Trump & Blanche Instantly Countered as Blanche Takes Over DOJ

0:00Michael Popok:The moral fight, the good fight, always worth having, even if you're on the losing end of it. Todd Blanche may have been confirmed. He may have had to sell out every last shred of his ethics and morals in order to get the votes. Bill Cassidy, who voted against Donald Trump after Jan 6th, did not want to challenge Donald Trump again. But at the end, the makings of Todd Blanche's impeachment are already in place. And that fight was worth having. Because now at the midterms, it is crystal clear, right? Good versus evil, light versus dark. Do you want a president who is unhinged and is abusing the rule of law and has no regard for the Constitution?

0:45Michael Popok:Do you want him and his attorney general who was picked solely to enable every worst instinct of Donald Trump? Do you want them in power or not? Or do you want them reined in by a proper Senate and a proper House providing oversight? That is a yes or no question. It's binary. The light is on where the light is off. And it's not just that Todd Blanche during his confirmation hearing said many things that will eventually be used both to impeach him and depending upon the level of the pardon that Donald Trump gives him, potentially to prosecute him. it is that there are now lawsuits that have become even more critical about Todd Blanche in courtrooms like Judge Brinkham's courtroom in the Eastern District of Virginia or Judge Williams' courtroom in Miami that matter even more than they did before because now he is the attorney general and so it's no longer this is a referendum on whether he is fit to be attorney general.

1:47Michael Popok:Now it's about finding in history the first times that a sitting attorney general is found in contempt of court has been found to abuse the rule of law and have that branded on him like a scarlet letter. Let me talk about Judge Brinkema's courtroom. We got a brand new filing by our friends at Democracy Forward. They've amended their complaint. They've added some plaintiffs. And now they are putting squarely in front of one federal judge the question of whether Todd Blanche's unilateral creation of an immunity, an immunity, a release of Donald Trump, his family, 400 of his entities from all tax liability, all tax prosecutions, all tax audits, meaning a carte blanche, a free pass to commit tax evasion from May of this year looking backwards.

2:38Michael Popok:decades if that is legal and unconstitutional or not. That's now in front of Judge Brinkema because we've got the brand new lawsuit that's been brought by Democracy Forward, an amendment to their prior complaint. Now, you may recall that Judge Brinkema already, already blocked the Jan 6 fund. You had Judge Williams in Miami who declared it the product of bad faith, the product of illegal collusion between Todd Blanche, Donald Trump, and the Internal Revenue Service. And she said that you can't call the resulting settlement agreement a settlement agreement at all because it was the result and byproduct of an illicit deal.

3:18Michael Popok:But Judge Brinkema went even further. She blocked the fund. And now she's being asked to do the exact same thing and declare the release, the immunity that Todd Blanche gave in order to get the job. another article of impeachment, declare that to be illegal and void. And just to let me just read to you. And we're here on the Midas Touch Network. I'm Michael Popok. Another backdrop for me. I am still traveling, but I wanted to jump on here and talk to you about these important issues in the aftermath of the Blanche confirmation. Let me read to you from the new complaint, and we'll post it up on Legal AF Substack for all to review.

4:02Michael Popok:This is right off the top, an amended complaint just filed in front of Judge Brinkama. Paragraph one, after President Trump brought an untimely and jurisdictionally faulty lawsuit against two federal agencies he controls, they executed a predictably collusive agreement with the president and the other Trump plaintiffs. The agreement led to Blanche issuing orders requiring the United States to give the president two very valuable things. One, the weaponization fund of taxpayer dollars to make payments to those that the Trump administration favors. And two, immunity from any civil and criminal liability for President Trump, his family, his businesses, and all others deemed to be related or affiliated, including a release of tax liability and tax audits based on conduct before May 18th of 2026.

4:55Michael Popok:That is a crime. That alone is a crime. You don't have to take my word for it. Take the word of a senior former federal judge, Mark Wolf, who resigned in protest after 35 or 40 years on the bench. I just interviewed him. He had this to say about Todd Blanche's grant of carte blanche to Donald Trump to commit tax evasion, calling it what it is, a crime. Play the clip. is the fact that, in my opinion, President Trump committed a crime in negotiating and the settlement agreement in this case and asking in that for immunity from tax audits. And it's possible that Mr. Blanche would be found to be a co-conspirator in that crime.

5:47Let me try to explain that briefly. Coming out of Watergate, my formative experience, Congress enacted a statute that makes it illegal for the president or the vice president to directly or indirectly request the initiation or a termination of a tax investigation. There's a five-year potential prison term for violating that statute. Donald Trump would not have immunity from criminal prosecution for violating that statute in this case because he filed this lawsuit in his personal capacity. And therefore, negotiating the settlement was not an official act for which he has immunity as president. So in this case, he was negotiating essentially with himself, as Judge Williams said in Trump versus IRS case in which I'm one of the 35 judges who, through excellent lawyers, persuaded the court to reopen the case and find that this was not a genuine case.

7:08This wasn't a real case of controversy that was legitimately in federal court. It was a collusive case brought for an improper purpose. That is to get a benefit, a personal benefit for President Trump, his family and his allies.

7:24Michael Popok:Now, back to the complaint filed by Democracy Forward, paragraph three. This scheme is unprecedented, unlawful and breathtakingly corrupt attempt by the president and members of his cabinet. That would be Blanche to manipulate the legal process and have intended and have and laws intended to prevent political interference to achieve benefits that President Trump and his political allies could not have obtained lawfully. By its own terms, paragraph four, the anti-weaponization fund is available only to claimants who assert that they were targeted by Democrats, even though the current Republican administration has weaponized the awesome power of the federal government against its perceived political opponents.

8:03Michael Popok:That's why in this lawsuit, which we call Floyd, a number of the plaintiffs are people who are Democrats who have been attacked by the Department of Justice. Therefore, they're entitled to money, too. The immunity order, this is on paragraph seven, also violates 26 USC 7217. That's what Judge Wolf was just talking about, which prohibits the president from asking the IRS either directly or indirectly to end audits of particular taxpayers, including the president's audits. Period. End of story. Here, let's move ahead to paragraph 289 of the complaint. Acting Attorney General Blanche, well, let's just call him Attorney General Blanche, had no authority to issue the immunity order releasing all tax claims and terminating tax audits and liability of the president, his family, and all unnamed affiliates for prior tax years.

9:00Michael Popok:We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that Donald Trump could have owed to the IRS and to the American taxpayer. He's been fighting it for years that just got wiped off the books if Todd Blanche's unilateral immunity agreement that he signed by himself is deemed to be legal. I don't think it's legal. I think Judge Brinkema is the right judge to undermine, to declare it illegal. On information and belief, paragraph 289 continues, the IRS did not refer any cases to the Department of Justice involving tax liability or audits of any of the plaintiffs in Trump. And therefore, they didn't have, therefore, the Department of Justice doesn't have the power to stop the audit.

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10:31Michael Popok:Look for Magic Spoon on Amazon or at your nearest grocery store. And if you want to try something new, check out Magic Spoon's protein pastries. Yes, they're packed with protein and taste like the nostalgic toaster pastries you grew up with, but without all the sugar. You can get$5 off your next order, including the protein pastries at magicspoon.com slash legal AF. That's magicspoon.com slash legal AF for$5 off. Now, I asked Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut a day before the vote about Todd Blanche possibly being impeached. Here's what he had to say. I think that, you know, his failing to acknowledge that the January 6th rioters committed crimes, his support for pardons, his enabling Donald Trump's profiting from crypto.

11:28One point four billion dollars is what Donald Trump made last year from crypto alone. Two billion dollars plus total. It is absolutely stomach turning. It's jaw dropping. the kind of corruption that Todd Blanch is enabling as we speak. So I think the kind of complicity in that kind of corruption is, for me, a very important reason that there could be impeachment. But remember that Donald Trump, under recent Supreme Court opinions, can't be held responsible criminally while he's in office for anything he does while he's in office, but Todd Blanche could be.

12:19Michael Popok:And so I didn't want to leave our audience here on Midas Touch and Legal AF sort of down in the dumps about, well, the fight was lost against Todd Blanche. You know, what are we going to do? Well, we're going to use it politically and to motivate the vote. That fight is worth having. That conversation, that debate in the public square of ideas, is worth having. And we see that the cravenness of 50 Republican, all Republican senators got Blanche barely across the finish line with Collins and Murkowski showing, I wouldn't call it political courage. They're fighting for their lives and their Senate seats in Alaska and Maine, respectively.

13:02Michael Popok:But at least they voted against Blanche. It'll go down in history that way. I mean, Murkowski Ian Collins voted to convict Donald Trump off of the impeachment of Jan 6th. So did Cassidy. What happened to Bill Cassidy? But rather than wring our hands and wring our necks about what's going to happen next, let's talk about how the courts continue to be the bulwark, continue to be the firewall to protect our democracy. I asked Senator Cory Booker, also on the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with Senator Blumenthal, about a day or two before the vote about whether this fight was even worth having and why have it.

13:40Michael Popok:Here's what he had to say. I would say, please don't surrender to that idea because that will lead us into a pretty terrible place. I know from my own history as a black American that people fought hard as hell for every inch of ground we gained. And this idea that if we just acquiesce, if we just give in, maybe it won't be as bad as we imagine it to be. That to me is inviting disaster and accepting, resigning yourself to injustice. We have to fight. I am telling you right now, when it comes to principled stands, we have to stand up or there'll be the slow erosion of the very principles that are worth fighting for.

14:31Michael Popok:So I just hope your viewers understand this is one of those moments where even if we lose, the fact that we stood, history will look back and take strength from our resistance. Thanks for being here on Midas Touch. You're going to see a few more of my videos over the weekend as I start to get back into my normal cadence, even though I'm still traveling with my family. It is important for me to take time away from my family to talk to you directly. I know it's important for you to be part of the Midas Touch and Legal AF community. We're going to cross 1.2 million subscribers this weekend with your help on Legal AF YouTube channel.

15:07Michael Popok:Take a minute, hit the free subscribe button, help us to continue to grow our pro-democracy channel there as well. And if you want to read the whole 60 pages of the brand new amended complaint filed to put that tax immunity front and center in front of a federal judge, it's up on Legal AF Substack for paid members. Think about becoming a member there as well. It helps us. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popok. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack.

15:41Michael Popok: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.