Trump Faces Legal Disaster as His Own Words Are Used Against Him in New Lawsuit

0:00Michael Popok:In breaking news, ABC may have found its spine, or at least its backbone. See, when you go after its broadcast television licenses for the eight stations that it owns and operates, like the Trump administration and its FCC chairman have done, you've left ABC apparently with no choice but to sue the Trump administration instead of the other way around. I'm going to cover this brand new breaking lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia by the American Broadcasting Companies, the Walt Disney Company, its parent, and its eight licensed television stations against Brendan Carr and the FCC. because in their words, they're going through a retaliatory environment against their First Amendment rights because Donald Trump doesn't like ABC, doesn't like its point of view, doesn't like its First Amendment expression, doesn't like Jimmy Kimmel, doesn't like questions he's asked by ABC reporters about the Epstein files, doesn't like when ABC refuses to air his political screed and rant masquerading as a White House Oval Office address.

1:05Michael Popok:and have threatened to take away their livelihood and their licenses. They brought a one-count complaint just under the First Amendment. That's all you need. Arguing retaliatory conduct for their viewpoint and asking a District of Columbia judge to block it, to enjoin it, to stop it. And they bring the receipts. Comments by Donald Trump attacking not only ABC, but certainly ABC and its license. A comments by Brendan Carr, the FCC chairperson, attacking ABC by name and making threats like, you like your license? You may not have it much longer. Mob-like threats by Brendan Carr recorded on a podcast.

1:52Michael Popok:between Donald Trump's frequent attacks of ABC and Brendan Carr's attacks and Brendan Carr reposting, and this is all in the complaint, reposting Donald Trump's social media attacks on ABC. What are you to think if you are a regulated entity that requires the FCC's approval for your license? See, ABC is the broadcaster and it operates through hundreds of local television stations throughout the country, which are owned and operated by people not named ABC or Disney. But they happen to own eight flagship TV stations since the beginning. Particularly, they own a station, WTVD in Durham, North Carolina, WLS in Chicago, KTRK in Houston, K-ABC in Los Angeles, K-G-O in San Francisco, K-F-S-N in Fresno, W-A-B-C in New York, and W-P-V-I in Philadelphia.

2:53Michael Popok:Now, they have to go for license renewal, but Carr has put all their licenses up for renewal now early, in some cases more than five years early. And that is obviously a retaliation for the fact that Donald Trump doesn't like ABC. And he's taken him on. Look, he's gone after ABC before when George Stepanopoulos was interviewing E. Jean Carroll, who just won her case in the United States Supreme Court as a sex abuse survivor of Donald Trump. Instead of calling her a sex abuse survivor, said that she was a rape victim. Pretty close. They ended up settling, stroking a check for 17 or 18 million dollars that Donald Trump to use for his library foundation or whatever.

3:38Michael Popok:Donald Trump got the taste for it. Kept going after other media like the Wall Street Journal and the BBC and the Pulitzer Prize Board and the New York Times. All in his goal to crush mainstream media, which he thinks does not give him proper coverage. I'm Michael Popok. By the way, you're on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. And if you want to read the complaint that just got filed, I'll post it up on Legal AF Substack for your review as well. Let me read to you from the complaint, then I'll show you some clips and we'll bring the receipts. Paragraph one, page one. Government censorship is deeply un-American.

4:14Michael Popok:The fundamental principle predates the republic with our founders recognizing that the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty. That was in the Declaration of Rights from the Virginia Convention of Delegates from June 1776, even before our own Constitution. And it is no less true today, as the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed just two years ago, the government may not use the power of the state to punish or suppress disfavored expression. That was a case involving the National Rifle Association. Paragraph two of the complaint. This case concerns the administration's sustained effort to do just that.

4:57Michael Popok:Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason. It disapproves of what ABC broadcasts. Paragraph three, that campaign began in this administration's earliest days and has only intensified again and again. The administration has attacked ABC's speech, the stories its journalists report, and the viewpoint its network programs air. Over time, those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech. Citing to a series of true social posts, such as the one they reproduce on Christmas Eve of 2025, if network newscasts, this is from Trump, and their late night shows are almost 100 % negative to President Donald J.

5:50Michael Popok:Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn't their very valuable broadcast licenses be terminated? I say yes. And things like that get reposted by his FCC chairman, Brendan Carr. Paragraph five, or paragraph four, in prosecuting the administration's campaign against free speech on network television, the commission fights on several fronts using its expansive regulatory powers. What has enfolded, in the words of the FCC commissioner, Ann Gomez, Anna Gomez, who is a Democrat, the lone Democrat on the commission, is a, according to her, a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control carried out through the weaponization of the FCC's authority as a federal regulator and aimed at pressuring a free and independent press and all media into submission.

6:42Michael Popok:She's on the commission and said that. In fact, Brendan Carr gave an interview several months ago to a right-wing podcaster in which he openly threatened to take away ABC's licenses because of their First Amendment expression. Play the clip. There's actions that we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think that it's really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, listen, we are going to preempt. We are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out, because we, we licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.

7:26So I think, again, Disney needs to see some change here. But the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it's time for them to step up and say this garbage, to the extent that that's what comes down the pipe in the future, isn't something that we think serves the needs of our local communities. But this sort of status quo is obviously not acceptable where we are.

7:46Michael Popok:That brings us to a speech that Donald Trump gave on July 16th, 2026, some sort of primetime address. Paragraph 8. With the threat of non-renewal or revocation of the station's broadcast licenses on the line, ABC cannot ignore the consequences of any decision that might anger the administration. On July 16th, the president made a primetime address. ABC made the editorial judgment not to broadcast the address live. ABC was aware the president wanted the address to be broadcast live and considered the risk of resulting administration retaliation. In direct response to ABC's decision not to broadcast his address, and during the address itself, he called for the revocation of ABC's licenses.

8:31Michael Popok:Here's the clip. In a rare move, NBC and ABC Fake News have both said that they would not cover this speech. They knew what it was about because of the fact that they don't like the topic, because they know how corrupt our system is and they don't want to reveal it. They and others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left. They can't have a great country, and that's true. You can't have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.

9:09They use our public multi-billion dollar in value airways for absolutely no money. They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting. They pay nothing for multi-billion dollar assets. Great damage has been done to our country. Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen. and the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue. Every American, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, independent, or otherwise, should be able to agree that we deserve the most secure, honest, and fair election system anywhere in the world.

9:53Michael Popok:They say they shouldn't have to wait around. This is why they want a district court judge to adjudicate this on First Amendment rights, that waiting for the FCC to adjudicate through their administrative process their license renewal is, in their words in paragraph 12, a charade. The commission cannot lawfully grant renewal this early in the license terms. The only outcomes on the table are adverse to the plaintiff. Paragraph 13, the commission's retaliatory campaign against ABC has drawn condemnation across the political spectrum. They say that Republican Senator Ted Cruz has warned that the commission's attempted censorship of ABC is dangerous as hell.

10:32Michael Popok:He said that on ABC when he was being interviewed by Bill Maher. Senator John Kennedy recently commented that the FCC scares me right now as it's getting into the foothills of violating the First Amendment. He's a Republican. They continue in paragraph 60. The chairman takes the president's social media post as his directives. For instance, the chairman has repeatedly reposted the president's social media complaints regarding broadcast content in a way that implies that the broadcasters will face FCC scrutiny if the complained about content continues. First, replying to a post by the president expressing frustration at news coverage of the Iran conflict, Chairman Carr warned that stations airing fake news had a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up or they will lose their licenses if they do not.

11:25Michael Popok:Similarly, when the president called for NBC to fire late night television host Seth Meyers, the chairman reposted the president's post to his official X account, thereby throwing the weight of NBC's chief regulator in support of the president's attempt to influence NBC's editorial discretion. See, they're not shy about it. Trump lets everybody know he's trying to exert pressure on ABC and other broadcasters to fire people he doesn't like. You know, he wants Jimmy Kimmel off the air. We saw what happened with that after Charlie Kirk's murder. And we just saw it again. He didn't like the fact in the last 24 hours that a lead reporter for CNN, a senior White House correspondent, asked him about Senator Ossoff's speech, accusing him of having an inappropriate intimate relationship or weird relationship with Natalie Harp, his 35-year-old staffer, and he just ripped into her.

12:26Michael Popok:Play the clip. Quiet, quiet, quiet. You're very disrespectful in front of this young man. Okay. Don't you find her disrespectful? He understands. Quiet. Who are you with? fake news you're fake news you're loud you're a loud boisterous person you're fake news be quiet be quiet be quiet you're a fake reporter and you report fake news so in the complaint itself which again is one count you know frankly that's all you need i know you know i've been a litigator for 35 years yeah you could have 10 12 15 causes of action but you really only need one and here they're saying violation of the First Amendment retaliation for protected expression.

13:14Michael Popok:They go through the case law about it. In paragraph 138, they say the administration and the FCC have made plain they are targeting plaintiffs because they disagree with the content of plaintiff's speech. They take issue with specific on-air statements by ABC talent, most notably Jimmy Kimmel and the host of The View. They perceive ABC reporting as unfairly critical of the administration, and the administration has explicitly called for the revocation of the station's licenses because of ABC's programming choices. But political speech is at the core of what the First Amendment is designed to protect.

13:54And plaintiffs' decisions about what to broadcast

13:58Michael Popok:and what not to broadcast constitute speech and editorial judgment protected by the First Amendment, and that the Constitution forbids the government from subjecting that editorial process, that journalistic process, to official inspection. So they're suing for a temporary, preliminary, and permanent injunction. As soon as the judge is assigned to this, this case is going to move rapidly. And we're here to report on it and to support free, independent journalism, content-based journalism, and to get the government and get Donald Trump's government out of stopping the presses, attacking journalists and media companies, whether independent or corporate owned.

14:47Michael Popok:And we'll always defend that right here on Legal AF. Take a moment, hit the free subscribe button, help us to continue to grow our pro-democracy channel. Until my next report, this is Michael Popak. 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.

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