Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Abortion, Second Amendment, Trump Prosecutions, & Rittenhouse

Episode Date: November 7, 2021

You come for the law, and stay for the truth. The top-rated weekly US law and politics news analysis podcast -- LegalAF -- produced by Meidas Touch and anchored by MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok, is back for another hard-hitting, thought-provoking, but entertaining look in “real time” at this week’s cases.  On this record-setting episode, Ben and Popok take on ten (10) (!!) developments this week : 1. Supreme Court Oral Argument and Likely Outcome of SB8 Texas Abortion Law Hearing and Power of Federal Court to Review Constitutionality of the Abortion Ban. 2. Supreme Court Oral Argument and Likely Outcome of “Concealed Weapon” as a Second Amendment Right. 3. DOJ’s new suit against Texas for Voting Rights Act violations for passing voter suppression laws (SB1). 4. Manhattan DA and Trump Prosecutions Update 5. NY Federal Prosecution of Giuliani Update 6. Trump’s attempts to shield Jan6 documents from public disclosure and likely outcome of this week’s Federal court injunction hearing 7. New civil defamation cases brought by Smartmatic and others against Trump, OANN, Newsmax and others in state and federal courts throughout the country. 8. Developments in the prosecution of Andrew Cuomo 9. This week’s sentencing of 2 Jan6 insurrectionists. 10. Rittenhouse Trial Update And so much more! Policy Genius -- Please visit https://Policygenius.com right now and compare insurance quotes today and support this show!!! Adam & Eve -- Go check out https://AdamandEve.com today, select one item and get 50% off including FREE shipping when you enter offer code LEGALAF Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to MidasTouch Podcast Legal, AF Ben, my sellers joined by Michael Popock, the Popo-Gian. If it's Saturday, it is legal, AF Live, if it's Sunday, it is legal, AF, basically, if it is the weekend, you're listening to Michael Popock and Ben, my sellers, thank you, Michael Popock for for joining me this weekend. As always, how you doing? I didn't know I had a choice. I thought I had a beer.

Okay, so last week, you shocked me with a prop. So I'm gonna, I'm thinking about using a pipe as I sit and listen to you ponder about the law. What do you think about that? I, you know, I'm not sure the pipe is a good, look, what kind of pipe do you have there though, Popye? Well, that's actually my late father's pipe. That's one of his Mershon pipes. He'd be so proud.

First of all, he'd be so proud of us doing this because he was a big, big loving supporter of me when he was, when he was here. We're coming up on the anniversary of his passing. So I thought about him today and I said, maybe I'll just sit here when I'm doing pondering. Like with the law, Popak, you got to give me the full set of facts before asking me what I think about your pipe. I didn't realize the pipe had such a significant background. I thought you were just losing your mind and like pop by the sailor, man.

So knowing the meaning and the deeper understanding, I appreciate you having the pipe. I thank you, Popok for joining us this weekend. And I want to say, hashtag thank you, brand in. That's right. If you follow the MidasTouch Twitter account, you'll know that MidasTouch trended hashtag thank you, brand in the GQ peers, tried to basically take this statement where

people were screaming a small group of people at a NASCAR event were saying fuck Joe Biden and then the reporter thought they were saying let's go Brandon. She was covering for the crowd. So the GQ peers out there, essentially, then we're censoring themselves by saying, let's go brand and as code for fuck Joe Biden. And look, no matter what, I think that we should all have somewhat of a sense of humor about it. I mean, let's go brand and is kind of funny. I mean, it's immature and stupid that a political party is doing it.

But let's not let them co-op these terms. And so we said, thank you, brand, because at the end of the day, the US added back 531,000 jobs in October, beating all expectations. The Dow is over 36,000. All the stocks seem to rise now except Trump's digital world acquisition company, which is we predicted on legal AF. It's coming crashing down more than 80% of jobs

lost during the pandemic have been recovered over 200 and 20 million Americans are vaccinated. Now children can get vaccinated and we passed an infrastructure bill last night. And so things are moving, but this popok is not might as touch podcast. It is legal. A F, but I just wanted to say thank you, Brandon. And did you see our shirts, Popeyes? I love the shirts. And I actually, I gave you, they didn't make the cut, but I gave you guys some other suggestions to go along with it. If you want to fill out the Brandon wear, I posted on Twitter this today, building back Brandon as part of the $1.3 trillion package, writing with Brandon, could also be a t-shirt.

I'm fully into Brandon. They can do whatever they want. Brandon won whatever they want to say. The fact that a sitting U.S. Senator, Ted Cruz, thinks it's appropriate to go tell the president to go fuck himself, it just shows you how pure aisle and immature that party is. But I think it's fun to watch you guys, hoist them on their own, Petard, and self-unit shirts, and reclaim what is Brandon. It's a good, they might as touch merch store. Just go to mitestouch.com. You'll be able to find

the merch store if you want to get your thank you brand and shirt. And as you talk about the GQP being so pure I also immature when it comes to how they are politically, it's really a common trend that we see here on legal AF and how they go about treating the law. Truthfully, we've talked about difficult legal decisions. We've talked about how there's this encroachment of fascism into our constitutional norms, but the one thing that's held has still been the court system, the constitution. That's what's kept this country going, and we need to fight for it every day. But those puril and immature arguments have not yet. And I say not yet, because it could happen, been able to pierce through kind of this final veil, which is into our kind of constitution, which hasn't happened yet. But let's get into the law, Pope, and let's start off by just talking about a quick update.

Another Pope, in prediction come true. We talked about the Cuomo criminal complaint filed by the sheriff up in Albany. We talked in the past podcast about how there was a number of procedural oddities with this. And it seemed to be politically motivated by the sheriff. I mean, look, you had prosecutors who were actually pursuing an investigation. I think we all think there needs to be a legitimate investigation taking place, but the fact that nobody knew about this filing as the filing was, what was the filing happened? Everybody was surprised that this happened.

The prosecutors were surprised. We predicted Pope Pock on the last podcast that this prosecutor is not going to be happy and there's an update here. You want to talk about. Yeah, absolutely. It's almost uncanny what you and I were able to predict. We said it's a bad day when the prosecutor doesn't know that the sheriff has filed a legal document in the courthouse to try to get somebody arrested and arraigned.

And it's a surprise to the victim, the person who's reported the incident. And so that went from bad to really bad to worse, because now David Sores, who's the Albany County District Attorney, has come out in a late night press conference yesterday and basically said that the document that was filed by the sheriff was improper, was probably procedurally defective because it missed two major components. One, it didn't

have a sworn affidavit under penalty of perjury by the alleged victim. In this case, Brittany Camiso, it paraphrased testimony that she had given to the attorney general, Tish James during her investigation, but didn't include an affidavit in New York requires that what we call precipian witnesses with knowledge actually swear out affidavits. So that's missing. And then, the DA also said the sheriff misstated the law in his filing.

This is why sheriff should arrest people and do investigations, but they shouldn't do court filings unless lawyers are present. And so, and it's to the advantage of the defense. It's to the advantage of Cuomo, which is what you and I said. I think you made the point, Ben, last podcast, which is, if they have a legitimate case, why crap all over it?

You know, let this be played out properly in the courthouse. So now what the DA has done is he's asked the judge to delay the arrangement that was scheduled for the 17th of November, and it may not happen at all. And then also the DA announced, I'm doing my own investigation of Cuomo. So and you stepped on that, Mr. Sheriff. So this will have to watch this closely. The short answer is Cuomo is not going to get arraigned on the 17th. He's not going to get arrested and he's not going to be processed for a misdemeanor for civil touching. And it's going to be up now to, I think, what it

should have been, the DA to file his own criminal complaint if he feels he has the evidence. Now Cuomo also has a great argument of malicious prosecution of prosecutorial misconduct, he can cite to the irregularities in the filing process as a way to get off from these charges. And basically, if it was a politically motivated thing, the sheriff just really handed Cuomo a real legal win here. That's what we talked about on the last podcast that a lot of lawyers, a lot of people

who live in these political echo chambers, they love that headline. Oh, does it feel good to get that great headline that a lawsuit's been filed on that first day where you roll it out? But you better be ready to litigate that case and be able to strategize because a case lasts for more than one day. A case has a life cycle of many, many years. That's what you and I would call in the business an unforced error like in tennis.

I mean, the sheriff just hit into the net for absolutely no reason to get some sort of one new cycle advantage. But you know, loss as our followers and listeners know, well, lawsuits are not one new cycle. From unforced errors to forced stupidity from the GQP, we go to January 6th sentencing. This is just an absurd and reticulous headline, though, from Huffington Post by referring to this, Jan Arian, who is sentenced as a January 6th influencer. Now, I don't know if this is, if she referred to herself as a January 6th influencer, which is just the most absurd concept and tells you what trash the GQP is that you could be an influencer for taking selfies of yourself on January 6th. But you'll recall, Jenna Ryan is the Trump loving real

estate broker following January 6th. She called it one of the best days of her life. She posted all of these photos of herself next to the Capitol building with windows that were smashed through. She's wearing, you know, she's wearing red, white, and blue, Trump kind of, and she was using it. She was using it to sell real estate. Look what I'm doing today in the Capitol. Guess what I could do for you to sell your house. I mean, that's actually what she did.

She said that she was also quote, going to war was language that she used as she was taping herself. Prosecutor said that Ryan had been promoting her personal brand while doing this. And then following the event she went to her followers and basically said words to the effect of because she was

a white woman, white woman who had money that she didn't even fear at all, that she was going to have to do any jail time whatsoever. So the Justice Department filed a sentencing memo that recommended that she go to jail specifically because of the statements that she made and that having her not serve any jail time would be problematic and needing to have an making sure she serves jail times would have a deterrent effect. What do you think here? Yeah, well, my favorite quote of hers

that she tweeted is that she had blonde hair and white skin in a great career and she was never going to jail. That's the part you paraphrased. And she had already pled guilty. So she just so everybody is following here. 600 people were indicted and arrested related to the Gen 6 insurrection and we're getting through sort of the first layer of people that pled guilty, some trials have been scheduled. She's one of the people that pled guilty. So one of the justices in the DC, the DC branch of the federal court, Judge Cooper, had a sentence here.

So you have in sentencing, I think we've talked about this a little bit in the past, you have the prosecutors making a recommendation. You usually with reference to the federal sentencing guidelines and a probation report that's prepared that ways the conduct against the sentencing guidelines and comes up with a recommended sentence. And then the feds can either depart from that, they can go higher, they can go lower, depending upon aggravating circumstances or otherwise, or cooperation credit, that type of thing. And then they stand in the courthouse on sentencing day and they say to the judge, this person should get six months.

And then of course the defense takes the same factors and analysis and argues for home confinement or they should wear a bracelet and they should go free today. And then it's up to the judge to actually do the sentencing. So here the federal prosecutors asked for 60 days in prison, $500 restitution. I think that's for the broken window that she was involved with and $1,000 fine. And that's what the broken window that she was involved with and a thousand dollar fine and that's what the judge went with I think the other side was arguing that she should be let go and be given a slap on the wrist. So She's going to jail. She had a comment after she got sentenced, which is my haters can pop champagne now I'm going to jail. She'll probably find a way to make money off of this and to that, Popeye, let me tell you what a trash person this gen Orion is.

On November 4th, she tweeted out, I'm just going to make a blanket statement to all the people that are calling me and texting me. You win. I'm going to prison so you don't need to contact me anymore. Pop champagne and then rejoice, but just leave me alone. Thank you. Then she tweets, shortly thereafter, I'm not going to prison for the things that I said or standing in front of the broken window. It's for walking

in the capital for two minutes and what the judge says is to serve a deterrence to others since I have a high profile, which I got after the fact thanks to the mainstream media's smear campaign. She tweets the next day on November 5th. Please note, payment getaways such as Stripe and PayPal have shut me down so I am unable to fundraise to cover my legal expenses. I will be seeking alternatives for fundraising. That's to your point, Popak, as you smoke the pipe, Popak, pipe smoking popax about her grifting off of this situation. And then a few hours later, she tweets, I will be on Newsmax tonight at 7pm Eastern Hour tune in. And then she

basically has no level of accountability whatsoever. 60 days for her is absurd. She should go to jail for at least five years. Let's flip the script for a second, Popeye. Could you imagine if there was a rally to support refugees outside of the Capitol building? Okay, and then during this rally to support refugees in solidarity with refugees, a group of Hispanic men and women or black men and women said, you know what, we've had enough of this government depression and the way you're persecuting refugees. We are going to storm in the capital and we

want the lawmakers to hear from us. So they push through, they smash and they hit all of the Capitol police officers. They kill a Capitol police officer. They injure for. They smash through. We're talking about a group of Hispanic men and women, black men and women. They run into the Senate chambers. They throw the paper everywhere and they say, we're not leaving until we get justice. Popak, would it be an understatement to say, every single one of them would get life in prison? Every single one of them would get life in prison. Folk stop.

I'll give you two observations. One, if the Trump administration, and it's Attorney General was in charge, the answer to that question is yes. However, if what you just described happened, if it were black men and women and brown men and women storming the Capitol, Trump would have made sure, and you pointed this out before, Trump would have made sure that the National Guard was present at that moment. And we would have had people shot and killed was present at that moment. And we would have had people shot and killed like Kent State and other and other times in our dark times in our history. There would have been water cannons used,

there would have been firepower used. We would have had mass death on the steps of the capital, except it was white, blonde, privileged people flying with private jets and others. privilege people flying with private jets and others. Right. And here she's flying in in a private jet. She's projecting this influencer lifestyle. And now she's out there basically begging for money to support her legal expenses. Are you going to be? You're right, Popak. If it was the Trump administration that was in power, when the example I just gave, you're right, they would have killed all of the protesters. If it was a democratic administration, it would have been life, it would have been

life in prison, but that's what would have happened. And so to see 60 days, you know, while I'm glad she's going to prison, you just look at her tweets. She's mocking the legal system. Well, let me, let me, let me outline one more sentencing this week. And then I want to ask you what what you think is going on with the Garland set of prosecutors here. So Matthew Mazzoco was sentenced this week as well. The federal prosecutors asked for home confinement because I think you and I talked about the two or three podcasts ago. You know, you get to go participate in an insurrection against your government, enter the capital and you get sent home with a t-shirt, a participation t-shirt, and that can't

be the messaging. You and I both said the day that that happened in the next day when we did the podcast that they should be sent to the equivalent of 11-worth penitentiary, every one of them, to be breaking big rocks into little rocks for the rest of their natural born life. This set of prosecutors aren't doing that. Much to the chagrin of some of the judges. So Tanya Chutkin, I call her Hang-Em-Hi Chutkin with praise. Well, we're going to talk about during the later segments at tonight on the Jan 6th and the Executive Privilege application

happen to be a judge this week for Matthew Muzoko. Prosecutors ask for home confinement. The judge takes one look and says, you are not going to participate in an insurrection and the violent overthrow of the government and go home and sit at home and serve your sentence. She threw the book at him in her way. She gave him 45 days in prison. Now, he's interesting because he did not commit any damage to property nor did he participate in a violent attack on a human being. He went into the Capitol,

was there for a short amount of time, took a lot of photos like he was on some sort of tourist binge and then left, but Chuck and sent him to jail for 45 days and the other judge Cooper sent Jenna, or Jen, whatever her name is, for 45 days and the other judge Cooper sent Jenna or Jen, whatever name is for 60 days. So what do you think is happening here with this level of participant and the sentencing that they're being given? I don't think they have enough resources.

And I think they are trying to focus. They have a lot to focus on. Trump left them with a ton of massive crimes that they are looking into, and at the highest levels, to have a former presidential administration engage in a coup to encourage an insurrection is something that we've never seen before in our country. So I think tasked with these issues of over resources over what are we going to do with someone like this influencer lady who's out there, you know, you know, you know, you know, sprouting her mouth on Twitter or this random loan officer from Texas, like we don't have enough time to even deal with them. Our prosecutors are focused on all these other issues. I think that's what's going on, but I think it's very problematic. I think you have to as a prosecutor in this situation, call the bluff of the geno Ryan's of the world. No one is forcing you to settle with these people. And to me, it's not ultimately

like putting on these trials is going to be all that difficult. Have a low level first year prosecutor do this case and do the trial. It'll probably take two or three days and ask the jury and ask consentencing for five to 10 years. Someone like a gen Orion should be doing at least five years because that is how you send a message to future genorians and that insurrection. Yeah, sure, you talk about the loan officer,

you talked about from Texas. Maybe he walked in and he didn't actually cause damage, but he gets away with it. All these future fucking idiots and fascists look at this and go, you know what? Maybe next time I could push it this further. I could push it this further. It's like the kid who just goes one step further and further and further. While they don't get punished. And before you know it, they basically stolen mom and dad's car and driven it out to whatever.

But that is the issue. What do you think's going on? Well, yeah, well, I agree with you. Let me give you an example. I think that the resources that the federal government has devoted to prosecuting the parents that bribed their children's way into universities and colleges under the the varsity blues investigation which led to

Felicity Huffman serving time in jail and William H. Macy, your husband. The resources that were devoted to that that are still being devoted to that to put are still being devoted to that, to put on trials in Boston, to send the message that rich entitled parents can't bribe their kids way through universities. Why isn't that same approach being used to people that storm the Capitol in a violent insurrection?

That's so true, Pope. It's absurd. It is absurd, and that is the perfect juxtaposition where it seemed the full force and power of the United States government thrown at this group of parents. By the way, fucked up. My parents, you know, but, but, but, but, but, same scale. Not even close to the same shenerion storming the Capitol. It shouldn't even be on a scale compared to insurrection. But yeah, where are those resources? Where are those prosecutors?

Higher more prosecutors. Go to the top law schools and let's get a fucking army of prosecutors who say, where for the democracy? And let's tell big law firms, hey, let's have your associates do something for our democracy and prosecute these motherfuckers. That's a very good observation. Deputizing private lawyers and law firms

to assist with prosecution is not unheard of. When I was a second year in in a big firm in New York to get experience, I handled by myself because it was years before I be able to go to a courthouse with with a paying client. But on a pro bono basis, they had a program where I signed up and I I was deputized for a case on the prosecutor's side for an appeal. And there's now a case, you can look it up, people versus Lucas, it's about bolstering testimony

when police testify, but I was writing the appeal on behalf of the state, on behalf of the prosecutors. And so you can do that. You can go get some Ivy League kids who are never gonna see the inside of a courtroom for the next 10 years and make them deputized as assistant U.S. attorneys to go prosecute these cases. You're right. I haven't seen the analysis about a resource deficiency here, but your observation makes perfect sense. Popo, your people, Melucus. Listen, you still good law in the books of New York.

People be Lucas, it's Pope Accus. I never knew that. You'd learn something new about Pope Ac everyday. And we learned something new on legal AF everyday. And so my friend Jeremy Stahl wrote this great article for Slate about how in the absence of real kind of accountability coming from prosecutorial bodies and the slow pace at which the January 6th commission is going.

And although it's moving quicker, we'll talk about some updates in January 6th and Trump's claim for executive privilege, but private defamation cases as a means to accountability. And in this Jeremy Stahl article for slate, he cites how in a Colorado case, you already have depositions being taken of Rudy Giuliani of Powell and others. And I've seen those depositions. What a fucking clown Giuliani is. Giuliani made it worse. He made he liable them again in the he basically proved the liable case

in his deposition testimony. We'll talk about it next. They they asked Giuliani a question about like he goes, I don't have to why would I have to do my research? And uh because I was given the report. I had to act quickly. And so I just said it. I think wait, wait, wait, wait, that's all true. Here's what he said in his deposition under oath in that, in that smart mat was a smart matiker. Was it dominion, smart matik, right? Yeah, the smart, but the smart matik thing just baffles my mind, though, pop out because smart matik only operated an elections operation in Los Angeles County and didn't even do smartmatic. It's like with these GQ peers, and I want you to say what happened in the in the position in a second,

but they latch on what they're actually good at is like a word like dominion and smart like flat earth CRT like it's a phrase that just fucking hypnotizes. They're fucking morons who go, oh, smartmatic was about. What's smartmatic only did a small amount of voting facilities in LA County. They weren't even in it. But anyways, what happened to Giuliani? So Giuliani testifies under oath in the deposition. And this is what he said. He said 12 to 13 wasn't sure how many executives from dominion and smart

matic went to Venezuela to meet with President Maduro in order to demonstrate from Maduro how with when Chavez was the president they were able to vote alter and change the election. This was the basis, which is totally untrue, which is totally defamatory, which never happened. So, this rises the level of not just defamatory information. This is actual malice, because you knew or should have known at the time that you made that statement and now in the deposition making the statement that it had no support in the truth, which is defamation per se, and we'll get them hundreds of millions

of dollars of an award, ultimately, who's going to pay it, who knows, but they're going to, they're going to win. And what I like about the strategy here that is outlined in slate, but that has been obvious to you and I for the last 20 episodes is that they're not just putting all their eggs, the plaintiffs are putting all their eggs in one basket, either. Smartmatic filed their original lawsuit. We talked about it a long time ago. In February of this year, February of 2021, against in the in the New York one against Fox News and Giuliani and debater Olo and and Piro and all the blue dobs and all of that. That's still pending in New York State Supreme trial court level since February of 2021.

Now they file in the federal court in the District of Columbia, basically the same suit, but now against the whole new group of right-wing entities, including Newsmax and the other ones. So I love the fact that they're making these defendants, Giuliani and Powell and Trump, Fox and OANN defend themselves, not just in one court with one judge,

but in multiple courts, in state and federal courts all around the country at the same time, which is great because A, it's usually the other way around, usually these large corporate types try to bleed the plaintiffs dry by making them do battle on multiple courthouse steps and spend a lot of money and resources. But Dominion and Smartmatic have money. So they're doing the same thing. They're filing five and six and seven of these lawsuits that have to be defended all at the same time and simultaneously, which is I I'm sure, fatiguing and draining will ultimately lead to victory

in terms of their strategy. What do you think about that? It's an incredible strategy. It's like the legal version of Kill Bill. It's like Dominion and Smartmatic are out for revenge. And they're climbing the ladders of basically, you know, not killing, but legally destroying like the lower level people as they work their way up to Donald Trump ultimately is where it's headed in Rupert Murdoch is where it's ultimately heading. It shows you the different before you move on. It shows you the difference because you and I've talked a lot about this between the

really poor loyering and the lawyers that are surrounding Trump and all the people involved in Gen 6 and stop the steel rally, all these lawyers that make appearances, another Jenna Ellis and all these other strange people. And compare that to the legal talent and fire power that are being retained by the legitimate companies and individuals who are suing Trump in the civil court. Because that's where we saw it in the OJ trial.

That's where justice may happen. It may happen on the civil side, in the civil courts, while the US Attorney and the Department of Justice sort of get its act together on the criminal side. That's why I wanted to, and why I was an M civil lawyer. I always wanted to go into politics, Pope Pockets, why I went to Georgetown, law, I interned for politicians. I always thought, I want to, I want to, to shocking revelation by then, my Salis.

But I then went in another direction, because I'm like, I don't think I can get, I want to get stuff done that actually helps people. And I thought the best way to actually help people and make an impact at a young age was being a civil lawyer. And you can see the strengths of being a civil lawyer. Let's talk about two of these civil defamation cases

that were filed recently very briefly. Smartmatic in the district court of Washington, DC filed against OAN, 3G1 paragraph from this complaint. Smartmatic provided election technology and services to Los Angeles County during the 2020 US election. It's technology and software were used nowhere else in the country and yet OAN published report after report naming Smartmatic as one of the voting machine

companies that had conspired to steal the election by switching votes from former president Trump to current president Biden. It was, it was all a lie and OAN knew it. And then it starts off by saying this, the first time it happened, it could be a mistake. The second, third, fourth, and 50th times it happened were intentional choices. OAN had every opportunity to do the right thing after the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. It could have reported the truth. Instead, it chose to do wrong every single time. It reported a lie.

And it talked about the financial motivations the lawsuit does that OAN wanted to juice its ratings in competing with Fox News and other. It was like a race to the bottom of who could be more defamatory towards these companies. So that was that case. Before you move on, and the heart of that complaint, again, based on a complaint that Smartmatic is currently prosecuting in the civil side in New York State Supreme against

Fox and Company, is the, just to remind everybody, there was a joint coordinating committee on election infrastructure with six or seven different federal agencies, including cybersecurity and things related to elections, who on November 12, 2020 report definitively established that there was no voter fraud at all, systemic or otherwise, that would have changed the election on the voting day that Biden beat Trump. End of story. And that's the heart of every one of these defamation cases that in the face of that factual analysis and report, these news entities and news media outlets in order to gin their ratings lied with actual malice against the smart maddox of the world.

And when you climb the ladder, Allah killed Bill. You know, who do you find? You find one person at the end of the day, Donald Trump and the cult of Trump. And maybe somewhere near his side, you see Rupert Murdoch. I think we can have a debate who's pulling whose strings there, but at the end of the day, that's at the top of the ladder. And the other defamation case to touch briefly on is the case filed by James Savage in Philadelphia County Court of Common Please, Civil Division. That's like their superior court there. Again, Donald Trump, Giuliani, the Trump for president campaign, the Giuliani law firm, Jenna Ellis, Gregory Stenstrom, Leah, Leah Hoops. Thomas Moore society. Thomas Moore

society. That'll be that one will be interesting. I have an interesting take on this one. I'll share with you. Yeah. And it says Savage was in charge of the suburban Philadelphia voting machine warehouse and GOP poll watchers Gregory Stenscher and Lea Hoops. They then defamed him. It's alleged when they said that he took a USB card and uploaded 50,000 illegal votes for Biden. He's doing them. And that whole bullshit conspiracy, the defamatory conspiracy, uh, by Gregory

Senschderman Leah Hoops. It's argued in the lawsuit was coordinated by Trump, Giuliani, and all of these other figures. My only view on this one is savage has a bit of a different calculus than some of these big companies, because Dominion and Smartmatic have a lot of money, and they can go after a lot of defendants. To me, strategically here, Savage going after all of these entities as an individual who likely doesn't have the same resources. I don't know what his arrangement is with the law firm, but then you bring in a Thomas

more society, which is going to, you know, also defend themselves very. Which is a law firm, which is a law firm and have unlimited resources and soon the law firm has some different implications. The law firm is likely going to claim a bunch of legal advice, style, civil immunities. We won't get into all of those here, but they have some defenses of being a law firm. I think my view is that I like the lawsuit. I think he's going to prevail with certain defendants. I think he overstretched here in terms of naming the defendants and it's going to come back to bite him strategically. If you and I had taken this case, it's a case that you and I could have taken.

If you and I had taken the case, I would have had a much narrower field as you just outlined of defendants to target probably two or three of them. Trump, Giuliani and the two people who defend. Right. I don't need the rest and I don't need to battle with a law firm over the ethics of suing a law firm. His case is interesting because they never named it by name, but he was basically the the John Doe who the media later figured out and outered him as the John Doe, who they were claiming had downloaded 50,000 votes in favor of Biden.

As if that's what was required in order for Biden to win suburban Philadelphia, which I think went 75% and has historically for years in favor of the Democrat, but putting that aside for a minute, he claims intentional inflection of emotional distress. He claims other physical and mental emotional arms. He said he had two or three heart attacks related to it. You know, there's going to be some arguments. We'll follow the case about whether, you know, he was in the zone of, of, of consequential people, you know, that, that could have been injured by these statements. I think he is.

But I would have made a narrower case. I would have made a simpler case and a faster case to get to the truth and get the justice than this one. But we'll follow this one. I think our followers and listeners will like to hear updates on this. That is because you are a genius, Pope, this podcast is sponsored by policy genius. And I want to talk to you briefly about the importance of life insurance. If someone relies on your financial support, whether it's a child, aging parent, or even a business partner, you need life insurance to properly provide for their families. Most people need 10 times

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find your best price. When you're ready to apply the policy genius team will handle the paperwork and scheduling for free policy genius does not add on extra fee. So what do you do? Head to policygenius.com slash legal AF to get started right now. That's policy genius. When it comes to insurance, it's nice to get it right. Popoq, let's talk about Trump's claims of executive privilege or rather his claims to try to cover up his role in the January. Speaking of not getting it right, let's go to Trump and executive privilege. I think we talked about this on past podcasts of legal AF that Trump's claim for executive privilege regarding information arising out of the January 6th insurrection is dubious as we know the January 6th Committee subpoenaed records from the National Archives post Nixon and Nixon.

The law was basically a little bit of a free for all. Presidents could basically spole eight and try to destroy their records and and not have the sunshine that we need. I point out the law of Nixon because Trump's dumb fuck lawyer. In my opinion, is a dumb fuck lawyer. Yeah, that's a DFL. Trump's lawyer cites the law that Nixon used that we all agreed as a country was bad so that there was an actual law passed by Congress to deal with this specific situation where the records would be transferred to the National Archives for subpoena and for records request in these purposes.

And that the privilege, the executive privilege lies with the executive, the current executive, not the loser former guy. And generally where there is comedy, C O M I T Y, between presidential administrations and they're in agreement because executive privilege furthers our democracy presidents may agree and say, Hey, this is illegitimate executive privilege. But where a prior president is trying to engage in a cover up of criminal acts to engage

in a coup, guess what? The future presidents and executives are going to say, uh, uh, uh, uh. And so Trump's lawyers had a hearing in front of the district court of DC in front of a judge who we talked about before I'm your chuckkin and It didn't exactly go we're not ever ruling yet, but it didn't seem to really go in Trump's favor What happened at the hearing Pope by when the judge laughs out loud and I've heard the recording at your arguments It's probably going terribly for you. The first thing that went terrible for them is they pulled hang him high chuckkin, who

we've talked about in the sentencing context as the judge and Obama appointee. We wind you one second, but it started going bad when Trump hired a lawyer who identifies himself as quote, a mega lawyer. Yes, well, that's what they, that's true. They have that's true. They have a lawyer who, this is all that's left to Trump to hire. It's not like legitimate lawyers like you and I are going to join him any longer. So yes, they had, he had one of these mega lawyers who's done all sorts of nutty things and argued about conspiracy theories and stealing the election as the lawyer.

So that lawyer gets up there and the battle that he thought he was going to be having with the judge was about Nixon versus General Services Administration in 1974 case on the books of the Supreme Court in which Nixon, as you as you mentioned or touched on, was trying to keep certain recordings. We all know now that Nixon had 24-7 audio recordings going on in the White House in the Oval Office, and he was trying to keep batches of those things, which our national records should have been in the archives from being disclosed and used against them in any way and tried to exert executive privilege. So in that case, since 1974, the Supreme Court was a little bit mushy about whether the

executive privilege could be asserted by a former president in contrast to the sitting president. But all that got resolved in 1978 when the federal government, when Congress passed the Presidential Records Act. So Chuck and sort of cut the lawyer off at the pass and said, well, why are you arguing the Nixon precedent? When Congress changed that law in 1978, and now everything has to go to the National Archives, and it's quite clear in that new act that Congress passed

that it's the sitting in that new act that Congress passed that it's the sitting president that holds the executive privilege and can make the decision whether to wave it or not. And not the former, the former president, why are you talking about the former president having a right to wave or not wave or assert the privilege? And you know what, you know, the lawyer for Trump just kind of, you know, he's already kamikaze anyway. So he just sort of doubles down on it and says, well, yeah, maybe true, but, you know, he's already kamikaze anyway. So he just sort of doubles down on it and says, well, yeah, maybe true, but, you know, this president that's sitting there today is the incumbent president. He can't be trusted with exercising the privilege. I don't know why that would

be possible. And you have to rely on the guy that was involved in the coup instead for deciding whether the record should be, should be covered or not. And then led to the chuckle moment. The chuckle moment was when the lawyer actually said it with a straight face that Trump had been cleared by the FBI and Homeland Security of any improper conduct on Jan 6th. And the judge said, where is that? What's your support for that statement? And then the lawyer said there was an article on Reuters that quoted the FBI and the judge said

stop. Your basis for saying that President Trump was clear to any wrongdoing is an article by a news media outlet, and this would be the left wing media, by the way, Reuters quoting some FBI report or agent, that's your support. And so she laughed out loud at the guy. And I'm sure he lost, if he had any credibility or shred of it, when he walked into the courtroom, sort of went out the window. She's going to rule quickly. into the courtroom, sort of went out the window. She's going to rule quickly. Here's the popok, Miss Allias, C.N. prediction. She's going to rule the next week that the National Archives can turn over the records on November 14th or so whenever the date was exactly to the Gen 6 Commission. And if he doesn't like it, he's going to have to try to take an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. Absolutely. And two observations here. One observation, I always love it when

that GQP MAGA echo chamber has to like bring those absurd conspiracies and arguments into a forum of actual thinkers, where thinkers can challenge their ideas. This is why Trump lost 70 of his bullshit cases when he was trying to engage in the coup because they were all completely and utterly absurd. And that's what happened here when this lawyer was the Maga lawyer was spouting Maga the legal equivalent of flat earth legal arguments to a judge. And the judge saying, what the hell are you talking about? But here's another observation I want to make too. This is why having federal judges who are not part of that echo chamber are so important. Trump got through a number of echo chamber judges

who are now actually federal district court judges who would approach this argument very different, who may agree with the lawyer. Trump's Maga lawyer is a type of person who Trump would try to appoint to the judiciary when Trump was president. So those arguments you're hearing, there are some federal judges who would potentially buy that argument as crazy as that sounds. And so while it's important for us to hold Joe Manchin and cinema accountable, let's also be thankful though that Democrats have a majority in the Senate as slim as it is because the most important thing Biden is doing now is the one of the least discussed things. His appointment of federal judges to district courts and circuit courts is the and courts of

appeal is the most important thing that he's doing right now. I don't want to, we're not going to lose that. And if McConnell was in charge of the Senate, you would not allow any of these nominees to go forward. Period. No way. I agree with that. The only thing just to just to put a final period on the executive privilege, uh, hearing with Judge Chuck and my sense from reading the oral argument is that she may give them a very small bone, which is to narrow slightly the scope of the Jan 6th Committee's subpoena, because they want to roll it back to April 2020. And I'm not sure or roll it forward to April 2020, and I'm not sure she's going to give them all of that in order to figure out what happened on Jan 6th.

But that may be the only thing she does with a blue pencil. She just narrows the scope a bit, tailors it just a little bit more. Other than that, those records are going over to the Jan 6th Committee. What one, and just one more thing, to have Trump's lawyer argue that these records were confidential,

totally falls in the face of the fact that the president's a public position. This is a public steward, and time and time again in this oral argument, the general counsel for the House of Representatives and the representative from the DOJ kept on reminding him. The president's a public position. This is public.

These records are presumed to be public. There's no confidentiality around these records. And then Trump's lawyer was a will. He's the president, you know, basically arguing that the president should be like treated as a king. Popok, let's give the update on SBA, the oral argument of this heinous and horrific and unconstitutional, which will likely be declared unconstitutional law by the Supreme Court. Oral argument was held November 1. Remember, the substance of Roe v. Wade, the substance of the abortion ban is not specifically at issue in this case. That's coming up soon in December 1,

when there's an oral argument on the Mississippi case where there is a state law, essentially banning abortions after 15 weeks, which is a direct challenge to Roe v Wade. This law addresses the federal, this case and oral argument on November 1, addresses the federal government's power to enjoy or stop a state law in this case, the Texas law, which basically deputizes private individuals to take out

bounties on people who aid and assist in the process of getting an abortion. We've talked at Nozium about why we think this law is unconstitutional. I mean, number one, it goes against Supreme Court precedents and deputizes private individuals to go around Supreme Court precedent. But it seems that the Supreme Court agreed that it is unconstitutional. Popo, what do you observe with the Supreme Court? Why it is when why we're certain justices who would not typically seem to be sympathetic with the Department of Justice position and joining Texas, why do they seem sympathetic here? All right, so let me update our listeners and followers. I thought going into the hearing on Monday, which was a three-hour oral argument done in two sessions. If you remember, two cases from

Judge Pittman in Austin, Texas came up together, we're joined together on the docket for the oral argument, one brought by the abortion providers and one brought by the Department of Justice in the name of the United States versus Texas. Both cases challenging a number of things, the constitutionality of SB 8 fundamentally at the heart of it, but also the procedural bounty aspect of it where Texas too smart by half to paraphrase Justice Kagan at the oral argument tried to or as she put it, who are these geniuses that thought they could do an end run around sitting Supreme Court precedent since 1908, putting that aside for a minute.

Those geniuses came up with the idea there will be no state actors by name. We will deputize individual citizens who will sue the abortion providers and people that facilitate abortions directly. Therefore, we'll avoid federal court review and federal constitutional review of our plainly unconstitutional SBA abortion ban, and that's how we're going to do it.

So all of the judges have got tied up in knots, starting not with Pittman because he was very clear that he felt he had the jurisdiction to make the ruling on the constitutionality, but certainly the fifth circuit court of appeals didn't. And originally two months ago, the Supreme Court in looking on an emergency appeal of the abortion providers, a case thought that it was very complicated, the whole procedural mechanism and they weren't ready to hear it. So they let it come back up with the US versus Texas case. So we have three hour hearing. You and you and I talked last week, I thought it was going to be Sotomayor who's written all of the very poignant descents here. That was going to take the lead and really bash

Texas position and lead the intellectual thought process on that bench of nine people. It wasn't. It was Kagan. no surprise. It's her ideological twin, but it was Justice Kagan, who most eloquently went after and attacked and picked up the pieces when she saw that a Kavanaugh or an Amy Coney Barrett was making a point where it looked like they were leaning in the direction of finding that procedurally SBA was defective and could be reviewed by a federal court on federal constitutional grounds. She ran with it. So there were two sessions.

They started the conversation with the abortion providers and they ended it with the US versus Texas case. But of course, there were there was common arguments and common questioning that ran through the entire three hours. What it looks like when the dust settled is that there's going to be at least five if not six votes, if they vote the way that they were asking questions. There's going to be at least a majority that finds that the that SBA can can be reviewed by a federal court on federal constitutional grounds, notwithstanding the language of SBA. That's all that's

going to be decided, which means, and this is where you and I had a little bit of a debate last week. I think that decision comes out in the next 30 days before Mississippi's case is heard about whether abortions can be banned less than 23 weeks between 15 and 23 weeks taking on the heart of Roe v Wade and Casey. I think they issued this early. I think it comes out in the next 30 days before the argument in December. And I think it then gets sent back procedurally back to judge pitman

and back to the fifth circuit with instructions from the US Supreme Court that you federal judges are empowered to review the constitutionality of SB8 and regardless of what the bounty law mechanism says. And then you work that up on briefing, we'll bring that back up to the Supreme Court on a proper appeal while we go move on to Mississippi and the substantive arguments of Roe v. Wade. What do you just just this Kavanaugh who you think would perhaps be a sympathizer with the SBA law was very critical of the law, but not for the reasons you think.

He basically in his questions, it weighed a minute. If you can do this for a woman's right to choose, hmm, couldn't a blue state basically pass a law like this when it comes to gun control and couldn't you do an end run around our precedence of the second amendment, which Pope Buck and I will talk about in a little bit, couldn't you do an end run around it and couldn't

a state pass a similar bounty law where people are suing individuals for aiding and abetting others in obtaining firearms despite our rulings. And then the Texas lawyer, the Roy representative Texas, had a concede. Yeah, that would be you'd be able to do that. So leave it to a white male justice to basically protect his guns as finding a way to also on this particular case, potentially strike down a law like SBA.

It was less troubled by that than some of the reading I did in preparation for tonight's podcast. I know people are saying, what does guns have to do with abortion? And like you just said, leave it to a white male to use that. I was less concerned about that. I thought and Kagan really shoved it back up. Kavanaugh's backside in the second session when she used that exact same line of questioning against Texas in the DOJ case.

Why is that even important? It's because the federal Supreme Court, the Supreme Court, that declares what is the law of the land. That's their job in the co-equal branches of government since 1801. If they don't have that job, the amount of will put out a gone fishing sign and they go out of business because if they can't declare fundamentally what the federal constitution provides in a case arising out of a state action, they're sort of out of business. And I think that is the fear that all the justice had and even the conservative justice

had, which is, what are we doing? We're going to let states decide when we have the power and jurisdiction to declare federal constitutional rights. No way. And I think you use the Second Amendment to drive home the point to the Texas guy who's probably a gun-toting attorney general or solicitor general, whatever he is, to say, really, you want us, you want to do that?

Kagan put it even better, Ben. Kagan said she called them unpreferred constitutional rights, meaning there are certain states where they are constitutional rights, and they are what they say they are. They're the rights that are embodied and guaranteed by the US Constitution. But some states may prefer some rights over others like you can choose. The problem with that analysis is you can't choose. All constitutional rights are almost equal. I mean, some are given a little more priority than others when there's a conflict between constitutional rights, but all constitutional rights, if it's in the Constitution or the court is declared it, have power and weight, and you are not allowed as a state to pick and choose.

I like this one. I like this one on religious, the division of church and state, stay out of my church, but I don't like this one because I wanna go into your bedroom. You don't get to choose that. And I love the her turn of the phrase because it was so withering in its eloquence. Unpreferred constitutional rights.

You may not like guns, same sex, reproductive rights. But are we gonna make it with that? And she said it this way are we going to make it, and she said it this way, are we going to make it that we're open for business that states can just ignore the power of the US Supreme Court to declare the law of the land? There's no way they're going to do that. They may even get eight to one on SBA, certainly a majority. That's the prediction. to one on SBA, certainly a majority. That's the prediction. I get a little nervous, though, Popak, about where we are headed, though, on December one in the Mississippi case, because a lot of the right wing justices who did not favor SBA'd here, though, made a number of comments to that. Basically said, well, why do we come on

Texas? Like, why do we really even care about this SBA? Like, you know what we're about to do in December? I mean, they didn't say it like that, but they might as well have said it like that. And I think there was one statement that was even made. And I forget which justice made it, but a right wing justice, basically saying, do you think that the reductions and abortions are really being caused by SB8? Or the fact that people know what's coming in the future. It was Alito, it was Alito.

And the answer was so effing disingenuous. What was the response? The response is, I don't know. Okay, so Kagan ran with that in the second session and said, we have the chilling effect of SBA writ large in the last two months because abortions have dropped by 80% and this asshole actually stood in front of the well of the US Supreme Court and said,

no, I don't know why abortions are down. I know. In Texas, it could be a fact that Alito, but Alito was goading him to like to, to imply that it was also because people know that abortions may be banned in the future. I agree with that. And so that was a whole very, so you think. Wait, let me ask you. So you think we're that that they're just arranging the tech chairs on the Titanic that none of this really matters become come December. If they can get

five votes, Roe v Wade, as we know it is out the window. Is that your view? Yeah. And I don't think it's I don't think you'll see anything in an opinion that says Roe v Wade is no longer the law of the land. They're going to act like Robe Wade still exists, but they're going to gut it so much and give such deference to states to pass laws like the one we see in Mississippi, in my view. Despite the fact that 80% of the population believes abortion should be legalized. I just think they have. I think the talking about arranging the decks of the chairs and the decks of the Titanic, that's the, the decks have been arranged in the Supreme Court.

They have the votes to do this. This is exactly what they want to do. Now is the time to do it. They bring all these abortion cases, you know, in front of them. And I believe that's the reason they're going to do it. I want to give one observation. We're going to say, Pupac, good.

I was going to, while I was going to do a quick quickie on SBA before we leave it. Oh, do do the quickie and I'll make an observation of one of my Canadian friends. So one, one thing that annoyed me and others and one thing that I thought again was Kagan, Kagan's brilliance. Kagan, Kagan's comment, which I think will survive in the, the ultimate opinion. If, and if she's in the majority and she's asked to write it, I wouldn't be surprised if Kagan's comment, which I think will survive in the ultimate opinion. And if she's in the majority and she's asked to write it, I wouldn't be surprised if Kagan ends up writing it. But she said, because they were talking about these very esoteric concepts of a case from 1908 called X-parte-yong, which has to do with whether a state actor can be

enjoined from violating the federal constitution in a federal court. It's a whole doctrine about separations, not separations of power, but comedy and federalism and all of that. And she said, what geniuses came up with SBA that thought they could do away with over 100 years of precedent? Great line. But the thing that really annoyed me and others

is how little respect, gorsuch and others showed for the solicitor general who was a female solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelongar. I mean, there's a whole thing that came out earlier this year about Sotomayor saying that the rules have changed with Roberts

because it was empirically true that female justices were being cut off from asking questions by their male colleagues more than male colleagues were being cut off in their questioning and it happened over and over and over again. And when they took that evidence to Roberts, he changed the rules to make sure that all justices

and especially the female justice are not cut off when they're doing their questioning at the Supreme Court. So discrimination even happens within the U.S. Supreme Court, but they showed no respect to the female solicitor general in her arguments. Absolutely. And just an incredible person, Elizabeth Preylegger, if you look at her backstory and her history, I mean, she is 39, 40 years old and representing the United States

in front of the Supreme Court at the highest level. I mean, just an incredibly accomplished person and it was really unfortunate to see that in a lot of commentators said the same thing. How annoyed they were as well about that pop-up. Switching gears for a second pop-up updates in criminal investigations into the Trump organization and into Rudy Giuliani. First, let's start with the Manhattan DA convening a new special grand jury, the other grand jury into the Trump investigation. I guess they serve six

month terms and so the other one expired. And so a new grand jury is being empaneled that will serve another term. Is taking quite a long time just to remind our listeners, this is the investigation into the Trump organizations, various tax related schemes, payments to employees that were improper, and this is one of the reasons that their CFO is currently being criminally prosecuted for basically taking a ton of money without reporting it to the IRS.

But generally the broader claims into the Trump organization are really avoiding paying taxes at the end of the day and engaging in a number of tax Well, broad related schemes. That's the investigation. Yeah, why is it taking so long? Yeah, I again, you know, I'm gonna people know I'm very Honest Asian pop-up. I don't well. I don't blow smoke or so. I don't blow smoke or sunshine I have been you blowing smoke all episode today No, I'm inhaling. It's because I've been on the defense side in criminal cases. And I know

that it can take years. I mean, I've been involved when I, you know, in in my prior life with two year, three year investigations by multiple regulatory authorities and prosecutorial agencies over conduct to get to the bottom of it. So the fact that in the first six months of the special general grand jury, that's SIE Vance, the outgoing Manhattan District Attorney, he's replaced in January because he didn't run for office. His term was over Alvin Bragg, the first black Manhattan district attorney takes over in January. And there is this little

period, this interstitial period between the end of Scyvans and the beginning of Alvin Bragg that the first grand jury would have expired. So to help out his successor, Sy Vance went and got authority to, uh, to empanel a second special grand jury. That'll run three days a week for the next six months that he'll use from now till January and Alvin Bragg and his people will use from January forward. The first special prosecutors grand jury led to the indictment of the Trump organization and Weiselberg, the CFO for the Trump organization, related to basically income tax fraud on benefits given to and from the Trump organization that were not properly taxed. The second, what I understand from the media and from reports is that the new focus

of the Manhattan District Attorney in combination with Tisch James, the Attorney General for New York, is on loan valuation fraud, separate from what was done in the special grand jury the first time around. Now we're looking at, as you said, a different type of tax evasion, but loan valuation. Why? Because as Michael Cohen had testified, our fellow podcaster, is that when Trump wanted to borrow money and needed to show a balance sheet of a lot of assets, he would inflate the price or the value of his golf courses, hotels, single family home developments, buildings,

licensing agreements. They would be up, up, up, why? Because the loan to value ratio, you got to have a lot of money, especially if you're a personal guarantor, which he was a lot. He wouldn't be now. He's he's he would never be given alone on his own name. But so he pumps it up. But then when he wants to recover or lower his taxes, he lowers the value.

It's like a it's like a balloon. And now he drinks the value of those assets. So they're looking at the manipulation of loan value, of asset value by the Trump throughout. That's one. Secondly, they're looking at things as arcane as how much did the Trump organization charge for Gulf course memberships, which is like two or three hundred thousand dollars. Because Trump often uses that when he's negotiating with lenders or he's negotiating with taxing authorities to show the health of his organization and they think he's been manipulating that number in order to also commit loan fraud and ultimately tax fraud. So everyone's like, oh my god, it's been six months, whatever. There are so many things that the Trump organization

and Trump has done criminally wrong that it would, it takes more than one term of one prosecutor in one office to get it all in front of a grand jury. Patients, there'll be more indictments. Patients, Popak, AKA Pp, probably a smooth transition into Adam and Eve. This podcast is brought to you by Adam and Eve. Let me ask you a question. Are you getting enough? I bet you love more. Right, Popok? I, more is better.

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So somebody reached out to us the other day and was in a really bad car accident. And they asked us for advice. It wasn't in a state where we practiced, but we linked them with a great personal injury lawyer in a state that we knew would handle their case very well. So it could be something like that. If you're in a car accident or a friend or someone is in an accident or has an injury or was injured somewhere and we usually handle more significant catastrophic injuries, but reach out. We're happy to assess your case. Reach of contract, business dispute cases. Popo and I represent a lot of founders who have been kicked out of kind of companies

that have large valuations. We've worked in business disputes, complex business disputes for clients. So if you have a case, if you've been injured, if you know someone who's been injured, feel free to reach out to me, benat-touch.com, benat-touch.com, or you can reach out to Pop. Ben at MidasTouch.com. Ben at MidasTouch.com, or you can reach out to Popak at mPOP.

Okay, at zplaw.com. mPOPAK at zplaw.com. We will do our best to get back to you. And again, feel free to reach out to us. But yes, we do do. And there are people at our firms who handle those personal injury cases. And one more thing, both you and I and our firms have a national trial practice.

Our practices are not centered only or anchored only in your city in California. I'm sitting in New York. You have offices in different locations. So to why we're in Chicago and Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, New York and Miami, but I have cases and with you all across the country, a national practice, and so do you. So if somebody's sitting in Phil in the blank state and think, oh crap, Pope Box only admitted in a couple of states, we take cases throughout the country, we retain local council, we get admitted, especially in that particular jurisdiction, and we can handle that case. And if it's's advice giving because we're also counselors at law. I give us much business advice as I am litigating cases. We can certainly do that depending upon the type of situation. handle on a contingency, meaning we're not charging you any money or an hourly rate

unless and until we recover. So the advice and consultation is free. And if we recover money, then, you know, there's a percentage, but otherwise, there's no like hourly fee for a lot of those cases. So anyway, moving on, Popak to the... You want to do Giuliani? Yeah, I do. Duty Giuliani brings me down, but we could talk about duty Giuliani.

I'll give you one minute. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. One minute to touch. Duty Giuliani. All right. So yeah, there's a prosecution update with Giuliani. So the Southern District of New York, we've talked about this 15 podcasts ago, is now focused. The reports are on one particular bad thing, Giuliani, and it's two colleagues, Vicki, Tonsing, and Joe D. Javona have done, which is to get into bed with the a Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, and come up with a scheme where Lutsenko

and the Ukrainian prosecutor's office would hire Giuliani and his other lawyers on a contract, all bullshit, in order to basically buy influence over Trump, but it would be a contract for the private legal services of Giuliani, hundreds of thousands of dollars to do, who knows what, and in return, the Ukrainian prosecutors would announce a investigation of Hunter Biden and his involvement with Burisma, which is an energy company sitting in the Ukraine. So this is what the Southern District now is focused on.

And this is, and whether Giuliani did not properly record himself or announced that he was a foreign actor, or foreign agent working for a foreign government, which is a crime, as would be for the other two people. So this, again, the news is tightening here around Giuliani focused on his involvement with Hunter Biden, Burisma, Ukrainian prosecutors, and getting paid and put money in lining his pockets with cash in order to pedal influence over Trump. Let's talk about this second amendment case that went before the Supreme Court this week, the cases in New York State, rifle and pistol association versus brewing

versus brewing and it involves a law that was passed in New York regulating concealed handguns. And in this particular law, it requires an individual who is having a concealed handgun to show quote proper cause. and the Supreme Court focused on this standard that existed in New York of this extra showing of proper cause, Judge Kavanaugh asked, why isn't it good enough just to say I live in a violent area, doesn't that satisfy the standard of proper cause? There hasn't been a lot of second amendment real landmark cases since the Heller decision, um, which 2008, 2008.

So what's going on here, Popeye? Yeah, and let me, let me preface it by saying it. I've said another podcast. I'm sort of the right wing's worst nightmare because I am both a card carrying member of the ACLU. And in the past, I've had a concealed weapons permit when I lived in Florida for personal safety purposes. And I did everything right. I got registered. I didn't, I don't have a criminal background. I learned how to use a weapon. I had to take a test on gun safety and unlicensing. And I always, always, always was very respectful that I was carrying something of lethal force and only used it for self protection. And I think, Sentseller, at least, that that is inappropriate.

I'm not in favor of AK-47s. I'm not in favor of tanks. I'm not in favor of high velocity weapons or magazines with thousands, hundreds of rounds, but I am in favor of that. So, I watched with interest the Second Amendment argument, which came up from the Second Circuit. Second Circuit had found that the New York Law that was on the books for over 100 years that had this additional requirement of showing this cause in order to get a handgun

or to get personal or to bear arms, if you will, was constitutional, even underheller. Here's the problem. The problem is in reality, no one can satisfy, almost no one can satisfy the requirement in the state of New York York unless you own a liquor store or upon shop or you're you're you're sort of in the quasi governmental or security mode the average citizen never satisfies this unless you know a cop and he can help you get it

It's all it's a whole shadow market going on in New York, one that I have not taken advantage of. But the reality is, no one can exercise if it is a constitutional right, which it has been since 2008 under the Heller decision. Then the question is, does New York's additional requirement, which results in almost no one being able to exercise the right constitutional. And the writing is on the wall.

This is gonna go down six, here's the prediction, six to three at least, that the New York law as written is gonna be found to be unconstitutional, allowing for with regulation, with permitting, with licensing, with restrictions, not to be able to bring it into schools or stadiums, but there's going to be concealed carry as a constitutional right following this argument.

What do you think? I agree with you. That's going to be the outcome. I haven't read it yet, but let me send you something that my buddy from Canada sent me just about their right wing versus our right wing here in the United States. He texts me, he goes, quote, our supposed crazy right wing prime minister, Steven Harper came down hard on parliamentarians who made anti-abortion comments. He maintained all gun control and decide from a brief stupid hesitation on Syrian refugee admissions was very pro multiculturalism. And so just looking north, the idea of common sense gun control,

not worshipping firearms, common sense protections on a woman and child bearing persons right to choose. You sometimes forget just how strange our country is sometimes on these laws, you know, and you know, this, this, it is a strange standard that had to be satisfied here, you know, because it is kind of a subjective standard of like what constitutes like how do you meet the standard? Who's ruling on the standard? Is it a right or is it not a right? That's the fundamental. And to your point, you've raised this a lot. It's been a thread that you've pulled through here in all of our legal AFs.

You know, you've got the, of course, all of the right wing on the Supreme Court, who are all federal, who worship at the altar of the Federalist Society, and claim to be textualists, like like Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh and, and Gorsuch now in Alito and the rest of them are all like we need to go look at what the what the founding fathers would have thought about brandishing a handgun or a weapon in the public. They love the text, the text of the Constitution. And what was in the framers' mind when it suits them, but of course when it doesn't suit them, they say, well, we shouldn't really be hamstrung by that. Let's just make new law.

Yeah. And we've read what the actual second amendment says. And I'll just read it one more time for everybody listening. that, let's just make new law. Yeah, and we've read what the actual second amendment says. And I'll just read it one more time for everybody listening. This is what the second amendment actually says, a well regulated militia being necessary to the sex security of a free state, the right of the people to keep in bear arms shall not be infringed. I paused during comma. So a well regulated militia comma being necessary to the security of a free

state, comma, the right of the people to keep in bearia, comma, being necessary to the security of a free state, comma, the right of the people to keep in bear arms, comma, shall not be infringed. And the right wingers basically just read out the entire first sentence. And they just say the right of the people to keep in bear arms shall not be infringed, which is what the framers would have written if they wanted it to be an unlimited right to bear arms. It's the one area in the constitution that literally uses the word regulation. It says a well regulated militia, even if you wanted to read out the word militia, it

talks about regulation in it. So clearly what the founders would envision, I don't have to divine this. Clearly when you're talking about militarized weapons or AR-15s or whatever, that is something that would be well-regulated. And why do we have that? Why is that now the law of the land of 2008? One, just to remind people, elections have consequences. One vote, it was a five to four decision on the Heller case that established an individual right to bear, to keep and bear arms. And now everything flows from that forward.

One vote, and we're never gonna reverse it anytime soon because now the Supreme Court has, because it's gotten even more right wing with a six to three majority. So we have to win the next election, win the election after that, win the election after that, keep replacing Supreme Court justices with more moderate, more states people like Supreme Court justices. So this is going to be on the books for the next, you know, in the current form for the next 20 to 30 years until we get the chance, unless

unless the commission comes out and somehow we pack the court with five more or six more Supreme Court justices. Touch briefly on this, a federal lawsuit accused the NRA violating campaign finance laws by using shell companies to illegally funnel up to $35 million to Republican candidates over the past 10 years, including Donald Trump, Senator Hawley from Missouri, and others, this was filed by the Campaign Legal Center, filed the lawsuit last Tuesday in Washington

on behalf of Giffords, a gun control nonprofit founded by former Democratic US Representative Gabby Giffords, a gun control nonprofit founded by former Democratic, US representative Gabby Giffords and it accuses the NRA of practices dating to 2014 quote to evade campaign finance regulations. A big number. I think that's what they were able to trace and identify, but the NRA has been able to basically get a lot of outside money, and I think it's been reported foreign outside money as well, funneled through the NRA as this quote unquote nonprofit.

Again, Latissia James in New York challenged that nonprofit status we talked on legal AF about the efforts that were done by the NRA and past episodes to try to declare bankruptcy in Texas and it was all, you know, and tried, you know, Letitia James says, this is not a nonprofit, but in any event, I just want to touch, just touch briefly on that lawsuit. The NRA is in a nonprofit, but in any event, I just want to touch just touch briefly on that lawsuit.

The NRA is in a world of trouble, and it seems that maybe the NRA's front is rifles and guns, but in reality, that's the front, but it's a funnel that was pouring millions and millions of dollars into the coffers of Republicans through means that we're not legal. We will follow up with that more. We can't put one more in, Ben. You get this next one in. We'll set a record for legal AF in the amount of stories that we cover. We have, we have written house and we have DOJ suing Texas for voting on the, for the SB one law that Texas did to basically

prevent voter turnout. You want to start with written house? Yeah, let's do a written house. Go. All right. Written house. Written house is easy. The jury selection.

One of the jurors was dismissed for a racist joke. And terrible, a terrible racist joke that he told him to bail. Say racist joke. And I should probably correct myself. He was dismissed for being a fucking racist. Let's just say that. Right.

Yeah, he made a comment to the bailiff who handles the movement of jurors from room to room at breaks. And how he got through the voidier process, the jury selection process. You know, that's because you don't ask a question like, have you ever told a story whose punchline was racist? Maybe I might add that to my new vwad deer because this guy got through, that was, listen, it was only two days of jury selection. This judge does a very fast jury selection and there's only so many questions you can ask and so much information as lawyers that you can find. And then you have a limited number of strikes just to bring the listeners up to our jury selection process. The selection process you and I go through takes a long time.

I get five or six strikes. The other side gets five or six strikes. You got a panel of 200. You got it. That's all you can do. There's some that are dismissed for cause because they can't speak English properly. They they've said, it doesn't matter who the guy is, I'm going to convict him or something

else stupid. And then there's other ones that are permissive or voluntary. So, you know, you're left with that as your jury at the end. The other thing the judge has done just to let everybody know is there are 20 pan members of the jury that are seated in the box listening to testimony and evidence every day. They don't know, even the 20 don't know, and the lawyers don't know, and the judge doesn't know yet, who the 12 that are going to be asked to liberate are. So, there's eight alternates that are sitting in the box, but we don't know in the, and none of the participants know which are the alternates and are sitting in the box, but we don't know in the and none of the participants know

Which are the alternates and which are the actual jurors only on the day of deliberation at the end of the trial when the judge says Okay, here's the numbers of the 12 that are actually the jurors who are going to decide this case So this we don't know if the guy was an alternate or he was an actual jerk, because he's one of the 20. And he told a ridiculous comment against Mr. Blake, who was paralyzed by the police that led to the riots that led to this written house event in Kenosha, or he murdered two people. They got him off. Now they're down to 19.

And you know, that's the seven R spares, if you will, to make sure that there's always 12, because you're going to lose one or two during the course of a long trial anyway, for this reason or for other reasons, so the judge is trying to maintain. So it's not a waste of time on the trial that you always have your 12. That's what's happened here. Opening statements happen. We'll keep a close eye on it. The biggest development was the juror and there's already been two witnesses that have gone forward for the prosecution. Some of it has been good for the prosecution. Some of it has not been so great for the prosecution. We'll follow it more closely and give an update next week.

Would you always have to be focused on these cases during jury selection, especially very high profile cases is what's called a stealth juror. A juror who doesn't answer the questions in Waddeer truthfully and who's either going on because they have a mission, a mission to convict, a mission to exonerate, but they are there. Or be famous, a mission to write a book and be famous. Or exactly. So one of those three, or there could be a variety of other reasons, but you as a lawyer have to sometimes find not just is the person answering my questions, you know, with

attending and how the answers are truthfully, but is this person really at the end of the day is what they're saying, what they truly believe, or do they actually have an ulterior motive, which is one of the aspects that makes jury selection even difficult. And on a case like this with Kyle Rittenhouse, all it takes, you have to have a unanimous jury.

So all it could take is one juror, basically out of 12, who says that Kyle is not guilty to have a hung jury, and have to go through the process of a trial all over again. Popok, let's hit DOJ. We're setting a record. Set the record right now, Department of Justice, suing the state of Texas for violating voting rights act. So DOJ, after feeling good about their lawsuit against Texas for SB 8, now going after SB 1, the slew of unconstitutional laws

that Texas has been passing. SB 1 makes it more difficult for Texas voters institutional laws that Texas has been passing. SB1 makes it more difficult for Texas voters to access the ballots for Republicans post 2020. Their view across all states is the way we can win elections is make it more difficult to vote. That's the analysis that they made. They may be wrong about that analysis though

because what we saw in Virginia actually is that access to early access to voting, actually favor Republicans. So it's possible. There's no. It used to historically early voting was the dominion of Republicans. Democrats got it in the COVID world,

but historically it always been early votes where didn't go 80% for the Democrats. It went the COVID world. But historically, it always been early votes where didn't go 80% for the Democrats. It went for the Republicans. Well, Democrats got it in the COVID world because dumb fuck Trump was telling people not to do it. Like that's, he was telling his supporters don't vote and it's fraudulent. When it's not fraudulent,

and that actually would have favored his voters. So in this lawsuit, the DOJ argues SB1 and Texas further and impermissibly restricts the core right to meaningful assistance in the voting booth, prohibiting the sisters from answering voters questions, responding to requests to clarify ballot translations and confirming that voters with visual impairments have marked a ballot as intended will curtail fundamental voting rights without advancing any

legitimate state interest. Quote SB one will disenfranchise some eligible male voters based on paperwork errors or omissions immaterial to their qualifications to vote, quote, conditioning the right to cast a mail ballot on a voter's ability to recall and recite the identification number provided on an application for voter registration. Months years before will curtail fundamental voting rights without advancing any legitimate state interest.

That's the standard, Popeye. Is there legitimate state interests? We talked about the balancing test that's applied in these cases by federal courts over what constitutes a legitimate state interest. And while you have these legal balancing tests where you apply various factors. As we know, depending on what judge you draw, they're going to apply factors that lead

in favor of one perspective or the other usually. These voting legislation, as such a hot button issue, I just think it's going to be a case that goes ultimately to the Supreme Court. You're going to have the, I don't like to call them conservative, but very right wing fifth circuit court of appeals, who's likely going to allow the law to stand. That's where it's going to be headed. And then it becomes an issue ultimately if the Supreme Court decides to grant. Here's the good and the bad about this filing.

The good is to answer the question, what is Merrick Garland doing these days? Is he's continuing to have his Justice Department file suits in states to support, especially on the civil rights side. So our followers and listeners have to be satisfied, or should be satisfied with the Justice Department, with Vanita Gupta, with the Civil Rights Division of all the filings that you're doing. The entire Justice Department can't just be about

prosecuting Trump. They got to do other things as well. So I like the filing, but here I want to manage expectations. The Voting Rights Act, as we know it, has been gutted since it was passed during the Johnson Administration by the conservative right wing Supreme Courts, including in a recent decision that went really against the Voting Rights Act, and in favor of Arizona voter suppression laws by the current Supreme Court on a 6-to a 63 basis, where they found just recently, just a less than a year ago, that Arizona's, what they call, ballot harvesting provisions, and Arizona's, if you vote in the wrong precinct, it doesn't count aspects, do not violate doesn't it doesn't count aspects do not violate clause two or section two of the Voting Rights Act. That's the current composition of the US Supreme Court. They bend over backwards to find that voting

suppression provisions pass muster under the Voting Rights Act. So where we are flying into those headwinds with this case as to whether the specific restrictions against voter assistance in the polling area and other obstacles to mail-in voting are disproportionately discriminatory against people of race, or certain protected language participants. And so I'm glad he filed it, but I want everybody ready that there's a buzz saw of the current Supreme Court that this case is going to fly into, because as of yet, they haven't seen a voter suppression law that they haven't liked. Popok great analysis there and great analysis throughout this jam packed edition of legal a f popok. I see you checking your notes. Popok wants to cover more categories.

He's like anything else I got. We hit 10 categories on legal a f today, not bad. I mean, Popok, that was one of the most impressive legal AFs that we've done today, but the time goes by so quickly when we're breaking down the law and we get to have fun spending this time together. I want to give a special thanks to our sponsors, Adam and Eve, and policy genius. Remember, you can go to Adam and Eve.com slash legal

AF. You can go to policy genius.com legal AF. Make sure to support our sponsors. It allows Polpocchi and and my cell is in to spend this time with you each and every weekend. Again, feel free. If you have a case, yes, it can even be a personal injury case. Popoq and I will take a look at it. You, your friend, a colleague will take a look at it. Ben at MidasTouch.com is how you reach out to me. And Popoq's email was mpopoc at zplaw.com. Go to the MidasTouch merch store by going to MidasTouch.com, click on the link that says Merchandise, go and get your thank you brand and shirt, which is gonna sell out soon.

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