Legal AF Full Episode - 11/29/2025

18:54Michael Popok:Not only Donald Trump, who has his own shield given to him by the Supreme Court in the immunity decision, but those around him do not. And we're looking at you, Pam Bondi and Tulsi Gabbard and Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth, and the list goes on. And so what I like about where we are coming into 2026 is that the people have spoken in elections, in polling, in the way the economy is being handled and the like. The Democrats are starting to get their groove back in leadership. And it's hard to lead from the minority position. But the Democrats are doing a very, very good job at setting the table for the conversation they need to have at the midterms.

19:42Michael Popok:And we're winning the fight, thank God, in the map areas so far. So for me, the takeaway of the ballroom thing is not just the ballroom. It's that business leaders who had supported Donald Trump are realizing that he's running out of time here. The time horizon for Donald Trump is much shorter than they anticipated. And now we're worrying about what the next Department of Justice, the next FBI, the next Democratic-led government looks like.

20:12Ben Meiselas:You mentioned Honduras, Tito Asfira, who's running for president. He's running against a candidate who is endorsed by the current president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro. And Trump hates Xiomara Castro because she asserted the sovereignty and autonomy of the country as against Donald Trump. But Trump's trying to install his kind of MAGA stooge in Honduras. And as part of doing that and to kind of rile up division and kind of civil war and just bring up pain and strife within the country and to harm the United States of America in this post where Donald Trump interferes at the election in Honduras, which is just unheard of for the United States president to ever post anything like this.

21:02Ben Meiselas:He goes like, if Tito Asfira wins, we will help Honduras. If he loses, we will throw you under the bus and we will not care about Honduras anymore. And we will like harm Honduras. So that's one of the threats that Trump makes. And then he says that I will give a full and complete pardon to the former president, Juan Orlando Hernandez. And this is what Trump says, who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly. This cannot be allowed to happen. Congratulations to Juan Orlando Hernandez.

21:34Michael Popok:That's Roger Stone. Roger Stone is the only one promoting the pardon of a 45 year convicted narco terrorist, former president of Honduras.

21:43Ben Meiselas:So anytime Donald Trump is out there and saying that, oh, we're doing this to stop the narco terrorist, that one of the biggest narco terrorists is Juan Orlando Hernandez and Juan Orlando Hernandez's brother, they provided quarter, help, support. They used the office to provide logistics to the Sinaloa cartel with Chapo. And they moved like quite literally 400 tons or more of cocaine into the United States, tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars of cocaine and other drugs into the United States. They're the worst of the worst of narco drug trafficking, of narco drug terrorists. And Trump says this guy has been treated unfairly.

22:29Ben Meiselas:I know that Juan Hernandez is not as like high profile perhaps in our country as the name El Chapo, but there is no El Chapo without Juan Orlando Hernandez. And so we're basically like pardoning Chapo. And by the way, you go back earlier in this regime and what they were doing. Remember, people saw Chapo's family getting a VIP tour into the United States from Tijuana as part of a deal that Trump was making, which wasn't announced with anybody, with the cartels. And right now, in this country right now, Chapo's family, they basically have full FBI protection. We don't know where they're living, but he basically gave the Chapo family VIP right now.

23:13Ben Meiselas:And that's who Donald Trump is. But notice, that's the people he supports, the billionaire corrupt criminals. And who does he hit? Who does he take down? The lower level people. And in this country, who does he take down? Most of the people who he hates and who he helps is the right.

23:31Michael Popok:Well, this is why MAGA is imploding, because even the Laura Loomers are like, We just pardoned the narco-terrorist bribed accepting president of Honduras after the DEA. Donald Trump, it started under Donald Trump. Donald Trump's U.S. attorney's office, including Emil Bovee and others, took the guy down. A jury convicted him and sentenced him to 45 years in prison. And we're letting him walk out the door because Donald Trump wants to influence the election on Sunday in Honduras?

24:00Ben Meiselas:Why I say, Popak, that anything on a random Friday that Trump does would make Watergate look small is quite literally an example like this, right? A random Friday, this is what he posts, that he wants to help pardon and support one of the number one narco terrorists that's out there. and you'll hear not a peep from state regime media known as Fox and right-wing media. Not like this. If Biden or Obama ever made a post like this, I can assure you on a bipartisan basis, they would be impeached the next Monday. There would be proceedings the next Monday. If it was on Thanksgiving, they may have started on that Saturday.

24:44Ben Meiselas:Popak, we've got a lot to discuss. I Hegseth is committing. I want to get into the rigging of the maps and more. Let's take our first quick break of the show. Just a reminder for everybody about Michael Popak's law firm. Check it out. If you or anybody you know has been injured in an accident, a car accident, a trucking accident, give a call to thepopakfirm.com, 877-POPAK-AF. Go to thepopakfirm.com or call 877-POPOC-AF. The consultation is free. Popoc's representing a huge amount of people who listen and watch Legal AF. So take that free consultation. If you or somebody you know has a potential case, let Popoc's team take a look at it.

25:31Ben Meiselas:And they have lawyers all across the country. Also subscribe to the Legal AF Substack and subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel. That YouTube channel is so close to hitting 1 million subscribers in 2025. and wow, would that be great if we can hit 1 million subscribers in the first year of that Legal AF channel. All right, let's take our first quick break of the show. We will be right back with much more Michael Bunker. Never wake up sweaty, freezing, or just plain uncomfortable.

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30:20Ben Meiselas:Let's welcome everybody back to Legal AF. Thank you to our sponsors. This show does not exist without our pro-democracy sponsors, so make sure you follow them, try to check out their products. The discount codes are in the description below. All right, Popak, why don't we talk about, Boesburg and then we can get into war crimes. I'll toss it over to you to speak about Judge Boesburg moving forward with contempt proceedings after a circuitous route in the court of appeals. It's interesting because there's this Trump or judge who always supports the Trump or stuff, Judge Katzis over there on the circuit court, on the D.C.

31:04Ben Meiselas:circuit. And it's the Trump regime keeps on citing Judge Katzis said, Judge Katzis said, and Judge Boesberg's like, you keep citing one circuit court judge. You want to talk about what everybody else is basically saying right now, because I've been given this case back to now look into contempt proceedings. And this is all arising out of, it shows you how these cases take a lot of time, Popak and legal efforts. the original kind of lawful order that was made by the Trump regime to round up these migrants, send them to the concentration camp in El Salvador. Judge Bozberg made that order saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

31:46Ben Meiselas:Maybe we do that in the future, but let's understand what this plan is. Let's understand if due process has been violated. What's going on here? And the Trump regime said, we don't care, Boesburg. We're sending them to the concentration camp. And then everything kind of flowed from that. And it's kind of, as we talk about Hegseth's order, which is, kill him after the initial strike as well. You just have these rogue criminal people in the Trump regime, starting at the top with Trump, who just keeps on making these criminal orders over and over and again. So what's going on with Boesburg and how did Kristi Noem get exposed as the person who directly, Noam herself said basically, screw the judge, you send him.

32:34Ben Meiselas:And now she's wrapped up into these proceedings. What's going on here, Popeye?

32:38Michael Popok:Yeah, you and I covered it at length when it happened in March. Judge Boesberg was one of the first judges in a case called JGG. I've had the ACLU who's leading the charge there, so have you. I've had Lee Glertner from the ACLU on as recently as a week ago talking about the case. And that's when Donald Trump, that's when Bozberg for the Trump administration said, you're not sending 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador and the prison there, CICOT prison without due process until I get my arms around it. So I'm going to enter a temporary restraining order. knowing that the temporary restraining order was coming that day, they continued to fuel the jets and fly them away from federal court jurisdiction and oversight on purpose.

33:33Michael Popok:And when they got into the courtroom, they had Drew Ensign, who's the lead lawyer there, effectively not tell the truth to Bozberg. I don't think they told the truth in their recent filing either about the timing of the planes versus the judge's order. The judge had grounded the planes and he said, any plane that has left needs to turn around and come back. Because I have jurisdiction over human beings, right? Like federal officials and pilots to tell them to come back. And they didn't do that. They grounded some other planes, but 200 people went to El Salvador. In fact, most of those people are no longer in El Salvador.

34:14Michael Popok:They were later traded in a prisoner exchange back to Venezuela. So they were so mean and ornery and narco-terrorist military combatants that we sent them back to Venezuela to rejoin the narco regime that we're at war with. Does that make any sense to anybody? No, because all of it's untrue. So the judge says, what do you mean the planes went? They said, well, you gave an oral order. By the time you reduced it to writing, there was this gap. And he said, oral order? Oral orders from a federal judge are orders of a federal judge. And you violated those orders. And I'm going to get to the bottom of it.

34:57Michael Popok:Now, a little twist here. the actual order itself later, much later, got vacated, thrown out by the United States Supreme Court. But at the time they needed to be complied with, they were orders. And the way this works is you don't get to say, you know, I think one day, judge, your order is going to be found to be, it's going to be reversed on appeal, or you're going to lose at the Supreme Court. So, you know, contempt, I don't care. You can't do that. You have to abide by the order, unless and until you're relieved of the order down the way. So that's where you hear a lot of MAGA jumping up and down.

35:36Michael Popok:But he lost. Boesberg's order was reversed at the Supreme Court. He said, now I need to get to the bottom of who violated my order and why. And you and I reported in April about the start of a criminal contempt proceeding. He found probable cause to start a criminal contempt proceeding against the Trump administration. They appealed all that to the D.C. appellate court. Three-judge panel, you know the old joke, how many Trumpers does it take to screw up a decision? Two. There were two Trumpers, Judge Rayo, Judge Katzis. But none of them, along with, I think it was Pollard as the third judge, a Democratic-appointed judge.

36:18Michael Popok:And they couldn't come to an agreement on a consensus of what even their ruling meant. But it did stop the contempt proceeding. Then it went off on another layer of appeal related to whether this was going to be heard by the entirety of the D.C. Circuit. And then when they said no, but they also gave permission for Judge Bozberg to pick up where he left off to get to the bottom of contempt, which the appellate panel said was very, very serious. and the Trump administration wasn't relieved of the contumacious behavior because the Supreme Court later bailed him out on the order. So that's how we got here.

37:00Michael Popok:The judge reopens the hearing last week and he says to the parties, give me a briefing schedule and witnesses that you think would be important for me to hear from. One in particular the judge says I want to hear from is right what you and I talked about. I said at the time, when Eris Ruveni, who just joined Democracy Forward as a new lawyer, Democracy Forward is over with us on an amazing playlist on Legal AF channel. They have 100 cases against the Trump administration. Now Eris Ruveni is one of their lawyers. But Eris Ruveni used to be for 15 years the head or one of the senior lawyers in the immigration litigation division of the Department of Justice, served five administrations, apolitical.

37:50Michael Popok:You and I should never have to say the words Erez Ruveni, but he's one of the unsung heroes because he told the truth to Judge Zinnis and Judge Bozberg that things were happening, that illegally Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador when he shouldn't have been. That's not part of the record. And he told Judge Boesburg when he was in the Boesburg courtroom. He told him the truth, that planes went after the oral order was issued, and he got fired for doing so. And when Emil Boeve, the number two in the Department of Justice, number three in the Department of Justice, who was nominated to be, and has now been confirmed to be, a Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge sitting in Philadelphia, former criminal judge, criminal lawyer for Donald Trump, when Emil Boeve was in his confirmation process, out came like a 30-page, single-spaced whistleblower complaint from Erez Reveni, who said right in the same time block, same days as Judge Boesberg's order was violated, that Emil Boeve from the Department of Justice got the immigration litigation lawyers together in the DOJ, including Erez Reveni, and told them that if a federal judge asks you where planes are, as we fly people away under the Alien Enemies Act, you're to tell them to F off.

39:11Michael Popok:Literally, F off. Fuck off. Became part of the Senate record as Adam Schiff asked Emil Bovay, did you ever tell the lawyers under you to go tell federal judges to go F off? And now we have the explanation. When we saw that letter, we said, uh-oh, Judge Zinnis in Maryland in the Ebrego Garcia case is going to want to hear from Erez Ruveni, And so is Judge Boesberg. And Boesberg, whether he's a fan of the show or not, said in court last week, I want to hear from Erez Ravetti. And Erez Ravetti is ready to go. He's ready to get testimony in that courtroom about the reason that the Trump administration violated his order.

39:48Michael Popok:looks like it's because a now Third Circuit judge gave the command to violate the order. When it came down to who made the decision within the administration that wasn't a lawyer, they threw Christy Noem under the bus. She's always good to throw under the bus. Puppy-colored Noem, I, based on the advice that was given to me by Todd Blanche and Emil Bovee and other people in my department, made the decision that an oral order wasn't binding or whatever this crazy crackpot theory was to let her give the go signal for these 200 people. So to answer the question, who gave the code red? It was Kristi Noem.

40:32Michael Popok:She's now going to have to testify. On paper, we call it a declaration. If it's live, we call it live testimony under oath. Emil Bovee might have to. That's going to be weird. Third circuit appellate judge coming over to testify to Chief Judge Bozberg in his trial court about a hearing, you know, because they all thought Trump thought he was going to bury this problem. He was going to take the 200, take him out of El Salvador, send him back to Venezuela. He was going to take Elmo Bovi, go hide him in a court position, a judge position. Nothing to see here, right, folks? Not according to Judge Bozberg.

41:08Michael Popok:And so what we're left with is the Trump administration and Pam Bondi continuing to hammer away at the reputation, which is unassailable, of Jeb Boesburg. Oh, Jeb Boesburg. He's the one as the chief judge that allowed those subpoenas about the phone records for the senators. By the way, note to MAGA and Lindsey Graham, nobody gives a shit about the fact that your phone bill was looked at in order to determine whether you are trying to overthrow democracy. No voter cares about that in the swing states. And yet this is what the Trump administration is left with. Oh, Boesburg was involved with that.

41:46Michael Popok:Oh, Boesburg is a radical terrorist enabling judge, Bondi said recently. I'm like, they obviously know that their time on planet Earth in the Department of Justice is short. And they're making, they're just, I mean, would you ever think that an attorney general would attack a sitting chief judge of the DC court in the vocabulary that's being used by the Trump administration? Would you ever see that, Ben?

42:12Ben Meiselas:You would never see that. You would never fathom that. What you would see is where I went to law school, Georgetown Law, someone like Boesburg and the AG sitting on a panel together, you know, having a collegial conversation about the rule of law. That's what I was used to seeing when I went to law school.

42:32Michael Popok:I agree. I mean, I went to Duke and we were within the three hour drive from DC and Supreme Court justices used to come down to judge our moot court competition. When I was on moot court board, I got to sit next to Justice Kennedy, who just got put on a brand new justice, even though I was still the same democratic person I am now. You know, it was still an honor and a privilege to to meet Justice Kennedy and host him at my table and all that. Scalia came down for... But like, that's... This administration does not take, especially the Department of Justice, there is no independents, they're just political hacks who are an arm of the Trump campaign instead of being what you and I expect and demand, and the people demand from their Department of Justice.

43:19Michael Popok:Look, there's a lot of repair work that's gonna have to get done, starting at the midterms, but then when a Democratic president takes office, he has to rebuild from almost from scratch the Department of Justice, put in an attorney general that is respected, who then spends time to take 5 ,000 people that left and either get them back, hopefully making it attractive to bring back career prosecutors back to the fold because of the brain drain, and then new people. Because there's another major problem you and I only touched on. Law students don't want to work in the government. Law students don't want to work in the Department of Justice from the top 10 or top 20 law schools.

44:00Michael Popok:And they're abandoning clerkships. And so there's this whole gap. It's like COVID gap for kids in school. Like, oh, I wasn't on campus for three years. There's a whole gap in the training and the talent that would be in the Department of Justice. All has to be rebuilt from scratch by a new president. One last thing. The only thing that's been good so far, it's hard to believe there's been so few, I want to get your opinion on this, so few federal judge openings for Trump to fill. There's been a few, but very few in the first 10 months. I'm not saying it's going to hold for the the whole next three years.

44:45But what do you make of the fact that there's so few people retiring

44:51Michael Popok:or openings for Trump to fill right now?

44:53Ben Meiselas:Look, I would say that about 90 to 95 % of this current federal judiciary at the trial court level, federal judges, by and large, do not like this regime, uphold law and order. I may disagree with their rulings, but by and large, have a view that Trump is a threat to this constitution at that level. Okay. You of course have your outliers like your judge cannons and others, but I would say 90 % of the federal judges have actually done their jobs by and large. Then you get up to the circuit court level. And I feel like that probably drops to about 65%, 70%. But by and large, the circuit court judges taking their responsibilities seriously, usually affirming the rulings of the trial court judges.

45:53Ben Meiselas:We're talking about Trump judges. We're talking about Obama judges, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Reagan judges, Biden judges, Clinton judges. At the Supreme Court, that's been the biggest betrayal and the most significant because they've used their shadow docket by invoking procedural nuances that they've never invoked before to often stay or pause the federal court or circuit court rulings pending trial. And trials can take years as we're seeing take place. So if it takes years and the status quo, the Supreme Court says, is what Trump says, not the federal judge order or not what existed before Trump, which I would interpret the status quo as what was the lawfully existing thing before Trump broke it.

46:48Ben Meiselas:The Supreme Court saying, well, Trump broke it. That's the status quo. And the federal judge stopping Trump is not the status quo by bringing back what existed before Trump, but is breaking the status quo because Trump's the status quo. That's what the Supreme Court is saying. So they're allowing Trump's policies to stay in effect based on shadow docket and staying these rulings. So I think that the federal judges have made a pact with each other. And I think that they've been able to make it not like by being in like a back room smoking cigar saying, here's what we're going to do. But I think if you've listened to their messaging at the various conferences, they've been signaling to each other, we need to hold the line right now and not to suggest that someone who's on the older side, there's going to be resignations, of course, just by the nature of the age of some of these judges.

47:40Ben Meiselas:But Popak, I believe it's intentional. But I want to talk about this too before the break. And I think we can take this one in a little bit of a shorter nugget here, which is we're also seeing now state level legislators assert themselves against the Trump regime in a place like Ruby Red, Indiana, of all places, where we've just seen a group of about eight of them, but it could be even more, at the Indiana State Senate level, saying to Trump, we're not okay with you rigging these Indiana maps. And many were saying, well, we were open to it and receptive to it. We don't like the tactics that you've used to try to kind of bully us.

48:23Ben Meiselas:And, you know, Trump goes through his whole abusive cachet from charm to threats to, you know, basically inspiring death threats. Want to come to the White House? You could be a club rose guarded. You want to take a picture with me? You want to golf with me? I got you. Oh, you don't want to do it. I'm going to primary you. I hate you. I'm going after you. You're the worst. Primary this person. So we heard just in the past 48 hours from two Indiana state senators, you had Michael Boachek, Indiana Republican state senator, whose second daughter, whose second daughter has Down syndrome. And he says, you know what, Trump, you've been referring to people as the R word.

49:02Ben Meiselas:You've called Governor Walz the R word on Friday over the past few days or on Thursday. And he's like, you know what, good luck. Convince the American people over the next 10 months that your policies and your behavior deserve a congressional majority. Try to tell the American people that this is the behavior that they want in the president. A Republican Indiana state senator said that. And then another Indiana state senator, Greg Walker, says, I don't even want to go to the White House. He goes, I refuse the invitation to go to the White House. But the underling who reached out to me is trying to influence the election on my dime.

49:42Ben Meiselas:That individual works for me. He works for you. He's on my payroll. He's on your payroll. And he's campaigning on company time. That's a violation of the Hatch Act. He's a federal employee. He works in the White House. But does anyone care about the rules anymore? Not that I can tell. I want to talk to you about this a little bit, Popak, when we come back from our next quick break. And then let's talk about the war crimes that Hegseth is committing. And we'll talk about more. And we'll talk about the fact that Trump granted the D.C. shooter asylum back in 2025, but is now trying to blame Biden.

50:14Ben Meiselas:But here again, we see another example of Republicans in a ruby red area saying, no, we're not doing this. We're not doing this. Sorry. See you later. We don't like your behavior and your conduct. We're not attaching ourselves to this. I think a major reason is they saw what's going to happen or what happened in the blue tsunami earlier in November. But if you thought that blue tsunami in November was something at these midterms, if you see a result like that at a grander scale, the Trump presidency is over. And not only is it over, but I think you can now encourage Republicans to actually support impeachment efforts and to support basically standing up to Trump because they now have to think about what's their future in a post-Trump world.

51:07Michael Popok:They have to triangulate and they have to they'd have to triangulate to show they're not Trump in order to save their own politics. As you and I have said, as we round out this segment here, the time horizon for Donald Trump and those of the Republicans are different. Donald Trump has a short time horizon, both chronologically and electorally. OK, he's not right. And people know it. And so others that want to have a career beyond Donald Trump are going to have to figure out. And I believe you're right about the pent up demand to vote against Donald Trump that's coming for the midterm election.

51:43Michael Popok:He will be the lamest of lame ducks. As you said, his presidency will effectively be over. And then people are going to be trying to figure out how they survive beyond because the MAGA movement is not going to be picked up by like Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance. I mean, you know, Donald Trump is one of one when it comes to the ability at the height of his powers to commandeer that party. And now it's just going to be a mad scramble to which the Democratic Party, which usually gets bad publicity for not being disciplined and not being organized. We look tremendous. The party looks tremendously disciplined and tremendously organized as a counterweight to Donald Trump.

52:29Ben Meiselas:Let's take our last quick break of the show. A reminder, Michael Popak's law firm is doing a great job representing so many people in this country who have their own individual cases. And he's representing a lot of people who listen and watch the show. So if you or anybody you know has been injured, whether it's a car accident, a trucking accident, whether you know someone who's the victim of who died in a horrific accident, catastrophic accident, whether it's medical malpractice, a victim of sexual assault. Give the Popak Firm a call. The consultation is free. It's 877-POPAK-AF or go to thepopakfirm.com.

53:10Ben Meiselas:That's 877-POPAK-AF or visit thepopakfirm.com. Consultation is free. And then if Popak's firm takes the case, they do it on a contingency mini. They don't get paid unless you get paid. Also, check out Michael Popak's Substack, the Legal AF Substack, and subscribe to Legal AF on YouTube. so close to 1 million subscribers, so close. All right, we'll be right back after our last quick break of the show.

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57:46Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to Legal AF. We've got a lot to discuss in this last segment. But why don't we just go straight to talking about this blockbuster Washington Post report, which is, by the way, consistent with what we were. I think it was more than just simply we would be speculating about what took place. I mean, you had a four star admiral from South Com, which is that region kind of abruptly quit and resign, which you never see take place. Someone halfway through their term like that, that was four star Admiral Hoseley. He resigned. Obviously, we had heard stories from the president of Columbia and others in the region in Trinidad and Tobago that a lot of these people in these fishing boats that have been shot down by the Trump regime, that these people were fishermen, that they were not drug traffickers.

58:40Ben Meiselas:In any event, even if you assume that they were low level drug trafficking mules, at worst, they were low, the lowest level in the drug hierarchy, people who have the task of basically being their life being threatened or are in the most destitute, and they're being sent by the cartels out. Now, we also know based on the size of these boats, 24 feet, these are not big boats that are being used. They likely don't have the fuel to even get into the United States. So they would have to be refueled several times. They were likely probably going other places in the region if they were going anywhere with drugs.

59:17Ben Meiselas:We also know for a fact that there was not fentanyl in those boats. I mean, if anything, there was cocaine. The fentanyl comes from basically the precursor and the ingredients that fentanyl come from Mexico. They're not coming from the region of Venezuela or Colombia. For sure, they aren't there. So those are kind of the undisputed facts. And look, we have Coast Guard. You know, Donald Trump was talking about on that deranged press conference he gave on Friday about the Coast Guard cutters, those Coast Guard ships. For a very long time, we have these Coast Guard cutters interdict the ships that are close to the United States.

59:59Ben Meiselas:They go on the ships. They see if the boats have drugs on them. I think the statistic is somewhere around one-fourth of the ships that they believe have the drugs on them actually don't. But that's why they interdict. They see there's a process. They don't kill them. And if there are drugs on it, they arrest the people. And then they try to figure out the source. And then they build a methodology because ultimately they want to get to the high level traffickers. Popak, like Juan Hernandez, like the president of Honduras, like the guy in Honduras. You take your sources, you find who the real person is, you run a case against that person, and that person gets sentenced to 45 years.

1:00:48Michael Popok:It's hard to interrogate them when you blow them up.

1:00:50Ben Meiselas:And one of the reasons, one of the things that we've seen in Colombia and Honduras is actually, I'm not going to say that they're drug free, let's not get carried away. But you've actually seen in with President Petro of Colombia, with Xiomara Castro in Honduras, for the first time with help of the United States, real efforts to reduce the drug narco states in those countries. Now, as the narco states in those countries have diminished, you've seen an increase in fentanyl from China and Mexico and elsewhere. So, you know, it's a little bit of a whack-a-mole game taking place. But we've seen what actual the right efforts can do in Honduras and in Colombia.

1:01:37Ben Meiselas:But let's talk about what this new reporting, though, that HEGSA ordered SEAL Team 6, which had always been viewed as the elite within the elite. shoot to kill if there were survivors of these boat strikes. And we know that there were survivors of the boat strikes. And then they followed an order to then kill the survivors. And this is a clear cut war crime. We know it. Going back to the 1800s, this was defined as war crimes based on international agreements, obviously Geneva Conventions, obviously the Rome Treaty, and American law. These are war crimes. This is murder. And after World War II, there was a lot of examples of German U-boat captains, Japanese ships, examples like this, where people would shoot people in the water after they were surviving.

1:02:28Ben Meiselas:And they held trials. And they were like death penalties that sent people sentenced who were involved in these war crimes after World War II. Popak, break it all down. Yeah.

1:02:39Michael Popok:I mean, listen, I live in an area, I live in Miami where drug trafficking was part of the scene throughout the 70s and 80s. You can leave in comments if you know what a square grouper is. A square grouper is bales of marijuana or coke that have been dumped overboard in shrink wrap by boats who have been interdicted. and the fishermen that later find them jokingly referred to them as square grouper. But interdiction, where you, as you said, you get to interrogate the people on the boat, extradite them and move yourself up the chain and find out what was on the ship and go through a due process is quite different than the 20 boats and 80 human beings that have been made to disappear by the Trump administration with a push of a button or a series of buttons off of Trinidad and Tobago and other drone locations.

1:03:41Michael Popok:And what we don't have, when the Coast Guard interdicts, we hear about the tons of cocaine and whatever other drugs and the people that were on board and who they are. We don't know who these people are because the Trump administration doesn't know who they are. They go on and they lie to Congress. And Pete Hegseth says, they were definitely Trenda, Aragua. All right, give us the big board. Who in Trenda, Aragua? Who are they? How are they connected to the cartel? How are these low-level guys on a fishing boat connected to Trenda? Tell us. No, because they don't know. Because they don't know the identity of these people.

1:04:23Michael Popok:And then let's go to phase two. What was on board? As you said, they don't even know what's on board. That's why we haven't heard about, oh, we stopped a ton of cocaine from going. It's not fentanyl coming out of these countries. It's coke and marijuana. It's mainly coke. So you've got that. You got the lying going on to Congress and Congress getting upset about it, including ones that have been in the military. That's why you see at the very same moment you and I are talking about this story, members of former members of the military that are in Congress, senators and congresspeople, or members of the intelligence community, came up with the don't give up the ship video in which they said, remember rank and file and army and navy and other armed force brass.

1:05:10Michael Popok:It is illegal. It is unconstitutional for you to follow an unconstitutional order. The Nuremberg Principles, which came out of World War II, where German soldiers of different ranks tried to defend themselves for the Holocaust and the horrors that they perpetrated by saying, we were just following orders. that got thrown out as a defense. You have a moral and legal obligation not to follow illegal orders. That's been embedded in the Code of Military Justice for the United States, the Nuremberg Principles. And you and I were talking before we came out of the air that I would not be shocked if in 2028, 2029, there aren't televised Nuremberg-like trials of people in the Trump administration who have committed acts in violation of the Constitution and of penal law, murder, international law, and the rest.

1:06:14Michael Popok:That's why we talked about at the top of this podcast about there's now people, it's coming out of people's mouths, this concept of the next Department of Justice and what they will do. First of all, there's going to be civilian lawsuits filed by the families of the 80 that disappeared. We may not know who they are, but they know who didn't come home from a fishing expedition. And they're going to be suing in American courts with American federal judges, including the ones you identified, who are not really thrilled with the Trump administration on civil cases that you're going to see versus Pete Hegseth, because we just got new reporting coming out of the Washington Post, of all places, in which in the first strike, at least in September, which they only showed us the edited version of, because if the American people that have seen that video have said, if the American people saw the complete version, which is too, it was shocking to those in military who were watching this, you know, on some screen that two people survived three strikes on the boat, But they survived, and they were hanging on to the side of the boat.

1:07:27Michael Popok:And Pete Hegseth, according to the new reporting, gave an oral command, not the President of the United States, Pete Hegseth, to double tap that boat and fire another missile from a drone and take them out and leave no survivors. Let's just leave that. Let's let that reverberate for a second. That is a confession of a war crime and murder committed by the head of the Department of Defense or war, whatever it is, for which he does not have immunity the way that the President of the United States was given immunity by the United States Supreme Court three years ago in the Trump decision. He instead has a very flimsy Office of Legal Counsel conjured up, fabricated legal memo that says that he's allowed because they've declared war or taken up arms against Venezuela, that anything that he does is right and has cover.

1:08:24Michael Popok:But every other military justice analyst, including those within the military and outside the military, have all said that was the commission of a war crime. And the impunity by which this administration operates, the smugness by which they think they are imperious and they think they are immune to future prosecution and investigation, but it's just staggering. But it's going to start then with the civil cases that are going to be brought by those families in federal courts that are going to bring out all this evidence as the Trump administration scrambles to defend themselves. And they're not going to be able to say, but we got El Chapo.

1:09:02Michael Popok:We got the head of the narco. You didn't get anything because if you got it, you would have told us what it was. Instead, you just blew people out of the water without due process in a tough guy move in some sort of deranged foreign policy related to narco terrorism.

1:09:18Ben Meiselas:You know, I think that someone should file if they haven't already a Freedom of Information Act request for the full video of that shooting of the of the killing of those two individuals, because what's the Trump regime going to claim that it's classified? they've already released all of the image other than that part of it, right? They showed it off, they posted it on social media. And I think that as sick and disturbing as that image is, I think that it's important to actually see the war crimes that are being committed. It's also notable that during the oral argument a few years back on the issue of absolute immunity, One of the hypotheticals that was used by the liberal justices who voted against absolute immunity was a question to Trump's lawyer.

1:10:07Ben Meiselas:Do you believe Trump could order SEAL Team 6 to kill his political opponents? And then the lawyer, who's now the solicitor general at the DOJ, tried to avoid the question and then ultimately said yes. I think that that is something that you could do if it was viewed as an official act under Article 2, if there was a war being declared, or if there was something in taking care of Executive 2 functions, yeah, I think you could. And then there was a debate, you'll recall our coverage on Legal AF, between the right-wing justices, six of them who ultimately gave Trump absolute immunity, and the liberal justices who voted against it.

1:10:51Ben Meiselas:And the right-wing justices were telling the liberal justices, stop it. Those hypotheticals are never going to happen. What we're worried about is the split second decisions that a president needs to make. And if they're worried that they could be criminally prosecuted, they won't be able to make those decisions. To which the liberal justices says, you know what? We've been a country for a pretty long time and no former president was ever worried about such a thing because they followed the law. And if you're worrying about those things, then maybe you're a criminal and maybe you're involved in criminality because there's never been this concept of absolute immunity since the very founding of our constitution was based on no kings.

1:11:32Ben Meiselas:You want to talk about originalist thinking, right? That's one of the frameworks that the Supreme courts were originalists. We interpretate the original framing. The whole freaking constitution was created as a reaction against the Kings, against the monarchy, in Britain. So the whole thing was created against absolute immunity. But I think it's interesting because actually Trump used that ruling as he always does. You give him an inch, he takes your life is what I've always said. And in this case, he's used that ruling and said, I can go and kill people. I can send ice on the streets and I won't be held accountable.

1:12:10Ben Meiselas:I, I, I, I, I, I. But as Popak makes clear, the people who are in that chain of command, who are following the unlawful orders, there will be a time, as Jamie Dimon said, where there'll be a new DOJ. And again, I think that any Democratic candidate in the primaries is going to be asked, what is your position about the United States joining with the International War Court? What's your view of the United States following international law when it comes to war crimes? What would you give immunity to Hegseth and these types of people? Would you pardon them and would you protect them from war prosecutions?

1:12:52Ben Meiselas:And I don't see how any Democrat makes it out of the primary without saying we will agree to any international ramifications for these people who committed war crimes. We will not offer protection and we will not offer any immunity or pardons. I don't see how you make it through the primaries unless you make those commitments. And also, we're going to tear down the golden ballroom crap and we're going to remove all of this stuff. I think that will be a litmus test. Finally, we talked about a lot, but I think it's important to talk about here before we go, which is, of course, we know the identity of the shooter in Washington, D.C.

1:13:28Ben Meiselas:Tragically, we know the National Guard's woman passed away from this horrific shooting. The shooter is a guy by the name of Ramunala Lakhkanwal, 29-year-old Afghan national. He entered the U.S. in 2021. He worked with the CIA in Afghanistan, Special Forces. He was in the Afghan military since he was a teenager and was working with the CIA there in Kandahar and in other areas. There was no red flags at all about his background when he entered the U.S. You all remember that Trump cut the deal with the Taliban, released 5000 Taliban prisoners. The Taliban prisoners then took over Afghanistan. Trump promised the withdrawal, but he didn't do a withdrawal in May when he promised that he was going to withdraw.

1:14:14Ben Meiselas:And then he provided no intelligence or communications with the Biden transition team. Ultimately, Biden removed the troops from Afghanistan, to which the Trump regime, to which Trump and all the Magnes would constantly attack Biden for the exit and the withdrawal of what Trump was supposed to do. But Trump refused to do because Trump is Trump. And this person was heavily vetted, heavily vetted. And because this person worked with the CIA, he was basically a member of the CIA. for 10 years in Gondahar and fought alongside American troops. This person was allowed to show up. There was no signs that this person, as far as we know as of now, was engaged.

1:14:55Ben Meiselas:He's living in Washington. There was no red flags until this shooting took place. But then again, the Trump regime granted this guy asylum in April of 2025. And we know the Trump regime has dismantled counterterrorism within the FBI and instead place the FBI on going after abuela and abuela duty, like going after people who have been here for a long time and who have been contributing to our country. They've attacked migrants in the factories and in the restaurants and on the farms and in the Home Depot parking lots and going through Latino neighborhoods and terrorizing them and landscapers instead of focusing on the bad guys or developing intelligence on the bad guys.

1:15:37Ben Meiselas:And the Trump regime picked an intern from the Heritage Foundation whose only other job experience was as a summer landscaper and MAGA social media guy who was a big super Trump fan named Thomas Fugate, 22 years old, no experience in the FBI, no experience in intelligence, no experience in anything, OK, other than he was the guy was an intern. They made him the head of counterintelligence at the FBI because Trump hates the FBI and wanted to destroy it. What better way to give the middle finger to the FBI than bring in a 22 year old guy who has no clue about the FBI, right, and make him the head of the most important division, counterintelligence.

1:16:18Ben Meiselas:So I'm not going to do what MAGA does and say, well, because of Fugate, that's why this happened. But I will say objectively, our counterterrorism has been extremely degraded and our ability to develop real time intelligence. So who knows? Could the FBI have been keeping track of people in chat rooms and see if somebody was getting radicalized? That's what they would do. That capability has been severely harmed, if not outright removed. And lots of former FBI agents have been warning us about that in litigation against the Trump regime. And these are FBI agents who served under Bush and Obama and even the Trump First administration who are now saying this second administration, this regime is engaged in this type of conduct.

1:17:06Ben Meiselas:So I covered a lot of it there, Popak, but I'll give you the final word on the subject.

1:17:10Michael Popok:No, I think you hit it all, but I'll just do it for what I did at the top of the podcast. Every time Donald Trump tries to make political, politically exploit a tragedy, it backfires for him. But how quickly those in his administration are so in this hermetically sealed world that, you know, right on cue, John Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, blames the Biden administration. And this one blames the Biden administration. And then, oh, let's turn it towards now nobody from Afghanistan is ever going to be able to come here again. And another Muslim country ban is going to happen. That's not what happened here.

1:17:56Michael Popok:What happened here is a guy who, starting in 2011, worked for some combination of the U.S. military and CIA and was trained and trusted in Afghanistan and got resettled in the state of Washington. somewhere along the way, something happened, you know, a circuit breaker blew, a fuse blew, and he got radicalized, or it's just a crazy mass shooter. I mean, there's plenty of white, non-Muslim, non-Afghan mass shooters also, including ones that fire at ICE, regardless of who's in charge. But Donald Trump's attempt to exploit it is what you and I keep a close eye on, Just as we saw in the Charlie Kirk murder, him trying to turn that into a cause celeb in order to crack down on, you know, DEI and First Amendment speech and, you know, Democratic groups and fundraising and all that.

1:18:59Michael Popok:And that seems to have backfired because the American people and Jimmy Kimmel, that backfired on him because people stood up for First Amendment speech and against tyranny created by a president who had lost sight and lost any, what's the word, any barrier between his presidency and his political world. When they saw the entirety of his cabinet go to Arizona for the Charlie Kirk vigil, when they saw J.D. Vance hold a Charlie Kirk podcast from the White House, that actually turned against the Trump administration. His efforts now to blame Biden for the tragedy that happened with the National Guard similarly is turning against him in the public polling.

1:19:57Michael Popok:Because frankly, the American people don't see a president who is focused on what matters to them on a daily basis. And I'll end it with the polling that I started the podcast with. While the ruby ruby red areas like Wyoming, he's never going to lose Wyoming. In the seven battleground states plus Texas, Wisconsin, and Florida, he is underwater double digits at the moment. Meaning if we were to run the election again, he would likely lose all those battleground states. You and I wouldn't be talking about a Trump presidency. People want their vote back, especially the independents, which have rejected Donald Trump.

1:20:44Michael Popok:76 % of independents want their vote back. It was just staggering numbers. We're 10 months into an administration that is looking for any, any way to distract from a floundering administration, even exploiting the death of a poor woman who served this country honorably in the National Guard. And that's why you and I got to talk about it, like instantly getting on the air and talking about it. And the people now are starting, you can see it in the polling and the voting, people are starting to see through this administration and their just exploitation for political gain of any tragedy that should have no political red or blue analysis applied to it.

1:21:33right?

1:21:34Michael Popok:This should just be about the tragedy and then maybe set up a blue ribbon panel to make sure it doesn't happen again. But Donald Trump can't help himself because he's looking for any life preserver that he can find for his depraved administration.

1:21:49Ben Meiselas:I want to thank everybody for watching this episode of Legal AF. A reminder, check out Michael Popak's law firm. If you or someone you know or love you believe has a case, call 877-POPOC-AF or visit thepopocfirm.com if you've been involved in a car accident, trucking accident. If you know somebody who has or someone's the victim of wrongful death that you know, just have them call the POPOC firm. The consultation is free. POPOC is representing a lot of listeners and viewers of the Legal AF podcast. So please, 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. Again, consultation is free. And if they take the case, they don't recover unless you recover.

1:22:27Ben Meiselas:Go to Michael Popak's Substack, the Legal AF Substack. Check it out, substack.com, then search Legal AF. And then make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel, almost 1 million subscribers. I think we could hit that 1 million subscriber mark this year. Thank you so much, Legal AFers. We appreciate you. We hope you had a happy Thanksgiving. I know times are difficult, but you make these times manageable and you make this enjoyable for us, even during very difficult times. We'll be here with you shoulder to shoulder every step of this fight. As always, we're grateful for you. Happy Thanksgiving.

1:23:06Ben Meiselas:Please send our love to your family, to everybody you know. Let others know about this show as well. Let's keep on growing. Thanks, everybody, so much. We'll see you next time on Legal AF. I'm Ben Micellis, joined by our co-host, Michael Popak signing off. Shout out Legal AFers. Shout out Midas Plain.

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1:23:51Ben Meiselas:So he actually gets results.

1:23:53Michael Popok:Exactly. As Governor, Phil will fight for Colorado.

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