Trump in Cold Sweat as Don Lemon Makes Him Pay

21:46A lot of casualties. and then um and then the president left the white house on that big chopper yeah and gave that thing uh that sort of i am not a crook moment or whatever it is and the peace sign and left and that was like a major thing people were like holy shit nothing like this has ever happened

22:05Michael Popok:by the way for those that are following at home i'm three months older than don lemon i told you because the way you were describing your childhood it's so matched my own in terms of those events. And I'm like, he has to be like with that. We were the first Sesame Street generation that was geared for us and our three-year-olds when it launched. Oh yeah, that's another good reason why I like talking to you. So let's turn to your case because people are very concerned about you and about you being one of many critics of the administration that has found themselves on the business end of a prosecution.

22:41Michael Popok:And one that, frankly, I was shocked that the grand jury returned an indictment. And we're going to get to the bottom of that in a minute, especially the way it started. I mean, as people know now, you were there to cover a protest in a Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota church. I think that somebody in the church was the local ice field officer, the field director for ice. And I think that's one of the reasons they were there. But you were there along with other journalists and your camera crew and all of that. And you're doing what journalists do. And when you get arrested or whatever, they try to arrest you, they actually like roused the chief judge of Minnesota's federal court, Judge Schiltz, out of his bed because they didn't like the fact that at the time, the magistrate judge, same magistrate judge now, didn't want to issue an arrest warrant, having found that you were a journalist doing your job under the First Amendment and couldn't be arrested.

23:38Michael Popok:And even Judge Schultz, in his own opinion, characterized you as a First Amendment journalist and implying that you had the cover and could not be arrested. So I was like, all right, well, you got the chief judge making those comments. Somewhere along the way, they get a grand jury in a room. Lord knows what they said. And what we know now from this Department of Justice is that they will lie, cheat, and steal their way through a grand jury. They will suborn perjury. They will put on false testimony. They will put on false documents. They will upend the instructions of the law. They'll violate the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, and the way they talk to the jury.

24:18Michael Popok:They'll talk to the jury out of the room. They'll talk to the jury in the hallway. They will dismiss jurors who are not on their side. They'll do all sorts of things. And you and I, when I was on your show a couple of months ago, I said it is professional malpractice for everybody who's a political critic of Donald Trump's who gets indicted not to seek the grand jury transcript. And your team has been seeking it from almost the very, very beginning. And finally, you got the federal district court judge to overrule the magistrate judge, which is normal, and say, I am going to look at the entirety of the grand jury transcript.

24:56Michael Popok:Give it to me on a thumb drive. And what she's looking for is prosecutorial misconduct and abuse. What was the reaction on your team when she granted the motion and said, I'm going to take it. I'm going to look at the whole thumb drive. Well, I can tell you my reaction and kind of theirs. It's like, it's about time someone does something that makes sense. That's logical. And look, can I give you behind the scenes just a little bit. Please.

25:25Well, a couple of things. One is that your explanation of what happened is correct, but they went to more than two, they went to two judges. They went to, as you said, the, what do you call it? There was a magistrate judge. And then is it the district court judge? I forget what it's called.

25:40Michael Popok:Well, they went to the magistrate judge. And I think that was Micco, this guy you have now. And then, and then he, they didn't like his answer. So they went, I think it ended up with Schultz, who's the chief judge of Minnesota Fed. Yep. And then they went to the Eighth Circuit. They went to three different entities. And then they went to the grand jury. And all three of those entities said no. It was an Eighth Circuit decision. Multiple judges, including judges at the Eighth Circuit, ruled that the government lacked probable cause to charge Lemon and co-defendant Georgia Ford. court. So they went to three different judges and then to the eighth circuit.

26:23So, I mean, come on, that's a little, that's a little nuts or two judges in the eighth circuit, but I think they did three tries before they went to the grand jury. So that, so that, so that is a bit unusual because usually if that, you tell me, you know more about this, you're an attorney, if that happens, usually it's just like, okay, we're done here. You know, usually.

26:42Michael Popok:Yeah, they don't continue to push through and impanel a grand jury or bring it to the grand jury. And I'm reasonably confident that there's going to be some, they put their big fat thumbs on the scales of justice when they presented your case to the grand jury. Because having presented the law and all the parts that should have gone into the grand jury, for a grand jury to indict you, I thought was shocking. Yeah. Well, you would know better than I. Again, I'm in the middle of it, but I'm not an attorney. I report on things, and so some things I understand very clearly, having reported on them for decades.

27:24And then there are other things I just don't understand. I don't understand why it takes so long. So when you asked about the reaction, I'll share something I haven't shared with anyone. And the reaction for me has been, you know, to just whomever, I'll say, is that the way this system operates should be, we should bring some sunlight to it. Because I think sunlight is the best disinfectant. How easily it is to influence judges or decisions or whatever it is, the secrecy of the grand jury, which I don't think is really a fair process. Because prosecutors get to say whatever they want. There's no judge there.

28:01There's no way of moderating it. And it's so secretive that you don't know what they say. You can just make things up. You tell me if I'm wrong, Michael, you're the attorney. And who's to know if the judge never looks at it or allows even the person who's the defendant to be able to look at it and say, no, that is wrong. Would you present it to the grand jury to even get this indictment is wrong. So I think that there should be more sunlight on this and also how judges can be influenced by administrations and people who are in powerful positions or they can live in fear of being protested against or their family or someone being harmed when they have more agency and a bigger platform and the ability to be able to get security and all those things than the people that they're supposed to be serving.

28:52and that this process takes so long that I think it's an injustice. Justice delayed is what? Justice denied. And I think about all the people who don't have the resources that I have and who don't have the platform that I have, who don't have the voice that I have, the ability to be able to do whatever. And I think about all those people who had just been treated unfairly by the system and have no recourse. And it's awful. I think that someone needs to put, we need to take a look at how people are charged, indicted, the justice system, the criminal justice system in this country, it favors too much the rich and powerful and the people who are making the decisions rather than the people who are the taxpayers, who are paying their salaries.

29:36Because many times the people who are involved in these things, like me, are innocent. But you have to go through this long process that they, you know, oh my God, it's so many of these. And you're like, what is taking the judge so long? What is taking them so long to rule on this? And you're like, well, what is it? The system is overwhelmed? Okay. If the system is overwhelmed, and especially if the Department of Justice is overwhelmed, then whose fault is that? Why are people, people have left the Department of Justice in droves because they don't want to be involved. They have a, you know, they have a skeleton crew there, basically.

30:13And so they keep asking for extension after extension after extension and either looking for evidence or you have no staff, why didn't you do all of this before you brought an indictment or charges?

30:24Michael Popok:Well, you make great points. I mean, criminal justice reform is something that is now made more acute because we're watching people we love and admire like you and Letitia James and Adam Schiff and all the other, you know, Barack Obama, who knows one day. And one of the ways you could improve the grand jury process is even if you left it secret, which is part of our kind of DNA going back, you know, a hundred years or more, a couple hundred years, is just let the judge look at every grand jury transcript that without having somebody have to file a motion or have to make it because you couldn't get it unless you made an argument that there was things that went wrong in the grand jury.

31:08Michael Popok:And how do you know you weren't there? So, you know, you're shadowboxing. Just let Just let every indictment, especially for a felony, let the transcript go to a judge just to confirm that there were no prosecutorial misconduct. But you know that prosecutors, come on, let's be real, prosecutors rely and depend on the fact that the judge probably will not, that the grand jury testimony will, on what they present to the grand jury, will never, ever see the light of day. And think about how many people have been set up and really framed from prosecutors from presenting false information. And you never know.

31:46Even if someone, you know, I don't know, but I would imagine if you're on trial for unaliving someone, that you'd have a tough time getting the grand jury testimony. You know, I don't know. Again, I'm just saying, to me as a layperson, it just does not seem right or fair.

32:05Michael Popok:I just interviewed Keith Ellison, the great attorney general of Minnesota. And this is something I hadn't known because every state has their own criminal justice process. And he said, in the state of Minnesota, you only need a grand jury in state. This is state, not federal. You only need a grand jury if it's a felony murder. If it's not a felony murder that you're going for, the prosecutor can just swear out a criminal complaint and that serves as your indictment. That's how that state does it. I never heard of a state that didn't use the grand jury process for almost every felony crime, let alone misdemeanors.

32:49Michael Popok:But no, they don't do that there. So the federal system that you're in, unfortunately, instead of just covering it, doesn't allow that. But there are, look, we'd be foolish to say that there doesn't need to be improvements so that there aren't exit ramps earlier than what you're having to go through a year into this process. And because you're a well-known person and you have good reputation, you have good lawyers that want to work with you, you're able to navigate the system. It reminds me of the 50s and McCarthyism and how many people got pulled in front of the House on American Committee and had their reputations ruined.

33:28Michael Popok:And then later on, it turned out, oh, oops, never mind. But they already were out of the film industry or the TV industry or they had their lives ruined and all of that for decades. And here, you know, Trump's trying to do the same thing. Fortunately, we have federal judges in a federal system that can help clear your name. But like, you don't need this. I know the Republicans keep going, this is the best thing that ever happened to Don Lemon. He gets to talk about his case all day long. I'm like, I don't think that's what Don's business model was. No. I mean, yeah, like why? Really? No. Anyone who has ever had the federal government after them, right, the Department of Justice, who does not want this, the invasion of your privacy, your rights, and be able to take away your freedom whenever they want, None of that.

34:17And the cost, the financial cost of this or obligations, however you want to put it, those things aren't nice. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy unless it was Pam Bondi.

34:34Michael Popok:Exactly. Can you give me five more minutes? Yeah. It's always great and comfortable to talk to you. So let's just wrap up with Nolan Wells. Oh, yeah. I know you've been covering, I was going to come on with you at one point, but I was traveling with a weird time difference. And so you've got this 18-year-old college student who's with a bunch of other friends, who's on a 4th of July fun day on boats off the coast of Mississippi to Horn Island. And everybody comes home. Everybody comes home from this trip except for one boy, a black boy that's found dead in the water. And we are now six weeks out, and we still do not have any understanding.

35:23Michael Popok:The autopsy came back as indeterminate death. The friends have lawyered up and are busy trying to file defamation cases against Al Sharpton instead of helping to solve the mystery and the suspicious circumstances behind their friend's death. You've got the prosecutor who's busy putting out videos about whatever she thinks she's doing to investigate. And now you've got Benjamin Crum representing the family. The NAACP and the Office of the General Counsel, Kristen Clark, former Civil Rights Division head for the Department of Justice has stepped in to work closely with the family. What are you hearing?

36:09Michael Popok:From your perspective, why are we so far down the road here from what happened without any transparent facts? Well, a couple of things. I think it's obviously distrust in the system and the investigation in Mississippi. The family is not trusting it. And in large part because, and not necessarily because of the young men who was with her son, but because of the sheriff coming out initially and saying, well, we're just, you know, we don't think that there's any foul play. We're looking at this as an accident, just, you know, right afterward. And people were like, wait a minute. And I think it's America.

36:47We know the history of America and we know the history of Mississippi. So when you just see a photograph and you hear, you know, and you hear what, okay, most of the kids with him were white. And you see the photograph and it's three white kids. And they were not the only people involved, right? But that's initially what we saw. There's three white kids and a black kid and then they didn't come home. And then later we learned there were a few black people, but not many, right? It was mostly white kids there. And so people get suspicious and that's America. And I think, look, whether race had anything to do with it or not, that's just reality.

37:25and for people to say that race has nothing to do with it in that sense are not living in reality because everything um i forget what is the saying um nothing is about race in america but everything is about race right so i think that's part of it i think it's just not trust not trusting the system i also feel too that it's taking so long because people are afraid to maybe come forward and tell the truth about the investigation and not about whether someone, you know, did something that was nefarious or anything for Nolan Wells. But, you know, what happened that day? Were you guys drinking? Were you doing a little molly?

38:12Were you guys a little high, doing a little pot? Maybe like what happened? Maybe it was an accident and maybe people are like, oh, I don't want to know because yeah i you know i wasn't my best on that day so i don't know what it is so i don't but you know i don't i don't think it is what anybody is saying it is i think it's going to be something else that we're going to figure out you know what it is um and then you know the the autopsy and And, you know, not the trachea and the throat and all of that, even though it may be something that's normal with autopsies, people don't really get to hear in-depth information about autopsies.

38:58So when they say his throat was missing and his organs are like, oh, and it's like, no, that's what happens for autopsies. It's very invasive. But people just don't know that. So I think everybody is being extremely careful now. The investigators are being extremely careful because they don't want to mess this up. They know what's on the line. And I think the families are, again, apprehensive because they don't trust and they're being careful. And then, you know, you've got attorneys involved and you know how attorneys are, Michael. And the one thing that really has been bothering me, and it's not so much the young men, it's the people who it's the adults in their lives.

39:36It's either the family or whoever's advising them, even the attorneys. Because when you get out there and you do interviews, and they may not have had anything to do with it. I don't know. I wasn't there. So I can't say that. But when you get out there in an interview, you say, if the mom hadn't put out a picture and whatever, then none of this would have happened. And you start blaming a grieving mother. It's not a good look. No. And you're not going to win in the court of public opinion with that. So on the. Advise them not to do those interviews.

40:10Michael Popok:So two observations. One, where is the Department of Justice? Normally in a case like this, they would volunteer their resources, FBI, field offices. They are completely absent. If this was a white boy who went missing, they wonder if that would have been the case. So you have that. This is one of the reasons the NAACP joined. And they're putting the full weight of their own investigative power behind it to sort of supplement. Listen to this statistic, though, Don, that Kristen Clark mentioned during her interview with me about the undetermined nature of his death listed on his autopsy report.

40:46Michael Popok:It says, the autopsy's findings that Nolan Wells' manner of death remains undetermined, underscores the importance of a thorough and transparent investigation. That concern is not unique to this case. According to the CDC's National Violent Death Reporting System, black males experience the highest rate of deaths classified as being of undetermined intent among males at 5.8 deaths per 100 ,000 in the population. This troubling disparity, and she said it's by a lot, like the next group, it's like, this is a huge red number glowing on the chart about black men. This troubling disparity highlights why unanswered questions surrounding deaths involving young black men cannot be met with silence or delay and why the family deserves complete transparency.

41:34Yeah. And no one understands this. No one understands anymore that there is nuance, right? And that they're, like you're giving, right now, you're giving what you're saying and doing or what people don't do anymore. They don't take whatever circumstances that we're dealing with. They don't take the reality of the world. They don't take the history of the world. They just say, well, it doesn't have anything to do with race. And because we have nothing to do with it and all those other things that you're doing, you're race baiting, whatever. It's like, no, that's a reality. It's the same thing if something happens to a woman, right?

42:18That everything in this world is not equal. women and men are not equal right everything is like oh it happened to a man it happened to a man and then it happens to a woman women have um a different um set of circumstances in society than men do and so the same thing goes for black and white people we have certain the rules are different whether we whether we want to believe it or not that's just the facts and i think in this administration, especially now, they have, I'm just going to be honest here, they've caused a whole lot of white people, especially white men, to feel aggrieved or that someone else, especially someone who is black or brown or immigrant or other or migrant or even a woman, is taking what rightfully belongs to a white man.

43:10And that is sort of the prevailing attitude in society right now. And to think that that doesn't factor into what's happening with Nolan Wells, I think we'd be pretty ignorant or quite frankly dumb to think that it's not. Look at, when I talk to you about the young men and the people who are advising those young men, look at the attorney they chose, a former Trump attorney who is sitting there And then another attorney who's from there who has a hat on his thing saying, you know, call whatever his name is, like on a baseball cap on one side when they're doing the interview. And then the other side is a tequila or a brandy or some sort of liquor that is the liquor of a bottle of the liquor.

44:03this is a prop in the interview that he's doing on, you know, Nancy Grace or whatever, from the right-wing podcaster who is also MAGA aligned, it's his brand. And so to think that that is not factoring into this, I think that these people are being pretty naive. It's like, so maybe they're leaning into it because that's what they want out there, but there's a whole other part of America going, hey, what the fuck?

44:29Michael Popok:I mean, exactly to your point, you know and this is anecdotal 50 of women in my life in my walk have told me that they were sexually um abused by a boss or in the workplace you know how many times you know how many times that happened to me zero uh and i could say 99 of my male friends so that's a lived experience that i don't have i worked in new york at my first major law firm in the early 90s with a really phenomenal friend of mine ended up becoming a federal public defender down in Miami, but he was a black man in the nineties. He came from, actually came from Louisiana as well, but ended up in New York.

45:16Michael Popok:And he told me, and this is in the nineties and it still goes on. He told me that when he drove to go visit his family in Louisiana, that he wore his driver's license around his neck like a dog collar. And I said, having never thought to do that, I said, why do you do that? And he said, because I don't want to, this is in the 90s, because I don't want to get shot reaching for my driver's license or my insurance in the car. So the fact that he felt he had to do that tells you everything you need to know about the role of race in society. And I don't have that lived experience. When a cop pulls me over, I'm like pissed off because a cop has pulled me over.

45:56Michael Popok:I might get a ticket, but I'm not thinking I might, my life might end here in this encounter. Yeah. Well, that's my world. Yeah. Right. Serious. Yeah. That's my world. I agree with you a hundred percent. And until we try to understand each other that way. And I thought we were for a while, we were trying to, I have been, since we're the same age, I've been so disappointed by my Gen X brothers and sisters and friends who have just gone off the deep end politically and had just become bigots. It's surprising to me. I thought we were going to be the generation that changed that. We changed things in so many ways, but we set up everything for everybody.

46:38We set up fashion, music, clothing, everything for all the millennials and the folks who are coming down the line. We were feral. I raised myself. I mean, my family, my parents were there, but it is like, but they were going out, you know, this is a family, this is a generation that smoked cigarettes in the station wagon with no seatbelts and the windows rolled up. And, and they're like, okay, how old are you? Nine, 10. All right. Mom and I are going out for the evening. Yeah. Call Ms. Williams next door. If you have a problem, right. You know what I mean? Here's a pizza and a carton of cigarettes.

47:14Yes. And look, when we were kids, they would leave us and we would take the liquor bottles. My sisters were older than I. They would drink and then pour water in there. So that was to the level where my dad had marked it with a Sharpie, you know? So, yeah. So anyways, I've been very surprised because I thought that we were going to be the generation that helped to at least not necessarily eliminate racism. I'm not that naive, but at least to have some understanding of each other. And it has not happened.

47:43Michael Popok:Yeah. Well, you being my friend and you being as successful as you are on the Don Lemon show, for those that don't know who I'm talking to, you need to subscribe and follow and like and get him into your feed every day. And we're going to continue to follow all the things that are important to you and bring you on to talk about your case here on Legal AF. Real honor to know you and to be able to have this kind of dialogue with you and brief our audience around it. thank you these are the kind of conversations i like to have just like open uh conversations like this honesty um and a good time and some serious stuff but look we're coming to a town near you um michael dl hugley and i are starting our tour on september um 11th in fort lauderdale florida oh we're gonna go where are you i think i know which where are you gonna be performing And we're going to be at, is it O 'Renee Theater in Broward Center?

48:41Michael Popok:Oh, I love that. Okay. All right. O 'Renee? Yeah. Okay. So everybody, we're going to put the link in the notes below so you can get the tickets. And when is that going to be? In September? September 11th, starting. That's the first day of our tour. September 11th, 2026, O 'Renee Theater in Broward Center for the Performing Arts. Okay. All right. And then separately. We're going all over the country. I'm going to talk to your people. I'll get some tickets. DonLemon.com. Yeah, no, you can come and be a guest. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's great. Come be a guest. Absolutely. September 11th. I think we can actually, oh, that would be great.

49:13Michael Popok:I love that theater. That's a great theater. Well, Don, thanks for being here. We'll put all the links below Don Lemon Show, Substack with Don Lemon, and all those great things, and YouTube, and all of that. And thanks for being here on Legal AF. I'm Michael Popok. Take a minute and hit the free subscribe button here as well as we continue to grow our pro-democracy channel. 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.

49:53Michael Popok: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.