Trump Faces Scrutiny Over Alleged Support for FIFA President’s Third Term Bid

0:00Popok:Welcome to a special edition of Legal AF. There are more connections between this U.S. president and football, which we call soccer, than there really should be. Despite the fact that we hosted, along with other countries in North America, a very successful World Cup tournament, why do I have to read about an embattled head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, getting political survival advice from Donald Trump and maybe Marco Rubio and Andrew Giuliani and other people to save his hide because soon after the World Cup, he trampled on any goodwill that was generated for him by announcing that there was going to be a private equity sale of billions of dollars of interest in a World Cup subsidiary to promote future World Cups.

0:57Popok:And lo and behold, a Trump family member, extended family member, was going to be involved in it. Does anybody really think that wasn't cooked up before the World Cup? And then when all of the football federations and nations came out against Gianni Infantino and threatened not to reelect him and not vote for him and oust him, he went into some sort of triage mode involving our president, who doesn't have apparently enough to do and doesn't have enough on his plate right now, but to try to save Gianni Infantino's hide. Separate from that, and I wonder where he got the idea, Gianni Infantino got his audit committee of FIFA to go look at their provision about how many terms a president can serve and somehow read into it that the first three years when he took over for the person who resigned in disgrace, Sepp Blatter, and finished off those three years.

1:58Popok:Those three years don't count. It's a mulligan, everybody. It's just the elected terms, not when he came in. Just skip it, even though he will have served 15 years as the president of FIFA. And you know what? It's wrong. And you know how I know it's wrong? Because Fair Square and our friend Nick McGeehan's group sent a letter and said, this is the beginnings of corruption. When you extend terms, when your bylaws say that you can't, when you have people stay in for 15 years, which is exactly the reason they put in term limits to begin with because of the corruption term of sep ladder and and no you you're not allowed to do it so of course we got to bring nick back on our show to talk about this and the connectivity to the united states i'm nick hey michael thanks for having me back wow what is happening with and then you got people resigning long-standing associates of gianni infantino like the coo mr lamore he resigns goldman sachs bankers resign all over gianni Infantino and trying to hang on to power.

3:05Popok:Tell our audience about the complaint or the letter that you sent to the Governance Audit and Compliance Committee of FIFA and what do you want it to accomplish? Yes. I guess we sent the letter, well, to go back a little bit, the pressure that Infantino has come under since that enterprise that you talked about, since trying to sell off the FIFA family silver to Trump private equity. There's been a huge outpouring of frustration and anger. People are calling for him to resign. A lot of the other football confederations are very powerful, like UEFA, the European Football Confederation, have effectively called for him to resign.

3:47But what's interesting in all this is no one's talking about the rules. No one's talking about what he's done and how he's violated those rules. Now, the most obvious way in which he's done this is the sort of sucking up to and the support for President Trump. not allowed you know you should be out of football for two years doing that um but a few weeks ago uh you know we were sitting chatting around and somebody we know quite well and someone quite connected to the football world and to fifa said what about this whole thing about eligibility um now this was something we'd been broadly aware of because it was in 2022 and where this um this eligibility was was confirmed um by an internal fifa committee um and so we thought well let's go back and look at that and let's go back and find out what reasoning did they use for discounting the first three years of this presidency?

4:33And so we looked and we looked and we couldn't find anything. There was no justification, no reasoning given as to why they were just going to discount these first three years. And so that became the basis for this letter. We wrote to the committee, which is an independent committee within FIFA. And we said, hold on a minute, you know, this is against the letter of the law. This is against the spirit and purpose of the law, very clearly. And also procedurally, it makes absolutely no sense. Also, you haven't provided any reasoning. And so we've called on them to basically use their independence and use the mandate they have under the FIFA statutes to consider eligibility of presidential candidates and to rule him ineligible.

5:15And what we think is very interesting about this is, given so many people in the football community, the soccer community, I should say, for a lot of your listeners and viewers. Will these other confederations have been calling for Infantino to quit, call for him to quit based on the rules? And we think they might not because what they want is Infantino to go. What they don't want is him to go because he's broken the rules, lest those rules be then applied to them when they step into the void.

5:43Popok:Yeah, I mean, look, why don't we give a little bit of a background here? You had a very corrupt FIFA. People went to jail. I mean, some people, I think Donald Trump has been pardoning, but people went to jail for bribery schemes, hundreds of billions of dollars that went to individuals who were on the FIFA board of governors who helped pick the World Cup selections. The reason we were in Qatar is because there was a bribe scandal. Who else puts an outdoor football conference over a month in a place that's 120 degrees? and so and sepp blatter presided over all of that and he had been on there for over 16 years so as part of the cleanup after that corruption scandal they imposed term limits let me am i right about that absolutely right yeah it was the department of justice in 2015 took a rico case against senior fifa officials it was the biggest scandal in fifa's history fifa's very survival was at stake and they cleaned house because they had to clean house.

6:46You know, they were terrified about regulation. They were terrified about sponsors. And so they said, OK, we're going to fix everything. You know, we're going to bring in a new leadership and a whole series of reforms. So a committee was convened and the 2016 Reform Committee and they proposed a series of recommendations, which FIFA accepted. And one of these was presidential term limits, which didn't exist before. and they said in this report there should be three terms absolute and 12 years maximum. Now, the 12-year bit didn't make it into the FIFA statutes, unfortunately, but the three-year term limit did.

7:19And very interestingly, UEFA had a representative on that committee who wrote those recommendations and that man was called Gianni Infantino. So he was part of the committee that proposed the recommendations on term limits and then he is now basically trying to extend those to the point where he will have served, as you pointed out in your very eloquent introduction, only two years less than Sepp Blatter, the most sort of scandal-ridden president in FIFA's history. Although that's debatable now. Right.

7:49Popok:He's quickly rising to the top of the charts. Here is the language, I mean, very similar to our own US Constitution about limits on a president. The president shall be elected by the Congress for a period of four years in the year following a FIFA World Cup. The term of office shall begin after the end of the Congress at which the president was elected. No person may serve as president for more than three terms of office, whether consecutive or not. Previous terms served as a vice president or as a member of the council shall not be considered in determining the term limits of a president. But so right there, the drafters could have said previous terms as a president doesn't count towards the term limits.

8:33Popok:But you have to assume the drafters know how to write language, English and syntax and grammar. They did not include that word. They said if you're a vice president, it's not going to count. So the proper, if this was a judge using all the tools of interpretation and construction of language, which is what we do every day in courthouses with judges, especially over contracts, or in this case, the United States Constitution, you applying all of these principles, there is no interpretation of that language that squares, no pun intended with your organization, that squares with infantinos. and the audit committee's interpretation.

9:16Popok:No, no, first three years, that was, was he president? I don't know, who even knows what he was? I mean, he was president of FIFA. Somebody had to take over. And he, as you just pointed out, knowing the rules, more importantly, being on the committee that recommended the rules, he just doesn't want it to apply to him now because he's got power mad. Exactly that. You know, it's great to be on a legal podcast because people understand this, right? It's the letter of law, the spirit of law, the purpose of the law. There is absolutely no way in which you can interpret. And where's the exception? Okay, if you're going to say there's an exception, what is it?

9:50Is it because it was less than four years? Or because it was after a normal Congress, not an extraordinary Congress? Well, that doesn't work either, because in the statutes, it also says that a Congress can be normal or extraordinary. So he has no get out that way. And then where is this reasoning? Where is this rationale on an issue of such importance? Where is it? The other thing I think is very interesting is the way in which this was released this was released on the 16th of december 2022 and that date is quite significant because that was two days before the qatar world cup final on the 18th of december 2022 it was snuck out at the time when everyone was focused on the football when infantino was riding high because he saw the tournament as being as a success and he just figured that no one was going to pay any attention to it and indeed nobody has really paid any attention to it um um i guess until until now i mean people had misgivings about it and it was mentioned in the press.

10:42But yeah, it's absurd is what it is. Is there, and your organization is not just nitpicking over, I want to make it clear,

10:55Popok:you're not just like a drive-by organization. It's like, yeah, let's nitpick about their bylaws. This matters to fairness in sport and corruption in sport, right? Yeah, exactly. We got involved in this issue because we were appalled by how FIFA behaved in the run-up to the Qatar 2022 World Cup. People died in that tournament. I think this is something I raised in the previous discussion with you. You know, we were absolutely outraged at the way they behaved. A lot of our sort of partners believe that you can fix FIFA by giving, making sure they have better policies and better people. We don't believe that at all.

11:25We believe the organization is absolutely rotten and dysfunctional. And the only way to go at it is to address its governance failures and to put those in front of policymakers and end the autonomy that allows them to behave this way. So it's a tactic for us. So we focus on the rule breaking, we focus on the governance failures because that's the root cause of the problems that sort of bled into the work that we do and will bleed into the work that we do because we've been working on Saudi 2034, for example. So it is incredibly important. It might seem dry and technical, but this is an incredibly powerful organisation in charge of the world's most popular sport.

12:05and the way in which they govern themselves matters and the rules matter. And to see them trampled over with such abandon and with such complete impunity and lack of accountability, it's just, you know, it's not on, frankly.

12:20Popok:Has Bruno Chiumento, the chairperson review committee, or Molly Roan or anybody that you addressed the letter to, have they responded? They did respond. They responded, I think, a couple of days after we sent the letter. They said they would take it into consideration in due course. I think the fact that they did respond was quite interesting, and they all put their name to it. We addressed it to three members of a subcommittee within the governance committee, one of whom actually is a US professor at Syracuse and someone who works on governance issues, a guy called Chris Mim. So, again, I'm not going to hold my breath when it comes to FIFA and its committees, but the fact that they did respond, the fact that the people concerned are quite reputable in the field of governance.

13:06The head of the committee used to work for Ernst & Young and so should have, I would say, a pretty decent understanding of what matters and what doesn't in governance. So yeah, we'll see if they actually take this seriously or not.

13:19Popok:Yeah, I mean, I've had you on the show before to talk about corruption at FIFA and the rest. I mean, as we were planning this, this story was ever-changing because there looked to be a groundswell of support to sack Infantino, mainly over his aborted attempt to sell as a separate, like, spun-off subsidiary the World Cup and bring in outside investors, including Josh Kushner, Jared Kushner's brother, and the extended son-in-law once removed from Donald Trump. And it looks like when, and that was in the making for a long time before the World Cup. They just waited for the afterglow of the World Cup and its success of it.

14:04Popok:And then they thought they'd try to launch it. Apparently they didn't let the COO know about it or anybody else know about it. It looked like it was a Gianni Infantino and maybe Donald Trump special. And then after that, so I thought, oh, between that and the European Federation coming out and the Asian Federation coming out, I said, I wonder if by the time I get Nick Khan, this guy's going to still be in office. What keeps him in office with these scandals swirling around him? I mean, I felt the same, to be honest. When UEFA came out and said that they weren't going to participate in FIFA tournaments if this sell-off went ahead, my initial reaction was, oh, he's gone.

14:40He can't survive this. The tournaments can't survive without the European teams because they're the heavyweights. I guess he survives because of the governance structure. the governance structure is such that there are 211 member associations in FIFA he needs a majority of them to support him and most of them are financially dependent on FIFA money and what he does is he promises them money and then turns his back on how they spend it so they can spend it wherever they like and I guess a lot of them there is no risk to supporting Gianni Infantino right now there's a slight risk in sticking your neck out and saying you want him gone and that's what UEFA have done that's what North American Confederation have done CONCACAF And that's what the Asian Football Confederation have done.

15:20Again, quite interesting because that was seen as a power base. But other countries are supporting him, staying silent or coming out in support of him. And Africa, which is where the huge power base is and where many member associations are, are also supporting him. It's a numbers game. It's a power play. It's a mafia-like organization.

15:39Popok:He's been working in Africa for a long, long time, seeding support there with cash and dollars. He was one of the first that figured out that their vote is just as important as the European vote. And it had been ignored for a long time by the institution as FIFA. And I think under him, he has spent an enormous amount of time grooming the Africans to support him. Yeah, it's been going on for a long time. I mean, you could probably go back to the 70s and a FIFA president called Yael Havalanj, a Brazilian who really identified Africa as a place where, you know, you could make gains. He had a point there because at that time FIFA was run by the Europeans.

16:22It was run by a sort of very buttoned up Englishman called Stanley Rouse, who wasn't particularly interested in African football. Havalanj actually realized that they had to be brought into the fold. But the way it was done, yes, was very much laying the grounds for this patrion's network that Blatter then continued. And Infantino was turbocharged, right? And what was so interesting about that sell-off was what he was offering the member associations was basically he was bribing them. He was saying you get$40 million or something up front if you agree to sell off the family silver cheap. But yeah, in short, Africa has long been a power base.

16:57And that's probably why he thinks he can hang on.

16:59Popok:And then look at Infantino using Trump and Trump using Infantino. I mean, you and I were questioning, you and I were trying to speculate, what has Gianni so inside with Trump? Like, what is it? And then we figured it out. There was this, I mean, it came to light that Jared Kushner's brother was about to make a$20 billion deal, a couple of billion dollar equity investment, huge first time ever in a FIFA World Cup subsidiary to benefit another Trump member. And then when that got turned down, he turned and bought the Lakers. Right, exactly. And I think there was this fascinating detail in that Infantino was going to be the commissioner of this new organization.

17:44So he's gone from a position. he obviously wants to continue his term limits, right? He wants to stay in power as long as he can. This was a way for him to do that.

17:52Popok:Oh, that's a good point. Maybe recognizing that he can only have three terms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, this is important because sport is so important. And because of the global nature of it, there is so many intersections between law and politics and sport. And that's why I'm so, you honored to have you and Fair Square come out here regularly and address our audience when you file your complaints. And this was an interesting response. You've been told to go pound sand and no response in prior ones. So at least you got a response to your letter. That's... Yeah. Yeah. An interesting response.

18:28They didn't have to respond. They could have just stonewalled or they could have said, well, this matter is finished. They didn't do that. So no, it's a pleasure to be on after the last thing. I got some lovely messages from your listeners last time.

18:39Popok:And as we round it out, you're not just a FIFA only organization. Tell our audience about the other things that are on your docket and that you're focused on. No, I mean, this is new for us. Well, that's not strictly true. We've been doing it for four years, really building this body of work on FIFA, but we're really a human rights organization. That's the meat of what we do. We work a lot on migrant worker abuses. We work a lot on political repression in the Middle East. We have a particular focus on the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates. So that's really been what we've been doing.

19:18Again, this work, though, is where we have sort of carved out a space for us because no one else is really doing it the way that we do it. And so it's a really useful complement, I think. And sports are really, I think what we found, it's a really interesting entry point to discuss issues that don't have a light shone on them. otherwise. So actually we find sport to be really helpful to the, to the work that we do and not just in shining a light, but in being potentially solutions to some of the problems that we have because of the, because of the power that it has, right? The culture and political power that sport has, if that's harnessed properly, directed properly, then it can be a really positive force.

19:58So, so that's another element of, as to why we do it.

20:01Popok:Yeah. And for those, we'll put the, we'll put the links in the notes below social media. You can follow them at at at fair SQ projects, fair SQ projects. And you can reach out to them at contact at fair SQ dot org. So, so happy to have you here. Nick McGeehan, who runs that organization called Fair Square. And as soon as you have a development in this or anything else that matters, please join our audience and give them some briefing. OK, I'd love to. Yeah. And if there are people listening who are frustrated as we are with FIFA, we also have a reboot fifa.com, which is a sort of public campaign where people can sign up and register their own dissent if they're unhappy about how things are going.

20:44Popok:Really great. Nick, thanks for joining us again. Appreciate it. Thank you, Michael. You're on Legal AF. I'm Michael Popok. Take a minute and help us to continue to grow our pro-democracy channel by hitting the free subscribe button. 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. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF.

21:16Popok: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.