Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Fani Will to Present POWERFUL EVIDENCE against Trump at Hearing

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Want to know what’s going to happen at Mark Meadows’ mini-trial about whether he gets to take his Georgia criminal conspiracy case to federal court instead of state? Michael Popok of Legal AF provides his “exploder” of what to expect from Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ expected witnesses, to Meadows’ legal arguments, and what federal Judge Jones is likely to do next. MASTERWORKS: Skip the waitlist and invest in blue-chip art for the very first time by signing up for Masterworks: https://www.masterworks.art/legalaf Purchase shares in great masterpieces from artists like Pablo Picasso, Banksy, Andy Warhol, and more. How Masterworks works: -Create your account with your traditional bank account -Pick major works of art to invest in or our new blue-chip diversified art portfolio -Identify investment amount -Hold shares in works by Picasso or trade them in our secondary marketplace See important Masterworks disclosures: https://www.masterworks.com/about/disclaimer?utm_source=meidastouch&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=2-17-23&utm_term=Meidas+Touch+Subscriber&utm_content=disclaimer 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 Burn the Boats: https://pod.link/1485464343 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://pod.link/1676844320 MAGA Uncovered: https://pod.link/1690214260 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Michael Popok, legal AF. I've been doing this for 32 years, the trial lawyer. I've never seen so much chaos and lack of coordination and cooperation between multiple defendants in a criminal case, then in Fawney, Willis's Georgia indictment and prosecution of Donald Trump and 18 others. They are acting like they don't have a care in the world

about the other person next to them. And they're just gonna do whatever they can as rats and a sinking ship. A group of them want to go to trial in October. Another group of them led by Donald Trump wants to stay in state court, but doesn't want to do it with the other two. Chespro and Powell who want to go to trial in two months. Donald Trump says, I don't want to go to trial ever and at least not until after the presidential election. The first one to jump off sides, Mark Meadows, and I'm going to give you a quick exploder explainer here on this particular hot take about what's going to happen at the evidentiary hearing, which is a mini trial in front of Judge Jones, and Obama appoint the federal judge,

who sits in the Northern district of Georgia, which sounds very far away, but it's really just sitting in Atlanta just down the street from the Fulham County Courthouse where the rest of the defendants are currently staying with Judge McAfee, who set a trial already for October for at least two of the 19 while Mark Meadows and a couple of others try to argue, we want to be in federal court. Now, let me tell you about this hearing that's going to happen on Monday and what's going to go down on this hearing. Fony Willis is ready. Let me just manage expectations here. She knew there was going to be a group

of people that were going to try to go to federal court judge Mick Bernie, who was the judge overseeing the grand jury process, even anticipated it a month ago in his own order When he said there may be some who will try to do what's called federal officer removal under a federal procedural Law that allows a small subset of federal officers who believe they're being prosecuted for doing their job as a federal officer and have a federal defense to have their case tried not in the state court, but in federal court. Doesn't mean they get a federal prosecutor.

Doesn't mean they get federal crimes against them. Doesn't mean they have, they, they, I'm not even sure they go to a federal pediat entry. It just means that Fawni Willis and her team have to go across the street and prosecute the case in a different courthouse in front of a different jury pool in front of a different judge. That's all it means. Now, on this particular hot take,

I wanna go over what is gonna happen at what we call an evidentiary hearing. An evidentiary hearing is what it sounds like. Evidence is gonna be presented, primarily through documents and witnesses. It's like a mini trial. The judge presides over it, swears in the witnesses, witnesses take the stand, their, their examined, if you will, by the side that has called them. They are cross-examined by the side that is opposed to them. And people testify. I'll tell you one person who's not going to testify. Mark Meadows, no way,

know how is testifying tomorrow or on Monday at the hearing in which he's trying to get the case over to federal court. There is absolutely zero chance that he's going to testify. But Fony Willis is going to put on a little mini case against Mark Meadows to demonstrate that he may have been the chief of staff. He may have had chief of staff like duties to assist the president, but all of the things that Mark Meadows did for which he's been indicted, that in Michigan, that in Pennsylvania, that in Georgia,

was completely in 100% political in nature to help candidate Trump and had nothing to do with his job description as chief of staff for the president of the United States. They, the lawyers for Mark Meadows and their filings. And he has a good lawyer. I'm going to give him that. He's got George Terwilliker, who is a competent lawyer, have argued, well, all the things that are in the indictment are just ordinary things that a chief of staff would do, you know, make meetings and arrange telephone calls and video conferences and shuffle papers.

And okay, first of all, everything they just described is what Cassidy Hutchinson, the executive assistant, or the assistant to the chief of staff would do, not the chief of staff. So let's put that aside for a minute. Talk about shrinking the job so small it could be drowned in a bathtub. The chief of staff is the primary gatekeeper for whoever's sitting in the Oval Office. And it goes to every event. And in this case, every seditious and conspiratorial event, Mark Meadows conducted. And Fony Willis is going to put on witness after witness.

And I'm going to tell you about at least two of them that we know from Sapina she's going to put on witness after witness. And I'm going to tell you about at least two of them that we know from subpoena she's going to put on. So putting on her case to prove that Mark Meadows may have been the chief of staff, but he was doing political work, political activities, not those related to the president and and his constitutional office because there's candidate Trump. There's the Trump campaign. There's the attempt to cling to power with criminal intent. And then there's the day to day operation of the president when he's not trying to overthrow democracy, you know, like he was president, there was other stuff going on domestically, nationally and the like. And I'm sure Mike Mark Meadows had a role in that. But when Fony Willis laid out in the papers that she's filed already in advance of the

hearing, that for instance, Mark Meadows went down to Michigan. And when he was in Michigan on November the 20th of 2020, actually, he met in, let me just correct it, he met with Michigan legislator in the Oval Office. They had them come up and come in and met with them to try to convince them him and Trump, try to convince them that there was fraud in the election in Michigan and they should not certify the electors to which the Michigan legislator's left the office, held a press conference and said everything was fine in Michigan with the electoral process and they weren't going to overturn the will of the people.

Then the next day on the 21st of November, Fony Willis is telling the judge, judge Jones, for the hearing that Meadows tried to influence Pennsylvania lawmakers to overthrow the will of the people. And then on the next month, on the 22nd of December, Meadows went to Cobb County, Georgia to try to burst into the room while the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Secretary of State Investigative Unit was doing signature match audit, which they're allowed to do as part of their investigative process. He tried to get in the room and try to interfere with the accounting process.

Again, a political act, not one of a chief of staff doing his job as the president's, you know, right hand for non-political purposes. And then on the next day, the 23rd of December, 2020, Faudi-Willis recites also that he Mark Meadows texted an investigator, Francis Watson, the chief investigator. She was for the Secretary of State's office in Georgia and said to her in a text, hey, if the Trump campaign stopped right there, the campaign, not Donald Trump president of the Oval Office guy campaign candidate Trump. If the campaign gives you more money, can you hurry up with the vote counting of mail-in

ballots and absentee ballots so we can get the results before Jan 6th? Now, I don't know if that's a bribe like we've got some money in a slush fund over at the campaign that could go your way. You can speed this thing up or he's volunteering resources, whatever he's doing, he's wearing a campaign hat. He's wearing a MAGA hat, right? Not whatever the chief of staff hat looks like. And so you put all this together.

Mark Meadows actions in Pennsylvania with Michigan elected officials and members of the state house. The phone calls to Francis Watson, the chief investigator, his visit to Georgia to interfere with the Cobb County vote by the GBI, his participation in arranging the phone call between Donald Trump and Brad Raffin's perger, the Secretary of State of Georgia. These, according to Fony Willis and I agree with her, go beyond, well beyond, and into the world of politics. And why do I keep saying politics, politics, politics?

Because we have a law on the books since 1939. It's called the Hatch Act. It was named after a New Mexico Senator and you, and it had to do with the days when people were in civil service or were in offices like Mark Meadows or in elected office, and they would use their elected office to help interfere with or campaign for election, either for themselves or for somebody else. We don't like that, United States. We don't like when you got a job, you got a job to do.

You can't go out and if you're a civil servant, that's not actually running for office, right? We don't like when you're campaigning for the other guy, right? That's why the people around Donald Trump, who are themselves not running for office, can't do political campaigning and activity on his behalf. He can do it.

That's why presidents in the middle of, you know, whatever, they'll take a plane and go to a fundraiser and go raise money. They just can't take their staff with them to do that. They're a White House staff. They have their campaign staff, but they can't take their White House staff, right? And that's why everybody gets in trouble with the hotchacked. Because if you're a civil servant or you're in the cabinet or you're on the staff of the president, there's limits to what you can do. And everything that I just outlined for you, the Michigan interference, the Pennsylvania interference, the flying to Cobb County, Georgia,

the perfect phone call, the interaction with Francis Watts and the chief investigator, it puts Mark Meadows into criminal conduct, right? With criminal intent and criminal and personal motivation, not because he's the chief of staff, but because he's trying to keep his boss in the job. As per usual, the economy was also a huge topic of the day. And why wouldn't it be? It's changing faster than ever, and demanding that we all adapt to keep up. In fact, a stunning survey revealed that over half of Americans making six figures now live paycheck to paycheck. Now, even though Goldman Sachs is saying that classic investments are headed nowhere for the rest of the year, other markets are rising to fill that gap, creating incredible opportunity

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or just click the link in the description of this episode below. That's masterworks.art slash legalaf, or just click the link in the description of this episode below. And just around this thing out, just to anticipate whatever argument that they may make during the hearing on the other side. And remember, Mark Meadows will not be able to testify because he's not going to waive his Fifth Amendment privilege and get on that stand because that'll waive it for the actual trial. So there's no way he's gonna be able to say,

well, I'm Mark Meadows. And the reason I made that phone call, the reason I texted that person and the reason I went to that meeting is something different. So the lawyers are gonna have to argue but without evidence. Fannie Willis is gonna have the benefit

of at least two witnesses. One of them's gonna be the secretary of state for the state of Georgia, Brett Raffin's burger, who's gonna talk about all the things within his state that he knows about. Well, Fonte already knows what his testimony is going to be because he's testified before her grand jury, right? You don't just blindly call the Secretary of State into a federal hearing if you don't know exactly what the answers to your questions are going to be.

So she already knows that when she asks Brad Raffinsberger, what role do you think Mark Meadows was playing when he tried to suggest that 12,000 votes should be tossed out the window and the election thrown to Donald Trump in a way from the winner, Joe Biden, was he chief of staff for you at that moment or was he whatever? And as I know, I think he was doing political bidding for his, his boss. And he wasn't there as any part of the presidential duties. Then they're going to bring Francis Watson, the chief investigator who works on a Brad Raffins burger.

And she's going to testify about at least three contacts that she had with Mark Meadows. Phone calls, emails and live meetings. She was in Cobb County. She was the chief investigator, along with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who were trying to match signatures and an audit that they usually do in a contested election. When he tried to burst into the room and observe it or interfere with it, and she strong-armed him and kept him out of the room, that't stop him from texting her and she'll testify to this during the hearing, testifying about a text message that said, Hey, if I give you Trump campaign resources, stop right there. You're dead. You're done,

meadows, and arguing that you didn't violate the Hatch Act because you're doing nothing but politics. And to answer the question some people might have, which they've already argued, which is, well, the president, you know, he has a role in the electoral count process. He doesn't. The Constitution doesn't recognize a role of the president of the United States in the electoral count of his own election.

The vice president has a role in certifying the election as the president of the Senate, right? But Trump isn't the president of the Senate. So he has no constitutional role. He may have curiosity, right? He may have desire to interfere in order to steal the election and stop the peaceful transfer of power, but that's not part of his job description either. So both President Trump is well outside his scope of duties as President, and he's dragged willingly or unwillingly menos along with him.

And if you're outside the scope of that authority, then you can't argue that you get to go to federal court as a federal officer because whatever you're doing under the removal statute has to be within the color of your office. Now look, just to manage expectations on the law. The 11th Circuit, which sits in Atlanta, is the appellate court directly over the Northern District of Georgia and Judge Jones. Judge Jones's boss, bosses for lack of a better term,

and whatever three judge panel is randomly selected. There is case law on the 11th Circuit that suggests that even if there is a slight connectivity, a connective tissue between the federal officer and the duties that he was doing, even if it's just a little slight touch, it may be enough for him to argue or hurt argue that there's federal removal is appropriate. And the defense that they would argue, because in order to get federal removal, you got to do cherry, cherry, cherry to hit jackpot. You got to be a federal officer. You got to be working within the scope of your duties, the color of your office. And you have to have a federal defense that is

dispositive of the crime. In this case, they're going to argue they have a federal defense. And that is under the supremacy clause, which is a separation of powers issue that he was just doing his job for the president of the United States. And no judicial branch in this case can go after him. And so that's gonna be argued. It may be argued in Fulton County, starting with Judge McAfee and go up to the Georgia Supreme Court, or if Meadows is successful,

it'll go to the 11th Circuit, and then over to the Supremes. The Supreme Court, Supreme Court of the United States. But that's the hearing that's gonna happen. And the takeaway from this hot take, at least from my perspective, that I'm trying to communicate, is that Meadows is gonna be bound and gagged and not be able to happen. And the takeaway from this hot tick, at least from my perspective that I'm trying to communicate, is that Meadows is going to be bound and gagged and not be able to testify at the hearing. So he's not going to be able to say, well, what I meant was, well, why I did it was and link it back. His lawyers can naked argue, what's it

we call it, without any evidence. But, you know, they have the burden of demonstrating that he was within his federal office, the color of office, and has a, a colorable federal defense to the claims. It's their burn, not Fony Willis, but Fony Willis is going to come in and do her part in bringing in her witnesses, which I'm sure will have a tremendous impact on Judge Jones. I mean, when the Secretary of State of Georgia is going to come in and say, I think Mark Meadows was violating the Hatch Act, I think he was just doing the political bidding of Donald Trump and had nothing to do with his oath of office as chief of staff. That's powerful stuff.

When Francis Watson, the chief investigator for Georgia and the Secretary of State comes in and says, every interaction I've ever had with Mark Meadows has been political in nature, having nothing to do with his oath of office as chief of staff. I think that's powerful. Now, they're going to have to balance Judge Jones, going to have to balance the case law, and what the 11th Circuit has to say about all this. And if he, if somebody doesn't like his decision, let's say he rules for Fonny Willis and remands the case, which is what it's called, back to a state court, where it's been progressing without delay in the interim.

Let me remind you, Mark Meadows and others, including Jeff Clark, who was in the Department of Justice, also arguing for removal, and a a few others all got processed in the state system, as we all know, because all 19 got booked mug shot at an 18 out of 19 got released on bond conditions, including mark meadows and Jeffrey Clark. So they've already been processed. The judge, judge Jones refused to enjoy or stop the state court process, criminal process, jail, booking, administrative, arrangement process, at all, until he makes his decision. Right?

He said that as the federal statute for removal already has baked into it, right? Baked into its threads. State court proceedings continue while the judge decides what he's going to do on the federal side. We'll get a reasonably quick ruling on the federal side from judge Jones about meadows. And that will inform what he's going to do. We'll know the writing will be on the wall for Jeff Clark, the Department of Justice and two or three others that are trying to get over to federal court because they want to get away from the fast-paced rocket docket that we're observing in Fulton County State Court in front of Judge McAfee.

And they think maybe it's better for them to go over to federal court. Others are trying. We'll talk about them on other hot takes. Others who are not federal officers, but say they were commanded by federal officers to do certain things like I didn't want to be a fake collector, but Trump they were commanded by federal officers to do certain things like I didn't want to be a fake collector, but Trump's lawyers told me to, not a great argument for Donald Trump, by the way, which goes back to my at the top of the hot take. I've never seen such lack of cooperation and coordination among co-defendants in a

conspiracy than this one. You would think they were not in a conspiracy ever before because there nobody is concerned about anybody else. It's every man, woman, and child for themselves. And all of that eners to the benefit of Fony Willis and the prosecutors and against Donald Trump in a case like this. We'll talk more on legal AF on the Midas Touch Network. We'll follow this case closely. All developments federal and state, the early trials in October for two of the lawyers for Donald Trump. What that means for the other 17, including Donald Trump, the trial date that will eventually

be established for Donald Trump in the state court. And of course, what trial date is going to be established remarkably, ironically, on the very same day on Monday by Judge Chutkin, a federal judge in the DC Circuit will follow it all because we sit onto my touch network on legal AF at the intersection of US law and politics. We, if you like these kind of hot takes, I do them about every day. And so to my co-anchors Karen Friedman, Agnipelo, Ben, my Salis, go pick us up day. And so to my co-anchors Karen Friedman, Agniphalo, Ben, my sellers, go pick us up on our legal AF podcast, where we put together five or six of the best stories for that week, we

curate them for you and bring them to you just like this, but with two people. You can do that on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights, and you can follow us on YouTube, and you go watch us on YouTube live or the video version, or if you're better with audio or you just like both, go over to the audio platforms for podcasting, you'll watch us on YouTube live or the video version, or if you're better with audio, or you just like both, go over to the audio platforms for podcasting, you'll find us there, legal AF. You like Michael Popock? I hope so.

Give me a thumbs up. It helps with the algorithms. It helps with keeping us on the air like this, and you can follow me at all things social media at MS Popock. And I'm now on threads. This is Michael Popock, legal AF reporting. Hey, Midas Mighty. Love this report. Continue the conversation by following us on Instagram. At Midas Touch to keep up with the most important

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