Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump CAN’T HANDLE the way CRIMINAl TRIAL is Going

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo are back for the Midweek edition of the top-rated Legal AF podcast. On this episode, the anchors discuss and debate: (1) the Trump Trial, the checks and the sex and which one is more powerful to the jury; the attempted mistrial by the defense, and whether the Judge will jail Trump for violating the gag orders; (2) Judge Cannon taking the Mar a Lago espionage trial against Trump off the docket, and whether the Special Counsel will finally move to have her reassigned by her bosses at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals; (3) the new Trump appeal of the trial judge’s decision not to disqualify the prosecutor in Georgia and what it could mean for future delays in the case; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Thanks to our sponsors: Moink: Sign up at https://MoinkBox.com/LEGALAF and get FREE BACON for a YEAR! Fast Growing Trees: Head to https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/collections/sale?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=legalaf right now to get 15% off your entire order with code LegalAF! Mack Weldon: Go to http://mackweldon.com/?utm_source=streaming&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcastlaunch&utm_content=LEGALAFutm_term=LEGALAF and get 20% off your first order with promo code LEGALAF Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coalition-of-the-sane/id1741663279 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, it's time for the midweek edition of Legal AF. The trial of Donald Trump might be dark, but we're not. Karen Freeman, Nick Niflo, Michael Pope, I'm going to break it all down to the intersection of law and politics. These are the things you got to know at midweek. We're going to do the Trump trial two ways, regular and extra crispy. We're going to talk about Stormy and her testimony, the mistrial motion and why it was rejected. We'll give our commentary about how the Stormy testimony

went for either side. Talk about the gag order and the mayor of New York and commissioners at Rikers Island gearing up for the possible jailing of Donald Trump. How likely is that? And Karen and I will talk about the upcoming witnesses, who we think they could be. We'll have a little debate about ones that maybe I think should go on and Karen doesn't or vice versa. This is about, as I've said before, now infamously, it's about checks, not sex. Stormy Daniels, fascinating to listen to. But that is not what I believe, and I wanna hear from Karen,

is gonna turn the tide of this case. It's gonna be people you never heard about before and you'll never hear about again. The accounts payable supervisor for Trump, the controller for Trump, and then eventually Michael Cohen, again, rolled up magazines and being paddled on the back was interesting and the jury tittered about it, but is that going to convict Donald

Trump or are the checks, the business ledgers, his signature and the testimony of those lower level people in his organization that will win the day? We'll talk about that. Then we'll leave all things Trump trial and we'll go and talk about dark days. Judge Aileen Cannon presiding over Mar-a-Lago as we expected. That case is not happening before the November election. Now especially given that the judge has allowed all the deadlines to slip in the Classified Information

Procedures Act espionage case and then pointed to the slippage of those deadlines for the reason she can't try the case before November. It's almost like she's saying what idiot presiding over this case allowed these deadlines to slip without being met? Well I can give you an idea when Karen and I talk about it. And if we have time, we'll talk about some other developments in some of the other cases involving Donald Trump at that same intersection of law and politics. But big news, I should have let off with this, let's bring Karen on. Karen and I ran into each other at a law firm where we were working on separate cases.

And I can't tell you, it was the highlight of my day to randomly bump into my podcast partner and friend in the hallway of this law firm. It was fun. It was definitely fun. Love seeing you in person. Absolutely. You too. You had a snazzy jacket that I think you wear sometimes

when you do some other work and I liked it a lot, but it's always fun. And while kidding aside, Karen and I work in New York. We have some overlapping cases and full disclosure, I've used her firm for some cases and vice versa, areas of expertise that I don't have and vice versa. And so, you know, it's, we're practicing lawyers and we're real friends outside of here. And I wanted to kind of bring that up.

Let's turn to the thing that you've been focused a lot on since the beginning, kind of being the leader here on Legal AF with Ben, but really you covering the Trump trial. And Wednesdays is a perfect day for us to pick up with it because it's the midweek and there's no trial that day. We can catch our breath and take the plane up 5,000 feet, look back down and see what's happened now that it's landed with a thump on the table, how we think it's impacting the jury, what's happening with the lawyers, and we can do some comments and criticism on both sides

about that, and then where it goes from here. And that's why we're gonna do Trump Trial Two Ways. Let's start with what you observed, Karen, as a prosecutor in this courtroom, this judge, some of these very same people when you were in the Manhattan DA's office about the, let's do Stormy, Stormy. Been waiting for Stormy Daniels to testify. People call Stormy Daniels.

I love only in New York that they use her stage name and not her legal name. Everybody turned and believe me, the jury was interested. But Stormy was an interesting cat up there. She's an interesting witness. And I've had witnesses like this who can't answer a question and then have been waiting 10 years to give their story. What did you observe about how Susan Hoffinger handled Stormy's credibility in terms of her testimony?

Why did the prosecutors get so into the weeds, inadvertently or otherwise, into the sex details about rolled up magazines and spanking and all of that in this case? And were they flirting with possible mistrial and reversible error? And then we'll talk about Mershon blaming the defense for letting the trial get into the weeds of Donald Trump's

sex life. What did you make of all that? So this week, the trial focused on the real, the kind of falsification of business records portion of the case where they called Jeff McConnie and Rona Graff. And they really started to talk about really what the meat of the case is. And then they called Stormy Daniels after they called this book publisher, which I thought was genius, by the way, these books that Donald Trump has written,

that they're using his own words essentially against him about how to be a billionaire and micromanage everything and don't and send checks back that that are too much or that you don't agree with and look at every dime. I mean, all that kind of stuff that they're going to just use against him his own words, they tried to say, Oh, a ghostwriter was was part of this too. But I thought that was extremely effective. So if he doesn't take the stand, you do have his

own words on how he conducts his very small family run business. And then came the blockbuster witness, obviously Stormy Daniels, who testified on direct for the better part of almost a whole well, I think it was the whole morning and then they got to cross-examination and I think they got into about an hour and change worth of cross-examination of her and they're going to finish that on Thursday and it's going to go quite long. I've heard from people that they initially thought they were going to be short and just brief. And I think now they're going to go quite long. And I think the reason is as follows. The defense, so let's just take, excuse me, let's take a step back. So Donald Trump is charged with falsification of business records. What makes it a felony is that they were committing another crime or concealing another crime,

this election crime. What does Stormy Daniels, what is her role in proving either of those things? Her role in proving those things is she is the reason, she is the hush money that was paid, that is at issue with all the checks that were done here, right? And she was, so it's not Karen McDougall who he had an affair with, who he also paid off, or the doorman who he also paid off. He actually, this is, she is the subject of the 34 accounts here. It was all to pay Michael Cohen back for her, which is why we've heard from her and why she testified and why she's relevant.

Now interestingly though, she didn't say anything about knowing anything about the falsification of the business records per se, but she was extremely, I think, important because she will testify, she did testify that she tried to sell her story to Donald Trump years prior because this affair happened in 2006 or this relationship or whatever you want to call it. They had sex once, but they met multiple times. And she described all of these meetings in detail. One of them had a professional football player at the table along with Karen McDougall, the Super Bowl ring of the professional football player. Or another time, she just gave a lot of details about all these meetings. It seems like this is a friendship that lasted for quite some time, although they only had

sex once. Donald Trump's testified, or I shouldn't say testified, his lawyers opened the fact that this never happened, that she is a liar. By doing that, by calling her credibility into question, then the prosecution has to really prove that what she's saying is true. Because if she's lying, right, then they will discredit everything that she says. There's an actual charge that you can ask the judge to give the jury. It's called the falsus in uno charge, which basically means if you lie about one thing, you can You can find that they're lying about everything and that would be problematic

Because I think she's important to the part of to corroborate the part of this charge that makes it That shows that this was really influenced by the election because that's what bumps this up to a felony and so the reason is because this relationship happened a while back. And she tried to sell this story at one point, she tried to tell her story and there was no market for it. Nobody wanted it. And it wasn't until the Access Hollywood tape came out and the election that she, that this actually had some monetary value.

And so if he was really concerned about Melania and it wasn't about the election, he would have bought it and made her sign an NDA way before that, but she testified that he didn't seem at all concerned. He never asked her to sign an NDA. He never denied it and he didn't wanna sell this. He didn't wanna buy the story prior to that.

And so clearly he wasn't that worried about his wife or his reputation or his kids. If anything, he would meet her in public with other people, with his mistress that he was having an affair with, Karen McDougall, all the while cheating on his wife with both of them. So he didn't seem to care when it came to his wife. He only cared because of the election, according to Stormy Daniels. And that's why she was able to monetize it and make the money that she made.

Now, Donald Trump said that the fact is, it doesn't matter if they had an affair or not. Well, the point is, it matters that he paid her. And so Dino Sejudin, that was debunked, right? That didn't happen, but he paid him because he didn't want that story to come out. And so the reason all these details are coming out is because her credibility is in question and it's her story. It's not to be salacious or dirty him up.

You know, for example, she didn't describe what she has described in her documentary or the 60 minutes interview or the... Pardon? I know where you're going. Go ahead. Well, it's true though. She didn't describe... Talk about his genitalia. Yeah, that she said his penis is unusually small with a mushroom head. Now, if I were the prosecutor, I was a prosecutor for a long time, I did sex crimes and child abuse cases. And in cases like child abuse cases or in cases that in

adult cases where there was a complete denial about whether the sex happened, one of the things I would do is I would ask for details of things that only someone who has had access to that area has seen. I would do search warrants to make the person drop their drawers and I would take a picture. I've actually exonerated people because somebody said, oh, he's got a birthmark somewhere and it looks like such and such and it was a child abuse case and there was no such birthmark. You know what? Guess what? I cannot prove that case any longer. There was a child abuse case and there was no such birthmark. And so you know what, guess what, I cannot prove that case any longer. There was another child abuse case in particular, I'm thinking of that there was this description of these marks all over somebody's penis and it was very detailed description and the search warrant revealed he had these marks.

And this was not someone who was like a family member who you might see changing in the background. This was like a coach who, or I can't remember if it was like a tutor or a coach or something. There's no reason this child should know that information. And that was the key to proving the case that the sex happened. So the fact of the matter is

the prosecution didn't do that here. And so I don't think it was, and I think they could have, if they wanted to, they could have actually said, you know what? They're denying this, they're calling her credibility into question and her credibility is important. And so I was struck by her testimony when she said things like I took a special elevator up to the penthouse floor and his bodyguard was standing outside and left me in and I walk in and it was a suite that was bigger than my last two or three apartments and there were several rooms and he was wearing a satin pajamas and the furniture was like expensive heavy furniture. I mean, you've got a real texture for where she was and what she was doing and and when you can provide those types of details, it has the ring of truth. So I think that I think they opened the door to being able to prove her credibility

because her credibility is important here because it really they called her a liar about her getting threats, right? There was she talked about being threatened by somebody they were cross examining her about that. I mean, they essentially are calling her a liar about all of this. And so she's allowed to prove the facts of the case. So I don't think not only do I not think it's mistrialable, I think it was utterly appropriate. And of course, the judge was like, well, you didn't object when they freaked out over lunch and asked for a mistrial. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was going to say that's a good place for me to do it with you.

So when they brought the mistrial motion, and reasonable minds can differ about whether Susan Offinger for the prosecutor's office kind of let the witness get a little bit away from her on some of the issues. I agree with you in principle about almost everything you just said about the need to put on more than I had a story to tell about Donald Trump and I got paid not to tell it. I get that that's not gonna be enough for the jury, even though it's almost could be a stipulated fact

that there was a non-disclosure agreement, there was a payment that was made, and in return, she didn't do certain things. But I agree with you. But when you have a little bit of a runaway witness, what I mean by that is, I'm not sure, I'm speaking from a practitioner's view here, I'm not sure Susan knew where Stormy Daniels was going

at certain points in that testimony. When you have a witness who is giving narrative and paragraphs are tumbling out of their mouth, even if you've prepared them, which we know that she was, I assume that she was prepared by the prosecutor's office. There were moments that were a little bit of a white knuckle moment because she's not really answering my question and she's getting into some areas. And there are some limits around as you know well about what you can bring in that won't be prejudicial, but is necessary to prove your case.

The way that I would have handled that when it got, if the other side had held up their end of the bargain and hadn't fallen asleep at the switch, which is where you were starting to go, because this is an adversarial process, which means that while the judge presides, and of course can't let clear error happen in his courtroom or violations of his orders or prior rulings, short of that, he's a referee in a

prize fight. And as long as they stay inside the ring and don't hit below the belt and follow the rules, they're going to let this case get tried the way the parties think it should be tried subject to New York law, they never objected on the defense side enough or really at all about all of this salacious, I'll call it salacious information coming out about, through Stormy, when they could have. In fact, he said later on in the mistrial motion when the jury was excused. Yeah, I was surprised that you allowed, you defense allowed as much of that testimony to come in. In other words, I would have sustained your objection had you made it, but you didn't make it.

And I jumped in a couple of times as the judge and cut off the testimony of this witness. And I know it was embarrassing and all that, but that's the way it is. It's really on you. And if you think the bell's been rung, which is what Todd Blanch likes to say, oh, the bell's been rung. The horses, the bar, the horse is out of the barn and all these other mixed metaphors. That's on you.

That's on you. And then the other thing that I- But what bell? What bell? That there was a missionary? It sounded like the most boring sex I've ever heard missionary style. Well, let me sort of except she verged on accusing him of a sex crime, which by the way, probably happened. I'm not saying, but you know, what she said. Well, let me just before we debate it, let me make sure the audience understands it. She said, she said, sorry, you and I are in shorthand mode because of our relationship and what we know.

You know, like, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right, so from her perspective, she said there was a bodyguard who was out in front of the door, which sounds like she wasn't free to leave. That even Trump blocked the door. Also sounds like not free to leave. That I don't remember how I got into the bed nor how the sex happened, which sounds like against my will.

So listen, we're verging into sex crime there, you know, this is a sex crime prosecutor. This isn't a sex crime case. True, but she said over and over and over again, I didn't say no. I didn't wanna do it, but it was consensual. Like, you know, she, she, she's very much. I agree with you. Yeah. But that's their argument, right? Like, oh, now the thing I also fault the defense for is that there is a proper procedure to handle this

pretrial. It's called motion and eliminate. They made a motion to eliminate a strike. We read it. We did it. You and I did it. We did hot and limine. They made a motion to eliminate, we read it, we did it, you and I did it, we did hot takes on it. There was a motion to eliminate, to preclude evidence, and to strike Stormy as a witness. And the judge said, no, I understand the necessity of this witness on these issues. They didn't then say, well, judge, look, we need to be able to cabin her testimony and

keep her on the straight and narrow, otherwise we're going to get into things that you can explain to the audience, Karen, like no other person about Malino and different things you're not allowed to get into in front of this jury, especially in the shadow of the Harvey Weinstein, reversal of his conviction. And so this is what we think that this is the script we think she should have to follow and not deviate. They never did that. They never did that. They just went for the home run, grand slam, get rid of her as a witness. No, we can't get that. Okay, fine. Then we're off and running then with what happened. And then if you're going to do that, if you're not going to

make the judge make the hard decisions early on about the path that the witness has to stay on, then you got to stay awake and hit the buzzers like a game show and buzz in when you see something that goes wrong, where you want to make that argument. And if it was the if the shoe was on the other foot, prosecutors are really good, you know, you work with them, they'd be up and like they were in the opening statements, they'd be up and down constantly with objections if they thought it was inappropriate They know how to do that. So the the lawyer team today of the incredible shrinking Todd Blanch

Who seems to have very limited role now in this case other than taking the judges abuse and Donald Trump's abuse It's really become the Emil Bo Bové and Susan Necklace show for key witnesses, including I assume, you know, Michael Cohen next week. I don't think Todd Blanch is going to make that appearance for that. No, he is. That's apparently, that's what they're putting out through sources, you know, they're putting it out that the reason he can't possibly be doing any of these other witnesses is because he's singularly focused on Michael Cohen. Let's see if that turns out to be the case. That's what people are saying. That's very interesting. Well, I guess that would make

sense because what else is he doing there? But let's talk about mistrial. So the mistrial motion was, aha, too much stuff, all this sex stuff, blowing the minds of the jury, prejudice, and all the other doctrines. Two questions for you. Do you think the judge was right to put the blame on them in this process? They'll take the appeal, but do you think we have, based on the Weinstein decision and all of that, a reversible error problem here with the judge allowing all of that information from Stormy to come in. You know, of all the things that have come in, the fact that they had missionary style sex, and there was a power imbalance because he was the same age as her father, and P.S. had said, you remind me of my daughter, creepy weird. Oh, yuck. Yuck me of my daughter, creepy weird.

Yuck, yuck. Yeah. That's always great. Right before he had sex with her, it says he reminds me of, all right, I'm gonna leave that alone, bye. Yeah, no, it's just so weird. But don't forget what's also come out in this trial

is the Axis Hollywood tape, right? Where Donald Trump is admitting to sexual assault, right? So if anything, that's the more salacious thing that's come out at this trial. But that's what this trial is about, right or wrong, good or bad. I mean, you know, look, all facts that tend to prove someone's guilt are prejudicial. So I just don't think that this was unnecessarily prejudicial. This is part of the narrative. This is exactly what their relationship was. And there was no way they wouldn't open the door to this information because they're not going to...

Donald Trump doesn't want to admit to having sex. If he had admitted to having sex and said yes, then I could see, okay, going into graphic detail might be, for some reason, they don don't wanna go into it. The minute he calls her a liar and says she's lying about all of this, I think at that point she can talk about it. So I don't think we're even close to the line of mistrial.

But as you pointed out, there's a brand new decision that has come down by the New York's highest court, uh, During this trial on reversing harvey winestein on the grounds that um the judge in that case impermissibly allowed too much Molino, uh evidence. This is not molino, by the way. This is direct evidence Explain to our audience. Molino so by the way. This is direct evidence. What is that? Explain to our audience Molino. Molino is the ability to... The feds call it 404B evidence.

In New York, it's called Molino. It's the French spelling, M-O-L-I-N-E-U-X. It's based on a case. It basically means you're allowed to, normally when you're trying a case, you're only allowed to prove what happened in that case, the facts surrounding the crime. But sometimes you want to be able to bring in prior bad acts

of the defendant to help prove your crime. Now, there's a concept in the law that's in every courthouse and every criminal courthouse in this country, that you're not allowed to prove prior bad acts, meaning other crimes or other other bad things that that a defendant has done in order to show propensity to commit a crime. So if you're a burglar, you can't put in other burglaries just to prove he's a burglar. So therefore, it makes sense that he would do this.

Propensity evidence is not allowed. But there are exceptions to when you can bring in prior bad acts in your direct case, meaning as part of your evidence, as part of your proof. And the exceptions are if it goes to prove a defendant's motive or their intent or some kind of element of one of the crimes or absence of mistake, things like that. So, you know, so here, the Molino evidence that was allowed in had to do with the payoffs of the doorman and of Karen McDougal. Those are prior bad acts, right? Essentially, even though it's not illegal, they could be prejudicial. And those were allowed in as part of their direct case

because it goes to show the defendant's intent to try and suppress these things around the election. It tends to go towards the part of this that it's, yeah, this was all around the time of the election. This was this catch and kill scheme. So that's why that was allowed in. But you got to be careful because if you allowed too much in, which is what they said in the Harvey Weinstein case was, was of course, Malino can be allowed in, but they allowed too much. And they allowed so the Harvey Weinstein case, was, of course, Mala No can be allowed in, but they allowed too much. And they allowed so much in that there was also a ruling involving what the defendant, if he were to take the stand in Harvey, what they could cross examine him on.

And they said that went too far too. And essentially all of those bad acts took away his right to testify because there's no way he could testify. And so if I were the prosecutor prosecuting this case, I'd want to strike that balance and not put in too much evidence, but put in just enough. And so the fact of the matter is that I was, because Karen McDougall and the doorman are part of the narrative, I think it was appropriate that they talk about it, but I wouldn't call them as witnesses because they're not the people involved in the 34 counts that are charged. But they, the way Stormy is, because those are reimbursements for the Stormy Daniels $130,000 payment. I, as a prosecutor, would say a conviction is great, but you don't want

a conviction that's reversed. So I would not bring that in, I would not bring Karen McDougal in as a witness or the doorman, because I don't need them that would go a bridge too far and could potentially taint the jury or taint the verdict if they get a verdict given the Molino decision. So since we anticipated a potential debate, let me be devil's advocate about Karen McDougall.

So on Karen McDougall, they've heard from Pecker. I love this case. They've heard from Pecker's testimony about the Trump Tower conspiracy, that there were three targets of the catch and kill program. The doorman with the story about the out of wedlock child that Donald Trump allegedly had with somebody that they paid $30,000 for. The Karen McDougal $150,000 that was paid by David Pecker and the Stormy $130,000 payment that was made that was paid not by David Pecker because David Pecker got,

no pun intended, stiffed by Donald Trump. He didn't get paid, he didn't get repaid. And so it fell on the slender shoulders of Michael Cohen to make the payment instead. So Pecker told that story, most of which clears the hearsay hurdles, for various exceptions to that. So I agree with you so far. I'm not needing Karen McDougall. Karen McDougall would only testify that she had sex with Donald Trump too. It was denied. She, Pecker signed the deal with her. She got paid by Pecker. She was a fitness article writer for National Enquirer, because when I think fitness magazines, I think National Enquirer. And then Pecker's

already said the reason he didn't do the next one, which was Stormy, is because he didn't get repaid by Donald on the first one, which was Karen McDougall. So, so far, I completely agree with you. I don't think she adds anything. And do you have that potentiality for it being that 404 bad, prejudicial evidence kind of stuff, although I would love to see her on the stand. So I think I'm coming around as I'm making this comment to your position. I thought earlier, I was like, no, I want Karen McDougall, but I do want Karen McDougall to go take the stand because I want to further embarrass Donald Trump, but that's the very reason you don't want to put him on during a criminal trial. This is a civil trial.

I would be selling tickets and popcorn for that. So in the next segment, having talked about the mistrial, I want to pick up on the gag order, the violations of the gag order, Donald Trump acting out in court in contumacious or contemptuous conduct that the judge already called out, jail as a real possibility, future witnesses including the penultimate witness whenever that's going to be of Michael Cohen and what's been done as preparatory work, as spade work leading into Michael Cohen masterfully by the prosecution. We're going to do all of that, but first a word from our sponsors.

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fastgrowingtrees.com. Using the code LEGALAF at checkout, that's fastgrowingtrees.com using the code legalAF at checkout. That's fastgrowingtrees.com and use legalAF at checkout. This offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions apply. And we're back. I've got the terms and conditions, the terms and conditions of the gag order on Donald Trump and how he continues to violate it. We got Judge Mershon who said during a hearing,

I don't know what to do with, I'm paraphrasing, I don't know what to do with you. $1,000 a fine for violations, you got 10 of them, don't seem to matter to you, that's all I can do under the judiciary law, I've got it seriously considering incarceration and jail time. And Donald Trump goes out and does this thing

in front of those bicycle racks where he does imaginary press conferences. I don't think there's anybody really over there. It's just him and a very awkwardly looking Todd Blanch standing next to him. And then goes into court and during Stormy Daniels testimony, starts acting out, only reinforcing as far as I'm concerned, her credibility and her veracity and her authenticity about the story she's telling when she when she tells this very hyper detailed this very prolix story about a rolled-up magazine and Donald Trump's backside you hear him say out loud bullshit so loud that the judge up at the bench heard it that That's to stop the case.

Call Todd Blanch on the carpet and go, what are we doing? You know, now he's acting out in front of witnesses, which are both intimidating the witnesses potentially, and the jurors in full view of the jurors. That's, he used the C word, that's contempt. It's contemptuous. I say contumacious, but the judge is old school. He said contemptuous, which means I'm running out of options here with the fines. The fines

aren't working. He just does that as a, Donald Trump sees that as a toll on the road, just the cost of doing business. Talk to me from a prosecutor's standpoint, from your standpoint, judgment standpoint, about whether the judge on the next violation, whenever it happens, and it will happen, is going to put Donald Trump in jail. And we've got, of course, our mayor, Mayor Adams, former law enforcement, who's already said during, and when he was hit with the question

during his little media event, he said, oh, well, we're ready for anything at Rikers Island. I'm sure the people of Rikers Island, we handled, he actually said in the same breath, we handled Harvey Weinstein. But we can handle Donald Trump, and we know the Secret Service, because we reported on it a couple weeks ago,

is in talks, just in case Donald Trump steps over the line intentionally or otherwise, and gets jailed. What do you think? What do you think? Talk about it. No, no. I was just going to say the one thing I'm not worried about is New York City's ability

to handle Donald Trump. I mean, the fact that we're having a criminal trial in 100 Center Street, which is the criminal court building that I spent my entire career in, and there hasn't been a problem. They are going to trial, not an issue. This is, you know, he's had several trials in federal court, Eugene Carroll, the state court, Judge and Goran. New York City can handle anything and the corrections can handle it, the police can handle it.

So I'm not worried about that. What do I think the judge is gonna do if he does it again? The answer is, it depends. If Donald Trump does something really egregious, like says something that could put the jurors at risk, if he mentions the jury at all, I think then he does put him in. But he has options. He could put him in behind the courtroom. There's a jail cell behind every courtroom in that building. There's this whole internal infrastructure of that whole building that prisoners get brought in through a Sally port, and then they go

into the innards of the building, and there's this whole Department of Corrections controlled inner workings of the entire building where there's special elevators and special hallways and jail cells that are behind every single courtroom because they regularly in that courtroom produce people from jail or prison who have to come to court. And so then they don't come in the back door of the court or the front door of the court, of the room, courtroom, they come in the back door, right?

There's a door by where the judge sits. So there's jail cells back there. They're holding cells, they're not meant for overnight stays. So I can imagine a scenario where the judge would put them in for the day or put them in for an hour or put them in over lunch. It doesn't have to be overnight, it doesn't have to be overnight. It doesn't have to be whatever.

Another option is he could sentence him to jail after he puts it over for sentencing for after the verdict. That's another option. I mean, if I'm the judge, what I'm worried about is causing a mistrial, right? Then you don't want to be the cause of a mistrial. Or you don't want, you wanna get to a verdict, whatever it is. And so I'd be concerned, for example, that the jury who isn't supposed to read,

and they get charged to this, they get told this every single day, don't read anything about this case, don't discuss anything about this case, don't watch TV about this case. I mean, it's kinda hard because it's everywhere, right? It's, it's, it's reported on constantly, like almost like no other case. So if I'm the judge, I'd be thinking, if I put Donald Trump in jail, that's going to

be all over the news, there'll be news alerts, right on people's phones, and the jury is going to see that and I wouldn't want to prejudice the jury by something I did. So I would do this as a last resort. I might put him on house arrest. That's another option. Or take away his social media privileges. Or there's different things he can do.

Would he put him in for the duration of the trial? I doubt it. Donald Trump has somewhat reined it in. And I say somewhat, but you know, one of the problems I have with the judges order is the judge for the last four requests for contempt, he did not find him in contempt with three of the four postings. He's kind of left open this gray area. Well, if you want, if you're going to respond to Michael Cohen,

something he says, I will call that political speech or if you, you know, that kind of thing. So I don't love that because it kind of sends the message that he can do these things when it comes to certain people. So depending on what he does, I'm not sure he would put them in. But if it could, but with the jury, that's we've talked about this before. That's the third rail for the judge.

He has to protect this jury. He has to get, uh, he has to get a verdict. Yeah, agreed. And it looks like it's going gonna be coming up relatively soon. Let's talk just a little bit more about some future witnesses. I'll give you my view on the lead up to Michael Cohen. Cause you know, we're getting into the Cohen range here.

There's a reason from my perspective as a trial lawyer, Michael Cohen's going towards the end of the trial. It's because the prosecution only benefits from telling the story their way and also bolstering in advance the credibility of Michael Cohen by having more people not named Michael Cohen say the same thing as Michael Cohen. It corroborates those data points

and it insulates Michael from the eventual motion that Karen you mentioned earlier related to another witness about, well, he's a liar about one thing, he's a liar about everything. They're going to make that motion against Michael. They tried it already. In the New York Attorney General case where Michael testified, in fact, Judge Angoran made a point in his order of saying, I am going to credit and I'm not going to apply that rule. I know that rule. I'm not going to apply it to Michael Cohen. I don't feel that he was, I feel he was telling the truth about

these particular issues. And so he didn't use that. But you're right. You're going to look for that kind of charge to the jury as if you're right, and you probably are, that Todd Blanche's big coming out party is going to be taken out. He better do a great job, by the way, for Donald Trump, because he's putting a lot of his eggs in that basket. But all the things that we've seen leading up to this, there's three people in the conspiracy in Trump Tower. Two of them are going to testify. David Pecker already testified, witness number one. Jury has already heard all of that. Jury has seen the checks with Michael Cohen's name on it. They've even heard secretly recorded audio of Michael Cohen already before he even gets there.

They've already anticipated and done preemptive strikes against the arguments that Michael Cohen, because of his past, because of some of his criminal issues and his convictions and things that he did or said is gonna come in there weighted down by so much baggage that the jury will find him to be not credible. So what we've been watching parallel to the prosecution and the case against Donald Trump

is the case for Michael Cohen because they have to use him. Not only do they promise it in the opening, they need him not on everything. This is like a hymnal. You sing from different pages of the hymnal. They need him to sort of tie the thing together at the end. But because of his past, they want others to go before Michael. Now we're sort of, you know, it's sort of like softening up the jury. You know, it's like, I like using boxing metaphors, is either working the body with the jury to soften them up for when Michael Cohen finally comes on. Michael Cohen's going to come on. It's not going be this week probably, probably sometime next week as they wrap.

And there'll be some other witnesses that we can sort of anticipate. They've done a good job for the prosecution of doing what I call inside out. Inside witnesses, most of them who don't wanna be there but have to tell the truth and have told the truth, that's like Ronna Graff, the executive assistant, longtime right-hand person,

and the woman who's the head of accounts payable, nobody's ever heard of and never hear of again, and then Jeff McConney sort of standing in for the disgraced Allen Weisselberg, who's in jail for being the chief financial officer. You got all these inside people. They got the outside people. David Pecker, right? You know, Keith Davidson, the lawyer for a couple of these witnesses, a couple of the targets of the Catch and Kill program. The poor publisher from Random House who had to read out loud all the passages that were

so powerful. As you pointed out, Karen and I did a hot take on it with Donald Trump's own words. He's got his mind on his money and his money on his mind. Count the paper clips, pick up the pennies. This is how you become a billionaire. Donald Trump. That's the same guy that the checks that he signed to Michael Cohen, he didn't know what they were for. He didn't know about the gross up, meaning overpaying Michael Cohen so that when he had to pay income tax on it,

it came out of Donald Trump's account, not out of Michael Cohen's account, because it really wasn't income to Michael Cohen, it was reimbursement for laying out the money for Donald Trump to Stormy. I mean, that's the kind of the evidence leading into Michael Cohen, but this kind of inside, outside, right?

Interesting scintillating witnesses you can't keep your eyes off of, like Pecker and Stormy and other ones that you could almost flatline in listening to them, but so critically important because this case is about checks, not sex, right? At the end of the day, leading into Michael Cohen. So I love the way they're doing it. Big pieces of puzzle, right? Of jigsaw puzzle being given to the jury

as they stitch it together before their very eyes, before they get to their closing argument off of Michael Cohen and a few more witnesses. You want to critique the defense. How do you think the defense is doing so far? Because after the case in chief for the prosecution rests, they say people rest, right? Then the defense has to do something.

Now, they've been cross-examining their way through the case. I get that. Do you think the defense calls witnesses, including the big guy, in the second half of the case, when they get the case? And then, of course, at the end, there's a little bit of a rebuttal case by the prosecutors. What do you think the defense does? Who do you think they call as witnesses? So to answer your-

How do you think they're doing witnesses? So to answer your- And what are you doing overall with this jury? Yeah, so to answer that question first, how do I think they're doing? I think they're doing actually a decent job. The thing that they've done, that they've established, I think fairly well, there's no doubt that a crime occurred. The prosecution's done a brilliant job at that, right? These were false business records. And, you know, it's in order to cover up another crime, I think the strongest other crime is actually the tax charge, right? This grossing up of, of to make a reimbursement look like wages to hide it. I think that's the strongest charge more than the election one, because that's

just kind of confusing. I don't know, for whatever reason, and my brain goes to the tax one as the one that there's slam dunk absolutely a crime has occurred. The thing that the defense has done a great job at is distancing Trump from that crime. And at the end of the day, all the witnesses who have testified, none of them have made Donald Trump have pointed out how there's no direct evidence that Donald Trump had any knowledge or intention to falsify the business records.

And that's what the crime is, right? He meant to pay Stormy Daniels, he meant to reimburse Michael Cohen, he even meant to lie about what the money was when he paid Michael Cohen back. But he, so far there's been no direct evidence that Donald Trump knew that they were going to record it differently in the books and records. That I think is unfortunately going to rely on Michael Cohen, who's going to have to provide that direct evidence. Now, there will also be, there's tons of circumstantial evidence, which is important. But for example, Alan Weisselberg is not testifying. That's a huge hole, right? Donald Trump is probably not going to testify. I originally thought

he was going to testify because I know he thinks he's his best spokesperson. He's going to want to say that he had nothing to do with this. But the reason I think ultimately he won't testify is different than what everyone else says. Everyone else says, oh, every defense attorney would say, don't testify. He lies about everything. You can't control him. And there's reasonable doubt here.

But the reason I don't think he's going to testify is slightly different. It's because he would have to admit that he'd never had these affairs and he never cheated on Melania. And I don't think he's going to ever go there. And I think it would be clear that he's lying to say that he's not, that he didn't do these things. And so if it's clear that he's lying to say that he's not, that he didn't do these things. And so if it's clear that he's lying, then it's game over. So in that regard, I don't think he's going to ultimately testify. But I worry a little bit that there isn't that direct link, because they've corroborated everything else 10 ways to Sunday. I mean, really strong case. But

I mean, really strong case, but like I said, that one little missing link, and Michael Cohen's going to fill that in, presumably, but it depends on how Michael Cohen does on the stand. So I think the defense is actually doing a decent job. I think Emile Beauvais has been a really good cross examiner. He's been effective. I think Emile Beauvais has been a really good cross examiner. He's been effective and we'll see what they do with Stormy. If I were them cross examining her, I would, apparently she was giggling and she hates him.

I would try to get under her skin and get her to kind of implode on the witness stand. We'll see if they're able to do that with her or if it'll just embolden her even more. We'll see. I wish I was in the room for her. Look, Hope Hicks was a great witness. I was in the room for when she testified and broke down crying. For the prosecution. No, I was there for the, yeah, great witness for the prosecution. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. I'm still a prosecutor deep down, but the defense is really, but even with

Hope Hicks, it's all about the election. It wasn't about Melania. They still don't have that missing piece. And so that's what I've been waiting for. And the thing that, there is some, a little bit of doubt. They're not done proving their case. And I don't know if it's going to be reasonable doubt, but until Michael Cohen testifies, there's a little doubt there. So Michael Cohen is a lot more important than, you know, than I think people realize because he's the direct link. Yeah, no, I agree.

I agree. And we're gonna follow it just the way we're doing it. Karen and Ben doing a great job. Sometimes I pitch in on the morning edition and on the wrap-up edition. Tune to Midas Touch and Legal AF for that. Everything about Trump trial. We do it by days. We're gonna talk about in the rest of the podcast, we're gonna talk about pick up with Judge Cannon, what she's doing down there with her case and the trial calendar that yeah okay. And the trial calendar that's now resulting from it as we await the Supreme

Court's decision before they go away on their June holiday and issuing the immunity decision about private conduct versus official conduct and what Judge Chuckin is going to do about that when she ever gets that case back, the DC election interference case. I think we'll have a couple of minutes to touch on in Georgia, as expected. We've got an appeal to the intermediary appellate court in Georgia, not the highest court in Georgia, by Trump because they were on the losing end of Judge McAfee's decision not to disqualify Fonny Willis as long as she fired Nathan Wade, which she did. And while that case, we give a lot of grief and criticism, rightfully so, to Judge Aileen Cannon. I mean, Scott McAfee hasn't set his trial either. There's no reason

why he shouldn't. He's dispatched all the motions to dismiss and he's handled all of that. He handled the big Fonny Willis disqualification that. He got rid of, you know, he handled the big Fonny Willis disqualification issue. But then again, she hasn't asked for it either. I don't know if it's a peculiarity of Georgia criminal procedure, but you and I will talk about that as well. But first, another word from more of our sponsors. Did you know that traditional bedsheets can harbor more bacteria than a toilet seat? It can lead to acne, allergies, and stuffy noses, and it's just gross. MiracleMaid offers a whole line of self-cleaning, antibacterial beddings such as sheets, pillowcases, and comforters that prevent up to 99.7% of bacteria growth and require up to three times

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That's M-A-C-K-W-E-L-D-O-N.com, promo code LegalAF. Lots of people ask us, how do we support the show besides watching it? Well, watching it is the first step. It's free, free subscribe to the Midas Touch Network, help them get to 3 million free subscribers. A lot of our audience, especially in chat tonight, know that and have helped us in that way.

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to say is important. And so we, we thank our sponsors. We have After Darks, which is we take a show like this, we break it into three or four segments and we launch it on YouTube again. We call them Legal AF After Dark. So we do that really for a promotional purpose. One, if you miss the show, it's a good way to catch up in little bite sized pieces, like little bite sized sticker bars of each sec of each thing that we did. Couple things on Trump today and then we get Canon and then whatever, they'll be there. But it's also like we are asking you to be our ad hoc marketing department. We don't have a marketing department. We don't have any hard assets. I made

a joke on during the hot take today. Like this is my hard assets and I bought this. So that's it, man. We need help. And so one way to help grow the audience organically, naturally, word of mouth, is to kind of take that Legal AF after dark, if you've seen it, right? And like, send it off to friends and family people in your life and say, Hey, I really like this show Legal AF. Remember I tell you about it? So maybe they don't want to make an hour and 20 minute investment, but they see the clip and then they join our audience. So that's another reason that we do it. And then to kind of get into the nitty gritty of the law, we set up a Patreon. Patreon.com slash legal AF.

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So that's why we do it. So now after that pitch for the show, let me switch over to Judge Cannon. You said disgrace and I say discuss. Go ahead, Karen. I mean, she basically said, we're putting the trial over indefinitely forever, which is just beyond, here I'm pulling up,

I'm gonna pull up what her entry says. She essentially did a five page, you know, the trial, the Mar-a-Lago documents case was set for trial for this month, but there's all these various hearings that she hasn't had and rulings that she hasn't done. And we all keep scratching our heads saying, why does she still have this on the calendar for a trial this month when everybody knows that it can't possibly happen? And so as a result, it was just sort of this ridiculous date.

She's not ruling on things that she should have and could have ruled on months ago. She's making these just rulings that are just outside the law that make no sense whatsoever, like she did in the beginning of this when she appointed a special master to go through the search warrant, and then she got reversed on that. And then the other real big misstep that she did about basically asking the sides to come up with hypothetical jury instructions based on a hypothetical that made no sense. And she was sort of like,

it was just this very weird, these very weird decisions that she's done. And she just really seems to be out over her skis. She does not know what she's doing. There's no reason this trial should be in the posture that it's in. There's no reason this couldn't happen before the election. And so she finally, today, May 8, did an order setting a set of pretrial deadlines and hearings. And she said, following the court's order prior, whatever, to setting substantive pretrial deadlines, the court hereby establishes a second set of pretrial deadlines

to manage pending discovery, disclosure, motions before the court, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. She then gives a chart of all these different hearings on May 8th, another resolution of something on May 20th, a non-evidentiary hearing on May 22nd, on and on and on. And then the SEPA Section 5 notice to all defendants for June 17th. And she basically gets to July 10th, 2024, the special counsel SEPA Section 6A, Defense Reciprocal Discovery Deadline. And then she gets to again, July 22, another SEPA section four hearing with a status conference also on July 22, 2024. And basically said, the court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pretrial and SEPA issues remaining

and forthcoming would be imprudent and inconsistent with the court's duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pretrial motions before the court, critical SEPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury. The court therefore vacates the current May 20th, 2024 trial date and associated calendar call to be reset in a separate order following resolution of matters before the court consistent with defendant's right of due process, the public's interest in a fair and efficient administration of justice. In reaching this decision, the court has fully evaluated the party's positions and reviewed the procedural posture of this case in light of the pending motions. And then, you know, she goes on and on and on about all the various things.

The courts evaluate the various statutory factors. So the time under the Speedy Trial Act is hereby told, meaning press pause, stop up until the July 22, 2024 date to permit adequate time for hearings and adjudication of substantive pretrial motions, discovery, and SIPA. And then she and essentially puts it over forever. I mean, she literally doesn't set a trial date, because it's imprudent to set

one at this time, because there's all this stuff to be done. I mean, it's very strange. Other judges, in fact, most judges, in fact, Judge Mershon, in this particular particular case in the current trial, they set a trial date and you work backwards from there. And usually you can say, okay, it's going to take six months or it's going to take eight months or it's going to take a year. You can always move it and change it. But at a certain point, you should be able to set a trial date. Why? 12 days before the date that was set for trial?

I mean, like she did, she set May 20th for trial, but 12 days before she suddenly realized that no, this can't happen. There's all these other things. I mean, she is slow walking everything. She won't even set a trial date. I mean, it's like the trial is going to be never. I mean, I just don't, I actually don't understand what her, what she's doing here. Either she's just, you know, either she's, you know, trying to help Donald Trump because he appointed her or she's totally, totally in over her head because she's a baby judge and doesn't know what she's doing. But this is just, I don't understand.

It makes no sense. And yes, I shook my head because this Mar-a-Lago documents case is definitely not happening before the election. And frankly, if she loses, if Donald Trump loses or wins the election, the case is going away forever. So Jack Smith has not asked, has not done a motion to recuse her. He could have, I think a couple of times.

And I don't know that this is something that you could add to the list of reasons why she should be recused, but at some point I do think they have to make that motion. She clearly cannot handle this case. I mean, it's just outrageous. Yeah, and I used to think it was maybe baby judge, but then I did a hot take about her going regularly to undisclosed trips paid, you know, ultimately by

the founder of the Federalist Society to George Mason University and Antony and Scalia Law School, along with all the other Federalists, you know, to listen to seminars on woke law and basically attacking the democratic agenda. It's one thing to be a federalist. It's another thing while you have active cases in front of you, including one involving Donald Trump, to go to undisclosed boondockles at $10,000 or more paid for by Leonard Leo, you know, and the Koch brothers. I'm sorry, I just like my judges differently. I like them to be above the law,

in the sense that we're above human greed, I guess is the better way to put it, and that the law is blind, and that's not the case. She should go out of her way not to have entanglements like that. But she doesn't. And so we are where we are as we expected. And I agree with you.

I've been calling for Donald Trump. Sorry. I've been calling for Jack Smith to go after her legitimately to the 11th circuit and ask for her to be reassigned and have a new judge reassigned to the case. And I don't know what they're waiting for. They might as well, as you said, they might as well. It's not, it's not, she's not everything she can to delay this case. It may not be her intent, but you have to eventually,

when so many things like this go against the government, and ultimately she pulls the rug out from under it and says, you know, as I joked, what idiot allowed all of these deadlines to pass without, you know, resetting them or things that should have been done six or eight months ago or a year ago? What idiot did that? You know, it's the judge, you know, and then for her to say, well, we just can't get this case tried. Yeah, well, no, no crap. You know, you did it on her to say, well, we just can't get this case right. Yeah, well, no, no crap. You know, you did it on purpose as is the part that we're trying to get to. We'll see what happens.

I mean, I would do it. There's no downside. You know, try for it. Go to the 11th. I think they're chomping at the bit at the 11th to take on, take her on and maybe replace her and this would be a great time because this case is at a stalemate. She's painted herself into a corner. She's doubled down on bad rulings

to justify those bad rulings, everything that gives grounds to remove the judge. So, but you know, Jack's gotta do his job with his team. And I'm sure they're thinking about it. You know, we're not giving them an idea they haven't thought of and we'll follow it. So I think that's it on Cannon. I think if you don't mind, we'll move on and just touch briefly on the filing in Georgia

at the Georgia Court of Appeals, the first stop at the appellate train. It's the intermediary appellate division. We expected it two months ago when Judge McAfee denied the motion to disqualify Bonnie Willis. He anticipated it and actually invited. You guys want to take an appeal? You want to try an interlocutory appeal? I won't stand in your way. Go at an interlocutory appeal, meaning an appeal before the end of the case. While we're in full steam here, full stream of the case, you have to get permission to do that. Usually it's trial judge certification, not sure about Georgia, and then court of appeals

to ask them to, because you don't have as of right for an interlocutory appeal, you have to ask permission. And, but the judge made it clear, although it's a little bit loose language, what you and I will talk about, two months ago, when he said, sure, you want to go for the appeal? Great, but I'm not staying the case. And I'm going to continue to do the things that aren't related to this issue,

like the motions and limit, the motions to dismiss and keep this kind of train rolling. Although there's no trial date set back to another judge who seems to have an allergy to setting trial dates. But I think you and I went back and forth in some text messaging earlier. You have an opinion about what you think Trump's going to do next, and then tell our audience that. And then what do you think McAfee does with the case about setting it for trial? And lastly, my third question to you is, what is FONI waiting for in terms of asking for a trial setting? This whole thing is just so perplexing to me.

I just don't understand. So if they rule that she is somehow disqualified from handling this case, is that gonna mean every time there's an office romance, two prosecutors have a relationship that somehow that makes the person disqualified. I mean, there's no evidence that came out at the hearing that showed that there was any impermissible or financial entanglement that was disqualifying here. And so I just don't understand

what the rule could be just, oh, the appearance of impropriety. So, okay, so any defendant can, the appearance of impropriety. So, okay, so any defendant can basically create this cloud of suspicion, not prove it at a hearing. And then because of what the defendant has raised, that means that the entire office is recused from the case. I don't know. I just don't understand this whole thing. I don't get Georgia and I don't see it the way they see it. I watched every minute of those hearings. Defense absolutely did not show any kind of disqualification that could have led to taking Fonny Willis off the case. I was surprised frankly that the judge said, okay, you can stay on the case if Nathan Wade leaves. I just don't get it, whatever.

But to me, this whole thing just seemed very strange. And they didn't ask a lot of the, talk about talking about impermissibly salacious details. I mean, the fact that we know that Nathan Wade has issues I mean, the fact that we know that Nathan Wade has issues in that situation because he has prostate issues, like, I don't want to know that. What does that have to do with being disqualified? But yet, that's the kind of stuff

that they talked about on the hearing. Why didn't they talk about the financial arrangement? That's the only thing that could potentially be disqualifying, but they barely touched on it. It was all like an episode of Real Housewives, but somehow that's appropriate. But it's interesting because as we were watching the hearing, I talked to a lot of people

and a lot of Southern men in particular really were appalled. And it just seems strange to me because I'm like, I don't know, the whole thing. So I can't possibly even predict what they'll do in Georgia. But yes, it's very much... That's for a trial setting, Fonny. Good news is she's steamrolling her way to re-election because I think that community, rightly so, has rallied around

her and she's going to win reelection there in November 5th. She's down ballot from our president. And Scott McAfee, the judge is on the ballot too, talk about weird coincidences. Everybody runs here. There's law and politics at the intersection. But we're trying to follow all these things. We got developments in the Jan 6th. Yes, there are still Jan 6th defendants that are being sentenced. We report on that. Reproductive rights, women's rights, civil rights,

constitutional rights. We're not the all Trump channel all the time. Sometimes that's a criticism of ours that I don't think is appropriate. However, we're not going to bury the lead. We've got a former president on trial, as Karen laid out earlier, like a run of the mill garden variety, criminal defendant in our shabbiest courtroom courthouse in New York. And now that we're in the third week, area, office workers in the neighborhood aren't even looking up from their lunch as to this trial. There's so few people down

there. I was walking by yesterday, no, actually today, I was walking by Trump Tower where Trump lives when he's on trial. There's nobody there because it's a city that never sleeps and it's a city that doesn't give a really a rat's ass about you. Um, and puts everybody in their place, including Donald Trump, the incredible shrinking man, along with no pun intended based on some of the reporting about his, um, his body parts, credible shrinking man shrinking before our very eyes, you know, into this, into this little thing. It reminds me of the scene in, in, um, Beetlejuice, you know, into this into this little thing. It reminds me of the scene in Beetlejuice, you know, when Beetlejuice is trying to get to the front of the line. He's sitting next to the African head shrinker and little, his little head gets shrunk and say, that's Trump and and Blanche right next to him. I mean, I sat on a hot take recently that, that, you know, he has

these down days, these dark days when he tries to, I don't know, raise money, connect with people, you know, like running off and going to the, uh, the fire department in New York and getting their name wrong in New York, you know, calling them that he, the NYFD instead of the FDNY is a problem. Going to a bodega to do another political stunt, you know, and then where are the, where are the crowds? I mean, he's got all these controlled environment events, you know, and then where are the crowds? I mean, he's got all these controlled environment events, you know, like he's selling NFTs that include a piece of his suit, like literally a suit off his back. He's selling it for money along

with sneakers and Bibles and all these other undignified ways of running for office that his supporters probably seem to be okay with. But where are the crowds? Where are the arenas filled with his supporters chanting his name? I mean, you always see the same, it always looks like the same seven or eight wackos that are covered head to toe with red Trump paraphernalia regalia. But where are the people? I get the polls.

The pollsters make a living, right? You know, there's the old joke about, there's lies, damn lies, and statistics. And I throw polling into that last one. But where are the people? Joe Biden, our president, is out there making his closing argument to people and meeting people. And that for me is more valuable than what we're watching Donald Trump do in

front of a bicycle rack every day. It's some appointed hours, some phony press conference, which is really just him unilaterally speaking and doing whatever he's doing. And I just, as we've said, I have a lot of faith in our jury system. I have a lot of faith in our electorate to I have a lot of faith in our electorate, to do the right thing at the end of the day. And we have to report on it. It's not that we get a special delight, although I do,

to report on Donald Trump as much as we do. And when other things matter, Arizona Attorney General bringing their charges, Michigan, Nevada, anything related to abortion rights, or women's rights or reproductive rights. We report on it too. And we use our various contributors to kind of fill in the gap to kind of give you a good, healthy, well-balanced legal and political analysis that we think we do in a special way, only our way here on the Legal AF Podcast. And on Wednesdays,

except when one of us is traveling or tied up with something else, it's Karen, Friedman, and Nifilo and me. And on Saturdays, it's Ben, my Salas, and me, unless we're covering. And soon we're gonna be scrambling and covering a little bit. We'll tell you why, but we're gonna be covering to cover a couple of these episodes.

But it means a lot to us that you're with us as our audience. We care so deeply about each of you. Karen, you have a special bond with our audience. What's your feelings about them? You know, before I answer that question, you reminded me of something, which so I hope you don't mind that I go back to it. But in this trial that we're following so closely, when you talked about polling the lies and things that, the, shouldn't say lies, but the unreliability of polling, there's a piece of evidence that hasn't gotten a lot of play in this trial, which is this, it's exhibit 35.

And it is the bank statement that shows the $130,000 going into essential consultings and then the $130,000 coming out to pay Stormy Daniels. It shows the date. But on it, there's handwriting. And the handwriting is basically, how are we going to do this scheme? And it's Alan Weisselberg's handwriting. And it says, you know, gross up the $130,000 and add this and blah, blah, blah. You know, it's almost like the criminal scheme written on the document,

the bank statement that is the hush money payment, right? This account that was open just to pay Stormy Daniels. And it's written in Alan Weisselberg's handwriting. I mean, it's crystal clear that is the crime. Next to it is handwritten is a $50,000 payment to a polling company or like a PR company. No one's really talking about this, but that was a PR company that they hired to get fake polling numbers, okay? Talk about a fraud.

And so it was almost like this document has all the places that we're gonna commit, all the fake things and lies and where we're gonna commit crimes. Let's just do it all here. And this is where they had that conversation. And I thought that was critical. You're gonna see a lot of that in summation.

And so I just wanted to mention it because when you talked about polling and it just reminded me of that and it's kind of a really important point. But to answer your question, our audience is, it's kind of the thing that keeps us going. You know, there are times when, you know, don't be completely honest, when I've had a hard day and I'm feeling down about something and I'm just having a rough time and you know what I'll do? I'll go and I'll read the comments sometimes like around one of our episodes because people say really nice things. They talk about how much it means to them to have us, you know, to have us providing information

and they're really supportive. I thought people were gonna be really disappointed or upset or critical of the fact that there were a couple of times I had to report from the back of a taxi or a train. I felt very, you know, like I was letting people down that I was in a rush and that I couldn't sit, you know, in an office with a microphone and that I was, you know, it's all jumpy and whatever.

People could not have been nicer. And it actually, you know, it gives you the strength because you don't always have the time to do this or the energy to do it. Or as you were saying, you know, we don't have, you know, we don't have a whole, we have salty, but you know, we have a few people who help us out, but we don't have like, you know, this, this huge, you know, production staff to do our research, etc. We do all these things ourselves, you know, and so the audience is kind of the fuel that keeps us all going. And the support I mean, like, we don't only get support, you know, we get we get some

colorful comments, too. And but I get a lot of constructive criticism, too. I get people who give me advice and who say, Hey, you know, I just thought you should know x, y, and Z. And I appreciate that too. I appreciate the people who actually take the time to either comment or reach out and give us feedback in, you know, good and bad. And so, and sometimes, you know, during these shows, I can't read the comments because our audience is also really, really clever and they make me crack up. And I, you know, and I'll sit here trying to keep a straight face and not crack up. So yeah, so I just really want to thank everyone for the incredible, incredible support they give us.

We got to take time out to do that. You know, I think that's one of the advantages to being on YouTube and not being on MSNBC or CNN and places where you and I could be and are, it's that we can actually talk to our audience as a friend, like come into their living room, so to speak, as I used to say about Walter Cronkite in the CBS days. We feel that way. Then we feel a bond with our audience and those that follow us and we're respectful of it because they're respectful of us. So we've reached the end of another episode of a midweek edition of Legal AF. Wednesdays, Karen Freeman and Nifilo and me.

Saturdays, Ben, Mycelis and me. And then we've got these little special breakout Legal AFs like the morning and evening episodes with Karen and Ben about the Trump trial, which will continue right to the bitter end, which we think will be another two to three weeks. And then there'll be something else interesting and exciting that we'll bring to you. But until our next episode and the episode on Saturday with Ben and me and hot takes in between, this is Michael Popok and Karen Friedman-Ecknifilo signing off. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.