Legal AF 8/20/26

17:35Popok:And an appearance on Colbert. That's your case? I mean, if I was the judge, I would just look down at my glasses and be like, tell me you have more.

17:45KFA:That took a year.

17:46Popok:That took a year for you to come up with. And so I think if you were picking sides, you'd want to be on Comey's side right now. And I'm sure Patrick Fitzgerald, his lawyer, who is a preeminent former top prosecutor in Chicago, and James Comey himself, and maybe even his daughter, Maureen Comey, are rubbing their hands in glee that this is what they have to deal with. And they'll be filing their reply paper, which we will follow. Let's touch, before we take our first break, let's touch on the, or talk about the FBI. why Kash Patel, since day one, has wanted to dismantle his own FBI. There's no other way to put it.

18:20Popok:He threatened to close the J. Edgar Hoover building, this dilapidated building. I don't know why it's falling apart so bad. It was built in the 1970s. It's not like the Federal Reserve had those 100-year-old buildings they were dealing with. But apparently, you know, like the way it was built or whatever, the way it was kept up, there's just bricks and stone just dropping to the ground. And he said, oh, I'm going to get I'm going to mothball it. I'm going to make it into a museum. I'm going to put all those FBI agents in places like Alabama, where the real crime is, and get them out of Washington.

18:52Popok:The problem with that is Congress bipartisanly, starting like 12, 15 years ago, authorized and mandated through an act of Congress that the FBI get a new headquarters. They allocated it up to, right now it's up to almost a billion dollars for it, money that's now apparently missing or been diverted by Donald Trump. Trump's plan is, oh, we don't need a big sprawling headquarters like the CIA has at Langley. We'll shove him into the Ronald Reagan building, which is also dilapidated. And we'll put the billion dollars, who knows where? A little bookkeeping entry issue. Who knows where the money is?

19:39Popok:No. And so Greenbelt, Maryland, and the county, Prince George County, and the state of Maryland sued because they were the winner of a competition between themselves and Virginia to get that project, creating tens of thousands of jobs and construction. And you know what Trump doesn't want to do? He doesn't want to benefit a blue state like Maryland or an up and coming politician like Wes Moore. So he killed it, you know, just like he went after Colorado when they when they indicted and sentenced and convicted and sentenced Tina Peters, the the election clerk for all of her, you know, election denying interfering activity and to get them to relent.

20:23Popok:And it worked, by the way. They squeezed that Democratic governor so hard he's outgoing that he actually relented and commuted her sentence. And the reason is they started cutting off the federal dollars. They they move the space force out of Colorado. They cut off some weather center money and federal dollars. And he said, uncle. And he he commuted that sentence. They're trying to do the same thing in Maryland. What do you make of Judge Chung's analysis and decision making in the next steps?

20:51KFA:I mean, look, that was a pretty simple analysis that the conclusion he came to. He basically said, look, this was the decision to not move the headquarters to Maryland was against the law. It was not in accordance with the law because Congress had specifically required the headquarters to be selected from three approved locations and nothing in the governing statutes authorized Trump and this administration to unilaterally rescind that and just pick an entirely new location. So he blocked the move. I mean, it was a simple interpretation of what the law is. And so, you know, I don't know what they're going to do.

21:32KFA:I don't know what they're going to do other than just completely violate what a judge says like they're doing with the ballroom. I mean, that to me is the biggest example of them just doing whatever they want and not listening to a court. And we're going to get to that. But other than other than ignoring what the judge says, I think they have to keep going.

21:56Popok:Yeah, I agree. I think Judge Chung said very straightforwardly, if Congress wants to change it by an act of Congress and let you use the dollars for the Ronald Reagan building, you can go ahead. But until then, you're moving to Maryland.

22:11KFA:Why doesn't he go through Congress? He controls Congress. Why doesn't he just go to Congress? Why are these court battles going on? Why doesn't he just have Congress?

22:21Popok:Does he control Congress and the House?

22:24KFA:I mean, it certainly seems like it.

22:27Popok:Because it's 50-50, because, you know, they're down to like three, a margin of three. And people who were there, who see the need of the FBI having a modern state-of-the-art facility, voted for that money and voted for that building. And they don't trust Kash Patel and Donald Trump. And so I think there's enough bipartisanship about the issue that the FBI long term needs a real home that I don't think he has the votes. That's my interpretation.

22:59KFA:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

23:00Popok:I mean, if it was a different leader, you know, if it wasn't Kash Patel carrying the water on this, you know, maybe you would have a different outcome. But listen, they can try. I mean, the things – he can't even get the SAVE Act passed and he controls Congress. You know, so I'm not so sure it's that easy these days. That's why he keeps bypassing them with executive orders. That makes sense.

23:23KFA:But the SAVE Act is like that. That is totally separate. Right. This was already authorized. This is already congressionally authorized. You would think years ago. Yeah. You would think they'd want to preserve something that they already decided.

23:38Popok:Well, if you're interested in protecting your co-equal branch status, you shouldn't let, as an institution, you shouldn't let the presidency shit all over you and not execute, which is right there in the title, as the executive branch, not execute the laws that you pass. That's a bad precedent for the future. And they're starting – the problem is they're so focused now on the midterms and their primaries and their whatever. Nothing's getting done. You've seen the numbers, right? This is the most do-nothing Congress of all time. It's passed like five bills, five laws. I mean, other than the budget and stuff that keeps their lights on, they don't pass any other laws, Karen.

24:22KFA:They really don't.

24:22Popok:They really don't. There's nothing – I don't want people to think like, why doesn't Legal AF ever talk about the good laws? that are being passed by Congress. There aren't any. It's just self-preservation. Another budget, another spending, another wallpaper over the deficit, the$40 trillion growing deficit, pass another bill to keep our salaries flowing. That's all you see.

24:48KFA:And they're not having hearings that you would think they should have, right? I mean, for example, They filed, they passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. You would think they would now have hearings, right, to see how are we doing in terms of compliance with that act. No, not at all. Right. Instead, they're just, they're, I don't know, they're having very, very partisan hearings, not about things they should be having hearings about.

25:17Popok:Last time we saw Melania, she was calling for congressional hearings that victims testify in order to get justice. Remember that? Oh, there should be congressional. That fell on deaf ears. Then she went back and crawled under, you know, Bergdorf Goodman's or wherever she wherever she goes to in New York. Since she's abdicated her responsibilities as the first lady, that may be a good thing. I know a lot of people wrote when I when I said a version of that, a lot of people wrote in my chat. We like seeing less of Melania. That's OK. She can. She should do her. She'll only do bad things, as we know, as the First Lady.

25:51Popok:When we come back, we're going to talk about the ballroom, because it's now fully briefed at the United States Supreme Court. The Kennedy Center and its new resolution to put, I don't know, a drive-through for McDonald's or his name back on in bigger letters than before. And how Judge Cooper is going to feel about that. And then, yeah, we're going to talk about this unnatural relationship between an 80-year-old president and a 35-year-old executive assistant. I've had executive assistants in my life. I have one now. I assure you they're not writing love notes to me. They never have. Nor would I want them to.

26:33Popok:And why is it okay that when he played God, Karen, and he chose who was going to go on the real Air Force One and get blown out of the sky potentially by an Iranian missile, he chose Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, and Scott Bessett, the Treasury Secretary. And who is he going to save to put on his little mini Air Force plane along with Pete Hegseth? Natalie Harp. Was she in the catering container with his fat ass coming out the back? I mean, I don't know, but she got on that plane too. Why? Why is she on Marine One? Why is she writing notes about you're the air that I breathe and I miss our little discussions?

27:14Popok:Why? Why is she the human binky? We'll cover that as well when we come back from our first break. So many great ways to support what we do. They're all free. First, Legal AF, the podcast. Let's keep that at the top of the charts. There is a, there, there, there, over there. There's a, there, thank you, Karen. There is a scan button, scan bar to download the audios. Hold on. Let me hear from my producers. We need more downloads. We need more downloads. It drives ratings. It drives traffic. It drives the algorithm. Don't ask me why. Don't ask me to explain it. I could never in a million years, but I've been told it needs to happen.

27:52Popok:So take a moment. Maybe you only watch us. Just go and download. Leave a five-star review. It really does help. That's one. Two, Legal AF, the YouTube channel, a dozen hot videos every day. I do a number of them myself. But of course, we've got our contributors like Democracy Forward and the ACLU and NAACP comes on with us and Adam Klassfeld of All Rise News and Court Accountability Action and Speak Up for Justice and all sorts of great one-stop shopping for law and politics. You want to be on Legal AF YouTube channel. Hit the free subscribe button while you're there as we try to get to 1.3 million subscribers this month alone.

28:33Popok:Substack, call in Substack. Right, there we are. Substack.com. Go on Legal AF. Get us to the top 10. I'm running a sale right now, 35 % off on paid membership to the end of the week. I do a live report. I did an hour long live today with Anthony Davis. We had over a thousand people drop whatever they were doing and join us at lunchtime. And there's other things there on that community that I think you're really going to enjoy. That's the two big, that'll do it. And then we've got our sponsors. Some of them have been here from the very, very beginning. Some of them are new and vetted by Karen and me and Jordi Micellis.

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31:25Popok:Excite OSA is an FDA-cleared prescription-only device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. Go to springsleep.com slash legal AF and unlock 20 % off with the code legal AF. Excite OSA is an FDA-cleared prescription-only device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. Not for everyone. Individual results vary. Risks and benefits at springsleep.com. Welcome back and thank you for your fervent support, your generosity of spirit, and in some cases of money to keep us on the air and keep this content coming to you uninterrupted. It's so appreciated. Can't even express how appreciative we are of our audience and you guys spending your time with us.

32:15Popok:Let's give an update, Karen, on the ballroom, now fully briefed for the United States Supreme Court. The Department of Justice must think it does its best work at 1.38 a.m. in the morning because that's when they filed their emergency petition up to the United States Supreme Court on Friday, asking Judge Roberts, Justice Roberts, and eventually the whole court to block Judge Leon's original injunction, which allowed them to continue to develop the military hospital Taco Bell complex below ground, but not build a 90 ,000 square foot ballroom. And I'm going to say something that other commentators are afraid to say.

32:53Popok:Donald Trump destroyed the White House as we know it. Donald Trump destroyed the White House as we know it. He didn't just, like, do some remodeling. He knocked over a third of the building. You know, the White House as we know it, whether you're a West Wing fan or otherwise, is like the centerpiece, the West Wing, and the East Wing. That's the White House. And the East Wing's missing. It's like when you're flying a jet, you look out your window, and the other engine is missing. It's gone. And then the wreckage of it is he wants to erect a ballroom. which until somebody took another shot at him or tried to at the White House Correspondents Dinner was not about security.

33:29Popok:It wasn't about it's an integrated security thing. We need the shell of the ballroom with a drone missile proof thing and concrete. That's not what they said. They said that they needed a ballroom because they didn't want women getting their high heels caught in the mud of the Rose Garden. This was Trump's words, not mine. and they needed a better, more dignified place to conduct ballroom business, you know, whatever that's supposed to be. Now Trump's like, it's my bunker. I have to operate out of a ballroom for the rest of my term. Otherwise, I may not live it out. And, you know, as soon as they figured out, well, if we say national security, that'll probably help us at some of these court hearings, right?

34:11Popok:No. Now the new problem is the federal appellate court, two to one, Millett Garcia and Millett writing it for the majority against Trumper Rao, affirmed Judge Leon's injunction and ruled that by statute and by constitution, It is Congress that is responsible for the people's house, the people's park, the national parks of which the White House is a part of it. And if you want to remodel it or you want to demolish it, you've got to go to Congress to do it under the organic statute, period. And no, there's no out clause, like there's no footnote that says, unless you raise a third of the money from private sources, then you can do whatever the F you want.

35:02Popok:I mean, I would have loved if Judge Millett or Garcia had said during the oral argument when Yakov Roth for the government argued, when they got into the thing about, so you could knock over the Statue of Liberty and we'd have no jurisdiction? Yep, that's about right. I would have loved them to say, what's your position on this? Could Donald Trump, who was a critic of the White House in the first term, could he have decided in the middle of the night just to knock the whole thing over? Put up a condominium, a tower? of some sort without, because that would have gotten, that would have trapped Yakov Roth to try to define a line about what he could, well, no, that's going too far.

35:42Popok:Well, why is that going too far and knock it over the East Wing, not going too far? So that's how I would have handled it, but that didn't really come up during the appellate argument. Now they've gone to the Supreme Court on a shadow docket. Why don't you take it, Karen, from shadow docket lecture forward about what you think is going to happen next?

36:01KFA:Yeah, look, this is like an emergency petition before the Supreme Court. It's an emergency application asking them to allow this construction to continue during this whole appeal of this injunction, right? And he's basically saying, this is, the question is, is this a separation of powers issue? In other words, does Congress have to say that this is okay? Or because now he's saying it's a national security thing, is it really in his purview to make the decision? Either way, the National Trust is saying, excuse me, they also, this doesn't belong to anybody. This belongs to the people. This belongs to the American people.

36:43KFA:And there are preservation statutes and rules and historical preservation as well here. And he has just taken a virtual, a literal sledgehammer to the East Wing without getting permission, calling it an alteration, which is a joke. And then now saying this is a national security thing. And look, the injunction essentially said, you can build everything from the ground down, but you can't do anything from the ground up until this is fully litigated. But what Trump is doing is completely ignoring that completely and building this ballroom. And what they're doing is they're working 24 hours a day or 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

37:26KFA:There's over 250 construction workers that are there and they are doing it like that so that they can essentially say, we can't reverse it. We can't reverse it now. It can't be stopped because we've gone too far. We have to keep going. And so that's how they're trying to get around this court order. Now, the plaintiffs can say, look, talk about irreparable harm, which is what they have to show here to get an injunction. The fact that Trump is saying we can't reverse it, that we can't stop it, shows that we are irreparably harmed, right? But the irreparable harm has already happened. And it happened after the injunction was put in place.

38:07KFA:So this, to me, is going to come as close as it gets to Trump just flagrantly violating a court order, not listening to a court, doing what he wants and seeing if the Supreme Court will stop him. I mean, you know, at this point, I don't know how they, how they stop. I don't know how they, how they stop without, they have to put something there at this point because he's taken down the East wing, right? They're not going to tell him, okay, put the East wing back up. And so they're going to somehow, I don't know how they're going to thread this needle because he has flagrantly violated a court order.

38:45KFA:He's violated the law. He's violated a court order. And I don't know how, and he's continuing every single day to violate this court order.

38:56Popok:250 person crew, 24 seven, and using nuclear reactor-grade concrete in order to get it up. Look, they could seal it and cap it until this whole thing is resolved. That's what Judge Leon told them to do. Look, you made a giant hole of your own making. You made a mess of your own making. Go fix it. Cap it. You can secure it. That's part of the injunction. You can secure the site. They're obviously operating business as usual at the White House. He doesn't cancel. He's hosted state dinners since the hole is in the ground. He just had a state dinner. He's hosted foreign dignitaries. He's had them at the Oval Office.

39:38Popok:He hasn't stopped. He's not working out of a construction trailer. You know, he's not like, well, I'll just fly around in one of my several Air Force Ones for the next year because I can't use the White House. Or I'll just operate out of my golf clubs. He's not golf courses. He's not doing that. So for me, that always undermines from the record standpoint, that always undermines any of his position taking. But now we've got to see if he's got five votes on the United States Supreme Court to give him his effing ballroom. One more thing, the Democrats, if they get possession of the White House again, are going to have to fix.

40:12Popok:How many tens of millions of dollars, Karen, do you think that the next administration is going to have to spend to reverse all of the Roman emperor gilded golden monuments renaming statues and ballrooms of Donald Trump? Hundreds of millions of dollars, right?

40:38KFA:You know, it's funny because if you went up the West Side Highway in Manhattan, which is the other side of Manhattan, not the FDR Drive, there's a whole stretch of buildings that all had Trump's name on it on the Upper West Side. And years ago, all of those buildings, the co-ops and condos, they voted to take his name off. And so it doesn't say Trump anymore. And I think that's exactly what's going to have to happen is they're going to have to peel his name off of all of the places he's affixed his name. Take that ugly gold leaf stuff he has in the Oval Office. I mean, that just looks atrocious, in my opinion, what he's done to the Oval Office.

41:28KFA:But this, I don't know that someone would take it down. after how you know this is going to be a military facility allegedly and what are they going to do take it down and put a park there at this point i mean this is going to be one he's going to put it up and he's going to keep going and who knows what what the democrats or whoever's going to do with this building after the fact the thing that bothers me the most about this isn't whether or not i mean it bothers me that he took down the east wing i mean that was a historical building that should have been preserved. What bothers me, though, the most about this whole thing is, you know, whether or not you need a bunker or whether or not you need a ballroom, what bothers me the most is that he is basically giving his middle finger to the courts.

42:17KFA:And he is saying, I can do whatever I want. There's no separation of powers. There's no co-equal branches of government. He's being told by the courts that he can't do it, and he's just doing it anyway. And that's where, to me, the rule of law breaks down completely. And that, to me, is the scariest part of all of this and what this really represents, not just a ballroom versus no ballroom. This is really about the rule of law and him just ignoring it.

42:46Popok:Well, that's why we're going to have to see what the Supreme Court does. And if there's five votes to give him the ballroom or not give him the ballroom, I don't know yet. We'll know in the next week or two if they're going to block the injunction. You know, he'll get the ballrooms. It'll go up. It'll be on the merits, even though they'll say, well, it's not on the merits, but it really is on the merits because that building will go up and not be replaced. So let's talk about Kennedy. Speaking of flagrantly violating court orders, Kennedy Center, which, I don't know, operated just fine for decades until Donald Trump came in and started describing it as some sort of slum that he needed to, you know, gentrify and fix.

43:33Popok:I never heard in any years when other presidents were president, including Trump and the first administration, that the Kennedy Center had major problems. Look, every performing arts center that's of a certain age or vintage needs to be refurbished. I mean, you and I lived through Lincoln Center. We're staying with our New York theme today. Lincoln Center in New York and what used to be Avery Fisher Hall, now Geffen Hall and all of that. and tens and hundreds of millions of dollars spent for modern audiences and new technology and all of that. I get it. Soundproofing. But let's start with the name.

44:10Popok:Trump says, you know, somebody check the statute. What does it say? Oh, it says that this is a living memorial to JFK following his assassination and no one else can put their name anywhere on the building. Okay. So what I'm hearing is I can put my name on the building. So he starts putting his name him on the building. And he has the board of trustees, which he controls, and he has them all by the short hairs, you know, Howard Lutnick and Howard Lutnick's wife and Usha Vance and Richard Grinnell and Paolo Zampoli of the modeling agency and who did the arranged marriage with with the Bologna Trump and Donald Trump, all these a-holes who are on the who are on the board, who vote, of course, to reward Donald Trump by slapping his name on top of the Kennedy Center and to put up on Bing Tarp and cancel the Kennedy Center for the next couple of years because nobody wants to perform there because no self-respecting artist, musician, actor, comedian, nobody wants to perform there while Donald Trump is the president.

45:15Popok:You know, how many times can, you know, you can't put Lee Greenwood in residency like it's Vegas for the next two years, although that sounds pretty good, I guess, to Trumpers. So to save himself the embarrassment, Trump's like, let's just shut it down. We'll say that the building needs complete repair and let's shut it down so we don't have to worry about programming. Well, there's an organic statute that says it has to serve the community. And I mean the DC community by having programming. So about a month ago, you and I did the report on it. Judge Chris Cooper, 96 pages worth, went through it and said, okay, first of all, you can't fire Joyce Beattie, the representative from Ohio, as a member of the Board of Trustees.

45:58Popok:So you have to reinstall her. She gets to participate. That's one. Two, yeah, you can't shut down the Kennedy Center on a vote. You have to use prudence, your fiduciaries. I don't see where you did diligence, due diligence, or any kind of appropriate research to make the decision that it has to be closed rather than have it be done in stages and keep it open while you're performing and all of that. And three, no, under no circumstances can you put Trump's name anywhere near it. And you can't sneak it in the back door by creating a Trump-Kennedy Center Foundation, which we've never heard of before for fundraising and try to bring it no no name tear down that name and they tore down the name on the on the injunction they left up the scaffolding and uh and still up the uh the uh the uh tarp and he said you got a big meeting in august so have your big meeting trustees try to fix these problems i listed in my order and come back to me now howard lutnik who i used to work for took to the microphone, which he loves it, right?

47:09Popok:It's the oxygen he breathes. And he said, well, I'm going to be in charge for the president of making sure we comply with the orders because his wife's on the board. And I knew that was going to be a disaster. And so they, Karen, they issued a resolution a few days ago where they said in honor of President Trump, and whereas President Trump has raised so much money and he's helped revitalize a dilapidated Kennedy Center, we're going to put his name bigger than the Kennedy Center, bigger than John F. Kennedy's name, as being refurbished and revitalized by Donald J. Trump and the Donald J. Trump Plaza.

47:46Popok:And if we raise$100 million, then we're going to say and endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center. It's going to be like five lines of text, most of it devoted to Donald Trump. And as the lawyers for Joyce Beattie wrote in a status report today, this is a childish and blatant, breathtaking disregard for this court's order about the name and the fact that the tarp is still up. And no, bring back Karen for a minute. Karen, what do you think they based, I know it's a bad way to ask because I know you know, how many slides did the Board of Trustees review substantively in order to make the decision to shut down the Kennedy Center in a PowerPoint deck?

48:35Popok:How many slides? Zero. No, two. They had five. But as five slides, one was the title page. The back one was the closing page. One was a biography of the person who wrote it. And two pages of bullet points is what they based their decision. Do you think that's the prudence that Judge Cooper was looking for? This is a joke.

49:02KFA:I mean, what's the psychology behind Donald Trump has to have his name on everything? He's so insecure that he has to have his name everywhere. And then you've got all these people who spend their time, like the fact that the board of trustees is spending all their time, not coming up with great programming, not finding artists, great artists to perform there, not figuring out how they can serve the public, coming up with other ways to put Donald Trump's name on the building, not once, not twice, not three times, but like five times. Like that's what they spend their time doing because he's so insecure and needs to have his name all over everything.

49:44KFA:I just don't get it. I don't understand. I don't understand what, what, why this is happening. And again, violating the court order and violated the law.

49:55Popok:He's because he's a megalomaniacal narcissist. And, and he thinks that the more things he puts his name on, look, it's going to be like those, remember those images with Iran, when they, the people once liberated went on horseback with ropes to tear down the giant statues of Saddam Hussein. It's going to be the effing same thing, except it's going to be, I don't know, the, the independence, the Democrats doing it. They're in a lot of trouble. Here's what I think is going to happen. Judge Cooper is not going to be happy, especially after he was attacked by Donald Trump, including about his wife.

50:28Popok:Like he actually was so low and disgusting that during a social media posting about the original decision, Trump said, even your own wife, judge, doesn't want to carry your name. I guess she doesn't have her last name because she's embarrassed by you. Really? Well, that's an appropriate thing to say about a sitting federal judge. So he's not gonna be happy. They've asked for discovery because they're tired of being spoon fed on the Joyce Beattie side. Documents by the Trump administration curated, they said. Like, for instance, if I'm doing a discovery plan, let's see, I'd like all the text messages and emails between Howard Lutnick and his wife, Allison Lutnick.

51:11Popok:I'd like all of the text messages between Paolo Zampoli and Donald Trump. Anybody on the board, like Richard Grinnell and Donald Trump. Trump, did you hear this one, Karen? Joyce Beattie revealed during an interview that Trump was on the phone call because it was a telephonic board meeting. He was on the phone call listening in to make sure that his name was put on. You could hear him breathing. It was like an obscene phone call to his own board.

51:41KFA:I mean, the fact that that's what he's worried about. Again, what about the Iran war? Get us out of that. There's so many more important things going on. And what does he care about? His name on the Kennedy Center. That's what's important to this president. Yeah.

51:58Popok:So he's going to get in a big trouble. There's going to be a new filing for another injunction. There's going to be an order of contempt eventually. It'll all happen in September. And you know where to find out about it on Legal AF, a podcast and YouTube channel. I'm so glad everybody's here today. We're going to take another quick break. For those that have asked us, how do we support? What would you do? We really enjoy it. We have millions, 40 million people a month that listen or watch our work. And so the way to support us and keep that coming to you uninterrupted is help the podcast. You know, we won the Webby's this year as the best podcast in our category.

52:35Popok:but we need more audio downloads. Don't ask me why. I wouldn't ask for it if we really needed it. We do need it. Help us with the downloads. That's one. Secondly, we've got Legal AF YouTube channel where I do about 25, 30 videos a week along with my other contributors. We try to make it one-stop shopping for all things law and politics under one pane of glass. Help us reach 1.3 million subscribers, check today whether you are subscribed. You might think, I think I subscribed to that already. I don't think so. Because we have 40 million views a month, and we don't have 40 million subscribers. So you do the math.

53:13Popok:All kidding aside, we appreciate you. Anything you can do to contribute to our success, we of course appreciate. Then Legal AF Substack. We're regularly in the top, I think we're in the top 25 right now for US News. Easily can get to the top 10 with your help. Come over to Legal AF Substack every day at about 1245 Eastern Time. I do a live report. And then we've got our sponsors who are pro-democracy, who know our point of view, who know we're exercising our First Amendment rights without censorship, and appreciate your First Amendment right to hear what we have to say and want to be heard. So let's take a break for our sponsors.

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56:03Popok:Weight Govee is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, with Govee clinical study information and restrictions, visit HIMSS.com. Welcome back. You're on Legal AF, the podcast of the midweek with Michael Popock and Karen Freepin-Acnifolo. All right, listen, we're not salacious here on Legal AF. I'm not talking about Natalie Harp with you, Karen, because like, you know, I want to be in the National Enquirer. Oh, my God, it's so interesting. You know, like, no, I'm doing it because it is a legitimate question to ask, despite them thinking it's below the office of the president for CNN to follow up on something that John Ossoff said during his campaign speech, questioning the relationship and Donald Trump's focus on his job instead of on his relationship with a 35 year old female staffer.

56:57Popok:if I'm not the one that wrote the love notes and put them all over the Oval Office as reported by Maggie Abram. I'm not the one that said, you're the air that I breathe. I can't live without you. I miss our times together. I didn't write that. She wrote it. First question for you, Karen, do you think it's a legitimate question for the media, for us in our commentary to highlight this, how do we put it, this unnatural weirdo relationship between the 80-year-old president and his 35-year-old staffer. Of course.

57:30KFA:I mean, by all accounts, she has more access than even the chief of staff, Susie Wiles. I mean, she right now, according to certain people, has the most access, the most proximity, and in some senses, the most power in the White House of any of his aides. And so, of course, it's legitimate to ask what qualifications does she have to have that type of a role. And then when you hear the, frankly, inappropriate way that she has talked to him, we've always thought it was strange that he needed someone, if you remember during the trial when he was being prosecuted by the Manhattan DA's office, she was there printing out articles, positive and favorable articles for him because he needed that.

58:17KFA:He can't handle negative press, so he needs to constantly be told how great he is and see people saying good things about him because I don't know if it's a fragile ego or what it is. And so we always called her, what, human printer? It was weird that she would just sit there and print out positive stories for him and that he needed that constant adulation and reinforcement. But now when you hear that of all the people on Air Force One, when there was a threat to people's lives, he basically, to his life, and therefore everyone on that plane, he left everyone on the plane, dozens of reporters, cabinet members.

58:53KFA:He left everyone on that plane except her and Pete Hegseth. And why, so who is, I think it's a completely legitimate question to ask. And then when you hear how inappropriately she speaks to him, look, you know, as a woman who has worked for powerful men before, that is what I have done many times. I've never in my life spoken to these people like that. I mean, the men that I've worked for like that, it is bizarre. It is completely bizarre. are. And just the more you hear about her obsession with him, it's not devotion or loyalty. It's like an obsession that she has towards him. And frankly, it seems to be mutual, right?

59:37KFA:The fact, like I said, that he would choose her, that she's the one he wants to survive with him, you know, in his food cart that he got, you know, his catering cart. I don't know if she got smuggled away in the catering cart with him. But somehow she ended up on that plane. I think it's a completely legitimate question to ask. And unfortunately, I guess it struck a nerve because the outsized reaction that the White House is having to John Ossoff and Kristen Snell from CNN and people who have questioned, that's what's causing, I think, the eyebrows to raise is the fact that they've acted like, I mean, if there's nothing to see here, you just nothing to see.

1:00:19KFA:I don't, you know, I don't know what you're talking about and move on, but they've reacted in such a way that the reaction is what people are saying is causing people to raise eyebrows and wondering why are they having such an outsized reaction to this? So it makes you think, you know, something is going on there.

1:00:37Popok:Oh, right. It's like the old, the old line from Hamlet. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Why, why, why is it such? And the lack of self-awareness by the Trump administration people like Stephen Chung. This is below the dignity of CNN. You will go down in history about the reporter asking the question. Your grandchildren will read. Natalie Harp is the person who posted the ape and chimpanzee animation meme of Barack and Michelle Obama. Okay. That was revealed. That was never denied. She posted Donald Trump as Jesus Christ Almighty with a stigmata, okay, in AI. And any other disgusting posts that you've seen where Donald Trump has gone after women or Democrats or transgender people, it was more likely than not written by Natalie Harp.

1:01:35Popok:Who, as you said, has complete carte blanche. when she started posting things and even, as you said, Susie Walsh, the chief of staff, didn't know about it, let alone Stephen Miller. They said, you need to clear this with us. She said, no, I report to one person. I report to Donald Trump. I mean, this is so creepy that my first thought was, is this like the fan club president and Selena? Do you remember that? You know what happened there? I mean, the Secret Service is probably like, this is a problem of compromising the security of a president of the United States. I mean, listen, presidents have had personal secretaries that they've been very close to.

1:02:16Popok:You know, Kennedy had a person named Lincoln. Lincoln had a person named Kennedy. There's all those weird coincidences in life. Nixon had whoever she was that erased the 18 minutes on the tapes. They've all, you know, Clinton had Betsy, Betty, whatever her name, Betty Curry, who helped her, helped him with Monica Lewinsky. They've had relationships, but not love notes, not playing footsie. And again, what it goes to is not whether he's really sleeping with Natalie Hart. I don't know. What it goes to is he is easily distracted and where he should be placing an emphasis on the American people and what's right for them and how to get himself out of the war that he started.

1:03:00Popok:He's instead concerned about, Make sure Natalie gets on the Air Force plane with me. Make sure she's at Bedminster with me this weekend. And you know who's missing Karen from all of this? Melania. Who's only made 36 appearances. That's less than once a week in the last six months. Melania Trump. Last time she was seen was July the 17th. She didn't go to the Lindsey Graham funeral. She didn't go to China. She didn't go to when Donald Trump received the bodies of service people in a dignified ceremony. You know who's next to him? Natalie Harp. She's the new Alina Hoppe. Yeah.

1:03:39KFA:Where is Melania, by the way?

1:03:41Popok:Got me. I assume New York. You have a better chance of running into her than we do.

1:03:46KFA:I mean, but she has a taxpayer-funded staff, right? And so we should get to know where is our money going? Where is the First Lady? Is she performing? She has staff because she has First Lady duties. Right.

1:04:01Popok:I got a question for you. We're where Donald Trump demolished her office. The East Wing is the primary functionality of the East Wing is the First Lady's offices. It's the offices of all the like you've been to the White House tour, right?

1:04:18KFA:Yeah.

1:04:19Popok:I did one under Biden. Thank God. And we got to go to the East Wing and it was dedicated to the First Ladies because that's where they West Wing president, East Wing First Lady. well in the middle of the night probably without telling her donald trump knocked over her office where is her new allocated real where is it it doesn't exist so her office is in trump tower

1:04:40KFA:right exactly and what is she doing what is she doing for the american people to justify this huge staff that she has like i think i think we have a right to know because she isn't seen anywhere i don't know what she's doing and as you said he's got he always has somebody else by his side kind of acting almost like a first lady.

1:04:59Popok:Right. Used to be Ivanka. Remember when Ivanka in the first term used to show up at a lot of stuff?

1:05:04KFA:That's true. She was sort of like the creepy first lady daughter.

1:05:10Popok:But he doesn't have that anymore because Ivanka doesn't want to go to the White House and all of that. So, yeah, we're going to continue to follow. And I think the buttons need to continue to be pushed because they're getting an unnatural reaction. which only makes us think, why? Why is this? And let me ask you a question because you're better situated than I am, obviously, to answer this question. Stephen Chung and other commentators or other enablers for Trump said a version of, leave it to the Democratic Party to attack a woman for doing her job. It's so misogynistic. Are you kidding me? How do you see it?

1:05:50Popok:You're the mother of young women. and you've been a young woman and are a young woman today. I'm still a young woman.

1:05:58KFA:I know.

1:05:58Popok:I said you're a young woman today. How do you see that? Are we attacking Natalie Harp in this discussion?

1:06:06KFA:Look, when he said that, and I thought to myself, if it was a man, would we be asking these same questions? And that's a legitimate question to ask, right? That's a legitimate question to wonder. But I don't think we're questioning, I don't think anyone's questioning her proximity to the president. Of course, he's going to have aides around him. It's not that she's an aide. It's not that she supports him the way others support him, like Susie Wiles, etc. It's that it's what she purportedly does for him, the fact that she's always around, even in times and in ways that don't seem appropriate for her position.

1:06:53KFA:And it's the way she has spoken to him and things she has written to him and things she has said about him. It's her own behavior that I think is why people are criticizing her and Trump's behavior. I don't think it's because she's a woman. I think if there was anybody who was in that situation, people would have the same questions.

1:07:16Popok:And if it was a female president and a male staffer, I'd be asking the exact same questions. We got some breaking news by MS Now as we came on the air. Back to my Selena and the president of the fan club scenario. It looks like Natalie Harp worked at the White House without a security clearance for more than a year and turned down routine security clearance meetings obtained by other West Wing staffers. What does she have to hide that she didn't want to? Well, look at that little footsie on the Marine One. What does she have to hide in her past that she doesn't want revealed in a traditional run of the mill security clearance?

1:07:53Popok:And why would she allow it?

1:07:55KFA:Exactly. That's the bigger question. Why does she have such proximity to power without a proper security clearance? That's the question. That's the judgment issue that raises eyebrows again. Like, that's why people are wondering what the heck is going on there that she is allowed and what does she do that's so important? What special skill does she have that's so unbelievable and amazing that she should have that kind of proximity to the president? and that she should be chosen to be saved above everybody else.

1:08:27Popok:Starting to sound a lot like fatal attraction. We'll have to continue to follow the story and MS Now. Breaking it, we appreciate that. We appreciate our audience so much. So many different ways to support what we do here. Become an audio subscriber. You're already here on Legal AF YouTube channel. You can hit the QR code at the top. That'll take you right to it. And that does really help us. Otherwise, frankly, we wouldn't ask for it. Send this YouTube clip to people in your life. ask them to join our audience here and continue to grow what we do here. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel, which I curate and produce.

1:08:59Popok:We do about a dozen videos a day at the intersection of law and politics and update you on all of those things. And then help us get to 1.3 million subscribers. Come over to Legal AF, the sub stack and help us get to the top 10. We're now about number 25 of U.S. News Substacks. I do a live report every day at 12.45 p.m. Eastern Time. Then, of course, we shout out and thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors. And Karen, as usual, the last word here. I have a feeling I know what it's going to be here on Legal AF at the Midweek on August the 19th, 2026. Go.

1:09:38KFA:Happy birthday, Dad. I love you.

1:09:41Popok:We all love him. He's been here since day one.

1:09:45KFA:He has. My dad has been here since day one. He's the best. And I wear these two necklaces every single day. This was my dad was a police officer with the LAPD. This is one of the buttons off his shirt. And my dad was in the military in the army. And this is one of the buttons off his army shirt. And I wear them. They give me strength every single day.

1:10:05Popok:So lovely. Thank you for being you and thank everybody out there for being who you are and such great supporters of Legal AF. So until our next show this Saturday with Ben Mycelis and me, shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.