Legal AF - 5/23/2026

29:33And you would think after you saw the first wave of people who all had their lives destroyed, careers destroyed, because they did bad, because they lied to judges and engaged in bad behavior or committed crimes and did all of these horrible things, you would think the next wave of people would look at them and go, man, maybe I don't want to be like them and I want to stay away. But it's not going to happen to me. So then Trump brings the next wave of the people, like the Blanches and this whole crew, and then he sends them out there. And these people, any reputation, they had credibility, they throw it all out the window.

30:13And you see, and to your point, Popak, as you described, you have to do this and that and that, it doesn't just go away. It's just other waves basically being sent. And we have to fight back and we have to adapt, you know, our tactics, right? I mean, you think about it as in a geopolitical sense, you think in a way, well, how does a, how does a Ukraine fight back against a Russia when Russia is the second largest army in the world? Now it's the second largest army in Ukraine. They have to develop drones, drone interceptors, you know, all of these things to figure out how you neutralize that, where you have state regime media, where you have Trump controlling a right-wing Supreme Court.

30:58How do you adapt? That nexus to me is right here at Legal AF and Midas Touch Network. Decentralized media, working with lawyers. You create a whole new strategy and paradigm in order to try to check it and expose it, and that's what we're all doing in real time. With that, we're going to take our first quick break of the show. But a reminder, if you or somebody who has been injured in an auto accident, car accident, trucking accident, if you've been injured by the negligence of a company, Popak handles real serious injury cases, catastrophic injury cases, death cases. If you know someone who tragically died because of the negligence of like a company, let's say a truck hit their car or something like really horrible, reach out to Popak.

31:38Popak's taking on clients and representing a lot of people who listen to this show. 877-POPAK-AF or visit thepopakfirm.com. Also, go check out on YouTube and check out on Substack Legal AF. Just search Legal AF. Let's get those channels continuing to surge. All right, let's take our first break of the show. Oh, I'm very excited to tell you about the world's number one expanding garden hose and their brand new product, the Pocket Hose Ballistic. I used to have to buy a new hose every year due to kinks and tangles, but the Pocket Hose Ballistic is the upgrade I've been looking for my entire life.

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34:23Go to qualialife.com slash legal AF for 50 % off. And here's a bonus. Use the code LEGALAF for an additional 15 % off your order. That's Q-U-A-L-I-A life.com slash LEGALAF. And then use code LEGALAF. Thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. Thank you to all of our sponsors. Links to the discount codes are in the description below. All of those sponsors help Midas Touch Network and LEGALAF continue to grow. So support LEGALAF by supporting our sponsors. Welcome back, everybody. We've got a lot to discuss. I want to talk about grand jury misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, and how rampant this is in the Trump regime.

35:08High profile examples we saw this week with the Broadview 6 case involving peaceful protesters outside the Broadview detention facility in Illinois. That case was dismissed on the basis of grand jury misconduct. We'll talk about that. prosecutorial misconduct in Abrego Garcia, a form of prosecutorial misconduct called a vindictive prosecution, specifically targeting out someone based on vindictiveness, not based on the law, in order to specifically punish somebody for political reasons or outside of a legal kind of framework. And so in both of those cases, they never went before a jury even because a judge said there are so many flaws that have infected the prosecution that this case can't go to a jury.

36:01You may recall the first James Comey case. Remember, that case was dismissed and the first Letitia James case was dismissed on the basis of the fact that Lindsay Halligan was an improper prosecutor, so she couldn't have even been in the room in the first place, right? And that's kind of like not putting your name on the SATs. They failed the most basic level of not putting the correct prosecutor in the room, and there was no other prosecutors with her. But that case, those cases would have been dismissed as well for prosecutorial misconduct because there they brought in attorney-client information.

36:39They instructed the grand jury with incorrect law, and then they had the grand jurors sign an indictment or the foreperson of the grand jury sign an indictment that the full grand jury panel never even saw. I mean, these things are so unheard of and never got to that stage because Halligan was viewed as an unlawful prosecutor. So those cases got dismissed. The broader point I want to make, though, as we break down these cases, this is happening throughout the country. Donald Trump has these political hacks, these people who aren't even a lot of them aren't even confirmed being United States attorneys.

37:16There have been so many people who have been fired or quit in the Department of Justice. Remember how Popak and I have been reporting on all of these terminations that have been taking place. So this has really purged the DOJ of qualified and competent people. So you have people who don't even know or don't even care how grand jury procedure works. Just so you all know, in a grand jury, a judge is not in the room and the defense lawyers are not in the room. It's the prosecutor with the grand jury, and it's based on a presumption of regularity, a presumption that prosecutors are representing justice.

37:56And prosecutors present the case to a grand jury to make a finding about whether a true bill can issue. And then if a true bill issues, then the criminal case basically begins. It's filed. But there has to be first the determination by a grand jury. And the grand jurors show up. They rely on what the prosecutors say. And so there are clear no-nos that you are not allowed to do. You can't give incorrect law to the grand jury. You can't tell the grand jury, hey, I've seen a lot of cases. There's clearly crimes here. you need to just sign this because let's just get the show on the road and here just sign your name on on this on this true bill and stuff like that is what these are really bad guys or you can say look we're not gonna there's a lot more evidence that we have than what we're showing you today okay but we don't have to show it all to you trust me it's powerful stuff we don't want these people on the street.

39:01Your responsibility is to protect the general public. So please, we need you to sign off on this. Can you sign off on this? That sounds so egregious that prosecutors would engage in that behavior. That's exactly what's happening. And so first off, it's rare to even get grand jury material to begin with, or in a vindictive prosecution case to get a finding of vindictive prosecution or to get into discovery because the showing is so high. Grand juries usually occur in secret. Every criminal defendant believes they're being vindictively prosecuted. So our law creates very high thresholds for you to be able to even pursue these types of claims.

39:44But where Donald Trump is out there making social media posts saying, I'm a vindictive bastard and I'm going after you? Or did you see a Brago? A Brago is a terrorist, everybody. Or where the Trump regime holds press conferences about the Broadview Six and says, these are the worst scumbags in the world. And we're going to go after them. And if it's the last, when you say things like that, you are creating a record that is used to make initial showings, to then do discovery, to identify this conduct. And sadly, this takes a lot of time while your life is wrapped up as a criminal defendant in these proceedings.

40:33Unfortunately, the wheels of justice work slow, but the wheels eventually work, fortunately, in these cases. And my broader point is, we'll talk about the Broadview 6, we'll talk about Abrego, we'll talk about misconduct, but this is happening across the country right now. Let me just read for you what the federal judge said when she dismissed the Broadview 6 case. This is Judge Perry dismissing the Broadview case. Here's what Judge April Perry's ruling says to the prosecutors as she dressed them down. I relied on all of you and your personal representations in this case about what has been issued in discovery about the types of searches you have done for exculpatory material, about what arguments you will and will not make in this case.

41:22And I do that because first of all, I treat every attorney who appears before me as an officer of the court. But secondly, because I put even more reliance on the Department of Justice attorneys. Your sole goal is your sole goal is to do justice. Your client is justice itself. I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken. And then she goes on to say how the lawyers, the prosecutors, went in front of the grand jury and did vouching and said, hey, you need to find in favor of me.

42:01We like each other. Hey, let's just get out of here, man. Let's just do that. Now, I'll pass it over to you, Popak. The one thing I want to point out as well, though, this reminds me of something that just happened in Wyoming, where there's a number of murder cases and serious crime cases that just got dismissed in Wyoming. And there's not a lot of murder that goes on there. But what did happen at, I think it was in an indigenous area as well, where someone came in and engaged. And so it's a big outcry amongst indigenous communities because they're victims of this as well. But there's serious crimes that have taken place in Wyoming.

42:40The prosecutor bundled these cases together, nine of them, separately presented them to the grand jury and went to the grand jury. Hey, everybody, we got some bad guys for you. Some of the worst of the worst today. Okay. And you're going to have to find for me, you know, you've got to find these bad guys and we're going to get out of here quickly. Okay. One by one, let's get rid of this bad guy, sign your name. The federal judge looked at it and said, case dismissed. You can't do that. You can't case dismissed against people who potentially engaged in murder. And this is happening across the country.

43:13Think about sex trafficking cases that are being dismissed. Think about violent crime cases being dismissed. Think about fraud cases being dismissed. And if they aren't dismissed, Trump will pardon you if you're one of the, if you're one of the biggest Medicare, Medicaid frauders, if you're one of the biggest criminal, white collar criminals or people who are really involved in the waste fraud Just send over$2 to$5 million to MAGA Inc. and you'll get a pardon right now, as we see over and over and over again. So, Popak, with that framework, can you hit Broadview and can you hit for us Abrego Garcia?

43:50Yeah. And as you said, they are linked because it shows the depravity of a hollowed out department of justice. When you remove 6 ,000 of your best and brightest through forced resignation or firings, then you don't replace them because you can't replace them. The institutional legacy knowledge of these people, the fact that they went to some of the best law schools, best federal clerkships were accomplished civil servants who have been in that position apolitically for decades, some of them. And you don't replace them at all. You just sort of stretch whatever's left. And you can think about who's left.

44:29Sort of a combination of those. I mean, at this point, you know, in 19 months into this administration that you're doing Trump's bidding. I mean, you may not like, well, I don't want to give up my great job as a U.S. attorney or assistant U.S. attorney just because Trump's in office. I'll wait it out. But are you really waiting it out or are you doing a disservice to the rule of law? At one point, I thought, well, staying in is good because you'll be the resistance. But if you're forced to do things in court that also subject you to possible punishment, including using your law license, are you really accomplishing that?

44:59And that's a debate for another time. So whatever's left is taking their direction from leadership in Washington, what we call main justice. And that consists of a triumvirate of Todd Blanche, Stan Woodward, who used to be a MAGA, Jan 6th defense lawyer and represented Walt Nauta, one of the co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago case of all things. And Donald Trump, I mean, you know, you can add a third person in there, but that's the three people that are making the decisions. And you know what they want you to do. And so we're seeing, you know, and I could take the perspective of being a 35-year litigator.

45:47I have never, I'll say this, it's not me vouching. It's me giving you my honest opinion. I've never seen a more corrupt Department of Justice and one, this will go down in history, as the most sanctioned, found in contempt, having law licenses penalized group of Department of Justice lawyers in history. and that's why first time ever the presumption of regularity which would be a doctrine used by federal judges to just sort of gloss over you know any argument that the defense would raise about judge they my guy shouldn't be prosecuted or subpoena shouldn't be issued or search warrant or grand jury indictment or whatever because and they say we have a presumption of regularity unless you can show me facts.

46:38Otherwise, that presumption, the tie doesn't go to the runner any longer. And that is probably a byproduct that you and I have had guests on that a year ago, like Jamie Raskin and others, who said, watch, Donald Trump's has broken the Department of Justice over his knee. And the result is going to be, and it has been in 19 months, grand juries, unless they're misled, juries and judges rejecting the Department of Justice and finding them to start off. It's not a level playing field anymore because it's starting off with juries and grand juries and judges don't believe anything that's coming out of the mouths of the Department of Justice.

47:26I mean, even Judge Perry said, look, there's fine people in the Department of Justice, but I just can't grant the regularity any longer with what I've seen. So the Broadview Six, which you outlined, which got down to the Broadview Four, was a congressional candidate, social media influencer, her manager, and two elected officials that were protesting. This is part of Operation Midway. You know, that crackdown with Greg Bovino in Chicago and other places. Judge Perry, just to connect the dots here, is one of the judges that issued one of the most important decisions to try to stop the National Guard mobilization and the use of ICE forces on the streets and to try to attack First Amendment protesters.

48:09So she's well versed in this area as a federal judge, even though she's relatively new or relatively young. So they're going to trial. I mean, next week, this is how close this came, from going to trial to indictment dismissed by the prosecutor because it was so egregious that even the U.S. attorney in Illinois, Northern District, Boutros, had to, once he reviewed the file and what a prosecutor named Sherry Mecklenburg did, he had to go into court and announce the dismissal of the indictment. Now, the judge in the transcript that we've all now seen said this is some of the most egregious violations of prosecutorial misconduct you'd ever seen in a grand jury.

48:59From vouching, which is what it sounds like, that's when you stand up in front of a jury and say, I wouldn't bring a case like this unless the evidence was really strong. You have to trust me. So you're vouching with your personal credibility for the evidence to try to tip the jury, grand jury, into your direction. I've been involved in cases on the flip side where a prosecutor tries to bolster a witness's credibility. You see the uniform that person's wearing. They served their country. They're now a law enforcement. You have to believe what they're saying. Look at the uniform. You bolster the credibility.

49:35You bolster or vouch for the evidence. Can't do that. It's a violation of Sixth Amendment rights and other rights. You also can't have conversations with the grand jury in the hallway. You also can't, between sessions of the grand jury, start picking off the ones that you think are against you. All of this, by the way, Ben, the wreckage of Sherry Mecklenburg's career, the reputation of the Department of Justice in front of a federal judge, all for what? A set of misdemeanor charges. They couldn't even get felony. misdemeanor charges because a group of people demonstrating surrounded a car with an ice or an ice officer inside.

50:16Nobody got injured. Nobody got hurt. And then Boutros screwed up again, even though he came into court on bended knee, a mea culpa, as the judge referred to it, because then he decided he was going to start attacking the defendants again in the courtroom. She said, well, I'm concerned about like protests and protesters about this issue and its influence on the jury. She said, yes, Judge, that's the point. They were a mob, and the mob surrounded the car. She said, stop. Now you're undermining your own mea culpa that came in here. And so she's making a referral. She signaled that she's going to make a referral, Judge Perry, of Sherry Mecklenburg and whoever else in that office to the regulator for the bar as a violation of officer of the court rules about candor to the tribunal.

51:02That means loss of law license. I think between one and five years, frankly, could be longer. She's also entertaining and asked for invited a motion for sanctions. And now the lawyers for the Mecklenburg four that are left have filed motions to make sure nothing gets destroyed by that office. Don't don't shred anything. We need it for the motion for sanctions. And I'm sure that'll be granted. And then a little weird twist of fate. Why wasn't Sherry Mecklenburg the prosecutor in the courtroom since February and certainly not at this hearing to dismiss? Because she left to take a job as the counsel for the Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee led by Dick Durbin in Illinois, the senior senator from Illinois.

51:54When he figured out that she was the same Sherry Mecklenburg, she got fired from that job because obviously she can't do the job on the Senate, given all of the allegations of misconduct against her in that particular case. So the nitty gritty is what we're talking about, but it points to a broader infection at the Department of Justice. You know, the fact that you and I have to regularly report on vindictive prosecution motions being successful, grand jury misconduct leading to the dismissal of indictments. If the Comey and James Comey and Letitia James indictments had not been dismissed because Lindsay Halligan was found to have been illegally and unconstitutionally appointed to her position as U.S.

52:46attorney, it was pretty clear from a magistrate judge's order that she had violated Fifth Amendment and Sixth Amendment rights in the way she handled the grand jury. likely to be dismissed, another indictment dismissed. In my entire career, I've heard of, I don't know, one, two indictments that got dismissed for real, you never get the grand jury transcripts. But now it is just, it has to be part of the pattern and practice of every defense lawyer to suspect, rightfully so, that something went awry inside the grand jury with a beleaguered and corrupted Department of Justice. And I'll move on to Abrego Garcia.

53:31Yeah, definitely move on to Abrego because Abrego, not grand jury misconduct, although, you know, who knows, maybe it got dismissed on the prosecutorial misconduct aspect of vindictive prosecution, which I want when you go over this, I want people to pay attention to because it's exactly the argument that, you know, that James Comey is going to make when he files his, amongst many other things, First Amendment, a bunch of, with the seashells, the 8647, but it's the clearest case of vindictive prosecution. And the vindictiveness, Popak, as I said at the outset, Trump is, creates the record of the vindictiveness.

54:10I mean, Trump basically on his social media every day, I know our corporate news likes to ignore it, but I'll tell you who isn't ignoring it. the criminal defense lawyers representing these people. They're compiling them and saying, hey, judge, if any one of these things happen during a deposition, this would be the biggest smoking gun for vindictiveness that there is. I've got a thousand messages of Donald Trump saying, I'm a vindictive asshole. Watch me do vindictive things, which maybe if you were in North Korea, and this is how we used to perceive Kim Jong-un's behavior. But here in the United States, You know, you know, not not not so much.

54:49But before doing that, I want to take our last quick break of the show. I want to tease it out right now. And a quick reminder, everybody, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel. Also, subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel and Legal AF Substack. Also, if you or somebody, you know, has been injured in an auto accident, a trucking accident, any type of negligence caused by somebody else, a negligence of a corporation. If you know, tragically, a situation where somebody died in a horrible accident or a trucking accident, those are the types of cases that the Popak firm handles. Also, sexual assault cases where people are sexually assaulted, representing victims and survivors.

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58:11Welcome back to Legal AF on Saturday with Ben Mycelis and Michael Popok. And thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors, without which, frankly, I think we'd be off the air. So I really do appreciate all of our sponsors who protect our First Amendment right and your First Amendment right as well. So two last stories here, and not in rank order. These are very, very important. We were waiting. I was waiting patiently for the last three or four months, and judges often have exquisite timing for when they finally land the plane on an opinion. And the order we've been waiting for was from Judge Crenshaw in the Middle District of Tennessee about Kilmer Abrego Garcia.

58:58Yes, that poor soul who's been put through a Kafkaesque turmoil has been abused by every level of the Trump administration, including on television, including being tortured in the El Salvadorian prison of Seacott, and has won every case about his civil liberties that there has been. from the Supreme Court to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals twice to multiple rulings by Judge Zinnis in Maryland. And yet the Department of Justice in retaliatory fashion brought an indictment against him in Tennessee about a traffic stop in 2022, where he had a bunch of guys in the car that didn't even result in him getting a citation for a traffic light, you know, a taillight being out.

59:43And yet that was the trade bait that the Department of Justice was using to try to squeeze Abrego Garcia, deport him, remove him out of the country, away from his U.S. wife and American children, and send him to like Cameroon or Liberia or somewhere else. And his lawyers, some of which I know, like Sean Hecker, who we're going to have on Legal AF hopefully next week to talk to our audience, have just been putting their head down and filing motion after motion after motion against the indictment. And their primary argument was, this is an example of vindictive prosecution, which is a term of art for a doctrine that says that the primary purpose of a prosecutor prosecuting you is not because you committed a crime, but is to pay you back for something else, your indictment should be dismissed.

1:00:36And we should have safeguards against an out-of-control prosecutor doing exactly that. And Judge Crenshaw has taken this case seriously. Back in October, he made a sort of a fundamental ruling that led to the dismissal of the indictment yesterday for human smuggling charges, some trumped-up charges, because he found, the judge found, that there was a presumption of vindictiveness. He didn't find actual vindictiveness, but he found a presumption of vindictiveness, which shifted the burden to the government, right? It's called a burden-shifting device. Somebody's got the burden to prove something in a courtroom.

1:01:23And depending upon if you're in a criminal courtroom or a civil courtroom or there's a different standard depending upon what the issue is. And on this issue, one party has to prove by clear and convincing evidence or a preponderance of the evidence that they should win their motion. Once the judge flipped the table and said that it's the government, because there's already been a finding of presumption of vindictiveness, they have to prove they have not been vindictive. that kind of changed the weather in the room. Now the burden is on the government, not on Abrego Garcia. And you'd think the government would do everything in their power.

1:02:07They'd bring in every witness that they could, and they would ultimately prevail to show that they didn't do anything predictively. Unfortunately, they didn't prove that because the judge went through a distinct timeline and said there were at least 11 communications between Todd Blanche's right-hand person, a guy named Akash Singh, the assistant to the deputy attorney general, with the acting U.S. attorney in the middle district of Tennessee, effectively a one-way street commanding that U.S. attorney to indict. They served up a witness on a platter who was a witness that was so not credible and disreputable because they were trying to throw a braggle onto the bus in order to get their own conviction overturned or to get a lesser sentence that a magistrate judge completely refuted the testimony of the person.

1:03:09Yet that's the testimony that was delivered to an investigator just a few days before the indictment, who had no knowledge of anything about the case. And so the judge said, look, I told you that there was a presumption of vindictiveness because of a statement that Todd Blanche made on Laura Ingraham, on Fox, in which he effectively conceded that the reason for the indictment is because the Department of Justice was pissed off that they were losing in front of the Supreme Court and Judge Zinnis. So they ended up indicting him. So they went from saying, we're going to remove him from the country, but not indict him, to we're going to indict him and not remove him.

1:03:54And that was the presumption of vindictiveness that the judge said, you never overcame that presumption. Let me show you the clip from Laura Ingraham interviewing Todd Blanche, which is at the heart of this entire order granting the dismissal of the indictment. Play the clip. Many members of Congress, we had a senator fly down to meet with him, questioned that decision and said, oh, no, he's just a family man. And so we said, OK, we'll look into it. And when we started looking into it and we have great law enforcement officers and prosecutors who started studying this man and investigating him.

1:04:34And what we found is that we were right. We were right. He is a criminal who should be deported. And at the end of the day, we have a responsibility to protect the American people and to keep our country safe. Right. And that is the clip that the judge referred to in October and said, now the burden's on you to prove me wrong. So you think they bring in Todd Blanche into the hearing, the trial? Nope. You think they bring in anybody in the Department of Justice to refute some of the emails? No. All they put on was the former acting interim U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, a guy named McGuire.

1:05:12And they put on Agent Syed, who just got the case like several weeks before the indictment. And the judge is like, what about the rest? What about Akash Singh, the guy that wrote all the emails, basically instructing the U.S. attorney to indict? Why don't you bring him in so I can hear from him? Nope. Nope. Blanche, nope. And that's what the defense lawyer said early on. They said, judge, they can't carry their burden with these people. Well, the judge says, it's their, whatever they want to do, it's their show, put it on. And here's how the judge let off his opinion. You'll see a lot of judges in the segments that we do on Legal AF and on Midas are quoting, you know, George Orwell in 1984, or they're quoting the founders or the framers or the Federalist Papers or Alexander Hamilton or George Washington's letter to the troops, or here a very famous former Attorney General Robert, who became a Supreme Court Justice, Robert H.

1:06:16Jackson. Here's how he leads Judge Crenshaw in his dismissal of the indictment against Ebrego Garcia for a finding of a vindictive prosecution. Then Attorney General Robert H. Jackson warned his fellow prosecutors long ago of the danger of picking the person first and the crime second. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor, that he will pick people that he thinks he should get rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. That is the situation here. In fact, when he repeats that quote at the end of his decision, he says in his own conclusions, he said that there is, I have to sadly make a finding that there has been an abuse of power and abuse of the law by the prosecutors.

1:07:06What I loved about the opinion is that he lays out the timeline, and I often in my own filings will use a timeline without any rhetorical flourish, no big words, no argumentative language, just the power of the momentum of the events lead inexorably to a conclusion. And for me, sometimes there's nothing more powerful and more persuasive in a brief or an order than lay, and that's what the judge did here. It's the heart of his order is this timeline of events. And then he says at the end of his order that the government never meets the evidence, never challenges the evidence in front of them. They ignore the United States Supreme Court decision finding that he was illegally, Braygo Garcia, illegally sent to El Salvador.

1:07:58They just ignore it like it didn't happen. They just ignore all of the one-way emails between Akash Singh and that office to compel an indictment, right? They ignore all of those rulings and elements of the timeline. And they're like, that's, the judge says, it's very telling. But they're not even engaging on the key evidence in the case. So what's going to happen? I'm sure, at one point, I was sure Trump would appeal. Because Abrego Garcia was a convenient punching bag, human punching bag for Donald Trump and for Greg Bovino and Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi and Tom Holman and all these other people and Stephen Miller in the immigration world for Donald Trump.

1:08:47But things have changed in the last year. Donald Trump's poll numbers, especially when it comes to immigration and migrant issues, is in the toilet. I mean, he's 75 % of America rejects him on what he's done to human beings. Bovino, gone. Acting ICE director Todd Lyons about to be gone. Kristi Noem, gone. Greg, you know, all of them gone. So times have changed. If somebody can get in Donald Trump's ear and tell him that politically bashing Abrego Garcia doesn't make any sense any longer, they should just take him up on his original offer. Abrego Garcia was willing to be removed to Costa Rica to be near his family, just not to Cameroon or Liberia.

1:09:35But this is an example. This is the first time in 19 months that this administration has been found to be having committed vindictive prosecution, which is a very rare occurrence. But it's not the last. I assure you that by the time another year rolls around, there's going to be one or two more vindictive prosecution cases. I can see James Comey bringing it, you know, against his seashell indictment. You know, if they ever get around to indicting the CIA director Brennan, I can see Brennan bringing it. You know, anybody who's one of Donald Trump's perceived enemies has a natural vindictive prosecution motion to bring.

1:10:20And they have to be encouraged by what just went down with Judge Crenshaw and Abrego Garcia, which leads me, people might be going, where's Ben? Is Ben coming back? Popak has Ben tied up? No. Ben had to leave for a family issue. You know, we have this long weekend here. And so I told him I would, of course, fill in for him. He's done it for me in the past. Then we have Judge Bates. Let's flip the page here. Judge Bates, George W. Bush appointee. People weren't really covering the story. We were on Legal AF pretty intently. Has issued a preliminary injunction to stop the White House, the office of the president, the office of the vice president, Stephen Miller, Susie Wiles, and everybody else you can think of, stop them from destroying documents or using disappearing messaging apps like Signal or WhatsApp and to ignore the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which was put in place by Congress to direct a repository for all presidential papers and vice presidential papers, that it be with the National Archive, which as a concept has been completely supported by the United States Supreme Court in past rulings involving Richard Nixon, where they were ruling about who owned his secretly recorded audio tapes.

1:11:44You know, he had this secret taping system in the White House that nobody learned about. We didn't learn about until, you know, Watergate. And then he was like, he tried to own them. They're mine. Like, No, they're not yours. There's a whole lawsuit that went up to the Supreme Court and he tried to argue separation of powers. I'm the president, they're Congress. They can't tell me what to do with my papers. And the Supreme Court said, no, they, the National Archive is an executive branch office. They're just directing which of the executive branch offices it goes to. And it doesn't interfere with your presidential power to have a repository for your papers, which is what we need for future presidents and for the press, media, the public and the like.

1:12:29But Donald Trump, of course, sticky finger Trump, who took 15 boxes of top secret classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago and declared there is personal papers. Of course, he was going to have his lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel write a memo a couple of months ago declaring that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional because it's Congress telling the president what to do. And they were like, what? So this guy, who's the Office of Legal Counsel head, wrote this entire memo and said the Supreme Court was wrong in the Nixon case and the separation of powers, but then issued guidance.

1:13:12We're not going to respect the Presidential Records Act, but we're going to do a records retention guidance policy, like it's some sort of handbook for employees in some company. Oh, yeah, you should try to keep your docs. And if you can, I guess that's okay. And nothing about text messages. And Judge Bates said, what are you doing? You can't ignore the Presidential Records Act and substitute it for some sort of records retention guideline policy. And so I'm going to stop you right now. Starting, I think it starts on Tuesday. You cannot destroy any documents. You have to retain your documents.

1:13:48That means you, Susie Miller, Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, I mean, Susie Wiles, Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Council of Economic Advisors, National Security Council, Vice President Trump, everybody, while we continue this appeal or we continue this litigation, which will probably go towards an appeal. And, you know, once again, you've got, you know, citations to different things. You know, you just had Robert Jackson being quoted by Judge Crenshaw. And now Judge Bates, in his decision, he starts quoting the George Orwell in 1984 and talks about the following.

1:14:35This is how he leads off. Now, he's not the only one. This quote has been used by other federal judges in the Trump era. But here's how Judge Bates starts his decision. And we'll put it up on the screen. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell, the book 1984 from 1949. Perhaps with that lesson in mind, Congress enacted laws to ensure that government records are created, preserved, and made available to the public, and then goes through the Presidential Records Act. Later, he reminds everyone of the inscription at the National Archives.

1:15:17And if you haven't been to the National Archives, you should go. Some of our foundational documents are housed there. It'll bring a tear to your eye to see them under glass and in a cage while Trump runs wild. But you should go look at them. And at the National Archive, it says the past is prologue, meaning we can't destroy our history. because we're doomed to repeat it. And just because Donald Trump's in office doesn't mean he gets to rewrite history and throw it into an incinerator. You'd think this wouldn't be controversial, but of course Donald Trump wants to not have Presidential Records Act responsibility.

1:15:59He's the same guy that told the National Archive to effectively go fuck off. He wasn't returning any of those 15 boxes or more of documents. They knew that he had left with them. And then when all negotiations failed, they turned it over to the Department of Justice, who started to negotiate. Then Trump started lying to his own lawyers. This is all in the indictment, all in the grand jury material at Mar-a-Lago, sort of lying to his own lawyers so they wouldn't know what to say to the National Archive or the Department of Justice, which led the Department of Justice to get a subpoena from a grand jury and execute it at Mar-a-Lago.

1:16:38So that's how Mar-a-Lago came to be. So, of course, that guy who said, well, they're declassified or they're my personal papers, even the Iranian war plans, that's come into popularity these days, or the nuclear plans of some other country. Of course, he was going to say nothing is subject to the Presidential Records Act. Now, what's going to happen next? As of tonight, they haven't yet appealed. I assume they will. They will. It'll go up to the D.C. Federal Appellate Court, depending upon the panel, as long as there's not two Trumpers on there. They should continue to abide by Judge Bates and not block his injunction, meaning no records get destroyed.

1:17:24And then it's going to go up to the United States Supreme Court. You see it going. It's not going to be, I don't think it's going to be an emergency shadow docket application this summer, but I've been wrong before. The Supreme Court seems intent to giving Donald Trump a short track path to the Supreme Court. My gut is it would be more like a first term next year, starting in October thing. but you never can tell with the Supreme Court. But these are important matters and that's why we curate them for you here on Legal AF. So many better, so many great ways to support what we do. The Legal AF YouTube channel is up and running.

1:18:051.12 million subscribers. We're growing, growing, growing, but only with your help. Come on over there, hit the free subscribe button. Help us to continue to grow that pro-democracy channel. Legal AF Substack, we do another 10 to 12 pieces a day there, all exclusive, including I do a live report for about a half an hour every day. Sometimes I bring in guests. They just had Adam Klassfeld on with me and others. So come over to Substack. I'm running a 40 % sale for the weekend. The perfect time to become a paid member. Then this particular podcast, even though we just won the Webby Award, thank you very much for all your support.

1:18:45we need help we're ranked 86th out of the top 100 podcasts Midas is number one we gotta get closer to Midas don't you think and that all comes with views and downloads mainly on YouTube so you can help us here tell people about this podcast bring them here for the next viewing and then we do shorter clips over on Legal AF YouTube channel for you and your viewing pleasure as well go over wherever audio podcasts are Keep us in the top 50 of all news podcasts by going to Spotify and Apple and all those places. Leave five-star reviews. Download that. Listen there. Watch on YouTube. Go back and forth.

1:19:26That keeps us afloat. It really does. And I do want to do, for Ben and me, a special shout-out to veterans and those that have served this country honorably in the military. It's a very trying time right now, but we do appreciate your service. my dad was army and so you know we've always been great supporters of those who uh you know who are patriotic in that way and serve their country in that way and or made the greatest sacrifice so uh you know i never want to forget what these holidays are about and so we wanted to do a special shout out for that in the meantime we'll see you on legal layoff youtube channel we'll see you i'll see you on tuesday on the intersection podcast here on the midas touch network a live podcast at 8 p.m.

1:20:13I have two special guests I'll be teasing over the weekend. Join me there. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popok. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.