Legal AF Full Episode - 12/13/2025

28:39And in the meantime, you know, probably her number two guy named Robert McBride, who's slightly older than me, semi-retired, they pulled him out of whatever. He had been a U.S. attorney, assistant U.S. attorney in the past from Kentucky of all places. They shoved him into the Eastern District of Virginia to babysit her. So he's been the one with his team and people not named Lindsey Halligan trying to get another indictment of Letitia James on mortgage fraud. There, it was an avenue opened because there is no statute of limitations problem or the time in which you must bring an indictment or it's found to, you are found to have been precluded because of a lapse of time.

29:21Almost every criminal statute, but not every criminal statute, has a statute of limitations. Once it runs, you're SOL. If you're the prosecutor, sometimes you, just to give a little inside baseball, if you're negotiating like you and I used to do for on behalf of clients in cases involving crime with the Department of Justice or something similar to it, and they were running up against a statute of limitations issue because they should always have their eye on that, they would often ask you for a tolling agreement, giving them more time. Some people might think, well, why would you ever sign that to give them more time?

29:58Because if you don't, they'll just rush in and indict you anyway, and you're hopefully in some sort of discussion mode for a plea deal, so you don't want to piss them off completely. Although I have been involved with cases where I've told them to go pound sand, I'm not signing the tolling agreement. But that's how important that issue is in the everyday world of prosecutor, or defense attorney negotiations. The plenty of time left on mortgage fraud, and just to remind people, because I know people are joining this story late, there's no mortgage fraud here. Letitia James, among various other pieces of property that she's acquired, bought a, I mean, talk about a modest home.

30:34When I give you the price, people are going to think I'm talking about some transaction in like 1980. $118 ,000 house she bought three or four years ago in Virginia. Why Virginia? She has family there. She has, I think her father lives near there. And her plan was to have it as a second home and to let family members stay there. They need to stay there. She's got a niece with kids and she's let the person stay there. Has she been renting it out? I've been told by lawyers that represent her in the press that there is no rental agreement. She's just been letting family stay in a house and she visits it as well.

31:10Where's the fraud? You know, and to hear Lindsay Halligan when she was still in the case, there was$17 ,000 worth of rental income. No, Lindsay, there was$17 ,000. If you're right that she should have gotten a higher interest rate based on a document that she signed, that would have been her savings over 30 years. So you're telling me you want the American people to believe and grand jurors to believe that the attorney general for the state of New York, in order to save the equivalent of five Starbucks coffees a month decided to commit mortgage fraud. I mean, and now grand jurors are not buying this.

31:48So there's always been this weird forum shopping, grand juror shopping that the Trump DOJ has been using in Virginia in the Eastern District. There's two main locations, two main districts. There's Norfolk, Virginia, and there's Alexandria. And they've been running back and forth between the two of them. The major crimes unit head for the Department of Justice the day that Lindsay Halligan arrived, Liz Yussi, gave a memo that said there should be no indictment here and I'm not going to go for an indictment in Norfolk, Virginia. There was already a grand jury up and running. She got fired for having let it be known that she had recommended against any kind of indictment, which of course a jury is eventually going to know about.

32:31She gets fired. Then they move to Alexandria, Virginia. Oh, we don't like that grand jury, even though that's where the house is located. Let's go to Alexandria. And so they go to Alexandria, and Lindsay, oh, Lindsay Halligan gets an indictment. Okay. The indictment gets thrown out. Now they run back to Norfolk, Virginia, and they can't get a re-indictment. That was last week or almost two weeks ago because the grand jurors didn't re-indict. So they go again, but they move it to Alexandria, Virginia. And they don't, a second time, they can't get an indictment. Because by this point, as our colleague Karen Freeman-Nignifolo put it on Wednesday so eloquently, grand jurors can read.

33:11And they know what's going on. And they have sided with Letitia James in the defense against the prosecutors. And even though there are presumably career prosecutors like this guy McBride, who's in there, I mean, just picture for a minute. You and I have never been inside of a grand jury room because we're not allowed in there. We're allowed to, or jury deliberation rooms for that matter, although you and I have spoken to jurors after they're done, which we're allowed to do. But can you imagine in a grand, the grand jury deliberation room when they seat them and they tell them they're here on the case of U.S.

33:49versus Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, how much eye rolling and moans were there in that room before they got started? I am sure there was quite a few like, That effing case. So what we're watching with this Department of Justice that has spent, I never thought it would only take 10 months to completely sully and undermine the prestige and reputation of the Department of Justice. I thought it would have had to take longer. But in just 10 months' time, Trump and his Department of Justice have so sullied the name of the Department of Justice that federal judges don't believe a word that they say.

34:32They don't believe a word that the witnesses, who are often Department of Justice lawyers, they don't believe a word that they say. They don't give them the presumption of regularity any longer. Juries don't believe what's coming out of the mouth when you're presenting your case, if you're saying that you're representing the United States of America. Grand juries are not believing them. We saw it in Washington. You interviewed the woman who had been attacked by ICE or somebody during a protest, and they tried four times to get an indictment, and they couldn't get it. So this is our way as Americans to vote against the corrupt lawless regime, as you like to say, of the Trump administration.

35:16So I'm not telling you not to follow the facts as presented or the legal arguments. But if you're not buying what the Department of Justice is selling and you're a juror or a grand juror, you should vote accordingly. And that's what we're starting to see. You and I speculated about this. I think Adam Schiff had said something like it in an interview with you a few months ago, which was the long-term deleterious impact on the Department of Justice's reputation as it plays out in the courtrooms, as jurors and judges and grand jurors no longer believe them, is yet to be seen. And now, 10 months in, 11 months in, this is what we're seeing.

35:56But to round it out before I turn it back, it's exactly what you said. We don't have a comparator for this. You and I can't go back in history and say, well, it's just like the Johnson administration or it's just like when Andrew Jackson took over the department. We've never had this. OK, and federal judges fighting with the United States Supreme Court in open warfare never saw that either. So for people that are kind of joining law and politics kind of in progress through our show or otherwise, there is no historical exemplar that we can point to because this is unchartered territory. Popak, talk about what's going on with Comey, where you had a federal judge.

36:42The Comey case, just like Letitia James case, was dismissed several weeks back because you had an unlawful prosecutor. Lindsay Halligan was the only person in the room when the indictment on both those cases was secured. In many ways, Lindsay Halligan being disqualified may have been the best thing for Lindsay Halligan because in Comey's case, she was in a lot of ethical trouble and judges were about to make rulings to the extent she wasn't disqualified about her behavior in the grand jury room using a witness, the only one witness, an FBI agent who was exposed intentionally so, to this attorney-client information between Comey and Dan Richman.

37:29Essentially, the main witness that they were going to try to claim if this case went to a trial was the witness against Comey was Dan Richman, Comey's lawyer and friend. And they got the information in, inaccurate information, through an FBI agent based on hearsay who invaded the attorney-client privilege and shouldn't have had access to this information in the first place. And then I believe misrepresented what it said. Halligan also gave incorrect legal instructions, fraudulent legal instructions to the jury. And then we also know presented an indictment signed to the magistrate judge that the grand jury never even saw.

38:15So there was all of that. So that case gets dismissed on the disqualification grounds, though, the same way New York Attorney General Letitia James' case got disqualified, got removed on the disqualification grounds. But now that lawyer of Comey, who is a Columbia law professor, Dan Richman, he initiated a legal proceeding in Washington, D.C. federal court because his documents were essentially stolen from his computer by the DOJ and utilized in that proceeding. And he's like, there was no warrant for this. You just basically took documents from my email account that you never should have had access to.

38:56You never had a warrant for these documents. And tell us what happened, Popak, with this judge's order. Yeah, I learned a lot about things. I didn't realize Blu-ray discs were still being used to collect evidence. But apparently in 2017 and 2019 and 2020, Daniel Richman produced documents to the FBI in two different tranches. In 2017, he voluntarily turned over his computer and had it imaged. We call it imaged. Apparently, It was burned onto a Blu-ray disc, video disc, with all the gigabytes of information. And that was done because Richman was a part of the cast of characters and admitted, this has already been confessed by both Comey and Richman, that when Richmond worked as a lawyer for Comey as a special FBI employee, and they have been friends since their U.S.

39:59attorney days in New York, that Comey needing to try to get a special counsel prosecutor appointed to go after Donald Trump for the corruption in the first Trump administration that he experienced, used Richmond to leak several memos, CYA memos, to the New York Times for the sole purpose of trying to get the public up in arms about Trump tried to interfere with a criminal investigation of Michael Flynn, and he used Richmond as the conduit. It's all been admitted. So there was an investigation about that. There was a separate investigation, that code name Arctic Hayes, about Hillary Clinton and her emails.

40:43So between 2017 and 2020, in two separate tranches, Richmond turned over his files, but there were warrants and there were limits to that, and they dealt with those investigations. Now, the government kept the documents, kept the Blu-ray disc. I know that because Judge Kolar-Kitelli, in her order from yesterday, told this whole story. And what she ruled is that the government retaining for 2017 2018, 2020, all of this material, the Columbia University emails and all of the imaging of his computer and laptops and all of that, the retention was not the problem. That's not an unlawful search and seizure or seizure.

41:27The unlawful search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment and in callous disregard for his rights happened in September of 2025, led by everybody, starts with Lindsey, ends with Halligan, Lindsey Halligan, who gave permission to the FBI to go back to the Blu-ray disc, or as I like to joke, the box on the shelf, and go rummaging around through it again to find communications between Daniel Richmond and his wife. and his client, lawyer client, James Comey. And the FBI agent, without regard in this warrantless search to any of the prior restrictions, and without a new warrant, opens up the box 18 days before the indictment, when they finally got in to get the indictment, and starts rummaging around the Blu-ray desk to look for these communications and finds them.

42:20And then, therefore, is tainted or polluted because he saw things he shouldn't have seen through a warrantless search. Now, the reason, as Judge Kolar-Kitelli in D.C., which is where this issue came up, the reason she thinks they did it that way without a warrant is they're running out of time. There was only 18 days to go before she had to get that indictment under the statute of limitations. So they were like, F it. We don't have time for the warrant. Go through a process where Richmond would move to quash and there'd be a process. They couldn't get it done in 18 days. So they were like, just look in the box.

42:58So he looks in the box and then he goes and testifies about stuff he shouldn't have seen, like attorney-client privilege information. That is a cardinal violation of the Fourth Amendment. The issue for the judge, and this is where she came up with a nuanced ruling. The issue for the judge is, and she says it right in the first paragraph of her order, when there has been a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment and an illegal warrantless search of somebody's material, what's the remedy? The government, Department of Justice, spent almost the entirety of their opposition brief saying, this is just a stalking horse motion.

43:36This isn't even about Richmond. He doesn't care about getting his stuff back. It's all about trying to help his buddy, James Comey, and it's really a suppression motion that can only be brought by James Comey after an indictment. And she said, a collateral issue that it may or may not help Mr. Comey is irrelevant to the Fourth Amendment violation of the professor that I'm dealing with now. So what she she granted the motion. And this is how she this is how she thread the needle for our audience. And I thought it was done well, to be frank. All of the Blu-ray disc and the data taken from Richmond has to be immediately returned to Richmond and certified on Monday by the Department of Justice, the Attorney General, that that has been done.

44:23And all copies and versions and derivatives of it have to be destroyed, with one exception. The government is allowed to make what I'll refer to as a deposit copy, one copy of the Richmond stuff to be deposited in a neutral location, the clerk of the Eastern District of Virginia court system, where it will sit until there is proper subpoenas, search warrants, litigation, oversight by a federal judge or magistrate about who's ever going to get the Richmond docs and how they can be used. It's not going to be her problem. She sits in D.C. It's back to the Eastern District of Virginia, particularly Judge Nachmanoff and Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick, Patrick, who sit over the Comey issues.

45:18I still think they'll get the case if there's ever a re-indictment. So the deposit copy gets sent to the Eastern District. DOJ destroys everything in their possession and returns it all to Richmond. If you and I are right that the sole basis, the foundation of the indictment against James Comey for having given a one-sentence answer to Ted Cruz in a Q &A in 2020 September at a House Oversight Committee meeting, do you stand by your prior testimony? I do, okay? If the foundation of that is the Richmond testimony in order to get the indictment from the grand jury, the Richmond files, and they're now not gonna be able to get the Richmond files that easily without going through judges and motion to quash hearings, which she invites in her order, you know, Richmond, you still got an ability to move to quash this stuff, and there'll be that fight.

46:22If they don't get that, and they have, under your and my calculation, they're completely out of time, and the statute of limitations on perjury is run. They've thrown up an argument that there's a statute that deals with defects, technical defects in indictments, which is exactly what it sounds like based on the case law. Like you left out an element of the crime. You forgot to sign it. You missed paragraph numbered. Then you've got six months to fix that. They're going to argue we get six more months because we had a defect and her name was Lindsay Halligan. We had a defect in the appointment of the U.S.

47:01attorney. No, that's not the defect. The appointment of a U.S. attorney who turned out to be invalid and unconstitutional results in no indictment, which is what Judge Curry ruled, and therefore no clock stopping on the statute of limitations. So you see that fight's going to happen. And all that's got to happen if they need the Richmond stuff, which I think they do because they've never suggested the Department of Justice they have another avenue to go after Comey. If they can do without it, they'll have to do without it. If they need it, they're going to have to wait to go through a process and hope they don't come up against the other six-month outer boundary for the indictment.

47:43But it's a short answer, good news for James Comey, good news for the Fourth Amendment, and Professor Richmond's rights who have been vindicated. The Trump administration can go appeal to the D.C. Court of Appeals if it wants to, if they really want to do it. But I think my prediction, there's a 20 or 30 percent chance they're ever going to be able to get an indictment against James Coby. And then if they do, then we're back to the world of vindictive prosecution dismissal, selective prosecution dismissal, maybe defects in that new indictment, the issue that we just talked about, which is the statute of limitations.

48:23But that's all going to be handled back in the Eastern District of Virginia with Judge Nakbunoff and Judge Fitzpatrick. And now that the composite file is with the Eastern District of Virginia, their judges and magistrate judges, all of these judges have the experience now with this Eastern District of Virginia prosecutor's office that is being unlawfully led by Halligan, who keeps still signing her name to these pleadings, even though she's been disqualified. And so you would have to have Halligan, who's been disqualified by them, who's pretending to be the United States attorney still, even though she's basically been evicted.

49:06And her argument is, you disqualified me, you didn't evict me yet. You're going to have to get an eviction notice. They're like, yeah, when we say go, that means go out of the building, not go Rams, like go Yankees or go Dodgers. It means go out of the, like, what are you talking about? Well, you never specifically said where to go, or you said I'm disqualified, but from what? Judge Curry said vacancy has been created by the illegal appointment of Lindsay Allegan. How much clearer does she need to be? Clearer can you be? And Allegan goes, well, that doesn't mean me. Yeah. It literally means you.

49:39So now you're going to have to have that Eastern District of Virginia office with zero credibility petition the federal judges based on the unlawful search and seizure that these attorney-client documents should now be utilized in a grand jury proceeding. You know what the Trump regime was hoping is, look, we bring this into a grand jury. There's no judge in it. There's no lawyers for the other side in it. We just lie to the people who don't know about the process and we just and we just get these indictments. And then kind of who cares after we got the indictments that we don't even need to think about the next step.

50:16And one of the things that I want to tell you all is that part of the law and being a professional or being a grown up is you have to think about the next step. OK, you have to think about when you do something, what happens thereafter. And it's an important thing to it's an important thing. Oh, by the way, Popak, while that's going on, you have the DOJ posting those Franklin the turtle or Franklin images, trying to recruit immigration judges by stealing the IP of this beloved Canadian cartoon. They're like, do you want to be an immigration judge? It's like, this is how you're advertising for being a judge was once a really big deal.

50:57OK, not anymore, according to this DOJ. Franklin is helping write the next chapter of America. You can too. We're looking for patriotic legal professionals to serve as deportation judges. Your work will have generational consequences. Apply today. Join.justice.gov. Franklin becomes a deportation judge. You have Midas Canada in your guide there, Angus. I'm sorry. Why a turtle in a powdered wig? What is it? What's the connectivity here? The connectivity was that Hegseth did this originally as a, he thought it was funny to show a children, just a children's, he could have used C-Spot Run or Goodnight Moon.

51:43He just chose the popular children's character book. It makes them softer? It makes them more approachable? No, and so he showed it as, this is Franklin's new adventure. He is blowing people up and committing war crimes. Oh. And that was Hegseth. So since then there was outrage to that because, you know, from Canada and from people here who don't like war crimes saying like, why are you doing that? Like that's so like, and then so like the right wing MAGA is like, that's how we own MAGA and we're owning people. So they've continued to use Franklin now because it's pissed off people as like a way to troll, like, like, ha ha ha ha.

52:20This makes libs angry. So it's like, it's not just make libs angry. You just look stupid. and we're trying to not look stupid. Put on your encyclopedic knowledge here for a minute, which you always have. I thought there is another frog that is a QAnon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Anti-Semitic frog. So they're using a turtle, a green character. Why don't they use like Mickey Mouse? Why don't they rip off Disney and it's new AI deal? Why don't they use Mickey Mouse as the... It's just intellectual theft of... because they're just such crappy. The whole thing is just good. There's Pepe the Frog. Right, Pepe the Frog.

53:00But they specifically want to go after a beloved cartoon in Canada because honestly, the DOJ and Department of Defense right now is run by a bunch of like, you know, I would say toddlers, but toddlers are more mature than these people. Let's take our last quick break of the show. A reminder, go check out Michael Popak's law firm if you've been injured in a car accident, an auto accident or know somebody who's been injured as the result of negligence, go to 877 or call 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. The consultation is free, 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. They have lawyers all across the country.

53:39The consultation's free. Subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel. As Popoc said, it's on its way to 1 million subscribers. So subscribe there and check out the Legal AF sub stack as well. We appreciate everybody subscribing to all of those Legal AF properties. I will be right back after our last break of the show. Let's be honest. What most people really want for the holidays is to see their favorite people more often. That's why this year, the best gift you can give besides plane tickets is an Aura digital picture frame. Named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter, Aura frames are incredibly smart and easy to use, allowing you to upload unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame.

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57:33So just sign the thing and we'll make our own objections and we'll not turn over the things that we don't want to turn over. But anyway, it's due this week, right? And we've had smart judges across the country in response to the Trump regime's demand that the transcripts from the grand jury proceedings in Epstein and Ghislaine's case be made public. These judges made clear, first off, there's nothing in here that will matter to the victims and survivors in the public because anything that was in here is small, like literally 85 pages, like with a single agent who testified. But, you know, Ghislaine had a trial.

58:20So all that stuff that was in the grand jury is in the public trial that's out there, or it's in the underlying indictments that people are aware of. These are not the Epstein files and the survivors and victims have been misled and the public has been misled, that somehow the grand jury transcript is the file. So the judges made very clear, we'll release the grand jury transcripts now in light of the Epstein Survivors Act, but there's nothing in here that's going to be of import. But what you saw Judge Engelmeyer do in the Southern District of New York, for example, he's one of the three judges that talked about releasing these grand jury transcripts.

59:00He said, okay, I'll release mine if you tell me what you have in yours. So he made the Trump regime list all of the files that could constitute the Epstein files. So there's a whole list of everything there. And we also know from the great FOIA work, Freedom of Information Act work of Bloomberg and others, but Bloomberg, the reporter Leopold does a great job. He showed that back in March, there were over a thousand FBI employees and DOJ employees assigned to the redaction squad or whatever they were calling it to go through the Epstein files. And there was like massive, a million dollars in overtime alone that was paid during a one week period of like massive redactions taking place to these files.

59:51So these were all ready to go in March. and people were tasked with going through and finding Trump's name or people Trump knows and others and like redacting stuff. So that's been in the works for a very long time. And so Popak, on the eve of this release, you had Democrats from the House Oversight Committee publishing a number of new photos that were fairly disturbing. Not fairly, they were like disturbing photos. I mean, it's a combination of Trump with young ladies or girls. And then there's like all this like Epstein sexual stuff of like massage stuff and gags and something, a pussy pump.

1:00:35It was like literally that's what it said on it. I'm not using that language myself. That's what it said on it. You had like extreme restraints, like ropes, job. It's crazy stuff. I mean, it's sickening stuff. Popak, Trump condoms, something Trump, I'm huge, Trump condoms. So that was released. And, you know, look, I think the Democrats in the House Oversight Committee want to keep the pressure and attention on this as as this week. But what do you think happens this week as the Epstein Transparency Act hits its 30 day mark? Ultimately, what do you think the DOJ is going to produce? I want to manage expectations the way that you do.

1:01:22Donald Trump has blown through and ignored deadlines, congressional deadlines before see TikTok. I don't think he thinks it's a real deadline. I think he'll calculate whether he can take the political heat or not when they release some but not all of the documents that his FBI and Department of Justice has looked at and he's been briefed on. He's never needed congressional approval in the separation of powers to release executive branch documents that were held by the Department of Justice and the FBI under his command. Again, the Congress thing was always a ruse, was always a distractor to try to say, to try to point to somebody else that was blocking his quote unquote willingness to be transparent.

1:02:13But we know all he wanted to do was to continue to cover up his close personal friendship and relationship with a convicted child sex trafficker and an indicted one who committed suicide rather than or took his own life rather than go through a court process. And the more that Donald Trump boxed himself in and painted himself into a corner, I didn't really know these people, I wasn't really that close to them, that required and that forced the media and House Democrats to continue to do reporting and unearth and report on, as we have, videos and photos and pictures to show the close personal relationship between Donald Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.

1:02:58And it's up to the American people to question why somebody who alleges that he did not know about the depravity and the immorality and the criminal conduct of some of his best friends, why he spent so much political capital and so much resources to hide and cover up for these people if he wasn't really somehow involved. involved, as you and I both said independently, we have something called an adverse inference in courtrooms, that if you don't produce something that you should have produced, or you don't, right, or you spoliate it, you destroy it, or whatever the version of that is, the jury can make an adverse inference that the documents that you're not producing are the ones that would be adverse to you, are the ones that would harm you.

1:03:47So the cover-up and the cover-up of the cover-up that we've been watching ad nauseum since the beginning of this administration when Donald Trump, you know, for political purposes of the campaign trail said, I'd release the files. And then it was like, holy crap, what's in those files? And once he learned what was in those files after being debriefed by Pam Bondi, it was like, we're not releasing those files. Let's say the Congress has to release them, which again, has no role in Congress interfering with the criminal investigation. Then you had, let's pin the blame on federal judges. Let's do that.

1:04:25Now, the only thing that came out good for the congressional statute is that it did lead to federal judges like Judge Berman, Judge Engelmeyer, and Judge Smith in Florida to release everything that they had and get out from under their federal rule of criminal procedure 6E problem on grand jury secrecy and to release other documents It's like the Maxwell exhibits, which you and I reported on in real time when it was happening. So at least that came out of it. But if anybody thinks Donald Trump, there's just going to be a data dump and a link. Everybody can go searching through the hundreds of thousands of pages that were reviewed by the FBI.

1:05:03That's not happening. And I don't expect it to happen. And what you're watching with the Oversight Committee and the Democrats, like Garcia and others, is you're basically playing chicken and warning the Trump administration that we have access to the motherlode of Epstein estate documents. I mean, you and I reported on 19 and then 70 photos. There are apparently 95 ,000 images that the House Oversight Committee, the Democrats have in their possession that they obtained from that hard drive and the email boxes of Epstein and Epstein. So they're using that as a compelling Donald Trump who doesn't know.

1:05:59It's asymmetrical informational warfare here. He doesn't know what's in the box that the Democrats have. And they're letting him know. It's like proof of life. They're sending fingers and ears and toes after they're telling him, you keep effing around. You think these are bad? We got 95 ,000 more images that could have your name or picture on it. So that's how it's smart. it you know the jamie raskins and all this very very smart because they happen to have a a confirmation load of documents at least from the epstein estate where they can say what about this you better produce all your docs because if you don't you're not going to like what we produce so we'll get it all anyway but i think that's what we're that's why it's just like these drips and drips let's do the photos for the epstein island and show the massage tables and the dentist chair and the whatever.

1:06:58And let's do the sex toys. And let's put Donald Trump's face and photos that he can't deny and can't say they're AI of him with young girls and, you know, with this, that, and the other thing. And so that's a very smart move by the House Democrats to do what they're doing. We're all about protecting the survivors and giving them back their dignity. I'm just afraid that it's, they're not going to be happy with what happens in the next 10 days or so when the deadline comes. Yeah. You know, and, you know, Trump in the White House and the MAGAs on the, in the House, Senate, Democrats, you're cherry picking and, you know, and, you know, the people who are there, you know, they're not, you know, you're misrepresenting who's in the photos and this and that.

1:07:51Well, then just release the whole files, like just release everything at the end of the day. That's to, you know, Trump does know what's in the files because they have the files. The custody and control is in the DOJ. And from all of the reporting and everything we know, Trump was told his name is in there repeatedly over and over Again, frankly, you know, these images were bad, but to me, the real, I mean, the real smoking gun type of stuff I thought was those emails, that initial batch of emails from the Epstein estate. I mean, you know, where Donald Trump is mentioned before Epstein ever even felt that he was in personal criminal jeopardy again after the sweetheart deal.

1:08:35You know, we're talking 2012 emails, you know, 2014 emails where Trump is mentioned in reference to girls and Epstein activities and Trump's behavior at a time where you Trump was not running for office, you know, and in real kind of sickening ways. So if you were to tell me that those emails are what's in the file and you know what Epstein was doing and you know the circle that Epstein ran in with other pedos and you said, well, actually, you know, there are you know who their other best friend was in this crew, Trump. But he's saying he didn't do any of this stuff. But then we have him on tape saying that he grabs women by their genitals because he's rich and you get away with it.

1:09:24He's been found liable for sexual assault. We'll move on to the next topic. But Popak, every time also Trump's behavior is mentioned on TV, they're always like, but there's no allegations that Trump was involved. Trump's been found liable of sexual assault. Talking about like that's not a normal thing to be found liable in a federal jury of sexual assault in civil cases that a jury heard this and said, yeah, that guy did it. That guy did it. And Trump's excuse is, well, it was a finger and not the genitals. So there. As sickening as that is, I just want to remind people, this is a guy who's been actually found civilly liable in a federal court case before a federal judge and a federal jury.

1:10:17Popak, last thing I want to talk about is contempt, contempt, contempt. You have Judge Boesberg moving forward with or on his own ready to move forward with contempt proceedings against Kristi Noem and others who defied his order. He asked them to submit declarations about their involvement and their response was to assert privilege and not turn anything over. So remember how the Trump DOJ invaded attorney-client privilege in the prior segment that we gave? And a judge said, well, that's unlawful search and seizure. You stole somebody's privilege? Well, now they want to use privilege improperly as a shield to say, oh, you know, the DOJ, we're our own client and Kristi Noem is actually the client and all these people in it.

1:11:15So all of our communications are private as the DOJ, even though Kristi No makes all of these videos in public and, you know, goes on Fox all the time and holds all these bogus press conferences. She ain't going to testify under oath. She'll say all that stuff on Fox, but she ain't going to go under oath. Why would, why would she do that for? We, we don't do that no more. So, so you have that. And judge Boesberg's like, yes, you just submitted a declaration that said you're not going to say anything. So show up and we'll take the objections one by one. Now, in any normal time, Michael Popak, a hearing is held and then later you can appeal it or you object one by one, objection, objection during the hearing itself.

1:11:59But you don't just stop a district court's hearing from taking place. But that's precisely up until this point. The latest thing that happened was the D.C. Circuit with these two Trump judges who do anything that Trump wants. They did an administrative stay. Remember back what I said earlier, using procedure as a way to allow Trump's fascism to take place. And these Trump judges said administrative stay. We're going to stop a district court's hearing. So I'll toss it to you. But there's a broader point before we go to of these district courts, Trump judges, Obama judges, Biden judges, Reagan judges, these district judges are pretty much doing the right thing.

1:12:39The problem to a lesser extent is the circuit court judges and to a massive extent at the Supreme Court. So Popak, what's going on here with Boesburg? Yeah, Boesburg's doing the right thing. I mean, he restarted his criminal contempt, probable cause hearing fact finding after an en banc panel of the meaning all of the judges of the DC circuit court told appellate court told him to do it and this all has to do with whether an order he gave orally at the end of a hearing on March 15th memorialized in a written temporary restraining order grounding planes from flying continuously to El Salvador with Venezuelan men on them without due process, without federal oversight, whether that was violated or not.

1:13:29Now, subsequently, that order, just to add some confusion to the mix, was overturned and vacated by the United States Supreme Court. That was later. The question was, the power of a federal judge or any federal judge to ensure that their orders are complied with. You can't violate an order, even if you think it's unconstitutional or illegal, or it's an abuse of power, or it's a left-wing radical Marxist judge, and you may get it overturned one day by your buddies on the Supreme Court, that doesn't give you the right today to violate the order, okay? Because we'd have utter chaos and anarchy if you could just go, I think I'm going to win on appeal, so F you, judge, I'm not listening to your order.

1:14:13So this is a strange but not academic case about the power of a federal judge to enforce their own order. He has already believes, based on the evidence that he's obtained already, that there is probable cause to believe that there's been a criminal contempt violation by Kristi Noem and Department of Justice attorneys who did not tell him the truth. That's the second judge. We're not going to talk too much about Abrego Garcia here today, but earlier this week, a day or so ago, we already had a judge, Judge Zinnis in Maryland, and find that six different Department of Justice witnesses and the Department of Justice attorneys themselves did not tell her the truth about Abrego Garcia at various times, including about what countries would or would not take him in a removal process.

1:15:03Again, back to our theme of the Department of Justice's reputation lies in rags at their feet. No one believes a word that they say. And that's why you're getting people saying things like contempt, contempt, contempt. Zinnis is going to do it in Abrego Garcia as well. She dropped in a footnote that she's going to take that up, that lying part, up at another time as she released Abrego Garcia from jail or from detention. On Bozberg, he had a three-judge panel that fractured his order, and it was Cassis, Trump, Rayo, Trump, and Pallard, I think at the time, not Trump, two to one. And they said no.

1:15:45And then the Supreme Court said that the order itself was unconstitutional, not because he'd done anything wrong, because they felt like it was the wrong court, the wrong procedure. The Supreme Court said that should be done by judges closer to the detention, like in Texas at the time, and a writ of habeas corpus mechanism. That was the only reason that they overturned him. So once the judges allowed him to go back and issue a new order and new fact finding about the violation of his order before it was overturned, then he's been moving towards that conclusion. He set a hearing on December the 15th for contempt.

1:16:31He ordered, after reading these bullshit affidavits that don't say anything, and make it worse for them from Kristi Noem and a couple of lawyers in the DOJ and Emil Bovi on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, he's gonna hold an evidentiary hearing. He's gonna start asking questions. He wants true ensign. I've told people from the last six months, true ensign's in a lot of trouble because I believe he lied to a federal judge. So does Erez Riveni, the whistleblower, who's also ready, willing, and able to testify about what he was told the day before the March 15th hearing by Emil Bovi to go tell federal judges to go F off and don't stop planes from flying to El Salvador.

1:17:14So Judge Bozberg wants to hear from him. The Trump administration filed a motion for reconsideration and said, judge, you're making a mistake. The best you can do is refer this to the Justice Department and we'll take it from there, meaning we're not going to prosecute ourselves. But you can't do anything else. You can't acquire anymore. You can't get beneath attorney-client privilege. And the ACLU representing the men wrote and said, you've waived attorney-client privilege. You waived it because you put the issue at issue. And you also, there's a crime fraud exception, and you're participating in a crime or fraud on the court.

1:17:56And therefore, you don't get to not tell us what the advice was to Kristi Noem. Before Judge Boesberg could rule on the reconsideration, the DOJ, as they are wont to do, filed a writ of mandamus, not quite an appeal. It's to get an order from the appellate court to compel a federal officer, in this case, a judge to do something or not do something, to stop the hearing. When you don't like a hearing, you don't like a procedure, You don't like a process. You don't, it's not an appeal. It's a mandamus. So they file a mandamus. And would you effing believe that in the allegedly random wheel that spun, they got two Trumpers again, including Katzis again, who is totally against Bosberg on all of these issues, this time joined by Walker, who was a very young judge.

1:18:51So Walker and Katzis issue the administrative a stay. Michelle Childs from South Carolina, who was shortlisted for the Supreme Court by Joe Biden, she said she would not have stayed it. I mean, you know where she's at. And now they're going to get full briefing on this issue. But look, the writing's on the wall. Katzis has it out for Bozberg. He had it out for him in April. He's going to have the same sentiment again. He'll probably get Walker to join him. It'll be two to one. And then the ACLU is going to have to ask for en banc and see if the rest of the justices of the D.C. Court of Appeals are going to eventually side with Boesburg.

1:19:30In the meantime, the case kind of stays and gets stuck in the mud. But I just don't see how appellate judges then can stand for the proposition that a federal judge's orders can be completely flouted and ignored and abused. And there's no repercussion for it. It's just a dangerous place for us to be in. And you and I are going to have to figure out the jurisprudential gymnastics that they're going to take with their eventual order a month from now. But that's where we are. with Postmark. Yeah. And there's this tension that's never really been seen before between the district court judges, the circuit court judges, and the Supreme Court.

1:20:18And the way, again, I would describe it is the district court judges seem to be getting it right 85 % of the time, actually. They make some bad rulings, but in this area of Trump democracy, Trump cases, they're about 80, to my view, they're about 85 % on target and right with about 15 % decisions that are like really wacky, but about 85 % right. Then to me, the circuit court, it brings it down to about 60%, 55%. And then the Supreme Court, you bring it down to about 10%, 15 % doing the right thing. I just think that's, you know, and so the federal judges, and we're talking about judges who are Trump appointed judges too, and Reagan appointed judges and George W.

1:21:07Bush judges, these federal judges, they spend a long time drafting these orders that are hundreds of pages long. They hold many trials that are, you know, or actual trials that are weeks long with dozens, sometimes hundreds of witnesses. They make findings as the referee, basically in it, like, you know, trying to call balls and strikes. They've seen all of the evidence. And then you have an appeals court that just made up of Trumpers like, ah, we're just going to stay at administrative stay or the Supreme Court does it. And the Supreme Court doesn't even give a reasoning. They're just like, yeah, you know, we just find right now that Trump would face irreparable harm if the status quo is in preserve and the status quo is what Trump did, not the status quo before Trump did the unlawful thing.

1:21:57So we're not saying that Trump is right. That's how the Supreme Court tries to dodge. We're not saying he's right. What we're saying is preserve the status quo, which is what Trump did, then just bring it back up through the court proceedings and we'll see in five to six years, which has the effect of letting Trump do whatever he wants to do because when the status quo, then Trump just goes in and does his unlawful agenda. So that's the status of things right now. What's important is that knowledge is power and that you're educated and all this stuff so you know what's really going on and you could be an informed voter, an informed citizen, and we could get through these issues together.

1:22:39Michael Popak, It's always a pleasure spending the weekends with you and the Legal AFers out there. A reminder to everybody, hit subscribe on this YouTube channel. But even more importantly, hit subscribe on Legal AF's YouTube channels. Search Legal AF on YouTube. Help Michael Popak get 1 million subscribers on Legal AF. Then check out the Legal AF sub stack while you're at it. Also, if you or someone you know has been injured in a car accident, auto accident, a victim of sexual assault or harassment, an employment discrimination case, you name it, wrongful death case involving someone you know, reach out to the Popak Firm, 877-POPAK-AF is the phone number or go to thepopakfirm.com.

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