Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Popok GIVES URGENT Legal Update Amid Trump Confirmation Hearings

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Legal AF's Popok provides an urgent live briefing to our audience on late-breaking events and answers questions too! Tonight, Popok will address: 1) Even Judge Cannon couldn't save her "bff" Trump and the key findings of the Special Counsel's report on the DC Election Interference case against Trump (spoiler alert: The Special Counsel believes Trump is guilty of crimes); 2) The Senate Confirmation hearings have begun, and a fresh of lies and awkward attempts to walk back prior statements has already begun with Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth. Will he survive? 3) the Supreme Court has suddenly become unreliable for Trump, with 2 losses this week and one last week, and the sudden rise of Amy Cony Barrett as the swing vote; 4) Bannon is attacking Musk and wants to bring him down; is this Trump using Bannon to cut Musk down to size? and 5) the memory of Jimmy Carter is already being disgraced by MAGA as they prepare for Trump's swearing in? Who's attending and who is giving a hard "pass", and who will laugh out loud as Trump swears to defend the Constitution. Support our Sponsors! Remi: Save your smile and your bank account with Remi! Get up to 50% off your custom-fit mouth guard at https://ShopRemi.com/LEGALAF today! Uplift: Elevate your workspace and energize your year with Uplift Desk. Go to https://upliftdesk.com/legalaf for a special offer exclusive to our audience.  Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You're on Popoc Live, a new community, a new show that we're building on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern time on this Midas Touch YouTube channel. I'm Michael Popoc. I take questions. I give answers. I don't pull punches. I don't take prisoners. And let's dive into the top six topics I want to talk about today. We're gonna talk about the 11th

Circuit and what's going on not just with volume one of Jack Smith's report that's already out and I'm gonna give an analysis of it in a minute, but volume two Mar-a-Lago. Will that ever see the light of day? Will it ever get out to Congress? Why is Judge Cannon playing an elaborate game of squid game? Red light, green light, are we ever gonna see Mar-a-Lago at the public or is it gonna be trapped in the world of Eileen Cannon and then the inauguration happens? We'll talk about that.

Then I'm gonna talk about Jack Smith's volume one. We've got about 130 pages of the substantive report. What does it say? What are my takeaway and conclusions? And why does it matter? Then I'm gonna move on to the start of the Senate confirmation hearings. They're starting a little late, honestly,

and they kicked it off with Pete Hegseth for the Pentagon. Does he, has he survived that four hour grilling in the continuation? Has he answered all of the questions, walked back all of his positions? Has he successfully taken on all of the Democratic senators, including women senators, who have asked him pointed questions about his past? Does he have enough votes to get out of committee and get to a full vote of the Senate, which is dominated by MAGA and the Republicans?

Yes or no? I'm going to tell you my view about Pete Hegseth and what I observed during the confirmation hearing. Then I'm going to move on to my fourth topic, which is going to be the Supreme Court of the United States. Two recent, just in the last day, losses for Donald Trump and all things related to Donald Trump, they're starting to rule against Donald Trump. And it's not just once or twice, it's now three times in over a week, they've ruled against Donald Trump.

I'll talk about it. One is the RFK Jr. public health case, not a great start to his confirmation process. The other has to do with whether cities and states, primarily blue ones, can sue big fossil, big oil, for their deceptive marketing and trade practices to consumers to convince people

that their oil and gas products were safe for the environment and for public health. The Supreme Court has ruled on that. And then of course we've got the rise of Amy Coney Barrett. What does it mean that she's likely to swing vote for now and in the foreseeable future? What does that mean for people arguing before the United States Supreme Court? How do you aim for Amy Coney Barrett is the real question.

If she has become the swing vote on the court, I will analyze and break that down for you. Then I got to talk about this battle that's broken out between Steve Bannon of all people going after and criticizing Elon Musk and trying to take him down, not just one or two pegs, but Bannon has said publicly, he wants to destroy Elon Musk. Is he jealous? Is he a proxy for Donald Trump

who's really pushing the buttons and Bannon's just blocking and tackling for Donald Trump because he wants to take down Elon Musk a notch or two, even before they move on to the White House campus for Donald Trump because he wants to take down Elon Musk a notch or two even before they move on to the White House campus with his Department of Government Efficiency. And why did the SEC bring this case earlier? Why is the SEC under Joe Biden? I mean I love the timing sort of, I get special delight from it, but like we we're five six days to go until

there's a new administration why is the SEC just getting around to filing a lawsuit now against Elon Musk for manipulating the Twitter stock before he bought it shouldn't that have been filed like I don't know three years ago well I'll talk about it right here in my Bannon must segment. And then finally, I want to both honor the memory of Jimmy Carter, and I want to talk about the ceremonies in America and why they matter and why the decision by the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and people like Governor DeSantis in Florida,

to violate Joe Biden's order to have the flags of America, the US flag at half mast for 30 days, just 30 days, why they are trampling on the legacy of Jimmy Carter having just attended his funeral and said all these amazing things about him as president and as past president, former president. Why are they raising the flags on inauguration day to violate the

memory of Jimmy Carter, who died in that period? Why are they doing that? And why does that matter? And why does it matter that people like, and states people like Michelle Obama and maybe Kamala Harris are not going to attend the inauguration? Ceremonies in our democracy matter and the messaging that's sent around them matter. We cover it all on PopePak Live. I'm glad you're here. Let's launch right in. And I'm gonna talk about the 11th Circuit first

and what's happening there with this squid game. Red light, green light, volume one, volume two. I'm gonna catch you up right here. Let's start with it. Three or four days ago on emergency applications filed by Donald Trump, sorry I slipped, filed for Donald Trump by his two co-conspirators where Donald Trump controls as pawns the lawyers for both of these henchmen, both of these co-conspirators suit with him in the

Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, espionage case, the valet butler guy who's known as Walt Nauta and the maintenance worker guy who's Carlos D. Olvera. Those two guys' lawyers are paid for by Donald Trump's PAC. They do his bidding, let's be frank. And so they filed two pieces of paper relatively quickly. They wanted to block the release of the special counsel report. They knew it was coming because Jack Smith had already declared at the beginning of January that he was done, that he was ready to deliver these reports as statutorily required by the special counsel law to his boss, the attorney general. The attorney general would then deliver it to the public, which he promised to do, and to the ranking members of the Congressional Judiciary Committee's House and Senate.

That's all what the statute says he has to do. He prepared everything. I said he was going to during Christmas, New Year's. He did it. He also gave, although he did not have to do this, Jack Smith gave the opportunity to Donald Trump's lawyers on the 4th and 5th or 5th and and sixth of January to sit in our closed-lock room without any electronic devices and review hard copies of his two volumes. What they didn't know, because it was none of their business, is that Jack Smith had already made the decision he was going to recommend

AmeriCarlan not to release volume two while the case against D'Alviera and Walt Natta was still pending down with Judge Cannon and the 11th Circuit. But that wasn't something he told them, that's not something that they needed to know. So they got all hot and bothered, they wrote a 15 page letter which they leaked, the lawyers for Donald Trump, they leaked by having it filed by the lawyers for Alviera and Nauta and they're filing

before Judge Cannon this 15 page critique of volume one and volume two. At the same time, those two same people filed an emergency motion with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and asked for the same relief, block the volumes. They tried to argue that both volumes needed to be blocked even though they're only in volume two. In other words, how do they have standing

to block a report about another trial in another courthouse with another judge that they were not involved with? That's a head scratcher. And then how did, and I argued this in a couple of hot takes, how does Eileen Cannon even have jurisdiction since she dismissed the indictment, Donald Trump was dismissed by the Department of

Justice after he won election under Office of Legal Counsel guidelines. She dismissed the indictment finding that the special counsel was invalidly unconstitutionally appointed and funded. That took the case up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals which should have divested her of jurisdiction as a trial judge about a case that wasn't going to trial. So she had no jurisdiction. She tried to argue that she had some sort of remnants, some sort of fumes of remaining jurisdiction because the case could be returned to her in the future. And so she needed to protect the defendants. And the 11th Circuit sort of sat on the sidelines on that issue.

I thought they were going to wrap her knuckles and say, you have no jurisdiction. We'll take over here. If we want to stay or block, you know, red light about about the reports release we'll do that but they kind of were very very quiet i mean yes appellate courts are courts of limited jurisdiction they don't like to get involved in things they don't have to sometimes they let time solve problems without ruling they do that a lot and they did that here so. So almost back to back, we had two orders that seemed to be competing just three or four days ago. Cannon said, I'm gonna, I'm going to, I'm still blocking,

and I'm gonna block for three days after the 11th Circuit rules, which was Sunday night, you know, Monday night kind of thing, let's say Monday night. And the 11th Circuit said, okay, I read all the papers, green light, let's get the volume one out the door on D.C. election interference. We don't want to touch that one. So all we had to do then was wait for the three days that Cannon had ruled on to expire. Meantime, the Department of Justice took an appeal of that to try to speed that three days

up. I thought maybe we get it a day early, but that didn't get ruled upon. And therefore we ran till Monday night at 1201 AM for the release of volume one. Then there was this flurry of emergency motions being filed in front of Judge Cannon. Trump tried to intervene, which is weird, okay? Because he's already been dismissed from the indictment. I've never heard of a criminal defendant who got out of a case trying to get back

into a case. My argument would be if he wants back in, maybe that waives the dismissal by the prosecutors and he should be a criminal defendant again in the case. Be careful what you ask for. You're intervening in a criminal case that was dismissed against you. Maybe it's back on. That's another argument. So he tries to intervene, but he doesn't do it on an emergency basis. So it kind of sits there languishing. He tries to file this friend of the court brief Trump does, which is completely ridiculous. The Department of Justice has now taken over the case from Jack Smith, who's resigned, as we know, on the 8th of January. And Merrick Garland has already, on the 7th, gotten his reports.

He's already prepared a letter to Congress saying, I'm ready to give you volume one and volume two. I'm just waiting for the order situation to get resolved in Florida. Cannon asked the Department of Justice to swear on a stack of Bibles, my interpretation, that there's nothing in volume one about the DC election interference case that backs up onto or maps onto Olivera, Olvera and Nauda in the Mar-a-Lago case, which they do.

They say, we've looked, there's nothing, couple of passing straight references, but nothing substantive. And with that, pardon me, with that, the judge says green light and releases volume one. Donald Trump and doesn't like that. So he files like at 10 o'clock at night last night an emergency emergency motion.

It reminds me of like a few good men, though I strenuously emergency apply for another stay. Don't release volume one, don't release volume two. And the judge says, here's what I'm gonna do on volume two. That one is red light, or at least amber light. I'm gonna do a full briefing schedule. We're gonna have a hearing on Thursday, literally this Thursday.

And I'm gonna decide whether volume two should go not to the public, because Merrick Garland has already said he's not releasing it to the public on his watch, on his tenure, and that's a problem. Because Pam Bondi, the soon-to-be incoming attorney general, she's not gonna release it. This is like when Robert Mueller handed off

the Mueller report to Bill Barr and said, "'Do the right thing, Bill. "'I know you will.'" And then we never saw that report again. Merrick Garland, similarly, you know, he's sort of left a love note on the desk of Pam Bondi. We've seen it. It's my version of the love note. And it said something like this. It's my judgment that after the case is over one way or the other against Alviera and Nauda, then volume two should be released to the public because it's to the public interest. Well, that's great, but that's sort of aspirational

recommendation from Merrick Garland that in like six dollars and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee in a bathroom at Starbucks, right? So she's just going to ignore that. The question now for the judge this week is whether it even goes to the ranking members of the House and the Senate. You know, if it goes to Jamie Raskin and Dick Durbin and and Jim Jordan and the other guy, does it go to them which statutorily it must? She's trying to block that interfering with the separation of powers but she's done that before. Interfering in a place where she has no jurisdiction, she's done that before interfering with the executive branch.

She's done that before. So I'm not sure how Thursday is going to turn out. If I know Judge Cannon will get a paperless order that'll block the Mar-a-Lago volume two from even going to Congress and then Jack Smith's going to have to take that up at the 11th circuit on appeal because that's an important issue, but we're running out of time. And if all this doesn't get resolved by Inauguration Day, by the 20th, like in the afternoon, it's over because Donald Trump is going to pardon, he already hasn't prepared, I'm sure, D'Oliveira and Walt Nauna ending the case.

Once the case. Once the case is over, there's no more live case or controversy. That's a requirement for all cases, that there would actually be a dispute and parties before the court, and the 11th Circuit won't have to rule, which is troubling because they won't have to rule either on the underlying appeal that's been sitting with them for four months, which says that Judge Cannon, hopefully if they had ruled, was wrong in finding that the indictment was improperly brought by a special counsel that is unconstitutionally appointed. That's an important issue that the 11th Circuit just like sitting on. Now, my fear is being reinforced because of this new order they

just issued today, like right before I started recording, in which the 11th circuit said, hey, you know all, this is my version, hey, you know all those motions that are pending before us? They're all moot. Moot, moot, moot, moot, moot. Meaning we're not rolling on them because volume one is out. Volume one's out. We were going to roll on volume one, but it's out. It's out, green light. Except what about volume two? So they're not commenting on volume two's process that Eileen Cannon has set up for a Thursday hearing. Are they endorsing it?

Did they forget about volume two? I think Jack Smith or now the Department of Justice has to file either a motion for reconsideration and ask them to clarify why they ignored volume two, which is this huge issue of separation of powers about turning over the report to the Congress and whether a judge can stop that. Or the alternative is they wait till Thursday, get a bad ruling out of Cannon, which we know is coming. Now we're out of time. Thursday, Monday's the inauguration, and then take a quick appeal to the 11th circuit,

which has already indicated they don't wanna touch us with a 10-foot pole. This is why, again, I'm back to where I was on Legal AF on Saturday when I was debating with Ben. We're not gonna see this Mar-a-Lago report. It's barely gonna get to Congress in time. And then once all bets are off and these guys are pardoned, the question is, does that ever get to Congress

and does it ever get to the people? If that decision is not being made by Merrick Garland, if he doesn't have the cojones, the brass ones, right now to release it, then we're never gonna see it because Pam Bondi is gonna bury this in the deepest recesses of the Department of Justice and no Freedom of Information Act request

or any type of public records request is ever gonna unearth it. Maybe when the Democrats come back into power four years from now and there's a new adult in the room named Attorney General, they'll dig it out, dust it off and give it to us. That's happened before. 10, 20, 30 years later, we get things like

the unredacted Pentagon Papers and things. That is gonna happen, but in the meantime, right now, no way, my daughter's gonna be going to first grade or fifth grade by the time we see the Morillago Report. Could be wrong, but that's where I'm at right now. Let me talk about, well, I've got a minute. Let me talk about volume one, right? Jack Smith, so smart, split it into two volumes.

We were debating whether he'd do one volume or two, but thank God it was two volumes because it limited the damage of Judge Cannon. Volume one is out, it's 130 pages. I read them all. But there's some takeaways that I can summarize for you right now. There's nothing really glaringly different than what was in the original superseding

indictment, the amended indictment that came out, or in the, we reported on it in detail, about three or four months ago, Judge Cannon in the DC election interference case required that the government supply a reason why all of the acts and actions of Donald Trump in the DC election interference case were not barred by the immunity decision by the United States Supreme Court. So they did like you know a hundred pages with an appendix of why it so most of it is in there right. Let me give you some initial reaction to volume one. While there's mention of the co-conspirators and we know who they are,

Boris Epstein, Rudy Giuliani, it was Jeff Clark at one time, Sidney Powell and the rest, they're not really, Jeff Clark, they're not really emphasized in the report. That's not surprising. They're not gonna spend time or abuse the system to use a final report to go after unindicted co-conspirators

and lay out a better case against them. If they wanted to indict them, they would have indicted them. Those people are gonna get a hard pass because of the fact that they were co-conspirators with a guy who got elected president. So there's not a lot of Giuliani, Bannon, Clark, sort of attacks, that's one.

So if you're waiting on that, it's not in there. Secondly, he explains why, because we were all wondering why, Jack Smith explains why he didn't bring an incitement to riot charge against Donald Trump, even though he blames the Jan 6th events and the riot on Donald Trump. And he said it's basically because under the federal guidelines for prosecution, under his prosecutorial discretion, he did not

feel at the end of the day he had enough evidence to satisfy beyond a reasonable doubt on that point. That there were some First Amendment arguments that could be raised, but more importantly that there was enough debatable evidence about whether Donald Trump intended the riot, intended the riot. We know he caused the riot. We know he fomented the discontent. We know he wound up the Jan 6 crowd, pulled down the magnetometers, let an armed crowd frothing at the mouth be pointed in the direction of the Capitol and said,

you're leading from behind, I'll meet you there. And then they all got all crazed and started bashing police. One of the commentaries in the report about the attacks on law enforcement, 140 law enforcement injured, two took their own life because of what they saw that day. One died of a heart attack, but clearly from the attack. Others died, one was crushed, one of the MAGA had a heart attack. I mean, the events were so terrible.

This medieval battle at the Western Terrace, you would have thought you were watching Game of Thrones or something, or some Civil War battle. Jack Smith posits, what do you think would have happened if these people had successfully gotten through the Speaker's Bureau and into the chamber while elected officials and their staff were still there? I mean, if they were braining and trying to kill and maim law enforcement, what chance do you think Nancy Pelosi or Mike Pence or any of the elected officials, including the ones that let Donald Trump off the hook, what chance do you think they would have had

as they were belly crawling through the Capitol? Zero. So that's another great observation by Jack Smith. But the lead headline, I think that is out there, and I agree with, as being the number one takeaway, is that Jack Smith is telling the American people, I had more than enough evidence to convict Donald Trump of all the conspiracies around election interference.

All of them, by beyond a reasonable doubt, the highest standard we recognize in the law, I could have gotten a conviction. I stand behind my prosecution, my team stands behind my prosecution. I don't care what they were saying. We were apolitical. I'm a career prosecutor. I have a career that's unblemished in not participating in any kind of partisan attacks. I would never do that. My team did not do that. We followed the facts. We followed the law. We would have won the case except for the strange occurrence of the fact that Donald Trump won election again. And we had to dismiss the case under the Office of Legal Counsel,

which is sort of the internal court system for the Department of Justice under their guidance. He also said that going after Donald Trump presented its own unique special set of problems. It's a slippery legal a-f-er, I'll leave it at that. He, you know, between his constant delays, his motion practice, the 11th Circuit, you know, coming back and forth, up and down from appellate courts,

his late filing on purpose to waste the clock, to take air out of the ball, if you will, made him a very difficult criminal defendant to go after, unlike any of the Department of Justice had ever seen. Remember, while they're doing this, the Department of Justice main justice in Washington is trying to prosecute 2,000 people that followed the clarion call of Donald Trump, right?

And so Jax, let me just give you some of the other observations and notes that I took from my first pass. And I'll do other hot takes because there's so many great nuggets in there, but I don't want it to be lost in sort of a kind of a summary fashion. I'll do individual hot takes on the Legal AF YouTube channel about certain aspects that I don't want you to lose sight of, but let me give you the headlines here. He would have obtained a conviction. He had enough admissible evidence to do so. They were

nonpartisan in their approach and that Merrick Garland never interfered. Joe Biden never interfered. He never had communications or contacts coordinated with anybody, which is what we knew, but we wanted him to say it, and he said it in the report. He holds Donald Trump completely responsible, criminally responsible for Jan 6th. That's why he used the conspiracy charges against him. He did not bring the incitement charge that we all wanted, or the sort of direct insurrectionist charge, because of the intent issue, which is a critical component of that statute, because he's not quite sure for the evidence whether Donald Trump, even in his wildest imagination, thought he was actually going to get these people to attack the cradle of our democracy, the seat of our democracy.

And so that's the only reason he didn't bring that. But even if he had brought it, so what? I mean, the fact that he had to dismiss the case later on really doesn't matter. He said he holds Donald Trump criminally responsible for the death and mayhem associated with law enforcement and the over 140 people there. And then to answer a question that's come up since the volume has come out, which I think is interesting. Sort of a thought experiment though, is that could Donald Trump be retried or tried for any of these matters,

given the way the case was dismissed? I mean, the statute of limitations for the crimes are not, they haven't run yet. I mean, they run out in 2026 and 2027, but there is an argument that the whole clock, the Statute of Limitations clock, is told, is stopped, is put in suspended animation while Donald Trump is president and doesn't restart again until he's out. And we'd have to have litigation over that. Of course, you'd have to get a new

prosecutor in four years from now for them to argue some sort of relationship back or some other way to restart the clock. He may not be completely out of the woods yet because everybody, even his own lawyers, acknowledge that whatever immunity he has, there's a temporary immunity that evaporates, boom, the moment 1201 in 2029, which sounds like very, very far away,

but I assure you it's not. So I'm going to cover that sort of my, again, I'm going to do a deeper dive and drill down, but I wanted to do this on PopePak Live because it is in the news, it is very important. So we've done the 11th circuit, we've done Jack Smith after a break from our sponsors, and thank God we've got sponsors after November 5th who are committed to our point of view, to our message and our independent media here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF, committed to us. I mean, we've got an overwhelming number, more than we had last year, of sponsors lining

up to help grow and develop and support this pro-democracy channel. There's a lot of different ways to do it. We are completely independent. We have no outside investors. Nobody tells us what to say. Nobody tells me what to say. We're completely uncensored. I never have any discussions with the owners of the channel, the brothers, about what I

just said or what I could say say and none of the other content providers do either but with that great freedom of first amendment expression, freedom of the press also comes not only great responsibility to paraphrase Spider-Man but also comes need for support and there's many ways to support what we're doing here. Free subscribe to the Midas Touch Network. Slide over to Legal AF which we call Legal AF MTN for Midas Touch Network. I'm doing it in collaboration with the Midas Touch Network. Slide over to Legal AF, which we call Legal AF MTN for Midas Touch Network.

I'm doing it in collaboration with the Midas Touch Network. I'm the curator there. We got some great new content. It's not just me every hour, although I do a lot of content there besides what I do on Midas Touch. We got Dina Dahl. She and I do a show also called Unprecedented about the United States Supreme Court every week. We've got Court Accountability Action and True North Research which are at the forefront of corruption at the federal court level and they do some amazing hot takes over there with us as well. Shan Wu, a former federal prosecutor and basically general counsel to the Attorney General of the United States at one point in his life, he's doing some amazing things with us.

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Welcome back to PO-POK Live. Let's get into the Senate confirmation hearing. We've got a first round of all the cabinet nominees for Donald Trump. Interesting how they've sequenced them. I'm not sure I would have led with Pete Hegseth. I guess they thought, let's, they thought, it's a heavy lift, let's do it early. But other controversial ones like Tulsi Gabbard

to run the national intelligence apparatus, RFK Jr. to be our head health official, Dr. Oz for Medicare and Medicaid, Russ Vought for Office of Management and Budget, which is the nation's purse strings, the checkbook. He's also the Project 2025 architect. Those are coming up later, some even to the next week. This week we're gonna see Hegseth, I'll talk about it now.

Pam Bondi, the start of Pam Bondi for Attorney General. Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, Russ Vought, very important, I'll touch on him. Literally the father of Project 2025, he's going back to the Office of Management and Budget through which all budgeting, dollar spend, tax dollar allocation, he runs the checkbook for America. It's not the Treasury secretary in

America. Very, very important. We'll talk about him. But the kickoff was with Hegseth. Hegseth came in with a lot of headwinds against him, right? First of all, a fair number of female senators, including battle-tested ones like Tammy Duckworth, had their knives out, understandably, because all they had to do is look at the 13 books that Hegseth has written with his Christian nationalist right-wing approach. All the stupid stuff he said out loud, all the stupid stuff he said on Fox and Friends over the last 13 years. So they had a lot of fodder. You know, they had a file ready. The problem is the FBI reports, the FBI background check that started late, that's another Donald Trump advantage, agreed to things but agree to them late.

FBI either didn't have the time to do a fulsome investigation or they just failed to do it. And so they got sort of a crappy, skimpy FBI report and not all the senators got it. And that was an issue about why was it so incomplete? Like for Hegseth, he's been accused of sexual assault and rape. Why didn't the ex-wife who had some assault

and cheating issues, why wasn't she interviewed by the FBI? He's been married three times. He cheated on two of his wives. There's an allegation of rape that he settled out in Washington. He got thrown out of two veteran organizations for mismanagement, including the allegations of putting money in his pocket.

There's allegations of public drunkenness and that he's not competent to run an $850 billion, $3 million service person strong Pentagon. And so these were the questions. The harshest questions were, of course, by the Democrats. You know, you've got Tammy Duckworth, who's asking hard questions. You've got Elizabeth Warren. You've got Joni Ernst on the Republican side,

hold her for a minute, she holds the keys. And you got Jack Reed, all these people were in the military and they all asked very pointed questions, along with my Senator from New York who also asked a question there, Kirsten Gillibrand, why did you say in the past that women should not be in the military and serve in combat? Do you still believe that? Why are you walking it back now? Why did you say the women aren't competent to be leaders? That's an interesting thing to have to answer to Tammy Duckworth who lost both of her legs and part of an arm in a helicopter crash when she was in Iraq.

Why do you think the gays can't be in the military? Why do you think the transgender can't be in the military? Why do you think that the military is woke or you're against DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and diversity hires. How would you run this? And then they just started to get into being thrown out of organizations, public drunkenness, marital infidelity, and the rest.

And he just tried to hide behind the shield of it's a redemption story. I'm a Christian and Jesus says I'm fine, so I should be in the Pentagon. Now they've been running a very hard full court press, MAGA full court press, Federalist Society full court press to save Hegseth and get him out of committee. Because for those that are just tuning in, the Senate has the obligation under its constitutional obligations to advise and consent to all cabinet members.

They have to do these confirmation hearings. They have to consent to them, ultimately by a vote. You have to get out a committee first. Each committee, which committee it is that's doing the confirmation hearing, depends upon sort of which area of the government this person is going to be involved with. Attorney General, Judiciary Committee, Armed Services Committee for the Pentagon Chair, and so on. And so the question here is, I mean, I'll talk through this, but is he going to get out of committee? And is he going to get a full vote for the full Senate, which is dominated by a more

than five seat vote by MAGA? And look, I'll give you the back and forth today, but he's getting out of committee. He's going to get out of committee. And Joni Ernst, who I originally held out a lot of hope for, but then about a month ago I said, uh-oh, MAGA got to Joni Ernst. MAGA has been building, beating the crap out of Joni Ernst, who was a Lieutenant Colonel herself, and was a rape victim, self-proclaimed rape victim herself. She would have been a perfect person to take down Hegseth, but they got to Joni.

They gave her the Doge Committee, even though they passed her over for all the leadership positions in the Senate. They gave it all to old white guys. They got to, it's obvious, they got to Joni Ernst. Somebody turned him. It's like, you know, in Godfather 2, somebody got to Frankie Pantangeli. They got to Joni. She is going to vote for Hegseth. She's gotten right with him, even though he's got a terrible record of misogyny and women abuse. So with that, with that, he's gonna get out of committee.

Yeah, and yes, the Elizabeth Warrens of the world and the Duckworths of the world, and the Jack Reeds of the world did valiant work to try to do a live autopsy of Hegseth and prove that he's not qualified for the position. But against that, you've got the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation spending over a million dollars to do an ad campaign, to stir up social media, to stir up television, to support Hegseth, to make it out to be a smear campaign like what happened to Clarence

Thomas 40 years ago. You got 300 veterans and Navy SEALs marching in the streets to support him. I mean, it's just 200, but it is an optical thing. And so, he's a smooth legal AF-er, I'll put it that way. He comes in, he's looking great right out of central casting, literally, hair is perfectly blown back, he's got the red tie, he's got the perfectly fit jacket. I don't know if he had you know binder clips on his on his suit jacket the way they accused David Muir of ABC News but he was looking fit as they say my British friends say. He plays the part you know Donald Trump likes good-looking

people. He has a weird attraction to good-looking men, even if they're against him. Comments on good-looking men all the time. It's weird. I'll leave it at that. But so he satisfies the good-looking man part, I guess. I mean, you know, I think if you start, you know, rolling up his shirt sleeves and I show you all the inappropriate tattoos that he has on his body, you know, of the Christian Crusades, of right-wing nationalism that wants to bring an apocalypse and heaven back on earth, you might think, you know, this is not the right guy to have his finger anywhere near

the nuclear butt, but he's going to get out. And Hegseth is one of the most controversial. If he gets out, I think, RFK Jr., I think is a life support. Cash Patel, I think is 50-50. Pam Bondi is getting in. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State is getting in. Pam Bondi, Department of Justice getting in. John Rockcliff for CIA getting in, for sure.

The other ones that I just talked about, Hegseth I think is getting in now based on these results. But this is important. We're following it on the Midas Touch Network. We're following it with live reporting. I'm going to try to jump on with at least Ben, maybe Karen Freeman at Nifilo, maybe Dina Dahl to talk about the Pam Bondi confirmation hearing and what comes out of that.

That one concerns me. I mean, she's been the private the private spear for Donald Trump including being his first impeachment lawyer. She did terribly there but first impeachment lawyer. She's a best friend for you know, Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott, Florida governors where she was the attorney general and she led the cheer at one of the conventions to lock up Hillary Clinton. Not my idea of an independent,

unbiased Department of Justice head, but that's the problem. MAGA and the Federalist Society, they don't think it's a good thing to have an independent Department of Justice in their worldview. And I'm not putting words in their mouth. This is from Heritage Foundation.

This is from Leonard Leo. This is from even Supreme Court justices have all said they believe in the unitary president where the executive branch, which is where the Department of Justice sits. I know sometimes some people think, well, isn't it with the judicial branch? No, it's with the executive branch. And in their worldview, the president, in this case, Donald Trump, is the chief prosecutor for America and his Department of Justice is just an arm of him.

And so there is no, there should be no independence between the president and the Department of Justice. We came up with that concept because after Nixon and the corruption scandals around him, where he was controlling the Department of Justice, some of which like the Attorney General went to prison, and the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, for his own benefits to spy on the Democrats and to be what is now going down in history is the second most corrupt president we've ever had. We thought maybe we should have an independent judiciary, maybe the FBI director and maybe the the Department of

Justice heads should take sort of a loyalty oath to their constitutional duty and to the American people and not be beholden to the president. Don't meet with him regularly. Don't go over your cases with him. But to the MAGA, they think I'm crazy. They think I'm talking Mandarin. They don't want that. They've said it out loud. They want the president to be the top cop, the top prosecutor, which is scary when you have a guy like Donald Trump who says he's going to go after his enemies list and he's going to spend a fair amount of his political capital not passing bills and laws to help the American people, but to go after his enemies list.

So that's where we are right now in the confirmation process. Let me move on to Supreme Court starting to maybe walk back helping Donald Trump as much as they have. There's been not but one, not two, but three losses by Donald Trump in the last week before the United States Supreme Court. Firstly, we know that by a five to four decision last week led by Roberts, but more importantly Amy Coney Barrett, they allowed the sentencing to happen in New York. Now while, you know, that was sort of like, meh, he did get branded permanently a felon, our first

felon president, to go back into office. Amy Coney Barrett, let's hold that for a minute, hold that ring. Amy Coney Barrett, the rise of Amy Coney Barrett, which I've been tracking for the last year, two years, she's becoming the swing vote on that court and she's getting pilloried and beaten up by MAGA about it. But I'm going to talk about that in a minute. So you have that loss. Then this week and today, you have back to back losses at the United States Supreme Court about key issues that are important to Donald Trump.

Now is this just because he's wrong on these issues or they're starting to have, well we gave you immunity, we gave you you're not going to jail, but we're not going to serve up on a silver platter all of your crazy policies and totally destroy the fabric of America. Not sure it's that either, but let me tell you what happened. First there's a case that was being followed very closely by environmental law advocates and about clean energy and global warming and that type of thing. And that is a case that's been kicking around since 2002 and 2003 in Hawaii, brought by the city of Honolulu against big oil, like 15 different oil companies, alleging that they have been lying to the American public

about the toxic nature and the dangers of their product, oil and gas, and its impact on the environment and on public health. Now, they're not bringing, that case was not brought by the attorney general and the local officials of Hawaii under any kind of federal law, like they're breaking emissions requirements under the EPA or anything else. It was brought under, and is being brought under, consumer protection law.

Laws about fraudulent marketing, which are on the state books. And the oil and gas, big oil, was jumping up and down trying to get the case out of state court in Hawaii over to federal court and then argue what we call federal preemption, which is a doctrine. Now we're breaking out into legal AF law school here for a minute, which is a doctrine that says if the federal government is regulating in a certain area,

like environmental protection or regulating oil and gas industries as they're subject to various licensing and regulations, then that ousts the state, the state can't also regulate in a subject matter taken over by the feds. And that concept is called ouster or we call it preemption doctrine.

So they tried to argue big oil that, oh, Hawaii can't regulate by way of their consumer protection statutes this issue. We're fully regulated. We're creatures of federal law. Take us over there. Take us away. It's like the Snickers commercial. Not going anywhere. Take us to federal court and then we'll try to go to the Supreme Court and get out from, they've been trying to get out from under this case For the last three years the American Petroleum Institute which gave billions and billions of dollars of Donald Trump. It hates this case It's it's the new equivalent of big tobacco Losing about 30 or 40 years ago their first lawsuit against a smoker for deceptive trade practices

Deceptive advertising and health concerns they tried to get out of that case too. They did not want to lose that first case, and now they've lost dozens and dozens of class actions, big tobacco, because, well, their product is dangerous. They tried to argue, but we're regulated. We're regulated by the fence. We've got warning labels on there. You can't come after us under this kind of consumer protection or advertising statutes and really creative plaintiffs' lawyers were able to get around that and get these giant, multi-billion dollar judgments about big tobacco. That keeps big oil up at night because this is the same, by the way, this is the same law firms that are involved who made hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for big tobacco

or have now moved on to big oil and big fossil fuel. The Supreme Court took a look at it. There was a question whether they were going to block the lawsuit on this emergency application. Now, the reason some people thought they were going to step in and take the case away from Hawaii and find that there was no liability in their ruling is because they've made rulings like this in the past even on technical grounds about other municipalities. And they also destroyed one of the major bulwarks to protect our environment and regulation in destroying the Chevron Doctrine, which had been on the books for 50 years that said that any which had been on the books for 50 years that said that any administrative agency, any cabinet level, if it makes a decision about a good faith interpretation of an unambiguous statute that Congress issued,

that decision should be given deference, it's called administrative deference, by the federal judge. But they took that away because they wanted to take away the power of the administrative state. They wanted the federal judges. When John Marshall wrote, sorry John Marshall, I wish he was John Marshall, when Justice Roberts wrote the decision, we call Loper-Brite the name of the case, taking away the Chevron decision, he said it's for judges to make law and interpret the law. Don't give deference to any experts over in the different cabinet positions. So we were like, oh, they're gonna use that

to dismantle environmental protection. But they didn't. They rejected the emergency application and the block. They're allowing the Hawaii case to go forward. And now really, frankly, big oil is stuck in a case that could lead to billions of dollars in that case and other class action cases much like big tobacco. That's the second loss. Third loss this week just happened like today. RFK Jr. back to the confirmation hearings who

they're trying to push to be top health, the head of Health and Human Services. He's also, I don't know if people know this, he's not a doctor, he's not a researcher, he's not a chemist, he's not any of these things. He's not a scientist, obviously. He's a lawyer. And he founded an organization and decided he was going to file briefs and argue to the United States Supreme Court. He wants all sorts of crazy misinformation about vaccines and COVID and healthcare recommendations.

He wants doctors to be able to tell you things that are basically quackery, that'll get you hurt or killed, but be able to do that under the First Amendment. Even though doctors are sort of a special class because they have a duty and an obligation, a Hippocratic oath to do that under the First Amendment. Even though doctors are a special class because they have a duty and an obligation, a Hippocratic oath to do no harm for RFK Jr. and others in the MAGA world. They think this all gets sorted out in the marketplace of ideas.

Just let all the marketplace of ideas and that people can make their own decision about health treatment. Pardon me, this is like saying go to your garage and there's something in there you could drink that may solve a problem. Put that up, have the doctor recommend that and hope that some competing idea talks you out of it. But then if you do it, if you drink Drano to try to cure cirrhosis and you die, well, I guess the marketplace didn't work. That's effectively what RFK Jr. is arguing.

He's protecting a group of doctors in Washington who are under disciplinary action and maybe will lose their medical license because they're recommending anti-vaccine and other unproven medical treatments under a First Amendment right. And the medical boards are saying, what are you talking about? You have an oath not to harm people. You have to sort out these things

and give good information, not bad information. And so RFK Jr. files an appeal, Justice Kagan sits on the appeal because she's over everything in Washington and California, and she denies the emergency application to stop the doctors from being disciplined for giving out misinformation under the First Amendment because they're doctors, and does it without any briefing because she can do that as the emergency duty judge. We call it the shadow docket. She says, I got this. No, they don't like that answer. So they give it to Clarence Thomas and they beg Clarence Thomas because they figure if anybody's going to rule in their favor, it's Clarence Thomas. But he doesn't want to take it. So he hot potatoes it to the full nine of the Supreme Court. Kagan already rejected it.

The Supreme Court didn't ask for any briefing. So it was no surprise when in a one-liner today in their orders on Monday, which they issue every Monday, they just said, emergency application for this case denied. That's it. It's over. One-liner, the case is over. Those doctors are going to get disciplined. They're going to lose their licenses. The competing marketplace of ideas isn't going to solve this problem. And RFK Jr. is going to have to answer for this when his confirmation hearing starts, I don't know, next week or in two weeks. So that's a good thing. And that's now SCOTUS, Supreme Court United States, starting to roll back. If Donald Trump

thought they're going to be in his back pocket on every one of his cabinet picks or policies, they're not. Now let me move finally, at the end of this PO-PAC Live, which again, I appreciate you being here. We've got a great audience tonight. I've sort of answered some questions. Let me take a question and answer right now. There's a number of questions that I got asked about the 14th Amendment, Section 3 again. That seems to be still lingering out there.

You know my position on this. You know it's not the same as some non-lawyers out there about whether it is an actual non-magical thinking way to deny Donald Trump the presidency. It's not. I understand what it says in 14.3. I've read it, I get it. I've been practicing law for 35 years.

I'm a constitutional scholar in my own right. I get what it says. And you're right, it should work that way. But we don't have the votes and we don't have the Supreme Court to interpret it that way, but we don't have the votes and we don't have the Supreme Court to interpret it that way and we know that from the Colorado decision. So let's stop talking about it because it's magical thinking. As I've said, I'd like a unicorn in my backyard who craps gold bricks, but I'm not getting that either.

I'll give you a perfect example to end the 14th Amendment discussion here one more time. If you read the Second Amendment, we can all read it. There is no way any reasonable person could read it any other way than to that there is not an individual right to bear arms, it's only as part of a well-regulated militia, and it can be regulated. But that is not

how the United States Supreme Court has read that provision. They've read that whole beginning part, you know, about a well-regulated militia. They've read it out. They've said it's just prefatory or introductory language. What really matters is the right to bear arms shall not be abridged. They skipped the first part. Now if you read it just like these people are reading the 14th Amendment section 3, you can read it. You can say look, look it's not an individual right. You can regulate this. That's not how the United States Supreme Court has interpreted it. That's not how Clarence Thomas has written it in the in the Bruin decision

for New York Rifle. It's now an individual right to bear arms without any real regulation lest it existed in old timey times back in the 1800s. Why? Not because that's what it says in writing, because that's what the current United States Supreme Court says it says. And that's what matters, and that's what get missed in all of those debates. Somebody else asked, couldn't Joe Biden just pardon D'Alviera and Walt Nauta in the Mar-a-Lago case and have Merrick Garland release the report instead of leaving it to Pam Bondi?

I actually liked that, I thought that was genius. They could, but they're not going to. But I like it, I liked that. I thought that was genius. They could but they're not going to But they I like it. I do I liked it I smiled when I saw that question in there. Some people wanted the Jack Smith deep dive. I've done that And then I'm gonna talk I was gonna talk about flags next that half-mast for Jimmy Carter and how he's being Disparaged in his in his death Let me just talk quickly about Amy Coney Barrett. Amy Coney Barrett is quickly becoming, rapidly becoming, the

center-right swing vote on the court. Now let me make this clear. She's not covering herself in any glory. I disagree with most of her positions. She sided wrongly against America and its democracy a number of times. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just pointing out that it is happening before our very eyes. She is going after MAGA and Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito on a number of occasions over the last two years. She's disagreed with them, she sided with the Democratic wing of the Supreme Court, she just did it with the sentencing, she's done it in the past.

She's not afraid to be on the wrong side of MAGA, Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito. She has some influence over Kavanaugh. She has some influence with or common interest with some of the women who make up the Democratic wing of the Supreme Court. She is just as Kennedy was the swing vote for about a good ten years, just as Sandra Day O'Connor was the swing vote as a Republican for a good 10 years. She is, she's to the right, right of Sandra Day O'Connor. She's to the right of Kennedy. But she is where advocates for the Supreme Court on most cases that matter to us, those 10 cases a year that really matter to us, that's where you're gonna have to aim. You're gonna have to aim to get Amy Coney Barrett and make arguments that resonate with her. We'll continue to follow that on unprecedented on Legal AF YouTube channel. Let me talk about the

flag debacle. Jimmy Carter made it to a hundred. Jimmy Carter is not only one of our finest Americans, he is arguably, maybe not even arguably anymore, the finest former president we've ever had with the Carter Institute, Habitat for Humanity, and everything he did around the world, including election watching, diplomacy, hostage negotiations, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and all of that. He deserves everything that he got, including lying in state, including having every living president attend, and the rest.

He does not deserve to have in the middle of his 30 day Joe Biden proclamation, to have the flags lowered at half mast, to have them raised for a day for Donald Trump. And to end the mast, the the half-mast honor. Yeah, it's disgusting, it's depraved, it's un-American, it's not patriotic, and I object and I want to raise it here, you know. Was Jimmy Carter the most successful president we've ever had?

No, but you could see the outpouring of love and true affection for his for this person. His love affair with his wife, his love affair for America, his patriotism, his military service on a nuclear sub, his taking over the country at a very trying time in terms of inflation, in terms of gas prices, in terms of mortgage rates, in terms of hostage crisis that wasn't of his doing, you know, and all of that. So it's a really depraved recognition. I saw somebody write once, oh, the Democrats are soulless.

We're soulless. Nobody's gonna challenge mine or my audience's patriotism. And Jimmy Carter deserves to have that flag up at full mass for the full 30 days. This is one of the reasons to end POPOC live, that people, true Americans like like Michelle Obama, while she couldn't attend or she didn't want to attend for whatever reason Jimmy Carter's funeral, maybe because she doesn't want to sit next to Donald Trump, she's not attending the inauguration.

I'm not sure Kamala Harris is either. And this is a statement. It's a proper statement. I mean look, when Donald Trump's first time around, his first inauguration, and he gave his inaugural speech, it was so dark, it was so apocalyptic, it was so dystopic that George Bush, George W. Bush turned to the Obamas and to the Obamas next to him, who he's friends with. And he just said, that is some weird shit. And you could see George Bush, there's no love loss there. He walked right past Donald Trump on the end. And when he got to Obama, he gave him a little frat brother

poke on the belly before he sat next to him. They're very close. We know that Michelle Obama and George Bush are very close. We've seen pictures of them actually hugging Donald Obama the same way. And so I think it's right. I'm gonna stand up for Michelle Obama's decision to stay in Hawaii, not attend the inauguration,

and not listen. I mean, you know, we're all gonna cringe and or laugh out loud and or cry at the moment that Chief Justice Roberts has Donald Trump say that he's going to cringe and or laugh out loud and or cry at the moment that Chief Justice Roberts has Donald Trump say that he's going to defend the United States Constitution when we know he's done the exact opposite of that, leaving it in tatters, in flames, in a dumpster as he attacked democracy, as Jack Smith just told us in volume one of the report now released. I'm so glad you're here on PO-POK Live. Remember how to support us.

Come here, be part of our audience every Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. Follow Legal AF, the podcast, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. I do it Wednesdays with Karen Friedman at Knitfalo, Saturdays with Ben Mycelis. Support us on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. We're hoping to grow that to 500,000 in the next month or two. We've got patreon.com slash Legal AF, where you can help support. This is always an independent media network and channel need your support. And then of course, we've got our great Pro Democracy sponsors today. We vetted these

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8 p.m. Eastern Time, I'm Michael Popak reporting. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Eastern Time. I'm Michael Popak reporting.