The Intersection with Michael Popok Full Episode - 9/23/2025

29:16Michael Popok:I think Eric Seibert resigning or being fired provides a major defense to the Democrats who would be prosecuted by Donald Trump. I would bring in that prosecutor to testify. I'm sure that prosecutor, Eric Seibert, is going to be brought in before the House Oversight Committee, the Judiciary Committee, to meet with Mr. Raskin and Mr. Goldman and Mr. Moskowitz and Ms. Crockett. And on the Senate side, Senator Schiff and Senator Booker talk about his resignation. You know that's coming, and it should. Donald Trump says no I got rid of him because he was supported by Democrats he was confirmed in May this is almost October that's not the reason you fired him you fired him because he wouldn't bring a case against Letitia James it's nonsense and when Pam Bondi didn't move fast enough Donald Trump went after her in the last 48 hours like in all caps on Truth Social Pam Pam, he's calling her name.

30:22Michael Popok:Pam, we have to act fast. You're moving too slow. You must go after, and then he names them. Schiff, James, Cook, and the rest. I'm like, well, this plays right into the hands of the defense. If this wasn't exhibit A, vindictive prosecution dismissal, I don't know what would be. Pam, you got to hurry. Lindsay Halligan, you should, Lindsay's cute, and she likes you. Now, I added the cute part, but he actually wrote in the social media post, she likes you. Like we're talking about a seventh grade cafeteria squabble. She really likes you. You should, you know, she's, who is Lindsey Halligan? You may be not, you wouldn't normally know her if Donald Trump wasn't president.

31:11Michael Popok:She was a insurance defense lawyer, never been a prosecutor. Didn't go to the, you know, didn't graduate with high honors. Didn't go to the best places. Didn't end up at the best law firms, if you know what I mean. But she looks like she should be on Fox and Friends or Fox News. She's another one of those air-blown blonde people that Donald Trump collects. And looks a little bit like a blonde version of Alina Habba. That seems to be her qualifications. You know, eight years out of law school. And what she'd been doing? Well, she was the Mar-a-Lago back to Florida, local counsel, where they pulled her out of the Federalist Society playbook somehow.

31:53Michael Popok:And then she got pulled into the White House to rummage around the Smithsonian and try to figure out how to cancel out facts that Donald Trump didn't like, like the fact that he was impeached or that black people were enslaved or that Jewish people were killed by Germans. You know, little sticky little facts like that. And so Donald Trump looked around and said, you know, you look like Hope Hicks slash Alina Habba slash fill in the blank. You go do this job. And when Pam Bondi had a moment of being her own person and nominated somebody else, Meg, I think Meg Cleary, who nobody's ever heard of, he said, no, Lindsay Allegan.

32:34Michael Popok:And then he put Lindsay Allegan in. It's all a shit show of Donald Trump's making, all playing into the hands of federal public defenders and defense lawyers and the like. So that happened. And then we have the Wall Street Journal finally got around to filing their motion to dismiss. I thought the timing was interesting. This is the defamation case for several billion dollars that Donald Trump filed against the Wall Street Journal. because they, about, I don't know, a month and a half before we actually got our hands on the three-volume leather-bound birthday scrapbook that Ghislaine Maxwell created with hundreds of Epstein's friends to give him on his 50th after it already got published after being subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee.

33:24Michael Popok:I mean, it's so public that we have it on our legal AF sub stack where you can read it. And so the Wall Street Journal got a copy of it earlier. I don't know if they got it from the estate of Epstein, which is where the House Oversight Committee got it, or they got it from somebody in the Department of Justice. I don't know, maybe Maureen Comey, who knows. But they got it and they described it. And they described, without publishing it, they described that obscene, I mean, Wall Street Journal calls it bawdy, but that's being kind, vulgar birthday note that somebody on behalf of Donald Trump prepared for him.

34:06Michael Popok:I don't think he sat down at an arts and crafts table or at Michael's and made it, but he signed it. Now, by the way, now that I've seen in the new filing the actual book in its original format and not just copies of photocopies, it's definitely his signature. I'll just leave it at that from 30 years ago. So they wrote a story corroborated properly, ethically proper. They wrote a story, the Wall Street Journal in July, front page, about Donald Trump was in the birthday book. Why did they write that story? Because Donald Trump continues to deny how close his relationship with the convicted child sex predator is, Jeffrey Epstein.

34:49Michael Popok:And every time he denies it, a reporter's got to run another story to remind everybody on how close personal BFFs they really were. And maybe it goes further than that. So they wrote the story. Trump threatens Rupert Murdoch. He threatens the Wall Street Journal. He says, that's not me. I didn't do it. Right. There's like 500, because that's 237 pages. There's like 500 cards from different submissions. Only yours is false. Only yours is forged from 30 years ago. Okay. They said, see you in court. He sues. He gets judge, for the Wall Street Journal, he gets Judge Darren Gales. Full disclosure, I know Darren Gales reasonably well.

35:33Michael Popok:Helped him get elected or retained when he was a state court judge in Miami. Great judge, by the way. Federal court judge in Miami. Same judge that presided over Michael Cohen's defamation case, which was famously dismissed by Donald Trump. An early taco moment, Trump always chickens out. He gets the case and then it sort of dies. There's a little bit of scuffle when Donald Trump asked for Rupert Murdoch's deposition claiming that he's got one foot on a banana peel and one foot in a grave, as my late mother would say, that he's not healthy, he's not well, he may die, we need his deposition. Donald Trump has opened himself up to depositions here.

36:11Michael Popok:He can't, to answer questions that come up in the comments, He can't not give this deposition because he's president of the United States. Not when he files the lawsuit, not when you're the plaintiff. And so we always thought it was dumb. Donald Trump does many, many dumb things. We thought this was dumb as practicing lawyers here at Legal AF World. So they've solved that problem. They decide a motion to dismiss will be filed first by the Wall Street Journal. and then if that doesn't kill the case, we'll do depositions later. Okay. So now I'm waiting patiently for the motion to dismiss and it comes, yay, with about 14 exhibits.

36:52Michael Popok:And they didn't have to do this, but what they said was two things. The mainstream media only picked up on one, which is you can't sue us because it's true. Defamation, the key defense of defamation is truth. We saw the letter. We saw the submission of the birthday book. We reported on it accurately. The book later came out. It's true. But the second defense was the better one for me, which was, and you can't be defamed because your reputation for being vulgar precedes you, and we can't make it worse. So in other words, Donald Trump, your reputation is so bad by your own self-admission that we can't defame you.

37:38Michael Popok:You're incapable of being defamed, I guess is the way to put it. And I was like, that is absolute and complete genius. Now, they attached interviews that Donald Trump gave, a Politico magazine article in which they listed the 99 dumbest things Donald Trump has ever said out loud effectively. and of course they focused on the Access Hollywood secret taping from 2005 that hit the 2016 campaign that's the gift that keeps on giving right where he says to Billy Bush not knowing he's being recorded well when you're a celebrity Billy you can do a lot of things you can grab a woman by her p-word and they're saying you can't defame a guy like that what publishing that accurately reporting that Donald Trump had a birthday card that was vulgar inside of a book to Epstein three months before it was outed that he was a child sex trafficker and a child rapist.

38:38Michael Popok:That's defamatory against who? But I want to read to you. Hold on one second. I want to read to you from some of the exhibits that they use, because what they do, besides attaching all sorts of articles, And of course, reminding us of what the vulgar card looked like and where it was placed. So in one of the exhibits that they asked the court to take judicial notice of is our statements made by Donald Trump. So you got the Access Hollywood, right? A person that says he can grab a woman by her P word can't be defamed by having a proper report about a letter, a birthday letter inside of a book. That was the first great argument.

39:26Michael Popok:And this is similar to what I had actually argued E. Jean Carroll when Donald Trump sued her, the victim of his sexual abuse, for defamation. I said she should be arguing that he has a reputation that can't be defamed because it's so gross and vulgar. And when he, just to remind people, he admitted that that was his voice on the Access Hollywood secret recording. He just said it was locker room banter. which they then used in the Wall Street Journal filing to say, you can't defame this guy. He's already admitted. They cited to a case involving Lenny Dykstra used to play for the Mets that said, people already have an evil thought in their head about you from your own actions.

40:09Michael Popok:Whatever you're claiming was defamatory certainly didn't put it there. So here's what he said and never denied. And there's citations here to where in what fora he said it. This is in the political article, and it's up on our Legal AF sub stack. Number 23, oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world, I would say to myself thinking about me as a boy from Queens, can you believe what I'm getting? Number 24, I've never had any trouble in bed. Number 27, all of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me, consciously or unconsciously. That's to be expected. it. Number 29, when a man leaves a woman, especially when it's perceived that he has left for a piece of ass, a good one, there are 50 % of the population who will love the woman who was left.

41:07Michael Popok:Vanity Fair, September 90. Then we get into disgusting things about Ivanka. That should be a coffee table book for Donald Trump. Disgusting things he said about Ivanka or a 12-year-old Paris Hilton. Get ready.

41:23Michael Popok:You know who's one of the great beauties of the world, according to everybody, and I helped create her? Ivanka. My daughter, Ivanka. She's six foot tall. She's got the best body. She made a lot of money as a model, a tremendous amount. Howard Stern Show, 2003. Every guy in the country wants to go out with my daughter. See, he doesn't make a personal exception there. New York Magazine, December 13th, 2004. She does have a very nice figure. I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her. ABC's The View. Very interesting because he's going after The View these days to try to get them off the air.

42:02Michael Popok:March 6th, 2006. And here is one of the most depraved. Number 33. I've known Paris Hilton from the time she's 12. Now put this against the backdrop of his association with Jeffrey Epstein, will you? Her parents are friends of mine. You know, the first time I saw her, she walked into the room and I said, who the hell is that? Well, at 12, I wasn't interested. Good to know. I've never been into that. That sort of always, I've always sort of stuck around 25 category. Howard Stern Show, 2003. That's 2003. He then goes into New York Magazine, and he participates in an interview about Jeffrey Epstein, in which he says, great guy, loves to party, likes women as much as me, almost as much as me, on the young side.

42:59Michael Popok:And then three months later, the birthday book. So you see, his reputation was already in the trash before we even get to the birthday book, let alone the reporting by the Wall Street Journal. So the Wall Street Journal asked the judge to dismiss and award sanctions immediately. What the little tricky TikTok-y part here that I wanted to at least put on your radar is that Donald Trump is brokering a deal for the sale of TikTok from the Chinese, right, for tens of billions of dollars. On the other side of the transactions are friends of his, like Larry Ellison, who owns Oracle, and Apollo Investors.

43:41Michael Popok:And now we hear potentially Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch was also at the same dinner in London hosted by the Royals for Donald Trump last week. So here's my working theory. Even though they just filed an aggressive motion to dismiss and put a lot of things in there they didn't have to. What if there's a settlement? But instead of the money going from the Wall Street Journal to Donald Trump's pocket or his presidential library, what if the settlement is Donald Trump will settle the case if Rupert Murdoch invests X amount of dollars to open a piece of TikTok? So now Donald Trump is using his own personal lawsuit to extort and coerce maybe a billion dollar purchase price out of Rupert Murdoch for him to take control of a platform with 170 million Americans on it and give that cash to the Chinese.

44:49Michael Popok:Do you see the scandal? Now, TikTok, I get 170 million people. I'm not really on TikTok. I get that 170 million people are on TikTok. I understand that. But are you going to want to be on TikTok when it's controlled by Oracle's Larry Ellison, a Trump supporter, and Rupert Murdoch of Fox? Think about that. Now, let's turn from there to the New York Times because it's all in Florida. In Tampa, Donald Trump filed, I guess to handpick his own judge, filed a defamation case against the New York Times for like 10 times their net worth. They're worth about$9 billion. dollars. And he avoids Florida, Southern District of Florida.

45:44Michael Popok:He avoids Eileen Cannon getting her as a judge. He avoids Miami. He files in Tampa. He gets the chief judge, Judge Meridae. He files a hundred page, you know, like 300 paragraph complaint against the New York Times, which is all just a political ranting, having nothing to do with defamation law, really little to do with the New York Times, you know, except he listed like 20 areas where he didn't like the reporting about, no, I have more money than they say. No, my father wasn't corrupt. No, I was big on the apprentice. You know, stupid crap that the judge had, as he's put it, the reader has to wade through all of these allegations having no place in a federal lawsuit.

46:27Michael Popok:And I said at the time, I did my own reporting as a federal practitioner who's a member of that bar, that court, that that should be dismissed automatically for a violation of Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure because it's not a clear and concise statement. It's a political screen masquerading as a lawsuit, to paraphrase Judge Middlebrooks. And the judge gets it within three days without even asking for the New York Times to respond. And he dismisses the lawsuit and warns the lawyer, Alejandro Brito, for Donald Trump, effectively, that he's going to be subject to sanctions. He invited sanctions for The New York Times.

47:10Michael Popok:He also gave Trump one more shot, 28 days to file a proper pleading. I know the Trump side was like, well, it's logistics, not logistics. You just got your head handed to you. and your lawyer, there's now an invitation for the New York Times to seek sanctions against Donald Trump and the lawyer for having filed this, you know what. And it's happened before. Judge Middlebrooks awarded a whole group of people, including the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton, over a million dollars as a sanction against Alina Hava and Donald Trump. Judge Middlebrooks did it because he brought a case for defamation against that group.

47:47Michael Popok:He's a serial liar and a serial litigant that files worthless cases and federal judges are on to him. And now we turn, I've kept you in suspense long enough, to Donald Trump's appearance at the General Assembly of the United Nations today in New York, the hallowed grounds of the United Nations, where he rambled for an hour and a half, attacking his allies, telling all of his allies that they need to close their borders and effectively impose U.S. immigration policy because their countries are in the trash can if they don't. Let me play you a clip so you know what I'm talking about. Let's run the clip.

48:36But you know, we have a border, strong, and we have a shape and that shape doesn't just go straight up that shape is amorphous when it comes to the atmosphere and if we had the most clean air and i think we do we have very clean air we have the cleanest air we've had in many many years but the problem is that other countries like china which has air that's a little bit rough it blows and no matter what you're doing down here, the air up here, tends to get very dirty because it comes in from other countries where their air isn't so clean. And the environmentalists refuse to acknowledge that.

49:17Michael Popok:And then he had a series of meetings, you know, one where he tried to prop up another Trump-like, Trump-lite dictator, Miley, and not Cyrus, the president of Brazil, sorry, the president of Argentina, whose economy is going down the drain. The peso is so devalued that Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, had to step in with a social media post to try to stop the bleeding and say, don't worry, we'll do everything we can to prop up the failed dictatorship of Miley. And then Donald Trump had to literally put his arm around him at the UN today. We're going to support you. It's not that they care about, by the way, I love Argentinian people.

50:05Michael Popok:I'm not talking about the people, I'm talking about the government. It's not that they love from a trading, a global economy perspective, Argentina. Mexico and Canada are much more important than Argentina. But it's a geopolitical thing. Donald Trump needs to try to prop up these dictators throughout Latin America to make himself look good. And he's going to spend every last American dollar from our taxpayer dollars in order to do it. And when he wasn't doing that, he then reversed course as if nobody would notice and said that he believes that after meeting with Zelensky in New York, that the Ukrainians can get back all of the territory that has been ceded to the Russians during the war with.

50:56Michael Popok:And then I was letting him go, okay, great. We're going to get off the sidelines and give them more help? Boots on the ground? No. With the help of NATO and the NATO government and the NATO funding, I'm like, so NATO is going to pay to win the war, the war that you effed up because you undermined Zelensky in front of his arch enemy and our arch enemy, Russia, because you didn't fund him, because you cut off funding to Zelensky, because you said he had to be realistic and that Russia would never have to give back any of the land? You said that before you met with Putin at that failed summit in Alaska where you kissed Putin's ass and then he kicked yours?

51:43Michael Popok:What are we watching with Russia right now? They know that Trump is not going to support Zelensky any further. They've calculated and baked into their calculus that Trump is not going to send any more troops there or send troops there. is not going to do really ramp up his aid. He's going to try to rely on NATO instead. And Trump's not going to make good on any of his economic sanctions. He sits today in the United Nations and bangs his foot, bangs his shoe on the podium about, you must stop buying oil and gas from the Russians. What are we doing to sanction the Russians? Nada, nothing. Go after Putin's assets.

52:25Michael Popok:like Biden did. Go after Putin's oligarch friends and go after their yachts again. Go get the cash. Sanction, sanction, sanction. Trump says, I think Russia's about to fall. They're a paper tiger. You know, in the meantime, what do we have? Putin bombing Kiev. Putin killing Ukrainians. It'd be better if you said nothing than what you're doing to undermine the Ukrainian people and their military strategy. But that's our president for us. Thank God that General Assembly is once a year. I'm sure people were trying to sit through it and get through it in the room like it was, you know, like root canal.

53:09You got to do it, but you can't wait for

53:11Michael Popok:it to be over. You know, I was hoping when the teleprompter failed, that he wouldn't be able to come up with much. But, you know, those are speeches that are written by like Stephen Miller, you know the american carnage on full display you know the europeans and the other 150 160 countries that are in there they know that what's going on right now with this with this season of america is not good economically politically geopolitically national security wise it's terrible and donald trump just stands there as a petty dictator bangs the bangs the podium and says, everything's great. We're great.

53:49Michael Popok:America's great. You suck. Which just continues to turn countries away from the democracies of the West and towards the East and their unconditional money. China, building bridges and infrastructure all over the world, stepping into the breach. You know, every time somebody turns away from America, like they turn to another ally, they turn to Canada, they turn to Brazil, they turn to China. Yes, they even turn to Russia and India. And that's all because of Donald Trump. Now, the best thing we can do is stay here and join together. We are bigger than our opposition. We are bigger than MAGA. We are bigger than MAGA.

54:41Michael Popok:We're just a sleeping giant that needs to be woken up. And if you're still asleep, it's time to get up. We are throwing up the windowsill, throwing up the sash and saying we're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore. But we are bigger than them. And if we go to the polls and vote together, we will win at the midterms. We will hold them accountable. We'll run the bastards out on a rail. And the Pam Bondys and the Kash Patels will not only be a distant memory along with the rest of the cabinet, but they will be the subject of impeachment proceedings and convictions in the Senate or criminal prosecutions when this administration is over.

55:28Michael Popok:I know I can't assure you of many things. Death and taxes, for sure. But this will happen as we join together. And we have to tune out the noise of the vindictive Christian nationalist Bible-thumping revival that just went on with being hosted effectively by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance during Charlie Kirk's memorial. I want to make this clear. I am fine, as should you be. with giving fellow Americans a safe space to grieve for what they consider to be a fallen idol. Okay? I'm not here to debate all of the disgusting, racist, hateful things inconsistent with the gospel that Charlie Kirk would say on a regular basis.

56:22Michael Popok:But I am fine with giving a safe space for grieving for people in America who don't believe what I believe, who think he is a fallen hero. I am not okay with holding him up and venerating him and making him into a martyr or a saint. And that's the difference. And that's okay. And that's part of being a country within the confines of having a First Amendment and having proper political dialogue and debate. And I'm happy to debate and have the dialogue with anybody who's on the opposite side of the spectrum. Come on, Legal AF. Come and have a conversation with me. Come and have a debate with me.

57:05Michael Popok:That's what I wanted with Charlie Kirk. I didn't want that dialogue to have ended the way that it did. So anybody out there, come on, drop me a note, DM me, tell me you want to come on. I'm talking about somebody, you know, in that world. and we'll have a conversation and a dialogue in front of an audience who will be in rapt attention, I assure you. But I'm glad you're here and I'm glad you're supporting what we're doing on The Intersection and making it a top 75 of all podcasts in America type event. And that's all because of you. Support us here on our audio platforms. Look for The Intersection.

57:51Michael Popok:on the Midas platform on Tuesday nights, the intersection. And then if you want to become a card-carrying member of the Legal AF community, which I'm one of the founders of and curators of, Legal AF YouTube, it's free. No corporate parent, nobody tells us what to say. Become a member and a subscriber. Legal AF Substack, that's a great place to join. We got live reporting there. I just did a live today with Michael Cohen. I think you'll find fascinating. and you can also become a paid member. And that's what helps keep Legal AF and everything in its world, you know, kind of up and running. And so I really appreciate what everybody, what everybody says and does here.

58:32Michael Popok:I take it seriously. As you know, I'm really glad that you've become part of this new community on The Intersection. Until next Tuesday, I'm Michael Popak. And again, Lashana Tova to those that observe. 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. Now building a what we started together on Legal AF, I've launched a new law firm, the Popok Firm, dedicated to obtaining justice through compassionate and zealous legal representation. At the Popok Firm, we are focused on obtaining justice for those who have been injured or damaged by a life-altering event, by securing the highest dollar recoveries.

59:18Michael Popok:I've been tirelessly fighting for justice for the last 35 years, so my own law firm organically building on my legal AF work just feels right. And I've handpicked a team of top-tier trial fighters and settlement experts throughout all 50 states known as Big Auto Injury Attorneys who have the know-how to beat heartless insurance companies, corporations, government entities, and their attorneys. Big Auto's attorneys working with my firm are rock stars in their respective states and collectively responsible for billions of dollars in recoveries. So if you were a loved one, but on the wrong side of a catastrophic auto, motor vehicle, rideshare, or truck accident, suffered a personal injury, or been the victim of medical malpractice, employment harassment, or discrimination, or suffered a violation of your civil and constitutional rights, then contact the Popak Firm today at 1-877-POPAKAF or by visiting my website at www.thepopakfirm.com and fill out a free case evaluation form.

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