Legal AF Full Episode 7/5/2025

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26:28Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to LEGALAF. Thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors. You know, we don't have outside investors. One of the ways we grow is through, one of the ways we grow is through those pro-democracy sponsors. My younger brother, Jordy, spends a long time negotiating those discount codes so that you can get great deals. So check them out. Also, I should also mention the LEGALAF sub stack, which I forgot to mention before the break. Everybody on Substack, go check out Legal AF. I want to talk about this Supreme Court ruling regarding the eight migrants who were kind of in this holding area in Djibouti, and they were going to be sent to a concentration camp in South Sudan, which is kind of like the Sikat in El Salvador, but in South Sudan, this war-torn area, one of the most dangerous and violent places in the world, the Trump regime saying, let's do a concentration camp there with the local officials there.

27:26Ben Meiselas:And that's where we're going to send migrants as part of third country deportation. So we talked about, there's this judge in Massachusetts, federal Judge Murphy, and Judge Murphy had issued an injunction blocking the Trump regime from bringing the people from Djibouti, bringing the people from the United States to South Sudan without justifying that the process that they're supposed to go through was actually followed. Judge Murphy's order was actually narrower than I guess the headlines were. Judge Murphy, and I agree with Judge Murphy here in the sense of this, deportations to third countries is indeed allowed, but you have to follow a process because it might violate not just laws here in the United States, but international law against human torture.

28:24Ben Meiselas:If you're taking human beings and you're putting them in war-torn countries. And so the idea is, is that if someone is one, allowed to be deported, you go through the steps of deportation, then the question is where. And if they can't be sent for whatever reason back to their home country for lots of reasons, then the next step is, yes, you can transfer them to other countries that they weren't born in or have no affiliation with. But you have to justify it. You have to explain why this country, are they going to be safe in this country? Could they die in this country? Is this country able to accept them?

29:01Ben Meiselas:And if you can go through those process through our immigration system. This has always been the case because, you know, you're allowed to do it. This idea, though, of putting people in South Sudan and Seacott, that's not what it was really ever intended to be used for. So all Judge Murphy said was, wow, you've all of a sudden shipped these eight people to South Sudan. When their lawyers came in and said, whoa, whoa, they're going to die in South Sudan. Then there was efforts to try to, you know, efforts to try to stop that and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, have they gone through the process? So all Judge Murphy did is said, follow the normal process before you send people to third countries.

29:37Ben Meiselas:Then the Supreme Court, this was what, a week and a half ago or two weeks ago, we covered it here. They then issued an order on their shadow docket, staying or pausing Judge Murphy's order. And so when you stayed in order, which stayed or blocked sending people to South Sudan, what that means is Trump can send people to South Sudan. And the Supreme Court was based, they didn't really provide any explanation, but they've always been saying that Trump and his regime will suffer irreparable harm if their executive orders and their actions as the executive branch are not followed. And then it got kicked back to Judge Murphy after the Supreme Court basically said, we're staying your order.

30:20Ben Meiselas:And Judge Murphy had issued two orders on two different dates. So then Judge Murphy said, okay, well, your stay was just of my original order, not my second order, which clarified my first order. And the second order was basically, can you justify the process that you're using before you send people to South Sudan? So go through the actual process. My first order was the injunction blocking them from going to South Sudan. And then the Trump regime ran right back to the Supreme Court and said, whoa, Judge Murphy is saying that your order didn't address his second order. So he's still allowing these people in Djibouti to stay in Djibouti.

31:03Ben Meiselas:We want them to South Sudan. So we want clarification, Supreme Court, say that all of Judge Murphy's orders are subject to your main order, Supreme Court, and let's get these people to South Sudan immediately so they can die. It's basically what the Trump regime said. So it went to the Supreme Court and then the Supreme Court immediately, instantly. It's like it's like a text. It's like Trump has text message service now with the right wing Supreme Court. They get it. There's no like briefing. There's no like oral argument. The Supreme Court gets it. They're like, oh, absolutely. We're granting this for Trump.

31:37Ben Meiselas:Send him to South Sudan. Basically what the Supreme Court did. There was a scathing, scathing dissent from Justice Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. And here's what they say. In a democracy, power implies responsibility. The greater the power that defies law, the less tolerant can this court be of defiance. As the nation's ultimate judicial tribunal, this court, beyond any other organ of society, is the trustee of law in charge with the duty of securing obedience to it. This court continues to invert those principles. Today's order clarifies only one thing. Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the Supreme Court on speed dial.

32:18Ben Meiselas:Respectively, I dissent. Popak, that was, you know, that statement, you are inferring what your job is. Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson are saying, yeah, basically the majority, you right-wing majority, you are the criminals. You are the ones committing crimes against humanity right now. And you have Trump on speed dial. Anytime he wants to commit crimes against humanity, You take it and then you take his call and then you grant him whatever he wants to do to allow his authoritarian machinations to be instantly implemented before there's even proceedings in a trial. All anybody was saying here, all Judge Murphy was saying here was, whoa, before we send these eight people to die in South Sudan, let's just go through a process.

33:05Ben Meiselas:That's all. So pause it. If ultimately Trump regime, you're right, they should go there. Fine. Just go through the process. to which Trump goes, oh my God, a process causes me irreparable harm. That goes back, Popak, to what we were also talking about in the first segment, due process. All we're saying is, I'm not and you're not defending Abrego. I'm not defending these eight people in Djibouti who are now going to South Sudan. All I'm defending is let them have their process. If ultimately you find they should go to South Sudan or Abrego, fine, that's the ruling. But what are we doing here when Trump just says it, and then you issue a stay of federal court orders that are just pausing it, not because they're finding in favor of the migrants, they're finding in favor of due process, and the Supreme Court keeps overruling that.

33:53Ben Meiselas:Popeye.

33:53Michael Popok:I mean, the American people should be concerned and upset that they now reside in a country where the Supreme Court allows somebody's constitutional rights to due process and notice, That's all we're talking about, to be run roughshod over by a president, a president that or as so succinctly and pithily and pithy put by Ketanji Brown Jackson, a president who lives in a law free zone. That's not OK. And as I've said, same way that you've said it during my hot takes, I'm not a Braco Garcia's defense lawyer. I don't know what these eight people in the Djibouti Air Force Base have done other than what's in the record.

34:34Michael Popok:I'm not here to defend them. I'm here to defend with my last dying breath the process, just as you and I will defend until we're hoarse and or dead First Amendment rights of people to speak about things in the public square that we find uncomfortable because we find them to be uncomfortable. And that used to be democracy, and that used to be the brand democracy that we all could be proud of one way or the other. But now you have, and I just did a hot take with Leah Littman from, I've become a semi-regular now, with Herb Strict Scrutiny, a law professor at Michigan. And Lee and I talked about the power of the dissents that are being written.

35:16Michael Popok:We talk about opposition. We talk about resistance here because we all vibrate on the same frequency on Legal AF and on Midas Touch in our audience and on both sides of the camera. I asked her about the power of dissents and why they're important. The ones we see written by Ketanji Brown-Jackson, the ones we see written by Sonia Sotomayor, a little bit by Kagan, but really by those two. And why do they matter? And you and I learned a lot in law school from dissents that eventually became the majority opinion, because dissents also influence public opinion. And dissents influence students, law students and people and give them hope.

35:57Michael Popok:And they are speaking to history. I mean, we have a playlist on Legal AF called Court of History, led by Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz, because the highest court is not the Supreme Court. It's how history is going to judge the lawyers, the judges, the Supreme Court, and us as citizens. There's no higher title in America, nor it should be that way, than citizen. And to watch this destruction and have Ketanji Brown-Jackson and Sotomayor call it out and call out, as Sotomayor did, that you touched on, the abuse of power, her words, the abuse of the inherent authority of the United States Supreme Court's MAGA right-wing majority to benefit, to bend over backwards, to find irreparable harm because it touches on Article III powers, sorry, Article II powers of the president, and not care a whit about human beings and their suffering and their lack of due process.

37:02Michael Popok:Now, some people, I just did a hot take on it for Legal AF side, some people might think, well, at the end of the day, after 72 hours, Trump got what he wanted because he ran back to court, just to give the timeline again, he gets a one paragraph ruling by the six to three majority that says, Murphy, your order, keeping those eight people in the Djibouti Air Force Base while due process and notice is being evaluated, we're blocking it. We're going to let the First Circuit do its thing on appeal, but we basically, we're okay with the president exercising his power to send people to third-party, third-world countries that don't share our values as a dumping ground.

37:52Michael Popok:So, and that's where we got the Sotomayor dissent, which was 12, 14 pages in length. Then Murphy gets everybody together, as you pointed out, and says, well, I had two orders. What was in April? And that was blocked. And, you know, you went into your shadow docket. You didn't wait for a final decision by May. You didn't wait. You did this not only interlocutory earlier than a final judgment, but you did it on one of my orders. There was another order in May where I said, you violated my order in April, and I think you may be in contempt, and I made another order, and you didn't block that. And Sotomayor actually signaled to Murphy, she said, not all remedial orders have been blocked.

38:32Michael Popok:And right on cue, he pulled everybody together the Monday after the Friday of the order and said, nothing's changed. Nothing's changed. They are not to move. I'm still evaluating. I'm still getting to the bottom of it. And they ran back to court with this whiny motion for clarification. But as you said, it's like they have a WhatsApp direct line or text messaging to the Supreme Court, like, bring it back, bring it back. Now, I had hoped that the window had closed. I did a report on this because they left for their, the term ended and they had ruled on it. It had been several days. Then, of course, low and low four days ago, they issue a one paragraph unsigned decision that, yeah, yeah, yeah, motion to clarify.

39:14Michael Popok:We're nothing Murphy, none of his rulings. They're all being blocked. None of them go forward. And so they got a win there. So we're like, oh, crap, those guys are going to South Sudan. The lawyers, you know, this is like last minute reprieve for somebody on death row, right? You're trying all the locks, all the doors. So they run to Judge Moss, Randy Moss in D.C., and bring what they claim to be a new petition on new evidence. He looks at it and says, I'm going to block it for a day, but I'm transferring it back to Judge Murphy. So he laterals it back to Murphy. In the meantime, he has another stay order.

39:50Michael Popok:So it's like the governor reprieve. Okay. All right. And then Murphy gets it back and says, look, let's have a hearing. But what I think he accomplished at the hearing, although most people, including myself, don't think it's worth the paper it's written on, is a concession by the Department of Justice that they've spoken to the State Department. and the State Department has informed them that these people are not going to be detained, that they're going to be temporarily released and go through a naturalization process in South Sudan. Let me remind everybody or say it out loud for people who don't know.

40:26Michael Popok:These people are not from South Sudan. That's the point. It's a third country, not their country of origin or nor one that they wanted to go to or would agree to go to. This is all another thing. This is like an El Salvadoran person Mexican person, whatever, or denaturalized U.S. citizen, God help us, being sent to South, think about this, South Sudan, okay, and dumped there with no passport. What's their passport? They lost their passport, passport from another country? Now they're going to go through a naturalization process in the middle of a war-torn South Sudan? And does anybody really believe that when the Trump administration, DOJ, told Murphy that when he said, look, what we don't want to be is dumping people off in foreign lands where they get tortured and we act like it didn't happen.

41:19Michael Popok:And I won't. And that's that we can't be in that world. And that's when the lawyer made all sorts of representations. But it's not in writing. And you see this Supreme Court, as we've watched the evolution since April of this court, first few orders came out. We were like, OK, we sort of figure it out. They're not going to go as far as to violate due process, habeas corpus rights, or notice when it comes to deportation or removal. Got it. And then another couple of orders came out and we're like, okay, I sort of understand that. And then this came out of nowhere, which is no, these people have no rights, we don't care, dump them off.

41:52Michael Popok:And we're like, really? That's the pronouncement of the United States Supreme Court? And that Article II power is preeminent about everything. And the problem, I'll just leave it on this bed. The problem with all of that, it's not about eight guys in the Jubilee Air Force Base. It's about the precedent and the body of law that's being developed by an emboldened Supreme Court led by Roberts and the rest. Now they have the numbers and have had it for a number of years and how they're shoving this anti-democratic, anti-America way of life down our throat. I'll give one last example that you and I will keep an eye on.

42:31Michael Popok:This is so bad that even my baby daughter is crying in the distance in the background. But in Texas, we've got a couple of guys that are trying out for the United States Supreme Court. One of them is Judge Ho, the other one is Judge Oldham. They held last week an oral argument that was sent back to them by the United States Supreme Court on immigration and removal issues related to the Alien Enemies Act. And when you hear the language, because they've been empowered by the Supreme Court. Oldham said in his oral argument, well, we have an armed invasion, an armed invasion of Venezuela by Tren de Agua that's been in this country, and MS-13 has been in this country for a dozen years.

43:11Michael Popok:We've got an armed invasion. Who are we to disagree with the president's determination under the Alien Enemies Act? We're like, oh, here we go. So So this kind of ruling and judges like Murphy willing to stand up for it is important. But we are watching. We now know better where the Supreme Court is going to go when it comes to Alien Enemies Act and where it comes to removal and deportation. A very narrow box of habeas corpus and due process and removal rights only under certain statutes related to it. And if it's an emergency or it's a war or a predatory incursion, all bets are going to be off and the power of the presidency reigns supreme.

43:58Michael Popok:And that is not only inconsistent with hundreds of years of precedent, but it just shows you as Judge Ludic, who's just been on our Legal AF channel in the last couple of days, said, this is about a Supreme Court that is bending over backwards, not just to reinforce the power. of the imperial presidency. It's about benefiting a guy named Donald Trump. And we should all be concerned about that, regardless of which side of the aisle or no aisle that you're on.

44:30Ben Meiselas:So our Legal AF audience would probably say, because I know them very well, guys, but why aren't you showing me the Supreme Court ruling? Like you talked about the dissent, you showed us Sotomayor, which we appreciate, but why aren't you showing me the rulings or playing the oral arguments. You guys always do that. So are you hiding something from me? No, actually the Supreme Court is. Because as Popak said, this massive precedent is being set that's overturning our entire conception of the Constitution as we've known it. And the Supreme Court is not holding any oral arguments on these cases. The parties are not showing up and arguing these issues in front of the court.

45:17Ben Meiselas:They're not submitting long briefs. You know how we talk about those amicus briefs, which are like friends of the court briefs, where people talk about different groups, give their opinions, and the Supreme Court sets these things like a year out or six months out or three months out and all of those types of things. That's not happening. The Supreme Court is using what's called a shadow docket because it's not happening in the sunlight. That's why it's been kind of nicknamed the shadow docket. And they're making these rulings using procedural language that have the substantive impact of endorsing Trump's authoritarianism.

45:58Ben Meiselas:So the Supreme Court isn't saying that we feel that Donald Trump violates the Constitution or that the Constitution supports what Trump is doing. They're not going there. What they're saying in all of these rulings is we're not going to even write an opinion. We're not going to have oral argument. What we're just going to do is we're going to say we've agreed to stay or pause the district court's ruling so ordered. And by pausing the district court's ruling and the district court's cases, they have hearings, they have submissions. The district court has oral argument, has the people argue and submit evidence.

46:41Ben Meiselas:And that's why these district courts, whether you're Trump appointed or Obama appointed or Biden appointed or Bush or Reagan, they're finding against Donald Trump after the evidence is provided. They're not just like just doing it. They're going through process. And they're saying, wait a minute, Trump, you're not showing us evidence. So we have to weigh and balance these things. So we're ruling against you. But then the Supreme Court goes in and basically says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, to what Popak said. We're dealing with Article 2 of the Constitution. That's the executive branch. If the executive branch says to us that the district court's orders are causing them irreparable harm, we as the judiciary, as Article 3, we have to step in for Article 2, the executive.

47:31Ben Meiselas:And what we're going to do is we're going to pause the district court's order. So it's this kind of cowardly move the Supreme Court's doing by not issuing the order so we could dissect it and say, oh, here's how they feel about these issues. Here's how they balance the evidence. They're not doing it. And then the Supreme Court, so cowardly, they're hiding behind this idea. Whoa, whoa, whoa. We didn't rule on the merits. We're not saying that Trump was right. We're not saying that he was wrong. All we're saying is, let's just let this thing progress for a few years through the judicial system, and then maybe it'll come to us in a few years.

48:08Ben Meiselas:Oh, really? You think those people in South Sudan, that they're going to come back in a few years after they go to South Sudan? And the next wave of people who Trump sends, you think that they're going to be able to do these things? You know, and there's other cases, too, like the Supreme Court's been doing this as Donald Trump's been firing people without cause who are on the various independent agencies. And what they're saying is, hey, the status quo is we're on the board. Let's keep us on the board and then we can litigate our case and then we can see if Trump is right or we're right. But then the Supreme Court steps in and goes, no, no, no.

48:46Ben Meiselas:The status quo is Trump fired you. So now that you're fired, you'll be fired for the next few years. Go litigate your case and come back to me in 2029 or 2030, and then we'll deal with it. Do you see what I'm saying? How cowardly that and then Popak and I and legal scholars, we can't even look to see, oh, it looks like the Supreme Court's having this type of test or, oh, they were strict constructionists or, oh, I see how they view that statute. No, they're not. They're not giving us any of that data. When we come back, I want to talk about a few other things. I want to talk about the CBS settlement.

49:20Ben Meiselas:I want to talk about who Donald Trump is. When Donald Trump fires people, who is he replacing them with? We'll talk about the Office of Special Counsel, what's going on there, and maybe another topic. reminder, if you have your own case, if you've been injured in an accident, a trucking accident, a car accident, if you know somebody who's been injured, if you know someone who was the victim of wrongful death because of the negligence of others, I know you know and love Popak and trust him, reach out to him. He's got a law firm that was set up because you all requested that he set up the Popak firm and he set it up to be able to help you out in cases.

49:56Ben Meiselas:So if you or someone you know has been injured, catastrophic injury types of cases, serious injury cases that require like surgeries, medical battle practice cases, wrongful death cases, sexual assault and harassment cases. Popak, where can they find you?

50:11Michael Popok:Thanks. Pardon me. Thanks, Ben. All roads lead back to the exact same place. You can either use a 1-800 number, 1-877-POPAK-AF, or if you'd like to do it by the website, just go to thepopocfirm.com and you'll end up talking not to AI, but to real people who help evaluate the case with me. And if we take the case and we won't charge you unless we recover. So we don't get paid unless you do.

50:42Ben Meiselas:There you have it. Subscribe to Michael Popoc's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help them get 1 million subscribers. Turn your notifications on there and also the Legal AF Substack. Check that out as well. All right, let's take our last quick break. We'll talk about CBS elements and a few other things.

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54:19Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to legal AF. I'm here with Michael Popak. Thanks to those pro-democracy sponsors. The discount codes are in the description below. Popak, let's talk about paramount folding in this. my opinion, it was perhaps the most frivolous case I've seen. And Trump has filed a lot of frivolous cases. He alleged that CBS in their 60 minute segment involving former vice president Kamala Harris in October of 2024, made an edit or two. And that that caused him massive amounts of damage and emotional distress, he alleged. And he brought in Ronnie Jackson to be a co-plaintiff in the case because Ronnie Jackson is from Amarillo, Texas, and Trump wanted to file this before the federal judge, Judge Kazmarek, who's the only judge in Amarillo, Texas.

55:11Ben Meiselas:So he has the Congress member from Amarillo join him and say that he was a consumer also who watched this and suffered emotional damage to see former Vice President Kamala Harris give this interview, which they said that CBS and 60 Minutes interviewed certain segments. First off, the edit that they made was kind of purely to keep the movement of it going. Like the, like it was not a sub, it didn't change a yes to a no or a up to a down or, or anything even of any significance. They took out a few ums and ahs that she was saying, and it was a slower answer. Although the full interview was out there, the way the Trump people knew it is that in one of the other segments, whether it was on Face the Nation or how it was posted online, it looked a little bit different from that one little segment.

56:01Ben Meiselas:There was more ums and ahs. That was really it. Trump won the election. So what are his damages anyway? But he said that then he amended the complaint in February to say, oh, now his damages are$20 billion. What was really going on here is that Paramount, which is owned by the heir of, what do you say? The Redstone family. the Redstone family, you know, it's owned by the daughter now, Sherry Redstone, who is Sumner's daughter. She wanted to sell her company to Skydance, a kind of a private equity hedge fund that gobbles up these companies. And Skydance is the son of the guy who runs Oracle. So you kind of had, you know, one heir wanting to buy a company from another heir.

56:50Ben Meiselas:And then Trump was basically not approving, not giving it the FCC approvals that it needed until a personal settlement was reached with Donald Trump in his own case for emotional distress. And so when we looked at this case, I mean, if anybody filed this case, you would get what's called Rule 11 sanctions. You would get laughed out of a federal court and you would be treated as a vexatious litigant because it's just the most bizarre and deranged lawsuit. But they got the judge that they wanted. And then they kept on doing the delays every time the judge was about to make an order. So I think they even thought they might have lost with that judge.

57:31Ben Meiselas:They would basically amend the complaint or ask for a delay. And in the background, they were doing their gangster tactics and applying pressure to Paramount to settle this thing. They went in front of a mediator. I don't know the name of this mediator. Mediation is kind of non-binding, informal negotiations that takes place. And basically, the mediator's job is not to rule, oh, you're right or you're wrong. The mediator's sole job is to try to make a deal. That's their job. And so the Trump regime was demanding$20 billion. And so the deal is a paramount. You want your approval to go through? Wink, wink.

58:16Ben Meiselas:Here's what you got to do. Here's what's going to happen. Mediation is confidential. That's why they go and they do this mediation. And then they basically said, aha, we settled $16 million. We're going to give it to a future presidential library. And that's basically it. We're not making statements of apology, but we're just going to give$16 million. And then I guess that'll clear the way for the regulatory approval to take place. I mean, the Democrats say when they get power, they're going to investigate this as an unlawful bribe and a scheme. And the Democrats say, well, OK, well, we're going to investigate Paramount and Skydance later.

59:00Ben Meiselas:But we saw some CBS hosts out there criticizing the decision from Paramount. But you can address it. And then I think it's helpful that you then address the Paul and Gracia guy in this analysis. But look, Popak, it's sad to say, but corporate news is done. They have some good reporters. There are some good reporters at CBS. There are some good reporters at Washington Post. There are some good reporters at New York Times. There are some great reporters out there who do good work. The issue is they're part of a corporate structure that will always sell out their work for the oligarchical. Yeah.

59:42Michael Popok:Well, look, I'll just continue with that and then I'll wrap it into Paul Ingrassi. CBS was known as the Tiffany Network for a reason. It was run by Bill Paley, a lion of the industry back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And 60 Minutes was the crown jewel of the Tiffany network. But to Paramount and the kids of Sumner Redstone, which is right out of succession last season, where this old line company with, you know, making buggy whips and television shows, you know, gets acquired by the newfangled Oracle, you know, because this is their succession plan. They don't have a succession plan. Sumner died.

1:00:33Michael Popok:Shari Redstone took over. And in order to cash out, they got to have a buyer. And Trump decided he was going to take their testicles, corporate in nature, in his hands and squeeze until they paid him the way ABC paid him because George Stephanopoulos used one sex abuse term instead of another when he was asking a question. They shouldn't have settled either. But that set the precedent for CBS. And then you've got Brendan Carr, who is Donald Trump's bootlicker, who's now in charge of the Federal Communications Commission. I see statements coming out of some of these places, and I think I'm in the Soviet Union circa 1970.

1:01:17Michael Popok:It's just like the Politburo, and it's propaganda. and you got the FCC guy or person saying things that are just totally political in nature, all to curry favor with Donald Trump. So they effectively told Cherry Redstone, we are not going to approve a merger that any day and twice on Sundays would be ultimately approved because Paramount and Skydance, there's no antitrust issues ultimately. This should have been closed a long time ago, but Donald Trump held it up using his lawsuit to extort a bribe, as you outlined it, from Paramount. And now, suddenly, after the$16 million will eventually be paid, suddenly there'll be regulatory approval.

1:02:03Michael Popok:So there's many things that lawyers representing Donald Trump have violated their rules of professional responsibility by using these threats for an ulterior motive, and the regulators too. And so that's something we'll have to keep an eye on. And you're right to open up that, not Pandora's box, but to open up that issue of when, not if, the Democrats take control of the House. And I don't mean that cavalierly. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of voting to do. We have a lot of voting registration to do. But should we do all of that, then the House should be a blue tidal wave. That happens.

1:02:43Michael Popok:It's going to be a considerable amount of time with real investigations, real articles of impeachment and about these kind of things. I could see two thirds of the, you know, of their time being taken up with those kind of things, along with helping the American people. So the according to the reporting, it looks like there's a former judge of some sort, state or federal, that was appointed to be the mediator. You and I have been involved with mediators. What happens is they mediate the two parties and the mediator does shuttle diplomacy back and forth, tries to use their own powers of influence and negotiation tactics in order to get the parties close.

1:03:22Michael Popok:It looks like the parties weren't that close. And so the mediator, it's a technique in mediation. The mediator made a proposal. It's called, what else? A mediator proposal. And then they keep it open for a certain amount of times. It's usually right at the end when there's an impasse and they're far enough apart. Like Trump's at 100 million and CBS is at five. The mediator says something like, 16 is my number. Who's going to meet me there? And they give a certain amount of time without telling either side who met them there. But if they both end up at 16, agreeing to the mediator's proposal, the mediator will announce a deal.

1:04:02Michael Popok:Like my number, he'll say to one side, my number is 16. My number 16. Are you there? And then they'll say, we're there or we're not there. And if they're not there, you'll know whether you accept it or not. So you know who screwed you. But you'll never know. So that's what happened. CBS, which has now completely thrown the crown jewel and the Tiffany Network into the trash. I mean, if 60 Minutes was a major asset of this company, it has been completely undermined by what Paramount just did on the way out. Skydance should be like, oh, shit, I thought we were buying a credible news organization, CBS News, and its flagship magazine that's been on the air for 50 years.

1:04:48Michael Popok:Now it's not worth anything. As far as I'm concerned, if I were the buyer, I'd be really pissed off about this. Bill Whitaker was in literally, according to reporting, in tears. He's the one that did the interview. And so was the other major player over there. Who's the female that does a lot of their, it'll come to me in a minute. But they were, the reporters were just flummoxed by this settlement. And I've been watching 60 Minutes for a long time. and after at the end of every segment, they say a version of for the full interview without editing, go to 60minutes.com, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:05:29Michael Popok:That's what happened here. But the fact that it took Kamala Harris a minute and a half to make her point, and they shortened it to 30 seconds because it was a clip. But to Donald Trump, See, word salad. You would have what? You won the seven battleground states. You won the popular vote. You won the election. It's like the suit against the pollster that's still alive in Iowa who said, oh, she's up by five points when he was really up by 13. who gives a crap at this point, but they do it to make a broader, all political point. Donald Trump's trying to destroy mainstream media. He can't get control of us.

1:06:14Michael Popok:He can't get control of things that are independent. So he has to go after the corporate owners of mainstream media. When we say mainstream media, we generally mean they're owned by corporations where this is an asset on their books, you know, and like Bezos owning Washington Post, the Asian business guy that owns the LA Times, you know, the only thing that's like independent is our papers like the New York Times, which is least owned by one family. You know, it has been for 150 years, but that's what we're talking about. This is just their own by private equity and hedge and the rest. And so at the end of the day, the settlement, they're trying to pat themselves on the back going, yes, 16 million.

1:07:02Michael Popok:We didn't have to apologize. And we'll just put the full report out. But this so scuttles any of their press or First Amendment integrity. And like I said, if I was skydance, I'd be like, you just shit all over 60 minutes. And that was a major asset for us in the purchase.

1:07:20Ben Meiselas:So you've got that happening, I mean, which is completely and utterly outrageous. And then you've got Trump appointing people, you know, so he's taken in this money and then he's pointing people like real whistle, people who have real cases. Right. So these Trump cases, just phony baloney stuff. Right. BS. Then you have people who have real cases, whistleblowers who are supposed to get whistleblower protection within the federal government. You have this office of special counsel, which is usually led by lawyers with real distinction, right, who have either been civil rights lawyers or these are the types of people who are like, I can either become a judge.

1:08:02Ben Meiselas:I can stay a partner at a firm where I'm earning seven figures. I can give back and provide real service to the federal government for a few years and, you know, as a matter of service and protect whistleblowers within the federal government.

1:08:18Michael Popok:Well, like Hampton Dellinger, the guy he canned, who's a friend.

1:08:22Ben Meiselas:So you have Hampton canned, and who comes in?

1:08:25Michael Popok:Okay, so Hampton Dellinger, who was Biden's, who, again, this is the ombudsperson position for whistleblowers in the federal government to feel like they can go complain and drop their whistleblower complaint and not be retaliated against. And it's like the ethics hotline, the whistleblower hotline for the federal government. It was created after Watergate. Donald Trump destroyed three major institutions in America almost at the same time. The National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Service Protection Board, and the Office of Special Counsel. He did it like within days of each other. The Merit Service Protection Board about federal workers being protected has effectively been trapped in amber and is on ice because he hasn't replaced the person he fired and the Supreme Court let him fire him.

1:09:10Michael Popok:And so they don't have a quorum, so they can't act. National Labor Relations Board, same thing. Protecting America's workers, all those unions that didn't support Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, what you get now? You got no place to go. You got no regulator because it's all been put out of business by Donald Trump. And then lastly was the Office of Special Counsel, which is not what it sounds like. Some people thought, oh, that's like where Jack Smith came from. I get it. But that's not what it is. It's just the title that they gave to this office. Hampton Dellinger, body of work, you know, just unrivaled, just bipartisan, independent, a lawyer's lawyer, comes from a long line of lawyers, lawyers.

1:09:48Michael Popok:His father, Walter Dellinger, was my constitutional law professor, hung out at his house because we had a small class on a regular basis talking about con law, solicitor general of the United States, shortlist for the U.S. Supreme Court. That's Hampton Dellinger's family. Donald Trump, it's, and it's just, I'd say it's comic relief, but it's just tragedy. He shits all over the office. I know I'm cursing so much on this trip. He craps all over the office by appointing a first-year lawyer. I should stop right there. Who is, because you're judged by the company you keep, especially on social media.

1:10:24Michael Popok:He hangs around with, pals around with, and endorses the views of white nationalists like Nick Fuentes, Holocaust deniers, 9-11 deniers, supports Alex Jones and his comments about Sandy Hook massacre of children being an inside job or a false flag. Does the same for 9-11? Attention Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary, who lost 658 people of his employees on 9-11. You okay rubbing elbows with the guy who's now the future head of the Office of Special Counsel, who doesn't think that happened or thinks it was an inside job, who went after Nikki Haley as a political hatchet man for Donald Trump, calling her the B word, saying that she wasn't qualified to be president because her parents are from another country.

1:11:10Michael Popok:Okay. I could go on and we, you and I do it in our own hot takes. This is the guy who got, who got fired from one job already in the Trump administration. He was at the beginning, the liaison between the White House and the Department of Justice until he got sideways with Pam Bondi's right-hand chief of staff. He tried to get him fired. The chief of staff got Paul Ingrassia fired. He got transferred to Homeland Security, where he's been stashed away, and now nominated wholly unqualified, obscenely unqualified for this position. What does it signal? It just means that Donald Trump doesn't give a rat's ass about and wants to weaponize an office that's about weaponization, that's about retaliation of whistleblowers and protecting them.

1:12:00Michael Popok:If I'm a whistleblower now in the government, and this is the guy running the ethics hotline, I hang up. So that's what Trump wants. He doesn't want whistleblowers. He doesn't want ethics charges. He just wants to put a joker in the spot because the other two, he figured out, well, if I just don't nominate anybody, they don't have a quorum, so they don't have to act. But I need to put somebody in the Office to special counsel, but I'll just put this joker in. And that guy was like, I'll do it. Thank you. Thank you, sir. So let me just fold it into one last point. I am very concerned, I just did my own hot take on this, about recess appointments by Donald Trump in August, feeling emboldened and whatever by the bill being passed for the budget, which we'll use against him for the midterms.

1:12:54Michael Popok:You can just hear it now. He talked about recess appointments where he'll get a year and a half of somebody being appointed through a commission without Senate confirmation. He's got 15 or 20 people in government, including U.S. attorneys like Alina Ava, including federal judges. It's never been done for a federal judge, but it could be, like Emil Bovee to be on the Third Circuit, give everybody a year and a half when the August recess happens until they come back a year later, a year and a half later, and then he worries about confirmation at that point. The more I hear about Donald Trump doing things that we weren't expecting, if that's even possible, like Alina Habba for permanent New Jersey U.S.

1:13:38Michael Popok:attorney, nominating this Senate, this person has to be Senate confirmed for this position. I now believe that he's going to try to shove all this down our throat at a Senate recess appointment in August. What do you think, Ben?

1:13:53Ben Meiselas:I agree with you. And I think that as you try to break this down in a way that's really simple to understand as well, whether it's a Paul Ingrassia or that 20-year-old guy who they have leading counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security, right, who's now like the number one person who's before he was like interning for Trump or something, they made him the number one guy. Everything I try to say here, and this is why you did that great piece with Judge Ludig. Judge Ludig's a pretty right-wing judge in a traditional sense. I mean, he's conservative in the traditional sense of conservative, where he and I and we align.

1:14:43Ben Meiselas:Even if you go back and look at his rulings where I would find disagreements, I'm sure I would find that his opinions were very thoughtful and logical and we came out differently and had different agreements. But we use stats and data and logic and we tried and we grappled with issues. And right now, the distinctions here to me are not like they shouldn't be, oh, that's a liberal view or that's a conservative view. That's the way it's kind of being treated by corporate news. But go back to the first segment we did on Legal AF. It was, I'm not like an Abrego Garcia fan. I'm not a fan of the eight migrants in Djibouti.

1:15:21Ben Meiselas:I'm not a fan. I don't know. All I care about is that they get actual process and they go through it. And if ultimately at the end of the day, the process reaches a conclusion, then let's have whatever the outcome is when they're provided due process. That that's what I'm a fan of. I'm a fan of the due process. Right. I'm not a fan of someone using the executive branch to shake down media entities and corporations to settle frivolous lawsuits. I don't think that's like a liberal position, conservative position. I just think that that's that's to me very logical. And I'm not for people being appointed who are not only not qualified, but who express views that I think are despicable.

1:16:06Ben Meiselas:And I am biased against views that are discriminatory against human beings. And I am biased against people who are not qualified getting jobs that require real serious qualifications and experience. I just, there's nothing that I'm saying there that to me feels, oh, well, that's like a hyper-partisan statement that you're making. I don't want people to get kicked off of Medicaid like this disastrous budget bill is going to do. I don't think that billionaires deserve like special treatment and that we should go out of the way to give them the most tax cuts and the most benefits so they can buy extra jets.

1:16:50Ben Meiselas:They should be treated fairly. I'm not against the idea that you could potentially become a billionaire one day if you build a corporation, but I am against the idea of them not getting taxed fairly and then becoming billionaires by gaining unfair advantages and exploiting workers. So I'll leave it with this, is that I want to approach all of this through a lens of common sense and logic. And I'll let you all who watch and listen to this decide where you stand on these issues. But a lot of this stuff is very simple to me when you begin with values and principles like we do here at the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF.

1:17:31Ben Meiselas:Let me remind everybody, subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel now. They're on their way to a million subscribers. Subscribe, help them get one million. They'll get 700 ,000 any minute now. And then let them get a million subscribers. Also, if you've been in an accident, whether it's a trucking accident or a car accident, a catastrophic injury, or you've had surgeries, or if you know somebody who has been in an accident or someone who died as a result of the negligence of some company or somebody else or whatever, I know you all know and love and trust Popak. So Popak started his own law firm because you all said, hey, start your firm.

1:18:11Ben Meiselas:And he couldn't handle these cases based on the other type of work he was doing. He could handle it. He just wasn't able to, hey, make phone calls. Let me help people on cases like this. So he started his own firm to be able to do this. So if you or someone you know has a legal case and you want representation, but try to limit it to having those types of cases. Trucking accidents, car accidents, catastrophic injury, sexual assault, sexual harassment, wrongful death, medical malpractice, dog bite cases. Negligence could be like a slip and fall, whatever it is. If you have a real viable case, reach out to Popak.

1:18:49Michael Popok:Rideshare to Uber, Lyft, that kind of thing. We made it easy for you. 1-800-NUMBER-IS-1-877-POPAKAF. What else? And then a website. it's thepopockfirm.com no ai real people standing by to talk about it evaluate it with me and if we take the case we don't get paid unless you do that's the way that'll work everybody thank you

1:19:14Ben Meiselas:for watching legal af popock it was great to see you be able to do this on your travels thank you so much for doing this i know the legal afers are glad to see you but enjoy your travels happy fourth to everybody as well. We'll see you next time on Legal AF. Hit subscribe here. Shout out Legal AFers and shout out Midas Mighty.

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