Legal AF Full Episode - 8/2/2025

24:04Ben Meiselas:What do you mean they eat it? That's just not a truthful statement. And the problem is then they get the Howard Lutnick's on and Howard Lutnick goes, don't you love the parents, the parents, you know, and you watch this sham wow style routine. And he goes, and all of the experts. Every single one of them is wrong because Donald Trump is just the greatest and he's so smart. And then, you know, our news repeats. That's my Lutnick impression.

24:32Michael Popok:By the way, I've been known to do a pretty fair Howard Lutnick impression.

24:35Ben Meiselas:I want to see it when we get back. We're going to take our first break of the show. I want you to talk about what happened at the circuit court, the federal circuit court. I want to remind everybody that Michael Popak has started his own law firm. He started it a few months back, but it is picking up a lot of clients right now from our viewers and our listeners. Go to thepopockfirm.com if you've been injured in a car accident, a trucking accident, a victim of sexual assault or harassment. If you know someone who is the victim of negligence in those categories, a wrongful death case, a medical malpractice case, the consultation is free.

25:16Ben Meiselas:Popak firm. Popak, where can people find it?

25:19Michael Popok:And by the way, I think I founded that firm several months ago and a number of pounds ago. I got to change that photo. That just went up. But the Pope, there, thank you. But the Popak firm really stands on the shoulders of everything you and I have done for Legal AF over the last five years and what our audience has demanded about, you know, you are what your audience and your market tell you you are. And they told me, I need a firm to be able to help people in their time of need, and hence the Popak Firm. Two ways to reach us, no artificial intelligence. We only have I, no AI. You go to the website that, Ben, you just mentioned, thepopakfirm.com.

26:00Michael Popok:You'll end up on that free case review form, and a human being will help you through that process. Or you can skip that, and you can call 1-877-POPAKAF for that free case review. If we take the case, there's no charge. It's contingency fee. We don't get paid unless you do. And that's the Popok firm. Thanks.

26:19Ben Meiselas:Everybody, make sure you subscribe to Popak's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel. Subscribe as well to Michael Popak's Substack, the Legal AF Substack. Both are on their way to be picking up a lot of subscribers that YouTube's on its way to a million subscribers. So help it get there. All right. When we come back, I want to talk about Trump's cover up of Epstein. Let's talk about what happened at the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals regarding Trump's tariffs. What we expect is going to happen there. Let's talk about Donald Trump firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

26:52Ben Meiselas:We went a little out of order, but that's what we can do. We can freestyle sometimes here on Legal AF. Let's take our first quick break of the show.

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30:34Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to LEGALAF. Thank you to all of those pro-democracy sponsors. When we left off, said we were going to talk about what happened at the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the case involving Donald Trump's tariffs against the world after being stayed for, oh boy, two months now or so, 45 days or so. finally got heard. There was oral argument. Popak, maybe first talk about what the heck the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is. What is this court? And maybe the procedural history of how we got here. And then talk about the oral argument. What do you expect to happen?

31:10Michael Popok:Fundamentally, what we're talking about is, does the president have Article 2 under the Constitution powers to impose tariffs on other countries? You would think the way Donald Trump operates, that he must have that power, right? No. In fact, it's very unlikely that he does have that power. And that's been the subject of two major or three major court decisions and one coming from this federal circuit court of appeals I'm going to tell you about in a minute. It all goes back to who has the power under the Constitution. The core constitutional power of tariffs, excise taxes, and the rest is for Article I, the Congress.

31:51Michael Popok:Article I, Congress. Congress, through a statute, gave the president, whoever occupies it, back in 1977, following up on another emergency statute earlier in the Carter era, an emergency statute, not to impose tariffs, to impose sanctions in case we were getting effed with, that's a legal term, by our foreign adversaries or frenemies. And that was going on a lot in 77. We had OPEC and oil. We had gas prices going through the roof. People were effing with our economy. So sanctions were allowed. In fact, as one judge pointed out at the federal circuit during the oral argument I listened to on Monday, there's not one mention in the emergency powers act that was used by the IEPA, we call it IEPA, that was used by Donald Trump.

32:43Michael Popok:There's not one mention of the word tariff. There's sanctions. Now, the only time that a president had ever used tariffs and got away with it was Nixon, the last criminal president. But even there, after litigation, they said only because his tariffs were really sanctions and they were targeted for a short duration on a very discreet thing, basically a functionally a sanction, they let it go. Not tariffs, not constitutional tariffs. Even if Congress doesn't care that they're being treated like a doormat and they're having their Article I powers gobbled up, courts should care. Constitutionalists should care.

33:24Michael Popok:So that's the issue. He had two phony declarations of war and emergencies when he came into office. One, to support his immigration policy with the Alien Enemies Act, also saying that it's unreviewable. Federal courts can't even review what I do. And it's an emergency because we're under a predatory invasion by Venezuela, which was news to Venezuela and everybody in America. The second one he did almost at the exact same time was to support his tariff program, was to go through the IEPA, this emergency statute, and say, and in order for this to survive judicial review, his powers, There has to be an unusual emergency of economic impact.

34:09Michael Popok:What's the unusual emergency? The trade deficit between America and its allies and around the world? Okay, that's been growing over the last 10 years. It's doubled over the last 10 years, but that doesn't represent an emergency. Bad policy and planning, maybe. Maybe things that ultimately trade deficits don't matter. They're not like your budget deficit or your national debt. Maybe that doesn't really matter in the long scheme of things from an economic standpoint, but not an emergency. So first stop on the train, there's two separate cases that kind of got joined together. One brought by some small businesses, oh yes, including ones owned by Republicans who were getting screwed by the tariffs, and another by a group of states, the gang of 12 states that filed.

35:00Michael Popok:One case ended up being decided. Another case got decided in Washington. And they ended up being sent to by Donald Trump because he wanted him transferred to a specialty court in New York that in five years on Legal AF, you and I never talked about. The Court of International Trade in Manhattan. Okay? Trump hoped he would get a better panel there. He didn't. He got a thinking panel that was bipartisan and said outright that you don't have the powers under this emergency statute because you don't have the emergency and you're not allowed to impose tariffs and struck down his tariffs. I mean, struck them down, meaning he can't collect.

35:37Michael Popok:Why has Donald Trump been able to announce to the American people that he brought in$60 billion worth of tariff money into the Fed, into the Treasury, you know, after the first quarter? Why? Because he appealed to where you appeal from that specialty court is to a court, a specialty limited jurisdiction appellate court that also sits in D.C., but it's not the D.C. Court of Appeals or the Circuit Court of Appeals. It is the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which deals with things like patents and trademarks and the Court of International Trade. And so it went up to a full-on bunk after he lost 3-0 at that level.

36:20Michael Popok:This panel, two months ago, stayed that order. And we were like, oh, crap, they're going to reverse this. They're going to find that he has tariff power. We were a little worried about that. And he collected$60 billion in the meantime because they blocked it. But they set a very, we set a very fast oral argument and briefing schedule, which happened on Monday for two hours. There were 11 judges that heard this. If they don't rule 11-0 or at least 9-2 against Donald Trump, I would be shocked. Now, let me tell you the makeup of the panel. Let me do the quick edge of your seat part. There are no Trump-appointed judges that sat and listened to this case.

37:05Michael Popok:We got that going for us. It's Biden, it's Obama, it's some Clinton, it's some George W. Bush, but no Trump. And the lawyer, Brett Schumate, who argued for the Department of Justice, he took on water in his argument pretty quickly from the bench. There were two judges in particular. One judge said, show me where in the entirety of IEPA, this statute, that you are relying on solely for these tariffs. Where is there any mention that you're allowed to tariff? Where's the word tariff? So they had trouble with that. And then Judge Dyke, who a great judge moving into senior status, he said, let me get this straight.

37:44Michael Popok:It was almost what you and I have talked about and taught our audience about, which is the major questions doctrine. You're telling me that Congress, which has an entire statute books devoted to trade policy and set by Congress and tariff policy set by Congress, that they're willing to throw that out completely. Just turn over the apple cart, throw away that entire statutory scheme because the president declares an emergency. And then you're also arguing that it's not reviewable by federal courts. That's how you think Congress clearly expressed their intention to allow you to impose tariffs beyond judicial review because of IEPA, which no president has ever used that or its predecessors to do what your client is doing.

38:29Michael Popok:And you know, you got to give him credit, man. You got to keep pressing your losing hand. Yes. All right. So here's what's going to happen. It's not going to be this week, but by the time, probably just after Labor Day, sometime in late September, we're going to get a ruling against Donald Trump on this issue. I don't know if it's 8 to 3, 9 to 2, 11, 0, but it's going to be substantially against Donald Trump based on my review of the oral argument and the transcripts from it. Then it goes on an emergency application, here we go again, to the United States Supreme Court. And now the United States Supreme Court, here's what they're going to do.

39:07Michael Popok:They're going to have two briefs instead of three. They're going to have an incomplete record, but it's coming off of these three courts. And they're going to set oral argument because it's such a major issue. I can't imagine they're going to skip oral argument. And then we're going to see whether they're going to help Donald Trump out by making a procedural ruling. He's going to ask for another emergency stay. Either the court, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is going to give the stay to give him time to get to the Supreme Court, which is likely. I want to prepare our audience. Or he's going to get it from Chief Justice Roberts, who sits over this court, as an administrative stay for a short amount of time.

39:42Michael Popok:So still tariff money keeps rolling in from American importers. Then we're going to have to see what the Supreme Court does. From my perspective, this Supreme Court would have to bend over backwards, which it's done before, to find an unusual emergency in the form of a trade deficit, the equivalent of almost like a war power, to allow him to take all of Congress and all of their statutes. They'd have to avoid the major questions doctrine, which they often use the MAGA right on the Supreme Court in order to strike down actions by presidents and others. They'd have to throw away the major questions doctrine and say, yeah, we're OK.

40:26Michael Popok:It's Trump. He's allowed to collect this money. Go ahead. I they could do it, but they would have to so tie themselves up in an intellectual pretzel, which you and I will report on. But that, I think, happens in October, November. In the meantime, Trump's collecting and the tariffs end up in the consumer price index and Americans are hurt. Exactly.

40:50Ben Meiselas:I mean, when you say he's collecting the money, it is a tax, right, on the American company. So if it's Ford, when the products come into the United States, whether it's copper and steel tariffs, whether it's parts from widgets from Japan or widgets from Canada or from Mexico or Brazil, right? It's like a 50 percent that he put on Brazil, you know, because he wants them to release the insurrectionist former president Jair Bolsonaro that tried to even though we have a trade surplus with Brazil, the emergency there is Trump wants the judiciary to release the insurrectionist president of former president who's being prosecuted, which is what our DOJ should have done with Donald Trump.

41:39Ben Meiselas:It is at the dock, right? You get the product. You have to report it. There's a form that you fill out, and then you literally pay to the United States government as the American importer that fee, right? So if it's$100 and there's a 15 % tariff, you paid$115 for that product. You paid an additional$15. And so your question then becomes, if you're Ford or whatever, is how much of that can you eat yourselves? And how much do you pass on to the consumer? And how do you deal with that? It's never the foreign country that's eating the tariff. That's just not what it is. Japan's not paying the percentage.

42:26Ben Meiselas:Exactly. Now, people are like, well, then why does Japan not like the tariff? Because in theory, when tariffs are supposed to be used surgically, it then deters the American company from doing business with the foreign company. So the American company then goes, wow, if I can't get this part from Japan, maybe I should get this part from Canada. Or maybe I should get this part from Canada. or make it myself. But then it becomes a business equation. Do I have the ability right now to build a factory to manufacture these widgets? And the answer almost certainly is not that a factory would take eight years to build or four to eight years to build in an uncertain environment.

43:12Ben Meiselas:The cost to build the factory makes you as the company go, you know what, I'd rather just pay Japan the 15 % and then figure out what I do. Maybe we win this court case. Maybe we hire a lobbyist who can convince Donald Trump to give us an exemption. Maybe we buy mean coins and try to stop Donald Trump that way. But it's no longer like you can get this cheaper product someplace else because we've tariffed the world and we've created such an uncertain business environment that no company he's going to invest in the manufacturing here. So everybody's getting screwed. And then we're just being lied to by the Trump regime, who's pretending that inflation is not increasing, and who's pretending that unemployment is great and that the jobs report is actually all rigged.

44:05Ben Meiselas:And that brings me to the next topic, Popak, that we should talk about. Then we'll do the end. we'll focus on all the Epstein, you know, related stuff though, is, is, you know, we, we got this horrible jobs report, which doesn't surprise me on Friday, because if you are a living and breathing human being, you know, what's out there. I mean, I know people who lost their jobs, who can get jobs. I, I, I, when I speak to people, I understand, I know that housing is not more affordable, it's less affordable. I know that when I go to the grocery store or go shopping, I see how much more expensive things are.

44:44Ben Meiselas:I mean, I see that people are not showing up, that tourists from across the world are not showing up to the United States anymore because they're afraid they're going to be put in concentration camps. And that has a trickle down effect on other aspects of the American economy. So Vegas is suffering and Florida, by the way, is suffering and Arizona and all Palm Springs in California, you know, Maine, there's lots of places where Canadians would go. They're skipping over the United States and going to Mexico and elsewhere. But it's not just Canadians, Australians, Europeans, people from across the country.

45:22Ben Meiselas:Certainly, if you're from Mexico, Central or South America, you're not going to want to go into the United States. If your skin color is brown, you can end up in a concentration camp, you know, and people in Africa don't want to show you. So tourism is down. We can see that manufacturing is down. We know the disastrous budget bill is crushing key industry sectors as well. In the latest jobs report, Popak, the only areas of growth were healthcare and social assistance. And that's actually what the disastrous budget bill kills. Manufacturing jobs were down significantly. And so you have this bad jobs report.

46:02Ben Meiselas:And so what does Donald Trump do? He says it's rigged. And it's all rigged against him and that the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner, who, by the way, have you ever talked about the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner before. No, because there's the job. She was appointed 86 to 6. She was appointed in 2024. She followed the Trump commissioner. So for all of Biden's administration, guess who was in charge? A Trump-appointed commissioner for three-fourths of the Biden administration. You had William Beach, I think was the guy's name, who was the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner.

46:41Ben Meiselas:And now Trump doesn't like a jobs report. So he says it's rigged the same way he says COVID is a hoax, the same way he says elections are rigged. And this I'll toss it to you, Popak, because he fires. Recklessly, capriciously, arbitrarily, maliciously, he just wakes up and he's like, fire that woman, fire that woman, which now destroys confidence. Always a woman. Always a woman. That's why I emphasize that, too. You know, and that's why I think part of who's that Biden woman, get rid of her. And William Beach, the Trump appointed commissioner who held that job before McAntifor, he came out with a statement and he said, you know, look, I condemn these actions.

47:22Ben Meiselas:She should never be fired. She's great. She's doing her job. This is not OK. So now the underlying data, the Consumer Price Index data, jobs reports are now all going to be manipulated by Trump. So nobody trusts him. We've seen dictators, Erdogan and Turkey file fire his statistician before. And we've seen this in other countries. But it's like, what are you what are you doing, man? And so obviously the question, the legal question, does he have the legal authority to do it? I think, unfortunately, from the Supreme Court cases, because she does not fall into that one category that the Supreme Court randomly says they're protecting Jerome Powell.

48:02Ben Meiselas:but I don't think they thought about her. Firing her is just as bad to me as firing Jerome. It's close to it. But I think that he's able to fire her now under the stupid precedent sent by the Supreme Court. What do you think? But it's a chilling effect on everything.

48:19Michael Popok:And stop just saying the numbers are rigged, man. With no proof and no evidence because they're not. The rigging of the Trump economy and the falsehoods that were planned to be promoted to the American people started at the top of this administration as early as February. I did a report on it that Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, back in January, said that the way that the Commerce Department measures gross domestic product was improper and it should back out how the U.S. federal government contributes to the U.S. economy because they knew they were going to cut the fuel line between the federal government and the economy.

49:03Michael Popok:They didn't want to be blamed for it. So he started talking about cooking the books and rigging the books then. Then in February, six months ago, at Trump's behest, Howard Lutnick fired and shuttered an entire group of economic statistical advisors, the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee that sat over the Bureau of Labor Statistics and about 10 other ones, just said, just literally posted on their website. This is how he told them. He posted on their website. We'll put it up later. He posted on their website. Thank you for your service. Your job is complete. And you are canceled as of February 28th of 2029.

49:45Michael Popok:And then they started defunding all of these statistical entities that provide or are supposed to provide reliable economic data to allow the Federal Reserve to do its job as input plug-ins. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is not the gold standard, the platinum standard around the world that is relied on by counterparties, traders, brokers, financial services, stock markets around the world. And now Donald Trump, because he doesn't like the numbers, and just to be clear what they were, he has been lying to the American people that there were 258 ,000 more jobs in May and June than there really were.

50:29Michael Popok:The real numbers were not a couple of hundred thousand a month. The real numbers, and this is in a country of 300 million people, under the Trump economy, that Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, I think, am I ready for my impression yet? Howard Lutnick, the Trump Commerce Secretary said, this is now officially the Trump economy. This is the Trump economy. All right, it is the Trump. We go back to that. It is the Trump economy. OK, so those numbers are now 19 ,000 jobs in June and 14 ,000 jobs in May. That's it. And 75 ,000 jobs, which will be revised later in July. Just by way of contrast, Donald Trump said that the person he just fired, who was a nonpartisan, bipartisan, career civil servant, all four letter words for Donald Trump, who served his administration when she worked in the Census Bureau, who served Obama's administration, Bush's administration, and got elevated by Joe Biden.

51:29Michael Popok:As you said, not only a vote of 86 to 8, you can't get 86 senators to agree on ordering at Sweet Greens, let alone to confirm somebody. That's how much support she had as an economist and statistician. But one of the people that voted in her favor was Vice President, then Senator J.D. Vance. So now suddenly she's she's a mole working, quote unquote, for Biden. And she said, oh, she cooked the books for Biden in her job numbers and is now trying to screw me. Right. The last job report that she issued right before the election on November 1 showed that the Biden-Kamala Harris administration made a total of 12 ,000 jobs that month, which was terrible and lower than the two numbers she just pinned on Donald Trump.

52:16Michael Popok:12 ,000. How did that help Kamala Harris in her race as the economy seemed to be a little bit dodgy at the final moments of the Biden administration? All a lie. And every time he fires somebody, Ben, as we said, it always seems to be a woman in power. All of the Pete Hegseth getting rid of those generals and admirals, most of them were women. First of their kind women, women that no woman had ever had to fill in the blank, and they all got rid of them under DEI, right? All of those attorneys, inspectors general, the watchdog, the sentinels for all of these departments and divisions that Donald Trump was going to decimate, like the one that didn't do their job on Emil Bovee and allowed three or four whistleblowers not to be investigated and allowed him to become a lifetime appointed federal judge, appellate judge at that.

53:07Michael Popok:All those people, a lot of them that got fired were women. So for those that voted for Donald Trump, that either are a woman or support women, I don't know how you can turn a blind eye to what he's doing. So if you don't like the numbers, you fire the numbers, apparently. The reality is this, and not because I want it to be, I'm in this economy. You're in this economy. I'm not willing it. I'm not wishing it. I'm not putting it out into the universe. But as you said, I'm also a carbon-based human being. I'm also a sentient human being that can see and hear and read. And when you see an economy where the GDP, the gross domestic product, is rolling backwards, okay, and is at its worst low at its ebbs since 2020 when Donald Trump was last president, and you combine that with increased prices.

54:00Michael Popok:So if you went to the supermarket today and you bought the exact same basket, the exact same cart of goods, of items, as you bought last year, you're 3 % short. Go back to your car, go look for it. And you're not going to have it there either because that's what's happened to that basket of groceries under Donald Trump. So you have that going on. You have job. We're not making jobs. Prices are going up. Stagflation is in. And we wonder why the Fed kept the rates exactly where they are. Because look at Trumponomics. We haven't even gotten to the tariffs going into the pricing. So this is a terrible set of economic metrics for the everyday American around their kitchen table, their checkbook, and their purse and pocketbook.

54:54Michael Popok:And Donald Trump wants to blame somebody. It's always a boogeyman under your bed. The boogeyman is the Bureau of Labor Statistics statistician. That's the boogeyman. The boogeyman is Jay Powell, that moron at the Federal Reserve. That's the problem. These are the people that are keeping America tethered to planet Earth when it comes to the economy. They're not the ones that got 258 ,000 jobs. They didn't just disappear because they said so. It disappeared because the Trump economy made them disappear. And I'll just leave it on this. As a reminder for those that want talking points. To match other talking points.

55:31Michael Popok:Democratic presidents make more and administrations make more jobs than Republican ones over the last 60 years and not by a little, by a lot. Do the math. Presidents from Kennedy to Clinton to Obama to Biden and beyond match them up against Reagan and Bush and Trump. and it's no contest. So why the American people allow, some of them, allow themselves to be convinced that Republicans are the only ones that can run a government and are better at running business, that's exactly the opposite of what the actual statistics show.

56:09Ben Meiselas:Right, you ask people, I'm liberal on social issues, but I'm conservative on fiscal issues. Well, okay, but... The conservative, let's not mix up what that means. The conservatives are not conservative. MAGA is bankrupters. They're Trump. They're fraudsters. They're crooks. That's not conservative. They're going to do what Trump did his whole career, which is run up the debt, not know how to manage it appropriately, bankrupt the entity, in this case, the United States, commit as much fraud as possible to try to cover it up. Blame whoever until the Ponzi scheme runs its course. Do your best to find your scapegoat.

56:53Ben Meiselas:Now it's McAntor for, it'll be Jerome Powell the same way it was Fauci during the first term. Just flood the zone with disinformation and then pretend that you're the victim. That's not fiscally conservative. So there's this view, oh, the conservatives are conservative. They're not. And there's a big kind of rhetorical framing issue about political parties, what liberal means, what conservative means. And, you know, my talking point is just, are you alive? Where do you live that you think that the economy is booming right now and gas is$1.98? And if you want to give me that crap, then good luck.

57:35Ben Meiselas:I really don't even want to talk to you. I really don't. I'm not going to persuade you if you're living in a delusional world. I wish you the best. I'll see you later. I'm going to speak to rational people who are receptive to seeing that that sign says$3.75 if you're lucky and not$1.98. Or when we go to a supermarket, we look at the price and we go, here's what the price actually is versus you telling me that it's at an all-time low when I know it is. Anyway, we come back, we'll talk about Trump's Epstein cover up, have to cover that. But I think it was important that we got into some of these other topics, Popak, in the level that we did here on Legal AF.

58:17Ben Meiselas:A reminder, if you've been injured in an auto accident, a trucking accident, really the types of serious, and I know all injuries are serious, but that involves surgeries and things like that. Those are the types of cases that the Popak firm takes, victim of sexual harassment or sexual assault. Or if you know somebody who's been injured in an accident or a victim of one of those things I just said, or wrongful death cases or anything like that, Popak, where can they reach out to your firm?

58:44Michael Popok:Yeah, I made it. Thanks, Ben. I made it easy. A website with a description of all the practice areas that we're focused on along with my team. I'm actually meeting with my team in Chicago, flying out there. tomorrow to spend several days with those plaintiffs lawyers that work with me. And you can go to the website, www.thepopockfirm.com, see the descriptions, fill out the free case review form. Somebody will immediately come back to you. Or you can just call and reach a human being, a live person, 1-877-POPOC-AF for that as well. And as long as we're on the topic, we're going to have photo proof, proof of life, Ben and me.

59:24Michael Popok:We're going to be in the same place, same time on Thursday or so, and we'll send back pictures. All right.

59:30Ben Meiselas:Make sure you subscribe to Popak's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe to his sub stack as well. Let's take our last quick break of the show. When we come back, let's talk Epstein.

59:41Michael Popok:You know, sometimes covering the political and legal news cycle feels like chasing a laser pointer, chaotic, relentless, and sometimes exhausting. And just like my cat, the news can go from napping to total mayhem in a split second. But when the headlines get too wild, there's one guaranteed comfort. Curling up on the couch with my cat and knowing she's eating like the queen she is, thanks to Smalls. This podcast is sponsored by Smalls. If you're a listener of this show, you know that Chanel cannot live without Smalls. Last night, I fed her the turkey recipe, her absolute favorite. And let me tell you, it was gone in 30 seconds flat.

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1:02:20Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to those pro-democracy sponsors. The discount codes are in the description below. And thank you for everybody reaching out to thepopockfirm.com. I saw we got a lot of calls during the break as well. Okay, Popock, let's talk about a few developments in Trump's cover up of his connections with Epstein. Obviously, earlier in the week, he made the statement that he was aware that Epstein was taking his help underage girls who were working in the spa, which Donald Trump says is the best spa in America. That happened around 2000, the Virginia Giuffre sex trafficking.

1:02:55Ben Meiselas:And then Donald Trump said, oh, Epstein stole, he stole her from me. He stole her. You mean he sex trafficked her from Mar-a-Lago? And we've been talking about that for a long time. You have Jufre's family. They've been very outspoken, obviously, about what Donald Trump has said and calling Jufre since died by suicide, but treating Jufre like she's property and also treating Ghislaine Maxwell as like the hero in the story. What we're seeing, Popak, is after Donald Trump's gone further down into looking like he's incriminating himself, you know, which we always knew these connections. But I mean, you were aware in 2000 of the sex trafficking happening in Mar-a-Lago.

1:03:40Ben Meiselas:I mean, it's a stunning thing for, you know, he didn't say sex trafficking, but he said he stole her and we knew what happened to her. And Trump said, you all know what happened to her. So he seems to be acknowledging that he was kind of aware what was happening. I've done so many videos on the Trump Epstein connection, But now you have all of that Trump MAGA media trying to basically do the January 6th. But that Ghislaine Maxwell is the hero and she and Trump are working to stop the bad guys and that the victims like Virginia Giuffre, they're the real bad guys and they're the ones not telling the truth.

1:04:17Ben Meiselas:So you've got shows like Greg Kelly and others like they bring on Ghislaine Maxwell's brother. Like they're doing a full fledged propaganda to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell because that's what Donald Trump wants to be done. Because, you know, she knows all about Donald Trump. She knew Trump in the late 80s. She was Epstein's girlfriend. Then she linked Epstein with Trump and she knew all about what Trump was doing. There's an article from the Sunday Mirror in 1997 how Madame Maxwell would get would bring the young girls to Donald Trump or the young ladies would be bringing to Donald Trump. Anyway, here's what Greg Kelly did.

1:04:55Here's Ian Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell's brother.

1:04:59Ben Meiselas:This is what they're this is what's happening on right wing media as they know how to brainwash their audience. Now they say the victims are liars. Here play this clip. Yesterday, what would you like to say in response to what should people know about Virginia, the late Virginia Jeffrey? free.

1:05:17Michael Popok:Look, the simple position is that it is Virginia Dufresne who has lied about her role and has lied about my sister's role.

1:05:30Ben Meiselas:And then Greg Kelly, the Trump propagandist, starts saying Ghislaine Maxwell is innocent and she should be let free. Again, this is just like the election lies they told they go all in on the big lie here play this clip that's why i'm not taking anything anything without skepticism from anybody especially the media especially the government especially the department of justice and i don't care quite frankly who it's about including galane maxwell and to a lesser extent jeffrey epstein all right I say lesser extent Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to the sex stuff in 2008. All right. He's a dirtbag monster.

1:06:13Ben Meiselas:Does that mean Ghislaine Maxwell is? I don't think so, folks. That's not the way our society works, not the way it's supposed to work at all.

1:06:21Michael Popok:There is so much exculpatory evidence here that nobody understands that it looks like the government kept from the defense, which is illegal. Juror misconduct, you name it.

1:06:33Ben Meiselas:And look at what happened in that court. Right. Prosecutor pointing the finger. All right. Just remember this image for a moment. All right. Ghislaine Maxwell's on the left. It's covid. Right. So hardly anybody's there. And the attorney, the government attorney, doesn't have to wear a mask, pointing her finger right there at at Maxwell. What are you even talking about? By the way, I mean, she was Ghislaine Maxwell had a fair trial. She was convicted of sex trafficking. Multiple victims testified that they were not just sexually assaulted by Epstein, but that Ghislaine was involved in it also, not just bringing them to Epstein.

1:07:11Ben Meiselas:The court found that Ghislaine Maxwell is a massive liar. Now Donald Trump has fired that prosecutor, Maureen Comey, who's the daughter of James Comey. Trump claims that James Comey created an Epstein hoax, which now he has the right-wing media parroting. So I think regardless, Ghislaine Maxwell is likely going to get a retrial, regardless of what happens before the Supreme Court, who she's currently petitioning, because the President of the United States said, I looked at the files, and the files show that this was a hoax and that this was tampered with by the FBI and the lead prosecutor's death.

1:07:50Ben Meiselas:Think about it, the president of the United States, granted it's a convicted felon himself, but he's saying that the father of the main prosecutor tampered with the files. And so Ghislaine's going to say whether that's true or not, well, we should have been entitled to that information. And there should be a presumption that the executive branch is telling the truth about things like that. So at the very least, I should get a retrial. So we all know by now from our last reports that she got immunity from Trump's former criminal defense attorney, the number two at the DOJ. She spoke for 10 hours with them.

1:08:30Ben Meiselas:And then she imposed conditions on her deposition with Congress. Remember how the Democrats were able to make that really smart maneuver to get her deposition and force the Republicans' hands, because the Republicans were too afraid not to vote on it. But then they recessed Congress to figure out how they were going to plan this. Well, we see the plan taking place. Even Maga Mike Johnson was like, we need to give Donald Trump the space to figure this out. Well, Trump's implemented his plan, right? He sent his former criminal defense lawyer, the number two at the DOJ, to give Ghislaine immunity.

1:09:04Ben Meiselas:They've now moved Ghislaine from her prison in Tallahassee, Tallahassee to a minimum security facility, like with no guards. It's basically like a resort in Southeast Texas, prison camp, Brian, it's called. They gave her an exemption because the conviction for sex trafficking does not allow her to be in this minimum facility, minimum security facility. So they move her there. They get what they want from her. She basically then gives conditions to testify before Congress. And her conditions are, you have to give me immunity. I get to dictate where the location is. I won't sit for a deposition until after the Supreme Court hears my petition for a new trial or to throw out the charges based on the non-prosecution agreement.

1:09:53Ben Meiselas:And then there was another, oh, I get the questions in advance. I want you to list all of the questions for me. Well, the MAGA Republicans in Congress didn't agree to the immunity portion, but they didn't have to because the DOJ has already given her the immunity. And now they've moved Ghislaine's deposition to September 20, after September 29th. There's no date for it right now. So they took that subpoena. They continued it, meaning they moved it to some indefinite time in the future. So Ghislaine can first hear what the Supreme Court has to say, and the Supreme Court will make a ruling there.

1:10:32Ben Meiselas:Then she's going to argue that her habeas petition has to be heard. That's her new trial petition to the district court base, and all this new information she's going to get. But now she's rewarded, right, Popak? She's now in this facility that she loves to be at. You know, she's been rewarded right now for what, what she being rewarded for right now, other than covering up for Donald Trump. This is sickening and disturbing. Oh, and we also learned this week, I mentioned at the top of the show, that Donald Trump has ordered the DOJ and FBI to redact his name from all of the files. So, you know, they have like a thousand FBI and DOJ agents.

1:11:11Ben Meiselas:What they were actually doing was redacting and removing the files or removing Trump's name from the files. It's sick. As I said, not a red or blue issue. To me, this is a good versus evil issue. This is sickening, but it is true. For Trump supporters, a lot of them, you could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, you can cover up for the pedo ring, you could be involved with Epstein. And they don't, I mean, yes, this is an issue that animates them a little bit, but there's really nothing for that 30 % of this country that this guy, you know, can't do. He's rewarding a convicted sex trafficker in plain view to cover up for him.

1:11:55Ben Meiselas:It's as obvious as can be. And then there are still people like, well, maybe she's the hero. She's the hero. What are you talking about? She's the sex trafficker. She had a trial. She's convicted. Popa.

1:12:08Michael Popok:Well, let's talk about people that have never been in a courtroom making comments about what happens in a courtroom. I've never been in a courtroom where I've been on the defense side where the prosecutor didn't at some point, or in a civil case, where one party didn't point to the other party during the case. I don't know what that means. It doesn't mean a darn thing. Ghislaine Maxwell doesn't believe there was anything untoward about her trial. Because how do I know that? Because she filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court. And she didn't say she wasn't guilty. She said she has immunity.

1:12:38Michael Popok:That's different. She didn't say that there was anything untoward. All that stuff that that one talking head for Newsmax or whatever it is. None of that's in her brief because none of it's true. There was no she doesn't argue that she didn't get a fair trial. She didn't argue that there was evidence that was let in that shouldn't have. She didn't argue that there was evidence that should've been let in that wasn't. She didn't argue that there was prosecutorial misconduct. She didn't argue that it was jury misconduct. She didn't argue that the judge didn't like her or the judge was married to somebody that didn't like her.

1:13:05Michael Popok:She didn't argue any of that. She argued that an agreement that she was not a party to was not mentioned in and did not sign somehow lets her off negotiated by Alan Dershowitz and others on behalf of their client, Jeffrey Epstein, to let him continue effectively to have the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami effectively allow him to continue to prey on women. As Alan Dershowitz went after victims, that's been reporting. We just had Julie K. Brown on. You can go watch her interview, who broke the story for the Miami Herald on Legal AF, that he hired, Dershowitz hired private investigators to go after victims and get them to change their story.

1:13:49Michael Popok:So this is the world of sexual abuse that Donald Trump operates in. I mean, what is it? It's almost like a disgusting tell by Donald Trump. What is it with him and convicted or indicted sex traffickers? He's considering a P. Diddy party a pardon. He's considering a Ghislaine Maxwell pardon. He's got Lawrence Taylor. Look, I was a big number 56 fan when I was a kid. He redefined the position of linebacker. But he's also a convicted young girl sex predator, not once but twice. And what is he doing at the White House? Talking about fitness. What is it with Donald Trump? He thinks if he normalizes sexual predator behavior and pedophilia, we won't act like it's a thing.

1:14:46Michael Popok:It is a thing. And it matters. And so Ghislaine Maxwell can say anything she wants with her family, but she was convicted 9-0, beyond a reasonable doubt, by a jury of her peers in New York for being a convicted child sex trafficker. And so don't tell me that she's the fall guy because she's the only living participant of the conspiracy. That's just bad luck that Epstein died one way or the other while he was awaiting trial. That doesn't absolve the living participant of the conspiracy, especially as depraved as this one is. And so to distract from all of this, you get Donald Trump pushing all the buttons with his social media influencers from Laura Loomer to everybody else and handing out talking points.

1:15:38Michael Popok:Run the talking point where Ghislaine Maxwell is a victim. Run the talking point where she may be bad, but other people are worse. Run the talking point that there may be Democrats in that in those files and those hundred names that Todd Blanche talked about. Run that Barack Obama may be guilty of seditious treason by Tulsi Gabbard, of all people, a crash test dummy that serves as our national director of intelligence. And when you, is that dying down? Is the embers of that dying down? Okay, let's go after Jack Smith, the special prosecutor. Maybe he violated the Hatch Act in how he prosecuted Donald Trump.

1:16:15Michael Popok:This is what happens. I know this sounds like a broken record, but this is what happens when you elect a criminal to the presidency. What did we think was going to happen? When you elect a judge sex abuser, misogynist and convicted felon to be your president, this is what you're going to get. And if you don't like it and we don't like it, then you work your butt off like we're all doing right now on both sides of the glass and microphone to get Democrats elected at the midterms to return to some vision of normalcy, some version of normalcy, checks and balance until the House is taken back by the Democrats.

1:16:58Michael Popok:And they can, on one hand, work for the American people and make their lives better. And on the other hand, bring Donald Trump to justice. and checks and balance is out of control road presidency. Our American democracy and experiment is at risk. And that's why you and I have such a high motor to do what we do, dozens of hours a day, every day for this democracy. I mean, I just had the pleasure of hosting and moderating a town hall, not attended by any Republicans at any level, from municipal to the highest level in Congress and Senate in Florida. All the Democrats showed up. And the room in this congregational church in Miami was filled with very concerned citizens, liberal and Democrat and others.

1:17:47Michael Popok:And I'm, because, you know, there's things I do on the national stage with you and the brothers in a legal layoff. There's things I need to do locally. And that's a way, you know, when I learned things there, as our audience has, 250 ,000 Democrats have been taken off the voting rolls in Miami-Dade County against 49 ,000 Republicans. We went from, in Miami, the majority of voter registration to six points down. And if you think you're registered in your state, especially if it's controlled by red for mail-in voting, if that's the way you like to vote, check again. Check now. Re-register. Because you may find out the day of the election or the week of the election that you're not registered at all behind the scenes.

1:18:34Ben Meiselas:If you go back to and look at the episodes we did back in 2020, 2021, we focused a lot on the Voting Rights Act's erosion. And that predates the founding of the Midas Touch Network when this Reagan right-wing Federalist Society movement really started taking hold. They had their eyes set on the Voting Rights Act from the 1960s and other similar pieces of legislation as well. And one of the ways they targeted it was to basically get rid of what a requirement was a review by the Department of Justice or a three-judge panel called pre-clearance. So anytime a state wanted to unlawfully gerrymander, it had to be approved by an impartial DOJ or this three-judge panel that it would go in front of.

1:19:30Ben Meiselas:And then they had to apply a formula, and the formula would then be utilized to determine whether or not it was, you know, whether it was like a racist map or an unlawful gerrymander. So back in the mid to early 2000s, you had Sandra Day O 'Connor, late Justice O 'Connor, was the swing vote that allowed the Voting Rights Act basically not to be gutted regarding the formula. But she made this comment like, well, in 20 years, racism may be gone or something, and we may not need to save the Voting Rights Act. So a lot of the right wing people latched on to that. And they now say racism, racism, the only racism that exists in 2025 is racism against white people, that there is no longer racism against any other people.

1:20:25Ben Meiselas:It's the white people who are being attacked. And that's where the real racism is, racism against white people. So we need to stop all of these other programs and things that look to elevate other people or to look at racial fairness, because white people are the ones who are under attack. So what they were able to do, these MAGAs, is they got rid of the formula. And once they got rid of the formula to determine if there was racially unlawful gerrymanders, what then fell necessarily was preclearance because preclearance applies the formula. So if the formula is unlawful, the preclearance can take place.

1:21:05Ben Meiselas:So now what's happening is the states are allowed to basically create whatever maps they are. It doesn't require preclearance. And then you have to file a lawsuit as a civil rights group to try to block what the state does. But what the state does is then viewed as presumptively OK. and even if it's unlawful and clearly a completely racist and illegal map, well, then you have to go and appeal it all the way up to the Supreme Court. Unlike the Trump cases, the Supreme Court does not take your case for many, many, many years. And then as it finally hits the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court says, we need to preserve the map that the state created, even if it's unlawful, because of a principle we apply called the Parcell or the Parcell principle, which basically says we can't get involved in anything as elections approach.

1:22:03Ben Meiselas:And because elections approach every two years, there's always one happening pretty quickly. So that's how the Supreme Court says we're not going to even address this issue. And then by the time the Supreme Court addresses the issue, you already have all of the shenanigans taking place. So now what you basically have, right is is texas doing an unlawful gerrymander now uh in california california has independent impartial commissions which texas doesn't so that's why california has fair maps and new york has it built into the constitution so now to do fair maps because blue states were playing by different rules than the red states the red states were like eff it fascism let's go we want power screw you.

1:22:47Ben Meiselas:The blue states were like, we're a democracy. We need to take all these. We can't do, you know, unlawful gerrymanders. But now you have people like Gavin Newsom, and I'll close out with this part of the show. Gavin Newsom's like, okay, well, we're going to do it if you do it now. And we'll say once the balance and democracy is restored, we'll go back to our independent commission. But no, no, no. We're going to do exactly what Texas does. We're going to do a referendum to the voters right away, an emergency referendum, and we're going to have our voters change the California maps. So now, though, we head into this area, Popak, because of what the Republicans have done.

1:23:24Ben Meiselas:And it's not a both sides issue, what the Republicans have done, where, you know what, we're just going to see all blue states, states that are blue, all blue states that are red, all red. And then you're going to have the unlawful censuses taking place to try to rig that. And where this leads is a broke, the system is already broken, but where this basically leads is everything that was bipartisan in the freaking 60s and the 70s to try to deal with this stuff because of this race to the bottom now, which you have to fight fire with fire. So Newsom's got, I support 100 % what Newsom's doing. But this is the world that we live in now, created by Donald Trump, and it will cause massive damage long-term to our country, the way we're seeing in the economy.

1:24:14Ben Meiselas:It's just the foundations of this contract, right? The Constitution's a contract. Trump hates contracts. He rips it apart. That contract has been basically destroyed, and it's a free-for-all right now. The United States of America isn't what the United, it just isn't. We're not what we were anymore. I'll give you the final thought, though, a poll podcast, but I'll toss it to you.

1:24:36Michael Popok:There's a reason 63 % of Americans don't trust the Democrats either with government. It's because government is broken. And part of the breaking of it is we don't have states people any longer. We want there to be. We promote them. But we have, as you said, this tug of war, mutual assured destruction led by the United States Supreme Court, who undermined completely the Voting Rights Act. Clarence Thomas had it as a mission to get rid of the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action. It was on his checklist, his shopping list. He's accomplished almost everything on his shopping list. Roe versus Wade, off, woman's right to choose, gone.

1:25:16Michael Popok:Affirmative action in higher education that helped him. And in getting a leg up in the job market, gone. Voting Rights Act, no longer necessary because we live in his world at a colorblind society. Does anybody really think we live at a colorblind society where everybody has equal rights as they destroy public education, which is usually the thing that helps people get a leg up to have a good? But when Donald Trump destroys and hollows out and chloroforms the Department of Education and everything else, I mean, what do you think is going to happen? John Roberts has tried to destroy the Voting Rights Act since he's been the chief justice.

1:25:54Michael Popok:He's been relatively successful in doing that. And we are not in a post-racial America. We are in, as some of the historians that I've spoken to on Legal AF said, we are scarily close to where we were emotionally and just in terms of results to where we were in just the decade or so after Reconstruction at the Civil War. that's the period that we're in and we have a supreme court that's scarily similar to the supreme courts that just followed the civil right uh the civil war that civil rights act the civil war and so once you destroy the voting rights act and once you make it impossible to see any illegal racial gerrymandering by the way you define things and just to be clear because i don't want to have a show where everybody's eyes roll back in their head and they're like what is he talking about?

1:26:49Michael Popok:We're talking about, we start talking about redistricting. I know we're going to lose some people, but I don't want to. It's really, really important. It's how the congressional and other maps are drawn and how your representation is made. Because if you don't have proper representation by having a representative in Congress who's close to you and your needs, because that district has been eliminated, combined with another district, the competitor district led by the other party, your voice is not going to be heard. When this country was founded, we didn't have districts. We had at-large members of Congress.

1:27:29Michael Popok:And you know what happened then. So to enhance representation, a representative form of government, we came up with districts. And then, of course, the monkey business happened. Let's start drawing it in a way to cut out, fill in the blank party. And now you have a Department of Justice that is supposed to be the sentinel, the watchdog, overlooking, I'm starting to laugh saying it, doing oversight over whether these districts are representative of the people so that we have a representative form of government. But this Department of Justice and Civil Rights Division is run by somebody who's MAGA right-wing Republican.

1:28:13Michael Popok:So they don't find anything wrong with the maps being proposed by the Republicans. They will with the Democrats, but with the Republicans, eliminating five Democratic seats, five in Texas, a state we thought was getting purpley, bluish maybe, and now will be concrete setting red for generations until at least the next census, hopefully in the control of the Democrats. But this is, as you've said at the top of the show, we've said throughout, this should not be a Republican versus Democratic set of ideals about what makes America great. It should just be a statesman, diplomacy, patriotism that drives these discussions.

1:28:57Michael Popok:But it doesn't, because the Republicans have led identity politics and hatred as a core principle and as a plank of their platform since before Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and Roger Ailes at Fox, because they are a, it's hard to believe, until the MAGA populism took over, they were a narrow party, a party that did not appeal to enough people to generally win national office. And the only way they could get enough votes to overcome the democratic advantage, yes, we had a democratic advantage, is to play identity politics, to drive wedges between people, to put people at seething at each other's throats, whether it was gays in the military or gay marriage or reproductive rights or transgender.

1:29:49Michael Popok:You know, they find whatever boogeyman they can find to try to drive the Christian right or other groups to them and away from the Democrats. And that's all that we've been watching. And things like the Voting Rights Act, which were passed by bipartisan Congress coming off a president that was a true leader in that area. You're talking about the Lyndon Johnsons prior to him, the John F. Kennedy's, Clinton, and that kind of thing. But this is where we're at. This is the cards we have now been dealt here with the Legal AF audience. But as you like to say, we're in this together. We vibrate on the same frequency.

1:30:26Michael Popok:and we will continue not just to report on what just happened. I mean, it's one thing to say, hey, look out. There's a, you know, we're hurtling towards an abyss, but there's a way for us to avoid the abyss and working together both politically and emotionally to get there together. And that's why you and I get up every morning and start brushing our teeth thinking about how to accomplish these goals, not just being reporters, but being leaders in our own way of a group of people that want to make real fundamental change to get back to where we were as an American.

1:31:01Ben Meiselas:Well said, Michael Popak. And I'll leave everybody with this idea, though, too. I mean, in the White House, you mentioned it. Donald Trump appoints Lawrence Taylor. He's convicted of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl, an underage girl. He pled guilty to it. He's on the sex offender registry. He's on the list. I just try to appeal to your basic common sense. Do you want that guy to work at a school with your children? Would you want that guy to be your camp counselor? Would you be beyond offended if the school said, you know what? We're bringing in a registered sex offender. That's going to be your teacher.

1:31:47Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump brought this guy into the White House to lead a fitness initiative for children. And by the way, Trump didn't even tell Lawrence Taylor what he was doing there. Lawrence Taylor found out when he was there. So Lawrence Taylor was even like, I'm not really sure what I'm doing here, to be honest with you, but I'm going to do what you tell me to do. So Trump intentionally brought a registered sex offender, didn't tell him what to do to lead a children's initiative. He found out while he was there. And Popak, I know you talked about talking points. There shouldn't have to be a talking point for me to say in a normal, healthy, political era, that in and of itself would be a grounds to remove the president of the United States.

1:32:42Ben Meiselas:Syria, Syria, it should be done. If Biden brought in a sexual predator, an offender, and put him in charge of a kids program, I'd be like, what the hell are you doing? What are you doing? But we'd live in unhealthy times in a very sickly environment. Salty, just show the Lawrence Taylor clip where he's at the White House, and he's like, I'm not really sure why I'm here. Here, play this clip.

1:33:09Ben Meiselas:I'm just proud to be on this on this team. I don't know why.

1:33:16Michael Popok:I don't know what we're supposed to be doing, but I'm here to serve and I'm here to serve you. OK, so I'm going to do the best I can for as long as I can. Thank you very much. Nobody like him. By the way, who said that Howard Lutnick in the back?

1:33:33Ben Meiselas:Nobody like him. Yeah, was that the Trump or him? Yeah. But it was all it was all men right there. By the way, you had Triple H, the WWE wrestler who's married to Vince McMahon's daughter. We all know WWE has been sued for sex trafficking, you know, as as well. And Vince McMahon, the shambo, the golfer. I'm like, what are we doing? By the way, even if they weren't sued for sex trafficking, WWE, you know, I'm just like, and even if it's hard to say even if, but like, why do we have these people here? Like, why is this happening in the what? What the hell is happening? You know, and so I reach out to all of the people with common sense to ask yourself, what the hell is happening?

1:34:17Ben Meiselas:Don't let media normalize this. Don't let friends and colleagues act like this is normal. trust your gut and speak out against it. Be vocal, be present, be out there letting people know this is not okay. A reminder, Michael Popak's law firm is really founded because of all of you. So we got a lot of calls during this episode. So if you've been injured in an accident, whether that's an auto accident, a trucking accident, whatever, reach out to thepopakfirm.com or call 1-877-POPOCAF for a free case review today. Check it out, thepopocfirm.com. And if you have a friend who has a case, whatever, wrongful death cases, catastrophic injury cases, medical malpractice cases, reach out.

1:35:03Ben Meiselas:Also, the Legal AF YouTube channel, subscribe. Let's help it get to 1 million subscribers. Can't wait to see that get 1 million. And subscribe to the Legal AF Substack. We covered a lot today. we covered a lot today but it had to be comprehensive we live in comprehensive times we got to be diligent share this network with everybody you know Popak, I'll see you on Thursday looking forward to seeing you in person and Legal AFers, we appreciate you so much have a great one shout out Legal AFers shout out Midas Mighty

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