Legal AF Full Episode - 3/25/2026

24:24Michael Popok:No, stay unsafe.

24:25Dina Doll:So the Supreme Court just heard a case on Monday contesting a Mississippi law of all places, allowing ballots to be counted if they were postmarked by election day, which is the law in many states in this country. But they contested it, the Republicans contested it, saying federal law requires election day to be a certain day and you cannot count afterwards. And it appears that this MAGA 6 is going to change the way we count mail-in ballots and require them not just to be postmarked, but them to be received by election day fundamentally. And the really big problem with this is not just the fact that you are making it harder for people to vote mail-in ballot, But to let people know that it's all about getting information out there, getting out the vote is like the hardest part of any campaign.

25:21Dina Doll:Now you also have to tell millions upon millions of people who, frankly, barely pay attention to elections that they now have to send in their ballot like two weeks out of their election day in order to get there in time. That's just not happening.

25:36Michael Popok:But, you know, I want to, you know, I want to dive into a whole segment on the Supreme Court. That was a very good preview of it when we come back from a break. But I do want to touch on the SAVE Act for a minute, because a lot of what we're watching with Donald Trump and his chest pounding and thumping and trying to get the Republicans in the Senate and the House to support him have to do with the SAVE Act, which is not about photo ID, although I may be okay with that. It's about citizenship papers. Show me your papers. and many people, huge percentages of Americans, don't have citizenship papers the way they're defined in the SAVE Act.

26:17Michael Popok:They don't have a passport. They don't have a birth certificate with their proper name on it because they got married or they got adopted or whatever you want to call it. And so that's what Donald Trump's going after. And that impacts Republicans as well. But in order to get the SAVE Act passed, because the Democrats have already said they're going to filibuster in the Senate, meaning they're going to block either by a technical procedural filibuster of saying we're going to filibuster or actually standing on their feet for weeks at a time, a la Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Well, hopefully we don't have to.

26:50Michael Popok:It may happen. I don't know. But the Republicans, this is really for Lisa, too. The Republicans know, they got to know that they're likely to lose at the midterms at the rate they're going. And are they going to want to give up the filibuster, the only procedural tool that a party in the minority has while they're in the minority to do anything to stop bills they don't like. They're going to give that up when months away from now they could be in the minority? Yeah, I mean, I don't think they will. I mean, there's been pressure from Trump to Thune, the majority leader for the Republicans, to abandon the filibuster that only right now applies to legislation.

27:25It doesn't apply to nominations that, you know, has was ended a few years ago by both Biden and by Trump. But for legislation to give up that last ability to thwart legislation you don't like with a filibuster, it seems it would be really irrational for the Republicans to go along with Trump, especially because what Trump wants is a bill that would make it harder for tens of millions of American women to vote, including Republican women. It doesn't just affect Democrats, it affects everyone, because if you don't have a certified birth certificate, you don't have a certified marriage certificate or a divorce certificate, you know, changing your showing your name change or a second marriage certificate with a name change, you may not be able to vote in the states.

28:06And it is really like one eight hundred big brother, because the fact of the matter is, is that there are fewer cases of voter fraud than the number of felonies Donald Trump has been convicted of. When you look at, you know, when you look at the data, less than 34. Yes. Yes. And when you look at the data and that and that's a ray of, you know, of fraud. When you look at the actual data of voting in America, if you think about, you know, 100 million in this election, 100 million in the election, et cetera, 200 million. You know, you can get to a billion votes and have fewer than a handful of people who were convicted of any type of voter fraud, meaning voted, you know, maybe they voted in the wrong place, maybe they voted twice.

28:51We've seen the number of Republicans who've been recently convicted of actual voter fraud, but it's so rare. It's like.0000001. And so you don't have an actual real problem of non-citizens voting, in part because you can be deported if you vote without having citizenship in an election for Congress or for the sort of party.

29:10Michael Popok:That's not their number one concern voting in elections. They're trying to stay in the country. But to your point in Georgia, which drives Donald Trump batty, right, because he got indicted there. He just he just sees the Fulton County boxes of voting materials there. Fonny Willis was his arch enemy in his own mind. Five million people or so voted in Georgia during the election. i'll i'll buy lunch if anybody gets it right do you know how many confirmed cases of voter fraud in the state of georgia that year out of 50 million i'm sorry i had a 5 million votes cast work i think it was 11 what do you say lisa two between it's between two and 11 eight okay it was eight so we're good we average out out of five million yeah yeah you know and And that wasn't necessarily immigrants.

30:03Oh, right. Oh, the immigrants. It's even lower than that. Someone might have had a felony, thought it was expunged, thought it was finished the sentence and voted. Someone may have voted twice. We've seen some Republicans convicted of voting twice or committing voter fraud. It's so rare, though. And it's certainly not an issue of citizenship. And so, like, to your point, Michael, the fact is that all of us have recently, almost everyone other than probably a bunch of New Yorkers who don't drive, But most Americans have gone through this real ID process where they're hounded and hounded and hounded.

30:33You've got to give it a real ID. People have gone in to get the real ID. But the real ID does not show citizenship. It doesn't have a checkoff box. Only five states have that checkoff box for citizenship. And so you may think you have a license that would allow you to vote, but you don't. In 45 of the 50 states, that real ID license is not enough. And as you pointed out, half of the American population don't have passports. And Donald Trump has made it harder to get a passport. They recently closed down thousands of passport offices at libraries. Meanwhile, Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general that Trump installed, has actually changed the process for processing mail so you don't get your mail postmarked at your local post office unless you walk in.

31:17If you put it in the box, it gets shipped hundreds of miles away to some processing center because, by the way, Louis DeJoy wants to sell off our mail service to the highest bidder in privatization. And so they're creating these little mail processing centers. And everyone I know knows their mail is going more slowly. And so between the Save Act and this Watson case, the Supreme Court case, you have a series of forces really being being instigated by Republicans, by the Republican president, by, you know, potentially by Congress, by the Republican appointed attorney general that are coming together to actually try to put a sort of vice grip on our voting at a time when Americans are probably voting more, you know, more than ever.

31:58These little special elections where you don't usually have a lot of turnout. The turnout has been strong, and that has been strongly against the president and his party.

32:07Michael Popok:You're on Legal AF on the Midas Touch Network. You got Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves, a guest host today, sitting in here. When we come back up and have, of course, Dina, why don't you take the lead on Trump steals two big documents, including one that only six people in the entire of the United States had classified clearance in order to review. So did he do it for profit motive? Well, Jack Smith thinks he does. We'll do that. We'll do what happened at the Supreme Court with back-to-back oral arguments Monday and Tuesday on mail-in ballots and on asylum. The dignity of our immigration policy, if you will.

32:42Michael Popok:I want to talk about what could happen with birthright citizenship and if we learned anything from the oral arguments. wet foot, dry foot. Talk about that in a moment. And that new revelations coming out of a hearing in a now unsealed transcript about the fact that, yes, the government does not have any real evidence that Jay Powell committed any crimes as the Federal Reserve Chair. And Donald Trump, again, talking about a blockade of his own making. It's not just in the Strait of Hormuz. It's in the Senate Banking Committee, because they're not going to allow Kevin Warsh to become the next chair on May 15th because Tom Tillis doesn't like the fact that there's a criminal investigation that's still potentially ongoing.

33:26Michael Popok:We'll cover all of that here on the midweek edition of Legal AF. So many different ways to support what we do on the Midas Touch Network, on Legal AF. We've got Legal AF as part of the ecosystem, Legal AF, the YouTube channel, which I founded a year and a half ago. We're going to hit 1.1 million subscribers, I think, this weekend with your help, 12 new videos a day, including sometimes the likes of Dana Dahl and Lisa Graves over on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. And the way you can, some people are like, how do you, how does this thing work? This whole, what's the business model for my, for my, Legal AF, right?

34:00Michael Popok:How do they, are they all volunteers? No, they're not. And our, especially our, our illustrious team, I got, I got salty with me today as a producer, we have producers and editors and lots of other people that need to get paid and not live in their cars like the TSA. So the way that you do it is just with your thumb or finger. If you like the content that you're watching, you want to support it and promote it and vote for it, and you've come to rely on it, then just become a subscriber. It's free. If you want to switch over and become a paid member, okay, that's great too. And then we've got Legal AF, the Substack.

34:34Michael Popok:That's a whole other world, But it's coextensive with and collaborative with the YouTube Legal AF and podcast world. There's eight or ten new pieces of Lisa writes for it a lot. I do a couple of lives a day, including today, with live reporting and interviews, all sorts of things. We've got Scott McFarlane, who just joined Midas Touch as its DC bureau chief, and to do a weekly show or daily show on the news. He's going to be on there with me. And so it's really amazing things. And then the show is six years old in the making. We've got our pro-democracy sponsors as well. Now, here's what I teased.

35:13Michael Popok:People are here now at the 33-minute mark. This is well worth it. I know everybody loves Dean and Lisa, and they like them separately. They like them together. And so we're going to do a Monday night or Dina and Lisa are going to do a Monday night legal AF. We do it on Wednesdays. We do it on Saturdays. We're going to do a Monday night over on the legal AF YouTube channel as a live podcast there. They're going to lead it. I'll come in and out, but it's really their show. And it's going to be starting hopefully sometime in April. We're working out the logistics of it now. And I thought with Karen being ill today, this would be a good opportunity to sort of put the band together and let people know about it.

35:53Michael Popok:And here you are. What do you guys think about that? I mean, you two.

35:57Dina Doll:So excited and honored. Lisa and I were one of the first contributors on the Legal AF channel and so honored to bring the Marquee podcast. Legal AF has been there since like day three, maybe, of the Midas Touch Network to bring it now to a home. A second home, original home of Legal AF channel. So honored, so excited. We cannot wait to do it.

36:24Michael Popok:And Lisa, people who don't know are looking it up right now, Lisa runs True North Research and is a founder or one of the leaders of Court Accountability Action. There's a whole playlist we have on Legal AF related to that. And a little known fact, besides she and I becoming very close friends, as I am with Dina, Lisa introduced me to Sidney Blumenthal, and that begat the Court of History podcast. There are resident historians, Sean Wilentz and Sidney Blumenthal. And that was because, you know, Lisa said, hey, can I give Sidney your number? He wants to, you know, nobody's watching him over where he's at now.

37:05Michael Popok:And I'll go, yeah, let's do it. And now look where we are now with an amazing podcast called Court of History. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you so much. I agree with everything Dana said. And Michael, we're so thrilled to have the chance to be part of the official legal AF lineup on Monday nights. We're looking forward to seeing you all as you tune in, not just on Mondays, but Wednesdays and Saturdays and other times as well. And really honored to have a chance to be part of this Midas Touch network and the live shows in addition to the recording. And again, a big shout out as well to the production team that makes all this work so well.

37:39And to you, our audience, I'm just honored to have the chance to join you. Thank you so much, Michael. And Dina, you know, I adore you. So really, really happy to be part of this.

37:48Dina Doll:I adore you too. We're going to have so much fun, Lisa. Mike, you're going to want to just come visit because we're going to have so much fun. I'm already.

37:58Michael Popok:Yeah, I'm really into that. I'm really into the visiting part. And but now we've got, thank God we've got sponsors that appreciate what we do and want to talk to our audience. And here's a word from our sponsors. When it comes to dog food, people often think they have to choose between fresh, healthy ingredients and convenience. But you don't have to choose anymore, thanks to Sundays. Sundays was founded by veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed sundaes, air-dried real food made in a human-grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care you'd use to cook for yourself and your family.

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41:37Michael Popok:And shipping is always free. So you can get the best book at the best price. For a gift that's truly unforgettable, head to bookbyanyone.com. Order your book today and enjoy free shipping at bookbyanyone.com. One last time, that's bookbyanyone.com. Welcome back to the midweek edition of Legal AF. Michael Popok, your regular anchor, joined by our two guest anchors, Dean Adal and Lisa Graves. We woke up this morning to new news coming out of Jack Smith and Merrick Garland by way of a letter sent out by the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Jamie Raskin, friend of the show. I'm actually working on getting him on the show to talk about this letter soon.

42:22Michael Popok:And Representative Raskin wrote a pretty scathing letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi about the fact that why does she get to cherry pick what was in the Mar-a-Lago files that she had Judge Cannon seal in a tomb forever, including future Department of Justices? Why does she get to pick and choose what's in the Mar-a-Lago file in terms of all of the documents that sticky-fingered Donald Trump took with him that were top secret and classified? Not because he's a hoarder, not because he's just keeping them as mementos, but according to an update report that we now know about from Jack Smith to Merrick Garland at the time, because there was a sneaking suspicion by the prosecution that he was doing it to use to profit in his businesses or use for some sort of commercial gain, selling out America for trade secrets.

43:14Michael Popok:People have been given lethal injection for a lot less in this country. And the part that we didn't know, because we knew about the maps, which we thought we knew about the war maps that he took with him from the earlier reporting about Mar-a-Lago and the indictment, But we didn't know about this one document that only six people have security clearance for and how Donald Trump used it. And just to frame the issue before I turn it over to Dina, just because we have to keep our timeline straight. At the time Donald Trump left office, he had no reason to believe he'd ever be elected again. He thought his career was over.

43:55Michael Popok:This is right off the heels of Jan 6th. This is Republicans taking to the House and Senate floor to condemn Donald Trump. This was the lowest ebb of his career and the prosecutions on top of it. So he thought he would just be businessman Donald Trump doing crypto deals and NFT deals and real estate deals, which explains why he kept a couple of little cache of documents for the people in the Middle East, for instance, that he was negotiating with. A country, sorry, a region we are now effectively at war with, at least parts of it. So the fundamental question that Jamie Raskin asked in his letter is, were these war plans and secret documents about the Middle East?

44:37Michael Popok:Who were they shown to and who in your family, including Barron Trump, knew about these documents at the time that you left office? And how were you planning to use them? And fundamentally, what is this document that you took with you that only six people get to see? Dina, take it from there.

44:54Dina Doll:Well, exactly. I mean, these are the questions Raskin is asking. It's really stunning. I mean, to the point that Trump was just a cheater and cheating, taking such a classified document that only five other people other than him were even able to view. And he takes it to his business. He takes it to Mar-a-Lago. And it was related to his business interests. So just trying to take advantage yet again from the American people, the most corrupt president ever. but using highly classified information for his own pocketbook. And in addition, evidently showing this classified map on a private plane. Interestingly, a new detail that he showed it in front of current chief of staff, Susan Wiles.

45:42Dina Doll:So she could here be implicated perhaps as well. But to your point, there was a cherry picking of release of documents. And Raskin saying that the DOJ very likely violated the gag order that they had requested and Trump had requested Judge Cannon. When Jack Smith went in front of Congress, he wasn't able to answer all of their questions because he kept referring to the gag order that was in place by Judge Cannon. Here the DOJ kind of doing what they want, seemingly violating the gag order. So that was the second part of Raskin's letter there.

46:20Michael Popok:And Lisa, what do you make of it? I mean, you've got the two concepts that are in the letter, right? Pam Bondi, why do you, there's no such thing as a congressional privilege. You don't get to violate a federal court order that you yourself obtained and use it as a shield and a sword to release documents to try to embarrass Jack Smith, which didn't work and backfired. And on the other hand, claim that the Mar-a-Lago volume two report can't ever be released to the American people because Eileen Cannon says so. And then you've got, did Donald Trump, is he, did he profit on top secret and classified information and undermine America's national interests, national security and the lives of people in the military?

47:08Yes, I mean, this is so it's extraordinarily serious what the allegations are. And I would encourage everyone to read Representative Jamie Raskin's letter for themselves because it is really compellingly written and it raises very serious concerns, both about the first point you mentioned in terms of the cherry picking of release of some information that Pan Bani thinks helps helps him or helps them. and then the denial or the effort to hide forever other information that is very damaging. Politico reviewed the letter, you know, the underlying sort of one of the underlying documents. There's a map of a plane, for example, where the names of the people who are on the plane who received this information, you know, their names are blacked out.

47:57Rep Raskin has asked for their names to be shared so the American people can know who they are, who was on that plane where this secret map was revealed. He's asked for the American people to know, and at least Congress to know, what country was depicted in that map? And what business did these other people who presumably did not actually have top secret clearance, let alone letter level clearance, the highest level of clearance, let alone the super highest level of clearance, where, as you point out, at least one of these documents was only seen or was only allowed to be seen by a handful of leaders of Congress, if they could see it at all.

48:35And so you have a former president sharing information that is supposed to be protected for our interests, the interests of the American people, our national security interests. And yet a former president is sharing this document with people who do not have clearance, presumably, and he's doing so on a private plane in these private facilities. And as Jamie Raskin said, he thinks that there's evidence, and certainly Jack Smith conveyed to the then Attorney General under Joe Biden, that this information showed that Donald Trump had compromised our national security to advance his own business interests.

49:14This is extremely serious. And this happened before we've seen the ways in which it appears that our national security interests are also being compromised or manipulated in some ways by this president to the profit of unknown people who are getting information out of this White House, either from him or someone else, and making trades on it. And so this is a precursor. But I think the American people have a right to know. And I don't think Judge Eileen Cannon had any right to suppress that evidence, to hide it from the American people. I agree with Rep Raskin that that information should be made public.

49:50The American people should see the evidence that Donald Trump had, not evidence that not the actual secret, secret documents that no one should see, but we should know what those documents related to, because it goes to the question of how, you know, how has Donald Trump perhaps compromised the security of the United States? And has he himself benefited or his family business with his sons or other associates benefited from his access to classified information? This is what you know, it's an extraordinary scandal. And the fact that the Trump administration, both the Justice Department and the White House, are attacking Jamie Raskin as, you know, supposedly having Trump derangement syndrome is ridiculous.

50:31Rep Raskin is a constitutional scholar. He's someone who has deep integrity. He's an excellent lawyer. And he is not going to give up on this fight, I'm sure, until we get to the bottom of it.

50:43Michael Popok:Right. And so I think what that means for our audience is that come the midterms and the Democrats get the gavel, we're going to see impeachment proceedings against Pam Bondi. I mean, does anybody on this illustrious panel tonight think that Pam Bondi isn't going to be the subject of an impeachment proceeding? And maybe Donald Trump as well. For things that happen, think about this. The the because we're going to talk about. Are we going to talk about this one? We'll touch on that. We know there's there is a grand conspiracy criminal investigation being conducted out of the Southern District of Florida, my backyard, by a handpicked prosecutor of Donald Trump called named Jason Redding Quinones.

51:28Michael Popok:and he's using Judge Cannon, again, 90 miles north of his home, to go run up there and get a grand jury in place. They've issued 130 subpoenas, including against James Comey, against Brennan, the former CIA director. And their working theory, since these events happened in 2016, is that the conspiracy component of it means that the statute of limitations has been recharged because things have happened in furtherance of the conspiracy in the last five years. All right. Hold that thought for a minute. If that's true, and some of the events related to these documents and Donald Trump's use of them happened in 2023, then a 2028-ish new Department of Justice could investigate Donald Trump, I don't care how old he is at that point, for what happened in 2023, 2024, right?

52:19Michael Popok:Before he became president. He doesn't have criminal immunity at that point by the Supreme Court. And this would extend the statute of limitations on many of these crimes. So I'm not sure Trump's out of the woods yet, because let's remember or tell our audience for the first time that he wasn't absolved in Mar-a-Lago, okay? And I don't even think it would be double jeopardy. He had his prosecutor declared to be invalidly appointed and had the indictment tossed as a result. But that doesn't mean that he was exonerated, okay? And so a new prosecutor or just the attorney general in the future, okay, without a special prosecutor, even though after Donald Trump for 2024, 2023 events, couldn't he?

53:13Dina Doll:I almost think that the attorney general position in 2028 is going to be more important than even the president because there are so many prosecutions that can go forward starting 2028.

53:25Michael Popok:Right. Or 2029. Well, and the related piece is, you know, if Trump is sharing information, secret information, super top secret information beyond top secret with people while he is not president, those are not the official acts of the president. You do not get immunity under the invented immunity that John Roberts created for him with the Republican appointees on the court. You cannot have immunity for acts that he committed while he was not president. Let me do a thought experiment and take advantage of Lisa being with us on the panel today with her deep Supreme Court knowledge and author of a recent book called Without Precedent.

54:04There we are.

54:05Michael Popok:About the John Roberts court. I'm not sure that Trump's out of the woods on the immunity decision. because there's nothing to stop the Department of Justice in 2029, right, to go back after Donald Trump and test the limits of that immunity stretched to its outer boundaries, core constitutional, is taking documents and using them maybe even now as commander-in-chief. He still has them apparently, or he has access to them. You know, so I'm not so sure that the immunity decision should be such a brick wall to stop future prosecutors from testing the outer boundaries of it and or giving the Supreme Court the opportunity to revisit the immunity decision based on some heinous conduct by Donald Trump, who doesn't give a crap about about any of the lines and boundaries.

55:02Michael Popok:He just does anything. What do you think, Lisa? Couldn't a future prosecutor test the limits and bring a case and they'll have to have Donald Trump try to argue about his immunity? Yeah, I think that could very well happen. And I actually think it should, because I think this court, the Supreme Court, should revisit that decision. It was a terrible decision, a reckless decision, an unreasoned decision in terms of our Constitution, a counter constitutional decision. and even within the boundaries of this despicable decision, it's not limitless. There are boundaries and I think those should be tested because we are in an extraordinarily dangerous situation with a president who thinks that he can do no wrong, thinks that anything he does is a so-called official act or official word, and also has the power to give pardons.

55:49Again, another power that I think really needs to be revisited and examined because no one should be able to pardon their co-conspirators, whether they're at the Justice Department or any other agency, or whether they're a high official or a lower official. The pardon power should not extend that way either. And that was implicated as well in the decision that John Roberts wrote. So I like the thought experiment. I think we're going to have to put a lot of things on the table to restore the rule of law, to restore justice, and to repair the damage that has been done not just by Donald Trump, but also by the Roberts court.

56:21And, you know, I think any reasonable person looking at the outcome of that decision back in 2024, right before the election, would recognize that that decision is a disaster constitutionally. And maybe there are some on the court, or maybe it'll be a different court, will revisit it and say that decision, you know, is repudiated because it was so wrongheaded and has so many problems with it. But you're right. It's not absolute. It's not unlimited. And even within the conversation or the descriptions of the power that John Roberts invented, it's not without bounds. Yeah.

56:58Michael Popok:And I think, sorry, you take it over, Dita. Go ahead.

57:02Dina Doll:Well, I was just making the point that, yes, to that point, it was only the Article 2 powers that were absolute. Official was qualified, private was not at all. And the reason why you know that some of those actions, well, at least when we're talking about January 6th, could have gone forward is because of the private lawsuit that's still going forward. The Capitol police officers and congresspeople have sued Trump saying that those were private actions because that speech he gave that day was paid, that rally was paid for with campaign funds. So if he had not won, that could have still been, the criminal proceeding against him could have gone forward.

57:39Dina Doll:And we know that because Trump tried to dismiss that lawsuit saying this was official conduct and he wasn't able to do that. And so that, you know, civil lawsuits always take a long time to move forward. So that's kind of still working its way through the court, but it did overcome that initial motion to dismiss because there were enough facts that that was actually private action that day.

58:00Michael Popok:And to Lisa's point, we can't as a society just chalk off, chalk up the four years of the, of the second Trump administration as just like this funny little period where really interesting things happened and ignore the impact that our, for the good of our, pardon me, for the good of our rule of law and our constitutional republic, our not too distant future selves have to go back and look at what should be impeached and what should be prosecuted, even if he tries to do mass pardons on the way out the way he did mass pardons on the way in of all the people who committed those crimes on the Capitol on Jan 6.

58:52Michael Popok:So what? We have to continue to make that party expend their political capital to support and protect a lawless president. And, you know, we can't just like I said, we can't just chalk it off to, oh, just like the funny little period in our, you know, in our life. And we'll just, we need to move on from it. Look forward, not back. No, we're going to have to spend a fair amount of time cleaning up behind this, this administration, right?

59:16Dina Doll:Because you can, just real question, sorry. Just because you can argue that actually Ford pardoning Nixon allowed for Trump, because if Nixon had gotten prosecuted, then perhaps Trump would have been afraid of breaking the law. So we do have to move past somehow the president is, you know, the deference to it. I think we certainly are. I think us as a country have a lot more willingness to prosecute.

59:43Michael Popok:So let's stay on the Supreme Court while we're there. And with Lisa, take advantage of Lisa being with us. So two major cases and a third coming up, mail-in ballots, Watson versus the Republican National Committee. I never thought in my lifetime I'd be talking about a Mississippi case where Mississippi was defending voting rights. But we are, along with 29 other states, giving a grace period. As long as you cast mark your ballot, you elect who you want to elect, and it's postmarked by election day, five business day grace period or some grace period, it'll still be counted. We're not talking about fraud.

1:00:21Michael Popok:We're just talking about when the mails can deliver. I mailed a letter from Miami to New York. it took eight days to show up seriously uh okay so we have a mail-in ballot and oral argument the next day uh i'll otro lados on the other side civic group immigration group brings a case about How far into the United States do you have to be in order to ask for asylum? And if you're blocked from ever putting your toe on U.S. soil, purposefully by the Border Patrol and by the policies of a president, does that deny you the ability to ever ask for asylum? Or if you or put it another way, if you sneak in and you're in the United States, apparently you can ask for asylum.

1:01:12But if you come in the front door and nobody opens it for you, you can't apply.

1:01:17Michael Popok:This was all up for grabs in a couple of oral arguments and then one that's coming up in April on birthright citizenship. Lisa, why don't you try to tie it together a bit, even though they're on different topics. These are statutory interpretations, not constitutional. That's one good thing about them. So as I've joked, Congress, the future Congress can fix what the Supreme Court has broken. But why don't you tell our audience what all this mail-in balloting business is all about? Well, I think a lot of people don't realize that mail-in ballots dates back to the Civil War. Soldiers in the Civil War who were voting during the Civil War voted by mail.

1:01:57This is not some new process. This is not some newfangled Democratic conspiracy. This is a longstanding way in which Americans have voted for more than 150, more than 170 years in this country. Now, some states have made it easier to vote by mail. Some states like like Oregon have exclusively vote by mail in the last presidential election. For example, in 2024, tens of millions of Californians voted by mail. And it has been the practice in almost all the states that there's a grace period where if you vote and the post and the vote is postmarked before the election or by election day, that vote is counted.

1:02:35That's because what we see on election night is just sort of the public statement about who won the election, but it's not the actual certification. So people have a chance to cure ballots if they voted provisionally. There's a chance to recount those ballots before it's certified. So there's a period of a couple days typically after the actual election day where ballots are counted and recounted and then finalized and certified. This isn't abnormal. This is normal. There's no indication of fraud of any kind through this process. And yet you have the Republican Party and the Republican Party apparatchiks attacking this process before the Supreme Court.

1:03:15And at the oral argument that just recently happened, the question was raised, I think, toward the end of oral argument about whether if the Supreme Court were to rule that Congress can set one single day for voting, meaning that no vote that arrives the day after, even if it was postmarked eight days before, like your mail, Michael, that that can't count. Despite the voters intent to vote, despite it being a legitimate ballot by an American, if the court were to rule that way, it may well invalidate all early voting for tens of millions of Americans. Absolutely.

1:03:50Michael Popok:Which they said, which when that came up, that was the only moment I thought, oh, wait a minute, let them run with this. Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice Roberts, you know, Roberts at one point said to Sauer, I don't understand, you're not logically consistent. If you're saying there's an election day and it has to be respected and mail-in ballots would never have been contemplated by 1845, the 1845 Congress, how do you explain, and Amy Coney Barrett said the same thing, how do you explain early voting? Early voting wouldn't have been contemplated by them either. Are you here trying to quash early voting.

1:04:25Michael Popok:And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, we're not. Early voting is okay. We're okay with early voting. So I don't even, they're going to have to ignore the arguments, apparently, of John Sauer and Paul Clement, who argued for the RNC or one of the other groups, the Libertarian group. And they're going to have to come up with their own crazy convoluted theory as to why mail-in ballots have to be received on election day in order to be counted, right? Because I don't see how they can do it based on the logic of the argument. No, they can't. And also in the middle of all this, Donald Trump just voted by mail in the Mar-a-Lago election where his candidate lost.

1:04:57And so it's all, you know, it's just all manufactured effort to try to make it harder for Americans to vote and have their votes count. And then meanwhile, you have an argument coming up next week on April 1st.

1:05:08Michael Popok:Before you go on that, before you go on that, let me have Lisa comment on the mail and ballot. Yes. Yes. I said Dina, sorry.

1:05:14Dina Doll:That's okay. Well, speaking about convoluted, you know, Justice Gorsuch got super convoluted. He didn't like the fact that Mississippi was saying that, you know, having an official carrier mail it was safe and, you know, should be respected. You know, that the state law was willing to have that official carrier. And so he gave this convoluted example of, well, then could a state say that a notary republic, like as if you submit your ballot, would it be the same to mail your ballot as to submit it to a notary republic who would, you know, say what day that you sent it? And what if the Supreme Court justice was the notary republic?

1:06:00Dina Doll:I mean, his examples were absurd. You know, the Supreme Court usually always says we are going to decide a case based on the facts in front of us. But Justice Gorsuch tried to use these examples like as if a state was ever going to authorize the use of a notary republic. No no voter is going to go to a notary republic. These convoluted ways that they and a Mississippi lawyer just he just was in circles. He was he was tied into knots trying to answer Justice Gorsuch. Justice Sotomayor jumped in a few times to try to save him and coach him through these kind of convoluted examples Gorsuch was giving.

1:06:40Michael Popok:Yeah, I don't think that I don't think that advocate did very well. I know. Yeah. Well, and also just goes to show the desperation in some ways of someone like Gorsuch to try to posit such a ridiculous set of examples. And I think, you know, so it may be that they do not invalidate this longstanding practice. But I also think that that could be that could then give them cover for the other maneuvers that John Roberts is orchestrating, attacking the Voting Rights Act. You know, his longstanding antipathy toward the Voting Rights Act. So we might survive in part because it is it is absurd from a historical matter to be attacking vote by mail when it's been with us for over a century.

1:07:21Michael Popok:So let's hope that we're all sort of wrong.

1:07:51Michael Popok:and you see the border patrol, you should be able to ask for asylum. But the Supreme Court MAGA 6 seemed to have a different view of what it means about arriving in or being physically present in the United States. Again, just so I frame it for our audience so they don't get confused, the Supreme Court is the final say on what the Constitution says. But not every case involves the Constitution. and some cases only involves federal statutory interpretation. Sometimes there's a mix, there's a hybrid. There's a statute, it's about power, it's about the extent of the statute, whether it violates the constitution in some way or an executive order violates the constitution in some way.

1:08:32Michael Popok:But in this case, it's really a statutory analysis about a statute related to asylum, a statute that if it goes the wrong way in this decision could be fixed by a future Congress, right? That's right. Although I will say to you, Michael, I am working on the important effort of raising questions about whether the court actually should have the final say on some of these matters constitutionally, which is, you know, we'll have that debate. You're doing another book? I love it. Yeah. So, but the fact is, is that statutory interpretation matters are typically matters where Congress has a much freer hand to try to redress a decision of the Supreme Court.

1:09:14I think that there are constitutional decisions that do need to also be redressed by Congress, given the way this court has been captured and the problems with just the inherent inconsistency and politicization of these rulings by this court. But in this instance, you know, you have a, there's longstanding international law on refugees, people fleeing persecution. This came out of World War II where ships were turned away and people were then killed, persecuted because they could not seek refuge in another country. the, you know, Jewish citizens of Europe perished because they could not, in some instances, get refugee status.

1:09:55They could not get accepted by other countries. And so there was a whole set of international laws, including domestic laws that were counterparts to those laws on refugees and on the issue of persecution. And so, you know, back in 1980, which seems like a long time ago, there was a set of U.S. laws on refugee status. But what happened was, not to get too far into the weeds on it, but what happened was in 1993, the Rehnquist Court issued a ruling involving Haitians seeking asylum or seeking refuge in the U.S. that allowed the Coast Guard to stop them in the waters. And that was seen by that Rehnquist Court as a correct decision.

1:10:35Justice Blackmun dissented. So there's this precedent in the sales case involving Haitian refugees that is the foothold, the toehold for John Sauer and the Trump administration to say they can, you know, move that from the waters into just feet from the border in Mexico, for example, and block people from seeking asylum. And the fact is, is that the United States typically, with few exceptions, actually has honored those asylum laws because it is a commitment of human rights that we do not send people back to their death, that we embrace people who are fleeing persecution and allow them the opportunity to seek asylum and have a process for doing so.

1:11:15But what the Trump administration did in the first term and has reversed Biden's policy now in the second term to do this again has been what they try to call metering, meaning that they are trying to stop people before they get to the actually put their foot on the U.S. territory like right outside the border. Those are U.S. agents, agents of America, you know, being deployed to try to block people from seeking asylum. I think that I think those cases should be revisited. I think that we need to have a process for honoring those commitments to human rights. But the fact is, is that this administration has taken an extremely harsh stance against people seeking, you know, seeking freedom from persecution seeking to escape possible death or injury or torture by their home governments.

1:12:02And this court may well end up ruling in favor of the Trump administration, in part because of that bad precedent from 1993, even though that precedent really is contrary to the actual statutes in the United States about seeking asylum people arriving in the United States. And it seems like a real technicality to say, you didn't arrive if I blocked you one foot outside the border or 10 feet outside the border, that seems like a real gaming with people's lives in a way that is really unjustified. Yeah.

1:12:33Dina Doll:And the Ninth Circuit had said that presenting yourself to a border official was the same as being there because of the fact that you were being stopped, not because you didn't walk two extra feet, but because that official was stopping you. And so that's what the Ninth Circuit had ruled. Now, this metering law is actually suspended. It's not being used right now. And Justice Katandri Brown Jackson tried to bring that into the oral argument and say, isn't this case moot because this law is not in effect? And I think that was her way of kicking the, hoping to kick the can because it looks like they are poised to basically overturn the Ninth Circuit and allow this metering.

1:13:15Dina Doll:So, but the Trump administration came back saying, well, it's paused now, but we can restart it at any time. But that was her one chance, I think, to try to stop it. And we've talked about this. This is not about you do not seek asylum and then automatically get citizenship. Like I did pro bono asylum cases at my law firm. It's very complicated. People are often, you know, don't even know English and are trying to go through this very long and difficult process with multiple court hearings. This is just about giving people a chance. People who have traversed from sometimes hundreds, thousands of miles away in the most horrific conditions to try to just present their case there.

1:13:59Dina Doll:And it's not because of their own effort. It is because of literally somebody locking the door.

1:14:06Michael Popok:I want to talk about that for a minute as it relates to the birthright citizenship. Okay. Lisa raised the Haitian case, you know, the interdiction case where they wouldn't let Haitians get what's called in the business dry foot. It used to be called a wet foot dry foot policy, right? Right. Dry foot meant you made it to American land. Cubans in Miami were often allowed to get dry foot. But if you were a wet foot and you couldn't get in, you were still at sea. In other words, then you were not put through the immigration process or asylum. Let's play this out. We just had a case in which the Supreme Court seems hell bent on saying you got to get your foot in the door and touch American soil or be on American soil in order to apply for asylum.

1:14:56Michael Popok:Do we all agree on that, that that's sort of where this oral argument seems to be going with the Supreme Court? Yes. Yeah? Yes. Yes. Yeah, sorry about that. In fact, I was just double-checking the case pronunciation. Researching on the fly. That's fine. Did I pronounce that case right? But no, that's right. That's exactly where we are. Yeah. All right. So now let's play that. Let's stay on together here. Birthright citizenship. 14th amendment effectively says if you're born here touch u.s soil where you're born in u.s air as a baby no baby is hopefully not immediately on u.s soil unless something's going terribly awry

1:15:36Dina Doll:in the process this is getting bad this example is going south no i people know i just had a baby

1:15:42Michael Popok:two years ago i was in the room i know what happens uh but you got to be on u.s soil u.s territory for that to happen. And then you're given by way of the constitution citizenship. So you're not stateless. Like we don't have people, babies who were born where the government looks over the shoulder of an American hospital or whatever and says, hey, you're now a citizen of Honduras. Like what? Like, you know, or you're stateless, go live at the airport, like Tom Hanks in that movie. Okay. So if you got to be on U.S. soil and okay, and they just made a big deal out of not making it, you know, getting to the last mile, the last meter, and not getting to the door, okay?

1:16:23Michael Popok:What are they going to do when they hear oral argument about babies, forget their parents, babies who were born on U.S. soil or territory, and the 14th Amendment being changed by an executive order? Having heard, it's a completely different thing, but having heard the oral argument, how do you think birthright citizenship, how do you think the numbers pan out there for the April oral argument on there? In other words, is this Robert slash Amy Coney Barrett led Supreme Court going to rip out the beating heart of birthright citizenship from the 14th Amendment during this term? Lisa? Oh, I'll go.

1:17:06Well, I mean, this is a dog of a case. This is a case where the Constitution is crystal clear that if you're born in the United States, you're a citizen. It's in the first paragraph. It's right up front. It was part of the, you know, the core language getting adopted by the Republican Congress back in the post-Civil War era. And in Supreme Court rulings dating back to the 1890s, it's been clear that it applies to that people who are born in the United States are citizens. Even the statute in the 1950s about the Immigration Nationality Act, it also has been interpreted and was interpreted then as exactly what it says if you're born in the United States, you're a citizen.

1:17:47There's a Latin term like Jus Terra, J-U-S-T-E-R-R-A, which is you are born, like that's your citizenship. You're born here. Trump's effort in early last year, a year ago, to assert that he could just declare people not to be citizens if they're born here is totally unconstitutional. It should be a 9-0 decision against him. They should be rebuked. When you look at the groups that are on board siding with Trump, it's like John Eastman, who was the guy at the heart of the effort to basically try to subvert our election in 2020. They have right wing groups that are tied to Stephen Miller, who's no lawyer, plays one on TV, apparently, but who has also asserted a whole array of things that are not consciously true or valid.

1:18:33And they're the ones advising Trump that he can do this. He can't. But, you know, Thomas and Alito are particularly in the tank for Trump. Kavanaugh seems to be there quite a bit, certainly even in the tariffs case, which was ridiculous. That should have been a 9-0 decision. We may end up with a decision that is five, you know, that is five, four in favor of the Constitution and against Trump. And that would just be because this is a ridiculous set of claims by Donald Trump, backed by fringe theory scholars, rejected by every real, you know, every major scholar who's looked at this. It is an outrageous thing that we're even having a debate about this because it is so basic to American history.

1:19:21And yet here we are with Trump putting another trial balloon up about this power. And as you point out, Michael, having just heard argument about where the line of territory is and why it matters for the size of U.S. jurisdiction or due process rights. Now it doesn't matter? Now it doesn't matter. Yeah, it's a really outlandish, inconsistent position the administration is taking.

1:19:46Michael Popok:Let me just read for our audience and what they're hanging their hat on. I'll bring Dina in. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which is one of the Reconstruction Amendments that came out all kind of in a row. If you want to watch a great movie about some of them, Lincoln. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. All persons born, and what they're hanging their hat on is comma, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, comma. There's commas there, by the way. And so they're arguing, oh, because their parents are illegals, the baby is not subject to the jurisdiction of this country.

1:20:37Michael Popok:They're the subject to the jurisdiction of Honduras or Mexico or Somalia. I mean, it is such a bad faith argument that any other lawyer or group would be sanctioned for this bad faith. It's not even a – it would be Rule 11 sanctioned for a bad faith extension of the law. in a misreading of the language. Dina?

1:20:59Dina Doll:I mean, this Supreme Court is not afraid to reinterpret or change the interpretation of the Constitution. They're the most activist Supreme Court ever, changing, overturning Roe, Humphrey's executor. That had been a hundred-year case, getting rid of it. I mean, we called our Supreme Court show unprecedented, because it is. They don't care about precedent. The fact is, this is what they're going to hang their hat on. And also the fact that the Supreme Court took this case at all is very disturbing because of how settled this law is. But they're hanging their hat on the fact that the 1898 Supreme Court case had to do with a baby born in the United States.

1:21:39Dina Doll:And his parents were Chinese immigrants, but they had legal status here. They were permanent residents. The holding did not say that that was why the young Kim Ark actually had birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court didn't hold that in the decision, but it mentioned in the opinion that, and you tie that with their philosophy, as you said, in the reading of that, that subject to the legal jurisdiction. And what I'm afraid of is that there's not going to be a complete overturn of birthright citizenship, but the incremental change with Chief Justice Roberts likes the incremental change. He did that with Humphrey's executive.

1:22:22Dina Doll:He started to chip away at it. He was against the overturning of Roe, not because he didn't want to overturn it. He doesn't like to do anything all at once. And my worry is that the incremental change they're going to do here is say that a baby born here to completely undocumented residents does not have citizenship. But if you can be born here to somebody with legal status, but not a citizen and still change it, and that's how they're going to incrementally change it. And I think there is a real risk of that happening.

1:22:54Michael Popok:Yeah. I thought, I thought his parents were, in that case, I thought his parents were still Chinese nationals. I didn't I didn't. Is that right, Lisa? Weren't his parents still like still kind of. Yes. Yes. All right. The emperor of China was still their their guy. Well, in part, because there there were other cases and other laws of the time and Chinese exclusion to try to deprive Chinese rail rail workers building the railroad across the country from getting access to citizenship. But, you know, this question of the absurdity of claiming that a baby born here is not subject to U.S. jurisdiction or that their parents aren't subject to U.S.

1:23:36jurisdiction is outlandish. When you have anyone in the United States subject to U.S. jurisdiction, the only people who are actually not subject to U.S. jurisdiction are diplomats on their diplomatic soil.

1:23:49Michael Popok:Or the American Aboriginal people when they're on certain things, depending upon whether they're on tribal land or not. But that's a very good point. Like, for instance, are you saying then, Donald Trump, that that baby born from parents who are not here with proper status can go out and commit murder, can double park, can violate the laws because they're not subject to the church?

1:24:11Dina Doll:Or a tourist coming and committing crime that somehow we couldn't prosecute them?

1:24:16Michael Popok:Wait till Taji Brown Jackson and Sotomayor Kagan start running their thought experiment during the oral argument. Exactly. Because anyone in the United States is subject to the U.S. jurisdiction, period, unless it is those rare instances, for example, where you have indigenous people with sovereign land, that is their sovereign land in which you have to have agreements. And similarly, when ambassadors are here in their residence. That's why you see cars parked in New York in front of embassies with all parking tickets on it. Diplomatic plates. Yeah, everyone else is subject to U.S. jurisdiction, period.

1:24:55It is a ridiculous argument. And John Sauer is not the first ridiculous argument John Sauer will make. We saw him make arguments about, you know, still Team Six and whether the president could assassinate an opponent. They are willing to do anything to do the bidding of Donald Trump. And as Dina points out, the fact that the court took this case, the Roberts court took this case, is a bad sign that they may, in fact, try to rule in favor of Donald Trump in a way, in a case in which no one should be ruling in favor of Trump's interpretation. It is counter-historical, counter-factual, counter-legal, counter-constitutional.

1:25:32It's absurd. And it would cause chaos in our hospitals. And like you said, Michael, at the beginning, who would these kids be citizens of if not the place in which they're born?

1:25:44Michael Popok:I don't understand. But we gave you a bonanza, a cornucopia of Supreme Court information here, taking advantage of Lisa being with us here as a guest anchor on Legal AF. We've got to take another break. So many ways to support what we do here. Legal AF, the YouTube channel, needs your help, your love, your support to get to 1.1 million this weekend. We will do it with your help. Just take your thumb or your finger, just hit the subscribe button. Legal AF Substack, same thing. If you don't know about Substack, come over and learn about it. If you're there already, keep us in the top five of news, all news on Substack, and you'll see the writings of Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves and my live reports on Substack.

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1:30:00Michael Popok:Again, for a limited time, our listeners get 10 % off their first bidet order when you use code LEGALAF at checkout. That's 10 % off at hellotushy.com with promo code LEGALAF. Welcome back to the midweek edition of Legal AF, the podcast. Michael Popok here. Of course, we've got Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves sitting in both for Karen Friedman and Ignifolo. Lots of things. You know, these shows are great. And I love being on with you guys. We could do this. We could do a three hour show easily. And we try to curate for everybody. There's so many things that happened today in the last 48 hours, even some that fell off the continuum for what we're going to cover today.

1:30:42Michael Popok:Like as we were coming on, the DOJ led by Donald Trump is going to settle with Michael Flynn, who was convicted by Robert Mueller, who just died a couple of days ago for crimes that he committed. But now we're going to pay him for being convicted, just like we paid Ashley Babbitt and her family because she tried to break through the speaker's corridor and do whatever she was going to do with murderous rants during Jan 6th. This is what Donald Trump tries to do. He's tried to make heroes out of the Jan Sixers. He's given them pardons, even ones that now have committed other crimes. I mean, we've got the guy that tried to bomb the DNC and the RNC.

1:31:23Michael Popok:He's claiming he was pardons and you can't go after him for mail bombing either. I mean, for setting up those bombs as well. So lots of different cases that, of course, we could have covered now. But the one that I liked for today is this one about this ongoing saga of Donald Trump's fight to the death, although it's a one-sided fight because he's fighting on his own, with Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell. And Jay Powell, by natural expiration of his term, would be out of the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve on May 15th. But Donald Trump didn't want to do that. So since he's got in office, the guy that he appointed back in 20, that was Donald Trump at the Rose Garden with appointing Jay Powell and complimenting him.

1:32:09Michael Popok:Now he's late and he's stubborn and he's stupid and he won't cut interest rates and blah, blah, blah. Okay. So we had a federal judge a week ago, two weeks ago, Jeff Bozberg, chief judge over all things grand jury in D.C., who declared after seeing things that we didn't see, including evidence that he demanded that the government provide, he did the extraordinary thing of intervening in a prosecution investigation and quashing the subpoenas against Jay Powell for crimes related to construction cost overruns. and or statements that he made in January of 2025 about those cost overruns. I mean, look, you want to show me the bank accounts that Jay Powell has money from bribes from suppliers and contractors related to the multi-billion dollar renovation of these hundred-year-old buildings?

1:33:01Michael Popok:Great. Bring it. But if you don't have that, short of that, Jay Powell's got a day job. And that is to connect the American economy to the world and tether it to reality against much headwind from Donald Trump. His J job is not being the owner's rep on the construction site, nor the GC, nor the inspector general, nor any of it. And the fact that there's cost overruns, including the ballroom that Donald Trump is building and every building ever built in DC is not an indicia of fraud. And now we've got the bombshell report that came out of a new transcript that just got revealed that Janine Pirro's right-hand person, the head of the criminal division for the Department of Justice's U.S.

1:33:44Michael Popok:Attorney's Office in D.C. admitted to Jeb Boesberg, the judge, that they had no evidence to support the criminal case against Jay Powell, yet they continue to go after Jay Powell. Lisa, what do you make of it? Well, I mean, this is just more misuse of the prosecutorial power. The power of the prosecution, power of the Justice Department is vast. And it being wielded by this administration against Trump's enemies or people he doesn't like or people he wants to replace, it is really a travesty. I'm afraid that we're actually going to have to end up, we the people, the taxpayer, going to end up paying people who were harassed by Donald Trump without our consent as he deploys the Department of Justice this way.

1:34:26And I think that when you see what happened in this case, you see a judge saying you cannot prosecute someone where there's no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. That's just prosecution 101. That's law 101. That's justice 101. And yet that has not been an impediment to the people that Donald Trump has handpicked to do his bidding, like Janine Pirro, like Pam Bondi, and others who are really his hatchet people, doing basically his political agenda, trying to use the awesome powers of prosecution against people, whether they're powerful people or not in order to advance Trump's agenda. And I will say to you both, again, this is partly John Roberts' fault, because in that terrible immunity decision, John Roberts asserted that a president can direct the Justice Department in ways that it has not been directed for basically in our lifetime since Nixon tried to, you know, got Bork basically to fire the prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who was investigating Nixon and his men.

1:35:27And so, you know, the fact is that we only have someone like Judge Boesberg to stand in, to stand up and say, this is impermissible. This is illegal. In essence, you cannot use the prosecutorial power to harass someone where there's no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. And there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Chairman Powell. And as you point out, Michael, I don't even remember the last building in D.C. that wasn't subject to a cost overrun.

1:35:52Michael Popok:Well, one of the interesting, before I turn it over to Dina for the final word on it, One of the interesting things that came out of the unsealed filings, many of these filings had been sealed because they related to grand jury work, is the lineup of lawyers that you and I are paying for, all three of us are paying for, representing the Federal Reserve and Jay Powell. On the Federal Reserve side, they hired Robert Herr, who was the special counsel against Joe Biden on his handling of documents. He's the guy that put the final nail in Joe Biden's coffin, that in the debate, about, well, he's a frail old guy with failing memory who couldn't remember who he was or where he was, so I'm not going to prosecute him.

1:36:34Michael Popok:that Robert Herr, but he's also a Republican. And so to insulate, I think the Federal Reserve to say, look, we hired Robert Herr. You guys liked Robert Herr when he went after Joe Biden. We're using him. And then on the other side, Jay Powell hired, listen to this, he hired a guy, one of his many lawyers, who used to be the general counsel at News Corp, Fox News. Therefore, He was the legal boss for Janine Pirro when she was at Fox. She knows this guy well. I don't know if he's the Janine Pirro whisperer or just as giving the team information about how Janine works. But I don't think it's random that the general counsel for Fox and News Corp, who's probably hasn't tried a case in 30 years, is on the trial team for Jay Powell.

1:37:26Michael Popok:I think a brilliant strategy in this lawyering part. Dina, what did you make of this new revelation that just came out as we close?

1:37:35Dina Doll:I mean, the fact that Jeanine Perra admitted that she didn't have any event showed that there was absolutely nothing, because if they even had a shred of something that they could spin, they would have. and most likely she admitted it because people might wonder why on earth she admitted it, was because she saw what happened with Trump's lawyers the first time around. All the lawyers in the 2020 election where they tried to say that there was fraud, Rudy Giuliani and others who basically lied or misled the court, that there was evidence when there wasn't, all got disbarred. She's an attorney. And that is a little bit more of a check than perhaps a Trump official's not an attorney because they can think, well, maybe Congress will never prosecute us or the DOJ.

1:38:20Dina Doll:But we are seeing a lot. I mean, hello, Lindsay Halligan. We are seeing attorneys getting disbarred or investigated by their bar associations. So, you know, poor Jerome Powell. I mean, my gosh, talk about a public servant just trying to do his job and really getting harassed for it. It's really a disgrace.

1:38:42Michael Popok:Absolutely. And we'll continue to follow it. It actually, it wasn't Janine Powell. It wasn't Pirro, but it was her number two who admitted it in a court hearing that the judge held. Once again, reinforcing the great work that Jeb Boesberg is doing against his own personal attacks by Donald Trump. They've tried, I mean, if this was Salem, I mean, witches in Salem have been put through less tests than Jeb Boesberg. I mean, they've tried to, one representative in Texas tried to defund just Jeb Boesburg's court. Another one tried to impeach him. Another one, the Trump administration filed a judicial complaint against him.

1:39:21Michael Popok:And yet, who's still standing on the other side of the rule of law? Jeb Boesburg, doing his job. Now, we'll have to see, I'd like to see finally, my last comment here, is to have the appellate court for the D.C. Circuit affirm finally something that Jeb Boesburg. is doing. They haven't supported him. They didn't support him on the JGG case related to the Venezuelans who were sent to El Salvador's torture prison. They didn't support him on the probable cause to find criminal contempt in that case a couple of times. They got to step forward and start supporting these district court judges who know what they're doing and support him here.

1:39:59Michael Popok:Now, I know there's going to be a whole argument, right? We saw it when Eileen Cannon got slapped by the 11th Circuit when she tried to interfere in the executive branch's investigation of Donald Trump back in the Mar-a-Lago case. And she was told by the 11th Circuit to back off. That's not the role of trial court judges. Here, however, Jeb Boesberg made it clear, if I find that the primary intent of the prosecution is to harass and intimidate the target and not because they believe in reasonable good faith that he committed a crime, I can quash the investigation. That's going to go up on appeal now.

1:40:37Michael Popok:We'll see. We'll follow it hour by hour, minute by minute here on Legal AF. I'm glad everybody's here in our audience. Thank you for being such fervent supporters of what we do. Hit the subscribe button on Legal AF, the podcast on the audio side, Apple and Spotify. Tell your friends about our video version here on Legal AF and on Midas Touch on the YouTube side. Support us on YouTube for Legal AF by hitting the subscribe button there. We'll get to 1.1 million subscribers with your help. And of course, we've got the Legal AF sub stack as well, where you can become a member and a paid member and get live reports every day.

1:41:18Michael Popok:A big shout out and thank you and hug, group hug for Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves, who starting in April will be doing a Legal AF on a Monday night on the Legal AF YouTube channel, as well as we kind of extend the brand bit a little bit there. And I thought it'd be a fun idea with Karen not feeling well today to bring in Dina and Lisa. Thank you for being here tonight.

1:41:42Dina Doll:Thank you for having us.

1:41:43Michael Popok:Absolutely. And shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.

1:42:22Michael Popok:We'll see you next time. See full terms at MintMobile.com.