Legal AF Full Episode 9/20/2025

23:47That's 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com. Sexual assault victims, sexual harassment victims and survivors are calling Popoc's firm medical malpractice victims. And again, if you've been injured in a car accident or trucking accident, give Popoc a call. Also, the Popak Substack, the Legal AF Substack is crushing it. Subscribe to the Legal AF Substack. Subscribe as well to the Legal AF YouTube channel on their way to 1 million subscribers. When we come back, Popak is going to let it rip. Let's take our first quick break.

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26:59It was behind closed doors, so we don't have the tape of it. But apparently he doesn't remember. He supports the decision to give the sweetheart deal to Epstein, but he's also never read any of the 40 victim statements. And he never was really all that much aware of the 53 page indictment that his line prosecutors wanted to file against Epstein, but he doesn't remember any other details, really. But Popak, make it all make sense, Michael Popak.

27:29Michael Popok:I'll try. I'll try to put it through the lens of a federal litigator and trial lawyer. There's an old line, as I was watching Kash Patel, I joked with you guys offline that there's an old line about intelligence. When you keep your mouth shut, doubts about your intelligence remain. But when you open your mouth, all doubts are erased. And watching Kash Patel, the more he talked, the more obscenely unqualified to be occupying the chair of the director of the FBI, the more apparent it has become. And the cross-examinations that we watch, I was chomping at the bit. I would love to be on the committee and advising the committee about how to do some of the questioning.

28:08Michael Popok:Some of it was done really expertly, as you just showed. The takeaway from two days of not one, but two days of cross-examination of Kash Patel, first in the Senate and then in the House, is that they, and this is while Donald Trump split screen was trying to do a royal visit to get away from the Epstein debacle. the Charlie Kirk overreach on the First Amendment backlash, the, you know, after he went after Jimmy Kimmel, because he overplayed his hand, the backlash over the economy, and Lisa Cook, terrible, terrible, you know, it's enough to fill, you know, a whole administration's worth of bad news, let alone one week.

28:55Michael Popok:And then he's hoping Kash Patel is going to do okay. And I've never seen a man actually drown until I saw Cash Patel in two days. We just showed a lot of the house clips. And he's easy to cross-examine to within an inch of his life because it's a person that has a secret and he wants to hide it from the American people, which is he knows that Donald Trump's name is lousy throughout the entirety of the thousands, hundreds of thousands of pages of Epstein files. That is the reason why we had cash. And I would have added another another cross. My cross would have started this way. Before you became the director of the FBI as a right wing podcaster and somebody trying to collect money, you peddled in the conspiracy theories about the Epstein and trying to bring everybody to justice who was involved with that child sex trafficking.

29:51Michael Popok:rig. Isn't that right, sir? And you made a lot of money about that, you know, grifting off of that issue. And then when you got into office at the highest level of the FBI, your minions, those that support you, were very, very happy that you and Pam Bondi would get to the bottom of this conspiracy theory and bring people to justice related to the Epstein files, right, sir? In fact, in February, after you'd only been in office a short amount of time, you and Pam Bondi co-authored a letter in which you promised the American people that no rock would be unturned, that no document would be withheld, and that everything would be released.

30:27Michael Popok:That was in February, right, sir? And since February until today, the entirety of the release is comprised of 33 ,000 pages, 98 % of which we've already seen, but nothing else. And what's the big difference? The big difference is that in March through May, the FBI scoured the documents looking for Donald Trump's name, found it, reported it to Donald Trump, and Donald Trump told you not to release the files. Isn't that right, sir? Is that about right? And let him go, what's the alphabet? What's my number? What's my name? You know, that's how I maybe there's a clip where somebody did that. But that's the first thing I would have went after with Kash Patel and just hoist him on his own batard.

31:11Michael Popok:But this was a very effective to show the American people, because this is our opportunity. This is the opportunity for the opposition, right? The party that's not in power can do some things. You can write nasty letters. You can issue subpoenas that may or may not be ignored. But here, during hearings and oversight hearings, you have to frame the issues for the American people. And Kash Patel drowned live on national television, including, as we've played before, where he was cross-examined about the Epstein photos of Donald Trump. This is Michael Wolff's testimony or his statements that were played on Legal AF that ended up in the hearing room played by Ted Lieu, that he, Epstein, saw photos, and so did Wolff, of Donald Trump with young girls on his lap.

31:56Michael Popok:and where did those photos go after the search warrant and where did the safe contents go for Epstein? And that was Raskin and Ted Lieu and all of them. Cash Patel showed a complete ignorance about anything that goes to his job running the FBI. He didn't know who Dylann Roof was. They're so hell-bent on martyring and venerating Charlie Kirk, that they don't know the basics of our history about mass murder, civil rights violations, and the rest. When the back and forth between Swalwell and him was very interesting, because it did remind me that Kash Patel for a short time was in the Obama Department of Justice purportedly doing prosecutions for counterterrorism.

32:48Michael Popok:Oh, how he has fallen since he He left the Obama administration into, as Jasmine Crockett called him, the most unqualified FBI director of all time. None of that helped Donald Trump. And then he lied, either ill-prepared because this is their other – it's a weird strategy. You and I who've represented people and got them ready for depositions, including me when I worked in corporate America, getting APEX officers and maybe you two ready for their depositions. You know, you prep them to within an inch of their life. There's some things you're like, well, you don't need to read that document, but, you know, wait to see if they use that exhibit.

33:26Michael Popok:But generally, you want your people prepared. They have obviously sent in, whether it's a Department of Justice lawyer to answer questions to a federal judge, or it's somebody like Kash Patel or others that go before the House or the Senate. They don't want them prepared. So they look ill prepared. They're sort of the sacrificial lambs pushed out to slaughter by Donald Trump and his and his the true leaders of the administration like Stephen Miller. Because like, no, don't let him know that fact. It's better that he doesn't know it and look stupid, such as his reference to court orders presenting, preventing him from releasing files.

34:02Michael Popok:First of all, that popped into his head on the second day. On the first day, he never said he wasn't releasing the files, the Epstein files, because there's a court order that he can't do it. That's something that they jammed into his head between the first testimony and the second testimony. And then he got that completely wrong, as Goldman, as Representative Goldman, a real former prosecutor, pointed out. We had three – Donald Trump tried to feed the monster of his own MAGA with Epstein files in the version of the grand jury testimony, which consists of three witnesses who were summary witnesses for law enforcement.

34:46Michael Popok:No victims testified at the grand jury. No clients testified. Epstein didn't testify. Maxwell didn't testify. Nobody testified. It's a very short, as Judge Berman pointed out, it's one day of testimony. Okay. And they said, well, we're going to, transparency, Epstein files, we're going to redefine them as the grand jury files. So they went to three different judges, Rosenberg in Florida, Engelmeyer, who sat over Maxwell. Well, he took over from the judge who had sat over the Maxwell trial because she got elevated to the Second Circuit. And Judge Berman, who was and is the judge over the Epstein prosecution.

35:28Michael Popok:And Engelmeyer and Berman, like a week apart, said virtually the same thing. You're barking up the wrong tree. All of the files, and Berman really brought it home, all, all of the files that you claim in your own filings here before my court that the U.S. public needs to see. It's of great public importance, which is your grounds for me to violate the grand jury rules of secrecy under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 4E. you all of that public interest and public demand and public clamor you can satiate and fix by releasing the documents that you have acknowledged are under your command don't blame the federal judges because all the only thing we're sitting on is grand jury transcripts which and i've looked and he said both engelmeyer and berman said i've looked at it in camera there's not much there there, that you have it hard.

36:25Michael Popok:The victim's own civil trials led to more information. We'll get to Acosta in a second. So somebody briefed Kash Patel and told him, or he read those orders, and the takeaway was, I can't release the Epstein files? Look, Bill Barr in one of those other secret closed door depositions, former Attorney General of the United States under Donald Trump, said that Pam Bondi has full authority to release the files. She's got full authority to do a lot of things. We've never seen volume two of Jack Smith's investigation and the results of his investigation against Donald Trump. We only saw volume one. We didn't see the Mar-a-Lago one.

37:08Michael Popok:Where is it? Burned in a fireplace somewhere in the Department of Justice, I'm sure. She hasn't released that either. We should make a FOIA request for that, by the way, as an entity. So now you go forward to Alex Acosta, who I don't want to say I know. He's not a friend of mine. But I did practice in South Florida at the same time he was moving around as a lawyer. And then he got elevated, a Cuban-American Federalist Society guy that became the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer for Epstein, now major shill for Ghislaine Maxwell on television. who got a tremendous gift present, as we know now from the Epstein emails, that included a$1.8 million Excel spreadsheet of gifts that went to both victims and other rich and famous white guys.

38:02Michael Popok:We'll just leave it at that for now. So Alan Dershowitz negotiates. When he's not busy, as the press has reported, Julie K. Brown included, when he's busy not going after victims and trying to make them recant their stories, he's signing this non-prosecution agreement on behalf of Epstein. with Alex Acosta's office, without consultation with the victims, to allow Epstein to plead guilty to a state charge of soliciting prostitution from a minor, which totally flips the script. The minor is no longer a victim. It's not raping a girl. It's like the girl is running a business, and this is almost like it's consensual.

38:46Michael Popok:Soliciting child prostitution is raping a little girl. I mean, I don't know how else you can put this. And that was the charge that put Epstein away for a very short amount of time and let him go back to raping girls at a child sex trafficking ring with the help of Ghislaine Maxwell. By the way, Patel also effed up the Ghislaine Maxwell rehabilitation tour to get her a pardon because he's like the only people that were involved with the child sex trafficking ring have been indicted and convicted. Okay. I thought Ghislaine Maxwell was a victim that needed to be given a cushy federal prison spot on her way to a pardon because she bailed out Donald Trump by vouching for him.

39:29Michael Popok:You know, and then and then he and then, of course, Patel forgot the talking points that he was supposed to do to throw Democrats under the bus because he said, well, there's nobody in there. This is my favorite part. I haven't seen the files. I haven't reviewed all the files, but in the files I haven't reviewed, there's nobody else involved with child sex trafficking besides Jeffrey Epstein and whoever else. I'm like, oh, what happened to the Clinton talking point? You forgot that, right? So I'm not sure as I agree with Cory Booker, who on the first day said, sir, I'm not sure you're long for your job.

40:07Michael Popok:I don't think I'm going to have to see you again in another oversight hearing. Talk about throwing a drowning man an anvil or the anchor, which is what Booker did so eloquently. Alex Acosta doesn't surprise me. He got rewarded for his non-prosecution agreement that left Epstein effectively on the street even longer. He got rewarded by Trump, of all people, by giving him the labor secretary position in the first administration, which he had to leave because of all of the public uproar about his involvement in the Epstein cover up and then went off not doing much in Miami ever since. So he doesn't want to remember anything because it's not going to help him in his career in his late stages.

40:54Michael Popok:So he didn't remember anything much the way Ghislaine Maxwell conveniently forgot most of what she said, including emails that she had wrote that Bloomberg got their hands on two weeks ago. So where are we with all of this? The Epstein cover-up scandals swirling around the Trump administration continues unabated. And it's stench. I'll leave it on this, Ben. The stench of Epstein. If Donald Trump thought, you know what I need right now? I need a royal dinner. I need horses and I need crowns and I need, people just kissing my ass for a period. I need that. He gets welcomed at Windsor Castle instead by a mini documentary about his close personal friendship with the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein projected on Windsor Castle by Leading Donkeys, a resistance group, which plays for about five, we won't play it here, but plays for about five minutes, including a timeline, his comments about about Virginia Giuffre and his relationship with young girls.

42:00Michael Popok:That's how that started. There he is. That's all he wanted. He wanted to take measurements for a future golden chariot or carriage that he can have built before he leaves at the White House. But that's not what happened. Because as we always say, Ben, when you travel, your troubles follow on the plane right behind you and land right behind you. I just think of the contrast as he demolishes the Rose Garden and turns it into club Rose Garden that belonged to we the people. Now it's a club for his rich right-wing oligarch cabal. I think about the trees 200 years old being ripped down from the White House lawn that were planted when Andrew Jackson was president and during the period of Chester Arthur, that they're just ripping apart to build a 90 ,000 square foot ballroom.

42:52Trump said that he was the only donor that he was going to pay for it himself. Remember that? Now, apparently, he's selling off like little pieces of it, 5 million a pop to companies like large. I'm not even sure if they're foreign companies, domestic. We have no transparency over it. But for the price of$5 million, you get your name etched on the White House ballroom, which I did a whole hot take on this. I think it's utterly illegal and unlawful. And frankly, I'm pissed that nobody's filed a lawsuit to block the ballroom because to me, it's symbolic of Trump's authoritarianism. It's to me, patently illegal.

43:28We have corporations building a ballroom that belongs to the White House, which is we, the people. And if anything, it's Congress's power. Congress can't just cede their appropriations power of funding construction at the White House to private companies that build ballrooms. I mean, you're a temporary resident of that White House and you rip it to shreds. Imagine like you're renting an apartment and then you just demolish it and you rebuild a new one. I mean, what do you think the owner's going to? We're the owner. The American people own the White House. The taxpayers own the White House. And then you have him gallivanting in the UK in golden carriages.

44:05It's ridiculous looking. Before we take our break, though, Popak, pit briefly on the Eastern District of Virginia lead prosecutor, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who was just he was fired. He resigned, but he was forced out by the Trump regime because he wouldn't prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James. So the contrast between kind of Kash Patel doing whatever the hell that was, and then this United States attorney who followed the law, I can't prosecute New York Attorney General Disney. She didn't commit a crime. And then that was enough for the Trump regime to say you're out and then to try to find someone who will try to prosecute her, I guess.

44:47But at this point, the prosecution's tainted where even when they do try to prosecute her now, she's going to say, well, you fired the other guy because he found no evidence on me. And it'll likely get dismissed. And then a judge will call the Trump regime out and then they'll say, oh, it's some leftist radical George H.W. Bush judge. You know, those you know, those radical Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush judges. Popak, just briefly tell us about Virginia and then we'll take a break.

45:14Michael Popok:Yeah, absolutely. So add Eric Seibert to a long list of Department of Justice leaders who have said, nope, we're not going to violate the Department of Justice principles of prosecution, the Department of Justice manual, our professional ethics, our duty as a officer of the court to conjure up phony criminal claims or allegations or prosecutions. against the political rival of Donald Trump because he tells us to. Seibert had worked for over 10 years in the Eastern District of Virginia. He had been the counterintelligence chief and one that went after drug dealers. He was supported by both senators in Virginia, Warner and the other one.

46:06Michael Popok:Warner and Tim, who's the guy? Tim Kaine. That was in May. So for Donald Trump to say, I got rid of him because he's supported by blue. I'm like, that was May. This is October. You got rid of him because he refused to find a mortgage fraud case where none exists against Letitia James. This is Donald. Look, we heard about this already. This is the let me give you the links in the conspiracy chain, the complicity chain. And Donald Trump has Bill Pulte, the Nepo baby heir to the Pulte construction fortune, who bought his way into a position as the head of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage liquidity entities.

46:50Michael Popok:He has him do a social media post, cherry picking a couple of documents, claiming that everybody in the Democratic Party is committing mortgage fraud. His version of mortgage fraud is you have two primary home residences, two homes, two homes or mortgages that you said you were going to live in as your primary residence. You can only have one. All right. That then the next step of the chain is Donald Trump then retweets it or does a mean social media post about it. Then Pam Bondi gets a letter that is that is choreographed to come from Bill Pulte on a criminal referral. She then announces she's opening a criminal referral.

47:24Michael Popok:She then sends it to Ed Martin, who's in charge of the weaponization of the Department of Justice. I know his title is against the weaponization, but he's just the weaponizer of the Department of Justice. She then appoints some sort of other MAGA sycophant in John Sarkoni up in the Northern District of New York to open up an investigation against Letitia James and her New York Attorney General's office. And Martin's going to do the mortgage side and he's going to do the other side. And all this is going on. And they get the headlines that they want. Adam Schiff and Letitia James, federal probes opened up against them.

47:58Michael Popok:Okay. So we have that. Then you have, you got to get prosecutors to bring the cases. So why Virginia? Everybody who's out of short pants, I think knows that the New York Attorney General lives in New York. She works out of two major offices, one in Albany, New York in the Capitol, the other one in New York City. She does not live in Virginia. Okay. She bought a property in Virginia. Could have been for her father. She had a niece fill out with a power of attorney some of the closing documents. In those closing documents, someone checked the box that said she was going to live there as her primary residence.

48:40Michael Popok:I think her father actually was going to live there as a primary residence. But other documentation that the bank had that Bill Pulte ignored said that everybody on the lender side knew that this was not her primary residence because the attorney general of New York doesn't live in Virginia. So no fraud. They give that file to Seibert's office and they go find a fraud and bring a case. Meaning he's got to not only, he's got to like get a grand jury. More importantly, in order to comply with the Department of Justice Manual and the principles of federal prosecution, you can't even start an investigation unless you believe there's probable cause to believe that you can sustain a conviction, meaning through appeal.

49:21Michael Popok:He was like the power of attorney by the niece and with other documents that say the bank knew that this was a second home. And what am I prosecuting? And so he wasn't going to do it. It was a race to see whether he was going to get fired or resigned, but he's not the only one. How many stories have we done on this show already? We've got the Eastern District of Tennessee prosecutor who refuses to bring phony charges against the Brego Garcia and gets shown the door. We've got Danielle Sassoon, who in New York was a rock star and considered to be the leading candidate to be, she's an Orthodox Jewish woman prosecutor, who was considered to be the leading candidate to be the U.S.

50:04Michael Popok:attorney for the Southern District of New York. She resigns because she's ordered by Emil Bovee, who's now on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, but was Donald Trump's favorite criminal defense lawyer, to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams because they had an unholy deal in which Adams would destroy the sanctuary city status of Manhattan in return for saving his bacon. And she said, dismiss the indictment? We're coming to you with a superseding indictment because we've got more bribery charges. And when she wouldn't do it, she quit and published an eight-page letter in the New York Times, which we'll talk about a little bit later on this podcast.

50:43Michael Popok:So there's a whole series of prosecutors that are just looking at this and going, nope, not doing it. And they're heroes as far as, and I go further, Ben. Anybody that is left now 10 months into this Department of Justice that's serving in the Department of Justice, this is now, you know what the Department of Justice is. And as I've said, it's the most corrupt Department of Justice we've ever had in our history. And you staying there, you are now complicit. And if that means that you are violating your oath as a lawyer, you're violating your oath as a prosecutor, and for you to say, well, I'm just doing my job as a career bureaucrat and civil servant and prosecute.

51:28Michael Popok:No, no, you're doing the bidding of Donald Trump and his and his corrupt Department of Justice. And you are now just as responsible in history's eyes and in the public's eyes as if you were Donald Trump. Leave now. There's plenty of law firms and public interest groups that would be happy to hire you. Democracy Forward is hiring dozens of people who have left the Department of Justice because they refuse to be used as a tool by Donald Trump's authoritarian abuse of the rule of law. When we come back, I want to talk briefly about what Senator Schiff, a former prosecutor, told me how this is actually impacting trials as well and how it's harming the ability of prosecutors to get convictions in meritorious cases as well.

52:12I'll talk about that. Talk about Donald Trump's loss in the frivolous$15 billion lawsuit. We'll talk a little bit more about Trump's attack on free speech. And finally, an update on Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor who was unlawfully fired by Donald Trump. And the lower courts thus far have said, you can't fire her. She's been in place. She's still at the Federal Reserve. A reminder, Michael Popak has started his own law firm. Thanks to really all of you who told him he needs to start one. So if you or anybody you know has been injured in a car accident or a trucking accident, If you know someone who's the victim in a wrongful death case or negligence, reach out to thepopocfirm.com or call 877-POPOC-AF.

52:55That's 877-POPOC-AF or call or go to thepopocfirm.com. Also, check out Michael Popoc's Substack, the Legal AF Substack. Wherever you go on Substack, just search Legal AF and help the Legal AF YouTube channel get to 1 million subscribers. go there now, subscribe to Legal AF, and don't forget to support our sponsors. We're going to bring you our sponsors right now. We'll be back with the last segment, Home Stretch of Legal AF coming right up.

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56:04Michael Popok:covering everything from care wishes to guardianship to power of attorney. No wonder Trust & Will has an overall excellent rating with thousands of five-star reviews and has already been used by hundreds of thousands of families. Add some peace of mind to your future with Trust & Will. Go to trustandwill.com slash legal AF for 20 % off. That's 20 % off at trustandwill.com slash legal AF. Welcome back to Legal AF. I want to talk about Trump instantly losing that$15 billion lawsuit that he filed against the New York Times. New York Times didn't even have to file any opposition, response, motion to dismiss the judge on his own.

56:46George H.W. Bush appointee said, this is ridiculous. This is a ridiculous document. This is not a complaint. This looks like some bizarre press release. Don't file these things in my court. I'll give you 28 days to file a new one, but I don't know what this is. This is some political speech you're giving. This is not a complaint. Go back, reevaluate your life. And just mocked Donald Trump. We'll talk about that briefly. I want to talk about what Senator Schiff told me because it was an interesting perspective that I just hadn't thought about before. What he said is, you know, juries across the country, like we hear about the grand juries in Washington, D.C., don't trust the federal government at all right now.

57:27And so criminal defense lawyers who are arguing in favor, who are arguing, you know, in closing arguments or, you know, when these cases go to trial, even when they're not political cases, if it's a drug case, counterterrorism case, espionage case, sex trafficking case, Just think about if you're the criminal defense lawyer and you're representing someone accused of sex trafficking, if you are representing someone who's accused of sexual assault, if you are representing someone who's accused of counterterrorism or money laundering or anything, Medicare fraud, you name it. What would your argument be to the jury?

58:05Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we see that this is being run by Donald Trump and Kash Patel. I'm going to read for you the statements that they've been making about the FBI and the DOJ, and they're attacking their own DOJ and their FBI. You know, this is a political witch hunt against our client by the regime because they're trying to jack up their numbers for Doge or they're trying to do this. Whatever the angle is. Whether it's actually true or not true, you could as a criminal defense lawyer zealously representing your client. It's it doesn't matter because Trump's implying that none of his none of the prosecutions by the Justice Department are going through a valid process.

58:58So just think about it this way. The grand jury in Washington, D.C., which has rejected, it's getting what, to like a dozen cases at this point that have been brought before it. In grand jury situations, there's no criminal defense lawyer. It's just the prosecutor and the grand jury. There's no judge in the room. So the fact that grand juries are rejecting requests that criminal defendants be indicted when there's no judge or defense lawyer in the room. Now think about cases, not just in that D.C., but across the country where you have a criminal defense lawyer. Now imagine a skilled criminal defense lawyer in a Medicare fraud case or a money laundering case or a wire fraud case or a case relating to immigration.

59:47Whatever the case is, you just go up there and you say, look at this regime. Look at what they're saying. Of course, it's politicized. All you need is one juror to get a hung jury. And what prosecutors have told me and what Senator Schiff told me is that, yeah, the actual like hardworking prosecutors and an actual hardworking FBI agents, not this Cash Patel clown show and the political people that Trump puts in place. Like they're like weak. We're struggling to like even even get convictions. And also FBI agents have to then testify at these at these trials. So imagine you're the FBI agent and you're now being cross examined for all the stuff that Kash Patel and Trump is saying.

1:00:30So I just want to give you that perspective because that's not been getting enough attention and it's creating a lot more harder for prosecutors to get convictions. And then also the fact that just think about all of the crimes and counterterrorism operations that are not being investigated, that's not being done because we don't have qualified people and they got rid of all the top FBI agents. So just think about that as well. So with that said, Popak, focus here on three topics. I'll let you take them all and once if you want to let you go through them. Talk about the New York Times case. But to me, that links with Trump's FCC really attacking Jimmy Kimmel because it's a attack on the First Amendment generally.

1:01:14And it comes in different forms. Direct government coercion, intimidation, Brendan Carr threatening licenses, threatening to shut down networks if you keep on people who do jokes about Trump. And then there's separately while that takes place and they're they happen in parallel paths. Then Trump sues you as a citizen individually and then links them together. Oh, you've got to pay me if you don't want the government to come after you. So they're intertwined. And then you have the final layer, which is kind of related to what we talked about with Eastern Virginia prosecutor. shooter is then Trump just hopes that the Supreme Court blesses all this ridiculousness.

1:01:59So tie it all together.

1:02:00Michael Popok:All right, I'm going to try to tie it all together. Here we go. New York time. One of my favorite events from this week was Judge Meridae, handpicked by Donald Trump in his courtroom. For this case, when we read the hundreds of paragraphs of complete and utter narcissistic, egotistical BS. You and I and everybody else that looked at it concluded that this was not a serious lawsuit, much the way none of the lawsuits that Donald Trump files against media is a serious lawsuit. But it was a, to paraphrase Judge Middlebrooks, when he fined Donald Trump a million dollars three years ago with Alina Habba, it's a political screed masquerading as a lawsuit.

1:02:44Michael Popok:When I saw it, I said that whoever is assigned to it, and this is a Republican appointed G.W. Bush appointee, chief judge of the Middle District of Florida, which sits in Tampa, and I'm a member of the Middle District. He said that I said, well, this is going to be it's going to be made quick work. I actually said this is right off the bat. This is a violation of Rule 8 about short and concise statements, notwithstanding the fact that it's subject to a motion to dismiss, because even with this prolix 230-whatever-paragraph complaint, nowhere in there is the proper elements to support defamation and actual malice.

1:03:26Michael Popok:In fact, when you got to actual malice, which is a term of art in the law that's required for a public figure like Donald Trump to prove under a case that has the New York Times' name in it from the 1970s, Sullivan and New York Times, you have to prove not just that the statement is false. And there's a whole bunch of stuff, picky things like, I wasn't discovered by Mark Burnett on The Apprentice. I made The Apprentice. Okay, but that's a matter of opinion. That's not a fact. and you can't sue somebody over that. But there were just dozens and dozens of paragraphs like that. But in order to do that, you also have to prove not just falsity, but you have to show that the other side, the media company in particular, either knew it was false or recklessly disregarded whether it was true or false.

1:04:13Michael Popok:That's called actual malice. When I got to the actual malice section, I said, here we go, because it's like a heightened pleading standard for that. What do they got? They got an email. They got a phone call. What do they got? And all they had was the street version of the Trump derangement syndrome. They obviously hate me. The paper hates me. The guy hates me. The writer hates me. They're really angry at me. They don't like me. Is that it? Did I satisfy actual malice now? No. So I knew this pleading was not long for this world. What I didn't expect is that the judge, what we call sua sponte, on his own initiative, took one look at the complaint and went, nope.

1:04:55Michael Popok:And not only kicked it, because he could have just kicked it, this is a Rule 8 violation, please refile, good day. Or as Trump's spokespeople said, our blockbuster lawsuit against the New York Times will continue, we just have to comply with some logistics. Comply with some logistics? Okay, here's what, and then I want to get to a clip from Donald Trump. Here's what Judge Merida, who did not have to write this, this is what he wrote. The reader of the complaint must labor through allegations, labor through allegations, this is page two, such as a new journalistic low for the hopelessly compromised and tarnished gray lady.

1:05:39Michael Popok:That's the New York Times. The reader must endure an allegation of the desperate need to defame with a partisan spear rather than report with an authentic looking glass. That sounds like a Stephen Miller special. And an allegation that the false narrative about the apprentice was just the tip of the defendant's melting iceberg of falsehoods. Similarly, Judge Merida reports, in one of many often repetitive and laudatory toward President Trump but superfluous allegations, the pleader states that the apprentice, my favorite one, represented the cultural magnitude of the President Trump's singular brilliance, which captured the zeitgeist of our time.

1:06:25Michael Popok:and Judge Merite says, and this is the signal, and I just did a hot take on it, he's inviting a Rule 11 motion by the New York Times. I think the New York Times is going to say, let's just see what they do in the next pleading, and they will really hit him with a Rule 11 motion for sanctions for bad faith filing. But I think they could do it now, because when he started, not once but twice by saying, as every member of the bar of the federal court knows or is presumed to know, He used that statement not once but twice. If I'm on the other side, that's an invitation for me to file a Rule 11 motion for sanctions against the lawyer that filed this along with Donald Trump.

1:07:02Michael Popok:But here's the part that got all the press, the statement on page four, again, starting with, as every lawyer knows, you can't file this. A complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective, not a protected platform to rage against an adversary. A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speaker's Corner. Try it again. So Donald Trump, of course, gets hit with the question by Jonathan Karl, his arch nemesis. And of course, the mass drops. This is an administration that said, along with its FCC chairman, that they would stop what they considered to be Biden's suppression of First Amendment speech and the weaponization of his administration and the Department of Justice to go after MAGA First Amendment speech.

1:07:58Michael Popok:Have we ever seen an administration more hell-bent on crushing dissent and crushing First Amendment speech than led by Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman, and Donald Trump? And he's asked about that and about – so it's okay to crush the speech of those who dissent against you but not against others? And this is right after Carl asked him about the loss on this motion, this order by Judge Merida. We have the clip. Let's roll the clip. So I want to sell this free speech question because you've said that you restored free speech in America. Is that free speech, including for people who are harshly critical of you, for your political opponents, for people who say things you don't like?

1:08:39I've become immune to it.

1:08:40Michael Popok:I've become immune to it. There's never been a person that's had more unfair publicity than me. And that's why your network paid me 15 million dollars or 16 million dollars, I believe, to be exact. George Slopidopoulos. And that's why CBS paid me a lot of money, too. And that's why I sued the New York Times two days ago for a lot of money. Because I, well, I'm winning. I mean, I'm winning the cases. And the reason I'm winning is because you're guilty, John. You're guilty. ABC is a terrible network, a very unfair network. And you should be ashamed of yourself. NBC is equally bad. I don't know who's worse.

1:09:15Michael Popok:I think they're equally bad. And, you know, for you to stand there and act so innocent and ask me a question like that. But look, you paid a big price because you were dishonest, John. The reason I won that lawsuit was because you were dishonest. You were proven to be dishonest. And so you can't sit back and just say, oh, well, what do you think? You know, like you're some wonderful person. You're not a wonderful person. Frankly, you're a terrible reporter. All right. So the thing he's talking about for ABC is that George Stephanopoulos, when he was interviewing E.G. Carroll, used the term rapist instead of sexual abuser for Donald Trump.

1:09:55Michael Popok:And that led ABC, owned by Disney, to stroke a check for$15 million to bail out their journalists instead of defending him because they were worried about all back to the FCC. This always ties back to the FCC. The FCC regulates media outlets, television, and others. and ABC owned by Disney cares about their media assets. They don't care about their journalistic integrity. They never have. And so they paid$15 million rather than fight. The sad part is, I just had Ben Wisner on from the American Civil Liberties Union. They would win these cases in federal court. If they would just go to federal court and get a federal court judge, they would win on all of the precedent.

1:10:41Michael Popok:And even this Supreme Court, MAGA right wing, would be hard pressed to crush First Amendment speech the way that he's doing it. But they don't do it, hoping that he'll go away. Then they didn't go away because they came back with Jimmy Kimmel. The only reason ABC, Disney took Kimmel off the air is because there's a$6.2 billion transaction at the heart of it, which is their leading TV station affiliate who owns 250 TV stations, is trying to get an approval to take over a 50 station merger candidate, one of their rivals, and needs the FCC's approval. So they leaned on ABC to get rid of Kimmel because Brendan Carr and Donald Trump saw this as an opportunity in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death to get rid of Jimmy Kimmel.

1:11:29Michael Popok:Think about how thin-skinned the president of the United States is, that he cares about what late night television says about him so much that he needs to take Seth Meyers and him. Comedy Central's next. Comedy Central's owned by a corporate parent. You know, I don't know how, I don't want him off the air, but I don't know how South Park's still on the air and Jon Stewart's still on the air and the rest of them. But if they would fight back in court, they would win. So we have to start getting the corporate media to start defending journalism and freedom of the press the way that we do here, you know, with our comments and commentary.

1:12:09Michael Popok:And Brendan Carr is going to be the subject of a lawsuit. Right now, it started as a FOIA request by Democracy Forward asking for every email, every calendar entry, every communication between the White House and FCC about going after ABC for the Jimmy Kimmel incident and anybody else. Look, we just had the White House think it was inappropriate to have the Biden administration, A couple of people on the Biden administration call up and tell some of the media, don't run COVID, you know, the alternate view of COVID vaccine. And that led to a series of decisions that said, yeah, we don't really like that.

1:12:45Michael Popok:We don't like when you try to get the NRA to lose their banking relationships. What are you going to do here? Donald Trump's threatened by a monologue by Jimmy Kimmel. See, here I think he's overplayed his hand. Leave it to the, you know, that's the gift. Leave it to the Republicans and MAGA to overplay their hand while they were winning a news cycle. Now they've overdone it with Kimmel and the rest is coming out. And as you said, I agree with Schiff completely that he so trashed the Department of Justice's reputation and its prosecutorial integrity is left in tatters that grand juries sense it.

1:13:21Michael Popok:Juries sense it. They can't get indictments. They can't get convictions because nobody's believing a word that they said, especially in the cities that are the states that are blue. And so now we've got a two tier justice system. The other thing that they're not believing, you know, or the other thing that connects back to the attack on the on the freedom of the press and the First Amendment is by undermining the Department of Justice. And by making statements the way Donald Trump is making it, you're providing a gift to the defense. Vindictive prosecution is a defense. And if you go after and you have these prosecutors, as we said earlier, resign in protest, that is used by the defense that said, this is vindictive prosecution.

1:14:04Michael Popok:The prosecutor on the case said there's no case. And now they're going after their political rival. And that provides a gift to the defense. Just as Kash Patel talking about the shooting suspect for Charlie Kirk and talking about as DNA evidence undermines the case for the prosecution. Same thing here. And everything that Donald Trump says, he can't help himself, obviously. He has some sort of mental disease. If anybody has Trump derangement syndrome, it's Trump. He just can't stop talking. And all of these clips right now that you and I run on Legal AF, they end up as footnotes in motions to dismiss and in briefing that's sent into federal courts about the animus and the...

1:14:48Michael Popok:that's being hit on the First Amendment and those that practice it like Donald Trump. He's not helped. But we saw this. How many times, Ben, did we talk about the evidence that he created in real time that was used against him in cases, including his criminal cases? Yeah, well, that's why, you know, in connection with the course and scope of him being the president, being in the Oval Office, you can never get his deposition. But you basically get his deposition every day, he gives you the incriminating admissions or the liability inducing admissions that you then bring into court. And it's crystal clear that they're not being shy about the authoritarian intention in the same sentence in the clip that you showed where Donald Trump says, yeah, I'm immune to people making fun of me.

1:15:38Well, you can't do it. I'm going to go after you. Like in the same sentence, it's like it's psychotic. It's actually And I'm not trying to use that term lightly and let him off because I understand the severity of mental illness. And he needs to be held accountable for his intentional and malicious conduct. But he is not a well human being. Like he's a deeply pathologically disturbed thing that civilized society should not countenance. Like we should not act like that's the way adults behave. I mean, it's like literally a man baby running around in a diaper, you know, essentially behaving in ways that are just unbecoming, that's not how adults or leaders or role models should behave.

1:16:33It just isn't. And that's why when the judge acted with moral clarity in the order in the New York Times case and mocked it and said, I was like, thank you, because moral clarity to me is the word. In addition to legal clarity, a lot of my involvement in politics and creating a news network and just doing this is is a frustration that there is a lack of moral clarity. And all of this both sides ism is filtered, you know, is being perpetuated by the media. And I'm like, this guy's just not acting normal like he's not acting lawfully or normally. And I'm sick and tired of acting like, oh, well, that's that's Trump.

1:17:15like he's some avatar in some humorous movie. No, he's a wrecking ball in lives. And I just want to see dignified and distinguished and smart and intelligent and thoughtful and nice and empathetic human beings in leadership position. If I were to define what my political ideology is, it's pretty much that at its core as a floor, as well as with democracy. Just finally, Popak, briefly, if you can, give an update on Lisa Cook before we go.

1:17:49Michael Popok:Yeah, I'm happy to do that. By the way, while we came on the air, speaking of the attack on the First Amendment, get this, the Department of War, this is going to be the subject of a lawsuit you and I will cover soon, whether it's brought by ACLU or Democracy Forward or one of the media outlets, maybe we'll bring the suit. The Department of War, Department of Defense by Pete Hegseth just issued a new 17-page document that NPR got their hands on about what journalists must sign in order to cover the Department of Defense. And here, listen to this Orwellian phrase, Ben, buried in the 17 pages. The DOW, the newly rebranded, which I don't think they can do, the Department of Defense remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust.

1:18:35Michael Popok:However, DOW information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it's unclassified. Okay, so we're transparent, but we need, much like Pravda and Putin and all the other propagandists, we need to screen what you're going to say about the Department of Defense. This is going to lead to lawsuits. suits we're not going to sit for it and we're going to bring it into court and let federal judges who are chomping at the bit to save our democracy in first amendment and let them make the appropriate rulings once we get there that the rulings will be in our favor the appellate rulings will be in our favor and then we're going to have to put the uh supreme court on the on tender hooks around the horns of a dilemma about well i really want to help this trump out but There is this thing called the First Amendment that we are that we vi of virulently protect.

1:19:30So but we got to do that.

1:19:32Michael Popok:We got to do we got to get to the courts and make this happen. And as and as Ben Weiser told the ACLU, when bad things happen, you got to you got to make them happen slower. We've got to slow down Donald Trump with these lawsuits so that we can get to the midterms politically so that we can win at the ballot box, the hearts and minds of the American people, and as a springboard towards 2028 and the return of the Democrats to power in the presidency. And in the meantime, much like Donald Trump slowed down his criminal cases long enough for him to reclaim the White House, we got to slow him down.

1:20:08Michael Popok:And that's where the case is coming. Speaking of slowing things down. So Lisa Cook, the reason Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve to transition here is being attacked by Donald Trump, is because one vote gets him nine. One vote gets him nine. Right now, he only has three votes on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Without the fourth vote on the Board of Governors, he can't take control of the regional banks and their presidencies, which along with the seven members of the Board of Governors, five off of the 12 regional banks create the Federal Open Markets Committee, which set interest rates.

1:20:47Michael Popok:If you don't control the other votes, you'll never control the interest rates, which is Donald Trump's ultimate thing. So this is not about Lisa Cook. This is about how Donald Trump, through getting rid of Lisa Cook, then gains control of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. He fires the presidents of the regional banks, and then he's able to get nine or more. He's able to get nine out of the 12 votes in his favor to set interest rates. And Lisa Cook is fighting back. So she gets, she wins twice. Trial court judge, Judge Cobb, who still has jurisdiction over the case for now, says, by firing her on the cause that you claim about this phony mortgage, she didn't say phony, This mortgage fraud double primary home thing, that's not what is required for four-cause termination of a board of governor, somebody on the board of governors.

1:21:37Michael Popok:And you violated her due process because you can't do a mean social media post by Bill Pulte and then take that off and running. And because she didn't say anything for five days, she got her due process. It goes up to the last week, it goes up to the three-judge panel of an appellate court, and they come back two to one and say she didn't get due process. We don't even have to touch for cause termination requirements because she never got due process to put on her case. So we're going to keep her in her chair the next day or the next 48 hours later. She's voting along with 11 other people. And Donald Trump's latest person, Stephen Mirren, who didn't leave his day job working for the White House, is now inside the tent voting on on interest rates.

1:22:21Michael Popok:And they vote. Everybody looked at the Trump economy and said it sucks. Even Stephen Mirren, who works in the Trump White House, said it sucks more than the others because he didn't have any access really to the Federal Reserve data, but he had access to the White House data. So he raised his hand and said, can we have a bigger cut? Meaning the economy is worse than you 11 think it is. So they cut, as we predicted, as I've been talking about for two months, they cut the interest rate a half a point. Lisa Cook, we waited around to see when are they going to file their emergency motion to the United States Supreme Court.

1:23:00Michael Popok:We knew it was coming. Donald Trump is winning. Get this, Ben. 84 % of his emergency motions on appeal to the United States Supreme Court, he's the winner. 50 % was Biden's track record. Somebody tell me how 34 % delta does not indicate partisan bias by the right wing of the Supreme Court. I mean, they always siding with Trump, never siding with Biden. I mean, Biden just made poor arguments every time. Come on. Let's at least be honest in our conversation, shall we? So we were like, what is he going to do it? Well, he wasn't able to get her out of the room for that meeting. And I was figuring he was waiting for another bad news cycle.

1:23:41Michael Popok:And he got another bad news cycle because he gets them every day. He's like, file it. So they file it. And they asked for it. This is only over the stay. The stay, though, means destroying the status quo because she's in the job. He said he fired her, but nobody really believed it. And she went to work. So in order to get her out, that would change the status quo, which appellate courts are not supposed to do. Roberts didn't initially issue the stays. Chief Justice Roberts is the first judge over D.C. matters to make a decision. He wants to be briefed about the stay. So they filed their emergency brief that says Judge Cobb and the lower appellate court was all wrong.

1:24:23Michael Popok:She doesn't have any Fifth Amendment rights for due process. Even if she did, she got it. And even if the four cause issue is a thing, the four cause is whatever we say it is. Because since Congress didn't define it, therefore, Trump gets to say, cause and you're out, which can't possibly be what the Supreme Court meant by you can't fire the Federal Reserve except for cause. It can't just be this, the going through the motions of saying, all right, I don't like her tie. That's the for cause. And you can't review me. So the issue now on the emergency appeal is whether the Supreme Court has five votes to take Lisa Cook out of her job while the appeal and the lower court continues developing the facts, yes or no.

1:25:11Michael Popok:And as of the time we're on the air, they haven't yet ruled, which I'm not sure is a great sign for Donald Trump. Now, if between the time tonight and tomorrow something happens on Legal AF sub stack where I'm doing two lives a day, I will update everybody very, very quickly on it. And my gut, I want to hear your opinion on it, Ben, of course. My gut is that Roberts and I don't think there's five votes to stay and take her out of her job, which would go to the heart of whether they really are protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve off of what the Supreme Court said in May in the Wilcox decision or they're not.

1:25:48Michael Popok:What do you think? Well, look, if they were to stay the district court's decision, you could imagine the warped logic where the Supreme Court continues to kind of move the explanations where they'll say, well, as it relates to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, not a board of governors. So that's where the independence, you know, you know, must arise. But to your point, we've said it before. If you give Donald Trump an inch, he asks for more. I've said he takes your life if you give him the inch. We saw that with ABC. You can't make deals with him like like any extorter. when you hear about people who extort others, right?

1:26:34One of the reasons you can't give into an extorter, even if you kind of just want to make it go away, right? Or even if you just don't want to deal with it, or even if you're like, uh, you know, what else am I going to do? Or, or, or I'm going to, I got to protect this interest or whatever. They, the mindset of an extorter is they then come, they then see you as got it. You're weak. They come back for you again, right? That's what the mob does. That's what the mafia, oh, he paid me. Okay. I'm going to do it again and again and again and again. So you have no choice. I guess your choice is you can either just shut it down, run away and don't do what you're doing, but you can't think you're going to live in a world where you make a one-time payment or a one-time deal and then the extorter will be cool with that and you can exist.

1:27:23You're just going to get shaked down over and over and over again. So ABC makes the ridiculous settlement initially. Oh, got it. I could keep coming back to ABC over and over and over and over again. Same thing with CBS. Now with the Supreme Court also. Got it. They gave me this. Okay. They're giving me a little more. Okay. They said that the Federal Reserve is independent unless it's for cause termination. All right. I'll gin up a for cause termination. I'll say that Lisa Cook was, I'm terminating her for cause. And essentially, Popak, the issue is, if they bless his ability to just, on his own discretion, declare something a for-cause termination, then there's really no distinction between a for-cause and a without cause, because it's just his discretion about what constitutes it regardless.

1:28:14And then no agency is independent. And then they create the precedent to then file the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Right. The moment they give him Lisa Cook, he files, he fires Jerome Powell. He goes, Jerome Powell wasted three billion dollars on the Federal Reserve building, even though we know that it was actually a bunch of Trumpers who were the ones requesting more of the expensive upgrades when you go through it. There's nothing wrong with anything he did about the Federal Reserve building. But then he goes after Powell for that. That's the next step in this. And so, you know, I don't know what this, I really don't.

1:28:51I mean, the Supreme Court's horrific. Like they're really the most, like they are in many ways, even more responsible than Trump for Trump. And really, John Roberts has blood on his hands. Like what a despicable legacy, that fool, I think that traitor to the judiciary and to the country. He's one of these guys who was viewed as like a George W. Bush, more moderate guy with the right temperament for it, a traditional old school conservative is what they said, but a guy who's really rolled over and turned the Supreme Court into the types of Supreme Courts we see in foreign countries where fascism exists, where it's just a rubber stamp.

1:29:40That's Robert's legacy. And it's disgusting. I mean, probably the worst chief judge in the history of the United States of America. And when we have a national reckoning with this period of time, he's right up there with Trump. He's right up there with Trump. Anyway, we'll leave you with that. I don't know, Popak, I don't have an answer to your question. I'm not trying to be evasive.

1:30:01Michael Popok:No, no, I don't. Look, I think what people respect about what you and I have been doing together for five years is that while we give you our best guess and estimate, when we're talking about trying to plot what the Supreme Court's going to do, you know it's increasingly difficult because they'll just reverse engineer and gin up a response, an opinion that doesn't comply with their prior rulings. They'll use a tool from their toolbox today. It's I'll do originalists, whatever the framers wanted in 17, whatever. No, we can't do that. We have to have to look at it's a major question for the Supreme Court.

1:30:37Michael Popok:No, we're too close to an election. It's the Purcell doctrine. It's it's these made up doctrines that are not embedded in the in the U.S. Constitution that they use as a tool to allow them to reverse engineer to the political response that they want. And we're honest that we're very, look, there's things that we can say with certainty. The judge in Tampa is going to be dismissing one way or the other that New York Times case, you know, or this judge is going to rule in this way. There was a thing recently, Ben, I'll end it with this. Judge Chutkin, and we like Judge Chutkin. We respect her, especially how she handled under much personal attack and pressure the election interference criminal case for Donald Trump.

1:31:19Michael Popok:handled it eloquently in a dignified way, showing her judicial chops. But she just had to admit that even though the Trump administration likely violated the civil rights and civil liberties of migrants being sent to Africa and abused them, she lost jurisdiction because they shipped them off. This sounds familiar. The Trump administration shipped them off in the middle of the night. and even though she wanted to make some comment about it, she lost jurisdiction. And so that was the right thing for her to do, just as, because we didn't get to touch on it, but let me just shove it in here, just as Judge Kelly, another Republican and a Trump appointee, just had to declare earlier in the week that the Trump administration effectively lied to him and lied to Judge Suknan and the prior judge about 600 migrant Guatemalan children in a refugee resettlement program who were at one o 'clock in the morning, this is in his order, which I have posted on Legal AF Substack, one o 'clock in the morning, rousted out of their beds with sleepy heads to be put on a plane, shipped back to Guatemala where they could face certain death without due process before the immigration rights advocates and the attorneys found out about it, ran into court on Labor Day weekend and grounded those planes through 15 different Judge Suknan and emergency orders because she didn't trust the Department of Justice either.

1:32:54Michael Popok:And the lie is, back to lying and the credibility of the Department of Justice in front of juries and federal judges, we're back to Drew Ensign, who's lied to Judge Zinnis, who lied to Judge Bozberg about planes and migrants and lied to Judge Suknan and to Judge Kelly when he said, Judge, I don't even know why we're here on this lawsuit to ground the planes and give them due process. The reason the judge said is because the government violated the child trafficking laws of the United States in doing this. He said, but we're just reunifying families, Judge. It's a pilot program. He actually said this with a straight face, Ben.

1:33:33Michael Popok:It's a pilot program putting families back together. They all want the kids back until there was a report, a whistleblower report that was delivered to the judge in which they said that none of the families wanted them back. Most of them couldn't be contacted. And some of the families said, bring them back. There's a reason we sent our children to another country and away from Guatemala because they're subject of kidnapping threats or death or death threats or rape or child abuse, or they're in a home of child abuse, sending them back. And the judge said, yeah, it felt like a house of cards, his quote, when that means the lawyer lied about it, about the parents welcoming these kids home with open arms.

1:34:14Michael Popok:Think of what, we're parents, think about what you have to do to put your, to feel that your kid's life is better off in the United States than with you, with other people, than with their parents in Guatemala in this case. And Judge Kelly caught the Department of Justice in a lie and issued the preliminary injunction permanently. But then Judge Chutkin, who's a Democrat appointee who Donald Trump attacked as a Marxist, she's got a rule that the kids went over, the people went away already. So she has no jurisdiction. So there we can do our fair reporting. Supreme Court, they're not even intellectually consistent within their own decisions.

1:34:49Michael Popok:So how are we supposed to make, but all we can do is sort of say, this is how it should come out. And if it comes out differently, we'll come back and report on it. There you have it, everybody. Thank you, everybody, for watching this episode of Legal AF. Make sure you reach out to the Popak Law Firm if you or anybody you know has a case. If someone you know was the victim in a wrongful death case, they died because of the negligence of somebody else. Or if you've been involved in a car accident or a trucking accident or the victim of medical malpractice, sexual harassment or sexual assault, visit thepopakfirm.com.

1:35:22That's thepopakfirm.com or call 877-POPAK-AF for a free case review today. 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com for a free case review today. Give him a call. Also, check out Michael Popoc's Substack, the Legal AF Substack, and also check out Michael Popoc's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel. Thank you, everybody, so much for watching. We appreciate you here on the Midas Touch Network. We will see you next time. Have a great rest of your

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