Trump's Own Official Just Blew the Whistle...

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1:00Michael Popok:Things are moving at a furious pace about mail-in ballots. Yes, your sacred right to vote by mail, as Donald Trump tries to use the Postal Service to throw your votes into the trash. We have an anonymous whistleblower inside the Trump administration. A federal official who obviously works within the Postal Service has come forward through Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut and has blown the lid off of the scam. by Donald Trump to create a phony portal that won't work of citizenship data, to then scan in batches of state ballots and have them rejected so that they return to the states and tens of thousands of people see their vote thrown into the trash can, all in violation of federal judge Talwani's temporary restraining order.

1:51Michael Popok:So I got two stories going on here. whistleblower disclosure. That's the headline. How that'll be used in Thursday, this coming Thursday's preliminary injunction hearing in front of Judge Talwani, as the Trump administration jumps the gun, tries to appeal the temporary restraining order, which you normally cannot do too early in the game on a TRO, try to appeal that and get a stay of Judge Talwani's order in order to build a database that apparently, according to the whistleblower, in violation of the order they're already building. I'm Michael Popak. I'm excited. This is Midas Touch and Legal AF.

2:28Michael Popok:Let's get down to this breaking news stories. I looked at the docket for Judge Talwani's case. There's two cases in front of her joined together. One brought by 20 or more Democratic blue states led by California and Massachusetts. The other one brought by public interest groups like the League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union, all before Judge Talwani. She's already blocked this Postal Service rule twice. Okay? Now, the United States Supreme Court about a week ago said, well, they haven't issued the rule yet, the Postal Service, so we don't know what it looks like. We don't know how you've been damaged.

3:05Michael Popok:You're too early. We're going to block your, we're going to reject your appeal for now. We're not going to block the development of the rule. Well, the rule is out. The rule of creation of this database that should normally take a year and a half, taking three months, what could go wrong? According to the whistleblower, if you take a batch of 10 ,000 ballots from a state and you feed it through the reader, the optical reader, and you got one scanning error, the entire 10 ,000 gets sent back to the states and you've just disenfranchised tens of thousands of people from that state. In the Judge Talwani case alone, there have been 15 filings in less than 24 hours.

3:44Michael Popok:15 filings yesterday alone, including her new order in which she has rejected the Trump administration's request and a lengthy scathing order to block her TRO to allow them to continue to build a database, which according to the whistleblower, they're already continuing to build and to use and to try to implement while they take their appeal. I'll go over the Talwani decisions, her Thursday hearing on preliminary injunction, the likely outcome at the United States Supreme Court, and the whistleblower. This whistleblower 14-page letter, single-spaced, anonymous, is up on Legal AF sub-stack for you to review as well.

4:26Michael Popok:Senator Blumenthal, let's start there. We've had on Legal AF before. We'll have him on again, a brief on this issue. He just wrote the Postmaster General David Steiner attaching the 14-page whistleblower letter. Here's what his cover letter says. My office is in receipt of an alarming whistleblower disclosure about the Postal Service, perilously rushed and potentially unlawful implementation of Trump's executive order. This is from March to restrict mail-in voting, to force the Postal Service and the states to use a citizenship database portal developed by the Postal Service at the last minute to use certain types of envelopes and zebra codes and barcodes and scanning codes or have them rejected.

5:11Michael Popok:The Trump administration, according to Senator Blumenthal, appears intent on the Postal Service moving forward with its flawed plans, no matter the chaos they may create. The whistleblowers allegations also provide disturbing information suggesting that the Postal Service may have violated a court order, that would be Judge Talwani, by continuing to implement the executive order despite being ordered to cease all such work. In fact, Judge Talwani, in her last order, instructed the Department of Justice to give the Postal Service and all relevant personnel that order so they knew that they were blocked under penalty of perjury and file on the docket within five days that that has been done.

5:57Michael Popok:That's going to be a fun filing since the whistleblower arose. Blumenthal continues, the Postal Service is building an entirely new online system, the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and related IT systems, which will be used to scan ballots. According to the whistleblower, the efforts so far to deploy the portal have been rushed, risky, haphazard, because leadership has demanded an impossible time frame. Should take a year and a half. They're trying to do it in three months. And we're talking about the Postal Service. What could go wrong? What could go wrong? Catastrophic failure could go wrong. They give an example from the whistleblower.

6:36Michael Popok:For example, when ballots are submitted to the Postal Service in large volume batches from states, if any one ballot in the batch cannot be verified, any one ballot, all the ballots in that batch will be rejected. For example, if a state election official brings a batch of 10 ,000 ballots to the Postal Service And the Postal Service is unable to match one of those 10 ,000 ballots because they've changed their name or marriage because of marriage or they've moved. And the Postal Service would refuse to mail the remaining 9 ,999 ballots as well and return it to the states. Let me read from the whistleblower complaint directly.

7:19Michael Popok:This is from an anonymous federal official on the letterhead of Whistleblower Aid, which is a public interest group that represents whistleblowers. This anonymous federal official has direct knowledge of potentially catastrophic problems in the development of the Postal Service's new system for handling federal election ballot mail. Well, the whistleblower raises grave concerns, this is all on page one, that the administration has hidden the high likelihood that the new ballot mail verification process will result in major disruptions in mail ballots ever getting delivered to voters and then gives that same 10 ,000 person or 10 ,000 ballot example.

8:00Michael Popok:On page three, notwithstanding the injunction, enjoining the Postal Service from implementing, giving effect to or enforcing Section 3 of the executive order, after an initial pause, the leadership of the Postal Service ordered employees to resume development of the election ballot mail IT systems about a month ago while the injunction was in effect. That's not going to sit well with Judge Talwani, I assure you. Page four, the apparently sloppy and rushed manner in which the portal and supporting IT systems are being built poses significant risk. Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballots this election cycle in a timely manner.

8:46Michael Popok:The assessment and recitation of the facts around this development of the project is a compelling warning of catastrophic failure, which could derail the midterm elections, which, let's be frank, is exactly what Donald Trump wanted. He doesn't care that this actually works. He just wants to create this Rube Goldberg contraption that he knows is likely to fail so that he can cast doubt and cast shade on the mail-in ballot process and try to claim victory in stolen elections. That's exactly what he's doing. We know that. When Trump was asked about how are they ever going to implement this, you can tell he doesn't care because he immediately started talking about his golf game.

9:25Michael Popok:Play the clip. a NATO territory. Mr. President, the Supreme Court earlier this week ruled on mail-in ballots. And there are states like North Carolina that have ballots that go out next week. How are states supposed to implement this? Well, they're able to figure it out. North Carolina's great. It's a great place. I won a goal three times. They do some mail-in ballots. But basically, they ruled on the legitimacy and the way we want to make them legitimate. And it was a great ruling for the Republican. Can we talk about the most underrated organ in your body? Your liver. It's doing more than 500 functions every day, filtering unwanted elements, supporting digestion, and helping with energy.

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11:38Michael Popok:That went up to the United States Supreme Court. And at the time, about a week ago, the Supreme Court said, well, it's interesting. this is my words, we're not going to get to the substance of your issue because you're too early. You're too early because they haven't issued the rule yet, the Postal Service. They may. We don't know what it looks like yet. Come back when they do. Less than 24 hours later, they filed their suit to come back because the rule had already been published at the time of the Supreme Court decision. So now they're back through Judge Talwani. There's another judge down in D.C.

12:09Michael Popok:called Judge Nichols with a couple of cases, but Talwani's cases have left the station first. Okay. She issues the temporary restraining order again, the Trump administration for 14 days to stop and block the implementation of that rule and the Postal Service rule about this mail-in ballots issue. Trump doesn't like it. He takes an appeal to the First Circuit, but he's too early. Generally, in general terms, a temporary restraining order is too early to take an appeal. You have to wait to the preliminary injunction hearing, in this case, this coming Thursday. Then you can take your appeal. Most appeals, even at the Supreme Court level, are rejected because they come in too early because you try to get the TRO appealed when you should be waiting for the PI preliminary injunction.

12:58Michael Popok:That's what I think is going to happen. In any event, the judge said in her order, which I'll read to you from in a moment, you're appealing my TRO, and so you're not likely to win that. And here's the other reasons I'm not going to lift my TRO, which is only for 14 days. And we have a hearing on Thursday. Let me go over this and then I'll tell you what they're likely to do next. This is a I have to do by screenshot. I apologize. She didn't issue an actual order. She just had her clerk type it directly into the electronic docket. So here we go. On August 21, the United States Postal Service issued a final rule on its mail-in ballots.

13:36Michael Popok:less than 70 days before the November 3rd midterm election. This court found that the standards for the temporary restraining order had been met and stayed for 14 days the mandatory requirements of the final rule. She found that it was likely that the plaintiffs were going to succeed on the merits when the case was over. They had irreparable harm, inadequate remedy at law, and the public interest tipped in favor of the plaintiffs. Those are the standards for TRO. Defendants now seek to undo the 14-day stay preserving the status quo prior to the federal agency's altering of requirements applicable to state and local officials.

14:15Michael Popok:These motions are denied. You're going to get a stay, you're going to have to go to the First Circuit, and I don't think you're going to get it at the First Circuit because you're too early with your appeal. First, although defendants and intervener defendants seek a stay pending appeal, the TRO is not an appealable order under the federal rules related to appeals. And the court has a September 3rd hearing on the preliminary injunction. Second, as to the merits, it is likely that the Postal Service lacked authority to issue the final rule that it is substantially unconstitutional, substantively unconstitutional and contrary to law.

14:53Michael Popok:Defendants claim they are entitled to relief because appellate review of the court's TRO a come too late for the midterms misconstrues the Supreme Court's original order from last week. A final rule has now issued, and contrary to the defendant's cynical interpretation, the Supreme Court has not endorsed the view that any challenge to the final rule is now too late. In other words, I'm going as fast as I can to get this case round-tripped back to the United States Supreme Court. She then says, fourth, as to the defendant's claims of irreparable harm, She doesn't believe they have irreparable harm because of the way she's limited her temporary restraining order.

15:32Michael Popok:And finally, as to the public interest, the court underscores that the late timing of the changes to state election practices the federal agency seeks to impose are contrary to the public's need for clear and settled rules of the road for November 3rd midterm elections. Now, only two months away. Trump's not going to like that. He's going to go seek from the First Circuit in Boston, three-judge panel, some sort of block of Judge Talwani. I believe he's going to lose that. And then he's going to, I think, wait until Thursday when he gets the preliminary injunction against him, which is likely with Judge Talwani.

16:11Michael Popok:Similar analysis, same facts. And now Judge Talwani has one more fact to grant the preliminary injunction in favor of the plaintiffs. The whistleblower, the anonymous whistleblower, talking about the violation of her order. So I think it's pretty clear Thursday night, Friday, heading into Labor Day, we're going to get another Judge Talwani order. They can then try to appeal that on an emergency basis. Get ready, First Circuit. You're not going to be sleeping on a Labor Day weekend or relaxing. And then from there, an emergency rule, emergency application, shadow docket application up to the United States Supreme Court.

16:45Michael Popok:It'll go through one of the moderate to liberal justices first for the First Circuit and then to the full court. And we'll see what happens. You know, it's a crapshoot. Usually comes out the wrong way with the Supreme Court on issues. When it comes to ballrooms, Supreme Court five to four yesterday, as we know, said, yeah, build a ballroom. I don't think the National Trust has standing. And, you know, put up a ballroom. Even Chief Justin Roberts thought that was wrong. But when it comes to voting and mail-in ballots and screwing with elections, they take a little harder tact against the Trump administration.

17:24Michael Popok:so we'll have to see what happens next. I'll follow it all right here. You're on Midas Dutch. Come over to Legal AF YouTube channel for me and hit that free subscribe button. Until my next report, this is Michael. 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 called, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well.

17:56Michael Popok:We've got some new reporting. We've got interviews. We've got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Wear Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe. Dave Bortnau here. Something big is coming. September 2nd, DraftKings Game Day. We're talking massive deals, exclusive offers, and an all-day celebration built for sports fans. Whatever you're betting, DraftKings Game Day has deals dropping all day long. One app, every sport. So mark the date. September 2nd. New season. New era. DraftKings Game Day. Get pumped. New DraftKings customers. Sign up with code SPOTIFY. Spend$5 to get$200 in bonus bets within 21 days.

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