Legal AF Full Episode - 8/9/2025

25:17Michael Popok:Close friends and podcast partners never are rude to each other. No, I was just going to say that But what Trump tries to exploit is the lack of continuity and the people's amnesia because of the news cycle. And I think that is one of the benefits we bring on the close reporting that we do on Legal AF and on Midas Touch, because just 72 hours ago, Donald Trump announced that there would be a tripartite, there would be a three-way meeting that he would broker with Zelensky, Putin, and him to talk about resolution of the war. That then morphed a day later into, well, the party's saying, Putin's saying, I'm not coming, to a Putin, a bilateral meeting with Putin and Trump.

26:06Michael Popok:But then with the announcement that Trump is already telling Zelensky, you're going to have to give up the Donbass and Crimea and all the territory you lost. We're going to reward Putin. We're going to give him that which he never would able, that he's not been able to obtain militarily. We're going to give him that as a reward for peace, but I'm not going to bring you into the meeting. I'm going to be doing it alone in Alaska. And what we're watching is the failure of diplomacy, among many failures, of the Trump administration, because he doesn't have any adults serving in position. We don't have a secretary of state.

26:43Michael Popok:It is, for all intents and purposes, Steve Whitcoff, who's not only Donald Trump's golfing buddy, his real estate development, small-time real estate development buddy, who testified in – we'll talk about it later – who testified as a, quote, unquote, expert for Donald Trump in his civil fraud case, who also got him involved and launched the cryptocurrency business with him, with his son – I almost said idiot son – with his Nepo baby son and Donald Trump's Nepo baby sons. This is the but that's that doesn't make you shooting golf in Boca Raton doesn't make you a diplomat that can go against Putin.

27:17Michael Popok:The former KGB agent, he's he's you know, and so that he runs Whitcoff around. Where are the grand tours by Marco Rubio to go be the secretary of state? Not not that I think he'd be any better against Putin, but this is what we're watching. Donald Trump substitutes his golf buddy to go to go negotiate with Putin and then wonders why the terms of the deals keep shifting against the American position. Popak, talk about these four cases, Donald Trump losing on birthright citizenship, you and the most recent one being in Maryland. Right. Everybody was saying when the Supreme Court made that ruling on nationwide injunctions that seemed to prohibit the idea of nationwide injunctions.

28:02But when you read deeper the way we did, we said, well, actually, it only prohibits it on one off cases that do not involve states or class certification. So where there is a class action or a state that is the plaintiff, the Supreme Court's ruling will not impact that. Now, there's really been no difference in terms of, at least on this issue, particularly birthright citizenship from district courts, because they've just been certifying class actions. They're right for class action certification. What does that mean, Popak? And how come we're not seeing these emergency appeals by Trump right into the Supreme Court as we've seen on other issues?

28:44Michael Popok:Perfect. Thank you for that setup. So four different cases. Judge Kofanor up in Seattle, Judge LaPlante up in New Hampshire, a judge whose name just escaped me up in Massachusetts and Judge Boardman in Maryland. And it'll come to me. They all did the exact same things before the United States Supreme Court ruled at the end of June, not on the substance of birthright citizenship. Why would they want to address that? But rather trying to take a tool out of the tool bag for judges about nationwide injunctions, wrapping them on the knuckles. No, you never had the power to do nationwide injunctions.

29:20Michael Popok:That's for the Supreme Court to do unless states are involved or you should use class actions. Do class actions with injunctions on top of class actions. Okay, that was the one area that Kavanaugh and Sotomayor both agreed. Sotomayor literally said in her dissent, like tomorrow, within hours of this decision, you guys should be running back to court with class action complaints. Same courts, same judges, just different vehicle. Just take your papers and convert them like now. And they all did it. In the CASA case, CASA Incorporated, which is in front of Judge Boardman, they got in within hours and filed.

29:58Michael Popok:When you file and when the judge makes her decision, it's two different things. And she just got around to making her decision today. Last month, Judge LaPlante, almost identically in New Hampshire, ruled, if you put them next to each other, two orders are almost identical. Pardon me. First, she certified and he certified a class. And the class is of currently born babies and babies yet to be born, the born and the unborn, who are subject to this executive order that Donald Trump issued in March to deny birthright citizenship to people born on U.S. soil, violation of the 14th Amendment. Because all those judges, even before, had all universally said you can't change the Constitution and your interpretation by executive order doesn't do it.

30:50Michael Popok:Now, there is another thing that got lost by mainstream media that I pulled out during a recent hot take, the position the Trump administration took about the unborn. You would think an administration that spent a hell of a lot of time arguing to the United States Supreme Court to rip down a constitutional right for a woman to choose, arguing that fetuses, no, embryos, have rights equal to that of their born mother. would not be taking the position that they took in these cases in the definition of the class by saying, unborn, unborn have no rights, unborn have no standing. How can you define the class as future to be born babies?

31:33Michael Popok:So they are not, when it's convenient to them and the argument doesn't fit, you see how quickly they drop the argument that those that are not yet born have rights. And those were all rejected by both Judge LaPlante and Judge Boardman. The other interesting thing is, where's the appeal? We already had Judge LaPlante in July give the administration seven days to run to the Supreme Court on an emergency application. Judge LaPlante even said in his order from last month that John Sauer, the solicitor general, had effectively promised the judge that they would be immediately moving for a stay or a emergency appeal at the United States Supreme Court about the substance of birthright citizenship.

32:20Michael Popok:And that came and went. And that's the reason you and I don't talk about the Trump administration implementing and executing on their executive order, because that order and another one earlier has kept in place the injunctions, and they have not run to get those removed. Now, there's two theories here, and I'll get your opinion, of course. One is that they know they don't have the votes on the substance of birthright citizenship. How would they know that? Oh, I don't know. Ginny Thomas is home every day with Clarence Thomas. I mean, you can do the math and the pillow talk that could happen. And so either they politically figured out they don't have the votes to tear down birthright citizenship, even with this right, right, right wing Supreme Court.

33:08Or it's a political timing issue.

33:11Michael Popok:They're waiting for the last decision. They want to take them all up together. And they're really waiting for maximum distraction for when they have another bad news cycle and they can then then take the appeal on a political calculus. It's one of those two things. Which do you think it is, Ben? Yeah, I mean, look at what they just took on an emergency basis, though, to the Supreme Court this past week. They took the issue of racially profiling migrants against the Ninth Circuit injunction. Again, there was a district court injunction in California. Then the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed it.

33:48Then the Trump regime ignored what the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did. They launched Operation Trojan Horse this past week where Trump sent ICE agents in Penske trucks, 30 of them at a time. They'd pull into parking lots in California and Los Angeles where migrants were known to work. And then they would all run out the the militarized looking ice agents and start chasing all of the people in the community, you know, like straight out of a horror movie, knocking them on the ground, beating them, grabbing them by their collars and then holding them up like like ducks that are killed from a hunt or like like a trophy.

34:24Now, that took place this past week in the brief to the United States Supreme Court. I think, Popak, they want this. They want this to go first before hitting birthright. I think they want to knock out. So it's a time. Yeah. And so they've argued that if people speak Spanish and have brown, this literally in the brief, they said, while it may not like I'm almost reading verbatim. While it may not always be the case that your skin color and language is enough to find probable cause to arrest you, citizen or not, the fact that you have those qualities in Los Angeles, which they argue is known to have at least one out of every 10 people living, may be undocumented.

35:09No citation, but that's what they say. That's enough for probable cause. I mean, literally in the brief, brown skin, speak Spanish in an area known where migrants could work. That gives us probable cause. Arrest everybody. That's why we're hearing the stories. Pregnant woman arrested, citizen, you know, just whoever, just citizens arrested. And whether you're in my own view, whether you're a citizen or not a citizen, no one should be treated like this. Animals shouldn't be treated like this. And again, this is what's going on under the name of the United States, a full fledged authoritarian regime here.

35:43And it's why, you know, tourism from Canada is down anywhere from 32 to 40 percent. And the rest of the world, tourism is down the same. I want to talk about Democrats fighting back, Popak. But the one thing I'll mention just on the Canada front as well is that they have their own version of the Girl Scouts in Canada. I think it's called Girl Guides, 60 ,000. It's just emblematic of everything. They're canceling all of their travel to the United States because the parents of girls in Canada don't want their daughters or sons, but in this case, daughters coming into the United States where you can where horrible things can happen to you.

36:21And so as we start to look towards the World Cup and the Olympics and America as this fascist regime, I think there's going to be a lot, a lot, a lot of problems there. And, you know, and then Popak, the other wrinkle of this authoritarian state and the Republicans are saying it outright is we need to turn Democrats into a permanent minority. We need to get rid of Democrats, have a one party country. And the way to do it is to exploit that Democrats operate under rule of law, independent commissions, good faith, constitutional norms. But if we, the Republicans, don't, then let's just do unlawful stuff and say, good luck trying to good luck trying to catch us if we don't go by the norm.

37:12Michael Popok:On that point, that's a very, very good point. I've been starting to make it in piecing together what we're watching with the attacks on Letitia James and Adam Schiff and Obama, Clinton. What the Republicans are trying to do, what MAGA is trying to do, is tear down our icons, tear down our leaders, destroy the credibility of the Democratic Party as a viable party. You do it through changing congressional maps and shrinking our ability to turn red states purple or blue or to have or to win back the Congress and things like that. But you also do it, as you've said before, you also do it in attacking the symbols of of of of the democracy and of our party.

38:00Michael Popok:he's already scarring the White House. We have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fix that if we can, when the Democrats hopefully take back the White House. But that symbol of the White House, scarred because of Donald Trump, the symbol of the Capitol, forever scarred because of Donald Trump. And now going after the Mount Rushmore of leaders for the Democrats, because it's not just about he's a sore winner. It's that he is, as Tom Tillis just recently said about a Trump nominee, he's just checking all the boxes. They're just all the wrong boxes. And we have to fight back both to circle the wagons and ring fence around our leaders like Obama, like Clinton Schiff and Letitia James.

38:51Michael Popok:That's one thing we have to do, but that's what we're watching. Make no mistake about it. We are watching them trying to put the Democratic Party and its leadership out of business. Here's what California Governor Gavin Newsom had to say about he held a press conference yesterday with some of the Texas state lawmakers who have left the state to break quorum. Talk about that in a moment. And other Texas state lawmakers are both in Illinois and in California. And we're seeing Democratic governors step up. Here's California Governor Newsom. Let's play. The leader of our congressional delegation, they are unanimous in their support and moving in this direction.

39:35Michael Popok:The speaker and the pro tem and a strong support of their caucuses and leaders of critical committees, caucus are here to express support. We are moving forward. Make no mistake, California is moving forward. It's a state that's larger than 21 state populations combined. We are not a small, isolated state, state larger than 21 populations combined. We tried to play by a higher set of standards and rules with our independent redistricting, and we believe in that. And we are not talking about eliminating that commission. We are talking about emergency measures to respond to what's happening in Texas, and we will nullify what happens in Texas.

40:19You hear what he said there. Governor Kathy Hochul in New York came out with a similar statement doing that in New York. And now Republicans are saying, well, OK, well, we're going to do it in Indiana. We're going to do it in Florida, in states that are already unlawfully gerrymandered by Republicans. They're now saying, well, we're going to make them doubly unlawful. And so, again, we have this system, Popak, based on good faith and norms. And every 10 years, there's a new census and then there could be redistricting. In the past, there used to be something called preclearance under the Voting Rights Act, which was a major way to step.

41:05Our lawmakers in the 60s knew this would happen. And on a bipartisan basis in the 60s, they wanted to stop that. So they passed a Voting Rights Act in the 60s on a bipartisan basis. Democrats and Republicans coming together. Yes, far more enlightened in the 60s than when they are now. But when the outcome of fair play was the outcome that MAGA and Trump didn't want, they said, F those rules. We're throwing that out. Now, I hear we'll talk about Democrats fighting back. But Popak, I hear a lot of Republicans now doing this gaslighting or this lying thing and saying, actually, it's the Democrats who are the ones who are doing this worse.

41:49So we had to respond in an emergency basis. Well, let me just make two points. Wrong. Number one, wrong. No Democrat has ever done any type of gerrymandering right before a midterm, not even halfway through a census. That's never happened before. But more simply, Democrats under former President Biden introduced H.R.1 as their first piece of legislation for the People Act, literally the legislation that would ban all of this partisan gerrymandering and unlawful gerrymandering across the country, introduced legislation to block it. You know who voted for blocking gerrymandering? Democrats. Democrats.

42:35You know who voted against it? The Republicans. Republicans said, no, we want the partisan and unlawful gerrymandering so they can do just this. So don't give me the, well, Democrats have done it worse. If you look in this specific state, Democrats wanted to get rid of gerrymandering in general. Tomorrow, if you put it up for a vote, Democrats would get rid of gerrymandering. Across the country because Democrats know if you played by fair rules on the issues, the Democrats will win if you played by the fair rules and Republicans know they would lose. So Republicans are going down this path. Popak, we're seeing Democrats fight back, but I want to take our last quick break on the show because I think it's a good way to combine two topics here, Texas Democrats fighting back, but also what we're seeing with the weaponization of the DOJ and how MAGA, how Trump, how they're now using the DOJ to go after Schiff, Letitia James, Obama, anything to distract from Epstein and anything to further Donald Trump's retribution tour.

43:41A reminder, Michael Popak's law firm has taken cases from Legal AF listeners and viewers and Midas Touch viewers, call 877-POPOC-AF, 877-POPOC-AF, or go to thepopocfirm.com, 877-POPOC-AF or thepopocfirm.com. If you've been injured, catastrophic injury, whether that's an auto accident, a trucking accident, you're the victim of sexual assault. If you know someone who is the victim of wrongful death, who died in an accident, medical malpractice, negligence, reach out to Popoc.

44:17Michael Popok:Sorry, on that point, just because people know I was there. I just met with the team that I work with across the country when I was in Chicago for three days. People saw my, that's how I got a little bit under the weather. And I just came back so, so jazzed up about representing our legal AFers and our mightest mighty. These are the lawyers that obtain billions, would it be, billions of dollars in forms of justice for people who have been injured. I met some of the that work on our team, met some of the top truck accident, car accident, ride share, Uber and Lyft accident, lawyers in the entire country.

44:54Michael Popok:And they're all plugged in for our Midas Mighty and Legal AFers. Homestretch on Legal AF. Reminders, subscribe to Michael Popak's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel. Subscribe to his sub stack, Legal AF sub stack. Let's take that last quick break of the show. You know, that feeling after your morning coffee, that crash, the jitters, the bloating. Yeah, I was getting all that every single day. But coffee was part of my routine and I wasn't ready to give it up. Then I found everyday dose and it completely changed the game. This isn't a coffee alternative. It's coffee with benefits. I'm talking 100 % Arabica coffee combined with functional mushrooms like lion's mane and chaga, plus collagen protein and nootropics.

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47:24Michael Popok:That's 20 % off your first order with code LEGALAF at liquidiv.com. Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to our sponsors. Discount codes are in the description below of those sponsors. Michael Popak, let's get back into it. Talk about Democrats fighting back. And then let's have you pivot to talk about what we're seeing with the DOJ going after New York Attorney General Letitia James. Now they're saying that Donald Trump is the victim. Donald Trump is a RICO victim. Donald Trump is a conspiracy victim. That's who the victim is of their case. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. And then they're going after Schiff for mortgage fraud.

48:05They're going after Obama and everyone in Obama's administration. They're opening up real criminal grand juries to do this. So, yes, they are talking points and headlines, but they have people crazy enough and fascist enough to actually do these things. Pope, I'll break it all down.

48:21Michael Popok:Well, let's have a moment of silence for the Department of Justice manual, because it died seven months ago. Pam Bondi put it out of its misery. It is supposed to be the Bible by which federal prosecutors do their job. They are never supposed to open up a criminal investigation, grand jury, or otherwise, especially announce it so that you're convicting the person in the media when he's innocent or she's innocent until proven guilty. You're never supposed to do that unless you have a good faith basis to believe that there is at least a level of probable cause that you will, as a prosecutor, obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt for a crime.

49:03Michael Popok:And if you don't have that, you cannot open up that investigation. But what we're watching, I'll do it in the second half, we're watching a conspiracy involving Donald Trump and his political hacks and pit bulls trying to tear down, again, to keep the theme going here, tear down the icons and leaders and idols, if you will, of the Democratic Party, try to undermine the Democratic Party, which is what we're exactly seeing in the Texas case. The narrative that the Trump administration wants, there's only a few of them. It's relatively juvenile, but you and I call it out, but it is what it is. They want to make the Republican Party the only party of law in order, a party that abuses the rule of law on purpose for political and financial gain.

49:52Michael Popok:And they want to have the Democrats portrayed as the party of lawlessness, whether that's Black Lives Matter or civil disobedience and protests of the streets or riots or protests that somehow turn into something else about immigration policy. We are the party of lawlessness. This is their narrative, and they are the party of law and order. We know what a joke that is, but that's what we're watching. So whenever you see a Governor Abbott in Texas going after 50 proud Texans, 50 proud Texans who have decided that the only way that they can defend the rights of their constituents is to break and bust the caucus because they're in the minority, but Texas has a caucus rule.

50:45Michael Popok:You have to have two-thirds of the House in Texas present to conduct business. And if you're short by one or you're short by 30, 40, or 50, no business can be conducted. They can sit around and twiddle their thumbs, but no justice, no action, no legislative action can be taken. And they were in special legislative session in Texas in order to redo the congressional maps. I was at a recent forum that I moderated where one of the election experts got up and gave a very good and simple metaphor for this, sports metaphor. Changing the maps six, five years after the census, right before the midterms, is the equivalent of the Democrats and Republicans go into the locker room tied at the half in a football game.

51:34Michael Popok:And while we're in the locker room, each other's, you know, his respective locker rooms, the referees come out, and they change all the white lines and chalk lines on the football field. They shorten some of them. They lengthen some of them. They make the Democrat end zone short, you know, smaller than the Republican end zone. And then you come out to play the game. It's like, and they blow the whistle. Like, here we go. Here's your football. Let's go. Like, what do you mean? The whole field has changed. The rules have changed the middle of the game. That's what we're watching for the Democrats.

52:02Michael Popok:So the only way for a minority that's been recognized in Texas since the 1870s to stop the steamrolling by the majority, to change the maps and undercut voting and voting rights and representation is to leave. And because of some Supreme Court rulings as recently as 2021 in Texas, they got to leave the state because arrest warrants don't go beyond Texas, as big a state as that is, and reach into places like Illinois. So they had to go somewhere. Now you've got a combination of the federal government, Trump, offering the support of the FBI to locate these people. I was just in Chicago. I'll leave it at that.

52:49Michael Popok:All right, I'll leave it at that. So FBI involved in a state issue about maps to track down legislators who are doing their job to protect their constituents. That's one. Two, Abbott announces to great fanfare he's going to send out the Texas Rangers. Good luck. You're going to have to get Illinois. I mean, this isn't like that old show when I was a kid, McLeod, now showing my age, when the sheriff who got reassigned to Manhattan with a cowboy hat started riding down the streets with a horse trying to do his job. I mean, that's not going to work in Illinois and in Chicago. So there was that. And then there was the announcements by the Abbott administration and their corrupt attorney general, Ken Paxton, that they were going to start filing lawsuits to remove these people for abandoning their job.

53:41Michael Popok:Now, interestingly enough, and I did a live report on this with Katie Fang on the Legal AF Substack last week, the only person at the time that they sued to try to get them back and to declare that they had abdicated was the one Asian American Texan. Not all 50, just this one guy. I'm like, really? That's what's going on now? So they're trying that. Now, the Texas Democrats are firing back with their own lawsuit, declaring that to have the court declare that you cannot remove me. There's a process for removal. You have to show abandonment. What we're doing is not abandonment. It's Texas Supreme Court approved majority caucus busting, right, to have your quorum.

54:28Michael Popok:Sorry, quorum, because I said caucus. I meant quorum. You can tell about cough medicine. Quorum busting. And that's been approved by the Texas Supreme Court as recently as 2021 when they did it then. Now, some people might be saying, what's this worth? It's worth a lot because in other states where this has happened, and sometimes these quorum busting goes on for six weeks, eight weeks or longer, it forces the majority to negotiate. And maybe instead of losing – this is all over five seats. The way the Texas Republicans redrew the maps, they eliminated minus five Democratic seats. That's a lot.

55:04Michael Popok:That's a lot where we're trying to cobble together a win at the midterms to take control of the House again. To lose five in Texas is a lot because then we have to gain five or more in other places, and that's hard. So that's what we're fighting over, this congressional map to eliminate Democratic seats. So maybe it ends up being two because they got to negotiate after these competing lawsuits get played out. You want to comment about that before I transition? No, I mean, I think you hit it. I think you hit it spot on. I mean, you know, I've been observing these Democratic Texas state legislators.

55:43They're in it for the long run. the way Texas maps work and the way their primaries work is that if Texas is unable to have a quorum really in the next four or five months, they're not going to be able to have the new maps in time for the midterms. And so I think we're really talking about, can they hold out until November or December or so? And that should do it. But, you know, my, but, But this is not something that the Texas state Democratic legislators want to do. And you heard from Newsom in the clip that I showed before. It's not something that Newsom, you know, Newsom, California, I, you Democrats, people who like democracy.

56:31We don't I don't want to see the gerrymandering in general. I supported the For the People Act. I supported McCain-Feingold's legislation to campaign finance reform. I would love our election system to look much more like Canada and Europe and elsewhere and other places where there's not money being injected into it, where, you know, I even like the idea of snap elections that happen pretty quickly. you can take a pulse of where the country is when these snap elections, you know, are called. I don't like our broken system. I think it's easy to fix it. I think that it's and it's very clear in these discussions.

57:08If your MAGA friend or Republican friend goes, well, Democrats be gerrymandering it also. They're gerrymandering. Democrats were the ones who put forward the bill to eliminate all of this. And you were the ones to block it. It's as simple as that. Shut up. Stop gaslighting me move on to the next issue because we want to ban it and you didn't want abandoned. So there's nothing else that needs to be discussed. Okay, Popak, let's move on. Let's talk finally about weaponization, Schiff, Letitia, Obama, and is this a bluff? Is this the headlines? But they put people like Ed Martin and the guy from the Northern District.

57:43Yeah, you put these people there. They're crazy enough to do it. These people do not follow manuals, do not follow rules, do not follow what the law is. And they could end up doing at Popeye.

57:56Michael Popok:So, well, I agree with you. I don't think it's a bluff, but they got the, I think ultimately they've now put shade on Letitia James and Schiff, not among our audience, but in general, because now they got a headline, you know, criminal probes opened against Letitia James, New York Attorney General, her office, and Senator Adam Schiff. And some people don't get beyond the headlines. I think that's what our audience likes, that we get beyond the headlines and explain why sometimes the headlines are wrong or out of context. But here, right off of this Wednesday night meeting at the White House that, again, lying to the American people.

58:33Michael Popok:You and I both did videos on this. Trump asked about it, about Epstein and FBI, firing of FBI, and him saying, I don't know anything about this meeting, but J.D. Vance is right here. J.D., is there a meeting at the White House tonight? Oh, fake news. Democrats try to distract. There was a meeting. it was attended by all the people that we reported on having been attended. And decisions were made. And we will see the results of those decisions, such as Todd Blanche having some phony press conference where he plays edited versions of his discussion with Ghislaine Maxwell to try to exonerate Donald Trump on the path to pardon for her, or goes on Joe Rogan, or something else like that.

59:13Michael Popok:We're going to see the benefits. We already saw the firing of the FBI agents. Now, within that slipstream of what just happened there in that news cycle, they then announce the attacks on these icons of democratic strength. Adam Schiff, former prosecutor, congressperson from your area, senator now, who led the charge against Donald Trump in the impeachment process in the House. He's done it in the Senate and also leading the charge on Jan 6th. So he has been, I won't even say, Donald Trump gave him a nickname, you know, and he's been a thorn in Donald Trump's side for a long time. Letitia James, and I'll get to what's happened.

59:56Michael Popok:Letitia James has been a thorn in Donald Trump's side, doing good trouble for a long time. She brought a successful civil fraud case against Donald Trump, proving to a New York State Supreme Court judge, Judge Angoran, that he committed, along with others in his family, along with others in his Trump organization, what we call in New York persistent fraud. under a unique statute that gives the power to the attorney general as the sheriff of Wall Street to go after financial crime and financial fraud, I guess is the better way to put it. She doesn't actually have much criminal prosecution powers.

1:00:34Michael Popok:She has tremendous civil enforcement powers. So she brings the case. It goes on for nine weeks. You and I cover it every day, literally every day. We had people in the courtroom. We had reporters that we relied on. And after nine weeks, dozens of witnesses, including Steve Witkoff, who is your effective secretary of state with no experience, running around getting his head handed to him by Putin, testifying on behalf of Donald Trump as some sort of real estate expert. And Goran concluded that Donald Trump inflated his assets in order to get out from under certain personal guarantees for banks and lower the interest rates and to brag to Forbes magazine and Fortune magazine about his wealth and deflated his assets in real estate when he wanted to save on taxes.

1:01:26Michael Popok:and he entered a$458 million judgment. And we've been waiting, and this is actually a crime. I mean, I've waited for the first department in New York sometimes, but not nine, ten months for a ruling about whether – it's really – they're going to cut that$450 million down to size, maybe in half, but I do not think, although now we'll have to see, I do not think that the first department appellate division in New York is going to throw out the judgment. But we've been waiting. And in that time, Donald Trump's able to perpetuate mischief because if it had got affirmed, it would be a little bit better.

1:02:03Michael Popok:So that's Letitia James's office. She also went after the National Rifle Association, rightly so, a New York corporation at the time for fraud and other things. went after Wayne LaPierre, the flamboyant head of the NRA, and took him down for embezzlement. And Donald Trump didn't like that either because Donald Trump likes Americans being shot in public schools and in churches and things and supports the NRA. So now that he's got back in power and he's got the most corrupt Department of Justice in history, he can have Pam Bondi. So here's the conspiracy I teased at the top of our podcast. You've got the Nepo baby and Bill Pulte, who comes from the Pulte building family in the Southeast.

1:02:45Michael Popok:Every other home in Atlanta was built by Pulte Homes. My late brother-in-law worked for Pulte Homes. So that Nepo baby gets put in. He's a little baby Trumper with political aspirations. He gets to be the head of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are kind of two semi-private regulatory lending guarantee organizations in the real estate market. Donald Trump uses him for a number of things. One, he's the chief attack dog of Jay Powell at the Federal Reserve. And he lobbed in a complaint alleging that Schiff and Letitia James both committed mortgage run. Lands on the desk of a willing conspiratorial Pam Bondi.

1:03:27Michael Popok:She says, looks good to me. What about the Department of Justice manual? Oh, no, that died seven months ago. I threw that out seven months ago. and she then makes a criminal referral and grand juries get open on fraud. What's the fraud for Schiff? Bullshit. In order to be a senator representing a state, the Constitution says, at the time of the election, you have to be resident in that state. And he was. But after he got elected, he bought a house in Maryland. And for the next six years has been listing that as his primary residence. So maybe he got a quarter of a point discount on the mortgage rate as a result.

1:04:05Michael Popok:And at the time he runs for re-election, five years from now, he's going to have to reestablish primary residency in California, which he will. But that's the requirement. And I'm sure he's got an ethics opinion that tells him exactly that, that you don't have to be a primary resident of the state for the entire duration of the six years because his day job is in Washington. And so he has his primary residence there. He will, I'm sure, reestablish residency should he choose to seek reelection in five years. So that's the mortgage fraud, which he already wrote a letter back to Pulte and told him exactly that and said he had ethics advisory opinions to support him.

1:04:46Michael Popok:Yet they opened up the investigation. So the New York Times has to have that banner. On Letitia James, she owns a couple of pieces of property. One is in Virginia. It's an investment property. I think her father's involved in it. And one is in New York, a multifamily. On the multifamily, it's listed, and I've owned property. I own property in New York, and it's a confusing Byzantine process. It's listed. It was built as a five-unit multifamily, but I think they tore down a wall, and it became a four-unit. Why does that matter? Because as a four-unit multifamily, you get more favorable interest rates than if it's a five-unit.

1:05:23Michael Popok:So she bought a four, well, it was built as a five, but she bought it as a four, and she took out a loan as if it were a four. Four, five, is any of this criminal intent, criminal mind mens rea to commit mortgage fraud? And she's got a great lawyer, Abby Lowell, who you and I know is representing her. So that's the mortgage fraud paperwork issue for Letitia James. Ironic that, and I'll tell you who's investigating her in a minute. Then you've got this Virginia home and allegedly on the line listed for either co-borrower or whatever, they listed her father as her husband line instead of as the co-borrower when it's her father, as if she was trying to mislead the broker or the bank about the fact that her father's her father and not her husband.

1:06:11Michael Popok:Sounds like a bank issue. If you've ever done a mortgage, there's a mile-high pile of documents to be signed, and she might have missed which line the person is on. I think I did the same thing. I signed an entire set of documents, like in my wife's, and I'm a lawyer, in my wife's signature block instead of where I was, and I had to redo them. It happens. That's not criminal fraud. Now, let's look at the continued conspirators. Who's investigating the mortgage fraud? Ed Martin. Who's Ed Martin? He's so MAGA Trumper and Jan Sixer that he can't even get confirmed by the United States Senate to be the DC US attorney.

1:06:51Michael Popok:That's why we got Janine Pirro, because he's so MAGA MAGA. He's the guy that said, I'll do anything Elon Musk says. I'll prosecute anybody he tells me to. Okay. He defended Jan Six insurrectionists. And I think this is the thing that got him, he lost a job over, is that he was on both sides of a case. He was the defense lawyer for a Jan Sixer, and he signed the dismissal after the pardons on behalf of the federal government for the same guy. He couldn't even grab another guy. So he signed his own. It's like totally ridiculous. So what'd they do with him? They might've made it worse for us. They put him as the head of the weaponization committee under Pam Bondi.

1:07:33Michael Popok:Well, the weaponization committee is now weaponized because he's now the prosecutor as some sort of quote unquote special attorney, not independent counsel, not special prosecutor, special attorney with whatever powers Bondi gave him to go after these mortgage issues. Separately, the last part of the conspiracy is John Sarkoni, who you and I covered a lot in the last four or five weeks. He's the guy that also couldn't get confirmed in the Northern District of New York, upstate New York, as a federal prosecutor. So she made him, Pam Bondi, the acting interim special attorney with the powers of the Northern District, whatever it was.

1:08:15Michael Popok:He's also got a couple of problems. One relates to his own residence. He claimed that he lived at a certain location. And when the local newspaper went to go check out that location, it was an abandoned, vacant, boarded up building. And the response for Sarkoni was to fire the media outlet and not allow them to cover to any press conferences with him. All right. So he listed an abandoned building as his primary residence. And he's the one going after Letitia James and the attorney general's office. And he also, there's some mixed reportings about whether he told the truth or lied about somebody, a knife-wielding attacker who happened to be brown or an immigrant that attacked him.

1:09:00Michael Popok:There's a videotape that suggests that that didn't go down exactly the way he said, that he tried to make himself more courageous and the attack more egregious than it really was. In either event, he's the guy that's now not only investigating, he's investigating Letitia James' and Letitia James' office. So now you've got the attorney general, a state law enforcement entity, the New York attorney general, being invested by a local U.S. attorney in the Northern District up in Albany of New York. Talk about that lastly in a moment. In order to find out whether she violated Donald Trump's civil rights because she obtained a civil fraud conviction against Donald Trump for$450 million and went after the NRA.

1:09:46Michael Popok:I mean, so they're going after her for abuse of power in her office. There's many, many problems with a federal prosecutor trying to go after a state law enforcement agency in our system of federalism, which will be played out. You and I will be teaching our audience about if that case gets beyond the grand jury. Why is it up in the Northern District of New York? Why is it not in Manhattan or Brooklyn? Because of the jury. Manhattan and Brooklyn are very liberal juries. Donald Trump got convicted in New York, in Manhattan, in a state court proceeding. His corporations got convicted in Manhattan.

1:10:26Michael Popok:And Brooklyn's worse in terms of being on the liberal spectrum. More north you go in New York, all the way up to Albany, the better chance you got of getting moderates, more importantly, right-wing MAGA up there. That's where Elise Stefanik comes from and other MAGA. Even though it's a bright blue state, there are pockets of red, especially as you go north. So that's why they're prosecuting it up there. That's why they want the grand jury up there. There's things that she could do to kind of change venue, and we'll talk about that at another time. But that is the conspiracy. It's Pulte to Bondi, Bondi to Martin, Martin to Sarkoni, and we're a lesser nation because of it.

1:11:10Going back and taking this episode full circle, all of the skilled prosecutors, the career prosecutors, the top people at the DOJ, they've either been fired or they most likely quit. So now you're left with the worst of the worst, bad lawyers, bad people, not smart people, evil people, dangerous people. And that's who's running this. And then when they're not allowed to even hold the position, whether it's like an Alina Habba, whether it's like a Sarconi, whether it's this guy in the Central District of California, we haven't talked about him, whatever, they don't leave. They don't leave. They get they get asked or they get fired basically because they term out because you can only be interim for a set period of time.

1:12:06Then they get fired by the judges who have the say if you can keep them on and extend them. Then they get fired by the federal judges. And then most people just I mean, and this to me speaks of the sociopathic MAGA movement of norms and whatever. You know, most people, you know, you get fired, you leave, you leave, you literally leave the office. You know, and Alina Habba, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. I'm staying. I'm not going anywhere. Get out. I'm not leaving. But the problem is when we, the people who follow the norms are like, all right, you're just annoying. I know that I can do just fine.

1:12:45You want that position stay. And that's when these idiots win. That's when these fascists win. When we like, okay, enough, just, just, just, you want the Nobel peace prize. Just give them the Nobel peace prize. Right. I mean, just think about the mindset of Trump saying that too. I want it. I get the Nobel Peace. And then you, and then they want more and then they want more and then they take more. And so we've had people, we just want to go, I know you watching, you want to spend time with your family and have hobbies and go out and go for walks and go to movies and watch TV or read books, you know, and just do things where these miserable MAGA people, they just want to make you miserable.

1:13:27Like that makes the, that's their hobby, right? Like where you're out there, hey, I want to go to the beach. I want to do that. They're thinking, how can I hurt someone? And that makes them happy. And eventually that wears people down and they do it in such a relentless nonstop way where eventually people who abide by norms say, ah, just keep the fine. You want to, you want that position so badly. And we can't though right now, we can't have that mentality. That's what Donald Trump's done his whole life, right? He doesn't take no, He keeps on doing it over and over again. He doesn't care. He blames whatever.

1:14:04And it's just a fountain of evil spewing over and over and over again, nonstop. But that's where we've got to stand up and say, stop it. Stop this crap. It ain't happening. It's not happening. I'm putting it all on the line for this. That's what we're going to do at Legal AF. That's what we're going to do at the Midas Touch Network each and every day. We appreciate you for watching. Everybody, hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers here. Subscribe to Michael Popak's legal YouTube channel, Legal AF. Subscribe to the Legal AF Substack, the Midas Touch Substack. Let's get those platforms growing.

1:14:42A reminder, Michael Popak's law firm, you all wanted him to start it. He's representing a ton of our viewers right now who have cases. So if you've been in a catastrophic accident or you know somebody who has, whether that's a trucking accident, a car accident, medical malpractice, sexual assault, wrongful death, call thepopocfirm.com or go to thepopocfirm.com or call 877 -POPOC-AF, 1-877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. free consultation reach out it's free the popock firm.com 1-877-POPOCAF they'll review the case see if it's something they take and even if they take the case they do it on a contingency meaning they don't get paid unless you get paid thank you everybody so much for watching popock feel better man and thank you everybody and we'll see you next time on legal air next week