Trump DOJ Just Let Secret Plan Slip

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0:29See terms.

0:30Michael Popok:Todd Blanche, the newly confirmed attorney general, has a tell. When he tells you he's not going to make a comment about ongoing litigation, even if it's about the Jan 6th insurrectionists and their cases under the Federal Tort Claims Act to get hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government. When he tells you I'm not going to answer those questions and everybody has the right to file a lawsuit against the Department of Justice, you can just instantly translate that into the Department of Justice is going to pay the Jan 6th insurrectionists for having attacked the Capitol and the cradle of our democracy.

1:10Michael Popok:I'm Michael Popak here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. That's what I caught when I watched Todd Blanche being grilled, being cross-examined to within an inch of his life by Kristen Welker on the Sunday morning talk shows. When she turned to him and said, will you make a commitment to the American people that even if there's no Jan 6th anti-weaponization fund, you say it's dead and you say it's buried, will you guarantee to the American people? that you won't, out of the Department of Justice's other funds, pay them for having attacked law enforcement and our Capitol. Watch what he has to say here, and then I'll translate it for you.

1:53Michael Popok:Play the clip. If the president asks you to revive the fund, will you tell him no? Well, the president has said it's dead as well. So you can, and as the president has said, that he very strongly believes that those that had this Department of Justice weaponized against them should be compensated. that he's going to continue to say that. He said it's up to you. He was just asked about it. He said effectively, it's up to you what to do about this. And I've said repeatedly, it's dead. And he has also said it's dead. He said it in a cabinet meeting with the press there. And so I think there's this, it might be enjoyable for the media to continually ask me about whether the fund is really dead.

2:29And there is no fund. No money went from the treasury to any account. There were no commissioners established. And so there is no fund. There will be no fund. I've said it repeatedly. And the different angles coming almost every time I speak with the media, someone says, well, wait, is it really dead? And I say, yes, it is. And then the next interview I give, somebody will say to me, is it really dead? And I promise you, I will say, yes, it is dead. So you're saying you rule out ever reviving it. But just to be very clear, can you guarantee that under your Department of Justice, Anyone who attacked the Capitol on January 6th will not receive one dime of taxpayer money if they file a claim against the federal government.

3:12Well, anybody can file a claim against the federal government, not just anybody associated with January 6th. I'm not going to sit here and say on a news program whether a litigation that may or may not happen will result in money. I can't do that. So what I will say is that there's a process in place for decades where somebody that believes they've been wronged or a tort's been committed against them by the federal government can seek redress. And beyond that, I'm not going to comment about hypotheticals of what will happen in any of those cases. So potentially they could get paid under another stream of government funding, but not the anti-proposition fund.

3:45Michael Popok:OK, let's do a quick tutorial, shall we, on the Federal Tort Claims Act. It is true that if you believe you've been aggrieved by the federal government, your rights have been violated, constitutional, common law or statutory, you can try to sue the federal government, but you can't do it without their initial permission. You have to go through a process. It's called the Federal Tort Claims Act. I'm currently representing Midas Touch and Legal AF community members in unrelated Federal Tort Claims Act cases. As people know, I represent, through the Popak firm, the family of a flight attendant who died on the American Airlines Black Hawk helicopter tragedy that happened within days of Donald Trump returning to power.

4:33Michael Popok:You go through the Federal Tort Claims Act. You present your case of why you have been injured or damaged by the government and how much you're looking for. The government has six months to review it, and if they reject it, you can file it in court. And then you expect the government to defend itself, ultimately, and maybe enter into settlement discussions. That's how it normally works. But when you're talking about the Jan Sixers, nothing is normal. Nothing is regular. Nothing can be presumed to be regular. Instead, what we're watching is an elaborate choreography where the Department of Justice is likely to bend over and fold.

5:13Michael Popok:So there's no real adversarial party here when the Jan Sixers file their lawsuits, which they are doing now to get hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayer dollars to pay them for having run rampant and wild like a pack of animals and try to burn down our capital and assassinate elected officials. And I guess to get paid for a day's work by the federal government for doing so. Now, when you watch Todd Blanche and he says out loud, well, I'm not going to comment. Anybody can sue the government. Forget all of that. Just think of exactly what Todd Blanche did. we'll use it as a blueprint in the Miami case of Trump versus the Internal Revenue Service, because that's exactly what a version of what's going on here.

5:58Michael Popok:In Trump versus the IRS, Judge Williams concluded that Trump effectively controlled all the pieces on the chessboard, all the pieces on the chessboard. So there was no adversarial process, which is the foundation of our jurisprudence, of our system of justice. In other countries, in Europe, for instance, in South America, Central America, the judges play a more prosecutorial role of doing inquiry and fact development. We don't do that here. We have two parties at each other's throats, they should be, adversaries in a case. And through the adversarial process, we believe justice will be done, facts will be developed.

6:40Michael Popok:And the trier of fact, which is either a judge or a jury, depending upon the nature of the case or the type of contract that's involved or the matter, will make the ultimate conclusions of who's telling the truth and sort through the different factual submissions we call evidence. That's in the normal case when you have adversaries. But we don't have adversaries here because the other side, the Jan Sixers, the Department of Justice willingly wants to settle with them, just like we saw in the Ashley Babbitt case. Remember Ashley Babbitt tried to run down the Speaker's hallway to get to elected officials who had not yet been cleared from that chamber on Jan 6th.

7:21Michael Popok:She had a backpack in her front. She's a former military person. She had other people behind her. And if she'd gotten down the Speaker's Bureau hallway into the chamber, bad things would have happened. We'd be reporting Jan 6th insurrection differently with dead, dead elected officials and staff. Security officers stopped her with a bullet. He was cleared because he did the right thing, the courageous thing, thing he's supposed to do to protect the human beings inside. And what did the Department of Justice do under Pam Bondi? They settled with Ashley Babbitt's family after Ashley Babbitt's family had filed a lawsuit and paid them$5 million.

8:01Michael Popok:Similarly, Trump versus IRS in front on Judge Williams. Blanche authorizes it to be brought. The IRS folds, right? It's like a boxing match. They hit the canvas. They decide that they're not going to fight. They tank the case. And therefore, there's no adversarial process. And then they went into phony settlement discussions because you got to have adversaries to do a settlement. Otherwise, you're on the same side of the V, you're just a collusive conspiracy. And now we've got these cases. Who's bringing these cases, first of all? We've got about 700 of the Jan Sixers being represented by Mark McCluskey.

8:46Michael Popok:Who's Mark McCluskey? Right. He was the guy, along with his wife, who held an AR-15 out. He was a bar member in St. Louis during Black Lives Matter in a menacing fashion, ended up losing his weapons, getting disbarred, eventually got reinstated. And now he represents about 700 Jan Sixers in their federal tort claim cases. Who else is representing the Jan Sixers and some of the most heinous ones like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers? Well, that'd be Peter Tickerton. That's Donald Trump's former military academy high school roommate in his 80s. And he writes some crazy crackpot shit in his lawsuits about election denying and conspiracy theories long debunked are at the heart of his case.

9:37Michael Popok:Because he doesn't care what he... See, the point is they don't care what they write. They just need to go through a process which will give the imprimatur of legitimacy. And then the Department of Justice will fold, will not defend the case. That's what's coming, folks. And settle out the back door using Department of Justice funds allocated by the MAGA Congress. And therefore, you don't need the anti-weaponization fund. That, according to reporting, came out of the fevered imagination of Mark McCluskey, that lawyer that I told you about during the Black Lives Matter movement, representing about 700 Gen Sixers.

10:13Michael Popok:He came up with the fund issue. you've got weight loss goals and this summer it's time to actually hit them weight loss by hymns is designed to support you every step of the way and now hymns offers access to an affordable range of fda approved glp1 medications including the wagovi pill and the wagovi pen so you can lose the weight and keep it off with wagovi at hymns lose up to 20 percent of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. Through HIMSS, everything happens online. You'll connect with a licensed provider who will determine if treatment is right for you. If prescribed, your medication is delivered right to your door.

10:56Michael Popok:No insurance necessary. Plus, you'll have access to 24-7 messaging with your care team and in-app lifestyle and nutrition support. Ready to reach your goals, visit HIMSS.com slash Legal AF to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. That's HIMSS.com slash Legal AF. HIMSS.com slash Legal AF. Weight loss by HIMSS is not available in all 50 states. WGOVI is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, WGOVI clinical study information, and restrictions, visit HIMSS.com. Once the fund got called out and blocked by a series of judges and called in bad faith by Judge Williams, then they had to kill the fund.

11:52Michael Popok:But that was all a red herring. That was all a diversionary tactic by Todd Blanche and his client, Donald Trump. They never cared about the fund because they were going to get the Jan Sixers, as you heard, Todd Blanche effectively admit at the top of my hot deck they were going to use other methods than to pay them out through the Federal Tort Claim Act process with a willing Department of Justice folding, settling the cases, using money appropriated to the Department of Justice in other ways, just like they did Ashley Babbitt. They will not litigate these cases. They will not defend these cases.

12:31Michael Popok:You know it now. You know it now. So the money will come out the back door to the Jan Sixers with some sort of announced settlement. And that's why Todd Blanche wouldn't answer Kristen Welker straight, because he's about as straight as a corkscrew these days, about will you guarantee that they will not be paid? No. Just like he fought her about the pardon issue. Like, how can you square your telling law enforcement that you will always prosecute to the highest extent of the law people who attack the police and then watch idly by as Donald Trump empties the jails of those that attack the police?

13:11Michael Popok:Well, that has to do with president's ability to pardon. I'm not going to comment on that. Play the clip. Mr. Attorney General, on President Trump's first day in office, as you know, he pardoned everyone who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, including 172 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers. How is that consistent with your pledge to always protect law enforcement? There's nothing inconsistent about that. The president's pardon powers, any president's pardon powers are not limited. So when I say, and what this Department of Justice says, and when the FBI says, like we're saying, and every U.S.

13:46attorney is saying that if you assault law enforcement, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. That is absolutely what President Trump expects. Absolutely what I expect of our prosecutors. And that that's completely separate from any president's ability to pardon. But he did the opposite of that effectively. I mean, on January 6, police officers were beaten with baseball bats and flagpoles. Do you believe it was wrong to pardon the people who assaulted police officers on January 6, given that you have vowed to protect law enforcement? Every attorney general vows to protect law enforcement, including me.

14:19And so, no, I'm not opining or in any way saying what President Trump did is wrong. Absolutely not. By the way. Isn't it inconsistent with what you said, though? Absolutely not. Is it inconsistent with your pledge? No, there's a difference between saying we will prosecute anybody. If later a president chooses to pardon that individual, that is the president's right under our Constitution. Do not forget that a few days before President Trump pardoned the individuals associated and who have pled guilty to the conduct on January 6th, President Biden pardoned hundreds and hundreds of criminals, many of whom were quite violent.

14:51So that's his right to do that, just like it's President Trump's right to do that. But what message does it send to police officers that people who assaulted them were pardoned? The message to police officers is consistent and same every single day, which is that we will protect you. And by the way, that's a little bit interesting coming from a place where we see violent protests breaking out all over the country, in New Jersey, in Minneapolis, in Seattle, in California. And instead of there being a full-throated defense by leadership on the Democrat side, on the Republican side, what you have is it's as if we're doing something wrong by saying we will protect law enforcement and we will prosecute those who assault law enforcement.

15:32We're not.

15:33Michael Popok:But I wanted to focus your attention because this is sort of like a magic trick, right? You know the magic trick where, you know, they do a close handwork or they do some sort of diversion over here so that you momentarily look over here while they do the trick over here and they saw the lady in half or they make the telephone end up inside of the bottle or whatever it is. And I wanted you to know what this trick is. Todd Blanche willingly put out of its misery and chloroformed the anti-weaponization fund for two reasons. They always had a plan to pay it through the Federal Tort Claim Act. One, by taking a powder and not defending the cases.

16:17Michael Popok:And two, what they only cared about was the immunity next day creation of an immunity deal by Todd Blanche with a one paragraph release granted to Donald Trump, his family, his family of companies, to basically let them get away with tax evasion, hundreds of millions of dollars worth for the last decade, all wrapped into one paragraph as an order of the Department of Justice, which is resting on a foundation of lies and illegitimacy and bad faith, and is now in the courtroom, that particular issue is in the courtroom of Judge Brinkema about whether that is going to survive or not. In fact, I interviewed Sky Perryman about that very case, and here's what she had to say about that case.

17:13Those to our brave clients that have been, you know, in this case from the beginning, the Floyd case, we have amended the complaint and we've continued to add allegations about the slush fund, because as we know, every time Donald Trump opens his mouth, he talks more about how the slush fund needs to exist. And so we are still challenging the slush fund. But we also added new brave plaintiffs, the National Employees Treasury Union, or the National Treasury Employees Union, NTEU, which has employees as members who work at the IRS. And those employees are essentially alleging that what this agreement that Blanche and Trump and the Trump Organization are engaged in to provide Donald Trump and his associates, his family, his organization, IRS immunity, conscripts them into the violation of law and is unlawful and is an unconstitutional emolument.

18:07It's giving the president a gift that, you know, that it's an unconstitutional emolument. So those are the claims with respect to the IRS immunity provision that the amended complaint, if you, I know your listeners always go to our actual court documents. You guys love to feature the actual court documents. There is tremendous, great history in there about why there are provisions of our tax code that prevent exactly what this agreement did, including, by the way, in a circumstance where in the Watergate era, in the Nixon era, he was seeking to weaponize the IRS against people and to use also the IRS to favor his friends.

18:45And Congress took action there to add additional protections, which is one of the many legal bases for our.

18:54Michael Popok:So that whole issue of whether the fund is legitimate or not before Judge Williams, before Judge Brinkham, the issue of whether the immunity deal that Todd Blanche unilaterally granted Donald Trump in order to get the nomination for attorney general, just hours separating them. right that that issue is in front of judge brinkham and the issue of whether jan sixers are going to get paid through another process known as the federal tort claim act with a willing conspiratorial department of justice on the other side that's going to be handled case by case by the federal judges but frankly they're going to try to do the same thing to those federal judges that they did to Judge Williams, which is to not let the federal judge have any supervisory oversight power whatsoever.

19:44Michael Popok:They're going to settle those. They're going to answer those suits. They're going to settle those cases, or they're not going to answer those suits. They're going to settle those cases. They're not going to have the federal judge involved at all. And each one of those cases, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, is going to lead to payments just like Ashley Babbitt's family and others received. That's it, folks. I wanted you to focus on it because there's so many moving parts here. So many spinning plates. It's a three-card Monty, but I wanted you to know under what cup the ball is. Here on Midas Touch and on Legal AF, I'm Michael Popak.

20:20Michael Popok:Take a minute, come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel. We're trying to get to 1.3 million subscribers before August is over. With your help, we will. Until my next report, this is 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. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting.

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