Trump Blows Up at Top Official after Epstein Secrets Surface

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2:21Michael Popok:Who is embroiled in more scandals in the Trump administration than Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. And that's saying a lot for a scandal-ridden administration. I mean, you've got the sex scandal swirling around Kristi Noem, another sex scandal swirling around the Labor Secretary, the child sex trafficking scandal and cover-up of the cover-up by the Trump administration, and the list goes on. And now you've got Howard Lutnick right in the middle of it. Besides the fact he's pissing everybody off in the administration because of his grandstanding. He's also pissing off Donald Trump, according to reporting, who's not happy that there's a family profiting on the Trump brand that's not named Donald Trump or his family.

3:06Michael Popok:And now that there's been reporting that the family office that Howard Lutnick used to own and now has his two 30-year-old sons run for him called Cantor Fitzgerald, that it profited to the tune of 25 % increase just last year, 2025. According to reporting and Politico, there was a fallout between Trump and Lutnik about how much money his family's making off the back of Donald Trump. Now you've got the latest scandal, inconsistent with how much money the family is making, is the fact that it looks like they bet against the tariffs, the very tariffs that Daddy Lutnick was busy telling the American people back in April of 2025 would be their liberation day and would be their ticket and path to success.

3:56Michael Popok:At the same time, probably knowing that the United States Supreme Court was going to rip down those tariffs, Daddy Lutnick's company bet against the tariffs. In other words, they were willing to buy from people who had to overpay for refunds that were eventually found to be unconstitutional, buy them for cents on the dollar, an arbitrage, if you will. Oh, you got$10 million in refund coming your way? We'll give you$3 million for it. We'll keep the other seven. We'll give you instant cash now. We'll hold on to the rest. And now Jamie Raskin, who's the ranking member of the House Democrats and Judiciary Committee, has opened up an investigation into Mr.

4:37Michael Popok:Lutnick, sending a strongly worded letter calling him in for testimony, along with his son, Brandon. I'm Michael Popok. You're on the Midas Touch Network. Full disclosure, I used to work at Cantor Fitzgerald about six years ago. I don't have any insider knowledge about this story, but I did work for Howard Lutnick. All right, let's move on in the storytelling. Lutnick seems to be rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, no surprise there within the administration. He was the head of Trump's transition team to come into the White House. He really wanted the Treasury Secretary position, and he didn't get it.

5:12Michael Popok:His consolation prize, all to our detriment, is he got the Commerce Secretary position. But he's had a kind of a sandpapery relationship with many people in the administration because of his grandstanding. He tries to take credit for trade deals and other deals that are not his, where he comes in at the last minute, not really understanding the full details. And then everybody's got to clean up behind the elephant, clean up the mess that he's created. He's also having difficulty delivering on Donald Trump's promise to the American people of an$18 trillion foreign investment in America because of the use of the tariffs.

5:47Michael Popok:Of course, that number keeps dwindling, and it looks like a lot of that number is not going to manifest itself or is connected to Joe Biden's presidency. So besides the fact he can't deliver on the$18 trillion of investment, or he points to projects that were actually created under somebody, some other president's watch. Now we've got the profiting on the unconstitutionality of a very thing that he was a champion of. Who can forget, because he won't let you forget, how many times Howard Lutnick has gone on CNBC and other news media to talk about how great the tariffs are. Who can forget this. Play the clip.

6:27Ben Meiselas:When we say we're going to charge a tariff and other countries who lean on us, who rely on us, who can't live without the oxygen that is our economy. Because remember the thing about our economy is while we have a$29 trillion GDP, we are the consumer of$20 trillion. Yeah, right. And this is the key thing. We buy everybody's stuff. So who's more important? Let's say they have an economy that produces stuff and we have an economy that buys stuff. The customer is always right. We all know the customer is always right because if no one buys it, they can't produce it. Right. So everybody needs our economy.

7:12Ben Meiselas:When? Now? I mean, to the fact that China consumes less than 10 trillion and primarily tries to figure out how to sell it to itself, right? Send it by anybody else's. Right. So we are the world's consumer. We're the world's customer. We want them to come here. And if they can't come here, what if you pass?

7:32Michael Popok:Well, Jamie Raskin, friend of the pod, is not a ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, is not forgetting. And he wrote a letter. Now, this is follow-up to a letter and an inquiry that was made several months ago by Elizabeth Warren in the Senate, in which there was word coming out of a magazine called Wired, sort of an expose, that they had gotten their hands on an actual Cantor Fitzgerald letterhead document sent out that suggested or indicated that they had already done a trade, that they had bought maybe$10 million worth of tariff refunds for cents on the dollar. And yet, every spokesperson at Cantor Fitzgerald and Howard Lutnick's own office deny that that happened.

8:12Michael Popok:And Raskin wants answers. He says, for months, Cantor Fitzgerald has reportedly been buying up the rights to collect potential tariff refunds from American importers for 20 to 30 cents on the dollar, in effect betting that the company would be forced to refund those tariffs back to injured American companies. A letter from the firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, reviewed by Wired, described this approach in detail, that they would pay cents on the dollar. The same letter boasted that the firm had already put a trade through, had already put a trade through, representing about$10 million of IEPA rights, the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, and that the capacity to trade up to several hundred million dollars of these are likely and can upsize even that.

8:58Michael Popok:So which is it, Lutnick and Cantor Fitzgerald? Are you not doing the deals or have you already done the deals? Here's what he says on page two. At the same time, Secretary Lutnick, you've been a key architect and cheerleader in chief of the administration's tariff policy. You participated in the losing strategy of bypassing Congress to unilaterally impose tariffs. And you had an insider's view of the tariffs' profound legal vulnerability, the administration's weak litigation hand. In other words, you had inside knowledge that they were going to fail. That potential conflict of interest raises some troubling questions of federal ethics and insider trading.

9:39Michael Popok:Was the Lutnick family's cornering of the market in this doomed endeavor a mere coincidence or something more orchestrated? The firm has so then they talk about the Wired article. It says that a Cantor spokesperson recently denied that there's ever been a trade yet. The Wired magazine article, based on a letter that they reviewed, said the firm had already put a trade through worth$10 million. The firm has subsequently claimed that a salesman had erroneously believed the firm was going to greenlight the transaction, but that is not what the letters said. A firm cannot simultaneously have never executed any transactions in this market and have already put through a trade.

10:23Michael Popok:Which is it the American people deserve to know whether the administration insiders and their closest family members deliberately positioned themselves to profit from these blatantly illegal tariffs while everybody else paid the price? All right. Time for a quick break. We've been really interested in the science behind OneSkin lately. It's a science-driven skincare brand built around their OS1 peptide, developed by longevity scientists and designed to target visible signs of aging while simplifying your routine with dermatologist-tested products safe for sensitive skin. Born from over a decade of longevity research, OneSkin's OS1 peptide is proven to target the visible signs of aging, helping you unlock your healthiest skin now and as you age.

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11:58Michael Popok:Of course, Lutnik has another problem. He also lied to the American people when about six or seven months ago, he said that he had no contact with Jeffrey Epstein after 2005 when he met him because he bought the townhouse next door to Jeffrey Epstein, met him with his wife, was so disgusted by him. He never wanted to be alone in the room with that man ever again, except for the fact that about nine years later, he went to the island along with his, another couple and their children to go have lunch with Jeffrey during a Christmas holiday on his yacht. And lots of other contacts related to charity and charity donations and trying to stop some construction in the neighborhood at a museum that they had a mutual interest in and things like that to put a lie to what Lutnik said out loud.

12:50Michael Popok:In fact, that came up during an appropriations hearing meeting where he had a like, basically with his wife sitting behind him, who brings his wife to an appropriations committee meeting, had to answer for why he didn't tell the truth about 2005. Is this administration and its leadership just genetically and from a DNA standpoint incapable of telling the truth? Play the clip.

13:15Ben Meiselas:But Nick, I think you understand the root of concern here. It's the way you described very emphatically your first encounter with him in his apartment, said you were disgusted, would never have any contact with him again. Did you, in fact, make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island? I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with they were there as well with their children. And we had lunch on the island. That is true for an hour. And we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife all together.

14:05Ben Meiselas:We were on family vacation. We were not apart to suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012. Well, I don't recall why we did it, but we did it. Mr. Secretary, again, as I said there.

14:19Michael Popok:So Democrats and even Republicans are calling for Howard Lutnick to go. Does he make it through the second year of the term? I'm not sure about that. There's been lots of rumblings. I mean, Trump has a habit of having attacks on his friends, and apparently Lutnick is his closest friend of the administration, make him pull them closer. But then again, you know, the people like Lindsey Halligan are out of the administration. Alina Habba are out of the administration and the rest. I mean, there's a lot of fighting going on in this administration. First of all, it's a tremendously leaky, undisciplined administration.

14:54Michael Popok:We're constantly getting information from insiders about problems, ethical conflicts, illegality within the Trump administration. And that's because people don't respect Donald Trump and they're starting to talk to reporters. You know, we just had the oddest thing ever. The number two in the Department of Justice, for instance, Todd Blanche, is rumored to be the attorney general when Pam Bondi gets canned. And yet Howard Lutnick's best friend from growing up in high school, Peter Tickerton, went on a recent podcast that nobody watches and said that Todd Blanche is corrupt and should go. I mean, this pitting administration officials against each other in some sort of hunger games, you know, is Donald Trump's M.O.

15:43Michael Popok:Certainly doesn't make for good government or good governance or ethics in government. And we'll continue to follow it all right here. You're on the Midas Touch Network. And also, if you know me, you know me from Legal AF. Come over to Legal AF YouTube channel. Hit the free subscribe button. Help us continue to grow that community as well. Until my next report, I'm Michael. 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. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF.

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