Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Federal Judge Finding of Trump THREAT Resurfaces with New Order
Episode Date: August 11, 2023Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on breaking news that the then chief judge of the DC federal court determined that Trump is a “flight risk” when she ordered that a secret search warrant be issue...d to Twitter to grab Trump’s account and DM and user data, and that Trump not be told about it, and it all came out in an appeal decision this week when Twitter appealed a huge fine against it for not complying with the federal judge’s order. Thanks to our sponsor HumanN! Get a free 30-day supply of SuperBeets heart chews and 15% off your first order by going to getsuperbeets.com and use promo code LEGALAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network 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
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This is Michael Pope, I call you a F. Do you hear the one about the federal judge or the district of Columbia that believes that Donald Trump is a flight risk and
Use that as the grounds to make sure that when she issued a search warrant to get his Twitter account that Twitter didn't tell Donald Trump back in January
That they had a turnover all of his Twitter data including whose posting and when and how they're posting and the timing of the posting and the device they're using the post and all of that.
Did you know that?
Well, I didn't and nobody did until Twitter decided in its infinite wisdom to appeal that
same federal judge, chief judge, at the time, barrel howl.
She issued a sanction of $350,000 against a foot dragging Twitter who didn't want to turn
over Donald Trump's account or his data or comply with the non-disclosure order that
was issued as part of the Storage Communications Act, which is what the statute is that governs
how the Department of Justice gets stored information about social media accounts.
And they followed that statute to a T and so did the judge.
And the judge said, you gotta turn it over
and you gotta abide by my non-disclosure order.
Don't tell Donald Trump.
And one of the grounds that she found,
Barrel Howell, that we just learned about
because it was mentioned in the appeal order
that just came down, which I'm going to read to you.
Right in a footnote, it said that the judge made a finding that Donald Trump was a potential
flight risk.
And therefore, as a potential flight risk, as one of the many grounds, including keeping
its secret potential destruction of evidence by Donald Trump, witness intimidation by
Donald Trump and all the other things.
But the takeaway from this hot take is, Barrel Howell also found that he could be Donald
Trump a potential flight risk.
Now you might be thinking to yourself, I know that name, Barrel Howell.
Where'd that come up with Donald Trump?
Right.
She's the chief judge at the time anyway that was responsible for all of the grand jury activity,
secret that Jack Smith was conducting against Donald Trump.
It's now another DC circuit court judge,
who's now the chief judge, Jeb Bozpert,
but at the time it was Barrel Howell
and Barrel Howell also made another finding against Donald Trump.
About eight months ago, she found that it was more likely
that not the Donald Trump committed a crime or a fraud, and she used that finding to strip away his assertion of attorney
client privilege and force his lawyer at Mar-a-Lago to testify to the grand jury without any
privilege at all.
He was just naked having to testify, and he had a turnover of 50 pages of attorney notes reflecting his deepest
darkest secrets in his conversations with his client, including that the client, Donald Trump,
tried to convince him to obstruct justice and destroy evidence and rip up classified documents
and destroy them and hide them from the Department of Justice and the FBI. It's all reflected
in 50 pages of single space notes by Evan Corcoran. So this is the same judge, right? The same judge who eight
months ago said, I think Donald Trump were likely to not commit a crime or fraud. Now
she thinks he's a flight risk. Now, we didn't know about this. If we did, you know we would
have brought it to you on the Midas Touch Network when it happened. We just found out about
it because, and we're going to read it to you, parts ofas Touch Network when it happened, we just found out about it. Because, and we're gonna read it to you,
parts of it anyway, a three-judge appellate court
after Twitter appealed
because they got nailed for $350,000 fine
because they were three days late
and complying with the search warrant
and the judge was having none of it.
You know, don't play with a federal judge.
Let me just tell you that
after 32 years of practicing law. Don't play with a federal judge. Let me just tell you that after 32 years of practicing law.
Don't play with a federal judge,
especially one that's on grand juries
in a criminal investigation of Donald Trump, okay?
And so you're gonna get fined, and they didn't like the fine,
and they didn't like, they thought it abridged
their first amendment rights.
They wanted to be able to tell Donald Trump at the time
about the fact that they got hit with a search warrant
and all of that.
And so that went to an appeal.
And who is the three judge panel out of all the dozen or more judges on the DC Court of Appeals?
It came up an Obama appointee and two Biden appointees.
That's it. Obama, Biden, Biden, you know where this is going.
And the judge that wrote the order judge, Pan, a Biden appointee,
wrote it for a unanimous court. going. And the judge, the judge that wrote the order, judge Panna Biden appointee, wrote
it for a unanimous court. One of the other just judges on there was Michelle Childs, who
was shortlisted for the Supreme Court position for Joe Biden that eventually went to Ketanji
Brown-Jaxson. So this is a very August body. This is a very smart group of people. They've
been handling a lot of Jan 6 things in in favor of justice.
And the ruling here is they noted in a footnote, we're going to put it up here and I'm going to read
to it that Judge Howell had relied in part on a finding that that Donald Trump could be a flight
risk. And this is a footnote too. We'll put it up on the screen.
I'm going to read it verbatim.
This is from Judge Pan writing for the unanimous court,
the DC Circuit Court, that just came out in the last couple of days.
The district court, that's Barrel Howell, judge,
at the time, Chief Judge Barrel Howell,
also found reason to believe that the former president would quote,
flee from prosecution.
Close quote, that is exactly what it sounds
like coward Donald Trump fleeing from prosecution. That's why you can't let Twitter tell him
about it. And that they cite to the record in the case, which is what a pellet courts do.
The judge Pan goes on to say the government later acknowledged, however, that it had
inherently included flight from prosecution as a predicate
in its application.
That means the government shouldn't have checked that box, but even though, and they're
willing to withdraw that as the grounds, and then the order goes on to say the district
court did not rely on risk of flight in its ultimate analysis.
But they went out of their way, Judge Pan in the Appellate decision to say that, Judge,
it wasn't that the Department of Justice and Jackson Smith removed that as grounds and it wasn't even considered
by the lower court, the district court judge.
It was considered by the district court judge and she actually found that he was a potential
flight risk.
And how does she know that?
Because she's been listening to in secret because we don't know all about it until things
like this happen to all of the testimony about Jan 6th
and the grand jury's Jack Smith's been running
and she's had all the arguments in front of her
from all of the lawyers who don't wanna give up
their attorney-client privilege
or Trump intervening to try to assert
executive privilege or attorney-client privilege
about everything related to Jan 6th.
That was her job, you know, she was also a regular district court judge,
but that was her job.
And so who knew it better than her,
the person that also found,
she's one of two federal judges,
Judge Carter and the Central District of California,
being the other, who found recently,
in the last year, the Donald Trump,
more likely than not, committed a crime,
a crime and a fraud,
the strip of the Visitorney Client Privilege.
Not one federal judge, but two federal judges.
Yes, on the lower civil standard,
not the beyond a reasonable doubt standard
of that a jury has to convict somebody of a crime.
But I don't know,
black robe federal judge lifetime appointment
makes a decision that the former guy is a flight risk and a crime
fraudster.
I don't know, that should be pretty big news.
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LegalAF. That's getSuperBEETS.com code LegalAF. You know what else I thought was interesting
that didn't get a lot of play is how in everything they file,
Jack Smith's team is mindful of who they're up against.
And they're very careful and surgical in the words that they chose in their filing.
In this case, yes, it was about $250,000, but the broader audience says everything that
they say in print could be used against them in a related case.
The government said in this case, and now the government saying in flip-flopping, in that
case, so they're very careful.
And I found it really interesting how they described their criminal investigation and how
it undermines Donald Trump's entire argument that this is all about his First Amendment
rights.
It's not a First amendment right case at all,
not in the least.
And the government knows that.
And so they went on to say,
and this is how, this is how, listen carefully.
This is how Jack Smith team describes
their criminal investigative process
and what they're after.
As quoted by Judge Pan in her a pellet
decision, her appeal decision that came out in the Twitter case, thus the government's interest
was particularly strong here, Judge Pan writes, because it's ongoing investigation aimed to
quoting from the government, quoting from Jack Smith, quote, ferret out activity intended to alter the outcome
of a valid national election for the leadership
of the executive branch of the federal government
and to assess whether that activity cross lines
into criminal culpability.
That is it in a nutshell.
That is the crucible of the entire investigation and why it's so right and on solid footing.
And why Donald Trump's lawyers, squawking and squeaking on television about first amendment
rights is so wrong.
The focus of all of Jack Smith's grand juries, and there's at least three of them, is the ferret out activity intended to alter the outcome of a valid national election for the
leadership of the executive branch.
Not to police first amendment speech.
You can talk all you want, but you can't put it into action to alter the outcome of an
election for the highest job in the land.
And the other aspect of them, related aspect of the investigation in the federal government
and Department of Justice's words, is to assess whether that activity crossed lines into
criminal culpability.
Think about that.
Not everything.
And he's acknowledged it, Jackson.
Even in his indictment, not everything is about
a crime being committed. There are certainly things that Donald Trump could have done legitimately
to protest the outcome of the election. There's audits, there's all sorts of things he can
demand, state by state, in order to do an audit, in order to within
time periods established by a body of law about election, an election process. He could do
all of that. And while he's doing it, he could go on television and talk about it and say,
I thought I won. And this is the reason I think I win. But what he can't do is cross over
into criminal culpable activity and conduct, right?
Call Mike Pence and pressure him
and call him the P word, not president.
Call him a female anatomic part and say you're too honest
and pressure him to do the right thing, Mike.
And overthrow the will of the people
and don't certify the
electoral votes, certificates for Joe Biden, recognize these other phony ones, or don't recognize
any of them and turn it over to the states and let the states pick the president when the states,
at least by number, are dominated by the Republicans, not every state, not every battleground state.
But if you just take the number of states, Donald Trump would win if the Republican states vote for him
and the Democratic states vote for Biden.
Trump wins and that was the goal.
That's the crossover into criminal culpable behavior
and that's the kernel, that's the essence of the prosecution
and it was buried again and I'm bringing it out to you now
in judge Pans order.
So what do we learn on this hot take
at the intersection of law and politics?
There are things that are buried in orders
that people like me that do this for a living.
And I've been doing it for 32 years,
trying cases in courtrooms,
just like the ones I talk about can find
and then bring to your attention.
As soon as we hear about them,
thence can happen in January
under the secrecy of the grand jury process
that we don't even find out about until the middle of August when some idiot like Twitter now
X decides to appeal and then the court mindful of the Grand Jury secrecy process deletes
and redacks and puts black tape over certain aspects of the order, but the rest of the order
is in the public, including the footnote in which they disclose that judge barrel howl thinks that Donald Trump could have been a flight risk.
We agree.
These are considerations that have to be made by others next time there's an arrangement
of Donald Trump, like attention, Fannie Willis, Fulton County, Georgia, who has a different
standard for whether she's going to try to ask for conditions of release or pretrial detention or whatever it's gonna be.
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