Legal AF - 7/4/2026

27:30Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to all of our sponsors. They help support the show, support them, discount codes in the description below. As I noted earlier, I wanted to share with you former President Biden's message because, again, regardless of where you are politically, this is the type of message that we expect of leaders, especially the President of the United States. He writes, 250 years ago, a group of Americans signed their names to a piece of parchment and made a promise no nation had ever made before, that we were all created equal, endowed by our creator with inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

28:05Ben Meiselas:We're the only nation in history built not on ethnicity or blood or geography, but on an idea that's always been what makes us exceptional. We choose that path 250 years ago, but that's where the work began, not where it ended. Every generation has had to choose it again. At Valley Forge, at Gettysburg, on the beaches of Normandy, and the streets of Selma. Americans recommitted themselves to the principles on which our nation was founded. My dogs really were into that section as well. Now it's our turn. There's nothing guaranteed about our democracy. We have to fight for it, defend it, and earn it over and over year after year.

28:42Ben Meiselas:That's not a burden. That's what it means to be an American 250 years in. We still haven't fully lived up to those words in the declaration, but we've never walked away from them. And this July 4th, I hope all of us can commit to one thing that we never will. I don't believe we're as divided as we were told we are. I bet my whole life on the American people and I'm not stopping now. Happy 250th birthday, America. Our story isn't finished. Let's keep on fighting together. Let's keep on writing it together is what he said. You know, I think again, powerful words right there. That's what we expect.

29:16Ben Meiselas:Instead, Donald Trump posts, as any Democrat ever happy, going after communists, you know, and just vitriolic hate that spewed on a daily basis. And that's been the thing since Trump and that ilk went on stage, you know, 15 years, 16 years ago, quite literally going down the escalator. But, you know, with the Tea Party turning into this, you know, rage machine, you know, it's all been about dividing and turning against each other, They're politicizing every issue. And here we are on July 4th, where, you know, you'll have people on state regime media like Brit Yume going, you know, you're like, Ben, what could they possibly be saying on Fox after, you know, reports like that?

30:05Ben Meiselas:You know, the financials, I'll just show you. I mean, you've got someone like Brit Yume says, look, the fact is he's rich. No one's ever saying that no one's saying that what he's doing is illegal. and as far as we know, he's paying all of his taxes. And it may be unseemly, but America wanted an unseemly guy. We knew that about him to begin with. First off, we don't know that he's – everything suggests he's not paying his taxes. He did a super pardon deal with himself where he sued the government for$10 billion. dollars. Well, in 2026, he sued the government for 10 billion and entered into a settlement where the IRS is prevented from auditing him and that he can't be prosecuted or investigated for any crimes regarding taxes.

30:51Ben Meiselas:What makes you think that a guy who never paid his taxes before or barely paid his taxes is now paying his taxes when he also carved out a super pardon for himself to not pay taxes? I mean, they just say things. They just say words. What are you talking about? Um, no one has suggested that what he did is illegal. I'm suggesting it. Let me be the person to suggest that in my opinion, that this is all a massive criminal enterprise. Lots of people are suggesting it. Actually, I think most Americans are suggesting it. And I think by you giving, by you spreading, and it's just unseemly, you're, you're creating a, uh, structure, uh, for people to say, oh, it's just unseemly, but he's going to make us rich.

31:35It's right around the corner, right? Oh, yeah. He said 2025, they promised we were going to get rich. Okay. 2026, they promised we were going to get rich. Okay. Okay. Now it's 2027. They're building the foundation. It takes them a long time to build a foundation for us. 2027, it's all going to be great. You know what they're going to say in 2027? We were so close. We were making you rich. Things were about to be amazing. We were right there. But then the communists won in the midterms and they've destroyed it. The reason why everything's crashed in 2027, it's the communists. They did it. Meanwhile, the Trump regime took all of their profits those first two years.

32:12They will screw you the hell over in 2027, 2028, and they will blame the communists and say, that's who did it. You see, if you're not MAGA, you're communists. They screwed us. We were so close. We were right around the corner. It was going to be amazing, right? Just like what Trump says with COVID. I mean, their story that they pushed about COVID is that literally it was Dr. Fauci's fault. The guy who was there to help and the guy who tried to warn, they make him the bad guy. And so, you know, now you have people like Bill Pulte, Donald Trump's mortgage, the guy who Trump put in the mortgage entity that no one heard of until the guy, another trust fund kid, was referring all of Donald Trump's political enemies for prosecution and saying they didn't do their mortgages the right way.

33:05Now, he's the acting head of the director. He's the acting head of ODNI, the office of the director of national intelligence. Even though he has no intelligence experience, he's firing everybody at the DNI, all the qualified experienced people who work within our intelligence structure they're now getting fired the same way the top prosecutors were fired the same way fbi agents of the same way you know people who worked at the cdc and nih and um and all of these entities you know we're fired we get rid of all the experts and then donald trump like you know i i know more about this than that i know more about this than that i know more about this no you don't you know less about this than anybody and you're an idiot and you're crashing everything that you claim to be an expert in, you're not an expert in, and you're making it horrific.

33:53And this is what they're setting up for, just to be very clear. They may try to take a little more profits, but then once the midterms come, they're going to say, ah, now it's a communist takeover, and now that's why the economy is doing. We were going to do the factories, but they did it. We were going to do this, but they did it. No. Trump just had to do nothing. If he literally did nothing and let former President Biden's economy just go on autopilot, you would have had manufacturing jobs. We were heading in the right direction. You would have had interest rates cuts. You would have, you know, Biden did the CHIPS Act, which invested all this money in semiconductor industry, in the semiconductor industry.

34:35You wonder, people are like, there's an AI revolution and all of these semiconductor companies have made all of this money. Yeah. Where do you think it came from? It came from Biden's Chips Act, idiots. Where do you think it came from? And then those companies go along right now. And like I saw Micron as a company, right? Where do you think? How do you think Micron went from being a 50 billion market cap to a$2 trillion market cap? Where do you think it came from? It came from the Chips Act, in my opinion, obviously. Look at the years of when it went down. They were subsidized by the federal government to the tune of billions and billions of dollars.

35:16But then typical late stage capitalism, Micron, then this is what they do. And Trump announces it. Trump goes, the great company Micron is investing, they're putting$250 million in a philanthropic enterprise into Trump accounts. He calls these accounts for children, these investment accounts that are being set up where the money goes into the stock market back into companies like Micron. They're calling it Trump accounts, and they're treating it as philanthropic endeavors for companies to give money to the Trump accounts, which then become tax write offs for Trump's right wing oligarch buds who got funded and fueled by Biden and through actual bipartisan legislation in the CHIPS Act, got billions of dollars in American subsidies.

36:09Then they turn around, give$250 million in a kind of a philanthropic tax write-off. Trump, who owns Micron, then posts about it. Oh, the great company Micron. You look at Trump's disclosures, he owns Micron stock. He owns Micron stock. Like, what the heck are we doing here? You know, you've got like the Michael Dell and Dells, you know, we're putting$250 into to all of these Trump accounts to celebrate the 250th. Trump owns all of this Dell stock. You saw that? Trump owns all of the Dell, the guys in there. They've hit record profits as well following the CHIPS Act and their stock took off after the CHIPS Act.

36:54And then they go around and then individually, then they cuddle up with people like Trump. And by the way, we've seen this. I I mean, you see the oligarch pattern in places like Russia. I mean, you see what that looks like. America thought, that's not us. We, you know, yes, it has its flaws and its problems and major ones in the past. But that wouldn't happen. Yes, it's happening. Here's Brit Hume, an agent of the oligarchy, pretending that, you know, Trump's just a rich guy. This is what rich guys do. Here, play this clip of Brit Hume. But the fact that he took in$1.2 billion in crypto income in his first year of his presidency, there's no suggestion from anybody that I've saw in any of the reporting that anything illegal is going on.

37:38But Britt, it's certainly his iPod. It is. It is, John. And I think that the right word for this is unseemly for a president to profit while in office. Now, it's not fair to say he profited from the office, although, you know, That's surely going to be subject to investigation, particularly if the Democrats get control of one or both branches of Congress. But if you wanted to be if you wanted seemliness in the White House, Donald Trump was not your man. And if you wanted a guy that wasn't very rich in the White House, he wasn't your man for that either. The fact is, he's a very rich guy. And when you hold the kind of holdings he has, you do get richer.

38:18this amount from crypto seems breathtaking. But as the point was made by you and by Scott Bessent, not illegal. So the people who don't like Trump won't like this. The people who do like Trump won't care very much in my judgment.

38:34Ben Meiselas:Why won't they care? Because you're telling them not to care? What do you mean, but not illegal? It looks like classic securities fraud to me. It looks like class, I'm giving you my opinion. It looks like classic wire fraud to me. If you showed that chart where someone makes$2.2 billion and the 1 million wallet holders lost$4 billion, yeah, that would normally be kind of investigated. And, you know, you could kind of almost look at it and go, unless you're saying those 1 million holders, all of them were just, you know, just completely, you know, to be expected that they lose all of their money.

39:22You almost look at it and go on its face, it looks like a criminal enterprise. Just because you say it isn't criminal, it isn't. And you go, well, someone who's that rich has substantial holdings. Okay, stop just treating us like we're all stupid and dumb. We understand that if you hold stock, if you hold certain things that increase in value in the past, sure, something happens called it compounds, right? Where you're making more money off the money that's made. The money's working for you. I understand that that's a thing that happens. but these weren't holdings that he had. Then he went into office.

40:03And what we're talking about is our economy was booming. So his wealth compounded. No, go look at his first term. He made 500 trades, which was 500 more than any former president. Now he did 21 ,000 trades in his first year alone. We're talking about new deals, new trades, new crypto holdings that were quid pro quos that he was using his office for. These are new holes. These aren't just rich people and the value increases. It just infuriates me to no end to see the massive amount of lying and normalization of this taking place. And it's why we started this network, because it is infuriating to see a criminal cartel and a criminal cartel media network that works to normalize and justify the criminal behavior and they do it with a collared shirt and they try to make it look all normal and great and that this is just the way rich people behave.

41:02No, this is the way criminals behave. This is the way Bernie Madoff behaves. This is the way Enron behaves. Actually, Bernie Madoff and Enron behave better, in my opinion, than this. This is the lowest form of lowest forms of human scumbag behavior, what they are doing to our country and to people across the world at this point. And then you've got James Comer up there, James Comer, yet another agent of the criminal cartel. And he's out there and he's like, well, you know, the difference between what Donald Trump is doing and what the Biden crime family was doing is that Donald Trump tells us all about it.

41:46He says, here it is. And then with the Bidens, I got to make up that they got 30 million from China, even though they didn't. And then I'm going to investigate it. And then I'm going to say they don't disclose the things that don't exist. And I'm going to make them prove a negative. You see what I'm saying? You see what I'm saying? This is what Comer says here. Watch this guy's supposed to be the head of the House Oversight Committee. Let's play. If you ask Donald Trump Jr., are you on a board for this crypto company? Are you on the board for this predictions market company? Are you on the board for this drone company?

42:22He will say, yes, I am. If you ask the president, the family, did you all do this development overseas in this country? Yes, it's the best development ever. It's going to be blah, blah, blah, blah. They're transparent. If you ask Joe Biden, did you take money from China? No, I don't know what you're talking about. No one in my family took money. Well, then I subpoenaed their bank records and guess what? There's money from China in there. Millions of dollars. For what? You may not like what some of the deals that the Trump family's been involved in, but we know about them. And the Democrats say, oh, you should be investigating Trump.

43:04For what? Well, his son's on a board of a drone company. What's to investigate? He's on the board of a drone company. Whereas the Bidens lied about everything. They completely lied and continue to lie to this day. So there's a big difference.

43:23Ben Meiselas:And he does it with a straight face. I mean, he is an agent of the RICO racketeering criminal enterprise right there. If you ask them, well, first off, you don't ask them. You're the head of the House Oversight Committee. Bring them in and ask them and hold a hearing because you're not curious what Qatar was buying for a$400 million jet that they gave. It doesn't bother you that the president flies around in a Qatari jet, that Air Force One is a Qatari jet on America's. Why the hell do we need a Qatari jet as our Air Force One? It's despicable. What are we talking about here? You don't think that, I don't know, maybe Qatar's central role as the mediator right now in everything regarding Donald Trump's catastrophic and unlawful war.

44:15Ben Meiselas:You don't think that there may be, you know, some interconnectivity there. What about Pakistan? You think that the United States throwing its relationship with India into the toilet and Pakistan investing in Donald Trump's crypto? By the way, I think Pakistan did a pretty good job in its mediation, though, too. I mean, not to suggest they didn't at all, you know, I mean, at least in terms of at least for now, at least for now, although I think it's going to be very fleeting. You know, there's been a temporary cessation of the war, although the Omani lane is shut down. It seems, in my view, escalation is fairly imminent at this stage.

44:56Ben Meiselas:I mean, it seems like it's part of a market manipulation scheme. And regardless, Pakistan's central role, India being pushed out, but India moving closer now to Russia and China after decades of U.S.-India relations. You don't think that has to do with Pakistan giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump's crypto and creating a crypto venture for that purpose? United Arab Emirates, their role in all of this, giving huge amounts of money in crypto. Jared Kushner is out there right now. You haven't called him once. He's out there in the Middle East at all of these meetings. So is Tiffany's husband, Michael Boutros.

45:37They're at all of these meetings with the head of the UAE, MBZ, and MBS. And they're all out there doing these meetings. And it's undermining America's role in the world. America's far weaker right now, global. I mean, It's not even close. America's power has been shattered abroad at this point. And Trump's fine with it. Trump's absolutely has no issue with it. You don't want to ask those questions to begin with. And then he's like, Joe Biden made millions of dollars. He didn't make millions of dollars. They just say the thing like it happened. No, he didn't. Joe Biden released his tax returns, Unlike Donald Trump, we saw it.

46:19He never made millions of dollars from China. Are you going to have to prove a negative right now?

46:26Ben Meiselas:How do you know it was like, did you see when Thomas Massey, you know, by the way, Thomas Massey was MAGA through and through until he was like, well, you got to release the Epstein files. And then Trump's like, no, we're going to cover up for the child sex trafficking. And Massie's like, well, we've got to release those files. And Massie's also, we've got to stop these never-ending wars, and we've got to stop aligning with Netanyahu and engaging in genocide. And then, you're out of MAGA. You what? What? You're out of MAGA. Get out there, Massie. So Massie then had, he saw what it looked like when state regime media Fox does this to you, when the MAGA, you know, they do this to you.

46:59And so they were like, Massie, your ex-girlfriend says that you did this. What's your response? And Matt's like, it never happened. But so then he goes to the Fox reporter. He's like, hey, show us your internet search history. You know, we hear that you love all of that. You know, and then the guy like walked away. And so it's like, this is what they do. They prove a negative. Prove the negative. And we're just going to push it out there over and over and over. I mean, I see what they're doing with Newsom here in California. They're like, some person who was in Newsom's orbit before she ever worked with Newsom wore a wire once.

47:35And as a result, this somehow relates to Newsom's wife's nonprofit. And the FBI is investigating Newsom. And then they'll just pump it out. And then Murdoch has all boom, pump, pump, pump, pump, just pump that, pump it out everywhere. And that's what they do. They bend reality with their propaganda machine right now. And that's the reality of what's going on right now. So you have Comer, you have Yume. And look, I'll show you in a little bit when

48:11Ben Meiselas:we come back, you've got people who are fighting for justice. You've got Katie Fang at the Midas Touch Network. You've got special counsel Jack Smith, who's horrified by what the DOJ has become right now. I want to show you what the latest updates with Katie Fang are. I want to talk about Jack Smith surfacing. We've got a lot more to discuss. Let's take our last quick break of the show. A reminder, if you or somebody who knows has been injured in a car accident, an auto accident, a trucking accident, if you're looking for a lawyer, reach out to the Popak Firm, call or text 877-POPAK-AF or visit thepopakfirm.com also.

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51:23Ben Meiselas:Thank you to all of our sponsors right there. Welcome back to Legal AF. We appreciate them. They support the show, support them. Discount codes for all of the sponsors are in the description below. Katie Fang, Jack Smith, With two people I'm grateful for on July 4th, Katie Fang's been fighting for the release of the Epstein file. She was the first reporter to file a lawsuit under the Epstein Transparency Act. Again, just an honor that she's on the Midas Touch Network. She prevailed. Federal judge issued a preliminary injunction order against the Trump regime demanding that they respond by July 2nd, produce the privilege log and produce the documents.

52:09Ben Meiselas:Lots of them that reference Trump's names and that have all of these redactions on it or show cause why you can't produce the documents. And the Trump regime said, okay, we'll treat that then as a show cause why we can't produce it. And the Trump regime said, yeah, we're not going to produce it because Katie Fang shouldn't file a lawsuit. She should go and do a FOIA request. Even though when people have filed FOIA, Freedom of Information Act requests, under the FOIA law, the Trump regime said, there's the Epstein Transparency Act, so we're not going to respond to your FOIA, which Katie Fang previously pointed out to this federal judge.

52:51Ben Meiselas:The Trump regime argued in its filing on July 2nd, July 2nd, which was filed like literally just minutes before the deadline that they already produced a privilege log or a redaction log that was already finished. Um, even though they didn't do it, they said, we gave a summary and then we did a letter back in February to Congress of an exposed person's list. Remember the one where they like listed like Janis Joplin and like people who had nothing to do with the Epstein files. Um, they were like list like Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene. They're like, that was the privilege log. That's not a privilege log.

53:28Ben Meiselas:A redaction log, just so all of our listeners and viewers know, I've done redaction logs in cases involving terabytes of documents. It's tedious. You go document by document, Bates number. Bates number is those numbers that you see at the bottom of the left of court documents. It could be like Epstein file, EFT 0001, EFT 1022234, whatever the numbers are. And you list why you're not producing that document. You assert the basis for which you're withholding a privilege claim if you're making certain privilege assertions. And then you give a little bit of a description so somebody can challenge it so we know, okay, you're withholding it improperly.

54:10Ben Meiselas:So they did not produce a privilege log or a witness log. Oh, and then they said, I did a video on this two days ago, that the reason that they didn't produce the co-conspirator list is that the co-conspirators are the victims. So they're protecting the victims, even though they leak the identity and the information of the real victims, the people who are listed under co-conspirators call themselves victims. So now the DOJ says, well, they're saying they're the victims, the co-conspirators. So now we're protecting them as victims. That's actually in the filing. So that's why they're saying to the judge, The co-conspirators are the victims, so we can't produce.

54:49Ben Meiselas:We've already produced a privilege log and a redaction log because we've turned over a summary and a list of people that we say are on the list. And remember, that list was like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey and Ro Khanna, like people who were like trying to get the information out. OK, here's Katie Fang describing how infuriated she is at the Trump regime's response. Let's play this clip of Katie. Blanche maintains that FOIA was my only and remains my only option. And then he has the balls to say the following. He says that my lawsuit, quote, threatens the interdependence and the reciprocity between Congress and the executive branch.

55:39You know, folks, last I checked, I don't see a lot of interdependence or reciprocity between Congress and the executive branch. This is what I see. I see many members of Congress standing there impotent, not doing their jobs, not leaning into the power that has been given to them as they have been elected by their constituents to go to D.C. and to fight for us. I also see members of Congress who are interested in transparency when it comes to the Epstein files being thwarted left and right as they try to, I don't know, look at documents in an unredacted format. Matt, we'll get to that in a few minutes.

56:21I don't see the DOJ working in any collaborative way with Congress to make sure that these redactions were done legally, the withholdings were done legally. None of that has been done here. What I have seen, I've seen people like Todd Blanche, Pammy Jo with the bad hair, Kash Patel, Susie Wiles, J.D. Vance, and others, assembling repeatedly in the Situation Room at the White House with Todd Blanch quarterbacking strategy on how to avoid turning over the Epstein files to the American people. Does that sound like interdependence or, quote, reciprocity? I submit to you, it does not.

57:08Ben Meiselas:Katie Fang, an American hero right there. Very, very, very powerful stuff. So Katie Fang to special counsel, Jack Smith. Jack Smith gave that incredible interview on MS Now with our friend, Nicole Wallace. And let me just share with you, Jack Smith saying something that we've been saying a lot here on Legal AF that one of the big problems with what the Trump regime has done to the DOJ is that the justice department can't do its job anymore, can't prosecute cases anymore. It has lost the presumption of regularity that federal courts assume that the DOJ is staffed by competent people who can be trusted before a grand jury, who can be trusted with declarations, who could be trusted to comply with court orders.

57:56Ben Meiselas:That's gone. So when you can't trust the DOJ, then the entire system gets shattered, not just as it relates to these cases where Donald Trump has completely weaponized the DOJ to go after political opponents, but also all of your just regular cases that don't get enough attention but are very important cases, federal sex trafficking cases and federal fraud cases and other federal crimes. those cases right now, criminal defense lawyers and public defenders and others, you know, are now able to make arguments to the federal judge. Hey, we got to see the grand jury transcript because it's possible that there was misconduct that took place.

58:46Ben Meiselas:Normally it would always be secret, but increasingly judges are saying, yeah, we're going to have to get you that grand jury testimony because the presumption of regularity is gone. And increasingly, we're seeing misconduct take place, even in case everyone's obviously presumed innocent, right? But even in cases which should otherwise be strong cases against bad guys, bad gals, what are you seeing? You're seeing these cases get dismissed a lot because of their procedural and technical issues. And then once people maybe even get convicted or had been convicted, Do Trump pardons them if they have the money to put money in a Trump political action committee or divert money to Donald Trump or hire a lawyer who's part of the Trump inner circle cartel and they get pardons.

59:37Ben Meiselas:So that's that's where we're at. Here's what Jack Smith had to say about one of the problems that the Justice Department is that it can't do its job. What do you make of the damage they're doing to our democracy at a moment you describe as dire? Yeah, well, I think one of the problems, I mean, there's several layers, right? One of the problems right today, besides the retribution prosecutions, is that the Justice Department can't do its job, right? Explain that. Well, if you go to court and the judges don't trust you, you can't do the basic things that you need to do to represent the American people in court.

1:00:11And we have seen judges across the country say they can't trust prosecutors anymore. And that has such a cascading effect on any sort of case. And, you know, I can't count how many opinions, but one opinion like that in my career would have been seismic. People would not know what to do if a court said, you know, trust that's been built over generations has been lost in days, right? And that's happening every day. And so regardless of what you think politically, they're just not effective at doing their job anymore. They've jettisoned expertise, right? And so we have a situation where we've got rid of people who know how to protect our national security, and we think that that's somehow not going to have an effect on our national security.

1:00:59You know, an example I can give you, Brian Driscoll. I don't know if you know who he is. He made a great video at the beginning to kind of rally the troops at same time. from the outside. Yeah, I mean, he's a folk hero in the FBI. If you were casting for a hero, that's what they look like, right? And just for your viewers, this is a guy, career agent, you know, mob investigator, SWAT team, hostage rescue, served overseas, Medal of Value, or bravery medals, all these things, and an expert in counterintelligence. They got rid of him because he stood up for agents who were being targeted improperly.

1:01:36You can't tell me, you cannot tell me our country is as safe as it was when people like that are being let go and fired for no reason.

1:01:46Ben Meiselas:You know, that's what we've been saying on Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network for a long time. This was my background when I was a litigator. I wasn't a Democratic litigator. You know, I wasn't like the Democratic Party, Independent Party. I represented when I was a litigator, Democrats, Republicans, and I didn't even know what political parties that people were. I had to show up to court every day. I took depositions regularly. I did trials. I had clients and I had to be a fiduciary to them, do my best work, be diligent, be candid with the court, execute the tasks that were assigned to me, meet deadlines.

1:02:32Ben Meiselas:That's not like a Democratic thing or a Republican thing. That was just like a thing thing, right? And so much of what we're seeing, in addition to the weaponization, which doesn't capture it, the word weaponization gets diluted because it's used against former President Biden, where I think the complaint that lots of Democrats had about Biden and Merrick Garland was that it wasn't aggressive, that it was the opposite, you know, that they were so afraid of the label weaponization that they let the, you know, that Merrick Garland let the bad guys get away with it for so long. And then it was too late by the time he started the prosecutions.

1:03:13And it didn't matter because everything that they were worried about happening, they allowed the other side to build up their troops and then, and their media machinery and just cry weaponization because it was brought 2023. It is so, so, but besides the weaponization aspect of it or whatever, you know what you want to say, it's that you destroyed like a functioning government, functioning things, things that work, you know, smart, intelligent people, top level people That doesn't exist. Instead, you've cast a dystopian reality show of losers, of literal losers and people, though, frankly, like Trump.

1:04:04Business leader, business loser pretending to be a leader on The Apprentice. Pete Hegseth couldn't run nonprofits because he was so corrupt and unethical in the military, ran him into the ground. And now a failed Fox weekend host, head of the defense department, you know, you've got Howard Lutnick Epstein Island boy, you know, over there bringing his little kids to Epstein Island, you know, you know, right to me, he's right out of central casting of Bernie Madoff. I mean, he could have, you could have, you know, you just put gray hair on, put more gray hair on the guy. You know, the guy is right.

1:04:43Bernie, you know, the whole shtick is a Bernie Madoff shtick to Lutnick. He's the commerce secretary. You know, the wick, just all of these losers. And speaking of which, then you have Jeanine Pirro. You know, it's basically your made for TV, you know, fascist judge Judy, if you will, you know, out there doing indictments against a two-time Olympic canoeist for dipping his hand into the reflecting pool, which was already damaged before he got there because Trump threw all this hydrogen peroxide into it after it was algae infested and disgusting. And there were lots of tourists who were just touching the water.

1:05:27They were just fascinated by what the hell had just happened to the reflecting pool by this Trump regime, just self-sabotage of it. And then they arrest the guy and they charge him with felony destruction of government property. There used to be a time when people would jump in and take a swim in the reflecting pool. It wasn't encouraged. But now because Donald Trump made up and lied that the vandals are shredding it with box cutters and throwing algae into it. They then have to create a prosecution around it. And that just, look, this is a case that will get thrown out and they'll blame the judge.

1:06:07Oh, the judge is weaponized against me. It's the judge's fault. It's a beyond frivolous, malicious case.

1:06:15Ben Meiselas:They'll then whine about the judge the way Trump does in all of his personal and individual lawsuits. But the systemic damage this does to law and order generally, to the fact that in our country, our system of law and order has been destroyed and crippled by this regime and that they've turned this country into like a failed state, into a failed country with right-wing oligarch pillages the treasury. There's no law and order. He's dishing out pardons and the SEC isn't doing anything at all. that's the system that we've got. Here's Janine Pirro during her press conference. Let's play it. Was this part of the poll specifically, was the sealant already partially removed?

1:07:05Did he rip it back and just describe in detail? Because he maintains that it looks the same as it did before he arrived. That's his. You know, I'm not going to get into the evidence, But what I told you is what our witnesses saw and experienced. There was an effort, a violent effort to rip up the ceiling from the bottom of the pool. And irrespective of whether or not, you know, we think that, you know, there there is some situation that preceded it. We can state and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he caused damage. And that damage is over$1 ,000. Keying in on that, how do you prove that$1 ,000?

1:07:48With an expert. Come to the trial. It has to be drained? Like, is that because it has to be drained? We'll hear all that at the trial. Did he have any tools, or was it just his bare hands? Right now, we believe it's his bare hands, both hands. So does that indicate, in your belief, that it was probably damaged before, or do you believe that he had... Oh, he damaged it. Further, but do you believe it had already been damaged before? He damaged the pool. before he touched it. He damaged this pool. But there have been all these videos, obviously. Well, good. I'm glad you've got that, Evans. Come on in the grand jury.

1:08:20You can testify. Next. I mean, it's just so dumb.

1:08:24Ben Meiselas:It's just so dumb. We all saw it was damaged before he got there. We all saw them pouring in the hydrogen peroxide, which anyone knows is going to rip up the paint at the bottom. We have the statements from the company that did the lining that talked about why it was happening in the first place. We know that the algae was there, the nano bubblers weren't installed. Even if they were installed, it's not going to prevent all the algae. Trump drove his freaking, you want to know where the vandalism was? You don't drive your motorcade, tens of thousands of pounds of vehicles over it. You're obviously going to create cracks in the bottom when you're trying to then put lining over.

1:09:10I mean, anybody can tell you it's the most basic stuff. But then again, it's the most basic stuff that if you do tariffs against the world, you're going to create inflation. And they can keep on saying all they want, that the foreign countries are going to pay the tariffs. They're not.

1:09:26Ben Meiselas:What the tariffs were, it was an extortion racket by Donald Trump to have mutually assured destruction for the United States and the other country because tariffs would hurt both. It hurts trade. It hurts free and fair trade. It screws Americans. It screws consumers. And it screws the other countries as well that may want to trade with the United States. So everybody suffers except Donald Trump because the point of the tariffs is to be used to say, okay, you want me to give you relief right there? I don't give a shit if the American people are hurt by the day. You think I care about the American people getting hurt?

1:10:03I'm going to hurt your people. I'm going to hurt the American people. What are you going to give me? You're going to give me a ring. You're going to do some crypto investments in Trump. You're going to help me with some stock trades. You're going to do a Trump property. Think about the countries that Donald Trump despises. NATO countries, Zelensky, they don't do these deals with him. Think about the countries he loves. They do the quid pro quos with him. That's the that's the dynamic.

1:10:32Ben Meiselas:And do you think that makes us stronger or weaker as a country? And then look at what he's doing with our criminal justice system. It is a criminal system now. It is run by a criminal racketeering enterprise that is Donald Trump's criminal enterprise. You take a look at those financials that were the subject of New York Attorney General Letitia James's prosecution or the Alvin Bragg criminal prosecution, the civil prosecution by James, the criminal case by Alvin Bragg. You take a look at all of the class actions that were filed against Donald Trump. You take a look at all of that. That's what he's turned the country into on America's 250th.

1:11:10Ben Meiselas:I mean, I still have hope. I still have a lot of hope. And I have hope in a generational project about what the United States can become. I think that after all of this, it should be very clear if we survive this, which I think we will survive this, the destruction and devastation that's caused by this. This is what our founders wanted to avoid. But our founders, frankly, certainly deserve some criticism on a lot of things. The Constitution was an impressive document. I agree. I agree. The vision that was set, if the vision is met, is something that is incredible. It is powerful. It is aspirational.

1:11:54It is wonderful. And it should be praised. The spirit of what America can be should be praised. And some of the great accomplishments that we have should be praised. We should not ignore the past and the problems that our country had.

1:12:08Ben Meiselas:And we should confront them head on and make sure to avoid them in the future. But our founders, for all of the wisdom that you want to attribute to them, This Constitution was founded on an idea of an executive commander-in-chief faithfully executing the laws, taking care that the laws of Congress are faithfully executed, and that judges were going to also, on an even-handed way, apply the law, apply the Constitution, and reach outcomes that were the right ones. That's not happening. The system has broken down. Trump, who has been ripping apart contracts and destroying things, has destroyed the Constitution.

1:12:51Ben Meiselas:All of the gaps in the Constitution, which were filled by an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing called the take care clause, that the president takes care that laws are faithfully executed, that is abused. That has rendered the entire Constitution effectively meaningless when you don't enforce the Constitution and you don't enforce the laws. So those loopholes need to be fixed. We need to truly think systemically about the composition of the Supreme Court. We need to think systemically about amendments to the Constitution and fixing it and figuring it out. It's deeper. It's more systemic when you actually look at the problems that exist because the Constitution itself is very vulnerable if you have a lawless presidency like we do now.

1:13:37And if you have Congress co-opted and turned into the Russian Duma by the sycophants of the lawless executive, that's the real message on July 4th. There's hope. There's optimism. There's happiness in the future if we fight for it. But we also have to not go into it with blind optimism. We have to truly take notice, audit what's happening right now and fix it. not as Democrats, independents, or as Republicans, but as Americans seeking to have another 250 years. Because we won't have another 10 or 15 if we don't figure this out, if we don't fix it. And that's the truth. That's the reality. That's the July 4th message that I bring you.

1:14:22I want of

1:14:22Ben Meiselas:realism right now. And that's why we've devoted our lives to Legal AF, why we've devoted our lives to this, you know, to Midas Touch, why we built this with you and us and this community with hosts like Michael Popak and Katie Fang and Scott McFarland and Adam Mocklers and Tennessee Brandos and, you know, the entire Midas Touch crew out there, you know. And again, to see Katie Fang fight, that's what you got to do. That's what you got to do. That's what we'll keep on doing here every single day so shout out to all of you on july 4th shout out to your families i'm grateful for you i appreciate you thanks for watching and we'll see you next time on legal af just a quick reminder subscribe to popock's youtube channel legal af subscribe to his sub stack legal af if you or somebody you know has been injured in an auto accident trucking accident car accident if you're looking for a lawyer do a free consultation with the popock firm see if you or a friend or somebody you know has a case again consultation is free call or text 877 popoc af or visit the popoc firm.com the popoc firm.com thanks everybody we appreciate you we're grateful for you happy fourth shout out legal af shout out my display