Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Judge Cannon Plan Gets CRUSHED by Jack Smith

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Michael Popok of Legal AF explains how Special Counsel Jack Smith outmaneuvered Trump’s paid-for lawyer and taught Judge Cannon a valuable lesson on how grand juries in multiple jurisdictions work, sort of Grand Juries 101 for new federal judges. Thanks to our sponsor Rocket Money! Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to RocketMoney.com/legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Burn the Boats: https://pod.link/1485464343 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://pod.link/1676844320 MAGA Uncovered: https://pod.link/1690214260 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Michael Popok, legal AFTER department of justice is getting fed up with Judge Cannon and having to teach her the basics of criminal practice, including get this, how a grand jury works. I'm not making this up. Today, the department of justice and their special counsel in the Mar-a-Lago case had a file or a reply brief to answer some of the most basic questions about how grand juries work to a sitting federal judge. Look, I get it. She's only been on the bench for a year, but when I'm done doing this hot take,

you're gonna know more about how grand juries are supposed to work in America that apparently I lean cannon does. After she watched, I don't know, maybe Fox News and got the idea that because they were, and I'm making this as simple as possible, more than one grand jury, one in the District of Columbia, and one in Florida that maybe there was something wrong with that. And that would undermine the indictment of Donald Trump and Mar-a-Lago.

I mean, I can't even, it's almost hard for me to get the words out. You know, this, I'm going to give you what the government gave Judge Cannon. I'm going to give you the schoolhouse rock version of how Grand Jury's work in America. And to answer the question, I know that you have on your mind. Shouldn't she already know this? The answer is yes. And now in about 10 minutes, you're going to know more than she does when I'm done with this explainer on only one place, the Midas Touch Network. Let's start with grand jury process.

Grand juries are allowed to do a lot of things in the hands of a prosecutor. One of them is the ultimate deliverable is if they're able to get an indictment from a grand jury. A lot of grand juries, there's a number of grand juries that look at evidence, review evidence, here witness testimony, and never indict. It happens.

They're also used to develop evidence, some of which ends up in indictment, and some of which is part of investigative streams and investigative threads that are pursued by law enforcement. They may find out in the course of a grand jury process, for instance, that somebody has lied to that grand jury or has opened the door to a new set of crimes, that the Department of Justice has to continue to investigate. Some of that may end up in an indictment if the prosecutor is ready using its prosecutorial discretion to bring the indictment because they have met their burden, right? The ultimate burden at trial of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Some of the threads may peter out these investigative threads and go nowhere. And then of a jury, a grand jury returns an indictment. They can continue to stay alive and stay in business, continuing to evaluate other evidence for different counts, different people, or the same people, different crimes. Now I will concede for those that are following along that you can't use a grand jury at the federal level or state level to bolster your case. If you already have your indictments against people and you already have your crimes against them and that's about it, you can't keep bringing in witnesses and evidence to bolster

through the grand jury your indating document, your indictment, but you can pursue new claims, new crimes, new people purgering themselves and lying in the course of a grand jury. And sometimes I know this sounds like grand jury 101, but I'm telling you, this is what judge can and appears not to understand requiring today's filing in court. I have it right here in which they had a teacher a lesson. And I'm giving you the basics right now. A grand jury is also for a proper purpose.

It may exist in more than one place. In other words, there may be multiple grand juries because the conduct, the witnesses in their location may span multiple jurisdictions. Sometimes criminals go on criminal crime sprees, and they do it in more than one place, like Donald Trump, the seven battleground states. Right? Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, they did a lot of damage in different places.

Then he went to Mar-a-Lago, that happens to me in Florida. His other golf course in Bedminster happens to be in New Jersey. And then he did really bad things with lots of other people in the District of Columbia while he was still the president of the United States. You see how there can be multiple grand juries who are all charged with looking at and investigating

and evaluating and developing the facts that are brought into them through witness testimony. Some may end up in an indictment. Some may get discarded, like the old movie editing. It may end up on that click-cutting room floor, because the prosecutor using a DOJ manual in his own or her own prosecutorial discretion doesn't think it's strong enough. And so that evidence goes over there. Or the evidence doesn't get used to support necessarily the inditing document, the indictment, the charging document, but gets used at trial. And that's okay. Somebody's witness testimony at trial.

We know now the government knows what they're about to say. And it gets brought into the trial itself. And that's okay. So these are all proper purposes of a grand jury. Why are we talking about the son of a tick? Well, I love talking about grand juries and their purpose because two weeks ago, judge canon in responding to a request by the government to conduct a completely independent, not related conflict of interest hearing about whether one of the lawyers, Stan Woodward, bought and paid for by the Donald Trump pack, whether he was representing too many, too many targets indicted, co-conspirators, unindicted co-conspirators and witnesses related to Mar-a-Lago. I mean, you can't represent them all

Stan. I know you'll want to and Donald Trump wants you to. And so they asked the judge to conduct what's called in Florida, a Garcia hearing, which is to evaluate the conflicts of interest between in this case Walt Nauta, represented by Stan Woodward, who is indicted, the body man, Valet, did all the bad things, moving the boxes and documents around, and Jose Tavaris, the IT director, who we find out now was asked by Al Nauta and Carlos the Oliveira, the maintenance worker,

to delete the server containing all the video surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago. That's a bad thing. And that showed up in the superseding or amended indictment that came out in July. And now we know how because a grand jury in the District of Columbia developed the evidence, Jose Tveris lied to that grand jury when he was represented by a by Stan Woodward, bought and paid for by Donald Trump and save America back.

And then when he got his own independent lawyer through the chief judge making the public defender represent him for that purpose, after that guy, the IT worker got a target letter that the Department of Justice believed it was more likely than not that he lied to the grand jury had probable cause to believe that he lied to the grand jury had probable cause to believe that he lied to the grand jury about not remembering the server deletion conversation. He got his own lawyer and suddenly real quick, he remembered that conversation,

recanted his prior testimony, cooperated with the government, cut an immunity deal, and that became the basis of the superseding indictment. And that all happened because Stan Woodward got basically fired by the IT director and the guy got his own lawyer. That's all now front and center in this reply brief filed today by the Department of Justice. In all of that process, the judge said, I don't understand grand juries and how they work. I mean, she didn't really say that, but she basically said that. Why are there two? Why is there still one of the addition of Columbia? What is that one doing?

How does that impact the one down in Florida that's under my control? All right, Judge, we'll explain it to you. Come up here and sit on our knee, grab a cup of warm milk, we'll tell you how grand jury's work. I mean, this is my version, but it's pretty close to what the government did. Boxing streaming services, that exercise app

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And let me read to you as they went through all of this from their reply brief. They first reminded the judge that during the investigations and the fact gathering and they didn't know where it was going to lead because it crossed over borders between Florida and District of Columbia in both places. They had two grand juries running and that's totally okay. And that that Mr. Tveris, the IT worker and Mr. D. Olivera, the maintenance worker testified up in, and they were all represented by Stan Woodward. They testified up in the District of Columbia and turned out they lied there.

And wherever you lie, that's where the crime is committed. And so they had a problem with a target letter to Varys Gott that said, you just committed, we think you committed a crime in the District of Columbia when you lied to that grand jury. Separately judge, as they reminded her in the filing today, we had another grand jury because Mar-a-Lago is based in Florida, Southern District, and so we had that grand jury. And that grand jury ultimately indicted the people that lived there, like Mr. Nauta and Mr. Trump.

The fact that there's another grand jury about people and acts that took place away from you, Your Honor, that's okay under grand jury law. In fact, the best way to put it is as the government did, which is to remind the judge that is that the long as the grand jury has a proper investigative purpose and stays within that, which they did. There's a presumption of regularity doctrine, right? Let me bring that up now. There is a presumption of presumption. It can be rebutted, but there is a presumption of the grand jury's doing proper things.

And it's within the scope of their authority and their evaluation as a sitting body, as a fact finder in the prosecution process, in the indictment process. And you have to presume that what they're doing has is proper. And nothing that Stan Woodward has suggested by saying, what are the two grand juries? Carries his burden of showing that anything was improper about dueling grand juries. And they also advised the judge, and we put the other grand jury at a business anyway.

We're only down now at Florida, but reminded them that the proper purpose of a grand jury is to take the evidence wherever it may lead. To quote from their brief on page five, to be sure the grand jury cannot be used solely or even primarily to gather evidence against an indicted defendant, but the law presumes absent a strong showing to the contrary that the grand jury acts within the legitimate scope of its authority and the defendant as the burden of showing that the government's use of the grand jury was improper.

Following, this is continuation by the government. Following the indictment in Florida, it was appropriate to use the grand jury in the District of Columbia, your honor, to investigate false statements by to Varys, the IT worker and D'Ala Vera, because they made it in the District of Columbia, right? Neither individual was named in the indictment at the time against now to entrum and venue for the charges would have been in the District of Columbia. And there they went on to say that that the government's attempt

to that the that attempted to finish the the court's authority over proceedings raised by Walt Doubt is improper. The conflicts of interest were present in the District of Columbia. Woodward's conflicts of interest were present also in Florida, and that's why there were hearings for conflicts in both places. As they as they reminded the judge in footnote 2, these cases and many others contradict now to suggestion that a hearing is required only when a conflict arises from joint representation of multiple defendants, not from successive or concurrent representation of a defendant and mere not from successive or concurrent representation of a defendant and mere witnesses, right?

They said, that's not true. And it would be an error to suppress the testimony, which is what they're ultimately trying to do, Trump, of the IT worker, because there was two grand juries. And it just is not the law as they reminded the judge, as they reminded her at the end on page 10 of their brief, to be sure the court declined to create a per se rule against excluding evidence to remedy a conflict of interest. But now to has not identified in any case, and the government is unaware of one, in which a court has excluded evidence

to avoid a conflict on facts remotely similar to this case. Instead, it's just an attempt at a tactical advantage at trial by excluding highly incriminating evidence to the benefit of not only his own client, but also a co-defendant whose pack is paying his legal fees and the court should not countenance this maneuver. That's where we're at. Schooling the judge about how grand juries work and teaching her that it is not improper and it's highly proper for the grand juries in both places to have done the job that they did, that in order to solve the conflict of interest that's acute and apparent with the bought and paid for Trump lawyers, Stan Woodward, the answer to that is not to somehow throw out the evidence by the maintenance work, by

the ID director, um, uh, uh, Mr. Tveris, who's the key to the superseding indictment, who cut his own deal because he got caught lying to the grand jury in the addition of Columbia. This went exactly the way the government wanted. He lied. They proved he lied. They forced him to get a new independent lawyer. He got the new independent lawyer fired Woodward. He then told the truth and this story in all its gory details has been explained to the

judge, Judge Cannon, which undermines the credibility by extension of the lawyers representing all these people, including Stan Woodward. That's grand jury 101. You now know more than even judge canondas in the Southern District of Florida in this particular case. You can find it only one place on the Midas Touch Network on a YouTube channel that might as touch networks has be one of as they get to two million subscribers, all free. Be part of that movement.

You can follow me, Michael Popak on all things social media. I'm the co-incor and co-founder of Legal AF, a podcast at the intersection of law and politics. You can only find one place on the Midas Touch Network. You can free subscribe. You can get my hot takes like this one, over on playlists on the YouTube channel and you can follow me on Everything social media at MSPOPAC. This is Michael Popac legal a F until the next hot take at might as touch We are unapologetically pro democracy and we demand justice and accountability That's why we're spreading our message to convict 45. That's right, gear up right now with your convict 45 tees and pins at store.mitustouch.com. That's store.mitustouch.com.