Trump Gets Served With Nuclear Option by Victims

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0:28Michael Popok:Vindictive prosecution, selective prosecution. Remember those concepts. We're going to be talking a lot about it with this Department of Justice weaponized by Donald Trump to go after Democrats and his enemy list. And now there's the first motion that's been filed against the Trump administration by Armando Abrego Garcia's lawyers in Tennessee, arguing on 40 pages of evidence that Armando Abrego Garcia was subjected to vindictive and selective prosecution by the Department of Justice in a retaliation campaign after he was successful in Maryland to prove that he was unconstitutionally removed to El Salvador.

1:09Michael Popok:from Maryland, where he lived and worked legally, and that that removal was unconstitutional. That's the guy that Donald Trump finally brought back from El Salvador's supermax prison, but not to bring to the courtroom of Judge Zinnis in Maryland about the unconstitutional conduct of the Trump administration. No, under a phony charge that was manufactured in Tennessee, that he was some sort of human trafficker or human smuggler, really smuggler. And now there is this motion that just got filed, first one ever in which this Department of Justice has been accused, rightly so, of vindictive prosecution to have the indictment dismissed and have him released from criminal holding by the federal marshal.

1:55Michael Popok:Now, that doesn't mean he's going to be out walking the streets. He's going to be transferred over to immigration custody and then under the custodial care of Judge Zinnis in Maryland. But this is an important motion. It's the first of many. You can see people like Senator Adam Schiff making a motion like this. Letitia James, the attorney general, making a motion like this. Barack Obama making a motion like this. This is the blueprint for how we fight back and use the Constitution against Donald Trump. And I'm here for it. So are you. You're on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. Let's get down to it.

2:33Michael Popok:There's going to be a ruling coming up as early as Friday on this issue. Armando Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland, married to a U.S. citizen, several children. He was picked up several years ago in Tennessee on a traffic stop, didn't have a license, had several people in the car with him. And he was let go and released. There was no arrest. There was no citation, not even for the driving without a license. But after he was picked up by ICE and when ICE picked him up, I think at a Home Depot or something like that, they had no understanding of his being involved with MS-13. They had no allegations like that.

3:12Michael Popok:And they knew that he had an order of non-removal to El Salvador because of threats to his life from his home country. His parents owned a successful business. MS-13 was shaking down his parents. And he had an order from an immigration judge of the United States never to be removed to El Salvador. Knowing that, they put him on the plane anyway, along with 200 people in the middle of the night, violated orders of Judge Boasberg, the chief judge in D.C., and went to the Supermax prison where, according to this new filing, he was tortured almost upon arrival. He won his case in front of Judge Zinnis.

3:53Michael Popok:He won his case in front of Judge Zinnis. He won his case twice in front of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. He won his case up to the United States Supreme Court. Yet Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice created a phony indictment about the traffic stop three years earlier when he had seven or eight people in it and and indicted him in Tennessee and then brought him back as part of the indictment. But not because he got indicted. That was a charade. that was a that was a screen a smoke screen so they could look judge innocent is that why you brought him back because of the you know you i ordered you to have him return to facilitate his return the supreme court supported my order you finally brought him back because there's a criminal case pending in tennessee you needed to do that in order to get el salvador to release him from that prison we know that's a lie by the way you're on the minus touch network and legal af on michael Popak.

4:46Michael Popok:We know that's a lie because in other cases, including in front of Judge Bosberg, there's been filings that show that the United States was always in control of the prisoners sent there to the supermax prison in El Salvador. They paid$6 million for the privilege of controlling the conditions and the release conditions of the people there. Even El Salvador told that to the United Nations. And so you have that case going on. And so the way so artfully they make out in their new motion to dismiss the indictment for vindictive and selective prosecution under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 12, is to lay out the retribution campaign that was waged against him after he was successful in Maryland on his constitutional rights.

5:35Michael Popok:then they amped it up. And he cites in his brief, Erez Ruveni, who is the whistleblower, a 27-page single-space whistleblower complaint, who says that the Department of Justice he worked for was corrupt, that he was ordered to lie to federal judges, that he was ordered to disrespect federal judges, not tell them what was going on in El Salvador, and that they knew or should have known that Abrego Garcia had an order not to be removed to El Salvador, and they did it anyway. In fact, in the brief that they filed with Judge Crenshaw, which is under review right now, as we speak, they cite to emails that they obtained in discovery in which people in the Department of Justice and Homeland Security said, well, he was removed under administrative error, but we shouldn't say that publicly.

6:22Michael Popok:Of course. Of course, the campaign of vindictiveness is easy to prove against anything related to Donald Trump and Pam Bondi because they say all this stuff out loud. They literally called him in order to justify him being indicted out loud in filings by the Department of Justice, a person who's assumed innocent, presumed innocent until proven guilty. They called him, and this is Pam Bondi alone, garbage, a monster, a illegal alien, a terrorist, a wife beater, and a human trafficker. and a human trafficker. Actually, he was a human smuggler. That was the indictment, which is not the same as a human trafficker.

7:03Michael Popok:Smuggler is two consensual parties. One wants to get somewhere, the other one takes him there. It's like a transporter. Trafficker is different. That's against somebody's will. And so they point to all that in the briefs. Let me actually read to you from the briefing. It says on page nine, in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court's order in favor of Abrego Garcia. The government did not facilitate Mr. Abrego's release. Far from it. Instead, just days after the order, President Trump hosted Salvadorian President Bukele in the Oval Office, where he met with other officials and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

7:39Michael Popok:At the meeting, the Attorney General and President Bukele mused about defying the Supreme Court's order, trading flip remarks about how neither had the power to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. This is on page 10. Shortly after the meeting and for months thereafter, Attorney General Bondi and other federal officials attacked Abrego publicly. This is all to show vindictiveness of prosecution under Rule 12. While the government waged this public campaign to discredit and punish Mr. Abrego, it also sought to use its criminal investigative authority for the same purpose. Opened a new criminal investigation in April 2025 about that traffic stop.

8:20Michael Popok:And then they go on at length in the new motion to talk about the whistleblower allegations of Mr. Ruvveni and why this proves vindictive prosecution under Rule 12 and selective prosecution as well, because there are limits to what a prosecutor can do. You can't just selectively go after somebody. Of course, that's what we're seeing with Letitia James. That's what we're seeing with Adam Schiff. That's what we're seeing with Bill Clinton. They just want the press, the Department of Justice, of these people having federal probes opened up against them, which itself violates the ethics of the Department of Justice.

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10:57Michael Popok:What's going to happen next in the Abrego Garcia case? It's up with Judge Crenshaw. He's the district court judge sitting in Maryland. Under him is a magistrate Judge Holmes, but it's really sitting with him at this level. And he's going to have to make a decision whether, even though it's rare to find vindictive prosecution, whether the facts merit it and warrant it. And as I've laid them out and as they are listed in the motion, which I'll post on Legal AF Substack, so you can read it for yourself, they got the grounds under Rule 12. It's hard to get vindictive prosecution, but the way Pam Bondi operates that Department of Justice, she makes it easy.

11:35Michael Popok:It's a gift. So my prediction is Crenshaw is going to find vindictive prosecution. He's going to dismiss that indictment. And then Abrego Garcia is sort of in another world. he'll be released by order of the judge from federal custody, martial custody as a criminal defendant, but he'll be moved over to be held by ICE, Immigration and Custom Enforcement, subject to what Judge Zinnis does in Maryland about his constitutional claims and arguments, because she's retained jurisdiction and she's ordered him to be sent to Maryland pronto after he's somehow released from the criminal indictment one way or the other.

12:16Michael Popok:So either he was going to win his case at a trial, which they don't seem to be interested in trying for obvious reasons in the Department of Justice. It was all a ruse. It was all a charade. Or he gets the indictment dismissed. I mean, if he lost, he would have to stay in the Bureau of Prisons somewhere. So watch for this. Watch for this on. We'll be announcing by later today. It could be as early as today, certainly before Friday, an announcement by Judge Crenshaw, a decision about the dismissal of this indictment. Follow us on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF, the Substack, where I do live reports every day, at least twice a day.

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