Legal AF Full Episode - 1/3/2026

22:57Ben Meiselas:Then we have a lot of a lot else to discuss. So let's take our first quick break. When we come back, let's talk about all of that and more. A reminder, check out Michael Popak's Substack Legal AF, one of the fastest rising, not only the fast, the number one fastest rising sub stack right now, number one. So search Legal AF on sub stack and subscribe. Also, make sure you check out the Legal AF YouTube channel, which passed a million subscribers on its way to 2 million subscribers. And if you or anyone you know has been injured in a car accident, a trucking accident, any injury as a result of the negligence of a company or a third party, if you know someone who's the victim of wrongful death or anything like that, or who's a wrongful, call 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com.

23:43Ben Meiselas:That's 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. Michael Popak has lawyers all across the United States who will give you a free consultation to let you know if you've got a case. Don't be shy. Call the Popoc Firm today or go to the website, thepopocfirm.com. First quick break. We will be right back.

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26:41Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to legal AF. Thank you to all of our sponsors. I want to just share this before going on to the next topic. Michael Popak is Marco Rubio and Donald Trump saying that they did not need congressional authorization. What they're basing that on is frankly nothing. They're violating the law. I suppose one of the things they'll try to grasp onto is a 1989 memorandum by Bill Barr, just basically saying, if you call what you're doing law enforcement operations, The DOJ has an obligation to go and arrest people who are hiding in foreign countries. So you're not in any way infringing upon international law or America's law or the Constitution that requires congressional authorization.

27:30Ben Meiselas:Just say you're doing law enforcement. I saw an Obama United States attorney point out that interesting that they say it's a law enforcement operation. But Pam Bondi, the attorney general, is not at the press conference for the law enforcement operation, nor is anybody at the DOJ. And also interesting law enforcement operation where you say you're going to run the country and take their oil. Very interesting law enforcement operation right there. But here's again, like this is like Marco Rubio and Trump from the press conference. Just so ridiculous what they're so offensive and ridiculous. Here, play this clip.

28:08Ben Meiselas:Mr. President, did you notify any members of Congress in advance?

28:11Michael Popok:Mark, do you want to talk about that? Because you were involved. We call members of Congress immediately after. This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on. It was a trigger-based mission in which conditions had to be met night after night. We watched and monitored that for a number of days. So it's just simply not the kind of mission you can call people and say, hey, we may do this at some point in the next 15 days. But it's largely a law enforcement function. Remember, at the end of the day, at its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice, and the Department of War supported the Department of Justice in that job.

28:41Michael Popok:Now, there are broader policy implications here, but it's just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify, because it endangers the mission. Plus, if I could add one thing to that, Congress has a tendency to leak. This would not be good. If they leaked, General, I think it would have been maybe a very different result. But I have to say they knew we were coming at some point, you know, a lot of ships out there. They sort of knew we were coming. We weren't. But Congress, Congress will leak and we don't want leakers. He said earlier in the press conference that Venezuela was in a ready position because they knew we were coming.

29:20Michael Popok:And now he's shitting on Congress for leaking. And to your point, I love I love how short Marco Rubio is. He's got the microphone on his forehead. Where is Pam Bondi of this? Where is Jay Clayton, who is the indicting prosecutor in the Southern District of New York at this press conference? It's not. It is a war effort that needed congressional approval. And we're going to have to see what happens with this resolution that's going to come out and can't be stopped by Thune and can't be filibustered away as the Democrats take the lead here to fight back against Donald Trump's flexing of his of his war powers without having any.

29:57Ben Meiselas:What I said on the live stream last night, Midas Touch was the first to go live with the news about the invasion. It was interesting. I saw like a lot of comments like you're being irresponsible. Why are you saying that the United States is attacking? I'm like, because I'm showing you the video footage right now. People were surprised that Independent News was getting the video footage first and posting it like I'm showing you what's actually happening. But but Popak, as you one of the things I said was this must be what it feels like on the live stream. I said this must be what it feels like to live in Russia, because the justification that you just saw Rubio give.

30:34Ben Meiselas:Actually, this was a law enforcement effort. So we didn't need to go through Congress. Why would I tell them? We just we just we told them after like this is like the Russian Duma. Right. And this is what Maga Mike Johnson and Senator Thune each turned Congress into like like this. pathetic. Congress is a co-equal branch. They should be strongly asserting their powers. Frankly, they should be meeting right now. We shouldn't have to wait until Monday, right? If I was the Speaker of the House or if I was the Senate leader, I'd convene immediately right now, summon everybody there, show up and make a point.

31:09Ben Meiselas:You're a co-equal branch. And there was just an act of war that took place while Donald Trump is giving you the middle figure. And again, And this has, even if Popak assume, you know, a leader gets into Venezuela, it's operating well, America's making money off of this. Like, just assume all those things happen, that the current regime leaders that are there, they all surrender. There's not a second way. Like, let's just assume all of that. As I said before the break, what it still does, and this is why you need congressional authorization on these types of things, because something like this now creates justifications if they already are utilizing other justifications, but for Putin to say, look, America's doing it, I'm doing it.

32:00Ben Meiselas:Xi Jinping, America's doing it, I'm doing it. This is just the way the world is. And if that's the way the world is going to be, Congress, our elected representatives should have to respond and they should have to say something about it versus an end run around them in this unlawful invasion. But Popak, one of the things that I think everybody realizes what this is also about is Donald Trump's cover up of the Epstein files, right? They're still violating the Epstein transparency law. The Department of Justice at this point is itself a criminal RICO enterprise, the same way in sex trafficking rings, they're often charged as RICO violation, racketeering sex trafficking organizations and enterprises.

32:50Ben Meiselas:That's basically what the DOJ is at all different levels covering up this sex trafficking ring. It went from 1.2 million missing records to 5 million missing records that they claim they're now reviewing that they didn't have when Pam Bondi said back in February that she had all the documents on her desk. And, you know, for those who are watching Legal AF last week as well, what do we say, or even the week before that, what were we saying? 5 million to 10 million records are likely outstanding. And Popak and I went through with you on the last episode. Why? We don't just come up with numbers. Michael Popak and I have litigated together.

33:30Ben Meiselas:Believe it or not, the way Popak and I know each other is we litigated against each other on the case where we first met. Then we litigated on the same side, but in our respective careers, and Popak's career is a bit longer than my career, but we both dealt with cases involving large terabyte document productions where we dealt with these types of things. And Popak's career was starting when there was an electronic discovery. I don't mean to try to date you there or give people your age. But when you went through quite literally mountains of paper documents and you would show up to court with trucks full of documents.

34:07Ben Meiselas:When I started practicing, we used earlier versions of these electronic software tools, which were still kind of elementary. I mean, you could do keyword searches, but none of the stuff that AI allows you to do today. And now there are pretty sophisticated electronic discovery tools. But on a case where you know that there's a billion dollar money laundering alongside a child sex trafficking ring, you know, a billion dollars in financial transactions, setting aside the emails and the photos and the transcriptions of the audience. You put all that aside, just the financial records would likely be millions of pages because they're done daily, weekly, monthly.

34:51Ben Meiselas:Then there are different LLCs and shell companies. Then there's the co-conspirator bank accounts. And you have to do forensic audits of these where we would sit with teams of lawyers when we would do these. And you would look through transactions and you would say March 12, 2007, there's a transaction for$9 ,999. What could that be? You highlight it and you literally just go through millions of documents and you go through page by page by page by page. It's a tedious task, but that's why sometimes these big firms have an advantage over solo practitioners being able to just go through the quantity in Vastropes.

35:29Ben Meiselas:So it never made sense when they said hundreds of thousands of records. So now we know the quantity of records is in the 5 to 10, 15 million range. They're now saying, oh, well, I bet you they use the Venezuelan invasion as pretext for why they have to delay the Epstein file release even more. We're in a war now and we're doing this, the special operation that we're doing. So we're going to need more time as well. And then we learned from this Wall Street Journal article. We've been actually reporting on it for years about this Mar-a-Lago spa. But I think the Wall Street Journal's new tactic is they do headlines that seem favorable to Donald Trump.

36:06Ben Meiselas:But inside the reporting, it's actually scathing. So the headline is the incident that led Donald Trump to ban Epstein. So Donald Trump said, oh, I guess it's a good article right there. I banned him in 2003. But then you actually look at the article and go, well, he wasn't banned from Mar-a-Lago. He was banned from the spa. And he never went to the spa. The spa went to him throughout the 90s. The article cites numerous staffers, masseuses, manicurists, and all these people who worked at the Mar-a-Lago spa. They would go to Epstein's home two miles away in Palm Beach, and he would, the way they refer to it in the Wall Street Journal articles, engage in sexually suggestive conduct with them.

36:44Ben Meiselas:Yeah, he sexually assaulted them. That's what he would do. He would expose himself to them. He would sexually harass them, and he would sexually assault them. He developed a reputation for that. A girl who's in the article that as someone who's described in I think a New York Post article as a girl from 2007, as a girl who was near the age of 18 or approximately 18, which is a weird way to describe someone who's 18. Sounds like they're saying she was 17. But she went there. Epstein engaged in either sexually harassing or sexual assaultive conduct with her. Her dad was going to go after Trump. So Trump said, I'm banning you from the spa, but he was like a fake ban because he was never going to the spa.

37:27Ben Meiselas:And in this New York Post article from 2007 that we've talked about a lot on the Midas Touch Network, Epstein's quoted in the article, page six, as saying, I'm not banned from Mar-a-Lago. I just attended a party there. Page six was as big as it got in gossip circles and in this community of people back in 2007. So the fact that Epstein was comfortable then to say, I'm not banned. What are you talking about? I go there all the time still. And there was no rebuttal. Epstein denies he's banned from Mar-a-Lago. In fact, he said he was recently invited to an event there. To me, that says it all. But that was page six, Epstein 2007.

38:07Ben Meiselas:So Popak, talk to us about where we stand with Epstein right now. But to me, this is also part of a big, you can't look at any of these things as being just isolated.

38:18Michael Popok:yeah let's start with the wall street journal uh wall street why donald trump decided the wall street journal is a favorable platform for him when he sued them maybe he forgot maybe part of the cognitive test that he also forgot he took because he's bragged about passing a cognitive test the same brag he did on december 1st what what what level of mental decline are you in when you can't remember which cognitive test you took and when he decides to call into the wall street Journal that he's currently suing in Miami in a defamation case involving his obscene entry in the two-volume Jeffrey Epstein birthday scrapbook, which we all have a copy of now.

38:59Michael Popok:I don't know how you can continue to sue over that. It's got released by the Oversight Committee. You have it up on your sub stack. I have it up on mine. We've all read it. Everybody has admitted effectively, either conceded by silence or otherwise, that all of their entries are true. And yet this defamation case continues, although probably not much longer. Judge Gales is sitting on a motion to dismiss after all argument. It's going to come sometime in the next week or two. I think we're going to get that ruling by Judge Gales, and I think it's going to be favorable to the Wall Street Journal.

39:31Michael Popok:But Rupert Murdoch, having handled the family transition, who has more money than Donald Trump and some of his other cronies combined, is not scared of him. And he is continuing to run stories against Donald Trump on his health, mental and physical, which led Donald Trump to an impromptu phone call to reporters that were like, hold on, where he admitted to a whole series of health issues from overdosing on aspirin on a daily basis. And he said, I take 325 milligrams of aspirin every day. He wants thin blood. That means he's a bleeder and he's a bruiser. Wearing compression socks, putting makeup on his hands to cover when he gets whacked by somebody, that he bled from his hands when Pam Bondi high-fived him at an event when a ring nicked his hands.

40:19Michael Popok:You've done plenty of videos about his strange gait and walking inability. He falls up the stairs on Marine One and U.S. and Air Force One and down the stairs. We just saw him during the press conference, barely able to keep his eyes open during something you think would be really, really exciting and energizing, which is he just took over a country for oil. And yet it looked like, as I said, like he was ordering from the McDonald's drive through. So on the same week, the Wall Street Journal runs the article, which I've made a big deal out of SFU, because this is he can deny everything. But they have the reporting, and I'm sure we're going to see the facts next, of a 2003 fax that put Donald Trump on notice, if he didn't know before, which we know he knew before, that Epstein was propositioning, and worse, spa attendants who were 18 or younger being sent to his house because Donald Trump wanted him to be treated like a member and to have people sent to his house.

41:20Michael Popok:As you said, the spa would come to him two miles away at his mansion in Palm Beach. We have a spa manager who faxes, and the Wall Street Journal has seen it, a memo to Trump telling him that this guy's got to be, we can't keep sending girls there. Here's what happened. And what did Donald Trump do with it? Did he report it? Was he a first responder? Did he report it to the authorities? No. He just said, oh, don't send him anywhere, girls. That was it. So for me, that's liability and exposure for Donald Trump and at least he's on notice. Think of all the girls and women who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein just from 2003 until about 2005 when the parents of a 14-year-old came out and said that their daughter had been raped by Jeffrey Epstein.

42:12Michael Popok:Think of the women that Donald Trump could have saved had he not tried to protect his pedophilia, his pedophile friend and people in high places, as he told Marjorie Taylor Greene recently, don't release the files, it'll hurt my friends. Right. If his natural instinct wasn't to cover up for his friends who were participating in a child sex trafficking ring and he'd done the right thing and called the Palm Beach County Police or the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office or the FBI the way the Maria Farmer did in 1996 that was ignored, then it may have cut off some victims. We all think it was earlier than that.

42:52Michael Popok:We know the comments of him being an enigma in the birthday book, and he likes young girls, and he's a great guy, and he palled around with them and partied with them. It was his wingman for years in the 90s. They ran beauty pageants together. They ran modeling agencies together. They were chasing after young women, believe the ages to another time, together and trading them as currency. and the fact that in 2003, his only reaction to an 18-year-old spa attendant saying she was sexually assaulted and propositioned by Jeffrey Epstein is don't send any more girls there. Seriously? In any other world, where Donald Trump, as the New York Times just outlined in one of their articles, wasn't dominating, except for Midas Dutch, and Legal AF, the daily news with social media posts appearances, rallies, speeches, meetings, to try to have every day, every day, be something about Donald Trump.

43:57If it wasn't for that, any other president would be running on a rail already.

44:04Michael Popok:This would bring down a presidency, simple facts like that. But there's a fatigue that you and I fight here with our audience together about Donald Trump, where you, oh, that's just Donald Trump, you know, that's just, you know, we can't allow that normality to take hold. And I think the polling is showing that it's not. I mean, we'll have to see the post-takeover of Venezuela polling. I don't think this is ultimately going to help him. And certainly as he's defeated, hopefully in the courts and or in Congress on these issues. I think, you know, we are, we'll be in a much better place electorally.

44:47Michael Popok:Last comment on the Epstein files. So yeah, I mean, a lot of us see it as a wag the dog moment where Donald Trump is using this takeout of Maduro in order to cover up for the 5 million, 10 million, 20 million Epstein files that still remain missing. And then they have to, we'll never get the entirety of the Epstein files. And what I've said, and I'll end it on this, what I've said is all of the states like California and some other states that have opened up their windows to allow the filing of lawsuits by victims and survivors against their predators that opened like in California, in your home state, on Jan 1 and in other states, they should be adding on to the back end of that two-year window.

45:34Michael Popok:every day and every week and every month that Trump delays and drags his feet on the production of the Epstein files, which would give these people the evidence they need to go into court, some of it anyway. They should delay, they should expand the window in equal amount of time, because you can see what he's doing. He's trying to slow foot this thing in order to get beyond the midterms and whatever. And now, as you said, say, oh, we're too tied up with more important matters, you know, doing regime change in every state in the Western, in every country in the Western hemisphere. Yeah.

46:11Ben Meiselas:You know, it's just a wild concept to me, you know, to articulate, wild's the wrong word, sad, distressing, to say that the United States government at the highest level is currently a racketeering enterprise covering up a child sex trafficking ring, and they've made themselves complicit in the largest child sex trafficking ring out there. I mean, when we talk about who's invading Venezuela, when we talk about who is engaging in all of these plans that are harming the American people's ability to live and the psychological torture being inflicted on people who they're lucky enough to get a paycheck, live paycheck to paycheck right now under this disastrous Trump economy.

47:03Ben Meiselas:These are people covering up for child sex trafficking. The Epstein Transparency Act wasn't ambiguous. Turn over all of the records as required by law by December 19th. It was not a difficult task. It really wasn't for them to do it. I mean, they put thousands of thousands of DOJ, FBI people, staff, lawyers working tens of thousands, potentially in the aggregate, hundreds of thousands of hours to do redactions or whatever the hell they were doing, dating back to February and March. I mean, there are public records requests showing what taxpayers paid these document reviewers, millions and millions of dollars.

47:49Ben Meiselas:and this is where they're at. And so cavalierly, there's 5 million records that we just identified. There's 1 million records. Go back to the last Legal AF we did where Michael Popock and I talked about how you would deal with the document production like this. You would say, who are my custodians? That's the term for who holds the documents. SDNY. What are my cases? Epstein, Ghislaine, Southern District of Florida, Treasury Department, the banks, the civil lawyers, the estate, international cases, the co-conspirator cases, those investigations, right? Take a look at that. You then gather, ingest all of those documents.

48:34Ben Meiselas:You give your document reviewers the protocols, and it's a simple protocol under the law. Under the law, the only thing that would be redacted were victims' names. So you would list the names of all of the victims, survivors, potential victims and survivors, and that's what you would look through. Otherwise, everything gets produced. That's it. It's actually a simple, it's a simple document production, and there's an ongoing violation of the law. There's a violation of international law now taking place and the Constitution with the unlawful invasion. When we go back, though, I want to show you someone who's not afraid to testify publicly.

49:13Ben Meiselas:Special Counsel Jack Smith, he wanted to do it in public. MAGA Republicans wanted it to be private. But the deposition video was still released anyway by the Midas Touch Network. We got our hands on it after the House tried to dump it on New Year's. We got our hands on it. We released it. It's been viewed millions of times right now so people can see for themselves and form their own opinions. Isn't it interesting that when it came to the Hunter Biden deposition and the Jack Smith deposition, two people, the MAGA Republicans attack over and over again on state regime media, they did not want to do public hearings.

49:46Ben Meiselas:Shouldn't that tell you a lot? These are tough guys. Why wouldn't you want to do public hearings? We'll be right back after our last quick break of the show. A reminder, make sure you subscribe to Michael Popak Substack, the Legal AF Substack, the number one fastest growing Substack in the country right now. Pretty good. Number one. Also, check out Legal AF on YouTube, wherever, you know, just search Legal AF on YouTube, whenever. Do it right now. Do it after. But make sure you hit subscribe. And then if you or somebody you know has been injured in a car accident, an auto accident, you're the victim of sexual assault, sexual harassment.

50:24Ben Meiselas:If you know someone who's been the victim of somebody else or a party's negligence or got injured by a company, reach out to 877-POPOC-AF or call thepopocfirm.com or the opposite. Go to thepopocfirm.com or call 877-POPOC-AF or text. The consultation is free. And see if you got a case. Popak has lawyers across the country who are there to help you, determine if you got a case or not. All right, let's take our last quick break of the show. We'll be right back.

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53:55Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to Legal AF. It seems like it was a year ago, but it was just this week that special counsel Jack Smith's video deposition was released. The MAGA Republicans also tried to set a perjury trap for Jack Smith or a perjury trap or just like a ethical trap or a trap to try to prosecute him. So first off, Jack Smith wanted to do this in public. He didn't want it to be private. And actually, a lot of the House Judiciary Committee and oversight members were warning Trump, we don't actually want to take his deposition because he's smart, he's competent, he's going to look great, and he's going to dime you out on everything.

54:34Ben Meiselas:But Trump's like, no, no, you got to do it. You got to do it. So Jack Smith's like, let's do it in public. Unlimited time. I'll go in front of the Senate. I'll go in front of the House. No limitations. Ask me anything. In fact, Jack Smith says, I just want to make sure I can speak about everything because I don't want the DOJ to take some position that because Judge Eileen Cannon hasn't allowed volume two of my report to be released yet on the Mar-a-Lago document case that you're going to ask me questions. I'm not going to be able to answer that. It's going to seem like I'm not transparent. I want to answer everything.

55:07Ben Meiselas:So I'm ready to go. Let's be clear. In public, takes 50 hours. Great. 100 hours. Great. 10 hours. Great. No time limits. let's go. MAGA Republicans go, oh, no, no, no, Jack Smith. We're doing this in private. What? You're doing it in private? Y 'all go on Fox every day in state regime media, Newsmax. You talk crap about Jack Smith. You act like tough guys. You can't do it in public. So that should be a red flag number one. Then Jack Smith shows up, right, Popak? And as Jack Smith shows up, he gets a letter an hour before he shows up from the DOJ saying, we are ordering you. You can't talk about the Mar-a-Lago document case unless it's already been made public.

55:46Ben Meiselas:But if it's in your report, which Judge Cannon is not allowing to be released public for now, which he's been delaying now for over a year, you can't talk about it. So Jack Smith's like, well, that's kind of an odd instruction because y 'all subpoenaed me, not the DOJ, but the House of Representatives, and you're going to ask me questions. So what if I get asked a question about these things? I'm supposed to determine if it's already been public or if you're going to take the position that it's private, then what, you're going to prosecute me for it? So Jack Smith's like, well, why don't we do this?

56:19Ben Meiselas:DOJ, do you want to send a lawyer? You know, you send lawyers to be with Ghislaine Maxwell and move her to minimum security facilities after she was supposed to be rotting in a maximum security facility in Tallahassee. Not only any lawyers, you send your number to the deputy AG. So why don't you just send a lawyer to be here at my deposition? And if you're concerned at all, we can ask the lawyer so we don't we don't do anything that you might worry about. And so there's no confusion here. The DOJ says, nope, we're not going to do that. Good luck. We wish you the best. Do it on your own. We'll make the determination later.

56:56Ben Meiselas:later. So do you see how that's a setup right there? So let me just show you right now. This is when Jack Smith's lawyer during the hearing says, we just got a letter from the DOJ an hour ago. Watch this. According to the Justice Department, discussion of volume two of the special counsel's reports and any information or conclusions in volume two or in draft thereof is specifically prohibited by Judge Cannon's January 21st, 2025 order. This morning, just over an hour ago, the Department of Justice sent us an email affirming its view that Judge Cannon's order applies to Mr. Smith, and that it precludes him from disclosing any non-public information that may be contained in Volume 2, including but not limited to interview transcripts search warrant materials business records toll records video footage records obtained by grand jury subpoenas attorney-client communications and potential for rule 404 B evidence this restriction significantly limits mr.

58:11Ben Meiselas:Smith's ability to discuss the classified documents case. Nevertheless, Mr. Smith is committed to doing his best to answering questions consistent with the department's guidance. And I asked that email from the Department of Justice that was sent earlier this morning to be made part of the record. Let's bring in Michael Popak. There's a lot more I wanna share there, but like, I mean, it's the most juvenile obvious setup. And here's my pushback to anybody here who's a Trump supporter or Republican or you don't like Jack Smith. If you don't like Jack Smith, shouldn't you have confidence in your ability to cross-examine him and not play those, you know, those games over there that are so obviously intended to set up?

59:02Ben Meiselas:Like, shouldn't that just tell you the infantile behavior on your side of things, regardless of your view? Like, why do that if you are confident that you've got great lawyers who can cross-examine Jack?

59:17Michael Popok:Jack Smith wiped the floor with Congress that day, despite all of these last-minute monkey wrenches thrown his way by the Department of Justice, which is completely out of gas. You know, that morning they sent him the email about Bar-Lago. It's just mind-boggling. But this was their worst nightmare, that it would be Jim Jordan and his little Jordanettes versus Jack Smith about anything related to the law. I mean, Jim Jordan, I think, went to law school. never took the bar. And he came in, although we're talking about projection, accusing Jack Smith of having a predetermined outcome when he took the assignment as special counsel, that of prosecuting and indicting Donald Trump, where it's obvious that Jim Jordan had a predetermined outcome.

1:00:16Michael Popok:He wanted to prove using the billing records, the phone billing records issue that, you know, there was something nefarious or underhanded about the prosecution. That's all he had. And then he got schooled by Jack Smith on that. Look, Jack Smith's opening was quite clear. I had enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, not just probable cause to bring an indictment, a lower level, beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump committed crimes in the D.C. election interference matter. And that is even knowing that about the immunity decision at the United States Supreme Court. He said, I was not rogue.

1:01:00Michael Popok:I was tethered to the Department of Justice. I spoke frequently to senior leadership in the Department of Justice, which I assume goes up to Merrick Garland. I spoke to the Solicitor General at every turn and to the criticism that he took about, quote unquote, the timing. He said it had to do with evidence, not politics. If we're going to make the decision to indict a outgoing president, former president, running for president, we're going to make sure that the evidence is properly lined up and accumulated. And at that tipping point, or as Marco Rubio said today about that as well, That trigger moment, that's when you indict.

1:01:47Michael Popok:Not before, not later. Indictment is ready when it's ready. Or the ability to bring your evidence in to obtain your indictment. So it had nothing to do with that. If anybody wants to blame timing, it's on Merrick Garland for wasting nine or ten months and only focusing for most of it on the lower level, actual Jan 6 insurrectionist instead of at the top level. He did not want to go after the top level, but the evidence was overwhelming. And finally, his prosecution team finally got Merrick Garland to see the light. And to say that Jack Smith had a predetermined outcome, there's a reason why Jack Smith was chosen.

1:02:27Michael Popok:Besides his unimpeachable credentials and body of work, including in the public integrity unit. But he wasn't even in America during Donald Trump's presidency or Jan 6th. He was at The Hague doing war crimes. There's a reason they chose him. So because he was not in the ecosystem of politics here, you know, he was busy chasing after war criminals. And so they brought him in to handle the case. And he said quite clearly, if this was a Republican or Democrat, it wouldn't matter. The evidence controlled, not the politics. He also said, I'm here under great, great personal sacrifice also, because this president who occupies the highest position in the land has said he wants to see me sued for treason, whatever that means.

1:03:22And I assume arrested.

1:03:23Michael Popok:So despite the parameters, the attempts to do a gotcha with Jack Smith in nine hours almost of testimony, and you have it up and I have it up on Legal AF under lives in two separate video clips, two segments. Jack Smith, nobody could watch that and come away, if you're objective, with any other thought than that this was an apolitical, professional, mature, adult prosecutor who made hard decisions using prosecutorial discretion, consistent with the Department of Justice manual and the principles of federal prosecution, to bring two cases through a grand jury against a person who's been, is, was, and is now a president under great, great attacks led by Donald Trump and MAGA on everybody in his world at the time.

1:04:26Michael Popok:You and I used to, when we did our daily Jack Smith videos, we said he was just the subway guy. I don't mean the guy that went to jail. I mean, he was just the guy that just put the subway sandwich under his arm, his thermos, black, dark suit, walking to court every day, taking no questions, just chopping wood every day, making his case, making his case. You can't fault him. He got his indictments up 10 months or so after the cases were handed to him. And they were complicated cases. Some of them were complicated cases. But, you know, the attempt to dump this, as you said, on New Year's Eve, you caught it.

1:04:59Michael Popok:I caught it. I did a video within moments. So did you. Put the video up. Everybody sees it. History sees it. And, you know, Donald Trump, I think the reason it got released is because the Jamie Raskins of the world and the House Democrats were going to be like, if you don't release this, we will. There's a gap between him giving the testimony and the videos. It takes a while for the videographer to get the video done and then match it with the transcript and then the transcript. It takes a minute. You and I, they weren't, they didn't, they didn't order it rush the way you and I would do in a trial.

1:05:33Michael Popok:Like Jim Jordan didn't say, need it tomorrow night or tomorrow afternoon. It took a while and then they got it delivered and they were like, oh, somebody's going to release this. Who's it going to be? Like, we're going to release it. So, and I know that Alison Gill's doing a nice video up on Midas on her curated best of Jack Smith. And it is the best of Jack Smith, because even when they tried to get him for the phone records issue and try to turn it into something that it's not to confuse the American people, Jack Smith did not wiretap members of Congress or the Senate. He got through a court process overseen by a federal judge, search warrants that were limited in time and scope to Jan 5 to Jan 7 of a handful of elected officials who they had other evidence that suggested was working with Donald Trump to delay the certification of the election, to buy Donald Trump more time to cling to power and do something else criminal.

1:06:35Michael Popok:And that's fair game. That's not speech and debate privileged activity by members of Congress or the Senate. That is fair game. Now, they didn't wiretap them, meaning they didn't sit in a van with headphones listening to the conversation. They got effectively their phone records, their phone bill. Last time you looked at your phone bill electronically or in paper, it says phone number called, duration of call. That's it. You don't know what was discussed. It just says you called grandma. It doesn't say you talked about her brownies. That's the difference between wiretapping and pen register and this type of toll data that they pulled.

1:07:16Michael Popok:But that gave, you know, the clutching of the pearls moment for Jim Jordan. Oh, my. My phone. record. I was under investigation and I didn't know it. Yeah, you're under investigation and you didn't know it. And there was no Department of Justice protocol that would have notified you that were pulling your phone records because you could have been a target of the criminal investigation. This is evidence. This is not, you know, if they didn't like it, then they shouldn't have participated in the phone calls or the rest. So nine hours of Jack Smith is just a breath of fresh air for the rule of law.

1:07:54Michael Popok:And I don't think we've heard the last of him. You know, we're going to see what happens with the Mar-a-Lago file release. Judge Cannon, you know, Donald Trump's judge of choice, who apparently is currently sitting over the investigations of other political critics of Donald Trump, like John Brennan, the CIA director, in the grand jury proceedings up there. I just had Mark Zaid on the national security lawyer, whistleblower lawyer extraordinaire for an interview. And he's working on a number of the matters out in Miami. You notice that Donald Trump during his press conference said, well, you know, it's going to be a case that's going to be prosecuted in the Southern District of New York, or maybe Miami.

1:08:37Michael Popok:So they've got a MAGA guy that's running the Southern District of Florida, U.S. Attorney's Office, and Jason Reading Quinones, who's a buddy of Pam Bondi's, who is a MAGA MAGA, works closely or had worked closely with people like Mike Davis, the right-wing influencer who runs the Article III project, whatever that's supposed to be. And they use Miami to go after their political critics like this. So we'll have to see what happens. So I think Jack Smith gets prosecuted by this Department of Justice. I mean, I think he's prepared if they try to, if they try to do it the way they did James Comey.

1:09:18Michael Popok:I mean, to hear Pam Bondi, maybe one of the reasons they didn't bring her to Washington is even the inner circle and sanctum of Donald Trump thinks she's a moron and she's a fool. I mean, she even in her own press conference about Venezuela said these are concepts that are not supposed to go together. You know, she said she's going to bring the full wrath of the Justice Department against Maduro. Now, listen, I like to see the guy convicted for a long, long time, too, and not pardoned. But that doesn't mean that he's not presumed innocent until he is convicted. And I don't think you talk about justice and wrath in the same sentence unless you're a moron like Pam Bondi, who wants to act like the big boys who's doing the war effort and act like she's got something up her sleeve there.

1:10:06Michael Popok:So at the end of the day, it was important for history that Jack Smith speak to us. He's the only special counsel that never got the opportunity to present his findings to the American people. Watergate did. John Durham did. Robert Mueller did. The guy that investigated Joe Biden, Bob Hurd did. Everybody, except they gagged Jack Smith because of the way this thing timed out towards the end of the election and then into the new administration. So we haven't heard the last of Jack Smith. And I'd like to find out what Jack Smith's going to do. He's not done. He's not retired. He's going to join a public interest group or a law firm.

1:10:49Michael Popok:And I think we're going to be pleased with what Jack Smith does in his future and will certainly are supportive of it here on Legal AF and Midas Touch.

1:10:57Ben Meiselas:There are so many people who told me that they watched the full Jack Smith deposition on the Midas Touch YouTube channel, and they watched it in various parts because it was actually therapeutic, right, to see a smart, understated prosecutor have a command of facts to discuss them in a calm and confident manner, to, you know, not go into hyperbole. hyperbole, and just to explain why he made the decisions that he made and answer every question, yes, no, or we're called for more than that, and answer the question. I know that the MAGA Republicans were hoping that that video would get buried in New Year's.

1:11:44Ben Meiselas:And I guess in the old days when you were doing a document review with paper and I was doing them with keyword searches before a lot of the software today, you may be able to drop that and bury something like that on New Year's and dump it and no one watches it. But right now with the growth of independent news and shows like this, a Legal AF channel purely devoted to law and all of these developments and going through the nuances of the cases and the footnotes. I think the media landscape has changed, and it is an honor to be a part of that with each one of you watching this. So, you know, when the war broke out, we were there the first to start covering it.

1:12:28Ben Meiselas:When the indictments are there, we're the first to cover it. When the guilty verdict is there, we're the first to cover it. And we're going to do our best to keep leading the way each and every day of this year and for many years and hopefully generations to come as we rebuild this news landscape and make it about you and we the people. Everybody, make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel. They're on their way to 2 million subscribers. Let's get them 3 million subscribers by the end of 2026. I think it's a doable goal. So let's start getting there now. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel here.

1:13:08Ben Meiselas:You may think you're subscribed to the Midas Touch channel because you get all of our videos, but double check and turn your notifications on, turn your notifications on, on the Legal AF channel. Subscribe to Michael Popak Substack, Legal AF Substack, the number one fastest growing Substack in the United States right now. Big honor for Legal AF, a testament to the great work of Michael Popak and his entire team. Terps and other people there are doing a great job as well. Shout out to all of them. And a reminder, everybody, if you or somebody who knows has been injured in an auto accident, a trucking accident, victim of sexual harassment or assault.

1:13:45Ben Meiselas:If you know someone who died in an accident, that's called a wrongful death case. Call 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. Get a free consultation from Michael Popoc's team. Determine if you got a case. Michael Popoc is representing a lot of Legal AF viewers and And listeners, don't be shy. Call Popak today. Thanks, everybody, for watching. We appreciate a lot of developments, a lot of breaking news. We'll be covering it all here on the Midas Touch YouTube channel, on the Legal AF YouTube channel. Thanks, everybody. Have a great rest of the weekend. Perhaps less restful than we thought it would be.

1:14:27Ben Meiselas:But you know what? We rested up already. And now it's time we meet the moment of history and fight for democracy. We'll see you next time on Legal AF. Shout out Midas Mighty. Shout out legal AFers.

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