The Intersection with Michael Popok Full Episode - 8/19/2025

23:39This is a violent dictator madman on one side and a mad president on the other. And our national security is undermined as a result. When we come back to the intersection, I want to talk about national security, the Posse Convatus Act in the D.C. case, about the new attorney general suit brought by 21 attorneys General, including Rob Bonta from California and Matt Placken from New Jersey, who I just interviewed and it will be up on Legal AF YouTube tomorrow, or will be this week at least, about the new lawsuit that was just filed in Rhode Island. I want to talk about, like I said, Posse Comitatus Act and national security and Donald Trump's use of national security as a way to gain more power and what federal judges are doing in resistance.

24:31And for that, I have Hina Shamsi, who is the director of the National Security Project for the American Civil Liberties Union. She joined me for an interview to talk about these very things. It will be up on Legal AF Substack tomorrow, for sure. And then the Department of Justice and its corruption is burst out into the open again with new allegations from the number two in the Department of Justice's antitrust division about corruption led by Pam Bondi and her number three, Stan Woodward, related to pay to play in the mergers and acquisitions world. We're going to talk about all that and some new developments in the Epstein Files case when we come back from the intersection.

25:19So how do you support the intersection? It's a podcast. So you're watching. That's great. We get two or 300 ,000 people watching. We get, and I'll be answering some questions as well. We get audio downloads and you want to rate us there, five-star rating on Apple and Spotify and all of that. But as a YouTube podcast, YouTube ranks the top 100.

25:39Michael Popok:We've been in the top 100 before, but with more views and more stuff going on there at the intersection, we can continue to ratchet up those ratings. And it's important that people say, well, it's not ego, it's algorithm. It keeps us on the air. We don't have outside investors. We don't have a corporate parent. This is it. And the other way to support my work is on the Legal AF Substack. Come over to Legal AF Substack. I'm doing live reports there every day, new editorials, new writings. And if you join as a paid member, there's a whole host of other features that are exclusive to you. Legal AF paid membership, I think it's$8 a month.

26:18And that really helps keep the lights on. And now a word from our sponsors.

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27:37Welcome back to The Intersection with Michael Popok, exclusively on the Midas Touch Network. Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting our pro-democracy sponsors. And thank you for supporting Legal AF Substack and joining as a paid member. Really do appreciate that. Let's get down to business to round out the intersection for this week. Let me start with a new lawsuit that was just filed by the attorney generals.

28:05Michael Popok:The Gang of 21 is back, led by New Jersey and California, Rhode Island and other states. They just filed a new lawsuit. I have it right here. It's up on Legal AF Substack as well, against the Trump administration trying to victimize the victims of crime again. There is the Victims of Crime Act, which was passed in a bipartisan way in 1982 by, as As one of our attorney generals just joked to me by that avowed liberal, Ronald Reagan. I don't really get why we have 40 years of no problem at making sure that victims of crime are given the medical treatment, the economic remediation, the support, the mental counseling, the burial expenses paid for.

28:55Or, you know, we live in a country where that should be a given that we protect the victims and help them. And so there's billions of dollars that have been allocated by Congress until Donald Trump got in office and decided that anything that's administered by the Department of Justice and his crash test dummy of Attorney General Pam Bondi, the sock puppet that she is, anything there is going to be held back unless the blue states agree to drop their sanctuary city policy, sanctuary state policies on immigration and comply with his depraved and deranged and inhumane immigration policy. Well, nowhere in the 40 years or almost 50 years of this program is there any conditions that are allowed to be placed on it by the executive branch.

29:46This is funding under the spending power of Congress. It's an Article I power. And the only reason that Donald Trump gets away with it for the short term is that we got to file the lawsuit. Then we got to get a federal judge to agree. Then we got to get an appellate judge to agree. Then maybe the Supreme Court has to get involved. In the meantime, he's defunded, he's defunded, he's defunded and victimized the victims. Of course, he's victimizing the victims. Many of the people that are in the victim program that are being compensated and helped are women.

30:18Michael Popok:We have an abuser in chief. We have a person who's in the Oval Office who was a judge to be a sex abuser. Technically, as one judge put it, technically a rapist. We had dozens of women who have come forward and said they were sexually assaulted and abused by Donald Trump. Many of them under oath in a court of law. He's a felon. He has a string of victims left behind him in the 34-count felony conviction in New York. Right? All of that. So, of course, his administration is using the Department of Justice. as a weapon to abuse the blue states. Has anybody noticed that's his goal? His goal is to make blue states look bad, although it's having a boomerang effect.

31:01Michael Popok:It's making him look weaker. He's the incredible shrinking president. I call him the, what was the thing on Game of Thrones? The mad king. He's the mad president. And he's going to burn it all down before it's over, if we let him. That's why he's so upset. And we're so delighted by Democratic leaders, especially the governors and the attorneys general that I'm talking about here, who are fighting back against Donald Trump fire with fire. We don't have time to fight fire with water. We can't put out the flames. News cycle doesn't allow us. We've got to fight fire with fire. That's why I love that Governor Newsom's office is mimicking Donald Trump and driving him crazy.

31:40Michael Popok:You know, you had Dana Perino come out and say, oh, you look so unpresidential. Why are you writing in all caps? Really? They're just doing a satire of Donald Trump. Here's the latest one that just went up, which I love. Went up this morning in California. Dana Ding Dong Perino, that's all in caps. Never heard of her until today. Is melting down because of me, Gavin C. Newsom. You see where we're going with this? Fox hates that I'm America's most favorite governor. Ratings King. Saving America. While Trump can't even conquer the big stairs on Air Force One anymore. Or, oh, you're so unpresidential.

32:20Michael Popok:What about the guy in the Oval Office? We're just lampooning something that's very difficult to lampoon. This is why Veep on HBO went out of business, because they couldn't parody the Trump administration anymore. They couldn't parody what was really going on in that first term of his. They were like, yeah, we're done. That's the problem. And so 23 Democratic attorneys general get together on a regular basis and file lawsuits where they have to, when they need to, against the Trump administration. So this new one about the violent victims of crime act and the billions of dollars being withheld has been filed in Rhode Island.

33:01Chief Judge of Rhode Island, McConnell, who was appointed by Obama, has been has been randomly assigned. And they're seeking to have, under separation of powers violation, under abuse of the arbitrary and capricious abuse of the Administrative Procedures Act, they're trying to get the judge to declare and to vacate this order of Pan Bondi, which is embargoing funds until the blue states capitulate.

33:34Michael Popok:and just victimizing the victims. And the attorney generals are winning over 90 % of the time when they file these lawsuits. That's why it's important. I just saw a stat that out of the couple of hundred of executive orders that Donald Trump has entered, only 27 % are actually operative because they've been blocked, because they've been overturned. 27%, it's pretty good. Attorney generals are running at 90 % in their 50 cases. Yeah. Democracy Forward, which has got a great playlist on Legal AF with us, Democracy Forward has over 80 cases filed against the Trump administration. The American Civil Liberties Union, which we're working on bringing on Legal AF on a regular basis, they've got probably double that against the Trump administration.

34:21In fact, besides interviewing A.G. Bonta and A.G. Platkin, California, New Jersey, respectively, concerning this new filing in Rhode Island, I also interviewed the director of the National Security Project for the American Civil Liberties Union, Hina Shamsi. And Hina Shamsi is fascinating.

34:48Michael Popok:And we're so we're so we're so blessed and honored to have her on our side fighting against Donald Trump as a first responder running into the burning building of democracy to save it. Yeah, she's focused on domestic national security. She used to be focused on foreign national security. But now she has to focus on a president who's going after the civil liberties of Americans on a daily basis. So she's drilled down on the whole use of the U.S. military on domestic soil. And the fact that it puts both parties in harm's way. It puts the National Guard that isn't trained to be domestic law enforcement in harm's way.

35:29And it puts the person on the other side of the rifle in harm's way.

35:33Michael Popok:Because this is just rife with civil rights violations. by a ill-trained, not properly trained military. Marines are not trained to make arrests. I mean, the MPs are. But Marines are not trained to make arrests or de-escalate problems or situations. They're trained to do something else, right? Take down the enemy, blow up that building, capture X, Y, and Z, right? That. Fight and win a firefight. not take a peaceful protest, First Amendment protest, and know what to do about it. And that's what national security experts like Hina Shubsi is worried about. And she briefs our audience on it. So catch that interview on Legal AF YouTube channel that's coming up actually tomorrow.

36:25And we also talk about, of course, the Posse Comitatus Act and the D.C. case. And fundamentally, that Trump is using not just emergency powers, not just war powers, but he's using national security as an excuse for every one of his illegal unconstitutional actions to try to give him more power. That's what they're doing. They search every day on how to give Donald Trump more power, how to forget about go beyond the envelope. There's no envelope. You know, we're outside the envelope. So his marching orders to his team is find me more power. Find me more power. I feel like it's it's like James Kirk on the Enterprise, you know, talking to Scotty.

37:16I need more power. that's what he's trying to do and so they look up at every strange, contorted, tortured interpretation of a statute of a law, of the constitution and they latched onto, if we make everything an emergency if we make everything a predatory incursion

37:36Michael Popok:if we make everything a war if we make everything a national security crisis and foreign policy crisis we'll shove back federal judges who will have to rush back in in order to give oversight and to check the out-of-control Donald Trump. He's hoping and he's trying to force the issue every time he's in court. Every time he's in court, he tells judges, you don't have any power to make a ruling in this area because national security, foreign policy, core constitutional functions of the president. There's no judicial oversight at all. If I say it's a rebellion, it's a rebellion. If I say it's a riot, it's a riot.

38:16Michael Popok:If I say it's an enemy incursion, it's an enemy incursion. If I say we're at war with a country we're not at war with, we're at war with a country we're not at war with. And you can't do anything about it. And federal judges are like, what are you even talking about? We understand deference, you know, as a doctrine, but you want us to do factual deference, your version of the facts we're going to adopt without challenge. And that federal judges, by and large, are not doing. That's what we're watching on full display with Judge Breyer. in San Francisco, who just held a three-day trial. We're waiting for the ruling, but it didn't go well for the Trump administration.

38:53At one point, Breyer, trying to figure out whether the Posse Comitatus Act had been violated and what he can do about it, said to the lawyers of the Department of Justice, I don't like your position.

39:02Michael Popok:Your position is there's no limits to what the president can do once he declares that there's some sort of rebellion. And I'm not buying that it was a rebellion or that he could violate the Posse Comitatus Act as a result. This limitless power thing is troubling to federal judges. And we're going to watch how he works his way out of this knot in the way he writes his opinion, knowing that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is watching him, including the same three-judge panel that didn't agree with him the first time on whether the federalization of the National Guard was appropriate in California.

39:37So he's got that he's worried about and working on. that's the posse comatose but you see donald trump will fold if if he's pushed to the mat and held and his feet held to the fire by a federal judge judge reyes in dc i'm going to rule against you about your takeover of the dc police department in violation of the home rule act for the district now go settle and they went and settled they went and settled we just saw another example of Donald Trump folding in his, in Alligator Alcatraz. There's a couple of suits floating around in Miami about the Alligator Alcatraz. One is Judge Williams, who stopped the continued development of Alligator Alcatraz.

40:22No more buildings until she gets to the bottom of the environmental impact, environmental concerns, the middle of the Everglades, effectively affecting the Florida's water supply. Now, in a couple of days, her injunction is going to run out. She'll have to decide whether to extend it. There's another case in front of Judge Ruiz, who sits in the same courthouse, but took a very different view. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that he was Trump appointed. Judge Williams was like, I have jurisdiction, and I'm going to make a ruling to stop the construction, even though the construction is not in Miami-Dade County.

40:54It's in Collier County. In Florida, this thing sits at the intersection, speaking of the intersection, of Miami-Dade County and Collier County. The runway for the airplanes for Alligator Alcatraz, Miami-Dade County. The buildings or the structures, whatever you want to call them, the lean-tos, that's Collier County. But the judge didn't say, well, I don't think I have jurisdiction. She said, I've got enough jurisdiction. There's enough facts here and support in Miami. Let me make my ruling. Judge Ruiz got all wrapped around his own axle about the venue.

41:24Michael Popok:Oh, venue. Are we in the right courthouse? I don't know. Are we? You're a federal judge. He had to turn a blind eye to the fact that there was actually success in the lawsuit as he dismissed part of it and sent it to Orlando. What was the success? Donald Trump folded. His Department of Justice folded. The biggest argument the ACLU, there they are again, the ACLU made, is that their clients inside of that Alcatraz aren't meeting regularly or properly with their lawyers. There's a First Amendment problem. There's a due process problem. right there's a sixth amendment process uh sixth amendment problem and suddenly before the injunction hearing on monday yesterday trump folds and says oh no we're going to be processing all these people and give them immigration court hearings yes yes yes at chrome k-r-o-m-e north facility in miami in miami judge ruiz so the solution for the thing that you said doesn't belong in Miami and has to go to Orlando and spend so many pages bemoaning why are we in Miami.

42:29Michael Popok:The solution the Trump administration came up with is in Miami. And your own colleague down the hall from you at the federal courthouse in the downtown Miami did not have this problem within you. I wonder what the difference is. But it's a win because sometimes you win if you're if you're an attorney general or you're an interest group or you're the ACLU. Sometimes you win by filing the case and obtaining the injunction from the judge, where the judge says it's more likely than not that you're going to win. Sometimes you win because the Trump administration folds. Sometimes you win because you get the injunction and the Trump administration doesn't appeal and releases the funds, the millions and billions of dollars, and doesn't take the appeal.

43:11And those are the cases I want to focus in on also, because we are winning those. That's why we're up to 90 % win rate in front of federal judges. Sure, it's down to 30 % at the Supreme Court, but not every case makes it to the Supreme Court. In fact, very few do. I did the math for everybody. 5 ,000, 8 ,000 cases get filed every year in federal court, give or take, civil and criminal, right? From that group, it's a funnel, very small amount, I think it's 10 or 12%, end up on an appeal to the next

43:43Michael Popok:level of appeal, and then 0.001 or something like that percent end up at the United States Supreme Court. Of all the cases that are filed in a given year, at the thousands in federal court and state court, tens of thousands, even if you add all the emergency docket together, along with the regular docket, the regular list of cases for the Supreme Court, it's 100 cases out of several, out of multiple thousands of cases filed. So we got to continue to use the fire hose to flood the zone and do a full court press in the courts in here together on the intersection as well. Let me end the intersection today talking about a new corruption scandal coming out of the Department of Justice.

44:32What else? And Donald Trump's not just abusing the financial system to benefit himself and those around him alone. He's using the Department of Justice as well. Of course he is. So Roger Alford, very well respected antitrust lawyer, number two in the antitrust division until a month ago, started being a whistleblower about an approval for a merger, a$14 billion merger, pretty sizable merger, just to give you a pretty sizable merger, 14 billion between Hewlett Packard and a company called Juniper. And the problem is it would dominate the wireless network equipment, manufacturing and software technology business, making consumers have to pay more.

45:17And so the Trump administration filed a complaint to stop it, stop the merger. Now that sounded OK. And then it was all about how much money can they put in their pockets. So the allegation by Roger Alford, who did it live at a conference and in written notes, is that the merger is a scandal. It was only approved after MAGA lobbyists, MAGA lobbyists close to Donald Trump and others, lobbied for changes to allow for the merger. And that's exactly what's not supposed to happen. And that's Stan Woodward, the nominee for the number three position in the Department of Justice, who's MAGA to the core, who represented Jan 6th insurrectionists, who represented one of the co-defendants with Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago, who was so respected among the Heritage Foundation that he got the number three job, that he opened the door.

46:13It was like a Trojan horse. He opened the door and let all the MAGA lobbyists in. So with the Trump administration, you always have to follow the money. You always have to follow the money. Who is going to be benefited by the approval? So now that the merger has been approved, subject to a federal judge, taking a look at it, now that Woodward, sorry, now that Alford has made his whistleblower allegations of corruption led by Chad Mizell, chief of staff by Pam Bondi and Stan Woodward, in benefiting all of the people around Donald Trump. That's to follow the money. Who is going to make money off of HP?

46:50Who in the Trump family and MAGA and Congress people and those around him, who holds stakes in HP?

46:58Michael Popok:I'll be frank. I don't. I don't hold stakes in Juniper. I don't hold stakes, equity stakes in HP. But I'm sure people around Donald Trump are and will and have and will benefit from this. Let's do the math. Before the Trump administration is over, Trump and his family and his friends will put in their pocket somewhere between five and ten billion dollars. Put this in a time capsule. That's what Popak's prediction is. Five and ten billion dollars will end up in the pockets of Trump, his family and those around him, including in the cabinet and family offices of people in the cabinet before this administration is over.

47:40However, I mean, we're going to continue to call it out. We're going to continue to follow it and rip the cover off the ball and talk more about it like we do here on The Intersection. But that's the reality. And this corruption scandal. So this Department of Justice official has gone to the judge and said, you should look at whether there's been smoke filled backroom deals in order to approve this, because it is a scandal. And if you knew what I knew, he told the judge, you would be very concerned. So look for this judge to step in, bring in this former Department of Justice official and get to the bottom of it before he approves that merger.

48:23And I'll continue to follow that now. I'm so glad you're here with me.

48:27Michael Popok:Take a minute and send some love over to the intersection as a podcast on audio, on audio platforms, five-star reviews and leave reviews. I read them. And also, of course, watch this and send it to your friends. We have commercial-free versions that are up on the Legal AF sub-stack, which I'd like you to come over and join. You're going to get some of them. Tomorrow I'm doing, I think Adam Klassfeld and I are going to be breaking some new news on a live report on Legal AF sub-stack. And if you can spare$7 or$8 a month, become a paid member of Legal AF as well. But I'm so honored to have you here with me.

49:04Until my next intersection next Tuesday, this is Michael Popak for all things Legal AF. I'm Michael Popak, and I got some big news for our audience. Most of you know me as the co-founder of Midas Touches Legal AF and the Legal AF YouTube channel, or as a 35-year national trial lawyer.

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