Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Prison & Damages: Trump, Meadows, Sacklers, Jan6 Defendants, & Fox News All Had a Really Bad Week

Episode Date: December 19, 2021

You know what happened; now hear what happens next. The top-rated weekly US law and politics news analysis podcast -- LegalAF -- produced by Meidas Touch and anchored by MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok, is back for another hard-hitting, thought-provoking look in “real time” at this week’s developments.  On this episode, Ben and Popok analyze: 1. DC Attorney General’s new civil suit under KKK Act against Insurrectionists like Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. 2. Biden winning with his OSHA Large Employer Vax/Testing Mandate upheld by the 6th Circuit. 3. Fox News failing to dismiss Dominion’s billion dollar defamation case in Delaware. 4. Trump losing in his efforts to prevent his personal tax returns from being turned over to House Ways & Means Committee. 5. A Jan6 insurrectionists sentenced to the harshest sentence yet for storming the Capitol.  6. Meadows found in Criminal Contempt of Congress, and how the other Jan6 planners are using various methods to delay justice including attempting to stop Verizon from turning over phone records. 7. Chauvin pleading guilty to federal civil rights charges. 8. The Sackler family failed efforts in Bankruptcy Court to be absolved of all current and future civil liability for the opioid addiction crisis from which they created their personal fortunes. 9. SCOTUS/Gorsuch sending the Texas Abortion Ban back to the right-wing 5th Circuit for further proceedings resulting in further delay to overturning the ban. 10. The sentencing process and the disparate impact on minorities. And so much more! Support the Show! AG1 by Athletic Greens -- Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune supporting FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit https://athleticgreens.com/legalaf today. BetterHelp -- Go to https://BetterHelp.com/legalaf and try BetterHelp today with a 10% off discount your first month! Affordable, private online therapy with BetterHelp. Anytime, anywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Midas Touch Legal AF. If it is Saturday, it is Legal AF Live. If it is Sunday, it is also Legal AF. Just not live. That's available for all the fine folks who Legal AFers who will listen to this on their podcast. Michael Popak, I'm cheering because we are heading into the holiday season with accountability. We're going to be talking about on the podcast. We're starting to see stiffer sentences in connection with insurrectionists who have been charged in connection with January 6th.

We're going to talk about some of those sentences on this podcast. We're talking about Mark Meadows being held in contempt on this podcast. We are talking about the January 6th committee, as you've always told us, Pope, be patient, the wheels of justice turn slowly, but always turned towards justice. We're starting to see the efforts starting to pay off with documents being received, whether it's from Mark Meadows, starting to expose some of the other aidinators and the betters from Fox News and other Congress members. So shocking that I have

to call these, some of these individuals on the GQP Congress members based on their conduct. But that's why I'm Chirry Popak. Are you, Chirry? I, I, you just got me really, Chirry. Santa's bag of goodies, and who's been naughty and nice, and we know who's been naughty, is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And it's nice to turn into the new year in the first quarter of 2022 and start seeing some real developments and justice being needed out. I know our followers and listeners get, uh, get flagged and, and deflated by how slow

things move in a process that you and I know move slow. You know, part of our job is to educate that some things go really, really fast, like in a temporary injunction setting or an emergency appeal, but most the vast majority of justice moves at its own pace, a pace that you and I are used to, but our listeners and followers aren't. They're like, it's already the January, you know, six, almost anniversary. Why is it everybody hung in the public square or in jail? You know, when I, when I sign up a case, although right now my, my legal practice is more transactional, but I still sign up big personal injury cases and big

breach of contract cases and big, you know, other, you know, negligence related cases, you know, on the plaintiffs and sometimes on the, the defense side. But, you know, it's, it's always in the past, I would say, okay, if I signed up a case right now at the end of 2021, I think to myself, that case will likely go to trial in 2023, the earliest, but more likely 2024 or 2025. And so the efforts that we do as lawyers on our day to day practices when we sign up cases and we know there's going to be a lot of work from now until then. In terms of just day to day stuff that has to happen, you know, there could be, you know, there's lots of rulings along the way like we're going to talk about on this podcast in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, they've been waiting for some time in the Delaware State Court to get a ruling on the motion to dismiss that was filed by Fox News and that motion to dismiss was denied that's one of the steps in a series of lots of steps that take place in a case, but a case like that won't go to trial for a number of years and And so you, you, you always interesting, you start planning in 2021, what you were going to be doing as a lawyer for your trials in three or four years for you. You and I are working on a case, I won't name it,

that you, you and I got involved with it in 2019. I just got the calendar call and the jury trial is going to be in April of 2023. That in civil justice certainly moves a lot slower. Criminal justice goes a little bit faster because of speedy trial act and constitutional provisions. But again, I don't want to, I don't want to step on your good tidings for, for the holidays. We have a lot of positive developments to talk about

on this podcast tonight. And so let's start, though, by talking about within criminal law. I also want to talk in civil law and other layers of accountability. We're going to talk about on this podcast, but in criminal law, sentencing disparities, and we should talk about this has been all over the news. It's been all over social media that this truck driver who was involved in a fatal 2019 Colorado truck crash was sentenced to 110 years in prison. And for those who don't know the facts, there was a truck driver. He crashed into traffic on interstate 70 in Denver, killed four individuals. The individual's name, the truck driver is Roguel Aguere Madero, who was 26 years old, is 26 years old, was driving a semi--tracker trailer in April 2019, traveling 85 miles per hour.

When the brakes failed, is what he told investigators. He tried to pull over to avoid stop traffic, but another semi-tracker had already stopped there, according to the arrest affidavit. And this crash led to a fiery 28 car car pile up that left for dead. There was a criminal prosecution. 23 charges were brought against this individual. And of course, our hearts go out to all of the victims, the victims families in this horribly tragic situation. The truck driver was charged with 23 charges, six counts of assault in the first degree, extreme indifference, 10 counts of attempt to commit assault in the first degree, extreme indifference, two counts of vehicular assault, reckless one count of reckless driving and four counts of careless driving, cause of death, found guilty, and then on sentencing, the judge was restricted because there were

minimum sentences that were available. Mandatory minimums is the term to be served consecutively. And when you add up all the consecutive terms, you have 110 years in prison for this individual. Now, do I think this individual should be in prison maybe, you know, in these situations where there's a negligence that becomes reckless, yeah, there should be layers of accountability beyond the civil lawsuits that take place. And my experience very rarely is an individual criminally charged for situations like this. These are civil lawsuits incredibly tragic situations,

but are usually dealt with as negligence, but a 110 year sentence on a situation like this seems extreme. Popo, what's your view of this overall situation? Yeah, let me tell you, you gave a very good detail. Let me give the color commentary about it. And it has to do with mandatory minimum sentencing. About 40 years ago, there was a trend started on the federal side where you would try to take out of individual judges coming up with sentences calculated out of their own heads and force them to follow they're called guidelines and the federal side but they really are mandatorally followed

by in general by the federal judiciary. That trend started on the fed side. The state legislators thought that's a good idea but we don't like some of the disparate sentences that are being handed out by state court judges, both on racial grounds and too light and too heavy. And the legislators got into their laboratory, like a judicial or a jurisprudential scientist and said, why don't we hamstring the judges who, once we put them on the bench or sort of left on their own devices, only policed by elections or by removal?

And why don't we force them to stay within a box of sentencing? So the states followed the federal path and came up with what you've referred to here in Colorado as mandatory minimum sentences. So the judge who expressed during the sentencing that even he thought the resulting number of 110 years served consecutively was too harsh, said at the same breath and the same breath, I can't do anything about it. He's got the counts that he has. And if you go into the mandatory minimum sentencing or the federal sentencing guidelines, there is a matrix. There is an axis.

It's the crime along the left axis. And it's the amount of time along the right access with aggravating factors, emitting factors that can be used to increase or decrease the amount. But you, you reeled off 10 or 12 counts felonies that the jury convicted him of, including ones showing reckless indifference or extreme indifference to human life, because it wasn't just a straight accident. He was going 85 miles an hour. Yes, his brakes failed, but he started the catastrophe showing reckless and difference, how fast

he was driving and ran into that pile up. So the judge said, what am I going to do? It's 25 years of peace for each of these four deaths and these other counts. And I have to add them together. I can't even have it run concurrently, which would mean he'd probably serve 30 years in jail instead of 110. So on appeal, now the defense lawyers have said not only were there errors in the way the jury was instructed and other issues that came up on evidence during the criminal trial, but we're going to attack the unfair draconian result of taking five counts or 10 counts across the matrix and totaling up in this case 110 years.

Now, I don't want to take away from the loss of life here. Four families are without mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers and others. No doubt. And I agree that he should have gotten some penalty. I wasn't there for the jury, the jury heard all the evidence. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to big foot the jury and take it away from what they, the hard work that they did. But the result for sentencing by the judge shows you the problem in this case with mandatory

minimum sentencing. And one other thing, I want to get your view because we get a lot of questions on tweet on Twitter. Sentencing itself, you want to walk through a little bit, Ben, from conviction or guilty plea to sentencing the timeline and what happens in that time period and why it takes so long. I get frequent questions about, well, they got convicted, you know, four months ago, why aren't they sentenced? You want to walk walk our legal AFRs a little bit through the sentencing process? Yeah, you know, the sentencing process involves a lot of paperwork. It involves, you know, a lot of, I mean, first off, the question is who is doing the sentencing?

And mostly the person who will be doing the sentencing in almost most circumstances is going to be the judge. And there are different standards, whether you're in federal court or whether you're in state court, but this process is a very long one that involves memos that are filed by victims, memos that are filed by the defendant who was found guilty. There's a whole incredible body of case law and legal practitioners who just focus on the sentencing aspect and putting together things that are called mitigation packets.

I've hired him. I've hired him. I've hired federal set in the federal side. I've hired federal sentencing consultants because in the federal side, remember, you have the federal probation department that prepares an official report and analyzing the defendant, whether he took responsibility or not, financial background gets all of the people who want to give good testimony, character testimony towards the person, assembles it all, the defense has the right to prepare its own report, a counter report, the prosecution does the same. This takes at least 90 days. I've never seen it take shorter than 90 days to prepare

all of the post-conviction materials that are required. And then, and then I got a higher if I'm out of defense side like you, I got to hire a consultant to kind of help me with that because I'm, while I'm good at it, I'm not an expert on the federal sentencing paperwork and advocacy. It's a whole nother level of advocacy. And as you said, some lawyers are just, all they do is helping people with federal sensing. Some lawyers, all they do, is help you pick the prison that you're going to ask for because you also, if the person's going to be incarcerated, you have the right under the Bureau of Prisons, the BOP, to ask to have your person in one of four or five different prisons, minimum security closer to family,

that type of thing, that all goes into the report. And then there's a hearing with the judge. Yeah. And who your judge is, is often very determinative of the outcome. And the type of mitigation paperwork that you're preparing on behalf of a defendant who is just found guilty, is also trying to tailor it to who that specific judge is. And I'll just make this observation as we talk broader about sentencing. Do I think that the initial decision to charge Rahel Aguilara Madero with all of these counts has something to do with his name being Rahel Aguilara Madero and not being a member of the Sackler family who put opioids out into the public and are widely held to be responsible.

And it's kind of a given fact that they're responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Americans and they haven't even been charged with any criminal conduct or been involved in any criminal cases to date and have served no jail time. Yeah, Absolutely. And as we go talk about from this setting in Colorado, Popeyes to what's going on in Washington, DC with the insurrection, what we've seen is judges giving slaps on the wrist to a lot of these insurrectionist and treating the insurrection as just basically loitering.

And that's been very problematic to watch that, but there's been one federal judge who's not been likeing. And that's been very problematic to watch that, but there's been one federal judge who's not been like that. And that's your favorite DC circuit judge. I mean, DC district court judge, not circuit judge, judge, Tanya Chutkin. You wanna talk about judge, Tanya Chutkin,

and specifically here, Popo, what this district court judge, Chuck in did in connection with, believe the individual's name is Robert Palmer, who just received the laintheists prison term imposed in the insurrection about five plus years. Yeah. We, we, we on the podcast really respect and love Tonya, Chuck in not only is she the judge just to remind our listeners and followers for all of the highest end of the sentencing continuum for the Gen 6 insurrectionists and there are 700 of them that are now coming up for sentencing. But remember, she's also been the judge that made the ruling

against Trump in the National Arch archive case that went up and got affirmed on a three judge panel appeal and is now heading up to the Supreme Court to turn over all the records from the national archive to the Gen 6 committee. So she does everything, just really right, follows justice. I wish the chief judge of the DC Circuit had the power and she does not to put all of the cases, all 700 cases in front of Tonya Chutkin for sentencing because things would be a lot better in terms of the meeting out of justice. The Robert Palmer from Largo, Florida, which is a small town near Tampa, uh, what,

Pled guilty, uh, did not go to to trial, pled guilty to counts involving that when he was on the lower West terrorists, these are now locations in the Gen 6 insurrection that are taking on the totemic meaning like E. O. G. Ma or bunker Hill, the lower West terrorists attack, not to be confused with the other group that went down the speaker's hallway into the chamber, but the lower West terrorist attack of which Palmer was a major part. He took a fire extinguisher and he blew out its contents towards Capitol police when that didn't stop them from coming after him.

He threw the fire extinguisher at at them. He swung planks and flag poles. Now fortunately for Palmer and for the police, other than the fire extinguisher at at them. He swung planks and flag poles. Now fortunately for Palmer and for the police, other than the fire extinguisher, he didn't hit his mark. Though it's, it's not battery. It may be assault, which is what he's been charged with or convicted of, but it wasn't battery because he didn't actually, he didn't actually physically brain somebody with the fire extinguisher.

Although, I'm sure that was part of his intent. He, he just got 63 months, which is now, now the marker being laid down by Judge Chutkin. It's the highest sentence being given so far of the 700 prosecutions. The next highest sentence just to put it in context is almost two years less than that. The the shaman guy got two years less than that. But Chutkin spends a considerable amount of her time at the sentencing hearing. This is the last step of sentencing process that you and I just talked about. And this was a 90 minute hearing.

This wasn't just like, okay, I've read all the papers. Here's your sentence. This is 90 minutes and she spends a lot of time putting everything into historical context talking about if you're going to participate in the violent overthrow, uh, and you're going to try of the of the country and you're going to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power. I am not giving you home confinement to go watch Netflix. That's almost a direct quote.

Yeah, the direct quote was quote, it has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power meets absolutely certain punishment, not staying at home, not watching Netflix. Right. Maybe legal AF for the next time around. Now of all of the people that have that had a upon which there's been report of the sentencing so i have to rely on the media because we're not in those courtrooms yet he seems to pomegranate seems to be the most remorseful he was i mean i don't think these are crocodile tears

uh... he was pouring tears the family was pouring tears he he um... said that he was overly influenced by donald trump that he never should have done it that he was overly influenced by Donald Trump that he never should have done it, that he saw the report of what he did on Rachel Maddow and was shocked by his own depravity. I mean, he said all of the right things. His lawyer tried an interesting angle here. I want to get your impression, Ben.

One of the lawyers pitches during his advocacy for lower sentencing was your honor, the people that lit the fire, the lit the flame and are the organizers. And Donald Trump himself haven't been prosecuted or sentenced yet. So don't sentence my poor guy. He was just following orders. Of course, that failed. What did you think about that as a potential defense strategy? Well, I agree with Judge Chuck Gins response to that quote, I don't have any influence over that. I have my opinions, but they are not relevant right now.

Quote, you are correct in that no one who was encouraging everybody to take to the Capitol has been charged as of yet. She says, but as a judge, I don't charge anybody. That's not my job. And that is, you know, obviously implying Donald Trump in his inner circle. But I do think what we see, Pope, is a climbing of the ladder to the apex,

which is Donald Trump and his inner circle that you, you know, you focus on these cast of clowns, not a cast of characters at first, the shaman idiots, and all of these just complete, you know, jokes and idiots, but we need to take their conduct very seriously, but get them to plead first and just remove the sides. They're going up to Palmer, then keep climbing. Yeah. Two last comments before we move on to the next segment. One, I had said at the last podcast or so that Kintanji Brown, who's also on the DC

circuit, I thought definitely has a star next to her name for potential Supreme Court pick for Biden, because just to bring our followers and listeners up to speed, the DC circuit is a feeder ground for Supreme Court justice. A lot of them have served time on the DC circuit. Merrick Garland was a judge on the DC circuit. I think Tonya Chutkin, if she's not in the mix on the short list for a Supreme court pick by Biden after how she's acquitted herself and during this Jan six process and all things Trump, I'd be shocked. I think she has moved in to the top five or six for him to consider on that list for a future

Supreme court. I think she's doing really that well. And the last thing is maybe you covered this on the brother's podcast or you will. I mean, you have, you still have, as you said, why do we have to call the members of Congress when they act this way, but they still are. Marjorie Taylor Green, you're my favorite soon to be former member of Congress, actually said that there's no evidence that anyone of the 700 insurrectionists were armed on that day. And that is a bald-face lie. If you look at the prosecution, memos, and indictments for the 700 who are being prosecuted, no less than 10% 70, 70, came armed, meaning they had arms with them when they arrived, or

when they got there, they armed themselves with bicycle rats, fire extinguishers, flag poles, and anything else they could get their hands on. So that is this, this, uh, uh, BS mantra that, that the right wing crazies of the party, trying to rewrite history right before our eyes when there is complete evidence to the contrary. It's just maddening. And thank God judges like Tonya Chutkin don't pay attention to any of it. Look on the one hand, this is why our judicial system and having smart intelligent justices and judges are important. You have the thoughtful deliberate rulings of a judge, Chutkin, and then you have someone like Marjorie Taylor Green, who calls

victims of school shootings, crisis actors, who claims that 9-11 was a false flag and didn't really take place. And she's a member of Congress. My one, the one problem, though, Popeye, is I do think that Marjorie Taylor Green, unless you have some inside information that I don't't is probably going to stay as a member of Congress in her district, although I hope she's defeated.

Lauren Bhrbert, I'm confident, is no longer going to be a member of Congress. I want to see, I don't, you know, you and I should offline follow the district a little bit closer in Northern District of Georgia, in the Northern section of Georgia and see if the brothers can do anything about that. And I don't know how, if she's delivering the bacon as they like to say and bringing home what you're supposed to bring home to her people so that they like her.

She definitely isn't. And we had on her Democratic opponent. I can't change. She's not on one committee. We brought on a Democratic opponent. It's a very Republican district. Yeah. I think that can go either way, but you know, she is representative of what the GQP is, but we, but that's to be determined. Just to be clear, can I give you a scary thought and then

we'll leave it? Yeah. Donald Trump wins a, wins a, beats Biden in the next election, and we have justice, bargery, Taylor Green. That's something that would actually, that's the type of person that Trump would appoint. And with the type of rhetoric that the House of Representatives talks about already, like you have Matt Gaetz basically saying, I'm not going to allow any single democratic member to be on any committee without first begging me to be on a committee. So that's the kind of level of intelligence or lack thereof that we're dealing with and kind of pro-fascism mentality. I just want to give one other judge, Chuck, in quote. She's made it clear

that quote, I'm not punishing anyone for who they support for the flying spaghetti monster or whatever your political beliefs are. Remember, and I know the flying spaghetti monster, I still think she's talking directly about Trump there, you know, whether you believe in QAnon Trump, whatever crazy thing you echo is our believing in. This podcast sponsored by the flying spaghetti monster. Oh, absolutely. You know, and she was also an individual who

in her ruling in the national archives basically said that, um, presidents are not kings and the plaintiff is not the president about Trump. She's got those incredible, you know, witty, but apt one. Can I can I make a suggestion for merchandise? I want to see a just a judge, Tonya Chutkin, Bobblehead, that you guys sell. I'm not kidding. I don't know. Could you imagine that like we have the Jen Saki Saki's, which is already fairly embarrassing, but people love the Saki's and I love the Saki's and Jordi, who's our producer of the legal A of podcast. But like, dude, stop talking negatively about the Saki's. But we have a Bobblehead like Mike Shoshefsky, Mike Shoshefevsky bobble head. Yeah, one for her. She's a real hero. We definitely need bobbles, but yeah, we actually have it might as touch for those listening to legal AF. We sell holiday socks,

but the socks that are going to be sold in the future that are called sockies that have gen sockies face on and have gen sockie quotes, but we could have, you know, you know, judge Chutkin sweaters or judge Chuck and Bob Lads. That will that that will crush things to look forward to in 2022. I want to talk that we're talking about sentencing. We're talking about disparities in sentencing. The Purdue pharma opioid catastrophe, the epidemic that has led to the deaths of 500,000 or more Americans through oxycontin that's been manufactured and distributed

and falsely marketed by Purdue Pharma. You know, the Sackler family, if you watch the show about the Sackler family, I forget which network it's on, if it's on, I think, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean. There's no sackler family members, you know, they're all billionaires who are behind bars. There was an overall settlement agreement in connection with a bankruptcy proceeding. And as part of that settlement, billions of dollars would go to states and to families and victims

and actually the a new, you know, a new entity would control Purdue, pharma, it would actually still be making opioids, but the Sackler family family would no longer have control and all of the profits from the company would be devoted to which I thought was quite ingenious, by the way, because opioids aren't going away, but to have all the money go to victims and counseling, it's like it would be like if Philip Morris in terms of a settlement gave up Philip Morris,

they're still making tobacco products, but all the money from tobacco goes to anti-tobacco. So a lot of states, a lot of state AGs, there's a division among states. A lot of states supported this bankruptcy settlement that would put billions of dollars into prevention, into the hands of victims and family members and have this structure. But there were also states that opposed it and it didn't necessarily split Democrat versus Republican. I mean, there were just some

states that had different views of, you know, Democrats and Democrats are public. It was there were weird alliances that were formed, but the most controversial aspect of this is an aspect in the overall bankruptcy settlement agreement that provides for third party releases. In other words, releasing the individual liability of members of the Sackler family. They can still, let's be clear, they can still be criminally charged and face criminal penalties, but in terms of being personally sued, once their contributions to the settlement

is made, which are billions and billions of dollars, they can't be individually sued. One of the reasons a lot of people were upset about this is because Purdue Farma made so much money and so much billions of dollars, and even if they contribute 15-20 billion dollars to the settlement, if they're able to keep five billion dollars or so as a family, and then put it in a trust that basically has interest over time, just do the math that in the next 10, 15, 20 years, that $5 billion that they have will be multiples of what the settlement is that they're paying.

And so is there actually accountability of the family members who are going to live out their list of their lives in a lavish billionaire lifestyle? Now, they've been socially ostracized. They've had to deal with that settlement. They have not been criminally charged. But their most recent update, though, is a district court basically said the federal bankruptcy court

did really not have the right to approve a settlement that includes third party releases in the way it did to individually release individual, secular family members from liability. So this now creates a great deal of uncertainty, whether the overall settlement would hold up, because that provision was kind of critical in the linchpin of the settlement. So you have states that are upset, you have states that are happy.

It's a complicated issue because you want resolution, you want accountability. Does that necessarily mean, though, Popok, that we need to make sure that the individual Sackler family members are bankrupt themselves individually. Is that justice? And that process may just take years and years and years and years to happen. And then you're not actually coming up with productive settlement plans that help people

right now. So where do you stand on this? Well, look, the Sackler, I think ultimately this settlement is gonna go through with the removal of the individual civil liability releases for the Sackler family members, because there's just so much other value here that the Sackler family is getting from putting this all behind them.

With an amount of money that, as you rightly noted, is probably just a return on interest for them for the remaining fortune. So look, they made a wise decision from their standpoint to use the bankruptcy laws and the protection of the bankruptcy court, which as you and I have talked about in the past is probably after the Supreme Court, the most powerful federal court in the land is the power of the federal bankruptcy judge. Yes, there's an appellate process which happened here, which you and I will talk about. That's unique to the bankruptcy code, but the bankruptcy judge has more power over over the life of a company in a bankrupt and the estate and the monies and who pays what and when and whether the company is going to survive or not and how it's going to survive and the individual liability

of officers and directors than any other judge that I can think of. The Sacklers decided rather than be facing hundreds, if not thousands of individual lawsuits or class action cases, brought against Purdue Pharma and them individually for the opioid addiction crisis, which was created by Pharma, by Purdue Pharma, who knew that their customers were getting addicted, who looked

the other way because it brought in lots of sales into and revenue into their company, which is, which is the heart of the lawsuits that Purdue, it's not that opioids by themselves are bad, properly dispensed for certain conditions under doctor, proper doctors care. They have a role in pain management and in society. It's the abuse of them and benefiting from that abuse, which is at the heart of the lawsuits. So the Sackler family said, let's take, let's take Purdue pharma into bankruptcy. Let's get the prediction of the bankruptcy court and let's put an eventual settlement or

plan a bankruptcy. What's called a bankruptcy plan of reorganization together under the auspices of the most powerful federal judge in the land, a bankruptcy, what's called a bankruptcy plan of reorganization together under the auspices of the most powerful federal judge in the land, a bankruptcy judge. And so they worked with the other side and a lot of the plaintiffs lawyers representing these families to try to put together something. Some attorney generals for some states were in favor of the settlement because there, there was a section of the plan that would give them money or their states money for the addicts and their state that were generated. Some of the states, as you noted, it doesn't matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat,

you've got opioid addicts in your state, depending upon how many you have, you may want a bigger share of that pie that's being administered by the bankruptcy judge. And if you don't think you got a fair amount, then you can, you know, say, I object, I don't, I think we should get a little more to Oklahoma and a little bit less to Texas or New Jersey. And that, that is the tug of war that was going on in the plan. The Sackler family said, we'll give up Purdue, Pharma. They basically just gave up the company and they continued right to get revenue generated or profit generated from it. They'll set it up in a separate trust that'll be dedicated to profits going to the victims.

The family said, we'll even give you some of our own personal fortune. We'll give, you know, $4.5 billion out of our coffers and put that into the pot. And what we want in return, though, and this is the demand of the of the Sackler family is we want personal liability insulation. And we want as part of this that people will not be able to sue individual Sackler family members now or in the future. And that would have been fine. Does the appellate court or the appellate judged in this case a district court judge in Manhattan. If the Sackler family members were themselves having filed bankruptcy under the auspices

of the bankruptcy judge because the Sackler family members don't want to file personal bankruptcy, but what the benefits of bankruptcy protection in a way, that is where this appellate judge has drawn the line. So just to walk through the bankruptcy process, there's a plan of reorganization that is negotiated with creditors and the estate or the debtor and the US trustee who assigns a trustee to be the trustee over the estate and makes reports with other professionals, including accountants and lawyers on behalf of the estate to the bankruptcy judge. In this case, a very fine bankruptcy judge in New York, Robert Drain, the RAN, Judge

Drain approved the bankruptcy plan of reorganization, which would have given the Sackler family a pass on individual civil liability. But others like the, actually the trustee, the US trustee, and other states stepped forward. I think the Department of Justice as well and opposed that aspect of the plan and took an appeal. It's a first level appeal. It didn't go to the circuit court for the second circuit in New York. It went to a federal article three judge sitting in Manhattan judge, Colleen, Colleen, I think McMullen, who has as her obligation sitting now, not as a trial judge, but as an appellate

judge over bankruptcy matters. Took a look at what judge drain did and said, I'm fine with it all, except for the part where you allowed people who are not themselves in the bankruptcy process to get a relief and take away the, the right of future plaintiffs to sue these people. They want that protection. They have to file for personal bankruptcy. And so she has rejected the plan and overturned judge drains approval of that plan of reorganization. And the next step on the train is the second circuit court of appeals with a three judge panel that's going to have to decide who's right, the judge on appeal or the original judge

drain the bankruptcy court. Oh, pop, what a great update on bankruptcy law and not an update, a summary on bankruptcy law was not expecting that, you know, it's so interesting, pop, because I was speaking to a big fan of legal AF, who's in the legal community. Know one of the things that she had liked so much about legal AF, which is something that I take, you know, for granted, sometimes she was just like, what's really good about what you a popok do and I don't know how you do it, is you touch on so many areas of law,

like criminal law, administrative law, civil law, bankruptcy law, environmental law, at very significant detail. She's like, how long do you prepare, you know, for the show? And for those wondering, it's ongoing. Like that there's something called continuing legal education. And to be, I think, a great lawyer, you have to really love law. You have to love these cases. And you're reading this not as work. Like it's not a chore to learn about these things and you're reading this not as work. Like it's not a chore to learn about these things.

I'm reading about these things anyway and Colin Popack about it, you know, regardless. And now we get to talk about it on a forum like this. Yeah, and I know our, our legal aifers like to hear about process with you and I and on the show. And during the week leading up to the night night live recording, you and I are going back and forth all week on, hey, did you see this? Did you see that? What do you think about this? Is this good for the show? And that's the other thing. You know, you and I also, you know, we have a lane of the intersection of of law and politics and we try to stay in that lane so that people when

they show up for the podcast, they know what to expect. And, you know, occasionally we'll deviate, you know, we'll take the train to a slightly different station. But you and I have that back and forth. Like I said, do we want to cover the trucker sentencing? While it's interesting and there's a moral component to it, is it really in our lane and you had a good argument with me, I mean, not an argument. I agreed with you pretty quickly that we could tie it into the overall sentencing minimum, a mandatory and the racial disparity within that as we move towards our other

items today. I thought that was genius, but you and I do this all week long. We're back and we don't just shop and go, hey, what are we going to talk about today? Yeah. And like, I think it's important that I want to include the trucker case also to remind people that even though we're talking a lot about legal cases that have this political aspect to it, it exists within this framework of justice and injustice that's taking place every day on all of these other issues. You know, it's just so interesting, Pope, I feel like what we don't have on the outline,

but which I just want to mention right now, because it came on my Twitter feed, is that the United States Postal Office reached a settlement with the NAACP for the 2020 mail delays and that people are calling for, DeJoy to resign, which everyone calls for, every single day. But there's just so much,

aspects and cases that are coming up. And so in this settlement, basically the US Postal Service, essentially admitted as much as one could admit in a settlement agreement, like there were unnecessary delays that were taking place, that may have been politically motivated and politically charged and had disparate impacts,

particularly on minority communities is ultimately the impact of it. I'll just read the quote. I mean, it's coming in the feed right now. Quote, consistent with the postal services steadfast commitment to fulfilling our vital role in the nation's electoral process. We agreed to continue to prioritize monitoring and timely delivery of election mail for future elections. This will include outreach and coordination with election officials and election stakeholders, including the end of Blacepiece. Popak, we wasn't even on the outline today, but what? You know what I want for my new, you know what I want for my new, I'm developing my podcast

studio. This is the beginnings of it. But now that you've said that, I want a ribbon, a news ribbon, a ticker tape of legal AF stories that go on behind me, you know, updated in real time. We'll get like some college kids to do it and just have it run behind us. I mean, we really do. I mean, you and I changed the order for tonight, like four times because things happened late, late Friday night, Saturday morning, you just got something now just in.

You know, and we try because we don't want this to be stale. We really take our responsibility to communicate, you know, in real time developments, so that our people are well armed. We're not talking about things from three weeks ago. We're gonna talk about things today where I'm gonna start by saying on Thursday, on Friday, Tuesday morning. It's that real. I mean, we may get to a point in the legal AF canon of podcasts where we have a spin off show, maybe

where we do a little more drill down a magazine style, 60 minute style on a couple of stories, but you and I get jazzed up. I said to you tonight, I think we got like 11 things to talk about. It's said a record. And rather than you saying, now let's cut out three, you're like, let's do it. Let's do it. And I think the new phrase for the papokian t-shirt is papokian. So fresh and so clean, clean, although we may run into some copyright or trademark violations there with that expression.

So Popak, just briefly, you know, I want to give a brief update on the Derek Chauvin civil rights case brought by the federal government. He played guilty to civil rights charges and connection to the killing of George Floyd, as well as another instance, which was similar. The victim didn't die, but very similar circumstances of putting his knee on the individual's neck. And he almost killed a black teenager in a separate arrest. Yeah, then 14 year old boy during a 2017 arrest and he pled guilty to both. Remember he's already serving a sentence of 22 and a half years in prison and connection with the conviction in Minnesota. But Popoac, does it surprise you that he pled guilty? I remember as he left the sentencing, he said something like the original sentencing, the original sentencing, he said something like, I have something original sentencing.

The original sentencing where he said something like, just wait until my next move or I have something up my sleeve. There was some implication that he had a broader plan, but do you think he's just at this point come to the conclusion that for the rest of his adult life he's going to be in prison and he just doesn't want to deal with any more trials? And it's just, you know, he just knows that that's his future. Yeah, I mean, I assume there was and I haven't seen too much press reporting on it and maybe you caught it, that there was some conversations or discussions with the prosecutors on the civil side department

of justice about if I plead guilty and take responsibility and don't put you through a trial, will there be leniency? And there is leniency that's sort of baked in. It may shave off a couple of years here and there when they do the sentencing report, when the US probation department prepares now the sentencing report,

which is that process that you and I talked about at length earlier tonight, and that he has now accepted responsibility. And if he's, if it's that and he's, and he's cooperating to the extent that he can cooperate with the prosecutors, maybe on other open cases, cold cases that he was involved with, so that they can also come forward and say, yeah, we want him in jail, but he has cooperatives. He has accepted responsibility. I presume that the defense lawyers have had that conversation.

They're not just winging it like, oh, I hope if we plead guilty, they'll take mercy on us. There's been discussions. Don't you think Ben leading into that, which have given him the signal from the, from the feds? If you make it easy on us in terms of this prosecution and sentencing, we'll shave a few years off. Maybe we'll even argue. Maybe, and I'm just guessing here, I'm just spitballing Ben. Maybe they'll let a portion of the federal sentence run concurrent with the state sentence that he's already serving.

I have to imagine if there is another strategy that Shovein has other than basically kind of complete capitulation and admission of the guilt that he rightfully should have admitted to from the outset that if there's a strategy here, it is to challenge the sentencing in the state court case to negotiate a deal with the feds that there be concurrent sentencing and to try to shade down 10 years or so from the state and try to make this 10, 15 year overall sentence as opposed to a life sentence. He's whittling down, you know, he's he's trying to lock in and stop the clock running on more time in the federal side because he's never going to win that trial. And he he's

already read the tea leaves on that. So now like you said, he's just trying to make, you know, some sort of lemonade at 11s and get the shortest amount of concurrent time possible. and get the shortest amount of concurrent time possible. The show on Hulu, I was referencing about the Sackler family is dope sick. So for all those who want to watch that, is that Michael Keaton plays one of the Sacklers? It is. That's good. I like Michael Keaton. Yeah, and he did a good interview also on, you know, whether it was, I think it was the 60-minute interview where he talked about all the various roles he played over time.

He's one of my favorite. He's been incredibly consistent and very normal, you know, which is, which is a hard combination. I mean, to play, put aside Birdman for a minute, which he won the Academy Award for, but to go for a Batman, which people forget what an uproar there was when he was chosen as Batman, the first Batman when they made the revival. But to go from Ray Crock in McDonald's to the head of the Sackler opioid factory, fascinating range of talent, you know?

Absolutely. And Popo, one of the reasons I'm so energized on this podcast today is also because of AG1, my athletic greens that I take every morning, I think that's also the factor in the band, the enthusiastic band that you're seeing today. And so you you you are your best band on AG1. If I best band an AG one and so Pope, this podcast disponsored by athletic greens, AG one by athletic greens, in particular, what is AG one?

Why do we love it so much, Pope? Well, let me, let me give a personal story first, because I had another, as you know, I had another one of these killer flip turns, another one of these killer flip turns from one office to another, another one from New York to Vegas. We opened a new office in Vegas and I was helping stand it up and a bunch of partners and I flooded out there. And I was in a 72 hour flip turn. I felt like a

flight attendant or a pilot between New York and Vegas. And I was drained. I mean, and there was not really no other than two dinners, there was no fun time in Vegas for me. There's literally all work nonstop. I came back to my room, never turned the light on and just dove into bed. I was that tired. And every day, I started my day with AG1 and before tonight.

This morning, I took AG1G.1 and I feel, this is honest truth here. I feel so much better inside and out, having taken that and then feeling like I'm doing something for my physical well-being and my metabolism and my probiotic and prebiotic and you'll get into all the amazing things that this company has jam packed into one powder pack,

but I feel like I'm doing, and I'm my best popock on AG1. One tasty scoop of AG1 contains 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin, multimineral probiotic, green, superfluid blend, and more in one convenient daily serving,

this special blend of high quality, bioavailable ingredients in a scoop of day G1 work together to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet, support energy, like the energy you're seeing here and focus, like the focus you see with papokian aid with gut health and

digestions. No one's gut is healthier than a papokian gut and support a healthy immune system effectively replacing multiple products or pills. Clear those shelves when you have one healthy, delicious drink and to make it easy, athletic greens is going to give you an immune supporting ready for this pop-up free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. If you visit athleticgreens.com slash legal AF, that is athletic greens, A-T-H-L-E-T-I-C-G-R-E-E-N-S.com slash legal AF. Again, simply visit athleticgreens.com slash legal AF, take control of your health and give a G one a try. You know what else they have? What else? Because I have a showroom that opened up across from my apartment in New York.

They have a really cool and we bought it travel. I don't know what called a travel mug, but travel container that you can pour the powder into mix up with like this built in spoon thing and with a twist, it's great for travel. And using AG1 is also a nice breaker. I've been at hotel, whatever, breakfast places. And I'm using the thing and I gotta ask for water and the spoon and the whole thing in the one pack.

And people come over either because they use AG1 and they're like, you know, thumbs up, you know, you're part of your part of this, this team or they're like, what is that? And then I get into a whole conversation about how great AG one is and you meet people, you know, in hotels, it's especially now with ice breaking. It's a nice way to get a conversation started. Hope I love it.

Speaking of help, we are vaxed and relaxed on the Midas Touch podcast and the Midas Mighty are vaxed and relaxed. I want to talk about the Biden's vaccine or testing rule, which has been tested in the federal courts, a victory by the Biden administration finally in the sixth circuit court of appeals after losing pretty much and all the other court of appeals. But there's a series of, you know, common sense rules that the Biden administration has put into place. This is a vaccine or testing rule.

So yeah, either get vaccinated. And if you don't want to get vaccinated, hey, you know what? Maybe you can get tested. I think that's a pretty fair compromise here. And that's what that rule is. And that's for companies with more than 100 employees. We've talked separately, which is a separate legal case about the center for Medicare and Medicaid services in connection with them, those centers offering their benefits, their funding to hospitals and basically saying, for those in the healthcare industry, for those on the front lines, we need you to be vaccinated. You should mandatory be vaccinated because you are dealing with people's health. As a fair minimum, the fair minimum that you shouldn't cough in my face while you're

treating me. And then there's also separately, one involving contractors and contractors of the federal government. But here, the one we're talking about is the 100 employees or more, the fifth circuit court of appeals prevented this law from going into effect. We know the fifth circuit, we've always talked about there, very, I don't like to say conservative, but very, very right wing,

that encompasses Texas and and surrounding areas. But all of these cases involving the Vax or test rules from the various different court of appeals. This was consolidated into the sixth circuit and on a two one, a sort, court of appeals and on a two one ruling upheld, Biden's, um, we're vaccine or test rule, that will then go to the Supreme Court. Where all these cases are going, but Pope, maybe first explain why did it go to the sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and what is this ruling me? We have, so I have so much to unpack in this one. I'm like giddy to get going.

Let's start with the score, let's start with the score card. I actually have a score card for those that are watching tonight. I want to give a quick score card of the three cases. Will you take a photo of the score card though and post it? Yeah, for sure. No, and like in law school, nobody will be able to read it. It's all gibberish except to me, but I will. I will do that tonight before the show. So there, let me just give the three cases that you just talked about

and where we are with them. You've got the vaccine mandate by the Biden administration to impose on federal contractors. You have the one on federal health care employees. So health care workers working in federal facilities. That's a second mandate of the bite administration. And the third one is using OSHA, which is the one that you and I just talked about, to enforce against large employers of 100 or more mandatory vaccine or testing. So three different mandates with three different regulatory agencies, and that's important here. OSHA being one, health and human services and Medicare Medicaid being another, and then the one under the federal for the federal contractors being a third, and all ended up in

different courts and different appellate circuits. The federal contractor mandate requiring all people who are doing business with the federal government to guarantee that their people are vaccinated has been blocked that mandate by the 11th circuit which covers Florida and Georgia. Currently, subject to a future United States Supreme Court review. The federal mandate of healthcare workers and federal facilities was blocked by the Western District of Louisiana federal judge.

It is now up as of December 16th at the Supreme Court, who will review that issue. That'll be the first federal vaccine mandate, as opposed to state or university vaccine mandate that the US Supreme Court is going to adjudicate. It's going to be the federal health care worker coming out of the Western District of Louisiana. And there, the Department of Justice just filed a brief with the US Supreme Court that said, allow the mandate for federal health care workers to, to go into place Supreme Court because of Amikron and tens of thousands of people that could be affected while this is on appeal. We will see that argument did not prevail for abortion. Let's see if it prevails with vaccine mandate, which the Supreme Court has already on the state and university levels said that vaccine mandates and at the TSA level for air travel

for masks is okay. So let's see what they say about Biden's federal mandate, which comes from which federal agency has the authority to make that rule. We're back to the rulemaking under administrative law. And then lastly, you've got the federal, this particular one that you and I are talking about, which will end up at the Supreme Court in the next two weeks. How do we know that?

Because the case started, the one related to OSHA and the 100 plus employee mandate or testing requirement as a case that the fifth circuit had already ruled against. They already rejected the mandate. They're the same fifth circuit that upheld the SBA, Texas abortion advance, you know, where they sit on the political spectrum. And so the Fifth Circuit already ruled. So for a minute, a hot minute, this vaccine mandate got a died. However, at the highest level of administration within the federal court system, there's something that's called the multi-district litigation panel. And there's a similar panel for a pellet And if there's a lot of appeals going on on similar issues and there's a petition

Brought to consolidate all those appeals so that there aren't different decisions in different circuits This panel this this and the chief judges that reside on it can make a decision to say you know what? We don't want a decision of the fifth and the ele, and the chief judges that reside on it, can make a decision to say, you know what, we don't want a decision of the fifth and the eleventh and the eighth. Let's get one panel to make the, of a pellet circuit to make the decision. Even if there's already been a ruling, they can still do that. They have the power to do that. So it was literally bilaterally. They just spun a wheel and the sixth circuit came up.

It's not because they said, oh, well, we'll a wheel and the six circuit came up. It's not because they said, oh, well, we'll stick it at the six circuit. It was really a random assignment of the six circuit. And the six circuit isn't, I mean, necessarily a, you know, liberal thinking circuit. It, it, it, it covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. And do you know who the, who the US Supreme Court Justice responsible for the six circuit is? I'm just going to guess. Kavanaugh. That's what you are. This is why I love doing the show with you. It's Kavanaugh. In fact, if you look, I looked at this before the show tonight, Ben. The chief just this assigns who's going to end up in what circuit, which, which justice

of the Supreme Court is assigned to which of the 11 circuits. And, and it would not shock you would it been that the more left wing or liberal thinking justices have the Northeast and California, and the more right wing justices have places like in the heart of the red meat, you know, the Trump belt. Is that surprise you? Does not surprise me. Right. So they don't take sought to my or and put her in Kentucky and they don't take Kagan

and put her in Texas. They put them, I mean, that, but that just shows you how sort of underhanded even that process is, because why, why isn't Briar capable of making decisions for Texas? Oh, no, I'm with you. And so let me ask you a legal question. I mean, coming off, legally is a douchebag. So what do you think that he's what what do you think that he's going to do in this situation? By the way, I one of the problems with doing this podcast though, like when I say things like that is, imagine if I ever actually have to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, you know, and then

Kavanaugh's like, did you call me a douchebag, you know, on December 18th of 22nd. You kind of have a question. If you're gonna do the podcast commentary, you kind of have to go all in, you know, it kind of be like, you know, I have to tell my client, you know, imagine a client wants to be to do our argument. Like, so I want you to do it. You know, the one problem is I called the judge

a douchebag on the podcast. But you, you want to let into a segment with me about eight or nine shows ago, where you said, Popeyes, all Republicans are pedophiles, right? That was your lead in. So what do you think, what do you think douchebag cabinet does? I, I think this, well, let me just give the, what happened at the six circuit, the six circuit, basically overruled the fifth circuit. And on a two to one vote vote because it's a three judge panel

ruled that the OSHA has the power and the rulemaking authority to properly regulate in this area. I'm sure Amikron has, I mean, I hate to say it's helped something, but three weeks ago when all these judges were going, it's almost over. Who cares? Nobody's dying from it. And now you have half in New York is closing down again because of this and around the country. That unfortunately has helped the argument about the public health crisis that we're in and the mortality rate.

The six circuits said, no, OSHA has the power, the vaccine mandate and testing requirement for large employers is going to survive and we're going to enforce it with a two week. You know, these judges love these two week gaps, a two week enforcement gap to allow the parties to take an appeal to the US Supreme Court. So they have to make an application for an emergency application to Kavanaugh. You know, it's hard to tell. Kavanaugh certainly, we know where he stands on abortion, but even even Amy

Cody Barrett and Roberts and the rest of them seem to be okay with vaccine mandates. You and I talked 12 episodes ago about the Boston case, the Massachusetts case about the scourge of smallpox and the requirement of vaccines. Now, this Supreme Court courts never met a precedent that it hasn't decided to want it to run away from. I would normally say there's a, there's a healthy body of precedent that supports mandatory federal vaccines or state vaccines. But I, I don't know. I, all right. I'm going to, I'll, I gotta, this is why we get paid the big bucks. I think he's going to, I think he's going to allow the federal vaccine mandate under OSHA,

even Cavanaugh, what do you think? I think that he'll allow it to remain in effect that's been consistent with the other right wingers on the Supreme Court. And so that's kind of where I think he nets out on, you know out on that issue. And, but we'll ultimately see, as this case, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services as the contractor, rules and regulations as those all work their way up for full oral argument, these will be cases that we'll be following

on the Midas Touch legal AF podcast. Let's talk about January 6th related legal issues. So Mark Meadows. I think this is a quick one, Popeye. I mean, we've given our listeners and viewers updates on all the Mark Meadows, Travals. You know, Mark Meadows initially said that he was through his lawyer would be cooperating in some capacity with the Jan 6th Commission.

He said that he would show up. He would invoke the privilege of executive privilege where he deemed that to be the appropriate invocation. Obviously, there are areas where executive privilege where he deemed that to be the appropriate invocation. Obviously, there are areas where executive privilege just doesn't apply when you're speaking to not executive officials. So when he's speaking to members of Congress or when he's talking to the public, like writing about it in a book, you know, and not in direct conversations with the president. There's a broader argument to be had about whether conversations between the president and meadows on January 6th is subject to executive privilege. I think it is not.

I think eating and abetting an insurrection has nothing to do with executive functions and that the executive privilege is not an absolute privilege to qualify one. And that would give way to other broader considerations. But that's not even what is at issue here. What is issue is will you show up? Literally, will you, will you come to the office?

Because you've been subpoenaed or come voluntarily, but will you come to the office and will you just have the discussion? You could invoke the privilege when you're there. So if I asked the question, what did you and Donald Trump speak about? The response would be from his attorney. I'm not going to allow Mr. Meadows to respond. We are invoking executive privilege. Even if you invoke the privilege on areas where you're not supposed to, you're at least showing up. So if they were to ask him, you've produced and turned over these text messages, which would be a waiver of the privilege, but you've returned over these text messages of your communications with Jim Jordan about how to overturn the will of the people and have state legislatures elect their own slate

of electors. Why did you do that? Even then his lawyer could make the claim. We object executive privilege. What would happen if you're the one asking the question, if I'm the Gen 6 committee, I would put on the record. That is an improper invocation of the privilege. We're going to be seeking sanctions against you. Case law clearly holds that that's not a privileged communication. You've turned over records as well. So any privilege claim is waived.

But we will have to go to court to argue that. That is not what happened here. What Mark Meadows simply did has said, you know what? I'm not showing up. I'm not even going to go through that process to make a privilege claim. And so the January 6th committee initially made the recommendation to hold them in contempt. And this week we had a full vote of the House of Representatives. All of the Democrats voted to hold Mark Meadows in contempt. Liz Cheney and Kitsinger were the two Republicans who sided with the Democrats. All of the other Republicans were like, you know what, we're cool with this conduct.

Like, think about that, though, all all the other Republicans had voted to not hold them in contempt, as Congress, like just the level of them sacrificing their own powers and authority. I guess they, I guess they never think that they're, when they're in power again, and they will be at some point, may not be midterms. The Republicans have just abdicated all responsibility. They must never want to hold any investigation of anything because they've now just flouted that. How would they ever going to conduct an investigation when they're the chair of the committees and they call people of any stripe before them when they voted when they voted against holding anybody in contempt with you Pope. So there's really nothing else to report there.

You know, I think let's do it this way. Let's do it this way. All right. I just want to make, I just want to make one observation. You've got a series of people from meadows to stone, to Eastman to Clark, who are all at Bannon, who have all tried various ways to delay the inevitable. You've got meadows who brings the lawsuit

and civil court claiming executive privilege and won't participate anymore in the Gen 6 process until that happens. You've got Eastman, along with some other Gen 6 organizers who have just filed a suit to try to stop Verizon from complying with a subpoena duly issued by the Gen 6 committee to get all of their text messages and phone records. Oh, can I just go over the Eastman legal arguments here are like these like just whack a doodle kind of theoretical like what he's saying. The committee is not even empowered

to issue subpoenas in the first place. But Ben, he is the chair of the Center for Constitutional jurisprudence. It says it right there on his business card. Are you, are you saying that John Eastman doesn't know what he's talking about? You know, the broader concern with Eastman, you know, in addition to that, there's so many concerns about it. But Eastman was a professor at a law professor at Chapman University. And so before all this insurrection stuff, like there were people who I've never heard of before today.

Chapman University though, is a law school in California. You know, it's not like a tier one or tier two, but they produce, it's ABA accredited. ABA accredited last time I checked. And they produce though, a lot of good scrappy kind of trial lawyers, you know, and again, my own view of it too is just because you know tier one tier two, great lawyers are people who are passionate about the lot and so whatever law school you go to I've known some great lawyer, you know lawyers who come from law schools. I've never heard of you know and but Chapman is small school

But you know a reputation of producing some good, and but Chapman is small school, but you know, a reputation to produce in some good lawyers, but he taught law students, other people, that he taught other people. And he's saying things like the committee's lack of validly appointed minority members, or validly appointed ranking minority members, make such compliance impossible. His lawsuit also argues the subpoena of his cell phone records is invalid saying quote, the committee is attempting to exercise a law enforcement function, adding that the subpoena infringed on attorney client privilege. I'm not sure how the like literally the record of phone calls happening how that would influence on any attorney.

Oh, they could they called each other. You know what? Yeah, the Eastman thing is great. And then I'm sure you caught the stone Roger stone. I mean, I'm so tired of saying his name. He actually showed up for his deposition or his interview, but he asserted, invoke the Fifth Amendment to every question, which is also an improper invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege. But I'll tell you when I think the dust settles

and all this is over and the delay that I started this comment with occurs, which is now, frankly, going to put the Meadows, Clark, Eastman, a tranche of defendants over the midterms because you see how close with Bannon, the trials in July three months from midterms. We're not even at the point of the DOJ referral of Meadows contempt, which now goes to the DC US attorney for the District of Columbia. And I want to just clean up something here. Merrick Garland is not in charge of deciding. It's not Merrick Garland decides whether the meadows of the world are going to be prosecuted

off a criminal contempt of Congress. It is the sitting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Yes, his boss is Merrick Garland, but that prosecutor makes a decision, not Merrick Garland. And you saw how long it took with baddened. Even if they short-circuit it a week or two, it's still going to be likely at or about or just after the midterms for any of this stuff to really play itself out. But when the dust settles, and you, you and I like to talk about the arc of history is long, but bends towards justice, the chapter that's going to be in the book about Mark Meadows and his

role in the Jan 6th is going to include the 38 page PowerPoint election fraud, foreign interference and options for 6th gen, which was created apparently by this former colonel in the army, intelligence colonel in the army, Phil Waldron, who got outed by Giuliani and his deposition testimony, who made this whole presentation that Meadows was involved with, whether he gives an ounce more of testimony between the Verizon records, the 200 other people who have testified and the emails that he, the 2000 pages of emails and the 38 page PowerPoint, this is going to be enough to hang meadows regardless. But that's going to be a whole chapter of this PowerPoint with a link out in future history

books. Oh, I completely agree. Pope, I can, what do you make of the district attorney in Washington, DC filing a lawsuit under the Ku Klux Klan. So, Attorney General, DC Attorney General. No, DC Attorney General. What do you make of that? Yeah, I think it's great. And here we get to do a little more tutorial for the legal aeifers and the law school, the virtual law school people. The highest chief legal officer of the district of Columbia, of course, a federal district is the attorney general for the district of Columbia.

What did I say? District attorney, I think. Yeah, yeah. But the attorney, but it's interesting because I really never thought about a DC attorney general until, you know, more recently. So that particular person, Carl Rayseen, if you go, if you go on his website, it's a, it's a pretty good website. They have a whole section I liked that was just people, the hate, people, the hate, which is not a case,

but it is the philosophy of the office in going after hate-based crimes on behalf of the people, in this case, the people of the District of Columbia. And so taking a page out of the Charlottesville case that you and I talked about two or three podcasts ago, in which they use the KKK act of 1871 passed under Ulysses S. Grant as to make sure that freed slaves were given the 14th Amendment protections that were guaranteed to them by the US Constitution, which is now codified, memorialized in a statute in the US code, which is 42 USC section 1986. So they'll refer to it either as a KKK

conspiracy or a section 1986 conspiracy. That is the foundation of the complaint that was just filed against 30 or more defendants, including the proud boys, the oath keepers and all the other organizers of Jan 6 saying that their acts were conspiratorial again under 42 USC 1985, which is a conspiracy to interfere with a federal officer from exercising their duties, which in this case is the is Congress in certifying the election on Jan 6, which they got the way of and and and and section 1986, which is the KKK act in denying people equal protection and to recover millions of dollars that the addition of Columbia suffered as as as the victims if

you will the people the victims of the Jansk sixth insurrection. I think they have standing. What do you think about the damage model if you will Ben in that case? Look, I think that at all levels, it's critical that we hold these insurrectionists accountable. As the wheels of justice move slowly but methodically in bringing criminal accountability, I do think it is important to have, in this case, the DC AG, bringing a civil case, went to hit these terrorists in the wallet as well.

You think about one of the tools in the toolkit of prosecutors in dealing with international terrorism, because of the flow of money and the banking system and its centralization in the United States, being such a major factor to the international kind of monetary systems, being able to freeze bank accounts is a major tool in addition to the military, in addition to other types of tribunals and prosecutions and actions that

could be taken. When dealing with domestic terrorists as well, those financial levers being brought to bear in terms of civil liability and dealing with who their funding sources are, I think is going to become increasingly important. It just hasn't really been systematized in a way because January 6th was so unprecedented in our nation's history, but I think you're going to start seeing, right now you're seeing the experimentation with the Ku Klux Klan Act and other financial levers like that, but I think what we need and what you'll see is more robust financial penalties as well To these domestic carols. Yeah, I think I think you're exactly right that we're now in an experimental laboratory of how to use existing law and

Remedies against an egregious unprecedented event just as watergate was, just as Timothy McVeigh bombing, you know, the federal courthouse. And here, Popeyes, the difference would be is you have a political party that would be supportive of Timothy McVeigh. Like that's what we're seeing now is a political party that looks at the act of terrorism and calls him a freedom fighter. So you have the prosecutors in the Jansick's sentencing using federal obstruction because they think that is the closest fit for the crime. Federal, then you got Republican judges, they're pushing back and saying,

well, obstruction's really for illegal proceeding like a courthouse. This wasn't a courthouse. Why, why didn't you use the misdemeanor one? My theory there, Popack is it's even deeper than that too. One of the most potent charges against Trump would be an obstruction charge in connection with January 6th. And so there, these initial battles over obstruction, in my view, are proxies to kind of try to help Trump

in a potential claim against him for obstruction. I like that. So, but you have, again, you have other, you have prosecutors and plaintiffs, lawyers, and attorney generals or district of Columbia going into their toolbox and trying to find a tool that works. The reality is after this, this is what the Gen 6 committee is doing. This is what the Houseways and Means Committee is doing is looking at the past events and making sure the past is not prologue that these things don't happen in the future and that there are and that future prosecutors have the right tools just as they pass new

laws after Watergate, the Presidential Records Act, things related to tax returns that you would are going to be talking about, all came from the watergate era. I'm hoping that if we get the Congress again in the midterms, it's why it's so important that we're able to change law on the books to be used as a tool and as a way to inhibit and prevent recidivism and people doing bad things again. But if we don't get the Congress again, tying this back to politics, then we're never gonna change the law in the books that will help future prosecutors and plaintiffs lawyers

stop and go after the future gen sixth of the world. Because I'd like to think that was the last time this has happened on US soil. I don't think so. Yeah, because many of the members of Congress from the GQP are terrorists themselves. Like they are actually wrong. And they think there was nothing wrong

with what happened on, Jen. Because they did it. A lot of them were. A lot of them were. We got the shirt. We got the t-shirt. We were there. We liked it.

Yeah, absolutely. This podcast is sponsored by Better Help. Is there something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals all the time all the time you can things we talk about on the show is interfering with my mental health. But at the end of the day, it is important that everybody takes mental health seriously as Pope, and I do, and that we create, you know, safe spaces to talk about mental. That's why I like better help as a sponsor better help will assess your needs and match you with your own license professional therapist. You'll be matched with a therapist and just under 48 hours. This is professional therapy done securely online. And there's a broad range of expertise available, which may not be locally available in many areas, the services available for clients world-wide,

log into your account anytime, send a message to your therapist and you'll get timely and thoughtful responses. Plus, you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions so you won't ever have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room as with traditional therapy. Better help is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches. So they make it easy and free to change therapists. If needed, although for me, they made a great therapeutic match right from the outset. And I haven't had to do that change. And look, I I

use this. And I'm proud to say that I'm someone who uses better help. And I think everybody can benefit from speaking to a professional therapist at your own schedule. It's more affordable than traditional offline therapy and financial aid is also available. Better help once you start living a happier life today. You visit their website. You'll read these testimonials that are posted daily

Some great testimonials that I think mirror my experience that I just talked about But go to better help that's better HLP and join the over two million people who have taken charge of their mental health With the help of an experience professional in, so many people have been using better help that they are recruiting additional therapists in all 50 states. Now, this is a special offer for legal AF listeners. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash legal AF. That's better help.com slash legal AF. Go to betterhelp.com slash legal AF and take advantage of all of their services. You won't regret it. Let's go to Delaware. It's travel over to Delaware. I've been there.

You've been there. You've been there. So the state court in Delaware issued a ruling, a very, very lengthy, well researched, well written order denying the Fox News motion to dismiss in the lawsuit brought by Dominion against Fox News for defamation. Dominion lawsuit was a very well-pled, I don't know if this one specifically was, but 100 plus pages, like all their lawsuits, for like hundreds of pages with exhibit after exhibit that set forth all of the defamatory acts. In their motion to dismiss Fox News raised a number of defenses. They raised a defense that's called the neutral reportage defense. Stop, stop. Fox News is claiming that they are just a neutral reporter of news. Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartoromo, all of Ducey, all the people they bring onto these shows,

which there's no barrier between opinion and news anyway on any other shows. They have the balls to claim Ben, the neutral reporter defense. So under the neutral reported doctrine, the press need not, quote, suppress newsworthy statements merely because it has serious doubts regarding their truth. Instead, under the doctrine, the press enjoys quote immunity from defamation suits, where the journalist believes reasonably and in good faith that his or her report accurately conveys the charges made. And so basically what that means is if you brought on a conspiracy theorist, but that was newsworthy and you're asking that individual or individual's questions, you're not getting imputed there, kind of crazy conspiracy defamatory

stuff onto you as the reporter. But if you reasonably in good faith believe that that information is conveying like a legitimate point of view. And what the order pointed out too is that you never even gave the other point of view really, you know, and that dominion sent you a list of the facts that were like there was no denying them, they were completely undisturbed. And they still read the stories anyway. And they didn't read the Dominion facts, but it's important to note though, when you see the reporters, whether it's the Fox News reporters,

the reporters from Newsmax or OAN, when they try to bury what they read that statement though, sometimes, and they say, these are accusations that we don't believe are true. What they're actually invoking are doctrines like the neutral reporter privilege so that they could defame people, but then try to claim they're like they're like the announcer at the basketball game when they have to when they have to introduce the opposing team, it's always mumble, but you don't know who the player is.

But but look, there are other doctrines too quickly pop out. The fair report privilege is one of the defenses that were raised, which essentially is, you know, a very similar doctrine. I won't get it into the weeds. And then finally, the defense that Fox News raised was the opinion defense that this was simply opinion and you can sue, which is the opposite of the first two defenses that you just talked about. The problem with Fox News is that it's very business model undermines all of the defenses that they just raised. They have made a ton, incalculable level of profit by blurring the lines, removing the barrier and not being a legitimate news organization and having it just be opinion after opinion. Well, not, not this kind of opinion you're talking about, but, but having fake or faux news casts,

you know, faux news, not Fox news is people like to say where they just like to say Fox ruse, Fox ruins or are you a succession on HBO fan? I am. I haven't seen this season though. All right. Well, I'll just take one line. I won't. I'm not ruining any plot line, but there was a great, you know, it's modeled as slightly after the Murdoch family. And they also own a right wing news organization. And one of, and one of the children said about their news organization that they're just turning on the bigot spigot. And that was, that was by Shiv, by the way. And that's what the Fox News Organization does.

Fox News Organization just turns on the bigot spigot and reaps the dollar. So then you can't stand in front of a courthouse or in a courtroom and argue that you're just a journalist reporting the news if that's how you make your money. So we're in Delaware Superior court, and just to give more of a lesson here, there's, there's two major courts of the state court system in Delaware, ones, the chance to record, which we talked about, which is probably where Fox wanted to end up, because they probably would have got a little fairer shake in their view by the chance to record judges, but I'm sure dominion filed on purpose in the superior court. Now judge, I don't

know him by name. I don't know him personally, but the judge here for the case in Newcastle County, Delaware, which is Wilmington court, Eric Davis was a partner in a for just full disclosure and a firm that I started my career at at SCAT, NARPS. There's about four or five firms in Delaware law firms that are like the feeders for the chance to record the superior court. In fact, some of the seats are called like the Skaten seat. So obviously, Eric Davis, Skaten partner, really well respected, representing companies like Dominion N. Fox. He's a corporate litigator by trade. And he's probably going to end up on the chance to record maybe the federal bench, but

in a 52 page decision on a motion to dismiss standard, which you and I have, I think have talked about in 37 other episodes, but in a motion to dismiss and not procure procedural posture, everything that's in the complaint for dominion, everything is assumed to be true and given the light most favorable and interpretation Against the movement which in this case is Fox News. So Fox News doesn't get the benefit of the doubt The complaint that's been filed gets the benefit of the doubt in every way shape and form If I write in my complaint that the moon is made of cheese informed. If I write in my complaint that the moon is made of cheese or I've got a flying spaghetti monster in my closet, for the purposes of that complaint, the judge has to assume that that is true. Now, I may be sanctioned separately for having written that, but he has to assume

for the purposes of the motion that that is true. So under the motion to dismiss standard, the court found that the allegations of defamation, what's called per se defamation have been adequately pled and will not be dismissed as a matter of law at the pleading stage. And let's get to trial or let's at least get the summary judgment, which happens after discovery. Of course, Fox wanted to kill this case now before it even got off the ground. So they didn't have to have Maria Bartolombo and Lou Dobbs and all the other talk talker Carlson have to give deposition testimony. But now discovery is not state in this case and I doubt they're going to get an appellate court to stay it, especially in Delaware.

And they're going to they're going to be sitting in deposition in the next six months. So just one point for people are wondering, so wait a minute, in a complaint, I could say anything in the judge has to accept it as true. There were other mechanisms in the legal system as popo colluded to that when you sign your name to a pleading, if you're putting false

information in the pleading, like we saw with a lot of these post election lawsuits by the Trumpers, we saw with a lot of these post election lawsuits by the Trumpers were all getting sent in. Right now everything that Cindy Powell wrote was not true. Yeah. So you can lie in the complaint, but there are also levers where you're making these completely false and fabricated accusations and the federal court.

It's called rule 11 sanctions and there are kind of similar rules in state court to rule 11 sanctions where you can basically call out the other side and basically say, this is frivolous and we're going to prove to your honor at this stage that it's frivolous and that you shouldn't accept as true they're saying because they're literally just lying and we want you to sanction them. But otherwise the court accepts the well-pled. That's an important line. The well-pled, not just any accusations, the well-pled accusations and statements in the complaint as true as Popoq just set out. So we will keep you updated there on what goes on with that lawsuit. And there's a ton of other lawsuits that are being filed by Dominion against other

defendants. But I mean, clearly Fox News here is the deepest pocket, meaning they have the most money of really any defendant that's being sued from the OANs to the news maxes to the individual Giuliani's and Sydney pals and all of those types of people who don't really have any significant forms of assets, although OAN and Newsmax may have something, but there's really exposure here, though that Fox News has, and especially if this case goes to trial,

ultimately, I don't think Dominion is gonna settle this case. I really don't, unless they're offered one point nine billion dollars that they're asking for. You know, they're going to bring this case to a trial. And the Murdoch's and people like that are going to be called through Sam. I wouldn't be shocked if on the eve of trial, though, they're basically offered one point nine billion dollars by Fox because at the end of the day, as crazy as it sounds, that isn't necessarily a material number based on the revenues that the news court made. You know what I'd like to see under this neutral reporter doctrine.

I haven't seen it. Maybe, Jordi or Brett can dig it up. How is Fox News reporting on its own lawsuits? I don't think they are. Is the is the answer? I think there, I think the omission of that is quite telling. Popak, what we talked an update on SB 8, you know, we talked about the Supreme Courts ruling last week. It was a bit of an odd ruling, a kept SB8 in full force and effect in Texas, and basically said, you know, you would allow the appropriate

authorities and, you know, their individuals, in this case, the labs and the facilities that were available to individuals seeking abortion and the clinics to bring lawsuits but against the licensing agencies but not directly against the court system and against the court clerks or the state or the state. Yeah. You know, based on immunities that the state has according to the Supreme Court, even though this is a clear end to run around

What federal law is and then in that ruling also that the federal government wasn't able to pursue the case that it had but the structure that it was creating with keeping SBA in effect and then that it was creating with keeping SBA in effect and then making this process was a very slow, arduous process and keeping SBA in on the books. Basically made it seem like SBA

is going to be on the books for a really, really long time. And what Gorsik did here kind of shows, I mean, he basically followed what the rules are usually, but in this case, there's probably emergency needs that it goes back to the trial court, but basically what's going to happen here, and Popok break it down, but SBA is going to be an effect for the foreseeable future, for a very long period of time, at least until the Supreme Court rules on the office, versus Mississippi, and then basically Texas, I think, will then voluntarily with the draw, sp8, and then just enact a law that is an abandoning abortion law.

Right. You're totally right. And to paraphrase you, my dear colleague and co-anchor, a gorsage also fucked them in the way that they made their request for an expedited ruling. He gave them that, but he sent it to the raw in their view and our abortion providers view, the wrong court, which will create further delay.

So let me untangle this because it's a really a procedural nest here, but I think within, if you give me two minutes, I'll get it untangled. We had a ruling five to four. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion. Roberts was in the minority last week. We talked about it in which the SBA law can be challenged by the abortion providers, but they can only bring their suit against the Texas Medical Licensing Board and not against anyone else. And Roberts was in the minority, which is not a great sign for the future of dobs in

the summer, the Mississippi case, because it showed that at least at this moment, he's unable to get a fifth vote to find that the constitutional right to pre-viability abortion overrides all other concerns and that S.B.H. should be barred, its application should be barred while the appeal is going on. Roberts couldn't do that. In fact, in a front probability of Roberts' corsage

ends up writing the vote that he needs, ends up writing the opposite opinion last week that we talked about. Now the abortion provider said, all right, we'll live with the decision, but can we speed this up? Because every day is another day that a woman is not able to get an abortion that she has a constitutional right to in our view in the state of Texas. By the time we get to the summer with dobs, it's going to be one year since SB 8 went into effect, which is, which is a pregnancy term and, and, and another, and another quarter. So can we speed it up? Send it, but you have 25 days under the federal rules for the Supreme Court to enter its order, if you will. It's decision. And the, and the abortion providers said, can you speed that up?

Let's not wait another month. Every month matters, literally, in a pregnancy. So, don't take 25 days. Do it tomorrow. And, and this was the second request, send it back to Judge Pitman, who's the other judge besides Tonya Chutkin that you and I like. It's the law firm of Chutkin and Pittman. So Pittman in Austin, who's a judge where they've gotten favorable rulings against SBA out

of them, they asked George Gorsuch and the Supreme Court to send the case back to the trial court level and let us litigate now on the trial court level and get to the merits of the case so it can come back on appeal. And Gorsuch said, no, we're going to send it back to the fifth circuit. Well, that sounds weird. Why are they sending Ben a case instead of to the trial level back to an appellate court, but beneath them, and you know that appellate court, the fifth is right wing. It's going to rule against this thing anyway and delayed, delayed, delayed. And Gorsuch said he bought the argument or the Supreme Court five, the five needed to vote this way, supported the argument that a novel

issue raised by the medical licensing board in Texas that will require the Texas Supreme Court. Now we're moving from federal system to state system. They want to go out to the state system. The highest court in the land for Texas on state issues is the Texas Supreme Court. And they want to get a ruling there as to whether the medical licensing board can even be sued at all because what do they have to do with abortion other than licensing the people? So the abortion providers, I'm sorry, the, the, yeah, the abortion providers are sitting quietly while there's a whole fight now going to be over, let's say three to six months at the Texas Supreme Court level to decide whether the case should even go forward at all.

It's another way to kill the case on behalf of the abortion providers. And corset has bought it hook line and sinker. And as a facilitator of it. And so is the other five or four voters on the Supreme Court. So it's another, as you would say, or as Tony Michaels would say, another fuck them. A lot of people have tagged us, though, with Gavin Newsom, Letitia James, saying that in New York and California, what they want to enact is an SBA style law with respect to assault weapons,

with respect to ghost guns, and keeping these dangerous weapons off the street. And why don't we enact in these states, basically a similar bounty hunter law while we think these laws in this legal scheme should not exist. If the Supreme Court is allowing something like SBA to stay in place, why not just do that in, you know, with respect to other issues like taking assault weapons and, and ghost

guns off the street. It was one of the things that in oral argument, Obers beate that Kavanaugh himself raised during our argument, what's preventing a state from doing that. And I encourage states to do that. I'm supportive of California's efforts. I'm supportive of New York's efforts, but the level of kind of evil geniusness of this Supreme Court and the mischief in their ruling, though, I think ultimately allows a path to declare S.B.8 to be unconstitutional, to allow S.B.8 to be deemed invalid.

But it delays that process from happening. And so when California does enact an SBA style law with respect to guns, when New York and acts an SBA style law with respect to assault weapons, let me know your thoughts, Popoac, but I think the Supreme Court, no, what are you talking about?

They're gonna say, we said that you can challenge SBA. We just said you have to go through kind of the proper methodology for doing it and sure that's going to take a long, but we never said that SB 8, you know, should remain in effect. And so I think that's kind of the structure they set up. And meanwhile, what the Supreme Court is going to do is they're over, they're going to overturn Roe v Wade or they're going to embrace the Mississippi ban on abortions after 15 weeks. That would be the most positive result based on oral argument that we saw is just upholding the ban and not a complete overturn of Roe v Wade.

And then what the Supreme Court's going to do is they're going to basically strike down the SBA style law in California, and they're going to strike down the SBA style law in New York and try to basically say, no, we were okay with challenging SBA. We just elongated that process from happening. So I know I'm thinking eight steps ahead here, but I'm thinking that's what the Supreme Court's doing. I'm not sure I love the attempt by Newsom and Leticia as much as you do. Well, I think it's creative and it's novel. I'm not sure I want to buy into the legitimacy

of that type of bounty hunter law. Even if people say, well, what's good for the goose, what's good for the gander and careful, what you ask for and all of that. But if you and I and other thinking sentient human beings believe that the bounty hunter law is an improper procedural and even substantive attack to avoid constitutional review by the US Supreme Court and federal courts, then I feel that way for all things. And I don't think saying, well, fine, we'll just throw in the towel and we'll use it for our own purposes. I think may backfire, because I don't want courts pointing to it and saying, well, we thought it was sort of not right. But look at all these democratic states that are doing it. That's one. Secondly, you know how sacra sank this right wing super majority of the Supreme Court feels about the

second amendment, and they're not going to allow any, you know, incursions on it. You know, we thought we thought religion was their animating feature on that panel. It doesn't seem to be. It seems to be because they were okay with things we talked about last week that were incursions on the separation of church and state, which ended up being, I guess, pro-religion in a way. But second amendment, try to pry their guns from their dead cult fingers. Good luck.

I think we're playing with fire. And this is where you and I have an opposite view, I guess. If we, if the, if the democratic governors tried to use it to their advantage against guns. They should just pass laws against guns that fit with the contours of the sitting Supreme Court or the Second Amendment or keep taking challenges back to the Supreme Court and see what they can provide and take a page out of the out of the Republicans that way. Keep attacking and sending cases to the Supreme Court and hopefully Biden will get another pick, something may happen.

I mean, not, I mean, look, I didn't expect Anthony Scalia to depart the court as early as he did. It's not something could happen naturally on the court, which could change the balance. And I'm not sure this is the precedent. I want to set the meantime. Copac, that was deep and unexpected, but we will see. But you know, we'll see what the Midas might think about that, but I appreciate there's always

good debate here on the Midas Touch League LAF podcast. And just finally, Popock, I think we should briefly, briefly touch on it. It was a bad week for Trump in trying to prevent his tax returns and financial records from being disclosed to Congress. Really two cases, one, the district court, a district court level case that said that Trump, that Congress does have a right to have Trump's tax returns. It was Judge McFadden, who's actually a Trump appointee, which is interesting. And Popak,

your analysis here, though, about what Congress's powers are here. I think it's helpful in illuminating, just to even know that Congress has that power. But then I'll talk very briefly after that about the other Court of Appeals case. So separate from the Gen 6 Committee, special select committee, there has been, and it's been going on longer than the Gen 6 committee, special select committee, there has been, and it's been going on longer than the Gen 6 special committee. Almost as the moment Trump took office, having not provided his tax returns first time in a hundred years, a sitting president or a presidential candidate didn't provide his tax returns. The House Ways and Means Committee Committee, which in the Congress sits over the internal revenue service.

So they have powers of a checks and balance powers over the IRS. They decided we're not really that comfortable with a president who may, who may have foreign interests and other business interests, which may impact his being an appropriate representative and holding the highest power of the law, the highest, the most powerful person in the world position. We don't like that that happened. We're going to use our oversight powers to get to the bottom of what is in the current toolbox to prevent a president like Trump from hiding foreign influence and other political

or business interests, their pressures that are on him that make him susceptible to doing bad things, right? Being co-opted, being corrupted. And we want to look at the current law and make recommendations for future law exactly what you and I just talked about earlier on this podcast, how we take the lessons and make sure the past is not prologue and we and they fix it. So Houseways and Means Committee, that's their power.

That's their jurisdiction. Why is the IRS involved because there already is on the books on their IRS manual, the presidential audit plan or program. And I did not know this. I don't know if you did. Did you know that that for the last like 40 years or 30 years, every president and vice president has their personal tax returns audited every year by the IRS? Did you know that before we started podcasting?

I did not know that. Okay. Now, the way I just said that our listeners and followers are probably already figuring out the loophole. Personal tax returns are reviewed only under the IRS presidential audit program. What's missing? Business tax returns. Now, generally, usually that doesn't matter because most presidents, except for a select few like Kennedy and a few others, they don't have a lot of like existing business that you have to worry about.

Barack Obama had, let's be frank, no money when he came into office. Clinton had no money when he came into office. They didn't run operating businesses. Trump, that's how he got in, that he's not an insider, he's an outsider, he's a business person. He had thousands and thousands. He had that, what was that? Was that your impression?

Yeah, bullshit. He had thousands and thousands of limited liability companies protecting every, for every business that he had, every real estate development, every Trump's stake house, every hotel, every restaurant, every golf course, every, the store in the golf course, you know, the one that sells the t-shirts and the mugs and whatever, all of that. And so we had our first Leviathan president who was just Trump incorporated. The IRS's program and law does not permit them to audit the business tax returns.

And that's where all the action is in Trump. It's not in his personal return. His personal return shows zero income, zero taxes. It's probably a 1040 EZ. It's like a one page document. He lives and breathes his corporations. So the House, ways and means committee said, we want to see the tax returns from the IRS to the Treasury Department that we oversee because we want to make recommendations

as to whether that audit function is appropriate or whether we need to add new law to that in appropriate and valid exercise of oversight by a committee of Congress. Trump, of course, hated that. The Treasury Department now headed instead of by Steve Manuchin, who was the Treasury Secretary billionaire under Trump, is now headed by like a real person. And they said, okay, we're going to turn, we're going to turn over the tax returns. Trump intervenes in the federal case and says, wait, those are my tax returns. And it's an improper exercise of oversight power by the ways the House Ways and Means

Committee, they're beyond their jurisdiction and how dare they. And the judge, who again, bad day in BlackRock for Donald Trump is a Trump appointee who said, yeah, you're right on the facts about what happened, but you're really wrong about the law. He actually wrote that in his, it is his 45 page opinion. And here's why you're wrong on the law. The Houseways and Means Committee has a valid oversight obligation over the internal revenue service. They're getting to the bottom of whether presidents, not just you, but future presidents should be audited and their corporations and businesses and trusts should be audited. And if we need to make that change, we have to see your returns and look at what the IRS did and its audit function. And we can't do that if you're going to stay in the way of this thing.

And judge and I was like, I'm sorry, Judge McFadden. You love that, right? Judge McChuckin actually came out and said, Trump, you're wrong. And I'm ordering that the returns be turned over. But once again, we're going to have a delay while parties take their case up to the US Supreme Court. But, you know, I found this interesting. I found a lot of what you and I talked about interesting. But I found this interesting is I did not know that there was already a sitting rule requiring audit of presidents and vice presidents of their personal tax returns.

Trump's argument in all of these cases is just so shameless and embarrassing though. And so, you know, he basically says, the terrible precedent that you will be setting for future generations. If Congress and the IRS is auditing the past president, it's like, it's a very unique position to be president. You shouldn't be engaged in all this weird financial entanglements that you're even worried about it. Future president should be like, Hey, you want my tax returns in all of the past, you know,

presidential races really since like Nixon, the president would say people running with a hair of my tax returns. Here's my, here are my business returns. Here's all my returns. It should be at dissuant. Because if you're not willing to turn over and be completely transparent about your business dealings, whether you hold them by trust, corporation LLC or personally, then you that should be a dissuant for you to be president. Unfortunately for that to happen, we'd have to amend the

constitution, which is never happening. Right. I mean, and the interesting thing is that Trump's going to face far more scrutiny. And I'm interested to see his filings and connection with his back and the S4 documentation, because him sitting as a board of director, if he's going to, I doubt he actually will, because he's going to have to face scrutiny that way. And background checks and investigations like for you to run a casino, for you to be a board member, for you to be most of jobs in the United States, you have background checks that the president of the United States is not subject to, which is just completely

absurd. But talking about, this is how we'll close legal AF today though, but the delays have real consequences. And I think we see here an example, a federal appeals court, another kind of Trump tax financial record case, this case from the House Oversight Committee, which requested documents from Trump's accountants, the mazers firm, Trump then sued the accounting firm. And went all the way up to the Supreme Court then sued the accounting firm and went all the way up to the Supreme Court.

You remember this from kind of all the way back in the day, the Supreme Court in a seven to two opinion though said that being the president doesn't make you immune from having to turn over tax returns and financial records. But the Supreme Court basically set out a four-part test to determine which records would have to be turned over and for the lower courts to apply that test. So the Supreme Court did say, yes, Trump, you do have to turn over some records, maybe not all of them, but in connection with the House Oversight Committee function. This is very different, though, than some of the kind of absolute rights

that you were just talking about, Pope Akin connection with IRS audits, which is a different and separate issue. This is just what can the House oversight committee do in its oversight functions? And so the House oversight committee issue this subpoena and then there was this four-part test that was applied at the district court,

which basically said most, but not all of the records should be turned over. And the subpoena was overbroad. This then went into the district court to basically apply this four-part test. And they seem to agree with the district court that some but not all of the records would be turned over based on this separate House oversight committee related subpoena.

But the broader issue here and that then will be appealed as well, you know, to the Supreme Court, the application of the four part test, I'd actually be surprised if the Supreme Court took it because it's not really an overarching constitutional issue, but more of a application of a test that the Supreme Court had already rolled up. We'll see if the Supreme Court takes this specific case or not, but it does show you the delay strategy, though, right? Because from 2019 to 2021, we've seen, no, nothing being turned over as this has been fought out has been fought out. And that is their strategy. What Trump is hoping is that the criminality, the fascism,

the anti-democratic initiatives will overwhelm the system that he could delay, delay, delay until you get people like Jim Jordan and Gates and Marjorie Taylor Greens and Lauren Boebergs and all of that crew on committees who will just cover up the criminality who will shut down legitimate investigations and erode our democratic process. And so it is important that we close our minus touch legal IF episode though with that case though to let everybody and remind everybody as we go into the holiday season. What's at stake? I'm telling you, even with the filibusters, even with all of the Republican machinations, if we turn out and vote, if we have faith in the system, if we show up by the numbers and are not deterred by all the anti-democratic GQP-led propaganda, we can hold the House, we can hold the Senate, and there could be incredible progress to the United States of America and incredible protections

to the United States of America and incredible protections of our democracy, of our judicial system. And so I'm always so grateful when the Midas mighty, the legal aephers reach out and share with us the steps that they're taking, sending postcards, doing community gatherings, organizing, knocking on doors, taking all of those steps. I love that legal AF is interactive. We love your support. We'll be on legal AF during the holiday time. That's how I was going to ask you.

We're not taking the courts. Don't take a holiday break. We're not taking a holiday break. We will not be taking a holiday break, but for those who are taking off next week have a very safe holiday Rejuvenate recharge keep listening to Midas Touch a podcast legal. I have podcast politics girl Kremlin file zoomed in May a copa use AG one use better help exactly, but Recharge rejuvenate and let's get ready to fight in 2022, popok, any final

words. No, I'm just going to be consistent. I have this. Can you see this? I have a baseball, but it's really the declaration of independence. And it reminds me that what we would I do, participatory democracy at its best is not a spectator sport. It's a participatory sport and pick up the ball. If Democrats turn out, if Democrats turn out in every national election that matters, we win. It's when we take every other election off. It's not every four years getting off the couch and lining up and doing absentee voting

and every other voting. It's every two years because if you wait to the fourth year, you're never going to have the social and progressive policies and laws passed unless you show up religiously every two years. Absolutely. Popuck. Popuck and I are practicing lawyers. We've been actually representing a bunch of legal affers on various matters. You know, if there's big personal injury cases, if there's sexual assault sexual harassment cases, if you or your friend are, you know, have been injured or have victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment, they're any kind of bigger business disputes, big contracts, type cases. Popo can I have done our best to listen to a lot of the inquiries and incoming that we have

and we are currently representing people who have these big cases, people who are in accidents and people who are wronged. And we generally, Popo can I and I handle, you know, kind of the larger, you know, larger-sized cases, but, you know, happy to try to at least even let you know where your case may fit. So feel free to email me, benatmitistouch.com, be-n, at mitistouch.com, Michael Popak's email is m-popak-m-p-o-p-o-k-. Okay, at zplaw.com.

Again, special thanks to our sponsors, AG1 Athletic Greens and Better Help. We appreciate our sponsors. Make sure you use the code legal AF. And we'll see you next time on Midas Touch Legal AF. If it Saturday, it is Legal AF live. If it's Sunday, it Touch Legal AF. If it Saturday, it is Legal AF live. If it's Sunday, it is Legal AF. Thank you for sharing your weekend

and week with us on all this legal news. We will see you next time. Ben and Popak signing off, shout out to The Midas Mighty. you