Trump Official Trapped by his own Epstein Lies

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2:58Michael Popok:Trump has learned after 17 months that the indelible stench of the child sex trafficking scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein and his connectivity to it and the cover up about it can't be washed away. The American people have already made up their minds. It's baked into the polling about Donald Trump and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. But it continues to be important that the survivors and the victims obtain justice. Now, justice, the only true justice is in the form of a special counsel being appointed who is independent from the corrupted and captured Department of Justice and Donald Trump, who investigates on behalf of the 1 ,200 victims, the three or 400 predators, and follows those facts, not just spoon-fed by the Trump administration in the dump of the Epstein files, but with subpoena power to go after information and documents that are being withheld and redacted.

3:58Michael Popok:And today, we've got the Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, who I used to work for, full disclosure. I was the global head of litigation for a company of his, it seems like a lifetime ago. But Howard Lutnick is now going to have to explain himself under oath, although just as cowardly as the rest of the MAGA and Trump administration. He's doing it behind closed doors with the Oversight Committee, an oversight committee that says on one hand that they are in support of the dignity and justice for the survivors, and yet they do nothing about it. They've killed the oversight committee hearings. They're letting the men go behind closed doors.

4:39Michael Popok:We'll have to get a transcript later on about Howard Lutnick's own inability to tell the American people the truth about his relationship with his adjoining wall next door neighbor in New York, Jeffrey Epstein. This is a scandal of his own making because of his refusal to level with the American people. Let's remember that Howard Lutnick is not only the Commerce Secretary and one of the brains, and that word's doing a heavy lift, behind the failed tariff policies of Donald Trump, which have wrecked the economy, but he was also the co-chair of the presidential transition team when Trump won the election before he came into office.

5:24Michael Popok:He and Susie Wiles were the ones in charge of vetting all of the candidates for office. Who vetted Howard Lutnick? and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And then when the clamor of the public and reporting on Legal AF and Amidas Touch grew so great and so loud that he felt he had to go on and try to absolve himself, magical thinking came over him. Maybe nobody will know about the emails that Jeffrey Epstein and I exchanged about a visit to the island years after he was convicted of child sex crimes. And now he's been caught. But James Comer, a MAGA to the core, is trying to both act like he's a supporter of the victims and the survivors and find a way to curry favor with the Trump administration with this oversight committee testimony today.

6:18Michael Popok:I've got some insight here I'm going to provide for you on Midas Touch and on Legal AF YouTube channel. Take a minute, hit the free subscribe button on both. Now, here's the truth that we now know. Howard Lutnick lived directly next door to Jeffrey Epstein when Epstein was in the midst of his child sex trafficking scheme. To try to absolve himself of any culpability or connectivity, Lutnick went on Miranda Devine, a podcast very little people watch, not Webby Award winning, run by Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. It's where a lot of MAGA and cabinet members go when they want to do like a confessional or absolve themselves of something.

7:03Michael Popok:They go on Stephen Miller's wife's podcast, Nobody Watches, named Katie Miller, or they go on Miranda Devine. And he went on on his own. Nobody asked him to. Legal AF didn't demand that he go on the podcast. And he tried to explain how in 2005, which is three years before Epstein took a plea deal on a child prostitution charge, so child sex abuse charge. Three years before, he made a decision with his wife that the guy was gross, having met him, having seen a massage table in the dining room of his townhouse, and I said I would never be that man ever again, all a lie. Played that clip, and then I'll tell you what part of it's a lie.

7:46My wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again. Did you, in fact, make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island? I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation.

8:04Michael Popok:All of it. That's the only way to put it. All of it. He was in a charitable relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, having asked him and gotten a$50 ,000 donation for United Jewish Appeal that was fetting Howard Lutnick as man of the year, one of the men of the year at a banquet. And that was in 2014, 2015. He vacationed with him or lunched with him on his island, Little St. John Island, now known as Petto Island, years, years after Epstein took a public charge. It wasn't private. It wasn't secret. Miami Herald following the story all along on a child sex, a child prostitution charge. Okay. This was before the fed swooped in and finally tried to bring him to justice before he hanged himself.

8:53Michael Popok:So years later, not only does he go based on emails that were dumped out by the Trump administration, not only does Howard Lutnick go to the island, but in his own hand, he lists in an email to Epstein's people the ages of his preteen and teenage children after he knew that Epstein was convicted of a child endangerment and prostitution charge. You list, hey, I'm coming with my daughter who's nine and another couple and their children. I mean, honestly, and of all the islands that you're transiting through with your yacht and your nannies and the other couple and all the children, you just got to stop off at Petto Island to have lunch with Jeffrey Epstein, the guy that you told Miranda Devine in the public that you stopped having any contact with since 2005.

9:50Michael Popok:Nine, 10 years later, you got to have lunch there. They can't make lunch on the yacht. They can't stop off at another island. So charity, lunches, then Epstein and Lutnik are collaborating on trying to stop a local museum from expanding and taking away their, I don't know, their view of Central Park. I don't even know. So then there's, they're in business together. There's a company that Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick's family office used to own called Adfin. And you know who another investor in Adfin was with a signature line? Jeffrey Epstein, all after 2005, which also begs the question, why was Lutnick so close to Epstein if he also believed he was the world's greatest blackmailer?

10:41Michael Popok:You remember this clip on the podcast? play it. The guy's gross. This was not, oh, the deep nuance of Howard Lutnick. This guy's gross. Right. So how come Bill Gates and all these other people could hang around him and not see what you saw? Or did they see it and ignore it? No, they participated. Right. That's what his MO was, you know, get a massage, get a massage. And what happened in that massage room, I assume was on video. This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever. Blackmailed people. That's how We had money. Talk about lack of judgment at the very least. And then, of course, Lutnick, every time he goes before a Senate Banking Committee hearing or another committee, and all he wants to do is talk about his stuff related to the Commerce Department, like all the taxpayer dollars he's misspent, investing in companies, failing companies to try to prop them up.

11:38Michael Popok:all the misguided things he's done, like letting Spirit Air go out of business along with their 17 ,000 employees. He just wants to talk about that. But no, he's got to come and often comes, get this, with his wife, Alison Lutnick, sitting behind him as one of his advisors. Don't do that. Don't, don't, especially when you're talking about a child sex trafficking scheme. Don't bring your wife to work, to sort of be a public face of it. You know, it didn't work for Elliott Spitzer when he had the sex scandal, when he had his wife next to him. Didn't work on The Good Wife, the television show on CBS.

12:15Michael Popok:Don't bring your wife to defend you, okay? You're the Commerce Secretary. You've got the big name card in front of you. And yet here he is having to answer for it just about two weeks ago before he goes in later today or this week in with the oversight committee hearing. Play the clip. Secretary Lutnik, why did you lie to the New York Post about your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein?

12:44Oh, I did hear that. Please don't repeat your gracious offer to speak behind closed doors, not under oath, without the ability of this committee to question you. The American people wants to know, why did you lie about your relationship with Epstein? The House Oversight Committee and I have agreed. We are the appropriate time. Reclaiming my time. I do not accept that answer. We've heard that one. We are our own committee. We have our own reason to test your credibility and veracity. Please answer the question. Why Why did you lie to the post? I have voluntarily agreed to spend the time and talk about it.

13:26I reclaim the time. Let the record reflect you're dodging the question. The cover-up continues. You know what, in your conversations with the president, is the president concerned about your continued relationship that you had with Mr. Epstein as recently as 2018? I am not going to discuss conversations I have with the president. That is not something I'm going to do. If you remember in that interview, you said you would never be in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. President Trump has just fired three cabinet secretaries, three women, Christy Noem, Pam Bondi, Lori Chavez de Reamer.

14:07If President Trump has even a shred of concern about accountability for Jeffrey Epstein's enablers, he would fire you too. Beyond ADFIN, what other financial ties do you have to Jeffrey Epstein?

14:25As I said, I'm going to answer all these questions. Beyond ADFIN, what other financial ties? You're the Commerce Secretary. We have a right to ask this question and get it answered. Again, I'm not going to spend the budget day discussing something I've set aside time to spend on this topic. I'm going to switch topics.

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16:07Michael Popok:That's LEGALAF to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. Now, he's walking in today, and I was going to do it as like a silent video, but you can hear reporters going after him on Epstein. Play, this is like real time. Lutnik walking in to the closed door deposition that he's giving today. Thank God the Democrats are inside of there as well. And the question's being shouted at him. Play it. Why is he doing it? Did you know anything about his playoff?

16:51Mr. Secretary, can you get out of the way, guys? Out of the way. Mr. Secretary, why are you in a photo with the chair of the X-T on his own? Is that beautiful?

17:02Michael Popok:And then Comer, who's the MAGA chair of the committee, has the balls and the brass ones to look the survivors and the victims in the eye and say, he's just doing, he hopes this brings a measure of dignity and justice to them. Here's the clip of James Comer trying to placate a group of people who have been maligned and continued to seek justice and have it denied by the Republicans. Play the clip. Went to the island with his family, with Mr. Epstein. He didn't seem to cut off his communications with Epstein after his conviction. Are those some of your questions? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are the questions.

17:46I think that's a question everyone would ask. I don't know how many more questions there are. This is something that many of the members wanted to hear from Lutnick, and I'll add he's come in voluntarily. So I appreciate that. Hopefully we'll have some more answers. We haven't talked to too many people that have admitted they've been on the island. So it's my understanding he wasn't on the island very long. He was there with his wife and kids, but we'll see what he says. But this is pretty extraordinary to bring in a cabinet secretary or something like that. Yeah, and look, I've been on the oversight committee 10 years, and there's never been a chairman bring in cabinet secretaries of their own party.

18:28And we have Lutnick coming in today. We have Pam Bondi coming in in a couple of weeks. So I think people can see that this is a bipartisan investigation. We're really sincerely trying to get the truth. Our goal is to provide justice for the victims, and hopefully today will be helpful.

18:47Michael Popok:Now let's talk about what the only true path of justice looks like in this case. It's not the angry call for victims and survivors to be victimized again, especially if they don't want to be. to testify in public about their sex, of having been sexually abused. That's Melania Trump's too smart by half call. Remember that in early part of April where she angrily denied being involved with a child sex trafficker? Why was she so angry? And then calls for justice in the form of forcing the women to testify under oath in public. Oh, sure. The men like Howard Lutnick and others, they get to go behind closed doors.

19:33Michael Popok:But the victims, oh no, they have to testify like it's some sort of sensational show, you know, for everybody's amusement about what happened to them. Why is that required? In what world or what part of history has the victim of a crime had to testify in Congress as part of getting justice? I mean, seriously. So that's not justice, OK, I'm not even sure how many of the victims and survivors would take advantage, would do that. I would say take advantage of it, would do it. Some might, but a lot of them won't, don't want to be re-traumatized. There's only one true path. This is the way. There's the appointment of an independent special counsel, independent from the corrupted and captured Department of Justice, independent from the FBI, who hires their own investigators, a former well-respected federal judge.

20:31Michael Popok:I can think of a few of them. Judge Gleason would be a very good former Judge Gleason. There's a number of former federal judges who I would put in charge of this. They then build their own team. Think of the movie The Untouchables. They go get their own group, right? They don't use the state troopers who are on the take, or the FBI, they get their own people. And they don't just rely on the three million pages that were self-selected by Donald Trump and spoon-fed to the American people, calling it the Epstein Library. They have independent powers of subpoena, and they can subpoena whatever they need from wherever they need it, including from within the government, including from Donald Trump, including from Melania Trump.

21:15Michael Popok:And yes, they can use the three million pages, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. And then they do their investigation over the next couple of years. It'll take that long or maybe longer. And they follow every fact to wherever it leads. You have 1 ,200, at least 1 ,200 Epstein survivors and victims. Let's just do the math. Assuming that a powerful depraved man violated and sexually abused more than one of them. You're looking at 400 to 500 predators, some of whom may not be named Donald Trump. Bring them to justice. That's the only path to justice. All this other stuff, you know, judges overseeing the Epstein files and victims having to testify and sing for their own justice.

22:05No, that's not it.

22:08Michael Popok:And we'll continue to demand the true justice and path of justice for the victims and survivors of the Epstein scandal here on Midas Touch and on Legal AF. Hit the free subscribe button here. Do the same thing. We're trying to get to 1.2 million subscribers this month of May over on Legal AF YouTube channel. 12 original pieces of content every day, four podcasts, all devoted to law and politics and ultimately to justice and our democracy. So come over there and hit the free subscribe button as well. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack.

22:47Michael Popok: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 in 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. 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.

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