Wow: Top Trump Loyalist Suddenly Quits as Spy Fears Erupt

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2:19Michael Popok:There's a secret that explains Donald Trump's shouting match with members of Congress during his State of the Union over Somalia and over purported fraud. It's that he's upset, I'm sure, that a top Trump donor and a major leader in his Treasury Department, John Hurley, has left, not because of disagreements with Scott Besson. The new reporting is he's leaving because he stumbled on and objects to a massive spying and surveillance program being operated by Donald Trump using the Treasury Department. He says it's only targeting Minnesota and the Somali community, but he's using the Treasury Department to spy on all financial transactions.

3:05Michael Popok:And it sounds like John Hurley would just rather be the ambassador to Germany than to continue to spy on Americans. I'm Michael Popak. You're on the Midas Touch Network. And of course, on Legal AF. So about a week or so ago, I reported that John Hurley maybe had gotten sideways with Scott Bessent. It's not the only one. There's many people that have left the Treasury Department that don't want to be seen working for Donald Trump through Scott Besant. But there's more to the story. It looks like John Hurley is an accidental whistleblower. Now, he's been the Undersecretary of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

3:42It's a

3:43Michael Popok:scary-sounding entity within the Treasury Department. And he's only been there about four months. So his departure was odd. But now it's explained. It probably explains the shouting match that Donald Trump decided to have yesterday during the State of the Union address. Now, it looks like the Treasury Department is trying to monitor and surveil international payments coming out of Minneapolis and out of Minnesota. This is data privacy. This is violation of the Fourth Amendment in its use by using something you've probably never heard of called a geographic target order, a GTO. A GTO is being used by the government to track the personal finances of people living in Minnesota so Donald Trump can try to get something about Somalia in 2026 to deliver to his MAGA base.

4:39Michael Popok:Problem with that is it is most likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And it will lead to new lawsuits, I'm sure, being filed about the use of the GTOs and particularly how Donald Trump is using an organization within the Treasury Department, which is known as FinCEN. I've been up against FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Unit of the Treasury Department, and how they're using FinCEN and weaponized it to go after Americans, mainly Democrats. See, Donald Trump hasn't just weaponized the Department of Justice. He's weaponized the Treasury Department, you know, the one that's holding all of your personal financial data, including Social Security, against you.

5:23Michael Popok:Now, we knew that something like this was going to happen because Elon Musk often talked about during his Doge days creating a giant database, right? A giant database, unified database of all government information about you and have it in one place. What could go wrong? and then use it for the government's nefarious purposes. But now we see it and how it's operating. And John Hurley apparently has had enough. Now to get rid of Hurley and get him out of the air of everybody, it looks like they're going to give him an ambassadorship and send him off to, I don't know, Greenland, Germany, somewhere.

6:02Michael Popok:Every time Donald Trump wants to get rid of somebody, he gives them an ambassadorship. You know, ex-wife of Don Jr., give her an ambassadorship. You know, it's kick him upstairs, get rid of the national security advisor because he screwed up and added a reporter from the Atlantic magazine onto a signal chat at the top of this administration when it first started, sent him off to Iceland. It's just, you know, it's just ridiculous. But the big picture here is Donald Trump is spying on America and he's using his Treasury Department to do it. I also thought it was odd that Donald Trump decided to waste his time, even though it rambled for two hours, this shambolic State of the Union address, to go after, you know, the representative from Minnesota and to talk about Somalia and then try to argue that, I don't know, people should stand up and celebrate him going after Somali fraudsters.

7:00Michael Popok:Let's play the clip.

7:00Mario P. C.:The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception. Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA. and it is the American people who pay the price and higher medical bills, car insurance rates, rent, taxes, and perhaps most importantly, crime. We will take care of this problem. We're going to take care of this problem. We are not playing games.

7:36Michael Popok:Here's the reality. You got a criminal case against a group of people. You think Medicare fraud, Medicaid fraud, insurance fraud, social security fraud is going on. It's very simple. You use the FBI, the postal inspectors, Medicare, Medicaid, inspector generals. You bring them all together under the auspices of an FBI that functions properly and a Department of Justice. And you focus and that's why they're called targets. You focus on the targets of the criminal investigation. What you don't do is cast this giant net, you know, of these geographic target orders and blanket an entire state. and then capture in there and sweep up in there, you're in my personal data.

8:20Michael Popok:And I think it just was a bridge too far for even a mega-maga donor like John Hurley. He's like, I'm out. Now, of course, when they reached him for comment, he said, oh, no, I fully support everything that Trump does about the Somali fraud. That's not the point, John. The point is you become an accidental whistleblower because outside media organizations have done some investigative reporting and come up with, lo and behold, you didn't just leave quietly. You left after making your concerns known that data privacy, Fourth Amendment issues were potentially being violated by the Treasury Department.

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10:21Now, what happens next?

10:23Michael Popok:What happens next is likely to be the lawsuits brought by public interest groups who are going to go after this particular issue, the use of the GTOs, the use of FinCEN within the Treasury Department to target Americans. Yeah, because much of that is unconstitutional. We still live in the United States of America. You know, Trump wants us to believe that he can redefine what that means. But at the end, we do have a constitution. We do have case law around this. And we do have a Supreme Court that we may not agree with a lot of what they do, but they are consistently protective of people's privacy rights and under the Fourth Amendment.

11:05Michael Popok:That's why there's so many lawsuits over the use of GTOs, over FinCEN's powers. And now that we've got this new reporting about John Hurley, I am sure we'll have a cascade of new lawsuits. This will eventually end up on the doorstep of the United States Supreme Court. Not today. May not even be a 2026 event. May be an event that ends up in 2027, but it will happen. And what we need to do now is expose it. Whistleblowers are so important, whether they want to be whistleblowers or not. For example, they have blown the whistle, like we just saw in the last couple of days, about ICE training, that ICE is being trained in their academy to violate the Constitution.

11:51Michael Popok:We know that because of a whistleblower. We know about the ICE memo, which says that the ICE should break down doors in violation of the Fourth Amendment without a proper federal judge order. We know that from a whistleblower. We know the whistleblowers at the Department of Justice that came forward and talked about the illicit, unconstitutional immigration policy and violation of federal court orders. So we have seen over the last year that there are whistleblowers inside the house, some of them unintentional. Some of them didn't mean to be whistleblowers when they woke up that morning, but by the time they resigned and people followed the story, they became whistleblowers.

12:37Michael Popok:and it's that focus on insiders coming forward and surfacing memos that had been hidden and surfacing policies that we couldn't see with the naked eye that is going to help us reclaim our democracy and our justice system. We need more whistleblowers to come forward. So I want to continue to report on all of that here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. Thank you for all the support you do for Legal AF on YouTube. Now would be the great opportunity. If you like our videos, you like my content, it's easy. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Hit the free subscribe button and come over to Legal AF Substack and do the exact same thing.

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