Transcript

LIVE: Popok Gives URGENT UPDATE on Breaking Legal news | 1/27/2026

From MeidasTouch · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 7 min · 10,959 words · 82 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "LIVE: Popok Gives URGENT UPDATE on Breaking Legal news | 1/27/2026", an episode of MeidasTouch published January 28, 2026 (1 h 7 min, about 10,959 words). It mentions 18 people, works and ideas, including Michael Popock, Alex Jeffrey Prey, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Andrew Schultz, Judge Menendez.

What this episode is about

Michael Popock provides an urgent update on the coalition of nine progressive prosecutors advocating for state charges against federal officers, highlighting the acronym FAFO—"f*** around and find out"—as a message directed at the Trump administration. The discussion focuses on the ongoing independent investigation in Minneapolis, led by local officials working to determine the appropriateness of potential state charges against federal officials.

Key takeaways

  • 3,000 attendees proves community engagement is alive; podcasts are the new town hall meetings.
  • FAFO: A cheeky battle cry against federal overreach, uniting progressive prosecutors like a legal Avengers team.
  • The tragic case of Alex Prey highlights the deadly intersection of the First and Second Amendments in protest.
  • Trump's latest blunder? Alienating the NRA by miscalculating the narrative on lawful gun ownership.
  • Public outrage can shift political tides; the tragic fate of Alex Prey ignites a movement unlike any other.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Alex Jeffrey Prey, Renee Mlin Good, Christine Nome, Michael Popock
  2. – 20:00: Attorney General Pam Bondi, Andrew Schultz, Judge Menendez, Don Lemon
  3. – 30:00: Don Lemon, Todd Lions, Alex Jeffrey Prey, Andrew Schultz
  4. – 40:00: Alex Jeffrey Prey, Minus Touch Network, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Renee Mlin Good
  5. – 50:00: Incogn, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
  6. – 1:00:00: Renee Mlin Good, Steven Miller

Notable quotes from "LIVE: Popok Gives URGENT UPDATE on Breaking Legal news | 1/27/2026"

  • Kick it off with two issues that I will weave together throughout our time here on the podcast. People often ask me what legal AF stands for and I tell them well now you know.…
    about Michael Popock · at
  • Because it is f around and find out for many people within the Trump administration including Pam Bondi and Christine No, who have been humiliated, can I stretch that word out further? be humiliated by Donald Trump, by federal judges, by.
    about Attorney General Pam Bondi · at
  • But Alex Prey has changed the weather in the room in a way that his fellow martyr victim murder victim Renee Good didn't. And maybe the combination of them has.
    about Alex Jeffrey Prey · at
  • The half-wit, inhumane cosplaying director of homeland security under which all of these other groups I just talked to you about, Border Patrol and ICE, all ultimately report. Donald Trump.
    about Christine Nome · at
  • That heat on the intersection. We talk about Judge Menendez. She's handling several cases involving Minnesota federal judge appointed by Joe Biden.
    about Judge Menendez · at
  • Judge Mendez is going to try to get to the bottom of in her letter related to Pam Bondi. We have another judge, Chief Judge Schultz.
    about Andrew Schultz · at
  • Apparently the Trump administration has already folded ordering that Todd Lions the acting ICE administrator. So many acting federal officers for Donald Trump.
    about Todd Lions · at
  • Senators. public pressure, outcry, outrage, the things we do here on the Midas Touch Network and illegal AF. This shows you that it matters. It's not just the…
    about Minus Touch Network · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Michael Popock — Person · Host / main speaker · 2 mentions · first at
    Narrates the episode’s legal/political analysis, frames the FAFO prosecutors effort, and critiques Trump administration officials and DOJ actions in Minnesota-related events.
  • Alex Jeffrey Prey — Person · Central victim referenced in legal analysis · 10 mentions · first at
    Discussed as a VA nurse and protester who was killed by Border Patrol; his death is used to analyze First/Second/Fourth Amendment issues and federal/state investigative conflict.
  • Attorney General Pam Bondi — Person · Primary criticized official · 6 mentions · first at
    Portrayed as a key Trump administration legal actor (DOJ) tied to aggressive enforcement, a controversial letter to Minnesota’s governor, and attempts to pursue charges related to Don Lemon coverage.
  • Andrew Schultz — Person · Referenced judge (chief judge; checks DOJ/ICE actions) · 6 mentions · first at
    Presented as a conservative chief judge in Minnesota who resists DOJ’s attempt to override a magistrate decision and who orders ICE leadership to appear regarding contempt/due process issues.
  • Judge Menendez — Person · Referenced judge (key legal gatekeeper in Minnesota disputes) · 4 mentions · first at
    Discussed as a federal judge handling Minnesota-related cases, including protections for protesters and scrutiny of a purported quid pro quo in a Bondi letter.
  • Christine Nome — Person · Primary criticized official · 3 mentions · first at
    Depicted as DHS leadership (misnamed in transcript) blamed for escalation and messaging (e.g., “domestic terrorist” framing) and discussed as being sidelined/targeted politically.
  • Renee Mlin Good — Person · Referenced victim (earlier killing) used for comparison · 6 mentions · first at
    Discussed as another protest-related killing; used to contrast public/political reaction and to argue the administration misread the optics and legal exposure.
    The room in a way that his fellow martyr victim murder victim Renee Good didn't. And maybe the combination of them has created what is what has now happened.
  • Don Lemon — Person · Referenced journalist involved in legal dispute · 6 mentions · first at
    Discussed as a journalist who recorded a church protest; DOJ allegedly sought arrest warrants, but a magistrate and then Judge Schultz’s response undermined the effort.
    They've gotten sideways with Judge Schultz in a number of ways. One involving our colleague, our journalistic colleague Don Lemon and the other involving there he is…
  • Todd Lions — Person · Referenced government official (ICE leadership) in contempt context · 3 mentions · first at
    Identified as acting ICE administrator ordered to appear for possible contempt; also tied to a memo encouraging aggressive enforcement and alleged Fourth Amendment disregard.
  • Steven Miller — Person · Referenced administration official / criticized messenger · 3 mentions · first at
    Cited as amplifying claims labeling Alex Prey as a would-be assassin; used to illustrate administration messaging strategy and escalation.
    That there is a back channel that she opened up with Minnesota officials into the White House through Susie Wilds. As Stephen Miller says and doubles down on wouldbe assassin…
  • Larry Krasner — Person · Referenced public official (prosecutor) / example of resistance strategy · 2 mentions · first at
    Cited as a leader among progressive prosecutors coordinating to bring state charges against federal officers as part of the FAFO (“fight against federal overreach”) effort.
    We've seen the evidence so far. I think we know the answer to that question. But I'm I'm so encouraged by the leadership of Larry Krasner and Mary…
  • Mary Morardi — Person · Referenced public official (prosecutor) / example of resistance strategy · 2 mentions · first at
    Named as a Minneapolis prosecutor involved in the FAFO prosecutors coalition; used to illustrate local/state pushback against federal enforcement actions.
    We've seen the evidence so far. I think we know the answer to that question. But I'm I'm so encouraged by the leadership of Larry Krasner and Mary…
  • John Choy — Person · Referenced prosecutor (FAFO coalition member) · 1 mention · first at
    Named as a St. Paul prosecutor aligned with the FAFO prosecutors coalition; supports the episode’s theme of state-level accountability for federal actions.
    Start led by Larry Kramer of Philadelphia and Mary Morardi of Minneapolis and John Choy of St. Paul prosecutors all they say the acronym stands for the fight against federal…
  • Cash Patel — Person · Referenced federal official (FBI) in messaging pile-on · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as joining public claims/attacks in the aftermath of Alex Prey’s killing; used to show multi-agency political messaging alignment.
    Assassin. And they all jumped on because they have no political instincts. And now Cash Patel, FBI jumped on and Pam Bondi jumped on and then they had to dial it back because…
  • Joe Biden — Person · Referenced political figure (appointing authority) · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned to contextualize Judge Menendez as a Biden appointee, relevant to claims about judicial ideology and appellate pushback.
    About Judge Menendez. She's handling several cases involving Minnesota federal judge appointed by Joe Biden.

Companies & orgs

  • Minus Touch Network — Company · Broadcast platform · 2 mentions · first at
    The podcast is broadcasted on the Midas Touch Network, indicating it's the hosting platform for the show.
  • American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — Company · Legal advocacy group · 3 mentions · first at
    The ACLU is mentioned as a legal entity bringing suit against the Trump administration, highlighting its role in legal advocacy.
    The suit. It's the District of Massachusetts, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which I hope everybody knows is now with us on Legal AF for regular…

Sponsors

  • Incogn — Product · Sponsor · 5 mentions · first at
    Incogn is promoted as a service to protect online privacy, indicating a sponsorship or advertisement segment in the podcast.
    Offer a 30-day money back guarantee. So you can get it completely riskfree right now. You can get 60% off an annual plan by going to incogn.com and use code truth. That's n ogni.com/truth and use the code truth at checkout.

Full transcript with timestamps

and about we had about 3,000 people at the gate at the door for the start of the intersection. I appreciate each and every one of you and the rest of our audience who are joining. I'm Michael Popock. You are at the intersection. We are on the Midas Touch Network. And um let me just let let's just um I want to kick it off with two issues that I will weave together throughout our time here on the podcast. People often ask me what legal AF stands for and I tell them well now you know. Uh but but FAFO you know you know f around and find out is the acronym that's being used by nine progressive prosecutors start led by Larry Kramer of Philadelphia and Mary Morardi of Minneapolis and John Choy of St. Paul prosecutors all they say the acronym stands for the fight against federal overreach. I think we know what FAFO stands for as a message to the Trump administration and they like the Democratic attorneys

general are b are bounding themselves together binding themselves together to work around the country with prosecutors to bring federal charges where appropriate or I'm sorry to bring state charges where appropriate against federal officers. That's what we're watching right now in the crucible that has become Minneapolis. State officials from the attorney general to the local prosecutors to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the rest trying to do an independent honest investigation of what happened and to decide whether f state charges should be brought against a federal officer. Now, we've seen the evidence so far. I think we know the answer to that question. But I'm I'm so encouraged by the leadership of Larry Krasner and Mary Morardi and the rest to and I love the cheeky the cheeky name for their organization because it is f around and find out for

many people within the Trump administration including Pam Bondi and Christine No, who have been humiliated, can I stretch that word out further? be humiliated by Donald Trump, by federal judges, by the public outcry and outrage. Christine know Bondi. Uh, and we'll talk about uh their shelf life, which I don't think is very long. Ambassador Bondi, Ambassador Gnome, maybe because they're not long for their current jobs, that's for sure. We have a I have a major Minneapolis update. I want to talk about Judge Menendez.

I want to talk about Judge Schultz. I want to talk about the judge who is presiding over the PRI investigation. And the second thing I wanted to talk about, I said I wanted to link these two things together is Alex Prey, the VA nurse who was Let's just Let's just use Can we use adult vocabulary on the intersection? He was executed by Border Patrol. I I don't know what else you could call it. Now we've got testimony and reporting that the gun didn't fire. Remember when they said, "Oh, maybe the maybe the Sig Sour went off when when I when the Border Patrol was trying to disarm him and then then they overreacted in two different agents and shot him 10 times." No. So what happened? Somebody yelled gun, you know. All right. You know, he we could have a separate debate about the Second Amendment, but he it's an open carry state. He's

allowed to have a weapon under his coat and be a First Amendment protester at the same time. Where the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, and the Fourth Amendment against illegal search and seizure, the stopping of Alex Prey before he was executed is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Plain and simple. But Alex Prey has changed the weather in the room in a way that his fellow martyr victim uh murder victim Renee Good didn't. And maybe the combination of them has created what is what has now happened.

There was a there was public outrage for sure about the 37year-old mother of a six-year-old with an old dog in the back who was who was brutally murdered with three bullets along with uh you know there protesting peacefully with her wife Alex Prey. They miscalculated politically the Trump administration and first they try to label him a domestic terrorist or a a wouldbe assassin. Gnome and Miller. That failed. Then they went after the gun issue. Oh, he had a gun. He shouldn't bring a gun. There shouldn't be a gun in a protest.

Who brings a gun to a protest? Only a domestic terrorist. Only a wouldbe assassin. And they all jumped on because they have no political instincts. And now Cash Patel, FBI jumped on and Pam Bondi jumped on and and then they had to dial it back because the Second Amendment group, the Second Amendment wing of the of MAGA uh reacted in horror and recoil and recoiled, no pun intended, from the attacks on a law-abiding citizen who also had a handgun. They miscalculated and Trump lost the NRA group and the second and the second amendment group. Even even in the last 24 hours when they asked Donald Trump, well, I don't know. I think shouldn't have brought the gun. You know, it's a shame that he's that he's not here any longer. I'm I'm heartbroken over it. I'm heartbroken over a Renee.

Good. Probably more heartbroken because uh her her parents, I think, are Trump supporters. What the [ __ ] Pardon me. What does the legal AF that have to do with anything whether they are or they aren't and they missed because they have a tin ear for the public right now. They figured out late, too late, that attacking a VA nurse based on the video that we saw that was doing nothing more than holding up a cell phone and peacefully protesting and helping as a nurse would do, as a human being would do, a good Samaritan would do, a fallen or downed fellow protester, a female at that, a woman at that. And when he went down to help her, did I did ICE or Border Patrol say, "Hey, let me help you up there, put you on the sidewalk, and let you go about your day." No, let's spray you with chemical irritant until you are hopefully immobilized like you're some sort of bug and you're being

sprayed with raid until you die. And then when he gets up disoriented, five different border patrol jump him like a pack of wolves and start punching him and beating him and then they find the weapon. Okay, they find the weapon. He didn't have time to identify that he had a weapon on him. I mean, it was all this ridiculous uh propaganda that came out. Oh, if he had a weapon, he knows he should have uh revealed that to law enforcement when, how, where, in the three minutes between the the chemical irritant spray, the take down, the punching, the hitting, the having his arms pulled BEHIND HIS BACK. OH, I'M A CONCEALED WEAPONS permit holder. I've got a gun. Yeah. No.

And then for that that that mistake, right? It's always user error. He he deserves to be executed in broad daylight at 9:00 in the morning. So they miscalculated because things have changed since Alex Prey politically. Even Donald Trump figured it out. And more importantly, Susie Wilds, his chief of staff, figured it out. I was with somebody today in Miami who knows Susie well, and she revealed to me that Susie confided in her that she's struggling to constrain and restrain Donald Trump. Uh, and she's the chief of staff. She's trying to save the administration. And it came out reporting in the last couple of days that there is a back channel that she opened up with Minnesota officials into the White House through Susie Wilds. As Stephen Miller says and doubles down on wouldbe assassin and Christine Nome says domestic terrorist and and all these other people as the truth every day when

we learn more about Alex Prey we learn what an upstanding American patriot law-abiding patriot he was and had his first second and fourth amendments violated but he was executed and there's no way way around it there was an insider within the Trump administration during after Renee Good's murder who said, "I don't know how we will recover from this." And that was Renee Good. So, you can see why Donald Trump now is starting to try to figure out a way to get himself out of the corner he painted him. He painted himself into with the blood of Renee Good and with Alex Prey.

And it starts with, of course, the humiliation of Christine Gnome because that's always a good place to start. the the half-wit, inhumane cosplaying director of homeland security under which all of these other groups I just talked to you about, Border Patrol and ICE, all ultimately report. Donald Trump apparently made the decision to sideline Christy Nome to take the Gestapo trench coatwearing SSwearing Greg Bavino acting regional whatever he was of Border Patrol out of Minneapolis. He said in in an interview today, Trump did uh we need to start deescalating in Minnesota. And then he puts in charge the bribeet taking borders are Tom H. Homeman of course.

And who is he reporting to? Not Christine Gnome. Donald Trump directly, right? So, if you didn't think the writing was on the wall for Christine Gnome, the Democrats saw it and they have now called for her head on a pike and have and have threatened Hakee Jeff has said, "We're going to do this the easy way or the hard way. You either fire her or we're going to gather the 218 votes that we need in Congress, in the House, and impeach her." And already 165 or so Democrats have joined to co-sponsor the Articles of Impeachment, the bill. And if you think 218's a hard lift, a heavy lift for the Democrats, it ain't. It ain't. They're 213 now.

If they were to flip just one of the four vacancies in a special election, you're looking at 216. You only need two Republicans to come over. We thought the same thing with the Epstein files. Look how many came over to join in on the Epstein files. If we put our public outcry and pressure and change the political calculus for Donald Trump, he bends, may not be as fast as we want, may not be on every issue that we want, but he bends. He folds, right? See it time and time and time again. And we're seeing it now. And now the Democrats are doing what they're supposed to do. call for a political solution of the problem called Christy Gnome. The Senate Democrats are working on blocking funding bills that would give more money to ice. How do you how do you um melt ice? You apply heat. And we're here together applying that heat on the intersection. We talk about Judge Menendez. She's handling

several cases involving Minnesota federal judge appointed by Joe Biden. The one that looks like it has a little traction because she also is getting sort of blocked by the eighth circuit court of appeals. Not in everything, but on on her order to protect First Amendment protesters against the abuse of ICE on the streets. ETH Circuit was like, "Well, maybe you went too far. Let's get some more briefing." See, I put the blood of Alex Freddy onto the eighth circuit because I think if her order had not been blocked, I'm not sure border patrol would have been emboldened to attack and e publicly execute Alex.

That's my view and the Menendez knowing that the eighth circuit blocked her in the first amendment protesters case has taken a very judicious cautious approach to the case brought by the state of Minnesota. about the ICE search, about getting them out, about having no more masks, no more no um identification, no more not wearing body cam. And I wasn't sure where she would go. She just had a hearing on uh yesterday. I wasn't sure where she was going to go until she got a gift or we got a gift in the form of a letter from Pam Bondi to Tim Walls the night of after Alex Py's execution.

Do you think that would be the time for reflection to console the nation and the family of Alex Prey? No. She writes a letter to Tim Walls to say, "If you don't, we'll stop the search if you open up your voter data information to us." Like, okay, what? That's one. Two, you give us all your SNAP program and welfare program data and you stop being a sanctuary city and state. Oh, that's all. So the judge said in her courtroom, led by the lawyers for the for Keith Ellison, the attorney general, "Am I seeing a illegal quid proquo? Were you trying to accomplish through military force on the streets that which you cannot accomplish in the courtroom?" That was the argument. And the Bondi letter came up over and over and over again. A letter she did not have to write. This is an own goal if you're a sports fan, right? This is serving it

into the net when you're in the lead, so to speak. And now the judge wants a new briefing by, I think, Friday to explain how this is not an illegal quidd proquo. Why is she linking the ICE surge to voter data? Why is she linking it to sanctuary city status? And why is she linking it to welfare fraud? You know, if the government's got an issue with how Minnesota has been administrating uh its uh welfare and entitlements program, then go send in the inspectors general and Medicare and Medicaid and all the inspectors general and let them pour over the books of Minnesota and render a verdict. It's happened before.

In times past, we've gone after health care companies and find health care executives, hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, companies. So do that. You don't send 4,000 boots on the ground and give them permission to abuse civil liberties and shoot, kill, maim, and murder people on the streets of America. It's downright unamerican. And that's what Judge Mendez is going to try to get to the bottom of in her letter related to Pam Bondi. We have another judge, Chief Judge Schultz.

And Schultz is interesting. Chief Judge of all federal courts in Minnesota because he's a rock ribbed conservative Republican. He is a federalist society. He's not a MAGA. He was appointed by George Bush, but he's a Republican. So Trump can't claim he's an activist Marxist leftist judge because he's not. And nobody in there knows he's not. and they've gotten sideways with Judge Schultz in a number of ways. One involving our colleague, our journalistic colleague Don Lemon and the other involving there he is involving contempt proceedings against the acting head of ICE. Let me start with Don Lemon. And full disclosure, as we heard on the on the Saturday edition of Legal AF with Ben Meales, I went to Ben's wedding. So did Don Lemon. I sat next to him. Okay, there we go. and Don went to cover the city's church protest in

Minneapolis. Eight people went in, two of which were Don and his producer. They had cameras. The others were protesting during a church service because there was a information they had about whether the one of the late one of the um clergy also worked for ICE or with ICE and they went in to protest that and Don went in to record it. Wow. Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice, run into a magistrate judge, which is what they have to do. And when you want an arrest uh an arrest warrant, and there's no indictment, you have to do it by way of what's called a criminal complaint. And a criminal complaint is on probable cause, supported by affidavit, sometimes testimony. You bring it to a federal magistrate judge, in this in this case, Judge Miko or Miko, and you present your evidence. And the judge listened to the eight presentations and he said on three of them I find probable cause. He issued

arrest warrants. We've all seen the results of activists, lawyers, different people. And on the other five, he said no, I don't see you didn't you haven't met your burden. Two of which were Don Lemon and his producer. And he said for those two, those are journalists. Was a journalist recording. They're not, you know, they're allowed to do that. And and let them and let them go. Well, Pam Bonnie didn't like that. So, she ran to have a article 3 judge, the actual district court judge, assigned to be assigned to the matter and override the magistrate judge. And the wheels spun and it landed on Chief Judge Schultz.

And he said, "You what you're asking me to do is unprecedented. It is unheard of that I he said he I did a survey and in the entirety of every judge in Minnesota and in the eighth circuit covering other states, no district court judge has ever overridden, overrode, vetoed a magistrate judge's decision about whether an arrest warrant or criminal complaint was sufficient. I'm going to consider it. Well, they didn't like what he said, so Pam Bondi decided to lob in a petition to the Eth Circuit Court of Appeals, what's called a mandamus petition, which is where you tried to get an order to force a judge to do something. Well, the eth circuit turned around and said, "You know who we'd like to hear from? Judge Schultz." So they sent him a note literally and they said, "We'd like to see if you'd

like to respond to this rid of mandamus against you." And the judge wrote a letter, now which I rarely see, a letter and then an email in which he effectively exonerated Don Lemon. That's why we'll talk about why there's no indictment of Don Lemon. In his letter, he he basically without too much snarkiness or sarcasm said, "I didn't know about the filing. It's under seal. I'm at home taking care of of a he has a a child that has special needs. I'm at home with my child. It's a it's a school, you know, a winter, what do you call it? Snow day. And uh I can't get access to my document. It seems to be sealed even against me. So, in two and a half hours, they want me to respond to a writ of mandamus they did not serve on me that is sealed. I do not I do not know what it says, but they want me to

respond based on what I think it says. And he says, "I'll do it." Then he went off for the next three pages saying that the Department of Justice is effectively out of control, asking a federal judge to do that, which they have he they have never done. He said, "I did a survey of all the judges." And then he said, "From what I can see, at at worst it was a group of people that went into a church and yelled things. There was no violence." In other words, first amendment. In his email, he went further and said that of the eight, two of them were a journalist, which we know is Don Lemon, and a producer who were recording for journalistic standpoints a a protest and committed no crime. So, you have the chief judge exonerating Don Lemon. Good luck if you even got an indictment.

uh because that ca that case would get dismissed based on the chief judge saying nothing happened that is wrong based on his evidence. He basically is has has tried the case and exonerated Don Lemon. Now the new reporting is they're not the Department of Justice now is not even going to bother going back to a magistrate and getting an arrest warrant with a criminal complaint. And there's been several grand juries impanled in Minnesota including today. Has anybody heard of an indictment of Don Lemon? I don't think so.

But First Amendment, freedom of expression, freedom of press, the media, and by extension legal AF and Midas Dutch, we're under attack. You know, just last week, a Washington Post reporter had her house raided with a search warrant. Not even a subpoena. Subpoena, at least you can go back and forth and have a federal judge kind of oversee it. search warrant, you know, bang on the door, early morning raid, start grabbing up everything, including her confidential informants, her source material, her sources for her reporting against the Trump administration.

Uh and then the last one of the last pieces is Judge Schultz again who issued an order this morning that apparently the Trump administration has already folded ordering that Todd Lions the acting ICE administrator. So many acting federal officers for Donald Trump. Nobody wants to be the permanent. He doesn't want to go through that process. There are so many acting interims. But Todd Lions, the acting interim ICE, was ordered to appear on Friday in the same chief judge's chambers or courtroom to answer for possible contempt after the judge said, "I'm fed up. I'm fed up with the failure of this administration to follow federal court orders." This is about the undocumented people that have been scooped up and thrown into into detention, right? thrown into jail effectively without access to due process. The judge already ruled on a writ of habius corpus which we consider

to be in this country our great writ. In fact, sometimes it's shorthanded at the Supreme Court as the great writ. And what it means is if you're ever in a dark dungeon, you'll at least have the ability, if you can get if a lawyer can get in to see you, to prepare a writ a petition for rid of habius corpus and have it filed and get before a federal judge. We all have that. That's why it's called the great writ, right? And he granted it for this one particular person. And yet no bond hearing and he's and this guy was languishing in detention. And the judge says he's either let out today and I mean let out. No bond hearing. You forfeited that, right? Or I want to see Todd Lions in person in my courtroom on Friday. Now the reporting is they let him out because they don't need Todd Lions at this moment with all of these moving parts, all these, you know, for

the Trump administration. Uh everything's spinning. They don't need Todd Lions, who's also to jog your memory, last week I reported that Todd Lions wrote, or it was written for him, a secret memo, not so secret anymore, from May of 2025, that whistleblowers within ICE, still there, two of them, released in which he or somebody writing for him told ICE agents that they can ignore the Fourth Amendment, they can ignore Supreme Court president, they can bash crashed down with a battering ram a door of a home with an administrative warrant issued by a Trump judge on advice of a Trump lawyer executed by a Trump agent to take somebody out by the by the back of their neck or worse in their home.

Something that we in the case law, Supreme Court case law talks about as the castle, the castle keep. And that means even if you're an undocumented migrant, you have the right to be safe in your home unless unless the federal officers went to a real independent, impartial, neutral federal judge or magistrate. See, immigration judges are not uh independent. They work for the Department of Justice. They work for Donald Trump. So, an administrative I 205 warrant, right? That's that should not allow that cannot allow under the case law somebody to burst down your door and take you out. But Todd Lion said it was okay. So now there's litigation that started about that particular memo and and now you understand why we watch and we run all these videos with status coup and Might as Touch and Katie Fang is on the ground now in in uh in Minnesota. We run all these videos of battering rams and

knocking down doors, bashing down doors and and uh five-year-olds being used as bait and all of that. And it's all because it all stems from that particular memo. So, they didn't need Todd Lions to be sitting in a hot seat being grilled by the judge, the chief judge in Minnesota at this particular time. And I want to do one more judge uh before we take our first break. Let me also go to our um comments because that's the one great thing about live. I just have to get my phone open is is to go to the comments tonight and see see what's shaken and try to on the fly answer them like stump the pop and see if we can uh let's see if I can pull that off. Um and we also have and thank you for the 12 or 13,000 people that joined us tonight. Uh, let me see if my let me see if my team can pull together some questions for me. Let's see.

Uh, where is my team? Do I have a team tonight? Doesn't look like it. Uh, let me get on my team. Producer, can you tell your buddy to send me some questions? That's an insider. It's an insider thing. But anyway, uh, let me do the last judge. We got a judge, a federal judge, Trump appointee, who the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension under the leadership, at least for the case of the attorney general, Keith Ellison, ran to a federal judge a couple days ago and obtained an order about the prey crime scene, in particular, an order not to destroy or conceal evidence. Now, you'd think the Trump administration would just stand up and tell the judge, "We're not doing that. We'll happily agree to that order. Let's do a consent decree or an agreed order, judge." Nope. They fought it. Yep, you heard me right. The Trump

administration actually filed three affidavits and a memo of law to tell the judge that he could not tell them not to destroy evidence related to Alex Prey. And when I got the three affidavit and I did a hot take on this, I said, "All right, well, let's see what they got." And every time I read something and then compared and contrasted the three, it was worse. Here's what I learned. I learned that there were three different agencies involved. That they were not from Border Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations, and FBI. That none of them were coordinated. that the crime scene was left, the prety murder scene was left unattended and not secured for more than 38 minutes. That's already bad. That the chain of custody, which they all recognized is a thing, was completely violated.

So much so that I can't tell you now because they can't tell you where Alex Prety's firearm is. Yep, you heard me right. I know where his phone is. But I don't know where his firearm is because they don't know or at least they haven't been able to disclose it in what they have filed. So I read one and it goes on for a few p Oh and the other thing one last thing two out of the three declarance these are the people under oath who are testifying two out of the three refused to tell the judge that they're abiding by his order not to destroy evidence and did not did not affirm or represent to the judge that he has nothing to worry about because they haven't destroyed any evidence. No. The third one, the FBI guy said, and I haven't destroyed any evidence. The other two didn't think that was important to tell the judge. So, I read

the first one and okay, and I learned something, right? Okay. Homeland Security Investigations is the lead agency and they were 38 minutes late to the crime scene. And by the time they got there, there was other things going on like people protesting the the execution of Alex Betty. So, they couldn't do their job. They went through the 12step program. We had a 12step program for collecting evidence. Like, okay. Oh, but we couldn't do it all because there were circumstances. Okay. And uh and we collected and we didn't really even do the collection. Okay.

Go on. So, they're in charge of an investigation for which they're not doing the collection. And then the FBI was there. Okay. So, then I go to Border Patrol, get that guy's affidavit. What does he tell me? He tells me he's not in charge of collecting any evidence at all. Okay. That it's being conducted by Homeland Security. Good. Then on the next page, he says there is evidence that they have the body cam footage. Okay. That they're keeping for 75 years under recordeping law. I'm like, let me get this straight. You think you don't have evidence, but you do have the body cam video and you haven't turned that over to HSI.

Okay. So, chain of custody. Sh blown blown. Then I get to the FBI agent whose name is redacted. I don't even know who it is. He says he works for the T, the evidence recovery team. I'm like, well, at least there's an evidence recovery team. What did you do? Start paging through it. Says, "We got there." Yeah. And we started collecting some, but not all of the evidence. Like, okay. Uh, we got the gun and the cell phone. Good. And then they wrote, we turned the cell phone over to HSI and I'm like, where where's the gun? Where's the gun now?

Could the gun be with alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, and explosives? Maybe. Could it be out for testing? Maybe. Uh, I like to know where is the weapons for the guys that executed Alex Prey? Have they Where's the ballistics? Where's the testing? Where's the forensic? Who's doing that? So, I don't know anything about the inventory. I don't know if there's been an inventory. HSI has some, but not all of the evidence. Major pieces are missing. Do you see why the judge is likely to extend his temporary restraining order? He hasn't ruled yet, but trust me, he's going to extend it because all the state wants to do is conduct an independent investigation, one that the Trump administration has looked you in the eye as Americans and told you that neither for Renee Good's murder nor for Alex Prety's murder will

they be conducting a criminal investigation or civil rights investigation into what happened. Did you guys hear me? They've already determined that they're not going to investigate this criminally. So, they've already rushed to judgment and reached their conclusions before Donald Trump's told the press today that I think there should be a an independent uh investigation. Who Who's going to do it? The feds can't. They're conflicted. Instead of the Department of Justice doing it, which of course is conflicted, they're going to have HSI, Homeland Security, investigate their own entities. Are you effing kidding me? And is there any wonder why Donald Trump's poll numbers that had already hit rock bottom have now started to dig? His immigration approval is underwater by over 30 points. Favorable, disfavorable.

30 points. The only thing worse on his chart is the handling of the Epstein files. That's 44 points under. So the stench of all these scandals that Donald Trump can't clear and what he's really concerned about. And I was with somebody today that worked for Donald Trump for about 17 years, not named Michael Cohen. And that person told me that what Donald Trump's biggest fear is right now based on their observation is the midterms that he'll be impeached again. And just to remind everybody because I'll I'll get to it after the break to impeach you need 218 in the House be even before midterms where Democrats are getting awful close especially if the four special elections. If we got all four I mean I don't think we're going to get all four. One of them is like North Georgia. We might. One of them is in California, but a a

Republican district. And then Mickey Cheryl's seat, Mikey Cheryl's seat, the governor of New Jersey. And um and another one uh who's a Democrat. So even if we picked up one, flip one seat, we're only two away from an impeachment of anybody. Now, you could eat twothirds of the Senate. So you need like 61 or 62 senators. And we've only got like 52 or 53. So we're a little short on the senators. public pressure, outcry, outrage, the things we do here on the Midas Touch Network and illegal AF. This shows you that it matters. It's not just the hummingbird theory. Let's all think happy thoughts and good thoughts and everybody will be impeached, removed. It really works. It really works because what Donald Trump is motivated and energized and what fuels him the most is his narcissism is public agilation. And when it bursts through that bubble of his that his poll

numbers are not terrific, like he said today, he know you could tell that's his tell. When he says they're doing great, he knows they're not. You know, he's trying to will it into being. This is where we can have our most influence bound together and united together. And um we're going to go into we're going to go to a commercial break. Couple of quickies I can do because I want to make this an update of things going on. the Abbrego Garcia trial/hering about whether he's going to have his indictment dismissed for uh vindictive prosecution of the of the Department of Justice was going to be today. It got postponed because of the weather. But that's just that's just uh slowing down a bad thing for the Trump administration. I would be shocked if Judge Krenshaw in Tennessee does not find actual or or implied vindictive prosecution and doesn't set Abrago

Garcia completely free from his criminal charges. Anyway, so I wanted to touch on that. And then as we came on the air, we have our first, but not the last filing by a victim of the boat strikes by Donald Trump. Two uh people from Trinidad who lost their life, their families have brought the suit. It's the District of Massachusetts, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which I hope everybody knows is now with us on Legal AF for regular reporting. It's the first case that's been filed. It's hard to believe it's the first case, right? It is. More than a hundred people have been killed and these two Trinidadian fishermen have finally brought suit. It's under the Death on the High Seas Act, which is how you sue for wrongful death. Um, this is a civil case, of course, for wrongful death. So, I wanted to kind of bring that up as well. Uh, we are going to

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which I'm responsible. Right. We've got the Legal AF YouTube channel. We just added another 40,000 subscribers in the last month there uh as we try to build towards our 2 million mark. And you can become we just launched for the new year a level of paid subscriber. I think it's associate council partner with different types of content that is available to you for your support. It's reasonably priced YouTube legal afstack. Yes, all the all the cool kids are hanging out on Substack. That's where independent media lives. That's where you can show your love. I do two live reports a day in the morning and in the evening. I do we have commentary from all of our dozen of contributors, essays, articles, videos, and different things all on the Legal AF Substack. And now is a great time for you to show some support for us and hit that subscribe button for that as well. And then as I

said, you know, everything that our contributors do within the Midas touch world, within the legal AF world, watch it, send it to your friends, comment on it, post it to your social media. It all helps with the the almighty algorithm. And now we've got a word from our intersection sponsor. Can we talk about incogn? I used to get tons of spam calls and my email, it was flooded with junk. The scariest of those messages were scams, and it was terrifying to see how much they knew about me. Turns out my information is spread all across the internet without me knowing. That's why I've partnered with Incogn. It helps reduce spam and take control of my online privacy by taking away my private data from shady companies. Online data breaches are relentless and rising annually. Anybody could be caught up in one. A breach of our data could put us at risk of scam attempts, identity

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uh stuck in traffic asked, "Can the citizens of a city, state, or even the whole country sue the federal government for violating so many laws?" I mean, class action for that type of thing isn't going to work. But I'll make you feel I think I'll make you feel better between the American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy Forward, the Democratic Attorneys General, and all the other interest groups that are underneath them, and then just law firms that have stepped forward, although not as many as I would like. Um, we're holding the Trump administration to account.

Sometimes it may not feel that way when I have to report on well the Supreme Court on the emergency docket today took away a you know woman's right to choose or something horrendous. But by and large, if if I will tell you from my own experience and from interviewing all of these people and following their cases as closely as I do that if these almost 1,000 cases weren't working to pin down the Trump administration, we would be in a much bigger pickle than uh than uh we than we're in right now. And and so it is working. You know, the wheels of justice are really big and they turn slowly, but they they uh ground finally.

And now we're starting to finally see the catchup here. You know, that it took us a year to catch our breath. You know, first he had to do the executive orders, then he had to do all of the bad [ __ ] and then we had to file all the lawsuits, and some of it's on emergency applications, and then some of them go for a longer period of time. And now you can see that Donald Trump is his uh whatever magic and superpower he thought he had, it's really running out. Um and he's and he's um and he's gassed. It it comes from a Department of Justice that's completely uh fatigued, drained of any talent, uh and corrupt. And bad things happen when you send that kind of entity into a courtroom. And that's what we're watching. and federal judges are certainly taking notice. Grand juries are taking notice and so are juries. Um, let's see. Field of Gold asks, "Can a

suit be brought by the American people for a violation of our fir first and fourth amendment rights uh or at the state level?" Again, it's the same sort of response that I would give to the earlier commentator about uh about what we can do. uh leave it to the ACLU and the other companies to put together the right group to uh to sue. Uh Mongana 8 asks and I this is a very good question. The ABA, the American Bar Association, where the f has it been in speaking up about America's constitutionality?

Hello, anybody home? Totally agree with you. Actually said something today at the National Trial Lawyers Convention in Miami about about this missing the bar. Where is the bar? American Bar Association, the Specialty Bars, the Ethnic Bars, the CubanAmerican Bar Association, the Women's Bar Association, the Hispanic Bar Association, the Black Bar Association. Where are they? Now, I know they live a bit in fear. They want to be independent. They don't want to be political, but you know, to paraphrase a senior judge in Seattle and federal court who issued the first order against birthright citizenship. He said, 'We don't want to be in a situation where people look back in history and said, 'Where are the lawyers? Where were the lawyers? That's why I can get up every morning and be energized to come on and run legal af YouTube and curate what we

do here and do all the videos I do for Midas and do our podcast because no one's ever going to look back and say, "What did Pac do?" Seriously, where was he when we needed him? I don't want you can say a lot about me, but I don't want that to be one of those things. But I totally agree with you. Um, we got to get off of the the fence, you know, about, oh, we need to be uh we have to both sides this and No, no, no. When you're watching desperatism, fascism, and tyrant tyranny, you got to say something. Especially when you're in the position of being a lawyer, with that comes responsibility. You're an officer of the court. You swore at duty the constitution.

Uh, in fact, I'm going on that note, I'm going on the 16th of February to a a judicial institute that's run by my alma mater, my law school, Duke, in DC, where it's going to have about 50 judges, a lot of them former, but some current, uh, and lawyers, top lawyers, about how they should be on new media. they should how they get onto YouTube, how they should why it's important, why that's where their audience is. It's not going on CNN for a one minute interview where they don't let you talk and they cut to the the the soap commercial. It's being here with our community. So, I'm going to be hopefully guiding them. Ken Harbaugh from Midas is also going to be there. Um, and but you're that is Let me do one more. This is a good segue. Hank Ering says, "What if anything can be done to compel the release of the

unredacted Epstein files? Can a judge appoint a special master to review?" Good. Let's segue into Melania and the Epstein files. Judge Engel Meyer and Judge Burman with heavy hearts concluded that because they had limited jurisdiction of of effectively closed criminal cases, Epstein dead, Galain Maxwell jailed, that they could not, even though it sounded like they wanted to, they couldn't help out the victims and the survivors and order a mechanism to have the files released under court supervision. Now, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a new independent lawsuit filed. In fact, Judge Angel Meer invited that when he denied um and people, I think, know by now that I represented one of the survivors, Lisa Phillips, and we filed on her behalf, the Pope firm, a affidavit, and it was quoted and cited by Judge Engelmire approvingly, but at the end he said, "I

just don't have the jurisdiction." And Judge Burman, who handled the Epstein case, concluded the same thing. He actually wrote a note. This is again, we're in un we're on unparalleled times here. He wrote a note to one of the survivors to thank her for her submission, but then said, "But I can't do anything about it." And posted that note on the docket. I mean, this is where we're at right now. And then today, we've got the Department of Justice announcing, Let me get this right. There it is.

Um, the attorneys have the DOJ says they've reviewed and redacted millions of pages of the Epstein files. I assume this was filed in the Angle Meyer case and should complete their review in the near term. Oh, well then I think we feel all better now. Uh this was sent to uh both Judge Engel Meyer and Judge Burman today uh respectfully submitting their letter about substantial progress and quality control uh and millions of pages and you know we'll get to it. Yeah, we're six weeks out, seven weeks out from the deadline and uh no end in sight. You know that the Epstein files are in the mail, everybody.

That's just uh outrageous. And then that allows me to segue to Melania. Yeah, she's back in the news again because she's been dodging not only service of process, but a lawsuit that ties her to the Epstein scandal. She doesn't want an Epstein lawsuit hanging around with her. She created the Epstein law. She created this particular Epstein related lawsuit. Why? because her lawyer, who's her husband's lawyer, Alejandra Breto down in Coral Gables, Florida, sent a letter in October to Michael Wolf, the Epstein chronicler, the journalist, and demanded that he retract certain things that he said connecting Melania to Epstein and Trump.

And if he didn't, he But that wasn't it. It wasn't just like cease and desist. I send those all the time. It was just it wasn't cease and desist, retract and desist. It was, "Oh, and by the way, give me a billion dollars because they don't know." The only the I think I think Alejandro Breto's keyboard only has a B on it for billion because that's the only thing he knows how to type out. And Michael was like, you know, Michael's a he's not okay in his life.

He's written a few books. Have a billion dollars laying around. Like what was he going to do? Like mail off a letter, seal it, and put a billion dollar check in it? No. So he had his lawyers file a lawsuit first in New York State Supreme Court which is the trial level court and I practice in New York so I know and it's a great it's a it's the right court to file it and argued that asking the the judge to declare that any of the things that were written in the letter none of it can be defamatory and do it from that regard.

Um, and Melania didn't like it. So, she started to this moment dodging service of process. They try to serve her at Trump Tower when they knew she was there. The door man, they try to serve the lawyer, try to get to Mara Lago. She keeps dodging service. Yet she appears in federal court to argue that her state the state case should be dragged over to federal court in New York because she really wants to send it down to federal court in Florida to you know who XOXO Judge Cannon. I'll get to that in a minute. Uh but it gets it lands because you know occasionally Donald Trump gets a lucky break. I'm being facicious on some of these judge selections. And he got Judge Vocusille, who's a Trump appointed judge in Manhattan, and there's very few of those, by the way. Judge Vocusil is already annoyed. I can I see it in her writings. You know, uh the lawyers for

Michael Wolf said because Melania filed a motion to dismiss, arguing, "I haven't been served." Yeah, because you're dodging service. There's no personal jurisdiction over me in New York and it belongs in federal court because I live in Florida and Michael lives in New York and you don't have jurisdiction over me. Well, there's a problem with the filing. There's a number of problems. One, you can't at the same time say there's no jurisdiction over me, but here's a motion to dismiss you need to consider.

That's called waiver. You've waved the argument. You can file a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and argue that you got sued in the wrong state, but you can't argue also even in federal court for a substantive motion to dismiss and ask the court to intervene on your behalf. You just told the court that they don't have jurisdiction over you. So, how do they have jurisdiction over you now? So, I thought that was a screw- up. Uh, which I'm sure that the lawyers from Michael Wolf will shove down their throat. And then what she's really trying to do because this this games the gaming of the service thing doesn't work in federal court. I've tried with with lawyers. I had a case people know Kanye West. We Ben Myers and me sued Kanye West. If you want to if you if you think I'm making it up, go right now. Well,

wait till the show's over and go into Google and put I never thought I'd ever be able to say this in my life. Put in PPA and Kanye. Boom. and you will see the video of my deposition of Kanye West, but we were trying to get him served like during COVID and he was dodging too until we couldn't get him. Tried him at his house in in uh he was living in uh hidden hidden uh hidden lakes, hidden hidden hills in California. We couldn't get him. Couldn't get through the guard gate. We're like, "Oh my god, how are we going to get him served?" And then a young lawyer in his his lawyer's law a young lawyer in his law firm his you know his lawyer's law firm accepted service. They're like signed for it. We were like what? And then we eventually didn't. Okay. So uh service is a thing but not in federal court because

eventually you just file a piece of paper that's called acceptance of service and then if you don't judges don't like that you're screwing around. They start awarding attorneys fees. There's a way to bring it to a head. So that's her lead argument. And then now she's filed, of course, her demand that the case be sent, if it's going to stay in federal court, down to Florida. Of course, because she lives in Palm Beach, there's only three judges that are in the West Palm Beach or Fort Pierce division of the Southern District of Florida. Judge Rosenberg, Judge Middlebrooks, and Judge Cannon. Middle Brooks is senior status and he's not getting cases assigned to him that way.

So you got a 5050 shot at cannon, right? Why wouldn't they? So that's what they're really trying to do. The point about Vocusil, the judge, I was like, you know, I thought Wol's lawyers wrote a very competent letter like, "Judge, just to remind you, you need to decide on whether there's diversity jurisdiction to have this case in federal court at all, and then you got to decide whether there's personal jurisdiction." And before you could even get to the motion to dismiss, she was like, "Oh ho, how dare you remind the court." She was like really pissy. I want see if I want to see if I have it here. Was like, "Oh, how dare you remind me. I know of my responsibilities." Like, "All right. All right. Pump the brakes, judge. Okay. They're doing their job. You're allegedly doing yours. All

right. Let's just just keep it professional." How about How about that? So, what's going to happen? I don't know. They're going to fight hard to keep the case in in state court. They get discovery. Here's the here's the other mistake by Melania. Open the door to making her sit for a deposition, you know, about where do you live? How long do you live there? Uh what bed do you sleep in? That was my own personal one. Uh how how often are you at Trump Tower? How often are you in Mara Lago? How about how about uh the White House? you know, and and get into because people that live in New York, like I have tons of friends that live in New York and I used to, they know she's there most of the year. She's there spa days and lunch with the ladies and Baron is down the street, Fifth Avenue, at NYU and the rest of it. So, I'm not I'm not so sure

even though she's registered to vote in Florida, that's going to be enough. So, we're gonna have to see and follow up on Melania. All right, I see a bunch of new questions coming in. Let me go to the questions. I I love this part. Jim Brown says, "Why don't we know the identities of Alex Patty shooters?" We will. We will. There's going to be foyer requests, Freedom of Information Act requests brought. Um, I know the reporters are out there on the ground sleuthing this to find out. We know from Bovino, who's no longer in Minnesota either, that he quickly got those five out of there, which troubles me from a crime scene investigation standpoint.

Where's their Who's got their um he didn't he didn't he didn't relieve them of duty? Who took their firearms? Who's testing it? These are all problems. These are all problems. But I agree with you. We we just like we know who Jonathan Ross is, who executed uh Renee Good. We should know about that as well. Continental Kitties uh asked, I love some of your names, by the way. Continental Kitties asked, "Can the Supreme Court decide to change their horrible ruling about presidential immunity, uh, seeing how abusive behavior the sitting president is?" Yeah, I mean, yes. If there's another case that's brought a prosecution about a president, um, they can revisit their earlier president, but they're not going to be able to do it in an unrelated case. you know, he's going to have it's going to

have to be a prosecution, which means we're going to have to wait till 2028, a whole new Department of Justice. 2028, I don't even think we have to wait till 2028 for a lot of the fun to begin. And that's where the call to action comes in for this show, right? Because if the Democrats sweep and take the White House, sorry, if Let's try it again, it's a long day. If the Democrats take the House and they get what we think based on the math looks like 220, 230 seats. Okay, you only need 218 for impeachment. Trump's impeached. Bondi is impeached. Blanch is impeached. Amil Boie on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals is impeached. Uh Gnome, if she's still around, whoever is still around is impeached. Steven Miller is impeached.

you know, and the list goes on. Heg Seth impeached, Marco Rubio impeached. There'll be a lot of impeachment proceedings. Now, we also want the government to work for us. We just experienced a do nothing Congress that did nothing for the American people. I mean, one of the lowest legislative outputs in history. I don't want that again. But we got to swing the pendulum and we've got to do checks and balances and we've got to do oversight and that will be a mandate hopefully for the American people. If by the grace of whomever you pray or don't pray to, we got a lot of senators also. Usually that's a little tighter handtohand combat, but a lot of them are retiring and here's a chance to flip the seats.

Here's a chance to take your public outrage and channel it into voting. If that happens, who knows? Could we get 56? Maybe. Maybe. It's a heavy lift, but with the retirements, we might get it. We're still short a handful. Pardon me. We're still short a handful to convict and remove, but I'll take impeachment at this point. That's midterm. That's the stakes as a springboard of 2028. Now you have a whole new department of justice that starts in January of 2029 and they start looking back at what just transpired.

Many of these crimes that have been committed before our very eyes, we don't have a statute of limitations problem in 2029. We don't. And so look out. So therefore, if we tried to prosecute Donald Trump again, we would then test the limits of that immunity decision and it could end up back at the United States Supreme Court. Where, as Continental Kenny's points out, they could revisit that precedent and trim it back. But it's got to be on a case. They can't be talking about like, well, let's talk about Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve. By the way, on the immunity decision, we made a mistake. It would have to be right on all fours with that particular issue. Let me do one more.

Um, talked about the first and fourth amendment. I think we hit it all. Uh 603 Lola asks, "What options do US citizens, illegal immigrants have for compensation for wrongful detention, even illegal illegal immigrants and injuries and property damage when ICE makes mistakes like destroying vehicles, yanking them to the ground, breaking down doors, and holding them for hours?" Yeah, we have a we have civil rights statutes. You know, this we have a what's called the 1983 action. Um we have a Bivvens action. There's a bunch of case law that allows people to seek compensation for unreasonable use of force um as being akin to a constitutional violation. There's lawyers that are responsible for handling cases like that. And that's where you go. That's one of the reasons you've seen appellet courts um like the eighth circuit and the seventh circuit

bristle at the suggestion that a federal judge should intervene early to stop law enforcement abuse, ICE and border patrol abuse, National Guard abuse. And it and it sounds terrible, but their position is you can't intervene early. You can't stop the car accident even though you could. You'd be able to. You can't run out there and and oh, the the lights out. Oh, you can't run out there and put your hands up and stop it, judge. You just have to adjudicate after the accident what happens and sit in judgment of that. Now, I know a lot of people are like, "Well, that's not why can't they intervene before?" I'm just telling you, the seventh circuit, eth circuit, most courts are like, "That's not the role of judiciary. It's not for you to stop civil rights violations before they happen. It's for you to adjudicate and

remedy them once they have happened. But at what point, you know, we we have an we have a roving band of an execution squad, assassin squad for Donald Trump. No federal judge can put an end to that. I think that's going too far. I think I think they need to put on their big boy and girl judge pants and start making some hard rulings about a rogue lawless out of control, you know, Department of Justice. That's it. plain and simple. So, um, we've reached the end of the intersection. What a I want, first of all, let me pat all of you on the back.

I think we hit like 15,000 at one point. Uh, it's just the outpouring of support for the show. What we do on Might as Dutch and legal layoff is just overwhelming sometimes. I appreciate you all. I read your comments. The way to support what we're doing, you're doing it here on the YouTube. Send it off to friends and family. have them join. That keeps our numbers up for the rankings and ratings. It makes us gives us the street cred. We need the audio version. We just went audio. You can just put in the intersection and there you will see all of my work including this show on Tuesday nights on the intersection audio. Leave a fivestar review and comments. We're so new.

You'll see your five star review and comments and so will I. And then we have u I have another show called Unprecedented that I do with Dena Dah. I think people like Dena Dah. She and I do a show about the Supreme Court once a week that's up on YouTube on Legal AF and on audio. So we've got that. You got Legal AF which is on, you know, the grand papy of them all. That's on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 800 p.m. Eastern time on the Midas Touch Network. And then we've got that whole ecosystem of Legal AF that we started with the podcast six years ago and now the Legal AF YouTube channel with a dozen videos, fresh videos every day drop. I do the first four my contributors that work with us like ACLU, Democracy Forward, uh Adam Classfeld, All Rise News, uh and Court of History and the and Civil Action and the rest. They fill out our day and you can become a paid subscriber

or just a regular subscriber. That's terrific. And then legal af on Substack. And there we've I figured out we're only I thought we were a year old. We're only eight months old. We're already in the top of Substacks for uh for US politics. We're doing eight or 10 postings there a day. New essays that I write and other people's write and uh two live videos. See, I can do lives there in a way that I can't do them on the YouTube channel. So, I try to do my breaking briefing news, you know, uh, twice a day on Substack. So, it's another way to support our show. But, I want to thank each and every one of you for being here and we'll see you next Tuesday on the intersection. I'm Michael Pop. Shout out to Mightest Mighty and the Legal Afers.

Can't get your fill of legal AF. Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "LIVE: Popok Gives URGENT UPDATE on Breaking Legal news | 1/27/2026"?

Michael Popok (Host), Larry Krasner (Guest), Mary Moriarty (Guest), John Choi (Guest), Christine Nome (Guest), Pam Bondi (Guest), Alex Prey (Guest), Don Lemon (Guest).

What is "LIVE: Popok Gives URGENT UPDATE on Breaking Legal news | 1/27/2026" about?

Michael Popock provides an urgent update on the coalition of nine progressive prosecutors advocating for state charges against federal officers, highlighting the acronym FAFO—"f*** around and find out"—as a message directed at the Trump administration. The discussion focuses on the ongoing independent investigation in Minneapolis, led by local officials working to determine the appropriateness…

What is mentioned in this MeidasTouch episode?

18 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Michael Popock, Alex Jeffrey Prey, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Andrew Schultz, Judge Menendez, Christine Nome. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "LIVE: Popok Gives URGENT UPDATE on Breaking Legal news | 1/27/2026"?

The episode runs 1 h 7 min; the transcript is about 10,959 words in 82 timestamped sections.

More from MeidasTouch

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 29, 2026.