Thursday Afternoon News Updates with Ben 8/6/2026

30:06Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to Ben on Breaking News. I'm Ben Micellis. This is our breaking news. It's our breaking news. Another big update moments ago in Virginia, the plaintiffs in that case, which blocked the J6 slush fund. Remember that we remember there's two cases. There's the Florida case. There's the Virginia case. The Florida case is the case that Trump filed. It's the case where Trump sued his own treasury department and IRS for $10 million, entered into the settlement that the federal judge found collusive, and then reported the lawyers to the state bar. That's the Florida case. In Virginia, there was injunctive relief that was granted to the group of plaintiffs to block.

30:56Ben Meiselas:The case was first just focused on the J6 slush fund. And a court granted a preliminary injunction blocking the J6 anti-weaponization fund or whatever the hell they call it. Now, moments ago, there was an amended complaint filed and the plaintiff said, now we want you to block Trump's tax immunity. That Trump's tax immunity is illegal. If you give him tax immunity, then everybody needs to get tax immunity because why are we just giving him preferred tax immunity? If a federal judge in Florida has already voided the agreement as collusive, they can't enter into a deal using the federal judge's name, right?

31:42Ben Meiselas:Because the agreement has remained in place, right? The Todd Blanch order that he did was just an order to rescind for now, temporarily, it's temporary, the anti-weaponization fund. But it is not a rescission of the settlement agreement, which created the anti-weaponization fund. And it did not rescind the addendum to the settlement agreement. And the addendum gave Trump and his family tax immunity. So now that is being challenged in the Virginia court. And I suspect we'll see what we have to wait for a federal judge's ruling, but that if another, right, it's comma T, not comma D, none of this is funny.

32:31Ben Meiselas:It would be funny if it wasn't so real, but comma T with a T-Y, having respect for the decision of your colleague, right? So a federal judge in Florida ruled the settlement agreement was collusive and void. So if you are now creating an addendum to the settlement agreement, to give Trump immunity from paying taxes. That should be void too. And so that's what's now being argued in Virginia. That amendment was filed moments ago. And I think that that is a very big deal as well. Let's take a look. What else we got? Let's talk about Katie Fang. a federal judge. And I did a video on it with Katie Fang.

33:19Ben Meiselas:So watch the video I did with Katie Fang also after this. And we had Katie Fang exclusively on here first on the Midas Touch Network in order to discuss how important this order is. But so Judge Emmett Sullivan, He's a district court judge in D.C. He's the judge assigned to the case that Katie Feng filed against Todd Blanche. In a new order, Sullivan says the Department of Justice failed to provide evidence supporting key victim redactions, questions why handwritten FBI notes remain withheld, and also a timeline for when the redaction log or the privilege log is going to be produced by the Department of Justice.

34:12Ben Meiselas:Not if you will produce it. Give me the date. Shut up and give me the damn date when we get to see the documents you are withholding in a privilege log. Now, one of my theories, which I think has proven to be correct, is there was a reason Judge Sullivan did not address the privilege log and redaction issues in his initial order where he told the DOJ, turn over a certain amount of documents for in-camera review. And I think what the judge wanted to see before getting to the redaction log or privilege log issue is, with this small group of documents, are you being forthcoming with the court? I think Judge Sullivan knew the Trump regime's never forthcoming, but I think it was an initial test.

35:04Ben Meiselas:Let's focus on a small group of documents. Category one, category two. Category one, you've redacted all of these names. They appear to be the bad guys, the co-conspirators. So why did you redact the bad guys' names? You're claiming they're victims? So that's what the Trump regime is saying, that the co-conspirators have reached out to the DOJ through their lawyers, right? These rich men have hired, do you get what's happening? The rich men hired powerful lawyers, and it's possible that there are some women too, but overwhelmingly, the rich men hired powerful lawyers who would call the DOJ and say, we are asserting that our clients are victims.

35:52Ben Meiselas:So because we said the magic words, like Harry Potter, what's the magic words in Harry Potter? I don't know. I read it a long time ago. I would say it's not hocus pocus or whatever. but you said victims so therefore the DOJ will keep your name redacted it's why it was so smart that Katie Fang and her legal team very surgically said we don't believe you we think that those are the co-conspirators and the judge said show me documents that support that these individuals whose names you're redacting are truly victims and not the bad guys. And instead of doing that, Todd Blanche just said, you see, we told you that they said they were victims and therefore they're the victims.

36:42Ben Meiselas:And the judge was like, well, that's pretty circular. That's a non sequitur. That's not what I asked for. I said, show me documents that these people are the victims and not the perpetrators because they look like the perpetrators. They look like the bad guys. And Todd Blanche violated the order, the judge said. The judge said, you did not comply with what I said. Pretty narrow what the judge was, pretty basic, right? And it's in camera, meaning that we don't get to see it. So Todd Blanche can't say, well, we didn't want to tell you, judge, because we wanted to protect the victim's identity or victim's counsel told us we couldn't tell you.

37:27Ben Meiselas:No, the judge said, that's why I want to see it privately. And you're not allowing me to understand why you're claiming these people are victims. They don't seem like victims to me. So that was the first group. The second group of documents were handwritten notes regarding those FBI 302s that involve the allegations of Donald Trump assaulting underage, an underage girl. Those allegations. Trump denies it. Trump's lawyers deny it. They say it's frivolous. Just to be clear what they've said, okay? These are what the allegations in the files. And so the judge said, let me see the notes. And Todd Bland said, no.

38:14Ben Meiselas:they're substantially similar to the report. So we're not going to give them to you, judge. And the judge in the order said, the hell are you talking about? You don't get to decide. The law says, turn them the hell over. You're creating a substantially similar exception to the Epstein files, that if you, Todd Blanche, deem these documents to be substantially similar to what you've produced, you don't have to reproduce the notes? No, that's not the way it works. I want those notes now. What Federal Judge Sullivan said, you can't hide them from me. And then Judge Sullivan said, well, since you didn't comply with my order on the first part, you didn't comply with my order on the second part.

39:07Ben Meiselas:Well, tell me when I get to see all of your redaction log. I want to see it all. I don't give a shit if it's a million, three million, five million documents. You go through them one by one and you give me an Excel spreadsheet where you explain why you withheld each and every one of these documents. That's what the Epstein Transparency Act required. That's what you need to do, a privilege log. And by the way, folks, I've done privilege logs for millions of documents. Personally, what do you think first year, second year, third year associates do? It's what you do as a lawyer sometimes. And I didn't have the tools that they probably have now, which makes it easier to do these logs.

39:59You know, and by the way, I still at least had search OCR, optical character recognition, but lawyers before me didn't have computers.

40:10Ben Meiselas:They would have to go through boxes of millions of documents and produce privilege logs. It's tedious. It's terrible to do. It's one of the worst. you go to good law school, you want to do trials, you want to do depositions, but there you are, 18-hour days, freaking doing privilege logs with five other associates for four months. And by the way, that's why litigation is expensive, right? That's why they pay, you pay a lawyer$750 an hour,$1 ,000 an hour, big law firm. Right now, I've seen big law offering fees,$1 ,500 an hour, expensive. I think when I was doing it, it was like$500 an hour, $450 an hour.

40:54Ben Meiselas:Shows you the inflation. I think now it's like$1 ,500. When I was practicing, it was like$500 an hour, which was high then. Anyway, we'd go through them. Document by document, you would say Bates number, reason for it being withheld, to, from. Then you would try to explain the reason like this privilege, that privilege, executive privilege, here's what it is. And so federal judge Sullivan ordered Blanche show up August 13th. I want to see the DOJ. Be prepared to answer questions. Number one, why you violated the court order regarding claiming perpetrators are victims. Number two, when are you going to give me the notes?

41:42Ben Meiselas:When are you going to produce them publicly? We don't care if they're substantially similar. Show us the notes. And again, think about Katie Fang surgically and her lawyer surgically knowing that those documents could, oh, this is why it's such a, I appreciate it as just a litigator, the strategy behind it, right? Because they know that if you could open up these areas, it opens up Pandora's box. That's why her preliminary injunction was surgical. Because if you just went scorched earth and did everything, which may seem to be just turn over everything, well, then you couldn't narrow into the fact that there's massive, massive crime and fraud and criminality going on with Trump's DOJ.

42:30Ben Meiselas:So now you see it. Ah, got it. These are your tactics. So now the judge said, and I want to see the privilege log, which once that gets produced, that can then open up what we all suspect. You think they're ever going to turn over the privilege log? You think Blanche is ever going to turn over? No, they're never going to. They didn't. Here's what I, they never prepared a privilege log. They never did a redaction log. They did a summary. They drafted a summary where they said, we've withheld documents on the following grounds, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you remember Pam Bondi's fake deposition, which was not under oath, which was not a deposition at all, which was not on video camera, remember the DOJ objections?

43:14Ben Meiselas:2020 objection, 2024. What? It happened in 2024, so she can't answer. What kind of objection is that? Time scope objection. It's not a real objection. What are you going to do about it? We're the DOJ. Okay. Miss Bondi, did you ever discuss with Donald Trump, objection. What's the objection? It happened in the White House objection. What do you mean? Executive privilege. Executive privilege for covering up a child sex trafficking ring? You think that's what the founders meant by executive privilege? that that is the presidency's role is to cover up victims of child sex traffickers? Yes! What are you going to do about it?

44:04Ben Meiselas:We're the DOJ. So if they were doing that there, what do you think they've done with the others? That's why we know there are tens of millions of files that they're not turning over. In addition to the documents that we know are about four to million documents, not pages. That could be 25 million pages. That also doesn't include the money laundering investigations and all these other criminal investigations into Epstein, which are not even part of those. Folks, we could be talking about 30, 50 million more pages of documents. And remember that one of the reasons that Trump and Epstein had their falling out was actually because of a financial transaction where Donald Trump acquired a property in West Palm Beach from under Epstein when Epstein thought that Trump would help him purchase this property at an auction by one of their billionaire Palm Beach friends.

45:04Ben Meiselas:And then Trump bought it. And then a few years later, Trump sold it for twice the value to a Russian oligarch who never moved into it, which Epstein then made lots of accusations against Donald Trump for the shadiness of the money from the oligarch. And Epstein was apparently out there telling anybody who would listen that Trump engaged in that conduct. And then it's believed that that's why Trump may have given, may have, and this is what Maggie Mike Johnson may have been alluding to, a potentially information to the police based on what he knew from Epstein. And that's why Maga Mike said that Trump may have been an informant.

45:48Ben Meiselas:Remember when Maga Mike, the Speaker of the House said that Trump was an informant. Remember that? Remember that? I remember that. Reminder, WTF America, pre-order it now. Lots of momentum with the pre-orders, the publisher says, that's great. We need to keep up the pre-order momentum. And I know you're going to love the book. I poured everything into it. It's not an election book. If you're looking for an election book, if you're looking for super secret sources or that I've hid information, you're not going to find it in there. This is everything that Midas Touch has worked for and we've worked for in a book.

46:30Ben Meiselas:It's the thought. It's everything that we needed to get out there into this world for generational change, to get out of this hell, not just for one election cycle, but how we think about things more broadly in terms of systemic structural change. It's more of that, which I think is critical right now. And it talks about the origin story, how we formed the brother stuff back and forth. Cool. All right. Last break of the show. See you after this. See you on the other side of this break, as they like to say. I never thought I'd say this, but I've actually become obsessed with doing laundry because of laundry sauce.

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50:15Ben Meiselas:Welcome back. You all see Donald Trump's new wig or whatever he appears to. You saw that yesterday? Pretty bizarre looking, huh? I mean, I'm not going to.

50:29I saw this one going viral.

50:31Ben Meiselas:That's not actually the wig. But it does look a lot like that. I know the producer is going to throw that one up. But that was a good one. hey jeremy just show um show him from the first stack in one of those interviews talking about iran with that you know with the interview afterwards just just just just toss any of them up it's fine you can just put any one of them all of the things including men and women sports transgender surgery for everyone uh they will overturn it if they get in we can't let that happen yeah they do do the other one by it too that's great just show the other one with iran I think it's right by that one also, Jeremy.

51:11Seems to be working out quite well. What makes you think this will be different? Because they tend to never... It may be and may not be. I think that the threat of this... I mean, this was more than a threat. We were ready to go. And, you know, in life, they know when you're ready to go and when you're just bluffing. No, we were ready to go. And we are ready to go. We have to do that.

51:32Ben Meiselas:Pull up the MB Goluboff post if we've got it. and it's, yeah, yeah. This is the parliament leader of Iran. Did I say I was going to show this one before, and then I went on my rant and then forgot to show it? Did I do one of those? At any event, yeah. The British is like, yeah, you did say that you were going to. I knew I was going to show. So, you know, the reality is I don't use – just so you all know, like, the process, if you were ever wondering what the process is, I don't use any scripts ever. I never really planned. I basically storyboard out the ideas and I send myself a text of different posts and videos in screenshot form.

52:29Ben Meiselas:and sometimes it may be helpful to have a script. So I stay on track. But okay, MB Gala Buff. You saw Donald Trump with that appeared to be a wig. I mean, the whole thing was absurd though too, right? I mean, that actually kind of looks like what it was to be honest with you. And I want to make sure I give credit to the guy who came up with that graphic or the person. I think they're called MAGA Devil Dog. I don't know if MAGA Devil Dog is a Trump supporter or not a Trump supporter. Some of the stuff looked like it was supportive of Trump. I don't know. It's quite illuminating that that's actually what Donald Trump looks like, though.

53:11Ben Meiselas:So I want to give credit for the person who – it appears to be AI. It may be a real photograph. I can't tell if that's actually a real photo or AI. I'm kidding. MB Galimboff. MB Galimboff. He writes, quote, massive attack coming. Wait, never mind. They want to negotiate. That's theater diplomacy on loop. Using bullying plus broken promises plus fake news as leveraged is a failed strategy. Acknowledge the facts and fulfill your commitments. We don't need more theater. Folks, that's coming from Iran's parliament leader and lead negotiator M.B. Goluboff. This whole catastrophic and unlawful war by Trump and Netanyahu has, I mean, it's really been illuminating to me.

54:12Ben Meiselas:You know, and it's really kind of forced me, honestly. and I think this is part of being a reporter. I think this is part of being someone who craves knowledge and craves the truth to really start to think about a lot of things that you weren't thinking through before even, which is, you know, you go back and I started studying the history of the Persian Gulf, you know, and the United States interference and the U.S. shooting down a commercial flight in the late 80s and never taking accountability for it, just slaughtering more people in the Strait of Hormuz in this commercial flight. And never, never apologizing, never taking accountability, never accepting responsibility.

55:07We awarded the commander like a medal of valor.

55:12Ben Meiselas:And so one of the things I talk about in WTF America is, look, Trump is obviously the most egregious, most obviously transparently disgusting vile manifestation of this. I mean, I showed you, you know, the last clip, I mean, he's like wearing this bizarre wig and the YMCA is playing and he's lying about negotiations. And it's incredibly embarrassing. But to simply say it's a Trump thing, I think really misses some of the broader points. It misses the broader points internationally. And it misses the broader points historically. Now, Trump's out there bull in a china shop, wrecking ball, word vomiting.

56:07But look back at George W.

56:12Ben Meiselas:Bush. Look back at Reagan. Look back at a lot of these decisions and perhaps others dealt with it more elegantly or in ways that weren't so transparently ridiculous and dangerous. and didn't gloat about the war crimes. But that didn't mean they weren't taking place. They were. And by the way, that doesn't mean that America is not or wasn't a special place or that we can't be a special place. We can hold complex thoughts. That's kind of one of the most important points in life, in NWTF America. We can look back at these things. and we could condemn them. That doesn't make us weak. It doesn't make us, it doesn't make it impossible for us to then strive for better things and to make improvements.

57:24Ben Meiselas:Quite the contrary. I think it's helpful that we acknowledge these things. And I think where perhaps even somebody like me, what, you know, and I consider myself, I hopefully consider myself someone who's well-read and learned and I cared about information. But there's so much that I felt that even the propaganda and lies, I didn't fully appreciate some of this stuff, some of this history. And that's, I think, part of growth. I think that's a good thing. I think that's – we need to be open. as part of making these connections, being better people. But when I see it laid so bare and I see Trump, he's at the Red Rock Casino and Spa in Las Vegas, making up fake negotiations with Iran after we ran out of our weapons.

58:31Ben Meiselas:and I see the Iranian parliament leader in a kind of mocking yet elevated tone saying enough with the theater honor your commitments and I see these images side by side I have to reflect on, seriously, like WTA, where are we? Where are we as a country?

59:07Ben Meiselas:And we are in a bad place. But I feel, as we look at the recent elections, as we look at the type of movements that are gaining strength here in the United States and internationally. When you draw inspiration from Canada going elbows up, Greenland standing up, when you see the E. Gene Carrolls and Abrego and David Hearn succeeding in court, by the way, the D.C. court just officially granted the dismissal in the David Hearn case. I know there was a motion to dismiss it, but the court now has ordered the dismissal. When you see that, when you see Trump being scared by BBC, when you see Trump choking as BBC fights back and says, all right, granted you had a terrible Trump appointed judge who just ruled.

1:00:13Ben Meiselas:Good point, Donald. You said that you were, you want to change your complaint, little baby Donald? You don't want to say that your business was injured for$10 billion, baby Donald? You want to say your reputation was? Okay, we understand, baby Donald. You're scared of BBC? Okay. Okay. we'll give you another shot there baby Donald okay we'll give you a participation trophy little baby Donald you want to amend your complaint little baby the institutions are broken and it's those broken institutions that led to a Trump in the media, in the courts, corporations law firms, right? And Trump and the people who led those institutions, they thought that if they consolidated under the authoritarian, that we, the people, would follow.

1:01:26Ben Meiselas:They thought we gave a shit about their institutions, that their institutions were what we, that we had to watch CBS or Fox or ABC or wherever, that we had to, we had no choice but to go to these firms. We had no choice but to buy these products. We had no choice. They control it. They didn't realize that we all recognize that we hold the power. Those institutions betrayed us. So what are we the people doing right now? Rebuilding, creating new institutions that could be powered by the people, not by the oligarchs. We don't want the data centers in our backyard. We don't want irresponsible, reckless this handling of AI that replaces workers.

1:02:32We don't want that. We don't want this wealth gap

1:02:40Ben Meiselas:where all of the money is hoarded by the chosen class of MAGA sycophants. We don't like that. We don't want that. We know that's not fair. They're scared. Why do you think they're saying anything that's not that is communism, is socialism? Look, when Donald Trump says that he thinks that the opposition to the Epstein class, which they now label communism, right? The opposition to the Epstein class, they call communism because they've been exposed as the Epstein class. You get that, right? They weaponized Epstein to go after their enemies. That's how they used to do it. They created a whole QAnon thing to use that to go after their enemies.

1:03:36But when they were revealed as the Epstein class, the cabal, when that was exposed, now it's the cabal of communists.

1:03:45Ben Meiselas:And the Epstein class is saying that they're going to save the world from the cabal of communists. And Trump says that all these other people out there who he labels communists because they oppose the Epstein class, not because they're actually communists. The most communist people are Trump and his regime. Look how they behave. They behave more like Stalin than anybody. Senator Bernie Sanders agreed with me when I was saying that. Did you see my interview with Senator Bernie Sanders? but now they're saying it's the that that if you disagree with the regime you're more dangerous than al-qaeda than the taliban than isis that's what trump said than the nazis and anybody in world war one that's what he says that's what that's aligned in his speech I gotta say it they're more dangerous than I mean it I mean it they're more dangerous than the Nazis than the world war one and ISIS look at the stupid wig look at my stupid hands people are like yo enough enough of this you've had enough shouldn't have been here in the first enough of this shut up and people are fighting back.

1:05:13Ben Meiselas:People are fighting back. You're fighting back. That's what makes this moment actually, that's why they're actually terrified. Get your copy of WTF America, pre-order it now. The pre-orders are really important. Again, the publisher tells me, Ben, focus on the pre-orders. Focus on the pre-orders. That's what they tell me. I'm not surprised I'm supposed to say that. Focus on the pre-orders. because then we can figure out how we promote the book and where we can advertise and all those things. But they said there's a lot of momentum on the pre-orders. But if you can, put in the comments how many copies you've gotten.

1:05:54Ben Meiselas:If you've pre-ordered it, put WTF in the comments or in the chat. All right, I've got the show. Make sure you all subscribe to Katie Fang's YouTube channel. That channel needs to hit a million subscribers, right? Tell people to subscribe to her channel. Subscribe to her audio podcast as well, the Katie Fang Audio Podcast. Sidebar with Katie Fang. I'll see you with my brothers tonight, 8 Eastern, 5 Pacific. It's a different show than this show. So if you're like, Ben, we've seen enough of you. We don't need to see you again. It's a different show. Different clips, different things, not the same show.

1:06:36Ben Meiselas:That'd be said, you don't want to see me again with my brothers? Come on. we want to see you. But it's going to be a good show with the brothers, in all honesty. 8 Eastern, 5 Pacific. A lot more breaking news then as well. We appreciate you. We're grateful for you. Keep checking in as we update you with breaking news throughout the day. Seriously, it's really an honor to be in this with you. Shout out Midas Mighty. I'll see you later. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com.