Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Jack Smith and Justice HAUNTS Trump the TRAITOR on Christmas

Episode Date: December 25, 2022

Anchored by MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok, the top-rated news analysis podcast LegalAF is back for another hard-hitting look at the wheels of justice in “real time.” as they analyze and discuss this week’s most consequential developments at the intersection of law and politics. On this week’s Special Holiday Edition, the anchors break-down and analyze: the Jan6 Committee’s Final Report and criminal referrals and new legislation recommendations; the House Ways and Means Committee voting to release 5 years of Trump’s tax returns; Trump being set for federal jury trial on April 17, 2022 in the new civil rape case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll; a Florida Federal judge denying Trump’s attempt in Florida to stay the New York Civil fraud case brought by the New York Attorney General, observing that the filing was frivolous and sanctionable; an Arizona judge dismissing Kari Lake’s frivolous suit to overturn the election and appoint her governor, inviting Governor Elect Hobbs to seek sanctions, and so much more. Shop LegalAF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com 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

Donald Trump faces two civil trials in 2023, a defamation and civil rape trial brought by E. Jean Carroll in New York Federal Court, and the New York Attorney General's fraud lawsuit, seeking at least $250 million in damages against Donald Trump, his adult children, and the Trump organization, in which would essentially shut down the Trump organization from doing business in New York. And Trump's lawyers were pretty much mocked in their federal court appearance in New York this week in the E. Jean Carroll matter. We will tell you why. And in addition to being mocked by the federal judge in New York, Trump's lawyers were also

admonished in a Florida federal court this week when a federal judge denied Trump's emergency injunction motion against the New York Attorney General, Leticia James, the judge called the filing frivolous, and the judge also cited the Trump organizations now criminal felon status in his order, essentially saying, I'm not going to let an organization convicted of 17 felonies try to scam New Yorkers again. And the January 6th committee released its final report this week, the report that we've all been waiting for, along with some really, really important witness depositions that we haven't read before. It's an 845 page scathing and precise body of work laying out Donald Trump's crimes.

And let's talk about how some of the new information we've learned from the report could impact the criminal prosecution of Trump when we think that will take place in 2023. And this week has been a week of accountability, indeed, because in addition to the January 6th committee, we also got two more reports that were made public this time from the House of Representative Ways and Means Committee regarding Trump's tax returns from 2015 to 2020. What did we learn?

Well, kind of what we already knew, but seeing it on paper like that with the certainty and reading it was still something to be hauled. So, yes, Trump is a tax cheat. He was really never under audit. And he stole from working class Americans who did pay their taxes. The Manhattan District Attorney and even perhaps the Department of Justice is going to have a field day. The wheels of justice turn and grind and most importantly bring some great holiday cheer.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays from Legal AF. I'm Ben Micellus joined by my co-host and great friend, Michael Popak, Michael Popak. Merry Christmas, happy holidays. You too. I almost thought you were gonna say the co-ho-ho-host, but that would have been too cute. I liked that.

I got Santa Claus in the background there, Popak. You're festive. You are ready to go. Again, happy holidays to all the mightas mighty out there. Make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel and make sure you subscribe wherever you get the legal AF podcast. Let's get into it right away, Michael. Popok, you did a great hot take on this. There was a hearing in federal court this week in the E gene Carol

matter. She brought another lawsuit in addition to the first defamation case that she had filed back during the Trump presidency where Trump tried to claim all of the immunities and billbar tried to substitute the United States government in place of Donald Trump arguing that it was within the course and scope that got tied up in lots of appeals. It's still pending a ruling by the DC Court of Appeals, the highest court within the District of Columbia on the course and scope issue. Trump then defames E. Jean Carroll again on a social media platform. When he's not president, losing all of the potential immunities there, that was part of our new lawsuit.

And because of the New York Adult Survivors Act, which has this one year look back period where survivors of sexual assault in New York who statute of limitations have passed can now bring the case within this one year period beginning in November when the law finally took effect. So she filed the new lawsuit.

And now there was a hearing because trial set for April, E. Jean Carroll wants to keep this April trial date where Donald Trump would be called as a witness. He's already been deposed in the action. One of the thing E. Jean Carroll's fighting for as well as to make that Trump deposition public. But E. Jean Carroll's like, look, we've been litigating this thing now for two, three, almost four years by 2023. The new allegations that we've alleged are essentially derivative or the same of the prior allegations. Let's go to trial in April.

Trump's lawyers are like, we are going to challenge not just this case. We're going to challenge the whole New York adult survivors act. We think it's unconstitutional. Trump wants to fight for all of the perpetrators of sexual assault out there to try to visionate the constitutionality of the adult survivors act. Popuck, the federal judge Kaplan was not taking it kindly. What happened? Oh, it's beginning to beginning to look like criminal justice. That's my little tune for our weekend of Christmas.

Great tune. Thank you. There's good reason for a federal judge, Lewis Kaplan, not to be confused with Robbie Kaplan, who's representing E. Jean Carroll, is as you put it, then, having nothing of it. The adult survivor's statute was passed by Governor Hocal in New York, really on the heels of what Governor then Governor Cuomo did in the child survivor of sexual assault statute had done already, which was to open a one-year lookback window to allow victims, now previously children, now adults, of sexual assault, battery abuse, rape

to bring civil cases within a one year period of time which started at the end of November. The first case that was filed because E. Jean Carroll's lawyer had it ready, knowing that the statute was going into effect. There was a 60-day period between the time the governor signed the bill and the time you could first file your lawsuit. And E. Jean Carroll's lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, was ready. She's been on our show before talking about matters just like this one. And in it, she claims not just that the act of defamation while Donald Trump was president of the United States denying that he sexually assaulted, battered, and

raped E. Jean Carroll in the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room at the department store in Manhattan directly across the street or just down the street from Trump Tower that that happened and saying she wasn't my type as if that disgusting comment was some sort of defense to a charge. He couldn't at that time, or even today be charged criminally for those that are asking because the statute of limitations has run on the criminal case of rape that E. Jean Carroll could have brought, leaving her really up until November of this year with no other recourse for what happened to her, what she alleges happened to her, in her lawsuit, other than the defamation case, because fortunately for her, the perpetrator of this heinous act against her, as she's alleged it, defamed her. And so the fight that's been going on before the Adult Survivors Act statute was passed was, as you mentioned, a fight over weather,

a Donald Trump was an employee of the federal government as President of the United States. And if he was, was he within the course and scope of his duties as President when he defamed her? If the answer to the first question is yes, which it's been determined by all courts of appeal that matter. He is an employee. Therefore, he also gets what's called sovereign immunity protection or West

Fall immunity protection, if you're being specific, if what he did was in the course and scope of his duties. His lawyers say, yes, addressing allegations against him and commenting on things of public importance about his presidency are part of his job. And of course, Robbie Kaplan and Eugene Carroll and everybody else it has a brain says, no, you stepped out from inside the scope and course, if your duties went you to Famed her and denied that you raped her

and went further and also said things like cruel things like she's not my type. Putting that aside for a minute, we have the new statute, which gives rise to civil liability, not criminal liability for things like rape. So E. Jean Carroll files it. Now when she first files it, I don't know if you remember this, Ben, Alina Habba, who apparently is going to be one of the lawyers, will be Donald pen. Alina Habba, who apparently is gonna be one of the lawyers, who will be Donald Trump. Alina Habba is gonna be one of the lawyers defending him against Robbie Kaplan.

I'd like to see that. That's gonna be like watching, I don't even know what, watching a, it's like Godzilla versus Bambi is basically the way, I guess I would lay that out. The Alina Habba when she first was in court, and then leaving an oppressed conference, or on the courthouse steps, said that they believed

in the rights of survivors of sexual assault under the Adult Survivors Act to bring a case, but that this was an abuse of the process because it didn't happen. Now they've gotten around to thinking, well, why don't we challenge the constitutionality of this retroactive ex-post-facto law in their view, which if they were right, which they're not, it would rip away the entire statutory scheme, not just for E. Jean-Carol, but for everybody else who's been a victim of, as an adult, a sexual abuse, leaving them with

no recourse or redress. But Alina Haba and the lawyers for Trump got cut off at the knees right away without even having filed the motion. Lewis Kaplan said, if you think, basically, I'm giving you that, I'm going to rule that the adult survivor statute is unconstitutional. You got another thing coming next. And then in the same breath, scheduled the trial, and there could be three trials. You mentioned two trials, Ben.

Right now, he's agreed, Judge Kaplan, to have the civil rape trial, beyond April 17th of 2023. Alina Habba and Trump were arguing for later in 2023, mainly because they've got something else they've got to deal with, which is the $250 million civil fraud case. And they're also saying, well, we have a defamation case at the same time. And Judge Kaplan said, the overlapping facts, the underlying facts are the same. The rape either did or did not happen. And the defamation is either true, is either you have a truth defense or you don't. And so I don't see you needing a lot more discovery depositions, exchange of documents. So we're keeping this on track for April.

Right now, the two cases are the defamation and the civil rape case, though, are on separate, uh, they're separate. They're not together yet in front of the same future jury, but the writing's on the wall. He's going to consolidate these two cases together. He's going to let E. Jean Carroll put on her case in front of one jury in New York, both for the civil rape case laying out all the facts that she alleged happened to her. For the moment she went through the revolving door of the department store and bumped into Donald Trump all the way through the dressing room,

her allegations of civil rape and the aftermath. And then fast forward to 2019 when he defamed her and fast forward to 2022 when he defamed or advanced forward to 2022 when he defamed her again. And this is all going to be in front of one jury in Manhattan in in April. That's it. This judge is not going to be dismissing any of these cases or claims. And he's going to put these cases, I believe together. Ben, what do you think? I agree. In fact, I think using that rubric, I think they'll be two trials. So the two trials I think are going to take place as one consolidated trial with all of E. Jean Carroll's claims.

And so recall, you have defamation one during Trump's presidency, defamation two, when Trump was no longer the president and said the same thing, he said a recently, like in September or October, on a social media platform. And then the civil rape case, that all gets consolidated, regardless of what happens to the defamation one, in the court of appeals, defamation, too,

and the civil rape case is absolutely going to trial. I think that gets consolidated into one trial. I don't know if that'll be April. April is ambitious. I could see that being moved to June or July, sometime before the October trial that he has, which I consider to be the trial number two, and trial number two in 2023 civil trial number 22 that is and we'll get into whether or not there will be criminal trials in 2023. I think we both agree there

will definitely be criminal indictments of Donald Trump in 2023. But we know that judge Arthur Ngaran in New York State Court has set the trial for the New York Attorney General's fraud lawsuit. That will take place in October. That is not getting moved. Donald Trump has already pled the fifth over 400 times in the special proceeding that took place before New York Attorney General Etichet. Let me mention one other thing, just on that point, Ben. One of the other things that came out of this recent hearing

with Judge Kaplan setting the April 17th date for the trial is that there's going to be a motion by Robbie Kaplan to release to the public. This is a great week for releasing everything to the public. We're going to talk about a number of them, tax returns, chance six transcripts, and everything else. The other thing that's going to come flying out is a deposition of Donald Trump that was given in October in the E. Jean Carroll case, which

Robbie's moving to unseal. And I'm sure Judge Kaplan is going to release to the public. I don't think though, Ben, based on reporting. And the fact that there was no litigation over the assertion or attempted assertion or attempted assertion by the Fifth Amendment, I don't think Donald Trump, because he's not facing criminal jeopardy in the rape case, could have properly asserted the Fifth Amendment, nor was there litigation around it in front of Judge Kaplan, nothing on the docket. So I think this was a multi-hour deposition in October and a transcript and maybe a video that we're going to be able to see soon that's going to have him answering under under

oath what transpired that day at at in 95 or 96 in the in the department store and the comments that he made before and after with very little assertion or ability to assert the Fifth Amendment. It's going to be fascinating to see it. If he denies it and it turns out to be true, then he's purging himself under oath. Only thing I take issue with what you've said, Popok, is comparing Alina Habat to Bambi, please, especially these holiday seasons. Do not ruin Bambi for me and the legal AF community.

If you want to say evil Bambi, if you want to say deranged Bambi, how about Pokey from Gumby and Pokey? Is that okay? I don't know. I'm going to have to do some more research about the Pokey reference, but let's compare it to something evil like a Lario or a Bowser or a Koopa Troopa. Maybe a Koopa Troopa, not quite a Bowser, bad guy, bad person. Anyway, we could refine that stick on the next legal AF, but we've been talking about this lawsuit that's set to head to trial. October 3rd, the one brought by New York Attorney General Latisha James, seeking at least $250 million in damages. It would also essentially shut down the Trump organization

from doing business in New York, and therefore really doing business in general. And one of the things that Trump tried to do, he's already tried to sue her a year ago or two years ago when she started this special proceeding in a federal court proceeding in Syracuse. Essentially, it's unclear what he even alleges sometimes. I'd love to give you like a great breakdown and go, so what he's really arguing here, because it's a bunch of just complete nonsense.

Anyway, he lost the federal case in Syracuse. This is Judge, this is Judge Sannis in the Northern District. Yeah, and that's when he brought that. But now I'm going to Judge Middlebrook's, because Trump filed this case in Florida State Court. He brought it like on November 2nd in the 15th Jud judicial circuit of Palm Beach on November, second. He tried to bring a state, a case in state court suing New York attorney general, Latisha James.

And I'll just read you his allegations. Just so you, when you go, oh, Ben, come on, he must be actually saying things. No, no, this is a type of stuff that he says. He goes, as a private company, nobody knew very much about the great business that then businessman Donald Trump had built. But now it is being revealed by James and much to her Shagrin, the continuing witch hunt that has haunted

and targeted Donald Trump since he came down the Golden Escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 continues. President Trump built a great and prosperous company, but a company nevertheless that must be carefully, delicately, yet powerfully managed. And the appointment of a political monitor, or the interference by a political hack like James, who is using this lawsuit for political political gain would bring great harm to the company, brand, the employees, and it's overall reputation. Come on, Ben.

Come on, Ben. A fifth grader wrote that, right? Good, good. I mean, the fact that one of my hot takes that I did recently, I said, look, the lawyers who file these things, one should not just be ashamed of themselves, but honestly, they should lose their licenses for filing. Like, there's got to be some more teeth that I know, like judge Middlebrook's who got

assigned this case, because what happened was Trump filed this case in state court. He shouldn't have filed it in state court. He shouldn't have filed it anywhere, but the New York attorney general, because she's in New York, he's in Florida, it's something called diversity jurisdiction. It wouldn't be a state court's jurisdiction. If anyone would have jurisdiction to ultimately make the determination that nobody has jurisdiction, that would be a federal court to say no one has jurisdiction over this. So it gets removed to federal court.

It gets assigned to Judge Middlebrook, who was also the judge who was assigned the other frivolous law, every case is frivolous that this Trump brings. But the frivolous lawsuit that Alina Habba filed for him, this racketeering lawsuit where 30 individuals were sued, including Hillary Clinton, it was dismissed as being completely frivolous. Habba was sanctioned so far, $60,000. There's still about a million dollars more in sanctions motions pending against her and Middlebrook's basically said in that order that she that there's probably disciplinary proceedings that are needed against her or some more teeth.

But Middlebrook's then gets this case. And as I just read for you paragraph 11, what is this even a legend because it's just a bunch of hundred more pages, basically stuff like that until you basically get to the end of it. And what Trump's asking was for a Florida court to interfere with New York attorney general, attisha james case in New York State Court, where there's already an independent monitor who was appointed, granted at the time Trump filed that that wasn't the case. But that's proceeding, though, with a special proceeding where New York Attorney General

ETC is doing discovery, really what Trump was asking a Florida court to do, which he's not allowed to do, which isn't a remedy, is to basically block New York attorney, General ETC from doing discovery in her case in New York and asking for an injunction to stop that from taking place. And the, I'll toss it to you right now, Popoq,

but the key thing I wanna read though from Judge Middlebrook's order, denying this injunction, in addition to saying Trump's claims are frivolous. Because one of the things Trump tried to do when he amended the complaint to try to get around some of the, like, immunities and lack of jurisdiction, is to pretend that Latisha James was not the New York Attorney General.

He amended the complaint, removed the words, New York Attorney General, and basically, look, it's just like a regular person. And the judge is like, that's patently frivolous. We know she's the New York Attorney General. You're not tricking me. And then the judge says at the end, the Trump organization has already been found guilty by a New York jury of several counts of tax fraud.

See, people versus Trump organization. To now impede a civil enforcement action by the New York Attorney General would be unprecedented and contrary to the interest of the people of New York. Accordingly, Trump's request is denied. By the way, I think he's going to get sanctioned on this too if New York Attorney General files that. What do you think, Pope? Yeah. So I've been before Judge, as people know, I've been before Judge Don Middlebrooks. You can just, if you're new to the show or you're just a, you're just a lover of, of law and politics, read the eight pages. We'll post a link to it,

that Dom Middlebrook's wrote to totally slam in eight pages or less, Donald Trump's lawsuit, and set him up for a future sanctions motion and sanctions award against him and his attorneys. Because when I talk about the footnote that you alluded to, it would send chills down any lawyer's

spine to have a federal judge say that to them and I'll talk about that in a minute. So, the first thing the judge did in his order was recite the procedural history leading to the filing of this BS lawsuit. Starting, as you said with, let's see, you said all these exact same things. Exactly. If you track all the things that Donald Trump has said in New York, before state judges, state appellate judges, federal appellate judges in New York, it's the exact same arguments that he's raising a new, another deadbeat at the horse or beating the dead horse in Florida in front of middle Brooks as if middle Brooks was living under a rock or didn't have access to

Google and couldn't do a Google search and his clerks couldn't to line up all of the allegations just like he assumed that that middle Brooks if he didn't put in the caption of the case uh New York Attorney General he would know the latisha james as the New York Attorney General um so middle Brooks said wait a minute you did all this already. You said she's got personal animus against you, that it's a political witch hunt, that it has no merit to it at all. Let me give some recitations here for the public as a judge that they should know about.

First of all, you tried that in front of judge and Geron and those arguments and you lost. You took that up to an appeal to the first department in New York, and then the court of appeals of New York, and you lost each time. Then you went to Judge Sanis in the Northern District of New York Federal Court by Syracuse, as you mentioned, Ben, and you lost on these very issues. Then in the interim, the organization for which Donald Trump heads is the head, the Godfather, is the Trump organization and its subsidiaries. And there's 17 counts of tax fraud that have been found against it. He did that in the analysis of the, as we talked about in the past, there's always factors and prongs that have to be analyzed in a lot of these hearings that we talk about. This one's the prongs that have to be satisfied to obtain a preliminary

injunction because even though Middle Brooks wasn't necessarily commenting on the merits, the first prong of moving for an injunction. And what was the ruse here just to kind of kind of go backwards for a minute? Trump claimed that he has a revocable trust in Florida Trump claimed that he has a revocable trust in Florida that the New York Attorney General is trying to obtain documents from first voluntarily, then by subpoena, then by court order, which has been affirmed on appeal back in February, to get documents related to the trust because he operates a lot of his business through the trust. And so it can't just be a black box. She has to have access to it in order to know what's in it in order to continue her civil

fraud case and the judge outlined all of that. And the judge when he got to the prong, the fourth prong or the third prong, and he said public interest ways in favor of denying the injunction. He said, let's look at the public interest. This man's the head of an organization that just got convicted of 17 counts of tax fraud. The people of New York expect better and are required to know what is happening in this trust. And so the public interest definitely goes against you. So I love the way he was able to weave in just eight pages. This, this dig procedurally at Donald Trump and reminding the public in

the world that he is already the head of an organization that's already been convicted of felony tax evasion. Now at the end of it, this is the chilling shot across the bow that Middlebrook takes rightly so at the lawyers. He says in the last footnote that this is an example, this filing of this injunction, asking me to stop the New York Attorney General from having access to the documents in the core of the trust. It is, this has all, this is his quote, Judge Middlebrook's, all the tell,ale signs of vexatious and frivolous litigation. And he had

managed the lawyers to reconsider their current opposition to to letitia james's motion to dismiss the case. Okay, what does that mean? Let's put that into English. Agreed to dismiss the case. Or if you don't and you make us everyone from the judge down to the opposing party, New York Attorney General, the Tisha James, if you make her go through the motions of having to oppose it, you know where I sit on the merits from my ruling here, you know you're going to lose. And if you keep going, I am going to award sanctions against the lawyers and Donald Trump for maintaining this vexatious and frivolous lawsuit. How else would you interpret that then? What do you think then?

His new his lawyers who sit This is a group of lawyers on the west coast of Florida that do a lot of trust in a state's work I'm sure there's a I'm sure there's a puppet master with his hand firmly up their backside manipulating whatever they're filing. But that small firm in St. Petersburg, Florida, wherever it is, what do you think they now do in terms of agreeing to the motion to dismiss or not? I think that they are going to dig their whole deeper.

I think that they are so twisted. Their moral compass has been shocked with the Trump fascist magnet that it's all out of whack and these people know no depths of ethical violations. Let me read for you, Pope-Pock, and for our listeners and viewers what Judge Middlebrook said when he sanctioned Alina Habba the first time. And note there are other sanctions motions pending against her. This is for another lawsuit that I referenced earlier, the one where they filed a racketeering lawsuit against 30

individual defendants, including Hillary Clinton, and this was brought by just one of the defendants not by Clinton and the nine or ten others seeking at least a million dollars. So what Judge Middlebrook said, quote, So what Judge Middlebrook said quote, so who is responsible for this case and others like it? The rule of law is undermined by the toxic combination of political fundraising with legal fees paid by political action committees reckless and factually untrue statements by lawyers at rallies and in the media and Efforts to advance a political narrative through lawsuits without factual basis or any cognizable legal theory.

Lawyers are enabling this behavior, and I am pessimistic that rule 11 sanctions alone can effectively stem this abuse. Aspects may be beyond the purview of the judiciary, requiring attention of the bar and disciplinary authorities. Additional sanctions may be appropriate. This is Judge Middlebrook's, who these lawyers are now before. And frankly, I mean, with all of Trump's lawsuits, I mean, the one he sues, the Pulitzer Board, you know,

he files this lawsuit against New York Attorney General Attisha James, where it is meritless on like 25 different levels that are taught to a first year law student. That's how frivolous it is. So which lawsuits more frivolous than the next, but he's gonna sanction these lawyers, And I hope these lawyers get disciplined. Popeyes, let me make, yeah, let me make two quick procedural observations as somebody who actually practiced in Palm Beach County, Florida in the in the mid 90s. And I know most of

the firms that are there. There is a reason why Donald Trump was not able to engage or retain a very high end law firm that practices regularly in the Southern District of Florida and in Palm Beach County in particular because none of them, none of them, and I know most of the managing partners of most of the major firms that operate and the boutique firms that operate in that area, none of them will touch in with a 10 foot pole. And they are properly to rehabilitate lawyers for a moment, even though people that I think like this show know that you and I are practicing lawyers to rehabilitate lawyers for a moment.

The vast majority of lawyers will not get into bed with Donald Trump or represent him. And the ones that do, you should already be suspect over about their professional credentials, their ethics and their judgment. So, hey, there's a reason he had to go all the way over to the West Coast of Florida, which is a different district to, which is the middle district of Florida to go grab a small firm. Nobody's ever heard of to come into Palm Beach County and go and do battle in front of Don Middlebrooks. That's one of the reasons. The second thing to remind everybody, because you just, you just quoted that passage from that, that really great decision. That one was about 30 pages

when he, when Don Middlebrooks wrote the sanctions order. But let's remember the first thing out of the box that Donald Trump tried to do after Don Middlebrooks was assigned that case that you talked about, the Rico case, was moved to disqualify Don Middlebrooks, judge Middlebrooks because he was appointed by Hillary Clinton's husband. Back in 1996 or eight or whatever, Middlebrooks took the bench. He had been at a very high-end I think he'd been a partner in a firm called Steel Hector in town And he'd been and he'd been elevated as a commercial litigator to hit the bench That lost as we can see just because some president appoints you that doesn't mean you're that's grounds to recuse or disqualify yourself. We haven't seen that happen at this. Well, Popeyes, he wanted to disqual,

that was at a time like in last April or May, where he wanted to disqualify Middlebrook's. This was before we knew who Judge Eileen Cannon even was, and there's a footnote in Judge Middlebrook's order saying what it appears you're trying to do is forum shop this to judge Eileen Cannon two months before judge Eileen Cannon came on the scene and corrupted the judiciary. Middle Brooks was warning everybody who she was back in May or April. Yeah, he's really, I got to, I've been in front

of a lot of federal judges. And from the very beginning, I was a younger lawyer and he was a first year judge. I was super impressed with just the way he ran the courtroom hasn't changed. He's no nonsense, but he's, but he is polite. He is gentile, but he doesn't suffer any fools. And that's been the problem. And that's why on the Pulitzer piece, you did a very good take on that one. There's a reason the Donald Trump dropped the lawsuit in the middle of the state, just at the cusp of Lake Okeechobee about as far away from judge Middlebrooks as he could get.

Because if he put it in Palm Beach County, where it probably may be belonged, it would just automatically probably route back where his fear was, it would route back to the judge middle Brooks. But here's the thing there, Pope, back to and this is why he's an idiot and why his lawyers are horrible. Just because you file it in the wrong forum doesn't mean that the other lawyers on the other side are just going to be like, what do we do? I guess he filed it in the wrong district like in the one he filed in Okachobi You know, I hope I'm saying it right what you can do or what you can do is

Okay, the first move I would do is then transfer it to the you know to where Trump lives and then Remove it to federal court and it'll go in front of middle and potentially goes in front of middle Brooks again It just takes a little bit more time to get there and it increases the sanctions. Yeah. I, um, the move that they made to file first in Palm Beach County State Court, and you and I talked about it a couple of podcasts ago. It was just ridiculous. They knew that the first place, the very first piece of paper that Latisha James was going to file was a one page notice of removal sending it to federal court.

They could have just skipped a step, filed it in federal court, take their chances at the wheel, the wheel would spin. It didn't get assigned to middle Brooks, just so everybody understands because he previously handled the other case. They're unrelated other than the fact there's a vexatious frivolous plaintiff in the middle, which is Donald Trump. It's funny, they both have the same person named Donald Middlebrook and Donald Trump. However, there's a very small group in Palm Beach County of the Upper part of the Southern

District of Florida of judges. And the only one, and he's of senior status, the only one that sits, there's like two that sit in West Palm Beach courthouse. Cannon doesn't even sit in the West Palm Beach courthouse. That's why there's speculation that he drove. Trump had his lawyers drive the lawsuit physically to Fort Pierce, which is 60 miles north of Palm Beach County at the very, very top of the district to try to get Cannon. Popok. Yes. Popok. Popok. So why some what did I do now? What did I do?

Just so why sometimes I want to just take it. I want to take it. And I have some breaking news for you, Popok, as well, the breaking news is that the Maricopa County judge in Arizona has denied and dismissed the lawsuit filed by Kerry Lake. It was a frivolous lawsuit to begin with. I know that all the people in the right wing echo chamber were celebrating and we're being sold to Bill of Goods by Kerry Lake and others, even though I was telling you that not only is the case frivolous,

but they're likely going to be sanctioned for bringing it. And in this order, confirming the election results for Katie Hobbs as Arizona governor, the court also welcomed not just a motion for the costs and expenses associated with litigating this by Maricopa County and by Katie Hobbs, but also said, any motion for sanctions must be filed by Monday, December 26th, 2022, and any response by plaintiff must be filed 5 p.m. on Monday, December 26th.

Though the sanctions motion and the response do the same exact day the judges got a sanction them This was one of the most sanctionable lawsuits and the standard that Kerry Lake had to prove Which he didn't even frankly try to talk about you know, they go with these they go with these like Expressions that they think will appeal like this one was you know It was 20 inches versus 19 inches and was, it was 20 inches versus 19 inches, and there was a whole conspiracy 20 inches versus 19 inches. And then they go down the whole rabbit hole,

and meanwhile, they're not even asking the questions about what this is about, which is do you have any evidence that Maricopa County intentionally acted with intent to try to overturn and change results from a carry-lake to Katie. Ben, she was using Cyber Ninja's report, even though she didn't call it the Cyber Ninja report, but you and I used to call the fraudet in Arizona back back before Jan 6, we called it that, as the basis for her

overturning the will of the people, it's amazing to me that the Maga Republicans spend so much time talking about the will of the people. And the first thing that they want to do in any courtroom that they find is overturned the will of the people and disenfranchise them. It is amazing. The people of Arizona have spoken and buy a lot. And Katie Holmes is the governor elect. Keep filing these lawsuits and keep filing the, you know, these opportunities for judges to sanction and ultimately recommend disbarment of lawyers. I love the fact that it's the the day that you just you just talked about on this breaking news is Christmas day observed. So justice doesn't sleep

for the holidays and we're back to my song. It's beginning to look a lot like criminal justice. You got it. You got it. And just to remind our listeners and viewers as well, Abe Hamaday in the attorney general race, he lost his lawsuit. That was dismissed at the end of last week. Mark Finchum lost his lawsuit. All the mega extremist do is lose, lose, lose. It's kind of the opposite of who's the, what's the guy? DJ, DJ Khaled.

All I do is win, win, win. All mega extremist do is lose, lose, lose, lose, no matter what. As long as you support Trump, you're gonna lose. I thought you were gonna say, I thought you're gonna use the Christopher Walken line about all I do is make hit records. More cowbell. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it was precise, it's detailed, it laid it all out. They also released deposition transcripts, some really key ones that I thought were one

demonstrate the cowardly, the cowardly approach by the MagGA extremist, others showing the courage of people like Cassidy Hutchinson, but more importantly for purposes of this show, really reflect, I think, where special counsel Jack Smith could be going with his investigation. So just a few observations I'll make before passing it to you, Michael Popok. First, the first batch of deposition transcripts released by the January 6th committee were all these mega extremists like Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes and Roger Stone and John Eastman

and Kelly Ward who runs the Republican Party in Arizona. She's the one who goes, all drunken, mega, we are the orange mafia, you know, these people who are the biggest blowhards of them all, the people who go on the right wing media every day and spread their lies. When they were asked the most basic questions, what's your name? And where do you live?

How old are you? Is this the organization that you run? Questions like that. I plead the fifth. I plead the fifth. I plead the fifth. You had a question. I think it was Roger Stone was asked, do you believe that in our democracy, there should be fascist coups to overthrow leaders in a free and fair election. And Roger Stone's response was, well, I must most respectfully invoke my fifth amendment, right, against self-incrimination. Most respectfully, sir, he says it like that, you know, how about wait, wait, before you move on on your list, how about how about Michael Flynn, when when Cheney asked him, and then we have the how about Michael Flynn when Cheney asked him, and then we have the video of that,

when Cheney asked him, are you sir in favor of the peaceful transfer of power following an election? Fifth amendment. Really? Fifth, fifth, fifth, fifth, fifth, fifth. You know, so all those people, the CURCs and the Wednesdays and the Stones, all of them,

invoke their fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. Then you saw, I thought in Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony, a few key observations there. I mean, number one, as we talk about what is Maga stand for, Make Attorneys, Get Attorneys, her Maga attorney, Stefan Pasantino, who's now on leave from his law firm, who was getting paid by Donald Trump, save America organization, according to Cassidy Hutchinson,

when she told her own lawyer, Stefan Pasantino, what she wanted to say, he would say things like, no, no, no, no, don't go there. Just say, you don't recall. And by the way, telling someone to say you don't recall when you do recall is perjury. And so Stefan Pasantino is definitely someone who I think will be looked into by the Department of Justice and others. And then going to Donald Trump's men's rea, his mental state, the knowingly, the willfully,

the corruptly element of the crimes, we see Cassidy Hutchinson talking about how John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, would tell her that Trump called him, and Trump said that he knew that he had lost, but would not concede, and also that Kevin McCarthy had told her that Trump had called him, and acknowledged that he lost,

but said that he would not concede. And then again, just seeing that all of the key witnesses were Republicans. All of the key witnesses were people who worked at the White House. Was people like Pat Zipeloni and Patrick Filman and Eric Hirschman and Mark Short and Greg Jacob. These were the top deputies, top staff, or stop lawyers at the White House.

And they were the ones who said all of these things about Trump. You mean, Trump's been on, you know, completely deranged and dangerous spree on these posts. He's doing that on a social media platform. He's made these really weird and dangerous videos of himself where he looks awful, but more importantly, the things that he's saying is just so awful. Threatening Jack Smith's family and Jack Smith's friends, he calls them out and says something needs to be done about this.

That's where we are right now. We've got the Republican Party still led by this insurrectionists still led by his cult leader who wants to overthrow our democracy. One final point that I'll throw it to you is that the Republicans wanted to do or did a pre-buddle. They did a rebuttal to the January 6th Committee report. And in their rebuttal, they praise their cult leader, Donald Trump, for taking swift action. And they blame the Capitol police. They blame law enforcement generally, Nancy Pelosi, and they blame Black Lives Matter and applaud the swift and decisive action that they say Donald Trump took on January 6th. People, it is a cult.

They are utterly dangerous. They are against our democracy when they do things like that. It just further and further reinforces this issue that this is not a normal political discussion about what the remedies should be in this horrific day. We literally have a full fascist party in the modern day American Republican Party. Popok. I'll pick up with, I will pick up with that last point and then I'll move back to the Jan 6th list of things I thought were interesting.

On the last point, you can only make the pre-bottle that Donald Trump was really concerned about safety and blame it on Nancy Pelosi and the failure of the call up the National Guard and the Capitol Police. If you completely ignored the entire body of Jan 6th Committee work, 1000 witness statements, the nine presentations, the final report, the last hearing, gaviled a gavil, and all the evidence that was presented. How about these stats? Over 300 people were armed at the, this all came out in Jan 6th,

and the Republican's know, or should know about it. Over 300 people at least were armed in the crowd. And I don't mean just with like a pocket knife. Some of them had AR-15s, handguns, bear spray, tasers, and the like. Donald Trump knew that because he was told that by a security forces because there's testimony

that when he was told that the hold up, where are all the people? Why aren't there more people at the ellipse for my speech? He said, well, we're making them go through security in the magnetometers. And he said, no, take the magnetometers down. These are my people.

He said, yeah, but we found weapons. There's a guy up literally up in a tree with a gun. He says, yeah, but he's they're not here to hurt me. They're not here to hurt me. I don't care if they're armed. Let them in. Let them all in. Then during the speech, he took this armed crowd. There's knowledge. There's mens reya that you talked about earlier in the in the show, the criminal intent. And he took that armed crowd. And he pointed them directly at the Capitol, calling them there, and he took that arms crowd and he pointed them directly at the Capitol, calling them there, that's the enemy, go, I'll go there with you, we know why it didn't go there with them.

We thought it was because he's a coward. Now we find out he's just insane and he tried to take over the Secret Service vehicle and make himself and get himself to the Capitol. Lord knows what would have happened if Donald Trump had actually been there during the riot and during the attack on the Capitol. So you have to ignore all of that in this cult, cult like trance that these people are under in the Republican Party. You call themselves leaders, put that aside.

Now let's go to the Jan 6th Committee. We'll continue our holiday theme. You had 11 recommendations, four criminal referrals, four referrals to the House ethics committees and a bar, Tridge, in a pair, tree. How'd you like that? That's great, right? I like that. Here's the 11 recommendations.

I'll go over the highlights. 14th of it. You do it all singing? No, I could, but I'm not going to. Fourteenth of the men mentioned bar Trump from ever running for office again. That ties back to one of their criminal referrals, which is what Jamie Raskin in giving the closing argument, giving the closing referral presentation. They let off with one that I actually, I don't think they were going to lead off with, but

they did. It's insurrection. It's aiding and giving comfort to insurrectionists. Why? Because that ties back to the 14th Amendment, Section 3, the disqualification clause. And so first recommendation is Trump can never run for office. Again, there'd be a procedure to evaluate the participation of other elected officials, Marjorie Taylor, Green, and Jordan, and all the others in the house primarily that also

Participate a aid in comfort to the enemy to the insurrectionists and have a process to evaluate Whether they should be barred from from further off as that's one Stronger criminal penalties for all the things that happen on Jan 6th, specifically tailored to Jan 6th. There's this whole debate going on that you and I have been reported on already about whether obstruction of an official proceeding, which came out of the corporate crime world in 2002, is exactly the right crime to fit the bill. Well, the Jan 6th Committee says come up with new crimes because this will happen in the future and we need to have crimes on the books ready at the highest level of penalty to

address it. The other thing they want to strengthen is federal penalties. I thought there were federal penalties for threatening election workers, but apparently they're not strong enough and the Jan 6th Committee recommended increasing them. They also want new legislation on how to enforce the House subpoena process. They want to be able, I thought they do go right into court, but they want sort of a formalized, routine,

a routinized process for the House when their subpoenas are flouted and ignored to be able to get kind of a hot track right into federal court to have them enforced. They want to, of course, address this as the last part that the Republicans picked up on, capital policing, the capital police, and have joint commissions around the capital police to make improvements there. And they want to better define the VP role so that Mike Pence, the next Mike Pence is not pressured improperly by a deranged homicidal maniacal future president, not named Trump, hopefully. Um, I hope it doesn't happen, but hopefully it's not Trump again. And, and the role of the VP being properly defined

that it's very ministerial. He can't stop the election, the electoral college count vote, or the certification of the election. It's got a very limited role on the election, the electoral college count vote or the certification of the election. It's got a very limited role. On the moving to the four criminal referrals, we've talked about it at length. It's obstruction of an official proceeding, Donald Trump, John Eastman and others, aid and comfort in correction. It's a crime to defraud the U.S., and it's also sending in false or forged information into the US government in the form

of the fake electric certificates to the National Archive. And others that they anticipated the Department of Justice would be better position to investigate specifically around conspiracy. Gen 6 isn't really suited to come up with conspiracy because they got roadblocked as we've talked about it length from witnesses who either and we'll talk about them next refused to testify developed convenient memory holes that they went down outright refused to testify under a privilege or fifth

amendment and Department of Justice doesn't have those problems and then the last thing the Jans X committee did before literally puffed, they went out of business. The moment that report was issued, it instantly by operation of law dissolved the JAN-6 committee. There is no more JAN-6 committee as of the day the report was published on Thursday. But the four referrals will live on that McCarthy, Jordan, Andy Briggs, and one more that I'll sure I'll come up with be referred to the ethics committee because of their failure and

refusal to testify before the committee. So that's sort of the recommendations, the criminal referrals and the referrals over to the ethics committee. For me, on the witness side, here's the ones I think are in deep, deep trouble. Mark Meadows, and I've done a hot take, I'll go out eventually, about Mark Meadows may be the most likely to flip on Donald Trump, because he has witness tampered. There's no doubt in my mind having read Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony, now learning more about her lawyer, her then lawyer at the time,

Pasantino, and what he told her in terms of making her try to forget what she knew, be loyal to the president, be loyal to Mark Meadows, and there'll be a job for you at the end. And when she asked him, who's paying your freight? I know you're representing me, but who's, which is a fundamental question and ethics that every lawyer has to answer. Who's paying your freight? I know you're representing me, but who's, which is a fundamental question and ethics that every lawyer has to answer. Actually, it has to just tell the client,

even if it's not asked, he lied and said, I'm really not gonna tell you who's representing. It's not, it's not your business right now. He was being paid by the State of America back. The other observation I thought the Gen 6 made that was incredible was the math. that Donald Trump and those around him raised $250 million off the grift of the big lie. It's coincidentally the same number that New York Attorney General, the Tisha James is seeking in her civil front case, but $250 million

to gullible. I'm calling it as I see it. gullible Republican maga supporters who stroke checks the Donald Trump, believing a lie and putting money in his pocket didn't go anywhere else. It went in his pocket. The other person that's got a lot of explaining to do to the Department of Justice, if you believe as you and I do, Ben, that these transcripts are really, really

important for establishing the criminal mind of Donald Trump. Because right off the bat, you've got Mark Meadows, for instance, him having said that he played the complete blame in emails, laid the complete blame for everything related to chance six and the insurrection on Donald Trump. He made those comments in front of people like Cassidy Hutchinson. He was in the dining room when Donald Trump said, can you believe I lost to this guy, all the things that go into criminal mind, criminal intent of Donald Trump? The children are not out of the woods yet.

I know that Ivanka and Jared believe that if they just quietly move to Florida, and they don't participate in the current new campaign of their father and father-of-law for the presidency, we'll forget about them. We won't. Apparently, from reading the transcripts, you can see that Ivanka was very not cooperative with the JAN-6 committee and conveniently forgot things that it was incredible that she would have forgotten. Department of Justice is not going to go so kindly on her because the things that

she said I can't recall are just, it's not believable. And they'll have more evidence from their side of the investigation, but they'll be able to go after her on. Jared Kushner is the same thing. I don't think they're at a harm's way. I think quite the opposite. Kelly, Kelly Lay McKenney, who was going out of business at way, I think, quite the opposite. Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, lay McKenney who was going out of business at the end of Jan 6th as press secretary. She's

got a lot of problems based on her testimony. And the Department of Justice will now, as you said, one of your hot takes will now take all of these transcripts, these thousand transcripts, and they'll compare it to what they've already developed at the grand jury. And they'll make sure that these things line up. And where there's disconnects, those witnesses have a big problem. If they've told a different story to the Grand Jury, then they told her the Jan 6th,

that of course is false statement under oath, which is a crime. There's gonna be statements in there that the DOJ hasn't gotten around to being able to take yet. And now they will know in advance, ah, if we take this deposition or bring this person into the grand jury more specifically,

this will be about their testimony or we'll be able to push them on this testimony because we're the Department of Justice, not just the Jan 6th Committee. So that is, as you said, a treasure trove of information that will now give Jack Smith extra turbocharging to go after all of these witness and advance all of his prosecutions and all of his grand juries that he's now responsible for.

A new grand jury, Ben, by the way, we always talked about, we're trying to do the, read the T-Lies. How many grand juries are there? There's a new one because I've seen it reported a time and time again. He has opened up a grand jury that's focused on the Georgia election interference acts by Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, the Senator from why am I forgetting the Senator of South Carolina, Graham? He's catching up in real time. He tells you want to forget him. I know. I know. Yeah. I got a picture.

But that's another grand jury. That is a new grand jury that's been open. They're looking at all. We know it because of the reporting about, uh, Justice Barrel Howell, what she's had to do with the release of all of the text messages and all the emails from Mark Meadows, Scott Perry, uh, attorneys, and it's all focused on a lot of it on messages and all the emails from Mark Meadows, Scott Perry, attorneys, and it's all focused on a lot of it on Georgia, which the JAN-6 committee also said there were over 200 acts.

This is mind-boggling this total. There were 200 acts of pressure being applied by Donald Trump and those around him on election officials by election day through Jan 6, including at his inner circle, there were 68 meetings or attempted meetings or phone calls by Donald Trump and those on his behalf to pressure local and state election officials. Think of the, talk about pressure testing, talk about the, the, the, the sheer pressure on one human being having a phone call from Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Flynn, Mark Meadows, Lindsey Graham, to try to get you to overturn the will of the people and give the election to Donald Trump.

Think of the pressure on these elected officials. And then, of course, is another part of another grand jury that we think is out there with all of that. But I agree with you. I think not to lose sight of all the other people like Congress people that were involved in all this. And I don't want to make the fall guy, you know, Stefan Pasantino for representing or misrepresenting Cassidy Hutchinson. But you know, it's gonna be you and I are doing it, you know, we're just a couple of guys going through transcripts. The Department of Justice says, test, I'm sure, you know, 30 or 40 or 50 people to read these transcripts, line it up in their database with all the information they already have, give it to the line prosecutors in front of each of the grand juries all led by Jack Smith, figure out who do we call in back as a witness for the grand jury or into the grand jury for the first time?

Who do we go now in front of Barrel Howell? It's going to be a tremendous amount of post-Jansix activity by the Department of Justice that you and I are going to follow in the first quarter of 2023. a report. I knew I'd get a little Christmas gift from that committee, but we also got the Christmas gift from the House of Representative Ways and Means Committee chaired by Richard Neal who released two reports relating to Donald Trump's tax returns from 2015 to 2020. Donald Trump tried desperately to block turning these over. We now obviously know why. There is a mandatory, mandatory, it doesn't mean discretionary, it means mandatory audit program where the IRS is required to audit the president's tax returns and the vice president's tax returns and the vice president's tax returns.

In fact, that was actually cited by people like Trump and people in the administration. I'm under an audit. I'm under an audit. It turns out he wasn't. He wasn't. The only time there was ever an audit was just on his 2016 returns and that was only after the Democrats won in the 2018 election and only after Richard

Neil, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, sent a letter asking if the mandatory audit function was actually taking place and then they scrambled and they did one just of 2016. They didn't do one of any of the other years. Mind you that it was mandatory. And when the House Ways and Means Committee requested that they see a copy of the tax returns, which literally the IRS code says word for word that that has to be turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee if they ask because they have an oversight ability to get that information.

Steve Manuchin at the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS and the IRS commission or blocked that from happening. So there had to be years and years of litigation. Finally, when Biden came into office, they followed the law and said, yeah, that's definitely something that the House Ways and Means Committee could get. Trump intervened to try to block it, dragged out litigation and DC federal courts took it all the way up to the Supreme Court,

lost in a unanimous rejection of his emergency application before the Supreme Court, the House Ways and Means Committee got it, they looked through it, they released these two reports, it shows that there was no mandatory audits taking place except for one in 2016 and all after all after the Democrats had finally asked for it and it was trying to be covered up by the way. All the other years were covered up as well. And here's what we've

learned, there was two reports released by the House of Ways and Means Committee. One that Trump had blocked the mandatory audit function and the Trump administration was not following that, the IRS was not following that under Trump. Mind you, at the same time, Trump was blocking the mandatory audit function. He was targeting his political enemies like Komi and McKay and others with audits of their tax returns and he was targeting them for political purposes. And then the second report was actually on the returns themselves.

And here's what we've basically learned. In 2015, Donald Trump earned, remember, the great businessman, Donald Trump. By the way, he jointly filed with Mulani, which means they're jointly and severally liable for any liability that flows from these returns. Under the IRS code, a spouse who claims they were doped can claim to be an innocent spouse and make a filing against their husband, but they would have to show the innocent

spouse would have to show not only that they didn't know, but they had no reason to know. And clearly, Mulania had a reason to know as well. But anyway, in 2015 and their jointly filed taxes, they earned negative $31 million, and they paid $641,000 in federal income taxes. In 2016, they earned negative $32 million and paid $750 in taxes. They should read read read read read read read read read read read read their business model. In 2017 they earn well their business model is fraud and this is all bunch of BS. 2017 they claim they earned negative $12 million and they paid $750 in taxes. In 2018, they claimed that they earned $24 million

and they paid $999,000 in taxes, which is less than 4%. In 2019, they claimed they earned $4.4 million and paid $133,000 in taxes. And in 2020, they claimed they lost again, when I say earned negative they're claiming that they lost just to be clear. They lost $4.6 million and not only paid $0 in taxes but they got about a $5.5 million refund.

So when you add the $5.5 million refund to the one million in taxes or so that they paid in 2018 and then the 641 they paid in 2015 and you take the five million in taxes or so that they paid in 2018, and then the 641 they paid in 2015, and you take the five million just round up and say they paid two million taxes over the years, but took a five, got a five million dollar refund, they basically grifted three million dollars that they got from the government in a refund. They paid not only zero dollars in taxes during these five or six years

They got three million dollars. So while the working class Americans while middle class Americans while hardworking Americans of all shape sizes jobs whatever have been paying their taxes Donald Trump has been stealing essentially from them. And then when you delve into it, there's things like he claimed a deduction from a conservation easement in 2015. Like he paid $7.5 million for the seven springs Westchester County property in 1995. And then in 2015, he took a $21.1 million conservation easement deduction on his

returns. There wait, it's worse. The conservation easement issue is part of Latisha James's civil fraud case in New York and in the New York State Court. So he's that's a deduction that is, is, is her example, one of her examples of civil fraud for which he's seeking $250 million in the Scourge. We're talking about over $80 million in declared losses on the 2018 return, which the age and identified as large and unusual. And you got a refund. He got a $79 million refund.

You go through it. You know, loans to the kids to avoid the gift tax. You go on and on and on here and it spells a damning picture of criminality. And I use the word criminality because, one, that's what it is. And two, because New York Attorney General Latisha James has also made the referral to the Department of Justice,

because she has access to this as well before we've seen it. And she's made a criminal referral as well, in addition to filing her civil case. So Popak, what were your low lights? I won't call them highlights, what were your low lights? I won't call them highlights. What were your low lights? Yeah, and I'll give a minute of my, I did a hot take on this one,

I'll give a minute on this. It dem, here's the scary parts of it. It demonstrated that the IRS in the hands of a corrupt president will be corrupted itself. They were hollowed out by President Trump, a president who was against the internal revenue service, saw them as a thorn in his side while he was in the private sector. And as soon as he got into office, along with his cronies like Steve Manuchin and others

that he placed in positions of power in his cabinet, the first thing they did, it's like they sat around and said, okay, what are the regulators and agencies that we don't like when we were in the private sector? Now that we're in charge, the criminals have now been elected to the panel. What can we do? SEC, okay, let's make that toothless, we'll reduce its budget, and we'll put some feckless person in charge of it, that's a golfing buddy of ours. That happened.

CFTC, same thing. We don't like them either. That regulator. Let's hollow that organization out. And who's the one that we all hate? And they all said in unison all these multi-billionaire greedy bastards. They all said, the internal revenue service is OK.

I got a great idea of the trauma revenue service. We'll put Steve Manuchin, one of my golf buddies, former owner of a bank that took advantage of people in the mortgage crisis, you know, working people, and also became a Hollywood producer. We'll make him treasury secretary. He's over the internal revenue service. We'll defund the internal revenue service.

We'll hollow them out. And when they need more resources to do things like do a proper audit function around the president of the United States, who is the only person in the entire world who can affect his own tax liability by signing a bill into law. The only one, that's why you got to put an effective robust audit function around him. But you can only do that if you have an effective robust muscular, well-funded IRS, IRS put, I'm not making this up, put one guy, one person on his tax returns.

Some of these tax returns go thousands of pages and you could see from even the middle Brooks case that we talked about, there's at least 20 organizations, 14 organizations that simultaneously file interconnected tax returns for Donald Trump. So, Pop, they even said here that there was 400 pass-through entities that were used. So, a picture of this, one poor schnook at the internal revenue service, who's a 9-5 person civil servant who gets paid whatever they get paid, and they're given, here you go, Bob.

Here's Trump's tax return. And they just threw up their hands. What they should have done and what will happen hopefully after this has happened is that they should have gone out and hired tax law experts at sophisticated money laundering and tax haven and tax scheme type lawyers who know and tax CPAs who know the code inside and out and can just throw all of their horse power or the mental horse power onto this project as consultants to the IRS in order to do a proper function. Look, if it's Barack Obama and he's doing like a like a 1040 EZ because he's got a little bit of royalties here and a little bit of speech royalties there and he can total

it all up with normal deductions that it's three pages long. Great. Then the average civil servant IRS person can do it. But Donald Trump, who's been grifting and creating tax avoidance schemes offshore and onshore and hiding money since he got his first communion dollar and from his father, you're going to have to bring in the cavalry. And so the first thing that you do when you're the president and you don't want the IRS to supervise you or to find that you're breaking the tax code for which you've sworn an oath that you would uphold is that you hollow it out. You say, oh, you only got one guy over there?

That's OK. That one guy's fine. Oh, he's not. He can only work nine to five, can't work weekends. That's fine. That's fine. He's going to rely on my auditors, measures, and my lawyers and take them at face value for whatever

they write on my returns. That's good. He should do that, too. And that's actually something that was found by the committee, that the IRS took the position that since it was his returns were prepared by quote unquote professionals, they were inherently reliable. We know now that measures who was his Trump organization and Trump's, you know, 12 year or more auditor basically had it declared that nothing that they had ever audited

could be relied upon because it was so suffused with fraud and corruption that it was, they totally renounced everything that they'd ever done. This is the same body of work that the internal revenue services were lying on. So we got to fix the internal revenue service. They can't be at the whim and the back-and-call of whoever happens to be in the White House because if you get a corrupt person, they're going to get corrupted. The Treasury Secretary is always going to be the golfing buddy of the President when it's a Republican at least.

And so you're going to have to watch that position, at least the IRS commissioner, who's the head of the IRS, should be immune from political, uh, political, uh, corruption and political power. And if not, why do all, why does all this matter? Because some people may, may not have heard about the Houseways and the, means committee before civics class in high school. But it's one of its main jobs is everything related to taxation and oversight in our checks and balance system over the internal revenue service and things like its audit function around the president checks and balance.

How do you have a checks and balance when the the head of the House Ways and Means Committee in a hearing asked the commissioner of the IRS and other people in subcommittees to get to the bottom of the audit function and he can't get straight answers out of the agency that he by house rules and the constitution is responsible for supervising. When they ask the IRS people, for instance, well, where are you with the returns? He's two years into office. Have you gotten around to any return? Not yet.

Well, what are you waiting for? Well, we're busy collecting things. Well, do you have enough people in order to do this? We don't know yet until we get to the bottom of our collection. I mean, this was just a Q and S. Magic 8-ball answers that were just devised to give the runaround to the boss, the supervisor, in this case, the Houseways and Means Committee. Steve Manuchin is at fault here, okay? He had an obligation to uphold the laws of the United States of America, sworn oath when

he became Treasury Secretary, his name is on the money for those years. He instead, as a cultist, did the bidding of Donald Trump and actually stepped in. The letters and the demands did not go to Steve Mnuchin. They went from House Ways and Means Committee to the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. Rather than answer, the Treasury Secretary stepped in and said, we're not turning over the returns. Go pound sand. Notwithstanding the audit function, the law that's been on the book since Richard Nixon. Because every time there is, it looks to be every time there's a Republican

president who's corrupt, we have to do cleanup after that with laws. That's what the Congress is supposed to do. So after Nixon, there was a series of laws that got passed because of how Nixon pressure tested the system. And they fixed a lot of things including the National Archives and records because of the the tape recordings by Richard Nixon. And it fixed a lot of things, including the National Archives and records because of the the tape recordings by Richard Nixon and his failure to turn over materials. So we had a whole body of law that developed off the National Archives that had now came into play with Trump. Same thing with tax returns. Nixon, there's a lot of money flowing around the Nixon administration and Nixon personally, and it wasn't properly accounted for for and its tax returns were an audit. Hence, 1977, new body of law about how presidents, audit function

the IRS are supposed to work. Now, House Ways and Means Committee making new recommendations about what should be done in the future about mandatory, I mean, really by law, not just IRS manual, mandatory auditing while they're in office, a president's advice, presidents and disclosure immediately, transparently, to the American people while they're in office. That is currently not the law. And that's why the House, we as a means committee, have no choice but to fix the problem by releasing the returns. You and I have talked a lot about the returns, but the reality is we haven't seen them because we've only seen summaries of them because they haven't yet fully been

released. So you and I are going to have a lot to do around this, the 27th of December, when the full set of tax returns are released, and we can get to the bottom and really roll up our short sleeves and get in there. We know a little bit, you read some of it, we know a little bit about what to expect, because as you mentioned before in 2020, New York Times got their hands on an overlapping set of a lot of these same years of tax returns through Mary Trump and was able to go through and see that, for instance, in 11 out of 18 years, 11 out of 18 years Donald Trump paid exactly zero in taxes. I defy anyone that follows or listens to our show to tell me how many times they

paid in their life, zero in taxes. And I assure you, it wasn't the majority of the time that they've been taxpayers. So that's, that's, that's, that is one thing we know we're going to see besides all of the question, questionable business deductions and other things. And the the sheer gall to continue to claim a deduction related to a conservation easement that is currently the focus of a criminal invest of a civil fraud investigation in the state of New York. You know, do you have he like you say he has no there's no limits

to how low he will go and how many holes he will dig for himself and how deep they will be. Popok, they deducted apparently the Stormy Daniels. The 150. They deducted the Stormy Daniels payment. Anyway, as you said, we have a lot to do. The Midas Mighty has a lot to do now. And what I ask you to do is enjoy your family enjoy your friends enjoy

The holidays we really really really are so grateful for you It's one of the things that makes me just so inspired each and every morning to do these videos to do these shows To know that I am part of this Midas mighty community, this unapologetically pro-democracy community, a compassionate community, a community that is positive, a community that wants to make sure that our country is always at its best. We're so grateful for all of you. For the holidays, you can still check out patreon.com slash might as touch.

It's one of the things that you can get if you're already a patron, if you're already gone to patreon.com slash might as touch, you can still right now as a last minute gift idea, get a family member or a friend, a colleague, or a coworker, a membership, and you can subscribe for the full year at any of the various membership tiers. And you can get the Pro Democracy membership in their name, in addition to your name, as well, go to patreon.com slash might as touch. You'll love the exclusive content there.

But most importantly, I'll help grow this independent media platform. Check out store.mitustouch.com store.mitustouch.com for the best unapologetically pro democracy gear. Obviously, if you buy it today, it's not going to arrive in time for the holidays, but you'll get some of the best gear as we head into 2023. We spend a lot of time designing the gear. I think you will like it a lot. Make sure you subscribe here subscribe to this YouTube channel And if you're listening on audio go to the YouTube channel if you're listening on YouTube or watching on YouTube go wherever The podcast is available of legal AF and make sure you subscribe there and give a review It's very important for the algorithm for the audio podcast that our YouTube viewers also subscribe on the audio. So that's one of the ways you can help out as well as making sure you subscribe to the audio legal AF as well

and leave a five star review. I'm Ben Myceles joined by Michael Popak, Mary Christmas, happy holidays. We love you and we'll see you next time here on Legal AF. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.