Trump DOJ Makes Shock Admission on Slush Fund Payouts

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2:58Michael Popok:Apparently, according to the Department of Justice's top guy, Todd Blanche, in testimony to Senator Van Hollen today, He said that people that assaulted police officers, including at Jan 6th, may be eligible to apply for funds and reimbursement from the anti-weaponization fund that Donald Trump just created using his captured DOJ, captured IRS and captured Treasury Department. that people who assaulted police officers, you know, part of the Jan 6th insurrectionists, the ones that actually got convicted, the worst offenders that were held in jail because they would not, a judge would not let them out for pretrial detention.

3:42Michael Popok:They're going to be entitled to compensation. Yes, says Todd Blanche. And then he has the brass ones to compare the settlement to a settlement that the Obama administration made with the Native American community about stolen land, which led to mocking and chuckling during the Senate oversight hearing. I'm Michael Popak with an update, fast-moving story. You're going to want to follow it here on Midas Touch and on Legal AF. Jeff, let's talk about the back and forth between Senator Van Hollen and Senator Coons and Todd Blanche. Anybody in this country, Blanche said, is eligible to apply if they believe they were victims of weaponization?

4:30Anybody?

4:31Michael Popok:And that was in response to a question about police being beaten and Trump paying off the people that beat them. Play the clip. Mr. Attorney General, this is an outrageous, unprecedented slush fund that you set up. Simple question. Will individuals who assaulted Capitol Hill police officers be eligible for this fund? Well, as it makes plain, anybody is - Just let me know if they're eligible for the fund. As was made plain yesterday, anybody in this country is eligible to apply if they believe they're a victim of a position. Mr. Attorney General, let me ask you this. Are there going to be rules that say that if you've assaulted a Capitol Hill police officer or committed a violent crime, you will not be eligible?

5:17Why not make that a rule? I expect that, well, because I'm not one of the commissioners setting up the rules, I expect that there will be rules set up. You're appointing four of the five members, aren't you, Mr. Attorney General? Pardon me? You're appointing four of the five members. I am appointing all five members. You can simply set up the rules. I would hope you make a rule that anyone convicted of assaulting a police officer of a violent crime is simply not eligible. They should not apply.

5:38Michael Popok:You know, you then have buried in the memo that was created by Todd Blanche approving the settlement. They actually have the brass ones to compare the settlement to a very famous settlement by the Department of Agriculture about not so much stolen lands, as I said before, denying of loans to Native Americans on a discriminatory basis systematically by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1980s and 1990s. It's known as the Keeps Eagle settlement. It was approved by a court, no court involved here, in 2010. And to hear, as he said in his memo and his relating to this, to hear Todd Blanche talk about the settlement in those terms got under the skin of Chris Coons, who mocked Blanche's claims that this relates to the Keeps Eagle settlement.

6:40Michael Popok:This proposal, this is a anti-weaponization fund falsely created by Donald Trump to settle a case that was filed in bad faith and about to be dismissed by a federal judge. He didn't want he doesn't want the settlement to be administered by a federal judge like the Keep Segal one. He wants it as far away from Judge Williams as possible. As you compared it to the Keeps Eagle case, but I think you know full well that in that case, the settlement agreement was approved by a federal judge, including the payments to people who were not originally parties to the lawsuit. No federal judge has approved this fund, have they, Mr.

7:19Attorney General? No, no federal judge did approve this. So that's a big difference between this case and the case that you compared it to. No, it's not. Did a judge sign off on this case? No. A judge did sign off on the other one. Yes, but your question was whether it's a big difference. It's not. Of course it is, because that allows for an independent person to look at it rather than the hand. There was no independence. There was no independence. There was a single commissioner. A judge signed off on it. A judge had nothing to do with deciding the money. There was a judge who looked at it and signed off on it.

7:50So to compare that case to this one is incredibly deceptive.

7:55Michael Popok:When you read the order closing the case, the judge goes out of her way to say that there has not been any reference to any settlement, no stipulation of settlement, no settlement on record at all about a case that she's called into question as being illegitimate. And they'll just say anything out loud. Well, this is like the Native American settlement with Barack Obama of the Agriculture Department in the 1980s. It isn't. It isn't anything like that. because Barack Obama didn't sue the Agriculture Department and then in order to set up a phony settlement in suing his own agency, set up a fund to be used by people who beat the police and then avoid using courts and court systems to settle legitimate claims.

8:45Michael Popok:These are completely illegitimate claims that gave birth. It was the midwife. Donald Trump's illegitimate claims were the midwife that gave birth to this fund. This fund is illegitimate. This fund is illegal. This fund is fraudulent. It violates the emoluments clause. And soon, I mean very soon, we're going to be seeing a lawsuit, and I'll be reporting on a lawsuit, filed against this fund. Judge Williams felt like she didn't have the jurisdiction to handle the case any longer because the case got closed behind her back. I disagree. I think she should have held in order to show clause hearing before she actually closed the case.

9:28Michael Popok:But so be it. It'll be for the next judge to come along, likely in the District of Columbia, and take on this case. I didn't realize how much my old mattress was affecting my sleep until I finally upgraded to a Lisa mattress. Honestly, the difference was immediate. it. I'm falling asleep faster, sleeping deeper, and waking up feeling actually rested instead of stiff and exhausted. What I really like is that Lisa has a lineup of mattresses designed for different sleep styles, so you can find the right fit for how you sleep. The quality feels incredible from the first night, and they back it up with free shipping, easy returns, and 120-night sleep trial.

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11:09Michael Popok:He always made a big show during the campaign when he was running for president both times to have a police and firefighters and uniforms, loves uniforms, standing behind him with American flags. And they should be embarrassed and ashamed that they supported this guy because he's about to give money to those that were arrested for having weapons and attacking the Capitol. In a recent ballroom filing, the Department of Justice said that the lawyers for the National Trust about the ballroom were not giving proper deference to the planned attempted massacre at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and the horrific aftermath that could have happened when the guy was on a floor below and he got caught.

11:57Michael Popok:What about the horrific planned massacre of the Jan 6th insurrectionists, the ones who are now apparently the recipients of, you know, maybe a half a million to a million dollars apiece from this fund? See, I see the rewriting of history. I was reading recently in the New York Post something that Miranda Devine, the podcaster who works for Rupert Murdoch, wrote. She said everybody on Jan 6th had no weapons. They were defenseless. they had no weapons. And many of them did not storm the Capitol. Oh, well, Miranda, maybe you should spend as much time as we did on Legal AF going through each of the Department of Justice press releases, indictments, reportings about cases to learn what really happened on Jan 6th.

12:45Michael Popok:Because every indictment, every arrest, every conviction by a trial or by a judge or a jury resulted in a press release that tells you exactly the crimes that these people committed and they were convicted of, including using flagpoles, bicycle racks, shields, pieces of wood, pieces of barricade, anything they could get their hands on, bear spray, things they brought with them, knives. In fact, Trump knew it because we know from the Jan 6th report, he was like, oh, why is there nobody here in my lip speech? Well, Mr. President, we're running everybody through the magnetometer because of weapons.

13:27Michael Popok:No, they're not here to hurt me. Let them all in. So he let them all in with weapons and all. And then he pointed them all, wound up and fomented and shot them like a weapon at the Capitol. We know that happened. And we know that the people, either they brought weapons with them or they made them, made them on the fly, makeshift weapons, sometimes beating members of the police with their own equipment, crushing them in revolving doors. Five people died that day, one by heart attack. One died the next day, a young police officer, and inside the Capitol. And if the Metro and Capitol Police had not by themselves figured out a way outmatched to defend the Capitol, including shooting Ashley Babbitt, who was heading down the Speaker's hallway, and they got into that chamber with staff and senators and congresspeople there, a marauding batch of hundreds pouring in through the front door.

14:31Michael Popok:What do you think was going to happen? They were going to hand out daisies? They were going to go peace and stick daisies there? Or they were going to drag them out by their hair and hang them? or use all of the battle gear that they had on the steps of the Capitol that they were using to beat and bash like some sort of medieval Game of Thrones. They were going to do that to the people, the vulnerable elected officials in our seat of our democracy. But that was stopped because the line eventually held. And now Todd Blanche wants to hand out money to them for the government. Don't let them ever forget this at the midterms, folks.

15:12Michael Popok:This is one of the things that should mobilize you in the voting. We're going to continue to follow it. The next time you hear from me, I think about this case. It's going to be about the lawsuit that gets filed. I don't know if it's by Democracy Defenders, Norm Eisen. I don't know if it's Matt Placken, the former attorney general of New Jersey, and his group and his law firm. I don't know if it's going to be Democracy Forward or the American Civil Liberties Union. Somebody's going to be filing this week. And we're going to bring it to you here on Midas Touch and Legal AF. Take a minute, hit the free subscribe button.

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