Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Jack Smith READY to bring JUSTICE to Trump and MAGA Criminals in 2023

Episode Date: January 1, 2023

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 New Year’s Eve Edition, the anchors discuss: the criminal prosecution implications of Trump’s newly-disclosed tax returns; the impact of the Jan. 6th Committee’s release of 1000+ witness transcripts on future court cases and public perception of the key witnesses; yet another Federal Judge commenting on Trump’s criminality; the likelihood of Representative-Elect (Republican) George Santos’ criminal prosecution; the Supreme Court’s policy-making and denial of Biden’s efforts to control his own immigration and asylum-seeking policy, and the hosts’ predictions of criminal prosecutions of Trump, Eastman, Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark and others in 2023, 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

Welcome to the new year edition of Legal AF. Donald Trump's full tax returns are released exposing more lies, more grips, more foreign conflicts and more crimes. We'll break it down. A federal judge in Washington, DC, cites the January 6th Committee's final report in rejecting an insurrectionist's motion and stating that Donald Trump's statements on January 6th would not and should not be construed as lawful commands.

How about the release, Popack, of those deposition transcripts of the witnesses that the January 6th Committee deposed. Having a monumental impact as those depositions have been released in these different tranches. We'll discuss that as well. The Supreme Court blocks President Biden from implementing his own immigration policy

as Commander-in-Chief and essentially forces him to continue enforcing title 42 expulsion of asylum seekers, at least until February when oral argument is now set to take place based on an expedited briefing schedule ordered by the Supreme Court. And the MAGA extremist fraud, George George Santos not going to be having a great 2023 but Santos may just claim 2023 is actually 2018 and expect us to believe that he's under criminal investigation from essentially everyone now federal state and local prosecutors a complete and utter fraud utterly humili, but that is the state of mega-republic ins today, sadly.

What can we expect in 20, 23? We've got special counsel, Jack Smith's criminal investigations of Trump. We've got New York attorney general, Latisha, James Sivill fraud lawsuit against Trump seeking at least $250 million in which would shut down the Trump organization from doing business in New York. That trial is set to start in October of 2023. The Manhattan DA's criminal investigation of Donald Trump himself is now ongoing after the Trump organization was convicted of 17 felony counts, Fulton County District Attorney, Fawni Willis's criminal investigation of 2020 election interference in Georgia heats up and there will be a report and indictments there,

Eging Carol's Civil Rape and defamation case against Donald Trump will go to trial in 2023. So Popeyes 2022 was a year where the wheels of justice turned in the right direction 2023. I believe will be the year of accountability. I'm calling it now. We're only a few hours away from the new years here in the United States. If you are watching this internationally and it's already 23 happy new years to you, happy new years eve to those watching it and counting down the final hours until the new year. I am so glad we are spending this together with all the legal a f's Pope Bach. How are you? I'm doing great. Happy New Year to you and everybody that follows us

and subscribes. And let me let me tell you only half jokingly. I thought you and I and legal a f would be out of business by 2023 when we first started this show. We talked about what are we going to talk about and the content that we're going to talk about? I thought, all right, look, let's try it. Let's see how much is out there at the intersection of law and politics for you and I to talk about. Maybe we'll run this for a couple of years. Boy was I wrong. 2023 is shaping up to be double or triple the amount of things that are monumental that you and I have to break down and cover along with carried freeman, Agnipfalo. And yeah, the show's not going anywhere because the goal of the show to explain and break it down in layman's terms, what's happening at the important intersection of law and politics

is not going anywhere. And so I'm looking forward to 2023, three with you, my, my co-anchor and host. Well, and here's the thing too for everybody watching this when PopoK and I started this back in 2020 and we would do these live broadcasts or live streams. We would have maybe 50 people, 25 people at first, 50 people, and a lot of them would be friends and family watching. But the overall point of now seeing that we have, thousands and thousands of people watching this, is the fact that anybody watching this at home,

anybody watching this on your phone, wherever you're watching this right now, you have the ability to make a difference and you did make a difference because none of this is possible without you. None of this is possible without the legal AF community. We built this together and you are the most important part of helping us to build this and you are a major part of that. So I just want to say thank you to everybody watching this at home. We are so thankful for all of you wherever you're watching this. Alright, let's get into it. Donald Trump's full tax returns are released. Hope we had the two

executive summaries that were released that we talked about in last week's edition, but now we have the full tax returns, the actual raw data where we could see things like charitable claims of monies that went to charity. So when Donald Trump says in 2020 that he donated his salary to charity, we see a big donut hole. We see zero in 2020. So we absolutely know that he's lying there. I mean, when Donald Trump claims in the various press conferences that he gave and leading up to the 2020 election, he said he paid millions of dollars in taxes. Well, not in the United States of America, and he didn't.

If you look at all of those five years and you kind of netted out, he actually received money from the government a $3 million tax refund you'd pay like $0.20 and receive to refund. In other years he got he paid $750 in taxes. He never paid more than 4% of his income in taxes, but that was ultimately you know eliminated by the fact that he got a $5 million refund. But then I say, well, you know, at least he wasn't paying that in America because we see all of these foreign entanglements. I mean, he literally had a Chinese bank account.

We see that. He claimed that he shut that down in 2015 and that he was thinking about doing business in 2013. Those were his public statements that he made, but he paid $200,000 in taxes to the Chinese government. More money than he paid to the United States government. In that year, he paid $750 to the US government. I think it was 2017 when he paid $200,000 to the Chinese government.

And so you start seeing all of these things that when you actually look at the raw data itself, I mean, shows a lot of criminality. I mean, Popeye, he took a deduction from the payoff to stormy Daniels that was routed through Michael Cohen. He took that as a deduction. So a lot, you know, look, obviously it shows that he's a liar. Obviously it shows that he's a grifter. Obviously it shows these foreign conflicts. But what do you think the Manhattan District Attorney is thinking right now? Well, let's go, yeah, I'm going to back my way into that. Off of that really good explanation. Let's talk about what the criminality could be within the tax returns. First of all, he used an abused,

a technique of setting up his companies into sole proprietorships and using what's called Schedule C in his 1040 tax return. He had a total of 65 sole proprietorships, which basically, I'll be honest with you, are used for very, usually for very small companies, not ones that have 1000 page returns, tax returns. The reason he did that is that there is a liberal use in the schedule of expenses against what's supposed to be income and revenue for that particular business that is listed as a sole proprietorship, except in

26 of Donald Trump's sole proprietorship, so over that five year periods for which we got our hands on the tax returns, each one of those 26 showed zero back to your donut, zero in income, but huge expenses, meaning he could take his expenses into the tens of millions of dollars and offset that against income, dividends, trust the count, trust, trust income, and other parts of his return. So when you net all of that out, those 26 companies with zero in revenue and huge expenses and tax losses, he took like a magician, a criminal magician. He took $46 million worth of adjusted, a gross income, $46 million.

And he made it a refund of $2.1 million. So he eliminated completely all of his income, $46 million. And he ended up with a refund of $ 2.1 collectively for those five years. Now, his total income was 152 million for those five years, but his adjusted gross income after all those expenses were applied was negative 53 million. He made over a hundred and fifty million dollars disappear by using these schedule Cs. That is a problem. He had a problem like this, apparently in 1984,

where a administrative law judge in the tax area, New York State also pointed out you can't have all these businesses with zero income and all these expenses and offset. So he's on notice that this is an improper methodology. Mazers, the now long discredited accounting firm, auditing firm for Donald Trump for 13 years, who under penalty of being criminally prosecuted itself by the Manhattan DA's office and looked at by the attorney general of New York Disclamed all of their work done for Donald Trump and basically told the world

You can't rely on a thing that we previously certified because we got that information from Donald Trump and the Trump organization And we find it now inherently unreliable. It is measures who is at the bottom of every tax return In fact, there's no signatures for Donald Trump or Melania. It's just measures with the tax preparer. Then you've got that that whole category of bogus charitable deductions, potentially bogus charitable deductions that aren't backed by any chits or invoices or receipts. And those are the tens of millions of dollars. You also have the impact on his tax returns of his own tax policy. The big tax change in 2017 led to him being able to avoid the alternate minimum tax, the AMT, which saved him again millions of dollars, which is exactly what the House Ways and

Means Committee was very concerned about that the president who alone can impact his own tax bill passes laws that benefit him. And so we saw that in the tax returns. The criminality is going to go to following the money now that the IRS, the U.S. Attorney's offices and prosecutors now have access to these returns and they see these banker bank accounts in China and Izer-Bijon and in other places and try to figure out if there's any money laundering going on here. Speaking of money laundering, we focused that I did this in my hot take on the matter. We focused on the $200,000 in Chinese taxes he paid, the same year that he and Melania paid $750 total to the US. But there's also this $15 million transaction with a high ranking elite of the and connected to the Chinese government who got a below market pen house in America, assaulted him by Donald Trump. Donald Trump immediately

took the entire sale price, $15 million out of the bank account. So in fact, you've got China giving Donald Trump $15 million by way of a penthouse transaction that gets reported on its tax returns. All of these things are going to be supremely important to prosecutors, some of which has been known to them because the New York Times got a bunch of these tax returns through Mary Trump back in 2020 But many of them did not and now you're gonna see Latisha James The internal revenue service a new and now emboldened by you know, Merrick Arlen and by Joe Biden looking at all of these things for future prosecutions I think Alvin Bragg is gonna have a good 2023. I don't know if he planned

it this way, but I'll give him credit for it because lots of people were very angry at Alvin Bragg when he let the grand jury investigating Donald Trump's financial crimes. Lapis. Including Karen, including Karen, our co-worker. Now he tries the case against the Trump organization as the test run because a lot of the same witnesses are going to be in the bigger trial against Trump directly if and when that occurs. For example, the measure's accountant was a key witness who was called by Trump's lawyers and they tried to cross examine him and Trump's lawyers did a really horrible job on the cross exam. So much so that when jurors spoke to the media, or at least one juror, who spoke to the media afterwards, they said

they hated Trump's lawyers, hated him. And they said things too like Trump's lawyers would do things, like make fun of the guy's voice, he had a high pitch voice, the accountant, and then in the closing arguments, he would do impressions. Trump's lawyer would do impressions of the accountant's voice. So this is Susan necklace and her at her colleague. It was her colleague who did it. I'm like kissing off the jury and the jurors and the jurors said, why would you one you put

on a horrible case? But why would you be so cruel and call into question the accountants manhood like what in the world were you doing? But it's going back to Alvin Bragg here. A lot of those witnesses are also going to be witnesses if and when Donald Trump is indicted himself. So Alvin Bragg's got the W, the win behind his back now after the Trump organization, Pled, or was found guilty, rather of these 17 felony counts and now when he tries the case or What I think will file against Donald Trump directly for a number of those things that you just mentioned They kind of know the strategy also it's remove this whole

Phony Teflon Don Narrative right that Trump he Trump, he'll always gonna win. He's always gonna get away with it. No, not only did they lose, but the jury was like guilty, like record time for all of those 17 counts. It was like, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, four hours, they sigh, vans.

And I agree with you about Alvin. I was less strong. You know, Karen was in that office and actually thought about running for that office. So she has very well considered strong opinions about that. But in retrospect, if he's a master chess player, which Alvin may be, he got the easier win with the cooperation of Alan Weiselberg, the longtime CFO, a win that, as you said,

led to 17 felony convictions. Ones that will now be cited forever more in court cases, and we'll talk about how things like Jan 6th and criminal convictions in one court end up being cited in another to support positions or analysis, which is really, really important. In a way that I haven't even contemplated as it related to Jan 6th, but we'll leave that. We'll put a pit in that for a moment. For Alvin, he's now 17 to know, if you will, against Donald Trump.

He knows how to fight the lawyers and he knows their weaknesses, which are, as you described them, not getting, not not being seen as credible or authentic in front of a jury, or having them see you the same as they see your client. I mean, if you're got a sleazy client that's known for being a misogynist, saying really terrible things out loud, you shouldn't repeat that in doing, you know, at least bring your own credibility to help your client prevail. That doesn't seem to have happened here. The way you described it.

So, but Alvin's got that 17 and no record now and now with his own people because look, it's, it's hard. He inherited a case and a prosecution and investigation from his predecessor, Sivance. Sivance is still around. I mean, the guy's only in his 60s. He's practicing law. And, you know, he's been kind of public about I would have prosecuted. I thought the next step,

what I left office was that Alvin was going to prosecute, given all the evidence I'd given him. However, he's his own person. He has to make his own decision. But, but let's give that credit. I mean, he is his own person. He did evaluate in his own way with his own experiences as a prosecutor, a lifelong prosecutor, federal and state, the evidence, and he didn't see the case at that moment. And he was getting pressured by the special prosecutors that, that side, the incident hired and brought in that, I don't want to say they were it, they were at Alvin's people, but they were at Alvin's people. And they were pushing. Look, if the only thing that you've been doing for the last two years,

having left private practice is working on this one case. Of course, you want that one case to be prosecuted. And Alvin had a little bit more of a sense of perspective, having been the new person into the job. And, you know, it was going to, it was going to live or die. The buck stopped with him. Now, as you said, 2023, if, if this is his strategy, it could turn out to be brilliant. Because, as you said, 2023, if this is his strategy, it could turn out to be brilliant. Because as you said, he put all of these witnesses through their papers already, he sees how they're going to perform now with his own people. And he's brought in his own group of special prosecutors who know about Trump and the Trump organization

to help him re-evaluate things like stormy Daniels. Is that an election, uh, election fraud violation or election contribution violation and other things within it. So I don't think anybody should be who listens to the show should be surprised. If in 2023, Alvin Bragg in the Manhattan DA's office bringing new round of criminal prosecution against Donald Trump specifically and these tax returns are only going to help him. Popak, you put a pin in it.

I'm taking the pin out of it. Let's go and see how the January 6th Committee's reports are now being cited and not just the reports, but how the deposition transcripts that they released and the way they've been kind of drip, drip, drip, drip in these deposition transcripts has had an incredible impact as well. I just think also reputationally in allowing the public to sort through who are the bad actors, who are the criminal actors, who are the phonies and who are the people who acted reasonably around that time here.

Very few heroes, other than the law enforcement, the Capitol police officers, the people who stood against it. You know, I don't want to fully say that were they really heroes in the White House on that day? I think there were people who acted as they should have acted in that. Pat Sipalone. Yeah. Pat Sipalone is becoming the John Dean of this investigation.

The more the transcripts come out through his own and through Cassie Hutchinson, the more Pat Sipalone looked like he was the adult that stopped a lot. You think what Trump did was crazy? It was gonna be even crazier if Pat Sippelown hadn't been in his position.

So, let's first talk about the federal judge in Washington, DC, though, who cited the January 6th final report in a recent court order this past week. The judge is John Bates, federal judge, district court judge, appointed by George W. Bush, an insurrectionist named Alex Sheppard tried to file a motion to dismiss and a change of venue motion and also wanted to assert a defense called a public authority defense, which basically is kind of like entrapment in a way. Public authority defense, although it's not fully well-defined because very rarely do you have a situation where someone can try to argue that a president told

them to lead an insurrection, but the claim of public authority defenses that you believed that you were following lawful orders, that the orders that were given appeared to be lawful and that you were just acting pursuant to those orders. So here, the federal judge had to analyze whether or not this insurrectionist could assert that defense here because the insurrectionist said, Donald Trump told me to do it. Donald Trump said that we should stormed or fight like hell And so I was following his orders on that day. And what Judge John Bates said is, look, let's look at the January 6th Committee report.

And also, let's use our common sense. And when you put those things together, it's apparent that Donald Trump was actually not giving a lawful order when he was saying things like fight like hell and we're going to the capital together and I'll be there with you and all of those things that a person who interpreted that would not believe they were following a lawful order but that they would be obstructing an official proceeding and so to have yet another federal judge I mean we've seen statements by Judge Carter federal Federal Judge in California, Judge Amit Mehta, Judge Sullivan, Judge Barrel Howell. It kind of adds to this list of Judge Amy

Berman Jackson. It adds to the list of these judges who are very, very, very critical to say the least of Donald Trump's conduct, but specifically here, Trump's really running out of any potential judge who may be an ally in Washington, D.C. where the indictments against Trump will be brought. They're not being brought. We talked about this in other podcasts. Judge Eileen Cannon should never have asserted jurisdiction. The fact that there was a search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago was the reason why there was a magistrate judge in the Southern District of Florida that had assigned the warrant. But that's why Florida was involved.

But any indictment on both Donald Trump's theft of government records, as well as Donald Trump's conduct relating to the insurrection and election interference, those will all be in DC. And even the Republican judges, all of them, whether we're talking about, you know, even a Trump appointee like a judge, Nichols. Maybe judge Nichols would be the most sympathetic,

but he's not sympathetic to the insurrection. Nichols has made a, I think, a terrible ruling claiming that obstruction of justice, that charge can't be used except in very narrowly circumstances, which we've talked about on prior podcasts, can have very big implications. But on the other charges, like a seditious conspiracy charge, on an insurrection charge, on a trespass charge, on a conspiracy charge, there's not a single federal judge in Washington, DC, who I think would let Donald Trump off easy here. So I wanted to talk about that piece about what Judge John Bates did, citing the January 6th report, Pope, I know you wanted

to talk about the deposition transcripts and their implications. Let me toss to you on that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me, let me pick up on a couple of threads that you laid out there. First of all, while we talk a lot about Trump having reshaped or attempted to reshape the federal judiciary, he wasn't that successful. I mean, there's there's courts of appeals that were already conservative, like the fifth,

the eleventh that he continued in that direction. But Biden has done a much better job at appointing at the state, at the trial level, the federal trial level and at the federal appeal level. The only place that Donald Trump really, and I'm not and at the federal appeal level, the only place that Donald Trump really, and I'm not saying I'm not minimizing it, it's important. But the place where he really reshaped is that he got three picks. He was able to get three picks on the Supreme Court. In DC, he's done very little to be able to ideologically shift the judges in his favor. These are not by and large.

In fact, none of them, MAGA Republicans that he appointed. Carl Nichols is not a MAGA Republican. You may not agree with his decision, but I knew him by reputation and where he worked at Williams and Connolly before he became a judge. He is a Republican, but he's not ideologically maga. And there aren't really aren't any in the DC circuit or in the DC circuit court of appeals that fit that bill. So even though you'll hit a Trump appoint, well, maybe one, maybe one on the court of appeals,

the guy that Katzis that had been in the Trump administration in the White House Council's office who seems to view his role as being mag up. But other than that. So you're right, when the prosecutions finally happen, they'll happen in Washington with a very unsympathetic bench. One that is you've noted, has already starting to form opinions

based on the 400 cases of the Jan 6th that are being filtered through their courtrooms. Barrel Howell can't help but have predispositions now about Trump, some of which we've seen in her rulings against Rudy Giuliani and others, when she's not also running the grand jury process and hearing all the secret testimony about attorney client communications that you and I don't even know about. So the good part about the insurrections being put through our justice system is it's having

an impact on the judges who are asked to handle. One of them is going to get picked to be the Donald Trump judge for one or more prosecutions coming out of the four or five grand juries that Jack Smith is running in Washington. Now, the part that I wanted to talk about is that, and we see it in the ruling by Judge Bates against Alexander Shepard, which is interesting for a couple of reasons. One, Judge Bates did not buy the argument

that obstruction of justice can't be used against the Jan 6 defendant, because unless you find evidence that he literally walked in and tore up the electoral votes, which is sort of Carl Nichol's position. That is that is a argument that that may prevail at the DC court of appeals, circuit court of appeals level and then go to the Supreme Court. But right now they have not ruled that three judge panel. And so judges like judge baits are doing their own analysis. And once again,

like every other judge in the DC circuit has ruled that obstruction, the obstruction of official proceeding is an appropriate count to go against the Jan 6th defendants because they're object of their of their acts of their obstruction of obstructionist acts was to stop the Electoral count, which they did for a period of time and to stop the certification. So he that's the first thing he dispatched. Then on the on the fight does fight like hell You got to go down and march to the Capitol was that the license the the the legitimacy the license by a government official to a person like Alexander Shepard, the others to say, hey, I'm allowed, I got, I got a free pass today.

I'm allowed to go storm the Capitol and confront Capitol police and interfere with the election process because my president who's a government official told me to and the judge, after going through the analysis, said, look, I get your argument. It's sometimes called a entrapment by a stop-all, meaning the government is a stopped from changing their position, telling you at one point you can do something, and then taking away that privilege or right, and then leave you in the middle being criminally prosecuted. And the examples that they used are like, for instance, when there was the the sit-in, the Occupy Wall Street in New York, but people forget, where for like the whole summer, in a park across from Wall Street, was occupied by people objecting to, you know, financial services in Wall Street,

Mayor Bloomberg gave out an edict, which is cited in this court's opinion, that said, as long as they're peaceful protesters, we're going to let them express themselves. And people said, based on that, I stayed in the park. So when they were criminally prosecuted, some of them were staying too long, they pointed to Bloomberg's comment and said, isn't that an express or implicit permission for me to do it? I was told if I'm peaceful, I can stay. And now I'm being arrested. So that's where it really comes up. But Donald Trump saying we're going to fight like hell. Go walk on the Capitol is not the equivalent of here. You have the permission. Today only I'm the president burst through the doors, confront the police, be violent about it and try to stop the electoral vote. And for that judge base was not buying that that defense

applies. What I liked about it is in that the footnote seven that you just talked about and maybe we'll be able to put it up for the show. It's footnote seven. This is where Jan six comes into the real world in a courtroom. He said that the President Trump, the person, Mr. Shepard, that you're relying on for the instruction that you said you were given to allow you to march to the Capitol and burst through the doors and attack the Capitol. That guy, that guy, according to Jan 6, committed four crimes.

And one of the crimes was fomenting the violence that happened by knowing people were armed and dangerous in the crowd and then turning them and pointing them to Capitol, another branch of government and telling them to go basically attack and yelling out the words attack, if you will. He says that guy, what you say is your permission is actually a crime that it was being committed by the President of the United States. So says the Jan 6th committee. So here's where I had a moment, like my own personal

revelation. I think I underestimated, and I talked to you about this pre-show, I underestimated the impact that the not not so much the criminal referrals. I thought that was important. I may have referred to it occasionally as ceremonial, but because I'm less worried about the criminal referrals in terms of the Department'm less worried about the criminal referrals in terms of the Department of Justice, but the criminal referrals and the release of the 1000 transcripts of witness testimony, which is being done about 100 a day

until they get to the full 1000 before Jan 3. I underestimated the impact that that would have, both in the courtrooms around America, like we just saw with the judge baits. And in the not only public perception, in not only saying the emperor has no clothes, but ripping away the clothes of all these elected officials like Marjorie Taylor Green and Mo Brooks and MacGates and the Trump kids and Donald Trump and everybody around the White House, including Meadows and Giuliani and Powell,

all those people don't have to take it, they don't have to take the Department of Justice's word for it as it comes out case by case when they finally prosecute because the Department of Justice right now is bound and gagged. A, they'll never release transcripts before a trial. They just can't. They can't under the law. Two, the grand jury process is completely secret. And three, Merrick Garland runs a leak proof shop. There's no leaks. There's no press conferences. There's no, you know, other administrations, other Department of Justice, you would hear a lot more information. We're not hearing anything. So the Jan 6 dumps all of these transcripts for everybody. You

me, pundits, personal, regular people, anybody that wants to pull the transcript can go read exactly what Don Jr said can go read. You know, and now there's catalyzed right there's this person in the communications office for Donald Trump attacking that person in the communications office for Donald Trump. And then you get to read four days of Cassidy Hutchinson, not just you and me interpreting it for you. That is having a tremendous impact on the future reputationally of all of these people. If Donald Trump was the giant boogie man under the bed, is he going to run again? Oh my God. Now he's so shrunk now to that you could drown him in a bathtub. I mean, he is tiny. He's a tiny little, you know, little

tyrant. And he gets shrunk more and more each day with more and more revelations about him. But the others do too. They've all taken major hits, you know, Mac and Annie, whoever this former press secretary that's on Fox News, terrible information came out in the transcripts about her. Don Jr. Eric, Ivanka, all of them will have, will be scarred indelibly by the Jan 6th Committee's release of these transcripts. That's doing a public service for the history of this country that I underestimated when it first started to happen. You know, and I think those to your point,

those depositions will be cited now in court cases. Those depositions will be cited now in just news articles and perpetuity. And those depositions are out there in just perpetuity and general reputationally. And you know, you have the people who invoke the fifth, you got your Roger stones and your Mike Flynn's and your Nick Fwentases and your Charlie Corks and your Kelly Awards, people who will forever be in the chapter under trader with Donald Trump and the mega extremists. You've got other

chapters for cowards, and you've got chapters for people who stepped up and did the right thing, where you'll see people like Cassidy Hutchinson and Pat Sipollone, and you know, at the beginning of this segment though, what I was saying is that they followed the law and by following the law they're courageous. But when the base level is, did you follow the law and that that is applauded, we should take a step back for a second though and reflect how far into the depths of depravity, the Trump administration and Maga has brought us where base level doing what you were supposed to do, you know, former vice president, Pence, engage in the ministerial task of counting versus allowing Donald Trump to lead a procession

of national guardsmen to overthrow and declare himself the emperor. I mean, you know, it's like, yes, Pence did the right thing. But you're supposed to do the right thing. You're supposed to follow the law. And we don't just expect our leaders to do base-level things. We expect in hope that our leaders are going to fight for us. Move democracy forward. That's why it's a very, very, very dark chapter in our nation's history, the darkest, perhaps, or one of the darkest. Let me make one, two more observations. And it's going to take a while for all of this to filter through 1000 transcripts. You got to figure about 10 hours per, if not more. You're talking about 10,000 hours or more of testimony. You know, even if we just, even if we speed it up to two times and listen to it really fast and read it really fast,

you're going to take a while for you and I and others to kind of figure it all out. But here's two little nuggets that I thought were very interesting that I hadn't heard before. I want to see if you heard it. First of all, we, I did a hot take and we, and I've talked about the struggle between the Department of Justice and the JAN-6 Committee, all along, JAN-6 Committee holding tight onto their transcripts and their witness testimony. I thought at the time it was only because they wanted it to be really, really impactful and not share with the Department of Justice because they hadn't yet made their own conclusions, but that's not it. Apparently, for a number of witnesses, the Jan 6th committee agreed not to make a

department of justice referral or send the transcript right to the Department of Justice in return for the witness testifying in front of the Jan 6th committee, knowing that at the end, they would, but they made promises in order to get certain people to testify. And I'm not sure which ones they are yet, but this came out already in reporting that they made promises that don't, if you talk to us right now, under oath or otherwise, we will not immediately turn the transcript over

to the Department of Justice, you know, like directly. And so they got a number of people to testify based on that promise. And then they felt like they had a, they were bound by that promise and they didn't turn it over to the Department of Justice. So that was very interesting. And also blasts from the past Dan Quale of all things,

former vice president under George W. Bush, making not one, but a series of phone calls to Mike Pence and others guiding them on what to do in this moment. First of all, I didn't even know Dan Quale was still around, let alone that he's respected in Republican circles, pre-trupp, right? This is when Republicans were a real party. And you got Dan Quail guiding Mike Pence

about what he should or shouldn't do, fascinating. People from history coming back, and I'm sure we're gonna see more of that as we get through 10,000 hours of testimony. We'll keep reading it here and we'll keep sharing it with all the legal aephers and Midas mighty out there. I want to talk about the Supreme Court's shadowed docket used to block President Biden from implementing his own immigration policy and basically forcing Biden to continue enforcing

Title 42 expulsion of asylum seekers here in the United States of America Expelling these asylum seekers back to places where they will be tortured or killed to be very clear Title 42 is actually not an immigration law, right? Title 42 is a health law. It involves powers given to the Surgeon General and the CDC to stop the transmission of communicable diseases. That was invoked by the Trump administration as part of a xenophobic immigration policy because we have title eight to deal with deportation, but that has a process where you still have to allow asylum seekers to go through and make their petition for asylum, but by claiming a health emergency and invoking title 42, you could avoid that from happening. Now, Title 42 also only deals with certain countries and certain groups and where it could

be expelled. It's very, very, very flawed. But nonetheless, Biden was criticized for using it because to all of a sudden, stop using something that was evoked by the Trump administration could cause a great degree of chaos. But finally in April, Biden's like, look, I wanna go back to title eight deportation. We wanna go back to have our own policy. If just saying we're not gonna use title 42,

doesn't mean we're not going to enforce a border policy. I'm the commander-in-chief, the justifications for Title 42, regarding the pandemic no longer holds. So I'm going to pursue my own policy. Then he was basically sued, or these Republican states intervened. The case was then labeled Arizona versus meorcus. And the Republican states led by Arizona and a bunch of other Republican states said, no, you have to keep enforcing title 42,

which title 42 is essentially an executive order, right? By the CDC and by the Trump administration, and Biden's like, I'm gonna do my own policy. And so this was litigated before the Washington, DC, federal court before Judge Sullivan. It was then litigated later on in front of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, both saying, Biden's policy. And the states, you shouldn't even have the ability to intervene. You don't have jurisdiction to even intervene here. Then it went up to the United States Supreme Court

through an emergency petition filed by the states. You had the chief judge Roberts, chief justice Roberts granted a temporary stay for briefing to take place. And then in a five to four decision, the shadow doc at the Supreme Court, not with oral argument, basically said, look, we're going to intervene, we don't care what the district court says, we don't care what

the DC Circuit Court of Appeals says. We are going to block Biden from implementing his own immigration policy until we have oral argument, which we're going to set for February. So until February and we hear the argument, we are stopping Biden from not utilizing Title 42 anymore. And the Supreme Court tries to be cute by half in their order and said, we're not telling him that he can't do the immigration policy. He just simply can't not use Title 42 anymore,

which is constraining him. If you're forcing him to use Title 42, you're constraining his immigration policy. Now, there may be differences of opinion. There may be differences of views about, should he use Title 42, should he use Title 8? He's the commander in chief, though. And so for the judiciary to use their shadow docket

in this way, to me is incredibly problematic and popuck, it's also incredibly hypocritical because in all the other areas where the executive has actually attempted to invoke their executive authority where Biden said, look, because of the COVID pandemic, when the COVID pandemic was raging, here's my view about evictions. I want to stop evictions right now.

What did the Supreme Court basically say and what did all the right wing courts say? They basically said, you can't use COVID and health policy as a pretext to reach into these areas of eviction. Same thing that we're seeing with what right wing Supreme courts are doing, and this is gonna work its way up to the Supreme Court on student loans.

You know, the Biden administration said, look, because of the global pandemic, this is an emergency under the, you know, under the 2003 Heroes Act. Therefore, we're gonna utilize our policy, the Department of Education is gonna forgive loans because we are in an emergency situation. And they're right wing courts. And I think the Supreme Court, ultimately, unfortunately, may agree with these right wing

courts. So, you know, say, you don't have an authority that violates the Administrative Procedures Act. Then you can't do that. Meanwhile, this archaic law from like almost a hundred years ago, title 42, is now being thrust and forced upon a commander in chief to engage in a policy that the commander in chief says, no, we, we, we want asylum seekers to be able to pursue a asylum. And I want to pursue my own border policy. I'll make this one point and then toss it to you, though,

Popeye here, which is, I think it is important that we have comprehensive immigration reform here. I don't think you can just basically say, we need totally open borders. I don't agree with that. I don't think that. However, there has to be compassion. There has to be a reflection that we, in the United States of America,

when people are legitimately seeking asylum, to send people back to get killed or tortured is not what our country is about. I think it's important to reflect that we are a country of immigrants and that all of our stories, all of our histories, the people who are so out against immigrants in the Mozena phobic ways. Mostly all of them have come from immigrants. They're one or two generations, you know, our two generations removed from that. So we need a comprehensive immigration policy, which is what Democrats invited and people always want to do. And we could achieve that but for the fact that

mega Republicans like to do the performative things where they kidnap people and human traffic them and send them and ship them to the vice president's house and engage in those xenophobic gestures and performative gestures. Like let's build the wall, okay, well someone could dig under the wall. They could climb the wall, they let's build the wall. Okay, well someone could dig under the wall. They could climb the wall, they could walk through the wall.

You know, they want the performative BS so that they could let people hate and let people blame others for their problems rather than solve problems. And I would like a comprehensive policy that's compassionate, that's respectful and that does recognize we do need borders here in the United States of America, but reflects that we are a country of immigrants.

So anyway, I'm sharing a little bit of my politics there, but I want to toss it to you briefly, there, Popeye. What do you think? All right, immigration policy is personal to me. I lived in Miami for 20 years. I have plenty of friends that were both legal and illegally in this country. We need, as you'd, pick up or you left off, we need a comprehensive humane immigration policy. Unfortunately, it has eluded administration after administration, both Republican and Democrat, whether we have the House and the Senate or we don't. Sometimes, there's political will for this.

Usually, there is not on the Republican side. It's personal to me. My great-grandfather came here in 1900 through the then-existing immigration policy through Ellis Island. My grandfather came here in 1908 through Ellis Island. I have loved ones that won the Green Card lottery, which is one aspect of a humane policy if it's properly applied. And there's no greater United States citizen or patriot than that person who came through the Green Card Lottery. Title 42 is controversial.

It's even controversial within the Biden administration to be perfectly frank. They were fighting for everything you laid out about the commander and chief and Joe Biden on one hand, but they were fighting that hard on the other hand because of the amount, the sheer volume of people who are yearning to breathe free and enter this country, which I completely support. And including places like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti, were violence and poverty make for most people living there completely insufferable and intolerable. And that's who's affected by it, pardon me. The one thing about Title 42, the people need to understand,

it was passed by Trump as a public health issue to use COVID policy to make people remain in place while they applied for asylum. Think about that. Most people that are applying for asylum, political or otherwise, are doing it because their life is in jeopardy because of the political circumstance or where they where they are in the socio economic group of those countries that I've just outlined. We used to let them in, stay at a detention center or stay in America safely while they applied for asylum. If they got asylum, they stayed.

If they didn't get asylum, then they were returned to their home country. But the benefit of the doubt was given to them. Under the Trump era policy, which frankly Biden continued to use, he could have gotten, he could have challenged it earlier, but he didn't. More than two million asylum seekers stayed in their countries rather than come through to the United States during this time period, both under Biden and under Trump, just to show you the sheer volume of people that are impacted by Title 42, two million remained in place. Why I say that Biden sort of was a little bit playing both sides is because even though they challenged the decision to eliminate Title 42, they didn't also move to the Supreme Court to get an injunction in their favor so that they could continue to drop it

and bring all these people in. Frankly, I'm not sure. Myorcus and by the Biden administration is completely ready for two million or one million people to be housed, protected, and all on this side of the border while they're applying for asylum. Now, Secretary, the press secretary was very adamant about it. They're still going to work to be ready for the day when Title 42 is no longer in place. But there are people within the Biden administration that breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief that they're not having to process one million people right now.

Putting aside for a moment, the important aspect of that is that's one million people that are probably in jeopardy, life and liberty in the countries that they are. So this is a supremely complicated moral and legal issue about Title 42. How did our Supreme Court handle it? The way they always handle it, they make policy by delay.

They say they don't make policy by delay. In fact, Gorsuch, who's the only one that wrote an opinion in the five to four decision, keeping Title 42 in place place requiring Biden to have these people remain in place outside of the country during asylum application process. Gorsuch said in his, it only wanted to write an opinion where he joined the three liberals, the three progressives on the Supreme Court, Kagan, Katanji Brown Jackson, and so to my or he wrote, we are a court of law.

We're not policy makers of last resort. That's interesting for Gorsuch to say that because if you could put a spin on every, if you could put a comment about the Supreme Court this last term, it was that they were policy makers and they did it in various ways, choosing which cases to take and the timing of those cases, whether to use the shadow docket, which frankly, in the 50 years prior to this past term, the shadow docket had been you, if you added it all up, it had been used less

than in this term, you know, in all the years prior, in this term completely. So they do it by shadow docket, they this term completely. So they do it by shadow docket, they do it by timing, they do it by whether they're going to take the case on full briefing, they do it on whether they're going to grant the stay or not, they do it on whether the circuit, the judge over the circuit, the justice over the circuit is going to grant the stay or refer it back. And there's time that goes by weeks, months, six months, eight months, nine months, the dobs decision and abortion.

Let's get to it in 10 months. We don't care what happens to people in that period of time. In immigration, we'll get to it in February. I actually think it's closer to March. We'll get to it in March on full briefing because we want to see full briefing, but that's a policy that the Supreme Court has made by doing it in doing timing. So for Gorsuch to gaslight America and say, don't look to us to be policymakers of last resort, because he thinks that since COVID is over,

that doesn't mean that there's not a crisis at the border, one of these borders, and that the Biden administration shouldn't be able to use or not use Title 42 to fix a crisis at the border related to immigration under the guise of a public health concern. But I think, you know, it is just Balsey for the for for a course it's especially to come out and say don't look to us to make policy when that's all that they have done over the last year. And I'll do with you. We'll do a Supreme Court roundup in the new year about where we are so far, where it's going to be until their next term and the developments there.

But that, I thought, was the most striking aspect of the decision. But I want to make clear, I'm not sure the Biden administration is that upset that they don't have to deal with one million people at the border and making decisions about remain in place or not. They'll fix this problem, but it's got to be what you laid out. It has to be a part of a humane, dignified immigration policy, one that my great grandparents came through and others came through who are now amazing patriots for America. Why do we want people to live in, in humane conditions in the shadows doing the dirty work for America, but don't have a place in America legally.

I would only slightly disagree with you in the sense that I think about six months ago, the Biden administration, given all the chaos that Trump's created with these policies, would be in a position where they did not want drastic change to occur, although now that they've implemented their own policies, their own procedures, the Biden administration wants to take on big challenges and they wanna do things right, they wanna do things their way. And there's a lot of data too behind Title 42

and the fact that it causes actually a great deal of recidivism because of the fact that it doesn't have some of the tools that deportation does as well and the way Title 42 has been implemented defectively by Trump. But I hear your point there, but ultimately to what it comes down to is, and to be very clear to all of our listeners and viewers out there, Title 42 is a law that trumped it in past the law. Title 42s existed for close to 100 years or so. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but just say about approximately 100 years. It was invoked in these circumstances to then be transplanted to further Trump's immigration policy via an executive order and going back to the point that I raised earlier. The Supreme Court has always held recently, this major questions doctrine as a way to

stop executives, particularly Democrats, when they're in office, from implementing policies that they want to implement, saying that Congress has to specifically act on an area, except when it's an area that the Supreme Court disagrees with or feels a certain way about, then the major questions doctrine, like all of their views when they claim their strict constructionists on the Constitution, except when it comes to the Second Amendment, will take out the words well-regulated and militia. We won't read those words. And so it goes to all of these views at the right wing extreme court just picks and chooses how it wants to make these decisions and then gas slides you to Popeyes point by basically saying,

oh no, no, where's your constructionist here? Oh, you know, no, we're going to look at history here. Oh, we don't make policy. And there's absolutely, you know, and it basically it is policy and it is agenda driven. Speaking about agenda driven, let's talk briefly about this mega extremist fraud, George Santos, that I wanna pick your brain on what you're looking forward to in 2023, Popeyes. But we can't not talk about George Santos. I mean, I like to not, but you're right, we can't.

I mean, okay, he's lied about everything, like everything, the most egregious things too. I mean, let's talk about, he his life about going to baroo college he's lied about um... where he's worked he could lie to you he never worked at city group he's never worked at goldman sacks he lied about the charity that he claimed existed which doesn't exist he claimed that his mom died on nine eleven he claimed that his mom survived nine eleven he claimed that his mom and dad survived nine eleven he claimed that his mom survived nine eleven he claimed that his mom and dad survived nine eleven he claimed that four employees died of his died in the pulse nightclub

shooting he claims that he's Jewish uh... he claims that his parent that his grandparents were holocaust survivors he claimed his last name was like zebrafski uh... i mean like they were they were from Ukraine. And he are from Ukraine. He lies about it. And we've talked about this on the Midas touch podcast. You know, the third congressional district in Long Island has a very large Jewish population. That's why he claims to be Jewish.

And also the memories of 9-11 resonate in the hearts of people who are across the country and mostly across the world. And specifically, like he's around my age. I mean, I remember being in my home room class when the planes hit the towers and having to hear the names of parents being or students' names being called over the loudspeaker, they can go into the principal's office to see how their parents were doing.

And so he lies about all of these, and he lied that he had a brain tumor that he survived. But more specifically, though, as it relates to the criminal investigation, that's what we talk about here on legal AF, it's his lies relating to disclosures that were made on his congressional forms, and not just the lies, but is he basically a straw man getting all of this money to get around campaign finance because he had no money, no money. He was doing crowdfunding for, you did a go fund me for like himself and for his mom right before he ran.

And his last congressional disclosure when he ran and lost, he claimed he was making $50,000 a year. And all of a sudden this time, he's now making millions of dollars. He's loaning his campaign, $700,000. He's got all these kind of shady connections to through people who have donated to him, who are related to Russian oligarchs, and I'm not saying that's necessarily the connection here. He's got a relationship with a company that was a $17 million Ponzi scheme

that was filed on by the SEC, and I think went out of business right before 2021, and he's using the same accountant there, and there's a weird office address in Florida. The real, the criminal issue here is the money, how do you get the money, are his disclosures accurate? Who's funding this fraud?

And then obviously the reputational issues will deal with on the Midas Touch Podcast and elsewhere on our platforms, where it's obvious that he is, unfortunately, that's who the Maga Republican Party is, we talked earlier in the show, Trump lying about everything. And here you got Santos, who's, who's just a different version.

Santos is not a trust fund kid, the way Trump was. Santos pretends to be, you know, rich and wealthy, but it's the same stuff just lying about everything. So now we know that all prosecutors at the local state federal level are all investigating prosecutor at EDNY, Eastern District out of Brooklyn, federal prosecutors are investigating at the state level, Tish James has said that she will be investigating in New York Attorney General, and then at a local level the Nassau County

Prosecutor who happens to be a Republican is also investigating and meanwhile Kevin McCarthy stays utterly Silent I mean these people are so weak and reckless and he's they silent that but Popeye going back to the criminal aspect of it here What do you think is going to happen? You stay silent because you're clinging to a nine, only a nine person majority in the house. And you can't afford to lose anybody. But here's my prediction, one of my predictions for 2023. George Santos may make it to be seated on Jan 3. And he should also learn how the calendar works because his printed material told people

that his investiture, his signing in, was going to be in 2022 in January. But putting that aside for a minute, I think he's going to get taken out of that seat. He's going to get indicted for one of the crimes that will outline by one of these three prosecutors, if not more, and he will then therefore be referred to the ethics committee, and he will ultimately be impeached and not seated. I mean, he'll be taken out of his seat. I think he gets there because I'm not sure they're going to be able to get all this to happen. And as you said, there's no political will among a morally bankrupt party to take him out of his chair. And then have a special election in that district, which would undoubtedly go to the Democrat at

that point. Now they're down to an eight vote lead. George Santos has major financial problems. It's obvious. I think he also has a tell like in poker, because one of the companies that he used, I don't know if you caught this, Ben, to pay the rent for his personal residency, which he claimed as a, as it expense for his campaign, was called cleaner, cleaner, one, two, three. That sounds a lot like money laundering.

Anything you name cleaner, one, two, three, sounds like you're funneling money and you're cleaning it through an entity paying your own, your own rent. How a person goes from a 2020 run for office, making $50,000 to two years later, loaning his company, $700,000 is, it's, it's not just Horatio Alger, it's just complete fraud. There is no ability to have done that unless he's running a Ponzi scheme through a company named after his mother's maiden name called the Devolder Company, which he claims is some sort of transactional broker

with clients all around the world that gets a fee for transacting real estate and selling yachts and boats. One of our followers and listeners actually had a good point, which I should have remembered because I was in financial services. He said, doesn't he need a series seven license in order to do a number of those transactions, which he does not have? That's true. So he's got this devolder company with the shadow black box sort of like FTX. We don't know what's going on in there. We don't know where the money's coming from. And somehow money comes out enough that he can loan himself $700,000. Where did that come from? Prosecutors will look at that in those three places that you talked about. Also, in addition to that, he does have a direct link, as you said, to this

Florida-based company that the SEC said ran a $17 million bondsy scheme. Some of that money may have ended up back with him. He has to explain. He can't get away with telling Tulsi Galbert or whatever her name is on Fox News. He can't get away with telling her, my biggest guilt, what I'm guilty of is a resume inflation, just like Joe Biden. Embellishment, embellishment. Embellishment, forget that. He's got major finance, then he's got his own campaign finance violations, which are also crimes related to how he's listed his expenses. Every one of them, he put just a dollar below the limit that he would have to, if he crossed

it, he'd have to have backup in terms of an invoice where some sort of receipt. Everything is like a dollar or a penny below that expense threshold. I mean, come on. This is called structuring for those that follow criminal law and money laundering and anti-money laundering. It's called structuring your transaction to avoid reporting requirements and that is a crime. So we have that level of crime.

He's never gonna be, this guy, I'm gonna backtrack. He made this appear before Gen 3. I mean, he's got so much that can't be accounted for. It's a quick flip flop. I don't know, because I, you worked this up up in the, I know, I'm in a lather, I'm in a lather of Ress Santos. I mean, he's just, but he will go to jail

for the things that he did. And it's interesting, the Nassau County one. By the way, are you and your brothers from Nassau County? And only I'm in from Nassau County, that congressional district is my congressional district. That's my hometown where I grew up. So you and I have, we have linkages. I worked at Cantor Fitzgerald,

which lost 658 people on 9-11. I wasn't there for it. I came in after. But every day we thought about the victims and every I was I was in that culture of that organization. And I know a lot about financial service and I currently live in a town that was the single most hardest hit town in 9-11. it lost 54 people. There's a park that I take the dog to that commemorates those people. So it's near and dear to me for somebody to be so despicable and so immoral to try to use 9-11 to get an extra vote. It's just, and the Nassau County prosecutor, and you know to properly, she's a Republican,

she said the fraud in his resume and what he campaigned on was stunning, stunning. She's going after him for some sort of voter fraud related to misrepresentations made. You, here's the reality, you can't just say anything to get elected and not violate criminal law. Well, it doesn't work. And the fact that he thought so, it just shows you

this criminal mind, this personality disorder that he obviously has, that allowed him to think he'd get away with it, that just if he just got to the finish line and won the election, and then touting all of these things as you and I talked about, and I did an hot take, every one of these things,

he carefully calculated to get a vote in all of these different categories. The gave the gave vote, the Republican vote, the Jewish vote, the 9-11 sympathy vote, the Ukrainian vote. The, it's just mind boggling, you know, the financial services. Okay, he thinks he's catching me if you can. He's like, Leonardo DiCaprio. It's like, catch me if you can. I'm an airline pilot. I'm not. I'm going to fly a plane.

I mean, take the. I like catch me if you can. Increasingly, it appears like the Manchurian candidate. Right. I think that there is a lot, a lot, a lot that is going to be uncovered by these federal state of local prosecutors. then go into the point though about like leadership. And this brings us to the last topic and you'll see the segue in a moment because this is what I ask sometimes our listeners and viewers to do when they watch the Midas Touch podcast or just when I talk generally, I'm like, let's just remove for a second the labels that large media networks like to talk about liberal conservative because if you utilize those labels, they would say, well, you got George Santos, who is a conservative.

And it's like the conservative, that's conservative. You just lie in about everything about you. That's supposed to be conservative. You just lie in about everything about you. That's supposed to be conservative. Now, or all these right wingers, they're conservative. And it's like overthrowing the government, eliminating the Constitution, destroying the Constitution, engaging in insurrection. And then you go back to just the basic concept of leadership here. You know, I think actually Kevin McCarthy would, and I'm not trying to give him advice.

It's the least thing I want to do. But I think it would be actually respected if you just said, you know what? In this political party, we are not accepting frauds like this. And while it's obviously tough with close selections, we have to be leaders and we're doing the right thing. And this person is an utter embarrassment because even if you didn't do that as like a leader to do the right thing, even if you were thinking selfishly two steps ahead to your point, Popoq, he's likely going to be criminally indicted. The story is going to get worse.

You know, frankly, that's why Tulsi Gaber did what she did because Murdoch probably told her, you know, as it filtered down like, we got to get rid of this guy because it's only going to create more problems down the road. It's going to metastasize. It's going to become worse. And that's the issue with all of these things that the Republicans do. They either affirmatively cheer on fascism or they're so weak in callous in the face of it that they allow it to foment and all of the parallels where history can repeat itself

of how fascist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler come into power. They're so feckless to it. And then ultimately, then they come for people like you Kevin McCarthy, then they come for people like you Tulsi Gavin, and they come for people like that. That's the M O. So let's reflect though on a year where the wheels of justice turned in the right direction in 2022. the right direction in 2022. And think, look, this was a, this was a productive year in 2022. But let's look ahead now in 2023 briefly, Popak. And I want to get your take on what you're looking forward to in 2023 in terms of justice. I'll give you my take. And then we will let everyone get back to their new year celebration. So the Papa, was it a Papa cork there? Um, all right. So criminal prosecutions for 2023, you outlined it perfectly at the top of the

show. 2022 is about preparing justice in 2023 is about prosecuting and getting convictions. The on the Trump side, on Donald Trump side, here's in, uh, in no particular rank order. I think we see an indictment on Mar-a-Lago. I think we see an indictment federally and likely from Georgia with Faudi Willis on Georgia interference. I think the Manhattan DA that we talked about on the show,vin Bragg brings an indictment against Trump related to Stormy Daniels at least. I think the others that are in harm's way for indictment in 2023 are John Eastman,

are Rudy Giuliani, and are Jeffrey Clark. And I think the broad, I'll categorize them or I'll lump them together the way Jack Smith will under the rubric of obstruction. You can call it obstruction with an official proceeding or you can call it just the catch all the Department of Justice is very successful at using obstruction of justice. And in many of the things that we talk about where people scratch their heads on social media and say, it's not a crime, it is. It is a crime when a witness gets tampered with. It is a crime when a witness's testimony is, is outsizedly influenced by somebody that's a target of the investigation like Donald Trump with Cassidy Hutchinson. It is a crime when you call to try to pressure

crime when you call to try to pressure an elected, an election office or state representative or someone else to flip votes in your favor and to throw out ballots. Yes, those are all crimes. And they, and at least one count of a crime that that is is obstruction of justice. I think Merrick Garland blew the dog at obstruction, when an introducing Jack Smith in his appointment, referred, I think, at least four times in his five-minute press conference, then a press conference, to the words obstruction. All of the things that we've talked about, that Trump and the others, Giuliani and Flynn and Powell and even Bannon in the Willard Hotel, Jeff Clark

about to write a letter on the Department of Justice Letterhead to influence criminally the election in Georgia before he was stopped by Pat Sipalone and others. All of that is obstruction. And the only other person that was mentioned by the Jan 6th Committee, so this shows you how high up the food chain he is, is John Eastman. The others, as part of the conspiracy, are being developed daily, hourly, even as we speak, by Smith and his, Jack Smith, and the prosecutors at these five different grand juries. One that just got popped up that we learned about in the last month, which is that he's opened a grand jury about the Georgia election interference.

And I'm sure that grand jury is looking at Nevada election interference in Colorado and Michigan and Pennsylvania and just election interference overall. So if so, so you have that group, you know, then you've got, you know, you even have people like Kayleigh McAnity, whatever her name was, you know, they're, they're trying to figure out whether she lied to the American people and obstructed justice in doing her job as press secretary by not properly reporting information that she knew or should have known or misreporting it intentionally in order to cover up. So all the people that said, I'm getting out of here,

you know, waning days of the administration and I'm going to go get my job at Fox News and at the lobby firm and and a consultant and all of that and and Ivanka and Jared. Oh, I'm going to walk away from politics and I'm just going to be a mom and dad in Miami. They are not out of harm's way based on the testimony that the Gen 6 has developed and the ones that the Department of Judd, the even more robust testimony that the Gen 6 will develop when all of their privileges and all of their Fifth Amendment privileges are stripped away, and they testify before the grand jury ultimately. So Trump, yes, indicted at least three times in various places in 2023. Eastman, I think it's entitled Giuliani gets entitled and Jeff Clark gets

indicted. Then we'll see. I don't want to say your opinion about this other next layer of people like Mark Meadows or whether Mark Meadows has flipped because he's really in harm's way and a number of these witness tampering obstruction charges. And he's the most like he is he's in he's got his finger in more pies than anybody else other than maybe Eastman related to Donald Trump and his criminality. Mark Meadows is at the center of it. And because I haven't heard his name that much and knowing that he is the center of it. And we had seen those videos of him in Washington, DC, not speaking to the press as he's kind of walking away

cagelly, I would imagine that he is cooperating. He still has thousands of text messages that he didn't turn over to the January 6th committee which I believe Special Counsel Jack Smith probably has now as well as additional emails that have not been turned over. And so ultimately, I mean meadows would definitely be indicted if he's not cooperating. And so we'll see what's going on there. I agree with you that I think Eastman, Juliani, all of them, they're going to be indicted

And I think it's all gonna happen relatively quickly. I mean, I think ultimately Trump being indicted my prediction was more in that April may period people like pre-Bahara who have Definitely more experienced than I do as you know the United States attorney They believe that it's gonna happen in as early as January. I still think based on the current timing that seems a little too soon. So I have it pegged more like April and May, but I wouldn't be shocked if in early February

you are seeing Eastman Jeff Clark be indicted. And specifically Jeff Clark feels like a very weak link and so I think a Jeff Clark indictment is probably imminent as well but we will of course keep you posted on legal AF but one prediction that I know will 100% be accurate is we're gonna have have a lot to discuss in 20-23 and we are so grateful for all the legal a-effors in helping to build this community together. This community is nothing without you. One of the things I am just so grateful for in 2022 is all of you is all of your support. And as we continue to build this community,

one of the ways you can help build the community and no pressure if you can't do it, but check us out at patreon.com slash might as touch p at r eo n dot com slash might as touch. We are 100% independent. We are 100% accountable to you. And one of the ways we're able to continue to compete with the large media networks and beat them is through your support. So check it out. You'll love the exclusive content at patreon.com slash might as touch. But most importantly, it helps grow this independent media platform and check out a store.

MidasTouch.com for the best unapologetically pro democracy merch out there store.mitustouch.com. We've got great legal AF merch. You can get there store.mitustouch.com. And again, happy new years to everyone looking forward to spending a productive 2023 with you all fighting for our democracy. Popoq, any final words? No, happy new year.

I'm exhausted. We've done an exhaustive show. You and I thought, maybe we'll skip New Year's Eve, but you're always right. We get a crowd that I call it the ultimate counter programming. And it just shows the commitment that everybody has to the show and to what we're doing, which fuels us to get up every morning, sometimes you really early and do what we do for democracy. So shout out to everybody that supports us and Happy New Year.

Thank you so much, Popak. It's been great 2022 with you as well. Looking forward to doing more of these with you in 2023. Until next time, shout out to the Midas Mighty.