Legal AF Full Episode - 12/20/2025

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31:39And make sure you use my promo code legal AF so they know I sent you. Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to all of our sponsors, and we appreciate them for keeping this show going. Thank you to those sponsors. By the way, Popak, I was out and about in Pasadena yesterday, and a guy by the name of Jaime Camacho was working in Pasadena. He said he saw me, he saw my wife and her little baby, said, Ben, I'm a big Legal AF fan. Give me a shout-out. Say, Jaime Camacho, biggest Legal AF fan out there. And he said, I listened to your partner, Popak, all the time, he said to me, Jaime Camacho. Jaime Camacho.

32:23Thank you for being such a big one. Shout out to Jaime Camacho. He gave him a shout out. Let's talk about Donald Trump not turning over the Epstein files as required by law. This is a law. Violating the law is a crime. the law says that you can't withhold records or delay records on the grounds of embarrassment reputational harm or political sensitivity and by the way what the trump regime said they did is that if you were mentioned other than bill clinton i guess because they did all these photos of bill clinton and they but like and they undermine their credibility though showing photos of like bill clinton diana ross and michael jackson then they redact the kids and make it seem like these kids are victims of Clinton.

33:06They're Diana Ross's kids. And it's like, it's not even a good, like if you wanted to go after him, like there's not even a good way to do it. You know what I mean? Like it's not, it's just, it's just ridiculous anyway. So they show Bill Clinton, but other than that, if you were a man referenced in these files at all, they treated you as the victim is according to them, which is exactly what the law says you can't do. They turned over what some people said may be 3 % to 5 % of what the DOJ actually has. And from that 3 % to 5%, they redacted 90 % of that 3 % to 5%. And here's the thing, Popak, too.

33:45It wasn't even a sophisticated document dump. Because if you were going to do a – you and I have seen people try to trick us on document dumps. I just got one recently. So if you were to do it, though, they know that the Epstein estate did 18 ,000 emails already that has Trump's name on it. And that's in the DOJ's possession. So if you were to do it and you wanted to be a little bit sophisticated about that, redump that and say, yeah, they did it first. We released that. Here's all of this. People go through it. And at least it wasn't even a sophisticated doctor. You had Todd Blanche, Donald Trump's criminal defense attorney in the morning say, this is phase one.

34:27What do you mean phase one? Don't you notice though, like everything with them because they're a bunch of frauds is always like, it's phase one, it's two weeks, or it is a concept of a deal, or it is a framework, right? They never actually do the deal. It is a framework of something. And it's like, okay, what are you even talking about? So he so Blanche in the morning is like it's phase one, a few hundred thousand documents like, oh, you already violated the law. That's a violation. Then the DOJ spokesperson account says, oh, we're being transparent. The initial deadline is being met as we work diligently to protect victims.

35:03Don't you dare invoke the name of victims in a sentence that says initial deadline is no initial deadline. It's the deadline. You produce all the records. And then I'm going to toss it to you, Popak, right now. But here's the thing. You and I have done lots of reporting on this. The guy who's been the best reporter on this about this aspect is Jason Leopold at Bloomberg, who did the FOIA requests, who went through and said that, look, there's a thousand agents back in March, back in March who are working on this. what they clocked 14 ,678 like overtime hours or something wild like that in like March, like in one month and then one week they were working on it.

35:45National security, thousands of national security officers that they took between the most recent review, which was about a thousand national security officers and a thousand FBI agents back in March. So how many hours were spent on this already, Popak? 200 ,000 hours, 300 ,000 hours that have been spent on this alone? You factor in one attorney at a big law firm billing 1 ,800 hours is a big amount, and that's the entire year. That's all they do. A document dump like this, if you and I were involved in it, we'd put, what, three or four associates on it. They'd work three to four weeks on it, and they'd get it done.

36:31You'd work with the technology companies. You'd get it done in a diligent fashion. I mean, that's just the reality of this. Let me pass it to you. Yeah. So the good thing about the Democrats is that unlike in when you and I do what we call discovery, which is the process of information exchange and document dumping and document production in federal cases, I don't have as a test pile another, usually, another set of documents, unless I've obtained them through subpoena, of things I know exist. because I got them directly from another source that I can use to keep the other side honest. And what the Democrats have are the servers and the email boxes and the photographs and the evidence that was produced directly through subpoena to the House and the Democrats by the Epstein estate.

37:31That's why you and I have been, some people, I don't want it to be confused, like, haven't we seen a lot of these documents before? Or haven't we been talking about documents for a long time? Yes, because when we say the Epstein files, Donald Trump wants to conflate a lot of different piles of things, a lot of different tranches of things, so that you're confused, and we're confused, and they're confused. Maybe we produced, maybe we didn't. That's the Epstein files. This isn't. No, forget all of that. The Epstein files that we refer to are the mass and the treasure trove of information obtained by the Department of Justice and the FBI, before the Trump administration came in or in its first term about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, this child sex trafficking ring.

38:13It's the information that was used in part to indict and investigate Epstein and Maxwell and go to trial against Maxwell and convict Maxwell and be ready to convict Epstein if he hadn't hanged himself. It's all of that from all the different government agencies, not just the FBI, the IRS, the banking records that were obtained, the social media records that were obtained, the subpoenas that were, and search warrants that were executed. That is all in the hands of the executive branch. They've always been in the hands of the executive branch. They've never been in the hands of the legislative branch and Congress.

38:52That's the Epstein files, so to speak. Then there's another tranche, which are the public documents and or at one time secret grand jury documents in the hands of at least three different federal courts. One in Florida, because Epstein was first prosecuted there in the Southern District of Florida, and two in New York, in Manhattan. One for Epstein, one for Maxwell. And that's what we reported on related to in the summer, Donald Trump trying to deflect attention from that first giant batch I just described. That's the thing that FBI and Cash Patel and Pam Bondi went through overtime triple shifts in March and April to report to Donald Trump that his name was all over those files.

39:35That's that file. The second tranche is this group of things that are in the court filings and grand jury proceedings. And finally, after that law was passed, because of the public pressure brought by the survivors, including ones that have appeared on my dissection on Legal AF, and one of the things that you and I will be announcing in January is that Legal AF is working very closely with the survivors, and Lisa Phillips in particular, and in organizations that are devoted to getting the survivors justice and returning dignity to them. And that's going to be a kind of a collaboration of Legal AF and the Popak firm.

40:10But so we're very focused on all of these things. And when those documents over here, the Epstein files, once they got the law passed to release from the executive branch that first tranche, Then they went to the federal judges. And in the last several weeks, three different federal judges said, all right, based on the law, you can release the grand jury transcripts. So let me short circuit. Is the grand jury transcripts in a fashion that is appropriate been released now to the public after the government went to these judges? And the answer is no. No, 119 page transcript, for instance, from the Southern District of New York, 118 pages are black and one page has been released.

40:55That's not a good faith redaction to protect the victims and the survivors with their identifying information. That's trolling of America, hoping we wouldn't find it. So that's the government. That's the grand jury stuff. Then there's the stuff that's been obtained by the legislative branch from the Epstein estate. And those are just lawyers working for this thing called the financial estate of Jeffrey Epstein and other sources like that. You know, like Michael Wolff's got stuff as a journalist, and they've gotten this trove of information that we've reported on over the last six months, emails we didn't know existed, and Ghislaine Maxwell didn't either, about email communications and gift records and who Epstein was paying and who was on his planes and who was on his island and photographs and birthday books and all of that.

41:50That's in the materials obtained by the committees led by the Democrats, but in a little bit of a bipartisan way from the Epstein estate and other places. So that is an Epstein pile, but we have that. And so with all of that, you would think Trump, knowing that the Democrats have 90 ,000 photographs, 90 ,000 images, hundreds of thousands of documents that they're slowly releasing to remind Donald Trump of what they have, you'd think he'd do a better job producing the documents on the deadline. And instead, as you said, they're over-redacted to treat the predators the same as the victims. That's disgusting.

42:38And they've already been reviewed. We heard that they were doing redaction to get rid of Donald Trump's name from back in March and April. You know who's seen the quote unquote files and that was finally revealed? Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, because in a series of interviews that started in March and just got published recently, she said, I've seen the files. The reporter was like, what? Oh, I've seen the Epstein files. Donald Trump's name is in them. She's the first government official to admit that Donald Trump's name is in the quote unquote Epstein files with the executive branch and that she had a chance to review them.

43:16and oh he's not really doing anything bad but he's in there bill clinton's not doing anything bad either you know what suzy let us be the judge of that when everything is released at the same time she went after pam bondy who should get her resume out looking for a job between the social right-wing influencers like laura loomer and now suzy wild saying she swung she was a swing and a miss on how she handled the epstein files and then criticizing her during this interview on behalf of Donald Trump. Pan Bondi's not long for this world, at least professionally. So that is the backdrop. So you'd think with all of that, all of the ways to put their feet to the fire, they do a better job.

43:55No, they over-redacted, they underproduced. And now you've got the sponsors of the bill that led to the law, Ro Khanna and Massey coming out with their video saying, are you kidding me? We're calling for a criminal investigation of Pan Bondi and Todd Blanche. in the next administration, if not before, based on obstruction of justice and the violation of the law. Wait till you and I start reporting on the lawsuits that are going to be flying out by the survivors, by public interest groups, about the violation, about these documents, because now we've seen, as AOC put it, now the cover-up is writ large.

44:32It's now public. You can see the cover-up and the cover-up of the cover-up in the way they're producing the documents. So if Donald Trump thought that in a week that he started yelling at the American people to love him more and ending with the release of the Epstein files, but not all of them, that this would be a successful news cycle for him, you can see why if I was somebody not named Donald Trump in the administration, I would be worried about his obvious loss of his grip on power, the splintering and immolation of the MAGA party and of what's going to happen. And it's going to be a bloodbath at the midterms.

45:16Look at his polling numbers. And so that is just the leak that you and I are commenting on through the lens of the Epstein production. Let's talk about what the legal actions could be now that there were violations by the Trump, now that they violated the law. In a normal world, there would be criminal referrals and the Department of Justice would prosecute the violators. But the Department of Justice, which is why I wanted to start our segment talking about this corrupt and pathetic DOJ that's been gutted and brain drained and is essentially its own criminal cartel at this point, at least at the upper rings and the non-line prosecutor rings.

45:59Although, you know, it's hard for me to still believe how you can even work at a criminal cartel like the DOJ, but, you know, people, it's a tough economy. So I get maybe it's hard to leave that situation. So criminal referral, but the reality is, is the DOJ would need to prosecute. They're the criminals, right? So that's it. So then you think about, is there a civil actions or are there actions to compel? Do you open up a new lawsuit that has a judge, you know, basically appoint a independent discovery referee or a forensic person to go in there and report to the judge about what's actually taking place.

46:42And what does that lawsuit look like? I think that that's one that really needs to be discussed. You'd probably file it in Washington, D.C. That's where there would be, you know, an obvious place where there would be jurisdiction. Although as I'll go to the other options, I think Southern District of New York and Southern District of Florida, maybe other options as well for some of these survivors. But, you know, maybe a member of Congress, it's a congressional law, as we'll talk about in the next segment. Congress had standing to sue to get themselves access to the detention centers. Maybe they sued to get access to these files pursuant to what this law requires.

47:21You get a judge to order like a discovery referee or a special master, sometimes it's referred to as. to go through the documents and then the federal judge takes over the process and then starts making these things public pursuant to the Epstein law. And you maybe frame it as a, like a declarative relief type of action or an injunctive relief action that I'd be thinking about that and what jurisdiction that could, that type of action could be filed in because you want someone independent and you'd probably want a former federal judge to be appointed as a discovery referee or as a special master.

48:02You may be saying, that sounds familiar. Ben Popak, when did you talk about that? In other Trump cases where he hit his finances and he hit his documents. Remember the fraud case where he was found liable for all that money and he wouldn't turn over and produce the documents. So eventually like the court had to put someone into the Trump organization to get these records and get these documents. This is how Trump behaves his whole life, right? So, you know, maybe you need to appoint somebody like that and initiate a new lawsuit. And then Popak, the third one that I've been thinking about is, look, you already have people like Judge Engelmeyer in Southern District of New York, Judge Berman in Southern District of New York, and then you have that federal judge in the Southern District of Florida who were petitioned by the Trump regime to release the grand jury transcripts when the regime was trying to frame them and basically say, you see, they're not the ones turning it over, but they turned over the grand jury transcripts, which now the Trump regime has basically redacted the entire thing when they asked the judges to turn it over.

49:00But if you look at what Engelmeyer's order did, Engelmeyer's order also talked about all of the other categories of documents that are in the possession of the DOJ. Engelmeyer made the DOJ respond with all the categories of documents. And so I wonder if Engelmeyer, because he's one of the judges in the Epstein-related cases or Berman, one of the judges in the Epstein-Maxwell related cases, if they still have ongoing jurisdiction for a survivor to intervene and file a motion there and make that request for a referee now for the production and say, look, you're already involved in this case because of the grand jury transcript pursuant to the Epstein Transparency Act based on the Trump regime opening that door, you already have jurisdiction.

49:50Can you go and demand that all these other stuff be produced? Anyway, that's how I've been thinking of it, Popak, about what these actions could look like. I think you're right. Certainly there's going to be actions. And I think the people withstanding of it and the people who have the moral gravitas to bring it are the survivors. I'd love to see the group that has been galvanized as a new movement led by people like Lisa Phillips take the lead on that. I mean, it's very hard for the Trump administration to, even the Trump administration, as corrupt as it is, to bash the plaintiff's group that would be this group of survivors.

50:30We all have a vested interest in having the law complied with. And when you have a law that has a lot of great language, and you've read some of it, it doesn't have a lot of teeth for violation, then it's up to people to be the enforcers of the law and finding the right groups. And I agree with you, members of Congress and survivors and others, there's a way to do it. And there's certainly, it's worth the fight to find somebody withstanding to bring this kind of case. And then the oversight I like, there are three judges. The one for me would be Berman or Engelmeyer, Engelmeyer over the Ghislaine Maxwell case.

51:13Side note on interesting side side note on or PS on Ghislaine Maxwell. Looks like she lost her lawyer because she just filed, you know, or as I joked on a recent hot take, you could add jailhouse lawyer to her long list of titles. You know, Epstein co-conspirator, child sex trafficker and abuser. And now jailhouse lawyers. Looks like she got access to a legal the legal resources in her low security prison. And she wrote her own writ of habeas corpus, filed, I think, in the wrong court in New York and not in Texas to try to get sprung from jail, raising, it was the rantings of a mad person, which is, I think, one of the reasons her lawyer fired her and is no longer around.

51:56The only question I have is whether the Trump is going to use that with his corrupt Department of Justice to try to cut some sort of deal with her and give her some sort of release from prison. I just don't, that's why the public outrage and uproar that we're helping to lead and galvanize on Legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network is so important at this moment in time. Our audience often asks us, is it worth it? What can we do? Yes, this is a citizen-powered, people-powered movement. And we can move heaven and earth if we do it together. I just did two back-to-back interviews, one of Rob Bonta, as I mentioned, the Attorney General of California, and one of, I don't call him retired Judge Mark Wolf, judge who resigned in protest to Donald Trump to go fight him in the streets, so to speak.

52:49And they both said the same thing, not knowing each other, which was the we aspect, not what you can do for your country, as JFK said in one of his inaugural speeches, but what we can do together is so critical right now. Things happen because we are bound together and criticizing this government, this regime. And we have to do that now about the Epstein files and bring to bear the public criticism at tremendous levels, you know, tremendous volumes in order to get what we want. Because when Donald Trump is always making political and financial calculation, is this good for me politically? This is good for me financially.

53:35Can I absorb this financially? Can I absorb this politically? And we have to teach him, no, you're going to be punished because that's what he's worried about. He's worried about his legacy because he knows he's lame duck in 10 months or 11 months, like stick a fork in it, lame duck. And that's why he's busy running around, spending taxpayer dollars that we're going to have to spend money to reverse, putting his name on everything and building statutes and building false idols to himself. And so that to me indicates not that he thinks he's winning, but that he knows he's losing and he's trying under a very short time interval to try to do maximum damage and build up his reputation.

54:18That's why he's out doing all these crazy interviews and rallies. You know, one of the things I don't know if you caught it then in some recent reporting in the Atlantic and the New York Times is about this administration is done. And the reason it's done is because Donald Trump refuses, because of his narcissism and his megalomaniacal aspects, he refuses to have any interaction with ordinary Americans, even their representatives in Congress. He refuses to have those conversations. He goes from Trump golf course to Trump golf course, from billionaire meeting to billionaire or trillionaire meeting.

54:53He never gets exposed. And what Susie Wiles pointed to as him being like an alcoholic, her words, not mine, is that he needs, he feeds off of public adulation that he gets with these artificial, let's put him in a casino in Pennsylvania to talk about the economy. I mean, that was no, I thought the Great Gatsby party during the shutdown was a bad image. How about you're only coming up craps in the Trump economy and he does it in a casino, but he's in this hermetically sealed environment that doesn't allow him to understand the American people hate him. And he's crushing the hopes and dreams of our, of our, of voters.

55:33You know what they did with Fred, right? Trump's dad who died after Alzheimer's rapidly accelerated. So when Fred was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and he took all of these cognitive exams and the family tried to cover it up, they built out a fake office for Fred is what the story was. So he would show up and he would feel like he was working for the Trump organization and they'd have like his secretary, but there was nothing really actually going on. And so again, look, I have a first amendment right to give you my opinion. Opinion speech is still protected. So I'll be very clear. It's my opinion speech.

56:05Um, it's just that, um, it seems that there are similarities. I'll just say that it's creating, you know, in Pennsylvania, the Mount Airy casino with like 200 people there. And then this North Carolina speech he just gave similarly like 200 people. Like it seemed that he needed it literally to feel that he was doing a rally. You know, and then I mean, I did a whole video on what he did in North Carolina. I mean, like you can't anyone who normalizes like what transpired in both of those. But like in North Carolina, the guy's up there and he's just like a hippopotamus is hard to identify on cognitive exams.

56:46hippopotamus hippopotamus and i'm watching i'm like i'm not even exaggerating this it's like it's like legitimately someone who is deeply mentally ill you know and it's like it's right before my eyes and he's like i aced it three times you know uh hillary clinton and he goes like topic hillary clinton you know what i want to call her the b word i want to call her that she's a b word right but melania will be melania her panties are steamed we go exactly melania you know her um her pantyhose you know what they call them yeah they call them panties they call them panties and uh and they they they look at the panties everybody and i'm there i'm watching this michael popock and this is you know look did biden have a terrible debate oh absolutely freaking lutely.

57:40You know, was Biden old and slower than he was? Absolutely. On Biden's worst day, worst day is, is, is frankly, sometimes every single that what I observed in North Carolina set aside the speech that took place when he addressed the nation. I mean, all things considered this speech, when he addressed the nation, frankly, and I know that's when he's getting all these like horrific reviews and he was yelling and he looked manic and all these things that's trump at his best right now like and i hate to like that's him at his most normal stage which he's addled and and looked ridiculous in north carolina it wasn't even sundown i mean you were looking at like honestly someone who's in a psych ward i don't describe that there's a big but there's one big difference in your i totally agree with everything you just said there's a big difference between the biden analogy the biden and the trump biden quit but well biden didn't had Biden didn't turn over the levers of power, that the Supreme Court keeps turning over to Donald Trump to two people, one named Stephen Miller and the other one named Russ Vogt.

58:48Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt, Stephen Miller for everything related to homeland security and internal security, all the immigration policy, all of the war on Alien Enemies Act, the war against Venezuela, and Russ Vogt on everything else, including funding. They are the presidents of the United States. Donald Trump has become both incapable, incapacitated, and unenthusiastic about doing his day job. That's why there's so many golf trips. Like you said, there's so many kind of let's put daddy in a phony office moments for Donald Trump while Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt run America, which is a scary proposition because the MAGA Supreme Court, led by John Roberts, keeps giving the unitary executive branch model, that keeps giving, there's only one occupant of the White House, and it's the President of the United States, and he can do whatever he wants, regardless of whether it's an executive office created by Congress to be independent.

59:45Once it's executive, he's the only person that can make the decision. But the light is on, but nobody's home in the executive branch. There's no executive function in the executive branch except for two guys we didn't vote for, one named Russ Vogt, who was the Project 2025 architect and the Office of Management and Budget head, and Stephen Miller, who we certainly did not vote for. That is the major problem that we're observing. Nobody home in the White House, a Trump who's bored and or incapable of doing his job. turning the reins over to people that are doing a job on the American people and the Supreme court allowing them to do it.

1:00:24Yeah. And when you had all of these structures around former President Biden, independent agencies doing its function with the top people in their professions who wanted to work for the government, and you had the top people in the military who rose through the ranks, not a Pete Hegseth. You had the top competent people running, whether it was the FCC or this or whatever these agencies were. And then Biden just let them do it. And when you let good people do good work, and ultimately, as long as you're able to make sometimes these binary decisions, you don't have to be a fast talker. You can just be there to say, that's the right path.

1:01:10When it comes to Ukraine, I authorize this level of support. That's it. That's the decision that had to be made. And Biden would always instinctually make the right decisions. Here's how you help manufacturers. Here's how you help this. Here's how you unleash investment and infrastructure. America's falling behind against China and this, that. Here's how we catch up, building the chip sack, semiconductor industry. It was that level of thing. Anyway, let's take our last quick break of the show. Reminder, make sure you check out Michael Popak's YouTube channel, Legal AF, on its way to 1 million subscribers.

1:01:43Let's get 1 million subscribers tonight. Wouldn't that be a great celebration? Also check out Michael Popak's sub stack, the Legal AF sub stack. That's one of the top red sub stacks in the country right now. And also if you or anyone you know has been injured in an auto accident, a car accident, injured by the result of someone else's negligence, if you know someone in a wrongful death situation, horrific as it is, victim of sexual assault or sexual harassment, medical malpractice, call 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. Consultation with Popoc and his firm is free.

1:02:21They've got lawyers across the country who can help answer your questions. Last break of the show, let's hear from our great sponsors who keep this show a running. Ever wake up sweaty, freezing, or just plain uncomfortable? The temperature in your bedroom can make or break your sleep. That's why I switched to Miracle-Made sheets. They're inspired by NASA technology and use silver-infused temperature-regulating fabric to help you sleep perfectly all night long. With Miracle Made, you'll sleep at the perfect temperature. Whether you run hot or cold, these sheets keep you in the comfort zone from the moment you crawl in to the moment you wake up.

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1:04:27Right now, Legal AF listeners can take advantage of holiday, buy one, get one savings, and enjoy free shipping on orders over 45 bucks. Head to cornbreadhemp.com slash Legal AF and use code Legal AF at checkout. That's cornbreadhemp.com slash Legal AF. Code Legal AF, Cornbread Hemp. This is the good life. Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to our sponsors. Discount codes are in the description below. Let's just talk, Popak, about, you know, more Trump regime breaking the law, but how Congress has been fighting back. You know, we've been covering all of these horrific ICE raids, Border Patrol raids, you know, whether it's Operation Charlotte's Web.

1:05:17They always have like these names like Mecklenburg County or whether it was Midway Blitz in Chicago or whether it was the operations in L.A. or Portland. But frankly, we've been seeing him all over. Right. We've been seeing him in Minnesota, specifically Minneapolis and the surrounding areas. We've been seeing them. But, you know, really everywhere, though, you know, you've seen these ICE Gestapo going after not the bad guys. I mean, going after people who were working on roofs, right, and working the gardens or working the farms or in factories or in restaurants. And, you know, you've got that guy, Greg Bovino.

1:05:55I mean, this guy is like right out of a supervillain movie. This guy, like a comically cartoonish villain if it wasn't so serious. You know, he goes into town. I mean, this guy's got like a demented past also. Like it's like a weird dude. He calls himself the commander at large and he wears his tactical gear and he goes into towns like, and this is what he did in like Chicago when he came back to Chicago. I think it was like in Evansville and other areas. And he's just like, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. And then he starts like playing rock, paper, scissor, like on camera about like, who's going to go in and like torture the migrant, like rock, paper, scissor.

1:06:35I've showed videos on this. I mean, like throwing pregnant women on the ground and burying their face in the snow and suffocating them. And like, you know, we've reported on a story where they disappeared. A woman had her give birth at the detention center and stole her baby after two days. You know, these people are in these detention centers, like sleeping on the floor. They're all sharing like 20, 30 people sharing one toilet bowl. It stinks. There are bugs in the food. The conditions are horrific. And there's a law that says Congress, because they're the ones who appropriate the funds for these detention centers, they're the ones who appropriate the funds in the federal government, that a Congress member can go to a detention center and show up and have access to it.

1:07:35They're a member of Congress. Right. I mean, there's not that many. There's one per each congressional district, two senators per state. And they're in their state specifically, too, although they can go to other states as well. They can show up, especially if there's a detention center in their state, and ask to have a tour and just show up and inspect it because it's the money of we the people and they're the representative of the people. And so this was never a controversial law that they could show up to a detention center and get a tour. But with everything with this Trump regime, whether it's Trump medical records, whether it's the video where the survivors of the first unlawful war crime strike were killed after they survived a boat strike on September 2nd, they cover up that video after saying they're going to release it.

1:08:28The cover up of the Epstein files, the cover up of the conditions inside the detention centers. This is what authoritarian regimes do. Cover up. Everything is a cover. By the way, did you even know, Popak, that we had troops in Syria? I mean, you know, like when I found out that those troops were killed in Syria, I'm like, we have troops who are on the ground patrolling Syria. Like that's news to me. And then you had Hegseth like we conducted a strike on ISIS, like right after the Epstein files were to be released. to distract from that. And we attacked at the heart of ISIS. Didn't Donald Trump say that he destroyed ISIS?

1:09:04So I'm just trying to understand. We have troops in Syria that were just pretend without authorization, patrolling the streets. ISIS is around killing our troops. And he announces that. Anyway, you and I could do a whole other shows on that. Well, we will. The good part about this new order that came out from Judge Cobb is that I think it helps people like Representative LaMonica MacGyver, who is still being prosecuted by the Department of Justice for doing her job, going to the Delaney Hall, which sounds very constitutionally interesting, but is a privately run detention center in the heart of Newark, New Jersey.

1:09:44And she, at the top of this administration, And people like Senator Menendez's son, who's a congressperson, and Mayor Baraka of Newark, you know, now famously went there to do oversight and got caught up in a melee, a little bit of a scrum that broke out as the congresspeople were trying to keep the obviously upset citizens of Newark, you know, sort of under control. and not foment the problem, got caught up between them and the Gestapo ICE police that were trying to rein in order, but that were given orders by Todd Blanche, this has already come out, to basically arrest people, including sitting members of Congress.

1:10:35And that was one of Alina Habba's specials. She indicted MacGyver. She indicted Baraka. Baraka's indictment gets dismissed and they get excoriated by a magistrate judge who, like the one you read from earlier at the top of the show, said, do better, Department of Justice. You have an awesome power. You can't come in here and indict first and investigate later and effectively name and shame, which is what they've all, this is what all these indictments are about. We don't even have time today to talk about the Lindsey Halligan appeal and all of that. But Donald Trump doesn't give a crap about when it comes to Adam Schiff or Letitia James or James Comey or LaMonica MacGyver.

1:11:20He doesn't give a crap about actually convicting them because he knows it violates the Department of Justice manual and the rules of federal prosecution and is not in good faith. He just wants to get his pound of flesh. He wants to name them and shame them and have them spend a year or two of their life trying to reclaim their dignity and their reputation. so that in their obituary, it reads, and Hunnam Shiff was the subject of a mortgage fraud investigation, and so was Letitia James. And yes, there's a complicated story, but, you know. Or, or, or, or, I don't mean to direct you. Yeah, yeah. Or Trump posts that as a social media post and then affixes it to the White House because now the White House has what he calls his, whatever, wall of fame, which is just his deranged social media post attacking former president.

1:12:04Yeah, it's ridiculous. Right, right, his whole, right, the whole hallway. We're now in brass plates. He goes after Obama and Clinton and Biden. I mean, it's just mind-boggling. But that new law, that new Gia Cobb, Judge Cobb, who's also the judge that's responsible for, among other things, responsible for Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve Board of Governor, which is up at the United States Supreme Court. But that's where we first kind of started following Gia Cobb as a judge. This is going to help Monica MacGyver because it's going to say, no, they get to do their oversight. And you can't put restrictions.

1:12:38And if they want to show up without notice, that's part of oversight. And I think laws like that are going to help. And I'm going to call it out here on Legal AF. Whoever's going to finally take over for Alina Haba and they're shuffling around some other violations of law in the form of deputies that aren't, or acting deputies that aren't appropriate either in New Jersey, they need to dismiss that indictment against LaMonica MacIver. Now, they may be all fired up because they got a felony conviction from a grand jury in Milwaukee in the last couple of days against Judge Hannah Dugan because she, according to the jury and a dozen witnesses, she may have sort of shunted a person ICE wanted to apprehend that was in her courtroom for her criminal proceedings, kind of sent the lawyer and the person out a back door to go down another set of stairs.

1:13:32I wasn't in the courtroom. Adam Klassfeld has been reporting on it for All Rise News and Legal AF. But a jury, what I do believe in is our jury process. And if the evidence, after listening to other judges testify and having court reporters testify and clerks testify, if that was the conclusion of the seven men and five women on that grand jury, then that's subject to appeal rights. if they got it wrong or if things happened in the case I'm not aware of. But I'm okay with, people, I think, come to Legal AF because we are reasonable and we believe in the rule of law. We believe in the justice system.

1:14:11And I believe in the power and the sanctity and the beauty of our jury system. Having been a trial lawyer for most of my career and having had dozens of juries that I've spoken to, I believe in the jury system. So if that's what happened with Judge Dukin, then okay. And she got convicted of a felony and subject to her appellate rights. We'll see how that shakes out. But the rest of this, you know, we just have to watch the appellate courts, sorry, the district courts do their job, the appellate courts support them, and then up to the Supreme Court. And this last word for our audience, because there is a fatigue I know that sets in a little bit about the legal stuff.

1:14:50Like, where is it going to go? And why does it matter? The Supreme Court will just reverse it. Rob Bonta reminded us yesterday in my interview with him that they're, because they just hit the mark. It's a mark they're not proud of, but they got to do it. 50 lawsuits have now been filed by the attorneys general. That is 50, 100 for the Democracy Forward group, hundreds for the American civil liberties. There's like 500 cases against the Trump administration in the first 11 months, right on target for my prediction of 2 ,000 or 3 ,000, but before the end of his term. But they're winning. They're not only winning because they're getting preliminary injunctions that are not being appealed by the Trump administration, but Trump's folding in cases, especially over billions of dollars of funding.

1:15:39And you don't know whether Trump's going to fold or he's going to appeal something up to the Supreme Court. And that very narrow band of cases, yes, important, yes, constitutional, yes, go to civil liberties, civil rights, women's rights, reproductive rights. But 99.9 % of justice is done at the trial court level and at the first level of appeal. And so that's where we're winning. We're winning there to slow down and or stop Donald Trump's worst instincts. And yes, we got jobs to do at the Supreme Court. We're now completely exposed as enablers and sycophant for Donald Trump, at least the MAGA 6.

1:16:15And there's things we can do about that. You know, that's where that national conversation has to happen starting at the midterms and at the presidential about reforming the United States Supreme Court. I just had Eric Holder on, the former U.S. attorney for Barack Obama, who runs a major redistricting organization. And he said, I think there should be at least three more seats on the Supreme Court. It should be 12, or it should be 13, of course, democratically appointed that way. So we're going to have to focus on fixing the obvious problem of the Supreme Court undermining the credibility of the rule of law with the American people.

1:17:01It is fixable. We just need political will, the citizen power here, to focus our politicians' attention on this matter. But the courts are holding. It's the Supreme Court that needs reform. And what the Supreme Court is doing now is it's involved in its own cover-up since its absolute immunity decision. Go back to the debates that were taking place before the Supreme Court when Trump was demanding absolute immunity and people were opposing that concept. Special Counsel Jack Smith was specifically opposing that concept. The arguments were that if you gave him absolute immunity, he was going to abuse it and that we are a nation that rebelled against kings.

1:17:49We were formed as anti-king. King equals absolute immunity, right? That's what a king is, absolute, a monarch. So if you wanted to go back to just the very structure of how our constitution was formed, the Declaration of Independence that preceded it. Our historical structure were no kings. By that, it means no absolute immunity. But you had this right-wing Supreme Court. Well, we're not worried about him actually doing all of these things. He's not going to order SEAL Team 6 to, what, actually kill survivors of an already unlawful boat strike off the coast of Venezuela? That was pretty much the hypothetical that was that was given.

1:18:31Yeah. What he it's it. He's not going to cover up a child sex trafficking ring when there is a law that requires documents be produced there. Can you imagine that hypothetical? There's basically hypotheticals like that in the sense of would he hide, you know, or steal the nuclear secrets and give it, you know, give it to an enemy, basically. So now what the Supreme Court's doing, though, is notice they're not actually making rulings on the substance. They're using their shadow docket, as it's called, to make procedural rulings where they deem the status quo to be what Donald Trump has ordered, even if that is unlawful, as opposed to ordering the status quo be preserved of what existed before Donald Trump.

1:19:20So what the district courts are saying, and they're mostly getting it right, they're saying, uh-uh, we're not supporting your violation of the law. You may have issued this executive order or you may be engaged in this behavior, but the status quo is what existed before Trump. That's the law. We're the district court judge. We're applying the law. That's what the law is. the Supreme Court's been coming in and saying, sure, that may be the case, but we're worried about irreparable harm being caused to the executive branch. And we don't want to prejudice the executive branch. So what we'll do is we're not making a ruling on the substance yet.

1:20:00Let's let this get through a trial. The Supreme Court knows, you know, how long it'll take to get to the Supreme Court by going through a trial, going through the circuit courts, then to the Supreme Court if the Supreme Court eventually takes a writ of certiorari, five years, seven years, 10 years. So they know what they're doing and they're allowing Trump to do what he did. And so they're just saying, ah, we'll just let the status quo be what Trump says it is and then come back to us in a few years. So they're also doing something though that is even deeper and more nefarious, I believe, which is what they want to then become in a future Democratic administration is the white knight who saves the day, but against the Democratic administration.

1:20:45Because then when the Democratic administration is like, OK, well, I'm just going to order this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, because that was fine. The Supreme Court would be like, well, actually, now the case has come to us and we've had an opportunity to review it on the merits. And actually, Donald Trump was wrong. And so they're going to issue all of it. Right, Popak? They're going to issue these scathing rulings in Trump absentia to try to act like they were right on history the whole time, but while also constraining executive power when a Democrat tries to wield it. Like, that's what their ultimate sick plan is here.

1:21:22I'll let you get the final word of the show. Yeah, well, I'll use some statistics to to show you you're exactly right. That court accountability action is with us on Legal AF and the New York Times showed. When the shadow docket is used by the Trump administration, which is when you have two briefs, no oral argument, limited record on an emergency, a trumped up stampede versus a thoughtful process that the Supreme Court is supposed to use, which is a year or more, record developed, three briefs, oral argument, time for deliberation and all that. Shadow docket, Trump administration is winning almost 90 % of the time on the shadow docket.

1:22:10Biden administration, 50%. Okay. I mean, come on. The numbers don't lie. It's not that the Biden took worse legal positions on jurisprudence. It's that the ideological MAGA 6 are willing to give Donald Trump and MAGA and that right-wing philosophy a tremendous amount of leeway and ideological birth through their decision-making. and that's it. And you're right. When there's a Democrat, whatever his name or her name is going to be as president of the United States, and they try to do the same things, although certain things with Trump's name on it are now precedent. You know, they make this ruling, which they're going to make to allow anybody named the president of the United States to fire anybody in any executive office, agency or otherwise, unless it's so judicial as not to be executive like any of these regulatory bodies, any of these agencies, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

1:23:16We're going to be firing everybody on the Federal Communications Commission when the Democrats take over. We're going to be firing everybody in the Securities and Exchange Commission and everybody on the FTC and every place else and packing them with Democrats for that four-year or eight-year period of time. That is what is allowed. But there are other areas, as you've said, where they've left themselves that wiggle room to say, no, no, no, no, it's not quite what we meant. You didn't quite do it right. You're not going to be able to fire that person or reform that thing, and we'll have to watch the flip-flopping of the United States Supreme Court, which, of course, we are well prepared.

1:23:54We are well prepared to handle one last word, to give our audience the confidence that they need and that they're reclaiming and that they're getting. I said to Attorney General Bonta as a proxy for the 23 Democratic attorneys general that are fighting so hard for America at this moment in time. I said we were talking about the 50 threshold, the 50 cases that they have filed already that they never thought they'd have to file. And I said to him in a way, are you ready for the next 50? And he said, without even prompting, he said, we are fired up and ready to go. We are not gassed. We are not beleaguered.

1:24:33We are not fatigued. We have hired a lot of people from the Department of Justice to work for us. You know, we're staffing. We are ready for the next 50 or the next 100 or the next thousand or whatever it takes to hold this administration accountable. And I felt my whole body like relaxed when I heard that. And I want one of the things you and I wanted to accomplish when we created the Legal AF YouTube channel is we wanted to give people where it was appropriate the confidence to know that there are other human beings that are working besides you and me and the Midas Touch Network that are working around the clock.

1:25:10from the moment our head gets off the pillow to the moment their head hits the pillow for America and Americans at this existential threat of a period of time. And that's why we bring on the senators, the congresspeople, former federal judges, ACLUs of the world to talk to our audience so that they know that it's a funnel system here. There's only so much, no matter how many videos you and I do, there's only so much that we can cover in a given week of the Trump administration. But that every day, thousands and thousands of lawyers and the support staff around the lawyers are working in courts and winning in courts.

1:25:48And we're here for it. And our audience, I know, is here for it. I want to remind everybody, Michael Popak's YouTube channel, Legal AF, and the Legal AF community of partners who work on that Legal AF channel. It's so close to hitting 1 million subscribers. Tell some friends. Talk to others about it. Make sure you're subscribed yourself. Let's get to that 1 million subscriber mark. Reminder as well. Legal AF on Substack, one of the most red Substacks out there. It's pretty cool to see the growth of Legal AF on Substack, especially over the past few months. It's just been soaring on Substack. Make sure you're subscribed there.

1:26:25Shout out to all of our sponsors here. Discount codes in the description below. And also, if you or anyone you know has been injured in an auto accident, trucking accident, the victim of sexual harassment or sexual assault, medical malpractice, negligence of others, or if you know someone who's a victim of the negligence of others, call or text 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com, 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. The consultation is free. And Michael Popak has lawyers across the country who are there to answer your questions and to see if you've got a case or if someone you know has got a case.

1:27:04Don't be shy. Popak's representing so many Legal AF audio and video viewers and audio listeners. All right. Thanks, everybody, for watching. We covered a lot of topics, a lot of ground. It's an honor spending this time with you, as always. Yeah, we're going to hear. Let's take a look. Let me just take a look at the calendar right here, Popak, because it is possible that we won't be with anybody. I guess Christmas is this upcoming week, so we won't be with we'll see them after Christmas or hear them after Christmas on this show. But of course, we'll be doing updates every single day on the Legal AF YouTube channel and the Midas YouTube channel.

1:27:39So if we don't see it before Christmas, Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy just being you. And let's just stay in this fight together. Thanks, everybody. Shout out Legal AFers and shout out Midas Mighty.

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