Legal AF - 6/3/2026

20:53KFA:No, nothing like that. She was, it was, but it's, you know, sometimes in this world of negativity and in this world of despair and Donald Trump and watching the news, et cetera, it can be depressing and it can be hard sometimes. And to be inspired by someone like Sonia Sotomayor and she's a great speaker. She's a great, you know, just what she said and her speech was amazing. It just gives you kind of, you know, goosebumps and makes you just feel good and makes you feel really patriotic and, but patriotic, like you really want to save this country out of love and out of love for what, and freedom and the freedom for all of us.

21:36KFA:And so it was, it was just a great, a great inspiring speech.

21:39Popok:That's how I felt when I heard Jay Powell accept the Profile and Courage Award a couple of days ago by the Kennedy family. First time a non-elected official ever got that award. I think the three members of the Supreme Court could get Profile and Courage Award as well, especially as some of them wind down their careers. And just as a programming note of what's coming up on the docket, the calendar page has turned. We're in June. We've got maybe one or two weeks left of Supreme Court dropping orders about the full appeals that they've handled over the course of the year that we've talked about.

22:21Popok:We're waiting on birthright citizenship. That's a huge one. That'll be last day, last minute, I assure you. because if it's good for the democracy, like birthright citizenship is saved, even the MAGA six are going to want to get out of town and start their holidays rather than get the abuse of Donald Trump. If Donald Trump even appears ever again in public, I mean, we're day eight. I feel like we're in zero dark 30. I'm going to start writing on a screen how many days Donald Trump has been missing since his Walter Reed doctor's visit. And no, pre-recorded interviews on podcasts don't count. You know, that's what, you know, we haven't seen the head of Iran lately either.

23:07Popok:And there's speculation about that. So while that's going on, we're also waiting on mail-in ballots, whether the Supreme Court is going to destroy how we've always recognized mail-in ballots, meaning postmarked the day of the election, received after the election, still count. Sounds like a good thing, as Donald Trump has instructed the post office not to deliver mail-in ballots from states unless they're on a federal database, subject to future lawsuits, of course. And then we're waiting on whether Lisa Cook is going to get fired. later on in the show, we'll talk about Bill Pulte, who went after Lisa Cook on the Board of Governors, claiming in a couple of social media posts by showing some signatures on some half-baked documents that she committed mortgage fraud because she owns two houses effectively and got an interest rate deduction for a break on one.

24:01Popok:We're waiting to see if Donald Trump's attack on the independence of Federal Reserve and his ability to fire them at will by just posting something on social media is going to be effective or not. I think that's a loser for Donald Trump, but I'm not sure about mail-in ballots. And I'm not worried. I think if I had to predict we win on birthright citizenship, I mean the democracy, we win on Lisa Cook, they're going to find that she has a due process right that had been violated. He'll have to do it another way, the Federal Reserve. And I think we lose on mail-in ballots. I think they're going to find, Like, no, the Constitution says there's an A election day.

24:39Popok:It doesn't account for votes coming in after all this other bullshit. So what do you think, Karen, on those three open ones?

24:45KFA:Yeah, you know, I think I hope I mean, I don't want to jinx it. I'm knocking on wood. I agree with you on that. On that the mail and ballot one, I think, is trickier because I think what are they are they going to they're going to have to be a little more strategic, like more surgical when they when they decide that. Because what about mail-in ballots that were mailed prior, right, or received prior to Election Day? It's not just the ones that are after. And what about people in the military and others? I think that one's going to be more nuanced, but I do agree they're going to come up with some arbitrary way, some kind of structure that's going to talk about whether it's on election day or certain people are exempt, whatever it is.

25:33KFA:But I think that one's going to be a little more surgical.

25:36Popok:Yeah, I totally agree with you. So when we come back, we're going to talk about the weaponization fund, how that's always been a smokescreen for what Donald Trump really wants, which is to get out from under tax liability for the last 16 years and tax exposure for himself and his family. We'll talk about the timeline that led to it and why I believe that's true. And we're going to talk about Maureen Comey and how the success that she's having with Judge Furman about her wrongful termination case fired as being just doing her job as a career prosecutor. And we'll talk to our former career prosecutor, Karen Freeman Diffolo, about that and that case.

26:16Popok:And then Bill Pulte, and we'll bring it back together with Lisa Cook, how he got a new feather in his cap by Donald Trump. But the Democrats are fighting back saying, yeah, all right, we'll take away all the toys from the director of national intelligence if it's going to be Bill Pulte. Like, if you're going to shit on Americans' national security, you know, on one hand, Donald Trump claims everything is a national security risk. Everything is a war. And he's a war commander to expand his presidential powers to its outer boundaries. Right. The ballroom's not a ballroom. The ballroom is a well-knitted, integrated military-industrial hospital complex that needs to have a drone port on the top of it.

26:54Popok:And it's all about security. And every time somebody fires off a gun within a mile of the White House, it's a murder attempt on Melania Trump and Donald Trump. I don't know how it could be a murder attempt on Melania Trump. She's never in the White House. Forget about eight days and counting with Donald Trump having been seen. Where is Melania? I'm starting to get worried. We might have to send out a search party. So for that, what he wants to bulldozer and steamroll Congress and the American people, it's national security. But does he care about national security? And if you want to have a prime example, Karen, of the dementia test, you know, he keeps bragging about, I know the difference between a rhinoceros and a camel.

27:38Popok:Good for you. But one of the key factors of whether you're fit for your job is who you're putting into these positions. And Bill Pulte is going to get Americans hurt, if not worse, running 17 intelligence agencies when he lacks the intelligence to pull that off. We'll talk about all that and so much more. So many ways to support what we do on Legal AF, the podcast. Let's go through them. Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Yes, about a dozen fresh videos every day. And if we didn't need subscribers, I wouldn't ask you for them. So take a minute and become a subscriber on Legal AF YouTube channel. Legal AF Substack.

28:18Popok:If you don't know about Substack, Legal AF is a great way to learn about it. And if you're already on, you got the leading law and Politics Substack is ours. Come on. I do a live report every day. We've got amazing postings. All our filings are posted there. Come over to Legal AF Substack as well. And then we've got our podcast, which won the Webby Award. Yay. Committee Award and Audience Voice Award for Best News Podcast. Keep us at the top of the rankings on audio podcast platforms of your choice and here on YouTube because there's all these different ranking systems. And that gives us the street credibility to continue to grow, bring on new programming, bring on new contributors and the like.

29:00Popok:And then we've got our pro-democracy sponsors curated by your favorite brother, Jordi Bicellis. And the rest of us take a look at these products too. We like them. So let's take a break. And for our sponsors. Look, magnesium, it's something most of us lack. And if you're taking that drugstore variant, you're still not getting the full picture. Industrial farming, chronic stress, and everyday aging all make it worse. Most supplements only use one form of magnesium, but magnesium comes in many forms that support your body in different ways. That's why you need to try Qualia Magnesium Plus. It combines 10 bioavailable forms of magnesium with more than 70 trace minerals for comprehensive full-spectrum support.

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31:58Popok:There's always been a giant ruse in mainstream media went after it and followed it. And so the announcement that the weaponization fund, a couple of billion dollars to pay Jan Sixers has no political currency, that it's been killed by the Republicans in the Senate, and Donald Trump's walking away from it in his discussions with the House, and Todd Blanche announces that it's dead on arrival. It doesn't matter. That's not what the plan was. The plan was not the settlement agreement. It was the amendment to the settlement agreement the very next day. See, on the day the settlement agreement was announced in the phony lawsuit that was filed in Miami, Trump versus his own IRS.

32:46Popok:So Trump versus Trump. They wanted to be able to announce the DOJ that Donald Trump and his family weren't going to get any part of the fund. No, not participating in any way. And they're there. No, it's not going to be for them. It's going to be for all the people hurt by the Biden administration's weaponization, meaning the Jan Sixers. And the Jan Sixers have like tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars of claims already against the federal government. under the Federal Tort Claims Act. And then what happened the following day? Without any fanfare, Todd Blanche posts a one-page, half a paragraph announcement signed by him alone with nobody other, none of the other parties to the settlement agreement, amending the settlement agreement and adding a release in favor of Donald Trump and his family on all tax returns from the moment of the settlement agreement backwards.

33:43Popok:So Donald Trump and his family is out from audit exposure and audit liability for tax evasion and tax fraud for 16 years, including$100 million audit about his obtaining an$80 million refund that wiped out his entire tax liability when he was on The Apprentice. And that didn't get any press because it was like, who, what is it? And, you know, all these pundits were like, I don't even know what this is. What do we do with it? And we were like, that's it. That's the tail that's been wagging the dog. And every time Trump or Blanche announced that the thing is dead, it's not the tax insulation. It's the weaponization fund, you know?

34:29Popok:I mean, this is why Scott Pelley got fired or quit, because he can't make reports like this on CBS. He can't make reports like this on 60 Minutes with Barry Weiss because they don't get down to this level of analysis. They're all top line. Weaponization fund. The reality is, Karen, that Trump didn't need a weaponization fund and doesn't need one in order to pay the Jan Sixers. They've got the money in the bank with the judgment fund already, just like they paid Ashley Babbitt and Michael Flynn. That money, they didn't need that to come from Congress. They got that in the DOJ. What they needed was a settlement to give his family and himself tax freedom.

35:11Popok:And that's an issue along with what happens with Judge Williams. Pick up from there and then talk about why, even if the fund were dead, the issues that Judge Williams is evaluating on fraud on the court are not over. Yeah.

35:26KFA:So when you want to bring a civil case, anyone, any person, it's normally you start with a demand letter, right? And you make a demand. And sometimes they are settled ahead of time based on a demand letter. When you do that, the courts never have anything to do with your case. That's just a private settlement between two parties. uh donald trump could have done that here and he could have done that and none of the problems that are happening are would have happened instead they made a strategic decision to file a lawsuit against his own doj right where as you said it's trump versus trump because he controls the other side of that v right trump versus the irs he controls the irs and so he's essentially settling with himself.

36:16KFA:The problem with doing that is he involved the courts because once you file a lawsuit, now you have court involvement and now courts will oversee whatever settlement and will oversee whatever the proceedings are and whatever is going on between the parties and the court has to sign off on whatever the result is. That was their biggest strategic mistake because not only did that now put Donald Trump in the crosshairs of Judge Williams. It essentially eviscerated. I think they did also want the fund more for a PR stunt than anything else. And I do think he wanted to be able to say, I was wronged.

36:56KFA:I sued the IRS. I got money, but I'm not going to take it. I'm going to be completely altruistic, and I'm going to give it to all of you. That way, the blowback of this whole IRS piece of it, of him never being investigated, wouldn't look so just like a complete bald face, get out of jail free card that he's trying to create for him and his family. And so I think that was a huge strategic mistake he made. He could have accomplished all of this if by just making a demand and settling privately. But he, I think, really wanted to be able to not get in trouble for setting up this sweetheart deal that he has set up for his family to never be audited by the IRS.

37:43KFA:And so because of that, he now has Judge Williams, who is reopening the IRS case, to examine whether this settlement was collusive or manipulated if they were trying to collude with and manipulate the court. because Trump was essentially settling with his own administration. And as a result, he's gonna have to answer to the court. And we're gonna get to see a lot of what went on there potentially. And I think stuff's gonna come out that is not gonna look favorably on him. So I think they made a huge, thankfully, a huge strategic mistake that has really blown back. And I think one of the things they didn't count on is the pushback from Congress, even congressional Republicans who were so appalled by this fund.

38:33KFA:Why? Because they were the victims of January 6th. They were there that day. And they saw how horrific January 6th was and what the people who stormed the Capitol did and the violence and havoc that was wreaked on the Capitol, the fear that they all felt. And so they are appalled. So even your most MAGA Republicans, this was a pill that they couldn't swallow. So I think they made a huge strategic mistake in a lot of ways. And Judge Williams is going to, I think, hold them to account.

39:05Popok:Oh, she definitely is going to hold them to account. I just had Judge Ludig and a local counsel friend of mine who represents the 35 federal judges who brought their motion that led to this reopening of the case. And they are unanimous that the judge's order indicates that And she is very upset about the settlement agreement referencing the lawsuit and the way it referenced the lawsuit, which makes it obvious that the federal court has been used and abused and had and deceived and a fraud has been perpetrated upon it. And I think she's going to focus on that and then start, she's already raised the specter of rule 11 sanctions, which are sanctions for bad faith filings, which could also be imposed against Donald Trump himself.

39:57Popok:It would be the second time he's gotten Rule 11 sanctions in the Southern District of Florida. He got sanctioned a million dollars with Alina Haba for bringing a phony lawsuit against the Democratic Party and a bunch of other Democratic operatives, you know, because he said, you know, they tried to deny him the presidency or whatever the other, you know, non-meritorious arguments were. Judge Middlebrooks threw the book at the two of them and made them pay the attorney's fees for the lawyers that were involved in that case. I think you're going to see something like that here. Is she going to find contempt?

40:30Popok:I don't know. It depends on what her fact finding shows. Her first step is she's asked, no, she's ordered. Judges rarely ask. She ordered Alejandro Brito, a lawyer that I know in Coral Gables, Florida, to answer her questions, you know, under the ethics obligation of complete candor to the tribunal. You know, did I ever have jurisdiction or was the case phony in terms of not being there were adversary parties? Has there been a deception on the court? Have I been deceived? And is the settlement agreement part of that deception? And has there been a fraud on the court? He's going to take a big gulp before he answers that.

41:14Popok:Now, he's Donald Trump's go to lawyer for all things Florida. so it's not like he's going to quit. But his law license is also implicated by questions like that. That's not a good look for a local lawyer who wants to continue to practice in this jurisdiction in front of a federal judge who's highly well regarded. She'd been a prosecutor. She was the public defender for the district for years in two districts in Florida before she went on the bench. There's nobody more well-respected. And nobody you don't want to F with more in federal court these days than I think Judge Williams, and that's a compliment.

41:53Popok:Hearing is on the 12th. Well, the briefs are in on the 12th, and there'll be a hearing. If there's a hearing, I've been promised that I'll be able to get into the room. Let's see if that happens. I'll be able to report that back to our audience as well. So that's kind of an update related to that. When let's talk about Maureen Comey for a moment before we take our next break. Maureen Comey, 12 years or so as a assistant U.S. attorney in one of the most prestigious offices in America, the then Southern District of New York office. before Donald Trump took over, just toiling away as a line prosecutor, but obviously receiving exemplary marks because she got some of the highest profile cases in the office and was successful.

42:43Popok:Puff Daddy, we'll skip over that one. The Epstein prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and the successful prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted five times, five counts of child sex trafficking and related counts and 20 years in prison. And wouldn't you know, just about a month or so before Todd Blanche went over to go interview Ghislaine Maxwell, the lead prosecutor, gets fired by the office. Now, Comey, Maureen Comey, who wants her job back and has alleged in her complaint that she was fired for the political animus against her father, former FBI Director James Comey. I don't think that goes far enough.

43:26Popok:There is a link, I believe, with the Epstein matter. It's just too coincidental. And I don't believe in any coincidences when it comes to the Trump administration. And I've been right every time that the lead prosecutor doesn't, gets fired, which gives Blanche and Trump a free hand to not challenge Ghislaine Maxwell when she lies which should have led to another indictment against her because she didn't get immunity for lying. But they didn't want the prosecutor there. See, we in the public would have demanded to know from Todd Blanche, why didn't you take Maureen Comey with you? She's in the office, but they fired her.

44:08Popok:And so there was a hearing in front of Judge Furman. And why don't you take it from there and about her trying to get her job back as a prosecutor to protect democracy?

44:18KFA:Yeah, so there was a hearing in front of Judge Furman about this firing. And there was a DOJ lawyer who spoke at the hearing who basically said that her firing was valid, even if there were political motivations. So she said, you know, she's here representing the government, etc. And Judge Furman, you know, really kind of pressed her on are there any limits to the president's Article II powers? Could the president, for example, decide to fire people in order to achieve an all-white executive branch or an all-black executive branch? You know, he asked hard questions like that. The DOJ lawyer, her name is Karen Lesperance, I think struggling and basically said, I can't answer on behalf of the government.

45:08KFA:And then that's when Furman says, yeah, but you're here representing the government, aren't you? And it was a knockdown, drag out fight there. And Maureen Comey's lawyer fought back and essentially said to, you know, this would be what Judge Furman just said would be a novel and breathtaking theory about the scope of the Article II power. So, you know, this is going to be, the discovery here is going to be great to see what it actually is. I think it's going to be a window into this Department of Justice and just how political it actually is. And they're not going to find any meritorious reason to that she got fired.

45:53She, by all accounts, had incredible, impeccable reputation.

45:58KFA:My husband's tried a case against her and has nothing but great things to say about her. She's an excellent prosecutor. And I've never heard a negative thing said about her. So she and she was a superstar there at the Southern District. So this was only political. And and I think, as you said, I think it's a very interesting theory about whether or not the reason that they wanted to get rid of her, too, was because they are completely whitewashing the Jeffrey Epstein files, right? They released 3 million files, but there's still another 2.5 million that need to be released. What's taking them so long?

46:37KFA:Where are they? Why haven't they been released? Why are the ones that were released so heavily redacted, but also the wrong things were redacted? And it just makes no sense how this whole thing was handled and how Todd Blanche has given a sweetheart deal to Ghislaine Maxwell, right? Putting her in a much more comfortable prison, asking her softball questions. When you listen to Todd Blanche's questioning of her, you would think this was almost like a puff interview. Todd Blanche is a former prosecutor with the Department of Justice. He knows how to cross-examine someone. He knows how to ask hard questions of cooperators.

47:17KFA:He certainly should have asked her a lot more questions than he did. And just from a skill standpoint that we know he has, the fact that he didn't do that, I think, shows there's another agenda there. And I think your theory, Popak, is an excellent one, that Maureen Comey knows where all the bodies are buried in the Epstein case. And is that why she was also fired, was to keep her from causing problems for this administration in their continued cover-up of the Epstein matter?

47:52Popok:Why do you think, because I've read that complaint a couple of times, why do you think she avoided, I mean, almost like studiously avoided raising the connection to Epstein, which is so obvious to those of us that follow the Epstein scandal and the timing of how close in time, you know, the temporal aspect of her firing versus Ghislaine Maxwell's interview and campaign to get a pardon. Why do you think she and her lawyers decided in that, at least in the first complaint, not to bring that up?

48:27KFA:I think because she's such an excellent attorney that will only say things she's sure about. And if that's the case, it'll come out in discovery and she could always amend her complaint. She's not going to set herself, she's not going to do anything or say anything that's political or that's going to try to get headlines or something that she's not 100 % sure about. in a legal filing that she can then be sanctioned for, right, by the court. And that's one of the reasons she has such an excellent reputation, because that is how she was a prosecutor. She wasn't somebody who spoke in hyperbole or somebody who made connections and predictions and conspiracy theories.

49:07KFA:And I think she was being very factual with what she knows now. And I think discovery is going to potentially show really what was going on, and then they can always amend their complaint. That's what I believe.

49:21Popok:That's as good a theory as any. I'd go with that. And then it won't limit her necessarily, her lawyers to asking the hard questions. They're going to have, they've said they want Todd Blanch, as you said, Pam Bondi. They're going to ask Todd Blanch, let's look at the timing of this. He can say, well, it's outside the scope of the subject matter of the suit. I think you have a freer hand. I've been known to obtain a freer hand in discovery than that. And you can tell they're worried, Karen, in the Department of Justice about having Todd Blanche testify, certainly Pam Bondi testify in an oak-paneled courtroom in front of a judge or a jury because they've let it be known in that status conference this week that they're going to be filing a motion for judgment on the pleadings.

50:08Popok:and I'm like, okay, I've done that twice in my career. And that's where you tell the court that the undisputed facts established between the complaint, that's the first piece of paper filed by the party, plaintiff, and the defense, that there's enough undisputed facts that as a matter of law without discovery, without depositions and without documents exchanged, the judge can issue an order and dismiss the case. But you're stuck, right? Then you can't rely on outside documents like they've tried to throw around a new Todd Blanche ratification memo and all things. Like it has to be in the four quarters of the two documents.

50:53Popok:And if you win, and you almost never do, because the judge is going to find and the other side is going to point out facts that are in dispute, their entitlement to discovery on certain of these issues and the like. And maybe you amend. Maybe that's when you amend. to oppose a motion for judgment on the pleadings. So the judge gave him until, I think, another couple of days to file the judgment on the pleadings motion to try to cut off discovery because they don't want Todd Blanchett to testify, which is a common theme in this administration. You know, they could have, I don't know if they could have won against Abrego Garcia in Tennessee when his case got dismissed for failure of the government to carry its burden to show.

51:37Popok:that vindictive prosecution wasn't afoot with Todd Blanche in bringing the indictment against Kilmer Obrego Garcia, but they didn't even try. And the only way they could have tried to win that was to have Todd Blanche testify. And they basically made a decision to not have Todd, they'd rather not have Todd Blanche testify than to win and have a judge find, they'd rather take the loss on a motion to dismiss for vindictive prosecution and be found to be vindictively prosecuting than let Todd Blanche testify. And that's saying something. I mean, I know, look, no DOJ wants their AG to testify. I get it.

52:13Popok:But when you have such a flattened organization, you know, hierarchy, organizational tree that's so flat between main justice calling the shots in these local prosecutions. I mean, I'm reading a paper filed by the lawyer for the government in this Covey case, Karen, another Karen, Karen Folster Lesperance. Do you know her? No. No. And I'm not sure anybody does. I think she's relatively young. And then I looked above and she signs it under the signature block of Todd Blanche. And this is in the Northern District of New York because of a potential conflict of interest between the Manhattan and Brooklyn on the case.

52:58Popok:So she works under first assistant U.S. attorney John Sarkone. John Sarkone, he was the guy that Trump tried to make the actual U.S. attorney and then found that he was unconstitutionally appointed. Also had some other problems in his past, including never being a prosecutor. And now he's on the pleadings. It just shows you how the continued corruption of the Department of Justice, I'm sure you found it not shocking a bit with the New York Times talked about federal judges completely rejecting the Department of Justice and the lies they're being told.

53:33KFA:Yeah, no, it's crazy. I mean, look, the Southern District of New York, the witness list for Maureen Comey of what an excellent prosecutor she is and why this was an unlawful firing is going to be the entire roster of all her colleagues because everybody loved her. Yeah. She was she's, like I said, just a stellar reputation.

53:52Popok:By the way, without getting into the details, you mentioned family members who had cases against her. Even when family members may have lost in a case against her, they still had nothing bad things to say about her as a colleague or a prosecutor, right? That's true.

54:07KFA:But in that particular case, the family member actually won, but yes.

54:13Popok:Right. Well, we'll debate that another time. In any event, we all agree that Maureen Comey deserves to be a public servant and to be a prosecutor and to protect the rule of law and democracy. But I want to follow that Comey case. It's not the only Comey case. Her father is going to be bringing his own motion for a vindictive prosecution up in North Carolina because of the Seashell case.

54:37KFA:What a waste. I mean, what a waste of taxpayer dollars. I mean, it's just an insane, ridiculous case.

54:44Popok:I don't care. Look at all the money they're blowing on fireworks for the 250th birthday party for Donald Trump. I mean, for America.

54:51KFA:Is that still happening?

54:53Popok:Well, it's happening without any performers, but I guess they need more fireworks now. So they're stealing it out of the park. The part, you know, you, when you pay to go to a park, you're now going to be subsidizing Donald Trump's bullshit, uh, bullshit event, you know, um, if he shows up, I mean, what is he doing? Is he resting up? I don't really get what he's doing right now by not, by not making appearances.

55:15KFA:What is your theory on that? I mean, do you think, Do you think it's really weird, right? And do you think the fact that he didn't go to Don Jr.'s wedding is related to that?

55:25Popok:The whole thing is weird. I mean, he's allegedly working executive time within the White House, but for him, these public forums and press conferences and cabinet meetings and White House meetings, it's like oxygen for him. Right. Well, the fact that he's been denied oxygen for the last eight days, is it voluntary? Does anybody believe Donald Trump woke up after the Walter Reed visit and said, I'm going to take the next eight days off and not meet with reporters? Who believes that? Or that his handlers finally got a handle on him? You know, like Susie Wiles said, you know, it's not helping you every time you go out to the public and talk right now.

56:08Popok:No, no. And, you know, he had a bad night, election night in America. He didn't go and you notice he never leaves. He's like, what a leash he's on. He never leaves the White House anymore. Like, I'm not sure it would have helped him, you know, to fly out in Iowa and campaign for the senator that he wanted, but he didn't even bother. It's just like the night before the election. He just like did a social media post. I mean, so we know he's the laziest president we've ever had, but no, there's something up. I mean, look, as we're talking, come on the air, you know, he could resurface. You know, like when Marco Rubio said, we're not at war with Iran, and then promptly missiles were flying all over the place, including at American targets, because, you know, even the Iranians watch cable news.

56:56Popok:So, you know, you got that going on. But look, the fact that, as you said, the Sotomayors, the Marine Comeys, the Jay Powells, the Michael Ludig's, that they still exist in American society matters. It makes me sleep better at night. You know, somebody wrote me last night during the Intersection podcast on the chat, they said a version of, give me your honest opinion. Are you worried about the midterms and voter suppression? And I said, no, because I have interviewed and been rubbing elbows enough with the attorneys general and the public interest groups and the ACLU, NAACP, Democracy Forward, the Norm Isens, the 200 federal judges X that have banded together at various times to file briefs.

57:49Popok:And they're all ready. Like, they've done the tabletop exercise. They know what doomsday looks like, and they are ready to run into court, to stop the post office from screwing us up, stop trump from stealing ballots stop this stop like they're ready all they need they're they've got an itchy trigger finger they're just they're just maybe i shouldn't use that with trump but they're ready they're ready to run into court at a moment's notice and they they had a test run because trump tried to do a lot of this bullshit during the first time around but if he starts trying to like seize voting machines and end voting hours and all they're they're we're going to be running into federal court on an hourly basis.

58:29I envision, frankly, several dozen lawsuits,

58:34Popok:if not 100 lawsuits being filed within a week of the election through the night of the election. Don't you?

58:42KFA:Yeah. Unless it's a complete blowout. Yeah.

58:44Popok:That's true. We'll take the win.

58:47KFA:Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

58:48Popok:Yeah. But we won't know. We won't know. And so they're going to have to in real time you know when a precinct you know uh shut you know some some ice agent grabs a voting machine somewhere somebody's have to run into court at that moment and bring it to a federal judge federal judges you better start taking you know eating your wheaties and taking vitamins because you're going to be working overtime and into the wee hours of the night on election related matters because of donald trump yeah 100 no doubt so when we come back i want to talk about how donald trump hates America, including its security, by appointing, I love this photo, it just looks totally clueless there.

59:26Popok:It doesn't demonstrate how incredibly short and how incredibly long his tie is, but it does do justice to the brainlessness of Donald Trump's pick. You would think that when he gets an opportunity to reshuffle the deck of his cabinet, you know, like Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi and Tulsi Gabbard, he would level up, you know, like, all right, I got a lot of shit for people who are obscenely unqualified. Let me pick somebody from the intelligence community. Let me pick somebody who's not a plumber, but somebody that's really handled homeland security issues, maybe at the state level or something like that.

1:00:04Popok:I mean, I don't think Blanche is worse than Bondi, but I don't think anybody's saying he's not, well, qualified is a weird term. He had the body of work to suggest that he could have been an Attorney General. That wasn't the problem. But when he has the opportunity to replace Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Security or National Intelligence, he picks who? Bill Pulte? The Neo, the Nepo Baby. There's the photo again. Everybody take a shot every time you see this photo. The Nepo Baby heir to the Pulte family fortune that's never worked an honest day in his life, you know, trust me, he doesn't have calluses on his hands, if you know what I mean, who has never been in the intelligence community, neither in the military or civilian life.

1:00:51Popok:And now he's not only going to run it, but he's going to run it part time. That's how little Donald Trump gives a shit. We're going to talk about all of that and so much more on the Legal AF podcast. Support us. Hit the, leave a note in chat. Come over to the audio platforms of Spotify and Apple. leave a five-star review, tell people about the YouTube version of us, continue to grow our audience here. That would be great. Come over to Legal AF YouTube channel. And trust me, if I didn't need subscribers and we didn't need it to continue to grow, I wouldn't ask for it. If you think you're subscribed, you're probably not.

1:01:27Popok:There's many things I think I'm subscribed to, and I'm always shocked when I'm like, oh crap, I didn't support that person. Come over and hit the free subscribe button there. Come over to Legal AF Substack for selling Substack. Come over there. I'm getting giddy. For paid membership, Legal AF Substack is the way to support everything that we do in all the Legal AF world. And then we've got our sponsors and we'll take a break from them right now. If you love your cat the way I do, you'll spend hundreds of dollars on towers and toys and cute little outfits. But a lot of us are still feeding our cat ultra processed food with mystery ingredients in it.

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1:04:12Popok:That's M-A-C-K-W-E-L-D-O-N.com. Code LEGALAF. Welcome back to Legal AF at the Midweek. And I'm down a co-host. As people saw, she was in a hotel room and had to catch a flight. And I'm actually on a way, a little programming note, a couple of programming notes. I'm actually on my way this evening, as soon as the show is over, to go to Philadelphia. and I'm going to be on Media Row for a conference called Netroots Nation 2026, which is like a lot of independent media meets elected officials. And I'd never been in the room before. I don't think Midas has ever been there. They were thrilled to have us on Media Row.

1:05:04Popok:I've got a table. My team, including my producer, Salty, has helped me figure out if they can get me to figure out how to use this piece of equipment to do kind of guerrilla style interviews, you know, which is also good because, you know, it's a union place and I can't use a union member for this. That I'll be you'll you'll know because I'll be interviewing some amazing people using this device. So starting tomorrow, you'll be seeing me from Philadelphia doing regular reporting, normal videos up on Legal AF YouTube and Midas and all of that. And getting together with other like-minded people, we all sort of vibrate on the same frequency.

1:05:44Popok:I'll be there with the Court Accountability Action people like Alex Aronson and Lisa Graves. and I'm trying to interview. I think my lineup is Jamie Raskin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Summer Lee, and Max Frost. And there may be some others that I catch, you know, sort of Scott McFarlane style, like, hello, Senator, grab you for a moment, all on this event that I'll be attending. Friday, come over to Legal AF YouTube channel, another excuse to go there, because we'll be doing the live feed, the live stream that I'll be hosting of the ballroom appellate argument. Oh, yes. Whether Donald Trump gets to keep his ballroom.

1:06:26Popok:He keeps doubling and tripling down on compromising national security. His lawyers are playing catch up like, oh, shit, that the president just post AI generated photos of the of the top secret, super secret drone depot on top of the roof. Yes. Oh, crap. We better mention it in our filings, along with a catalog of all the other security features that our enemy wants to know about. Some of the dumbest lawyering I've ever seen is going on in the ballroom matter. But now it's in the hands of a three-judge panel. One of them is a Trumper, but two aren't. And they're holding oral argument about whether Donald Trump violated the Constitution, statutes, separation of powers, and organic law in deciding to bulldoze the East Wing without approval.

1:07:13Popok:and you know if he did that well i'm actually shocked he didn't go further and just knocked the whole white house down he's always said it was a what's the word i'm looking for a shithole uh that he didn't want to live in so i'm surprised he's not living in a series of double wide construction trailers on the side of the white house why not under his theory of what he can do without permission there's no reason to think he doesn't think he could he could knock over the White House. So you're going to want to be around. I start at 9.30 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, the live feed, and then we'll go right to the three judge panel.

1:07:50Popok:I don't know if it's video or audio or both. We'll know together on Friday. That's a little bit of a programming note there. Some great videos that are already up on Legal AF YouTube and interviews. This week alone, I interviewed Katie Fang and Alison Gill of Mueller She Wrote to talk about There are two separate lawsuits, one on Alison Gill on the weaponization fund and Katie Fang on the Epstein files and why as journalists and as commentators, they stepped out and across the line and became plaintiffs in lawsuits. Fascinating interview. I think you're really going to enjoy. J. Michael Luttig, Judge Luttig, joined me to talk about the filing of the 35 federal judges of which he led the charge to get Judge Williams to reopen about whether there's been fraud on the court related to the weaponization fund.

1:08:42Popok:And that interview is up on Legal AF YouTube channel, as well as I interviewed the two lawyers responsible for Kilmer Abrego Garcia, having his indictment dismissed from the Hecker Fink firm. They joined me. And then finally, this is all over the last 10 days or less, probably last week, I've got Sky Perryman, one of the founders of Democracy Forward. And she is the person and her team that got the judge to block the weaponization fund, Judge Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia. You know, in addition to my commentary, we bring on newsmakers like that and people in the trenches. And I wanted you to know about that.

1:09:23Popok:So let's end today with Bill Pulte. Now, we're not the only ones here on Legal AF that think he is grossly unqualified. And we are, from the moment it was announced, we are less secure as a nation than the moment before it. There's somebody, I don't know if you know this guy, Marco Rubio, aka Little Marco, who's been on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Intelligence Committee of the United States Senate. He's Secretary of State of the United States. He's been involved with directing traffic in a number of wars, which the Trump administration doesn't like to call wars, like in Venezuela and in Iran.

1:10:04Popok:So if anybody had a good handle on whether Bill Pulte was qualified to be the director of intelligence for the United States with 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military reporting to him, including the CIA, you'd think Marco Rubio would be the one to watch, right? Well, we got a clip of Marco Rubio because he was asked that question during some hearings yesterday on Capitol Hill. Ranking member. Without objection. Secretary, thank you for being here. In conjunction with your job, you're also the national security advisor with access to the most sensitive intelligence secrets our countries and other countries have in the world.

1:10:44Popok:But before this, you had these two positions. You had a distinguished career as a member and a chair for five years of the Senate Intelligence Committee up to last year. And you and Senator Warner are some of the most respected and knowledgeable people at that time and voices in the entire intelligence community, earning the trust of Democrats and Republicans alike, Senator and House members and other countries. So with all your intelligence committee experience and now a secretary of state and national security advisor and all those years of experience, have you ever specifically in the context of the intelligence community heard the name Bill Pulte?

1:11:27Popok:In the context of intelligence? That's what I said. I have never heard his name. OK, thank you for answering. Well, never. See, Marco Rubio knew he'd been had and then tried to double back. I know who he is, of course. Yeah, okay. That's all you need to know. So this is why this sort of exposes the charade of Donald Trump, pulls back the curtain on all the lies. On the one hand, Trump uses and tries to scare the shit out of the American people by claiming that we're at war with everybody, even unseen, unknown enemy combatants from countries that we didn't even know we were at war with and everything is a national security issue in order to expand his presidential powers and stretch it to the outer boundaries of what the Supreme Court allows under Article 2.

1:12:26Popok:So everything is an emergency. Everything is national security. Everything is a war for Donald Trump. Except when you look at his policies and his picks in his cabinet, you have to come away with the conclusion that he doesn't care about the American people. He doesn't care about my safety, your safety. He doesn't care about all of the aspects of the apparatus that have kept us safe since 9-11 and beyond. There's a reason why shopping malls and movie theaters. People still go to those anymore? And food courts, you see, I'm dating myself a bit, and other public squares are blowing up on a regular basis in America.

1:13:11Popok:Sure, we have an inordinate, unacceptable amount of mass shootings in America, including in places of worship. But we don't have the wholesale bombings and the destruction like we had on 9-11 where several thousand people die in an event. And a huge part of that is the intelligence community, outward facing, the FBI inward facing before Donald Trump and its collaboration with local law enforcement. And those things together, along with good relationships that we used to have with our allies and sharing intelligence with the five eyes and NATO and the European Union who would tip us off because we had good relationships with them.

1:14:04Popok:That's all been destroyed. Each one of those things has been wrecked by Donald Trump. And the ultimate thumb in the eye where Donald Trump shows disrespect to an intelligence community that he blames for leaks and blames for the Russia hoax and blames for all the tsuris in his life is to put on top of it a cartoon character who has no experience. That is his way of saying, I don't respect you, intelligence community, and I don't respect the intelligence of the American public. Because while he's trolling the intelligence community like FU, Bill Pulte. I think so little of what you do for a living as spy masters that I think this guy can do it part time while he still holds his job related to mortgages and regulation.

1:15:00I'm like, oh boy.

1:15:02Popok:See, he's effectively neutered the Department of the Intelligence, the Directorate of National Intelligence. It was created after 9-11, so there was coordination among all of these entities, so they weren't siloed. You know, every, you know, Navy has an intelligence, and Army, and Air Force, and Space Force, and this one. And then there's, you know, there's so many intelligence agencies besides the one that we always refer to, the CIA. So they brought them all together to be run by one person so that we would avoid the blind spots in intelligence that contributed to 9-11 and us not catching on that we were about to be attacked.

1:15:47Popok:But Donald Trump just wrecked that, just destroyed that. Just the way he destroyed the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, the Treasury Department, Commerce Department, it's just destroyed. And we are less safe as a result. And this should be an issue to be considered by the American public at the midterms. You know, are you when you go through the list of things and the Democrats are going to make you answer these questions? Are you better off economically than you were two years ago? I think that's the easy one. No. Are you more financially secure?

1:16:26Popok:No. Are you more secure in your health care, your ability to obtain health care or have health care or your ability to have affordable health care? No. Are you more secure from a national security standpoint in terms of what Donald Trump has done to wreck global relationships, the relationship between the states and the federal government, the relationship between local law enforcement and the FBI, you know, between the FBI and public interest groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center? Are you feel safer and more secure than two years ago? No. Do you feel more secure in your ability to obtain the food that you need or the housing that you need?

1:17:11Popok:I mean, very few people can answer yes, yes, yes. That they feel more better off than two years ago? No. And this contributes to that feeling. And that's why the numbers are so poor for Donald Trump. I mean, as we came on the air, the Dow Jones crapped the bed, stock market crapped the bed today, in part because of Iran and because of other things about Donald Trump's stewardship of the economy. Yeah. You know, he's about to impose tariffs on 60 countries again, you know, claiming I'm really going after child labor laws and forced labor. All of a sudden, Donald Trump, the great humanitarian, right, gives a shit about, you know, how many children, you know, make sneakers in a factory in China.

1:17:59Popok:Is that really why? Or because he still has to find a way to plug a hole in his budget by bringing in more tariff money because he's given away so much money in tax breaks and tax relief and blowing money on the 250th birthday. That's what this is all about. So when you are going, it is legitimate for a voter, regardless of party affiliation or no affiliation, to ask themselves, am I better off now than I was? There may be one or two people out of 100 that will say, well, me particularly, I invested in the same stock portfolio that Donald Trump seems to have invested in. You know, I'm investing in everything that every time I hear that he's gone on another trip with another set of business people, I invest in that group of people.

1:18:43Popok:You know, and I trade. I try to I follow the trading pattern of the president. OK, maybe you did OK. But everybody else, we know what the answers are. And then the Democrats just have to be able to make that connection to say and and because there's a comma after that and the Democrats can do better and will do better. and we'll be better stewards of the public money, we'll be better stewards of the economy and of good government, and we'll root out corruption. We'll deal with healthcare. We'll deal with, how about instead of chasing after human beings and having them self-deport, a couple of million of them, and help wreck the economy and tear families apart, How about we have a coherent, dignified immigration policy, like a giant bill that puts people on a path to citizenship and makes getting a green card easier for those that deserve it?

1:19:43Popok:How about that instead of what we're watching, which is forcing people through sheer blunt force trauma, forcing them to self-deport? So we'll cover all of that. You know, this is our midweek. Saturday, I pick up the show again with Ben Micellis, co-founder. We had a rocking, rollicking show last Saturday with almost 400 ,000 people watching. So we want you to be there for this coming Saturday. We have a new Monday Night Live edition of Legal AF. If you can't get your fill of all things Legal AF, come to Legal AF YouTube, where we launched a couple of weeks ago with Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves as the anchors, Monday Night Live Legal AF, 5 p.m.

1:20:32Popok:Eastern Time on the Legal AF YouTube channels. And while you're there, take a minute, hit the free subscribe button as we continue to grow that channel. Legal AF Substack, also a great place to pick up the actual legal filings. You know, by the time I'm at the midweek, you know, when it comes back to me, this is what my source material looks like. And all of that is posted for you to read, should you want to, on Legally Off Substack, along with my live reporting. So we've got that. We've got the new programming. We've got the programming we just talked about. And then just the podcast itself needs love and support.

1:21:12Popok:Audio podcast platforms, you know, leave a five-star review and comment. and that helps move us up the charts. On YouTube, bring other people here. Tell them what a great time you're having with this community that we're building. And let me just do a quick shout out to that rather than just do the shout out, Midas Mighty and Legal AFers. The generosity of this audience, of this community that overlaps with Midas's is heartwarming. Generous of time, generous of spirit and generous sometimes of money because some of these paid subscriptions, of course, cost a couple of dollars. And we appreciate all of it.

1:21:50Popok:Without it, right, I would be Scott Pelley screaming at my new overlord about how incompetent they are as a ticket out the door and then be in a public firing, public shouting match between myself and my editors after I have been canned. But I never worry about getting canned because this community, is my employer. This community is my boss. Yeah? Not even the brothers. And nobody loves the brothers more than me. But I don't work for the brothers. I collaborate with the brothers. I work, if you want to say who I work for, I work for this audience. I work for this community. That is what gets me up in the morning.

1:22:37Popok:The first thing I think of is not my corporate overlords that don't own me. The first thing I think of is what is the content that I need to capture today and curate for our audience that's going to be interesting, informative, honest, and true and powerful. And then I work on developing it and I do it over and then it's rinse and repeat all day long. I do eight to 10 videos a day to keep it rolling because our audience demands it. Again, that goes back to your generous spirit, which I appreciate. With that, on behalf of Karen Freeman Agnifolo, who's off on her plane, I'm about to hit mine. Thank you for being here on Legal AF at the Midweek.

1:23:22Popok:Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.