The Intersection with Michael Popok - 12/23/2025

29:31They should be fully briefed, have amicus insight input. They should have a full oral argument and a full vetting and analysis. So maybe this will slow down the use of the emergency docket in the future. One can only hope.

29:46Michael Popok:Yeah, the way that I now in retrospect, one of the reasons, again, this is only 2020 hindsight. One of the reasons why you and I were scratching our head with what's taking them so long. And look at all the rulings that are coming out, like at the Ninth Circuit for you in your favor, that they seem to be just sitting and allowing to happen. It's a lot of things to have to unscramble. So maybe in retrospect, they knew they had the numbers. They were okay with the Ninth Circuit's ruling in your favor and some of these other courts because they knew they may not have had the opinions written, but they knew it was going to be about a five to four, six to three decision that was going to be supportive of these other rulings.

30:24Michael Popok:That's one observation. Let me read to the audience, to our audience tonight, the key paragraph in the majority opinion. Again, we don't know who wrote it. We just know who joined it. And that would be Sotomayor, Kagan, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, Chief Justice Roberts, and Amy Coney Barrett, and Kavanaugh. And here's the statement.

31:15confederalize the Guard under 124063, he likely must have statutory or constitutional authority

31:22Michael Popok:to execute the laws with the regular military and must be unable with those forces to perform that function. Now, Sam Alito, in his dissent, made it into a circular logic. He said 124063 is the congressional delegation of authority. I'm like, what? I mean, his argument made absolutely no sense. So, but they were very clear. The only problem before I turn to Kavanaugh with you, and then I'm going to talk about, I want to do a little tea leaf reading about the tariffs having taken this position. The only, the only problem I have with this, it sort of invites Donald Trump to try to use the Insurrection Act.

32:01Michael Popok:Yeah. Right. Because the Insurrection Act, which Donald Trump has threatened and flirted with it for a long time, including in the first administration, like those, let's take the voting machines under the Insurrection Act, or I don't want to do the Insurrection Act, I've heard him say before. But if he does the Insurrection Act, which is one of those limited exceptions, if the grounds are proper, to use the military, the armed forces on U.S. soil, I mean, are you troubled by the fact that they've sort of invited potentially or debated him to do the Insurrection Act? Yeah, there's a couple odd and not desired potential outcomes here.

32:42If the regular forces means the military forces, and you need to exhaust the use of the military's regular forces first before you bring in the National Guard, then assuming there's a justification for military to be deployed on American soil in the first place, then that means you're likely to see military, you know, Army, Marines, before you see National Guard. And probably that's not preferred. I think people would rather see National Guard if they're going to see anyone before they see Marines and members of the Army. So there's that. And then there's also, you know, the point that you're making that if they, you know, I can imagine Trump huddling with his team responding to this Supreme Court ruling and saying, we want the same outcome.

33:32I want National Guard in blue cities, in Democratic cities that didn't vote for me. How do we get them there? And the one logical response is the Insurrection Act. And he's kind of bandied it out there and kind of threatened to deploy it and to apply it, but never has. He kind of says, It's there. I can use it if I want, but I don't want to. And maybe he will now. And it still has a high threshold, a high factual underpinning and predicate and basis that's required to use it. you need to have, you know, essentially that the equivalent of an invasion or a rebellion and, you know, an armed attempt to overthrow the government is what an insurrection is, essentially.

34:19So he's very unlikely to have that, hasn't had that in D.C., L.A., Portland or Chicago. But it does kind of have kind of push him towards the Insurrection Act if his desire is to legally, in the eyes of the U.S. Supreme Court, deploy National Guard.

34:35Michael Popok:Even the Biden prosecutors didn't use the Insurrection Act against the insurrectionists on Jan 6th. Right. They used sedition, seditious conspiracy. Even they didn't do even they didn't use the I word. But listen to this in Kavanaugh, you know, because Kavanaugh like it's almost like, oh, well, I'm going to side with them to, you know, to block Trump on this. But, you know, let me let me troll while I'm doing it. So in footnote two and his dissent, his dissent, his concurrence, Kavanaugh says, as I read it, the court's opinion does not address the president's authority under the Insurrection Act.

35:11Michael Popok:Yeah, OK, we got it, Brett. We know where your head's at, right? Wait, wait, maybe you want to consider that. But then the part that really called me, and the way I read it, let me just read it to our audience, is the hypothetical that he used, which is right out, it's a Jan 6th hypothetical, but rewrites history to make a president actually send in the National Guard and or the armed forces to protect the Capitol when we know that's exactly the opposite of what Donald Trump, his patron, did. So here's what he says. He says the courts, this is on page five, the court's legal interpretation, as I understand it, could lead to potentially significant implications for future crises that we cannot foresee.

35:53Michael Popok:Consider a hypothetical. I'm like, OK, go ahead. Suppose a mob rapidly gathers outside the U.S. courthouse in Philadelphia in response to an unpopular decision or to influence an outcome of a pending matter. Oh, you mean like the mob outside of the Capitol to try to stop the certification? Okay, you got me. Keep going. Suppose the mob is threatening to storm the courthouse and attack the federal judges, prosecutors, and others inside. Oh, like the legislators and their staff? And the damager burned down the building, thereby preventing the execution of federal law. Does anybody think this sounds familiar?

36:28Michael Popok:Yeah. Suppose further the U.S. military forces cannot readily mobilize to deploy to the site, or the president doesn't call him because he's busy fuming in the dining room, that the local police and federal court security officers are outnumbered. Oh, like the Metro Police and the Capitol Police who can't hold the line? Under the court's order today, even under those circumstances, the president presumably could not federalize the National Guard. Donald Trump famously, as the Jan 6th committee determined, never called the National Guard, never called out the military to protect the cradle of our democracy.

37:02Michael Popok:But look how Kavanaugh subtly, subtly says to the Democrats, is that what you want for the next Jan 6th? Right, right. And rewrites Trump as the savior here, the white hat in the revision, in the revisionist history here. Yeah, interesting. I thought Kavanaugh's concurrence, you know, definitely read like a dissent at times. I thought his footnotes were really interesting. And, you know, in particular, the one that you just read and the very, you know, the strong calling out and illumination of the Insurrection Act in case the Trump administration had missed that pathway. way. And you had asked earlier, what do I think the implication is of these cases on our, of this case on our cases?

37:49I think it ends them. Every case is based on the very expansive authority that the federal government thought they had under 10 USC 12406. Supreme Court just said that you don't have it. And so I think maybe they go back and with this guidance, they try to show that all the military locally in LA or in Portland or everyone stationed in the different bases where we're unable to address the dancing dinosaurs in Portland or whatever it is. But they try to make a factual argument consistent with the military not being able to execute the laws. But I just don't see it. I think they're going to pivot away from 10 USC 12 or 406.

38:29Michael Popok:I like the headline that A.G. Bonta, you just made. I think it ends the cases in every way, shape and form. Let me pivot for one moment while and I'll just if you'll indulge just for a few more minutes with our audience. We've got a great crowd tonight. We've got almost 11 ,000 people here just in the live chat alone, which is really heartwarming to see. And people taking time out of their holidays and holiday shopping and all that good stuff. You were in the room, literally, where it happened, the oral argument on the tariffs. You got Donald Trump, which he was increasingly getting very, very anxious about, I'm sure he's been briefed that he's got a very, very good chance of losing, which is why we're seeing these midnight screeds.

39:10Michael Popok:I just picture him with like a sleeve of Oreo cookies or a box, a gallon of whatever. And he's just like sitting in the bathroom, and everything is like, God bless the Supreme Court and the tariffs are making our country great. Don't let them go away. It's hard to go from one case to another, but they just did a very hard thing, six to three, the Supreme Court, in ruling against Donald Trump, with a number of the right right wing moving over to the other side. It would have been five to four, even if Kavanaugh had stayed with Gorsuch and Alito and Thomas. What do you think this means, if anything, for a likely outcome for Trump that's not good, like a ruling against him on tariffs?

39:59I think he's going to get a ruling against them on tariffs. And, you know, having been in the courtroom, seen the, you know, read the briefs and seen the oral arguments, saw the engagement from the bench. It was a hot bench. They were active. They were very dubious of and suspicious of and of the arguments of the federal government. And, you know, the right was very engaged. Barrett was engaged and Gorsuch was engaged in addition to, you know, Sotomayor and Jackson and Kagan. So I thought that could I thought I saw a clear 5-4 just from my own observation. Maybe I'm biased. You know, of course, I have a position on this.

40:46So maybe I didn't see it the way others did, but it could even be 6-3. And I think that when it's quick justice on the emergency docket and, you know, there's a lot of deference to the federal government and there's some discretion, some wiggle room, then maybe there's a bigger likelihood, a greater likelihood that they side with the Trump administration. But when they're in deep, when they're looking at the cases and doing the analysis and looking at the core authority of Congress vis-a-vis the executive branch and looking at separation of powers and know that this is an important case for the future and they have their own precedent that they've been a part of when it comes to the major questions doctrine, I don't see how they don't find for the states and the private plaintiffs here that the tariffs are unlawful.

41:36So, you know, I think Trump sees it coming. He is getting more desperate. He is getting more concerned. His his polling is is in the tank. He's losing major cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, the place where he thought he would never lose and hoped he would never lose. And so he's getting more desperate. And that's not necessarily a good thing. You know, his desperation could mean more extreme actions. I think the actions are already extreme in many ways, and we're able to bat them down and block them and stop them in court. But maybe he does invoke the Insurrection Act. Maybe he does pivot and try to impose additional tariffs under other authority.

42:15But a desperate Trump is not good for the United States of America. A non-desperate Trump is not good for the United States of America, in my opinion. But I think he's going to lose the tariffs case. And that'll be another U.S. Supreme Court case that kind of aligns with my hardwired, hopeful position. You know, I think if they disengage the law and the facts and just stick to that, let the chips fall where they may, the people, you know, the states, those that are holding the federal government accountable are going to win most of the time. Yeah.

42:46Michael Popok:And thank you for being there. You were on with me the other day, and we were celebrating, although celebrating is the wrong word, we were acknowledging the milestone that the Democratic attorneys general had filed their 50th case this year in 10 months, 11 months, against Trump administration with an amazing historic winning percentage against the Trump administration. And you said something that we circulated through social media, which made everybody feel a lot better. and I don't want to paraphrase it. You said something about being ready for the next 50. I'll leave it to you. We got a full tank of gas, full of energy, ready to roll.

43:24Whatever comes next. It's up to Tom how many times he wants to get sued. If he wants to stop breaking the law, we can live with that too. But no passes. Each and every time he breaks the law, hurts our states, we sue him. We're ready to go.

43:38Michael Popok:Yeah, absolutely. And we're so glad that you're ready to go. And you're always so kind with your time and generous with your time here to brief our audience, whether it's Legal AF or on the intersection. Attorney General Rob Bonta of the great state of California, who has joined the intersection to talk about the results of the United States Supreme Court decision against Donald Trump on the National Guard. And also congratulations on getting the National Guard through your efforts and the work of your team off the streets of Los Angeles and other places in California with a recent win at the Ninth Circuit.

44:09Thank you, Michael. An honor to fight for the people of this state and this nation. I'm going to keep doing it and grateful for all you're doing. Thanks for having me and your entire audience. Happy holidays, everybody.

44:18Michael Popok:Thank you. You as well. To your family as well. AG Rob Bonta. Thank you. Well, we're going to take a quick break. Sort of the word from our sponsors. We've got a great audience tonight. Some questions that are accumulating. I'm going to answer them when we come back from the break. First, again, heartfelt, heartfelt love here to all of our audience that also overlap with the Legal AF YouTube channel. we got to our 1 million subscribers this past weekend. We were all watching it very well. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? We're there. Okay, great. And now, as we like to say in the world of Midas, we're on our way to 2 million.

44:56Michael Popok:So take a moment and come over to Legal AF YouTube channel. It's all free, no outside investors, no paywall. And now more than ever, we need your support. You see what's happening to mainstream media. You see what's happening to corporate media. You got Barry Weiss spiking a story that 60 Minutes wanted to run about the torture prison of El Salvador because 60 Minutes is bending over backwards because it's now owned by buddies of Donald Trump. But, you know, I'm not saying you can't trust mainstream media. Certainly it's a source for us. Pardon me, I'm the intersection in Midas and Legal AF. But I think you also value the independence, the honest commentary that comes from what we provide and what we've provided.

45:47Michael Popok:And we've been doing it religiously for the last five and a half years. I think we have an admirable track record. When we get it right, we'll give you our best analysis. If we get it wrong, we'll come back and tell you we got it wrong. but I think this is an audience, a fellowship, a community beyond just random, you know, how many views did we get or how many people are in the chat tonight? It's a community and I honor it and I value it and I appreciate it. So if you want to support us, the intersection, you've already helped us get into the top 20 or so on YouTube rankings. Those are important on the audio ratings on Spotify and Apple put in the intersection.

46:35Michael Popok:We've got the Legal AF podcast on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time on the Midas Touch Network. And we've got all that great stuff going on on Legal AF YouTube channel. And of course, we've got this new thing, relatively new, six, seven months, a new community, extension of our community at Legal AF Substack. So Substack, amazing. We've already got about 120 ,000 people. And I got a great announcement starting today for the rest of the holidays until the 31st of December. We're putting our monthly subscription, paid subscription on sale, 30 % off, should be about $6.50 a month. And for that, you'll get eight, nine, 10 postings a day, commentary, analysis, articles, lives, live reports from me and from others.

47:22Michael Popok:You can get access to all the rulings and orders and opinions and filings all in one place under one pane of glass. Legal AF Substack. But now we've got a word from our pro-democracy sponsors. This episode of Legal AF is brought to you by Moikbox. Did you know four companies control over 80 % of the U.S. meat industry and that the largest share of U.S. pork is now controlled by China? These meat giants use mobster-like tactics to crush American family farms. flooding our food supply with sketchy additives and low-quality meat. So what can you do about it? Here's where Moink comes in. Featured on Shark Tank, Moink is standing up for family farms and your food security.

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50:19Michael Popok:Let's turn to Epstein. It's going to be a daily story. This has been a story about the whole administration. We're watching the corrupt intent of the Trump administration through its Department of Justice cover up and cover up the cover up of child sex traffickers. Now we know why the first tranche of documents that came out the other day, everybody's talking about the Bill Clinton in a hot tub photo, because Donald Trump wanted to distract from the tranche that was dropped today. There's three or four pieces of paper in there alone that would be enough to scuttle any presidency, and should this one.

50:55Michael Popok:Let me take it in no particular order. They're all important. um maria maria farmer who is the sister of annie farmer one of the survivors of the epstein child sex trafficking ring and it's a ring i just interviewed lisa phillips who's going to be a regular with us on legal af who's also a survivor this is a ring that involved 1200 girls and young women who were being trafficked by dozens of men, including Jeffrey Epstein, by way of Ghislaine Maxwell and others. That's what we want to get justice over and what we want to prevent from happening in the future. And we'll talk about the different ways that happens.

51:42Michael Popok:So Annie Farmer's sister, Maria Farmer. We'd always heard, and she said, that she filed a report back in 1996, 10 years before Jeffrey Epstein was finally investigated by the Southern District of Florida, a U.S. Attorney's Office and FBI. I'm talking 1 ,000 victims between 1996 and the opening of that investigation. In 1996, she said she went to the FBI and reported that she worked for Epstein, that he had stolen photographs that she had taken, including the negatives, old school photographs of her 14 and 12-year-old sisters, including Annie Farmer, and that he had taken those photos, had hired her to take photos at a local pool of young girls, and that he had sold the photos.

52:33Michael Popok:And she went to the FBI on a claim of pornography and illegal activity. And you know what's in the batch that just came out today? Maria Farmer's FBI report. That was intaked in Miami and was sent to New York. And then nothing happened for 10 years because Epstein had friends named Donald Trump and Bill Clinton and others. And that 10 years isn't just a passage of time. That is victim, thousand victims that could have been saved had the FBI done their job. In fact, the House Oversight Committee and the Democrats on it have sent a letter to the Inspector General for the Department of Justice, said, where's the justice?

53:22What

53:22Michael Popok:happened? Why wasn't this investigated? Who is responsible for not investigating it? And the us to try to get justice for the victims. And Maria Farmer has, you know, the way we know it's hers, I think we have a copy of it somewhere. We can put it up on the screen while I'm talking about it. The way we know it's hers is that it's got redactions, but it is, she has outed it with her lawyer and said, yeah, that's my FBI report about my sister's photos, my kid's sister's photos being taken think about it that he even then he was taking there it is he was taking uh is that the one that uh unclassified no that's a different one keep looking that's that's 2020 this is 1996 uh but you get the point um the fact that that he was selling or giving these photos to others in the ring in the traffic ring is just really uh disgusting now Now, there's also a handwritten note that's getting a lot of publicity and setting the Trump administration's hair on fire.

54:37Michael Popok:There it is. Leave it up on the screen. So this is allegedly from Jeffrey Epstein, written several days before he hanged himself, written to Larry Nassar, who was the disgraced doctor who was a rapist and a child sex molester and a young girl abuser of the women's Olympic gymnastics team. Yes, they're friends. That's a stated fact that they were friends. And in it, he makes references to Donald Trump liking young, nubile women that he could grab by their genitalia. And while that's going on, he and Larry are grabbing crub in the prison commissary and life is unfortunate. Dead man's confession.

55:27Michael Popok:Now, you can see the Department of Justice without any time on the clock has already come out and called it an unfounded. Oh, there's handwriting analysis that needs to be done. Oh, the postmark on the envelope says Virginia and maybe it's not Virginia and it's really supposed to be New York and humna humna humna and all that may be true but they're in no position to to make a statement that things that are in the release are somehow unfounded it went so far that even the New York Post was like they're already clearing Donald Trump how could how could that possibly be So quickly, related to this.

56:12Michael Popok:So the Department of Justice is not supposed to be defending Donald Trump, right? Except they are just a law firm devoted to Donald Trump's criminal defense and a political arm of the Trump administration. They're not an independent justice system, justice agency, no independent justice. You think Merrick Garland, say what you want about him? You think he posts something that says, here are some documents that we posted, but we're just letting you know they're unfounded and baseless. How do you know that? I mean, it's just remarkable the lengths at which Donald Trump makes this Department of Justice jump.

56:54Michael Popok:And yet they still somehow sleep at night. I'm talking about Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche. They still think they're officers of the court that are complying with ethics, that have sworn to uphold the Constitution. I just don't understand it. Then there's a email from 2020, obviously from a U.S. attorney, assistant U.S. attorney in New York, working on the Maxwell prosecution. Least we forget that she was prosecuted. There it is. She was prosecuted by James Comey's daughter, Maureen, a lifelong prosecutor in that office, convicted, five felony counts, sentenced to 20 years for child sex trafficking.

57:38Michael Popok:and you can tell this is part of that investigation because here's what it says. I'll just round it out for you. Donald Trump was on the plane a lot more with Epstein than first thought because they stumbled into a lot of the flight logs and photos when they were getting ready to try the Maxwell case. So it says, for your situational awareness, I'm not sure who he's writing to or she's writing to, we wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times that had previously been reported or that we were aware, including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case.

58:15Michael Popok:So this is pre-indictment of Ghislaine Maxwell and a prosecutor talking to somebody, I assume, in his office or at the FBI. In particular, he goes on, or she goes on, he is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 93 and 96, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was present. It gets better, folks. He's listed as having traveled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples. All right, that was his future wife or wife. His daughter, Tiffany, and his son, Eric. Well, nothing like putting your young daughter and your young son on an airplane with a child sex trafficker.

58:52Michael Popok:On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers. On another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and a then 20-year-old name blacked out. But the prosecutor thought enough of putting in the age. On the other two flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who could be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case. That sounds like young girls to me. We've just finished reviewing the full records, more than 100 pages of very small scripts, and didn't want any of this to be a surprise down the road. Thank you, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York, whoever you are.

59:36Michael Popok:uh so we got that going on remember this is against the backdrop of donald trump constantly rewriting and revising history to say i never liked a guy he was a creep he's a trump i threw him out of mar-a-lago he's like collapsing like 10 years of relationship down to the final how the friendship ended you know we've all had friendships that ended you know but you can't point to the end of the friendship to say i oh that that thing in the bar in vegas This also didn't happen five years earlier. You know, that doesn't work that way. Time doesn't run backwards that way. So you've got that. And then I didn't know, and nobody knew until we saw it.

1:00:15Michael Popok:Maybe we knew it. But it was good to see in the pile that the Mar-a-Lago Club was subpoenaed for the Maxwell trial to appear in November of 2021 and bring with it all employment records related to blank. All right, let's fill in the blank. without name and names. Why are you subpoenaing records for Mar-a-Lago? We know from other reporting that Mar-a-Lago was the happy hunting ground for Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein to look for young girls, including ones that worked in the club or in the spa for Donald Trump, and then bring them into the web of Jeffrey Epstein and sex traffic them. So somebody employed there is important to the prosecution about Ghislaine Maxwell and Mar-a-Lago and the link between the two.

1:01:10Michael Popok:Look, we've got another one. This is one of the ones I guess the Department of Justice was talking about when they said there were a whole bunch of baseless accusations around the time of the election that all came in. We got this one from 2020 where a woman claims that Ghislaine Maxwell solicited prostitution and drug use at Mar-a-Lago. Now, do I know if this is true or not? No, but neither does the Department of Justice. And that's the point. I'm just Michael Popak. I'm not stating that this is true or not true. Department of Justice is saying emphatically this cannot be true. Why? Because our boss is standing right behind us.

1:01:51Michael Popok:Right, exactly. Exactly. So this is not going to be the last of the Epstein follow-ups. You're going to see an interview that I just conducted today of Lisa Phillips, because there's something we haven't really talked about, which is what happens when the 1 ,200 victims, who have all sort of, many of them have gotten together and compared notes, and I mean literally, decide that the pace of the disclosures and the pace of the Trump administration is too slow for their liking. and they want justice, not just in the release of the files, but a justice that only a civil lawsuit against the perpetrators can bring.

1:02:30Michael Popok:So forget Donald Trump for now, although you can bring a civil suit against Donald Trump. You can prosecute that civil suit. He brings civil suits all the time while he's president. He's not too busy playing, you know, between his golf game and his and his Kennedy Center and his casino visits. You know, he's got time to file lawsuits against the New York Times, against the Washington Post, against the Wall Street Journal, against the BBC. So we call it the goose gander doctrine. It's good for the goose is good for the gander. So wait for these victims to start suing, not just Trump potentially, but Epstein's estate and others.

1:03:13Michael Popok:Prince Andrew, former Prince, the Prince formerly, the Andrew formerly known as Prince, I guess is the right way to put it. He's going, I mean, now you see why they kicked him out of the house recently, because things that have come out now are like worse for him. He still can be sued. He's settled with people. And we're working with a team at the Popak firm, Legal AF. We're working with a team called Survivor Strategies led by Senator Joe Dunn, former Senator Joe Dunn and Sam Maloney and Lisa Phillips to help bring justice to these people with the filing of civil lawsuits. It's many states, including blue states like California, recently have opened a window to allow adult survivors who are now adults but were children then or otherwise, to bring or adult survivors or survivors of child molestation or rape to bring civil cases in a two-year window period of time with a look back as far back as possible.

1:04:18Michael Popok:In other words, lifting the statute of limitations and allowing for these filings. And Joe Dunn lobbied and successfully obtained, along with Lisa Phillips, just as they had in New York, a reopening of a window in California. So start January 1. Boy, that's right around the corner. Get ready. I can't reveal it. I don't have exactly. I'm just telling you, it's coming. there's going to be a handful of lawsuits filed on jan one coming out of the epstein documents and the victims and survivors of epstein in california not saying it's against donald trump i'm just saying cases are coming okay just like they did in the hashtag me too era they're coming out of this epstein thing that's the next thing that happens in the pursuit of justice for the survivors and i talk about it more in an interview you'll see in the next day or two with lisa phillips So that's where we are with Epstein.

1:05:12Now I want to just round out our show with quickly on a Brigo Garcia and Judge Zinnis and Judge Bozberg in a case we call JGG because they're linked.

1:05:22Michael Popok:Rago Garcia has been breathing free air for the last couple of weeks and he got to go to court and sit without shackles without handcuffs with his family in a courtroom yesterday anyway and with Judge Zinnis about whether her order blocking him from being picked up again by ICE and thrown into detention while she makes decisions about his habeas corpus petition should be extended And the judge was pretty jocular and friendly to that side of the table. In fact, she joked, Judge Zinnis joked when she saw Abrego Garcia there and his 10 lawyers that he had enough lawyers to field a baseball team. She then looked over at poor Mr.

1:06:08Michael Popok:Molina by himself for the Department of Justice with others listening on the phone. She was not too pleased with the Department of Justice. She scolded the Department of Justice for effectively lying to her. for misrepresenting facts to her, to misrepresenting documents to her. And she said it out loud. She said, why should I trust anything that you say? You say that this document is new and it was a mistake or a clerical error. Why should I do that? And I have another bone to pick with you. This is the judge. She said that you referred to my order in the middle of the month, granting a temporary restraining order to block Mr.

1:06:45Michael Popok:Abrego Garcia being picked up again by ICE as an ex parte order. Ex parte means that there's only one party there. It's you and the judge. It happens in rare circumstances. I think in my entire 35 years career, 35 year career, I've done it five times, maybe five times. You get a restraining order. It's usually if you think like a boat, a plane, big money is about to leave or something's going to happen. You don't even have time to tell the other side, or if you tell the other side, they're going to secrete the asset or hide it or this or that. So you run and you get a temporary restraining order without notice.

1:07:23Michael Popok:Judge says, fine, but now give them notice of the temporary restraining order, and we'll bring everybody together in three days or four days, and they can move to dissolve it. That's the backstop to that. That's ex parte. That's not what this was when she issued her order. That was on full briefing. That was on an emergency briefing, but on full briefing. That wasn't ex parte. And she said, I'm not happy that you wrote ex parte. And I want a declaration to tell me who made the decision of the four lawyers that signed this piece of paper, who didn't catch or who made the decision to call it ex parte.

1:07:55Michael Popok:So she's pissed about a lot of things. She said, I'm keeping you out, Mr. Abrego or Garcia, until after the holidays. We'll full brief everything in the meantime. And then she issued another order. Nobody records me. She said, I don't want smart watches, smart phones, smart glasses, recording devices, nothing in my courtroom. Something happened. I just don't know quite what it was that led her to issue that order. Somebody in the Department of Justice side did something wrong. And of course, another series of bumbling errors by the Department of Justice. and she's, Obrego Garcia's judge, Judge Zinnis, she's a rock star.

1:08:36Michael Popok:You know, they like to call her a Marxist leftist. I don't know about all that. All I know is a 9-0 United States Supreme Court supported her decision to order Obrego Garcia to have his return facilitated by the US government. And the reason I mentioned that is that Judge Bozberg in District of Columbia, Chief Judge Bozberg, he just issued an order today as we were coming on the air, summary judgment. concerning the 250 people disappeared in the middle of the night without due process, who they branded Trendaeragua Venezuelan gang members, most of them are not, by the way, violent criminals, 92 % of them are not, and then just whisked them away during a hearing without federal oversight or due process and put them in the torture prison of El Salvador in Seacott.

1:09:29Michael Popok:And Boesberg has not been happy since. He's the one that started the criminal contempt proceedings that have been blocked by an appellate court led by Trumpers and different things. The Supreme Court told Boesberg, we like your process, but you're in the wrong court potentially, because you got to do it by writ of habeas corpus. And that has to be where the people were last incarcerated. And that wasn't Washington. That was like Texas or this or that. Now they've been sent to El Salvador, but they're not even in El Salvador any longer. Pardon me, folks. There was traded a prisoner exchange with Venezuela to send them back to Venezuela.

1:10:15Michael Popok:I thought we're at war with Venezuela. I thought they're enemy combatants that we just gave back to the enemy. See how there's no consistency because it's all lies by the Trump administration. So the Judge Bozberg said, if I determined, and he did, that the prison of El Salvador is under the custodial control of the Trump administration, then that's the last place they were. That's federal soil. And that gives me my jurisdiction for habeas corpus. And under the Abrego Garcia ruling that Judge Zinnis obtained through the Supreme Court, that he cited Abrego Garcia, I'm going to order that the government give those 250 people now sitting in Venezuela a habeas corpus due process mechanism that they can use.

1:11:04Michael Popok:That's his ruling. Summary judgment. Case closed. They're going to have to take the appeal. They'll take it up to D.C. Hopefully they won't get two Trump judges at the Court of Appeal. We'll see what the United States Supreme Court does. They're a wily bunch at the Supreme Court. You don't know what they're going to do in any given time. Look what they just did today with the National Guard troops. And I'm hoping that as we head into the new year in the first quarter, Donald Trump gets on a little bit of a losing streak at the U.S. Supreme Court. National Guard case against him. Hopefully the tariff case against him.

1:11:42Michael Popok:And then we got birthright citizenship. We're going to have to see what that's going to be all about on the 14th Amendment. You got Lisa Cook at the Federal Reserve. Does she stay or does she go? Got a lot of big issues about presidential power and, more importantly, the ability of the federal judiciary and Congress to control an out-of-control lawless president. But we do it here. I'm so happy that we had such an amazing audience tonight for our special guest, Rob Ponta. Holidays are upon us. We're going to be doing regular programming on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, right through the holidays with all new videos.

1:12:22straight out until the new year.

1:12:26Michael Popok:And we're celebrating our one millionth subscriber on the YouTube channel for Legal AF in record time. Join us, help us get to our next million. It's that important. The bigger we get, the more robust we get, the more muscular we get, the better we are for the most pivotal year in my lifetime, 2026. And you can help us by hitting the free subscribe button and then joining Legal AF Substack, where you'll get some additional information and training. It's like a TED Talk meets a law school class, all in Legal AF Substack. I'm running a sale, 30 % off on our monthly subscription. It'll bring it down to about, I don't know,$6 a month.

1:13:08Michael Popok:And for that, that's the way to support all that we do. Our editors, our producers keeps us on the air. This is the way you support independent journalism and independent media. And I really do appreciate it. So happy holidays for those that celebrated Hanukkah, for those who have Christmas and Orthodox Christmas coming up and the new year and Kwanzaa and whatever else is your holiday or no holiday at all. Just, you know, love your family, bring your friends and family even closer at this moment because together, together, we're going to shorten that tunnel and the light is on the other side, I promise you.

1:13:44Michael Popok:I'm Michael Popak until my next report. can't get your fill of legal af me neither that's why we formed the legal af sub stack every time we mention something in a hot take whether it's a court filing or a oral argument come over to the sub stack you'll find the court filing and the oral argument there including a daily roundup that i do call wait for it morning af what else all the other contributors from legal af are there as well we got some new reporting we got interviews we got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

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