Legal AF by MeidasTouch - BREAKING: NEW Special Counsel APPOINTED by Merrick Garland

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

Legal AF host, Michael Popok, reports on breaking news with Merrick Garland’s appointment of a new Special Counsel Robert Hur to investigate President Biden’s handling of classified documents and what it means for the Jack Smith led Trump criminal investigation.  Shop LegalAF at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Michael Popak, legal AF with breaking news in the Biden classified document issue. We now have the appointment of a new special counsel by attorney general, Merrick Garland. It will be Robert K. Her H. You are a long time Department of Justice employee, former Maryland, US attorney appointed by Donald Trump originally also worked in the Trump Department of Justice and for the Attorney General at the time brought Rosenstein.

Mr. Herr also was counsel to FBI director Ray at one point as a long and illustrious career regardless of who appointed him in the areas of public corruption and national security. Why did Merrick Garland just this afternoon at a hastily-called press conference appoint a new special counsel because the timeline and the drip, drip, drip of spoon feeding information coming out, unfortunately, from the Biden administration has sort of forced Merrick Arland's hands. Let's look at the timeline. And then at the end, we'll talk about the differences and why there is likely no crime here having been committed, maybe a crime of inadvertence and sloppiness, but not the

same as what is facing Donald Trump. We'll talk about the impact on the Trump investigation related to Mar-a-Lago and other classified documents led by his special prosecutor, Jack Smith, in a moment. Let's first get the details. In November of 2021, sorry, 2022, the Biden administration informed Merrick Garland a day or so before he appointed Jack Smith as a special prosecutor over all things Trump, that they had located a small batch of classified documents as they were closing in office that that the Biden had originally used for his pen Biden center. It was like a think tank and consultancy that Biden had in between being the vice president

running for office and becoming president of the United States. They finally got around to closing that office. They found in a locked cabinet about a package of about 10 classified documents or so. That was reported to Merrick Garland who knew that in the back of his mind when he had the press conference to appoint Jack Smith. Even though the public didn't know about it, the Department of his mind when he had the press conference to appoint Jack Smith. So even though the public didn't know about it, the Department of Justice and the National Archive knew about it because we're talking at, at bottom, about presidential records that are not owned by the occupant of the office or vice presidential records in the case of vice president Joe Biden.

Um, but belong to the American people and belong back in the National archive at the appropriate time when they leave office. President Joe Biden, but belong to the American people and belong back in the National Archive at the appropriate time when they leave office. Self-reported by the Biden administration to the National Archive, self-reported to the Attorney General of the United States who knew about this in November. And now we move forward. That convinced and urged the Biden administration and his people to do a diligent further search to see if there were other inadvertent documents sitting in other residences or offices that

Joe Biden used. So they looked at his beach houses. They looked at his personal residence. They looked at other offices that he used. And as they found a document or two, since then, they doodifully reported, up, found another one, found another one, and turned it into the National Archive and reported it again to Merrick Garland, who has been properly advised by Joe Biden, this team all along. That stands in stark contrast to when we talk about what's going on with Donald Trump

and the criminal focus on him related to his handling or mishandling of classified information. And then we have new reporting that in the last week or two, another box or two of documents marked classified. Some of them, to be frank, even Mark Topp's secret, were found for whatever reason in Joe Biden's garage next to his beloved, a vintage corvette. That's a line that Biden said, well, I didn't have them out of the street. They were in a lot garage next to my corvette, so I'm repeating that here. But it's an embarrassment for the Biden administration, and it puts pressure on the Jack Smith side of the prosecution of Donald Trump, because it gives mileage to the argument that see everybody does it by accident, and why isn't Joe

Biden being prosecuted? So the whole timeline and this sort of drip, drip, drip of new documents being discovered and then turned over dutifully, I agree to the relevant authorities is putting pressure on the other side of the equation related to Donald Trump. So Merrick Garland knows the special prosecutor and special counsel statute well. And for those that like to follow along, it's Title 28 section 600.1. And it says there's three things that have to be found, three factors that have to be present in order for the appointment of a special counsel, which Marik Garland found today, are present. One, that there is a possibility that there is a crime, a crime may have been committed. It's not a reflection on Joe Biden that they think that a crime has

been committed, but that it implicates potential criminal claims and criminal statutes like the SB Nage Act and the obstruction act. Secondly, they have to determine whether the prosecution could create a conflict of interest for the Department of Justice. And given the Joe Biden is Merrick Garland's boss, we have that present. And the third is that public interest would be served by appointing a special counsel and getting Merrick Garland's office off the hook for any appearances of impropriety and he

found that as well. And I think given the timeline and the documents that are still coming out and trying to get to the bottom of it, it's better for a special counsel to investigate it than that not. Now you may recall earlier reporting, including on legal AF, that there was another lawyer that was involved looking at these things. Mr. Laos, she was a US attorney out of Illinois, also at Trump appointee, that Marik Garland had assigned the task of advising whether there should be a special counsel appointed under the statute. And he advised, based on his analysis, that there should be one.

And then, Merrick Arlen took that recommendation to his own analysis and agreed. And so now we have starting today, starting on Thursday, we have, we'll have to talk about two special councils. Now, when we talk about classified documents, one for Biden, one for Trump, Mr. Biden's will be Robert Kaye, herUR, longtime Department of Justice official, as a unassailable record, starting with his clerkship with Chief Justice Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court,

all the way through serving multiple presidents, including continuing to serve this president in the Department of Justice, even after he took office. So I wouldn't be that concerned that he was originally a Trump appointee. I think he's ideologically maybe Republican, but kind of neutral and is not a MAGA person.

But he is going to roll up his shirt sleeves and get a team together and look at the timeline and find out when Biden knew something, what he knew and when he knew it. I don't think we have a hand in the cookie jar problem. I think we have a cookie jar problem. They were finding cookie jars in garages and in lock closets and in cabinets, but we don't have Biden's hands in it. He didn't intentionally do it. There's no evidence that he did, but Mr. Hurr is going to have to get to the bottom of it, make sure that's true. What's the difference between what we know so far about Biden

quickly self-reporting everything to the proper officials in Donald Trump? Donald Trump didn't do any of these things. He had sticky fingers on the way out of office. He decided he wanted to keep certain files, secret files about the president of France, about his sexual life, things about Ukraine, things about Hillary Clinton that he wanted to keep. You know, he kind of had his little, you know, hit list retaliatory list. And he wanted to keep files related to that, which you're not allowed to do. And so he didn't return them. And he had his people try to negotiate in the waning days of his White House, while he was busy trying to cling to power and attempt to, attempt to coup. He also had the presence of mind to try to figure out how to keep these documents.

And so he turned over documents, talk about drips and drabs to the the National Archive. And they knew that it wasn't complete because they had other witnesses tell them that. And so there were back and forth and back and forth for months at length to get the documents. And then finally, if you recall, you know, Trump had one of his lawyers sign a certificate that put all of the classified documents in a very small envelope, you know, an envelope like this for those that are watching and and signing on the outside. This is the complete list of all the classified documents that I'm aware of. That wasn't true because you had already turned in 184 documents, the National Archives. And then, of course, when the search warrant got executed at Mar-a-Lago, they found low and behold, at least 100 more classified and top secret documents. Plus, there's still finding documents here and there under this subpoena that's been issued by the Grand Jury out of Washington,

which is really how this all started. And all along, Donald Trump believes he has the right to hold on those documents, didn't want to turn it back to the Department of Justice and and so on and so on. The exact opposite of the conduct and behavior we expect in a president and one that has been exhibited by Joe Biden. I'm sure that's going to go into the analysis. The deep dark analysis that Mr.

Hurr is going to conduct about Joe Biden, how he handled things. But it's an unforced error for the Biden administration. They knew about Mar-a-Lago. I mean, you'd have to be asleep for a hundred years not to know what happened at Mar-a-Lago in Donald Trump and Jack Smith. You would think at some point before even November and the midterm, somebody would have woken up and saying, hey, I wonder if we've got any of those boxes sitting in any of the places where Joe operated or operates. And, you know, they just didn't get around to doing it. You know, there's a country to

run. There is an economy to run. There's a foreign policy to run in a war to assist in Ukraine. And I wasn't on, obviously, it wasn't on the top page or two pages of there to do list. And now they're getting around to it. And they bought themselves a special prosecutor as a result. Now let's talk finally about the impact that I see and other see on Jack Smith. And we'd like to say, what I'd like to say is it's going to have no impact on him that these two factual situations are different and rise and fall on their own merits. And what, and they're not going to cooperate.

These two special councils are not going to cooperate with each other in any way, shape and form. In fact, I'm sure they're going to be a wall of information between them to stop information flow between any teams that are overlapping or that work in the Department of Justice. So that we won't have to worry about that. But it's gonna have, you know, the political imagery of me too, and, you know, oh, see, they did it also, which is what, you know, everybody's gonna say

on Fox News and every place else in the Twitter verse, is really not true. The facts are completely different. And one person's looking at prosecuting a different case than the other person. But to say it's going to have no impact, I think is not being a fair or in living in reality. It's going to have an impact. He's going, is Jackson it's going to have to make sure and go back and check all the evidence. And, and, you know, at the very moment where he could make the decision,

he's gonna have to think about the ramifications, political and otherwise, of making the decision to prosecute a former president for doing something that the current president, at least at first blush, did a version of not the crime version of it, but wasn't careful with his top secret document management either. And that's going to be the talking point coming out of this. So where are we as of midday

on Thursday? We have Merrick Garland having been advised by a US attorney out of Chicago that he appointed, especially to consider whether a special counsel should be appointed to investigate Joe Biden's retention of top secret and classified documents, which have come to light starting in November all the way through December, where they found documents inadvertent. So the Biden administration says, of course, in lock cabinets in an office of his and a foundation in his garage next to his court vet and in one or two other places, whether that rises the level of a crime that

should be prosecuted or those around him should be prosecuted. And we have a new, we have a new prosecutor special counsel in Robert K her H. U. R. He was going to leave the Department of Justice, but he's decided to stay on and help Merrick Arlen and accept this appointment. So if you go and do some research on Robert K her you might have seen that he was about to leave the department last February, but he stayed on in the interest of justice and worked with Merrick Arlen and his people since then. And and will be the special counsel and will continue to report Michael Popuck on legal AF.

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