Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump CAN’T PAY BOND and BEGGING for Delay

Episode Date: March 3, 2024

Trial attorneys Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back with a new episode of the weekend edition of the top rated Legal AF podcast. On this episode, they debate/discuss: Trump’s efforts to post more than $600 million in bonds to stop the liquidation of his assets related to the NYAG civil fraud judgment and E Jean Carroll’s defamation/punitive damages one; developments in front of Judge Cannon concerning Trump’s Mar a Lago criminal obstruction prosecution, including whether she will give the Special Counsel the error-filled ruling he’s been waiting for, and the likelihood of a pre-Election Day trial; Judge MacAfee’s handling or mishandling of the District Attorney Fani Willis disqualification hearing in the Trump Georgia Election Interference criminal case; the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the full appeal of Trump’s attempt to assert presidential immunity to dismiss his DC Election Interference indictment, how the March 25th criminal case against Trump for business record fraud with a NY jury will play out, and so much more from the intersection of law, politics and justice. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! Beam: Get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to https://shopbeam.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF at checkout! BookShop.org: Use code LEGALAF to get 10 percent off your next order at https://bookshop.org/?utm_source=meidas-touch&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=meidas-touch-legalaf&utm_content=brand Fum: Head to https://TryFum.com/legalaf and use code LEGALAF to save 10% off when you get the journey pack today! SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop NEW LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As we predicted, Donald Trump was unable to post the bond first in the appeal of the New York Attorney General's civil fraud case, that for $464 million now with the pre-judgment and post-judgment interest. Also in the E. Gene Carroll defamation verdict against him, their $83.3 million bond unable to post as well. Trump got rejected by the Appellate Division in New York to stay the enforcement of the New York Attorney General's civil fraud judgment. We're waiting to hear from federal Judge Lewis Kaplan in the E. Gene Carroll

defamation verdict. That's the judge who Donald Trump, like most judges, who Trump continued to attack, who Trump is now begging to give him a break and not post that $83.3 million bond. We'll break it all down. Also, a big hearing took place on Friday before Judge Eileen Cannon in the Southern District of Florida federal court in the criminal case involving Donald Trump's theft of our national defense information, including nuclear secrets and war plans. The hearing that took place on Friday was on the potential trial date where special counsel Jack Smith was requesting a date in July.

Donald Trump, I think, pretended on paper to request a trial date in August, but then during the hearing said that he did not want to have the trial in August. And then Special Counsel Jack Smith made a major announcement as well though that I think is very important and has ramifications not just on the Southern District of Florida case for the willful retention of national defense information, but also the Washington D.C. federal criminal case, which is important as we talk about the Supreme Court setting an oral argument in that D.C. federal criminal case for the week of April 22nd on Trump's bogus claim of absolute presidential immunity. I think it's a travesty. The Supreme Court is even entertaining this in a

hearing. But let's discuss that order. Let's also discuss the implications that resonate from that order. We should also talk about the hearing that took place in Fulton County, Georgia, where Donald Trump and his co-defendants have been trying to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fawney Willis, but the hearing was more into like personal relationships and sexual relations. It got really weird and unseemly and it was very disappointing just to watch the fact that a judge even allowed that to take place like that. But we'll break it down what we think is going to happen and what took place. And then of course, all eyes turned to Manhattan, where you have the Manhattan District Attorney criminal case against Donald Trump, a felony case,

which absolutely will be starting this month in just a few weeks. So we have that to look forward to as well. We'll be covering it all like we always do on Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. But let's break down, Michael Popak. What happened this past week? Great to be with you again tonight. Yeah. You know, I was just thinking before we got started today, I am so glad that you and I founded this show because if we didn't, I would have no outlet for my anxiety and I would just be yelling at the TV and at cable news.

Instead, we have a podcast that we get to break it down and do the analysis of all the things that we kind of led us to this moment in March of 2024. You and I and Karen and others on the network, we've been updating our audience with our best guests and our best analysis of starting from before the indictments, the investigations, the grand juries, the indictments, the prosecutions, now trials and trial setting and this weird world that we're in that only, you know, everything's a bunch of firsts with Donald Trump, right? First former president in the history of our republic ever to be indicted, ever to be indicted multiple times. And now in a weird way, he's trying to benefit from the fact that he's a defendant in four

different criminal cases, using them against each other to argue that he can't be forced to go back to back to back to back in criminal trials. And like judges are struggling struggling and we'll talk about Eileen Cannon when we get there in Florida about we've never had a case where there's one guy who's got four different criminal cases all crammed into the same year. And what do we do about it? And yet also because we have to protect his due process and rights to a fair trial. You know, one of the big things to come out of that Southern

District of Florida hearing before Judge Eileen Cannon was something that was not necessarily expected for purposes of that hearing, but it's very revealing. That special counsel, Jack Smith's team said that this 60 day Department of Justice rule, whereby they won't initiate prosecutions within 60 days of the date of an election, that Jack Smith takes the position that that doesn't apply to Donald Trump because the cases were filed before the 60-day mark.

So if Trump wants to delay these cases, even the Washington, D.C. criminal case, through all of these machinations, special counsel Jack misses, I don't care. I'll try the case in October. I'll try the case November 1st. We're going to try these cases when they're ready to be tried. There isn't an arbitrary 60 day rule. I thought that was very important. We'll talk more about that when we get to that here. But let's talk about what happened in New York, both at the federal court and state court level. Let's first talk about the state court level where Donald Trump rushed to the appellate division, asking the appellate division to stay the enforcement of the now $464 million judgment against Donald Trump and the New York Attorney General. Civil fraud case, it seemed popock that Donald Trump and the New York Attorney General, civil fraud case.

It seemed popock that Donald Trump was even trying to like negotiate with the appellate division. Hey, I shouldn't have to pay anything, but I may be willing to pay $100 million and I'll post that as the bond, but I'm not going to post the $464 million as a bond. Are you okay with that appellate division? And ultimately, what you have to do under the law in New York if you want to stay the enforcement of the judgment. And here that would mean preventing New York Attorney General Letitia James from seizing his buildings, seizing his bank accounts and just outright taking it is you have to post a bond, what's called a supercedius bond,

that's equal to the, at least equal to the judgment amount. And Donald Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, claimed Trump had all the money to do that. And he's a billionaire, of course he's got the money. But when you actually looked in the filings that Donald Trump made to the Appellate Division, it says, irreparable harm inheres to appellants from any forced sale of properties.

In the absence of a stay on the terms here in Outline, properties would likely need to be sold to raise capital under exigent circumstances, and there would be no way to recover any property sold following a successful appeal, and no means to recover the resulting financial losses from the attorney general.

So Michael Popak, number one, that means he didn't have the cash. That's what he's saying here, to actually post the bond. But walk us through what happened, what did the appellate division ultimately rule and what's the import of that. And then let's go on to Eugene Carroll, where Donald Trump is trying to avoid posting the $83.3 million bond there. He's out of time. I'll do the second one first. He's out of time with E. Gene Carroll. He's got to post it by Monday or Tuesday. He's running out of time there. Most of these bonds have to be

upwards of 120% of the amount. It's very simple. It's a binary get the bond either he has, it's very simple. It's a binary choice. He either has the cash to put up and does a cash bond deposit into the court registry in the New York, New York State Supreme Court, the clerk's office and for Eugene Carroll, the 83.5 million, these are all running with interest. So it's higher than that now. And 120% of that, you pay it into the federal court registry. This is one's a state judgment, one's a half million. These are all running with interest, so it's higher than that now. And 120% of that, you pay it into the federal court registry. These are ones of state judgment, ones of federal judgment. If you don't post the bond, then you can still appeal. It's

not the entry price to appeal, but you can't stop the execution of the judgment, which means assets are being liquidated and sold to pay for your judgment while you appeal the niceties of whether you should have gotten a judgment against you or not Or the size of it or as one you you posted on some some pre-show Chatter that you and I had with with our team about some social media guy Noting that not posting the bond while you have a judgment against you would be the equivalent of appealing your death penalty While they put the lethal injection into your arm. So they don't want to do that. He's playing with fire, but it shouldn't surprise anybody.

I did a hot take where I found back in 2016 his big King of Debt interview with CBS News where he said, I'm the king of debt. He was running against Hillary Clinton at the time. I'm the king of debt. I like debt. I like all I negotiate debt. And the interviewer said, what do you mean you negotiate the debt? Well, I don't pay them what they want.

So what we're watching is the king of debt trying to negotiate and bargain with the court system about putting up the bond. Now certain places not relevant here have bond hearings to set the appropriate amount of the bond. But when you're talking about a judgment, that's normally pre-judgment type bonds that are put up in place, like for injunctions. We're beyond injunctions. There are two judgment creditors here,

and there's one judgment debtor or series of judgment debtors owned by Donald Trump. Judgment creditors are the people of the state of New York for $465 million running with $3.5 million a month in interest until it's paid and paid off in full. E. Jean Carroll, who's a judgment creditor twice, she's got a $5.5 million judgment, but that's been stayed because he posted the $5.5 million plus into the bank way back when on that first rape slash defamation case. So as I did a hot take on this one, kind of breaking down all the bond things, he doesn't have the cash, which he doesn't. There's no debate.

But putting aside Alina Habba's false provado, there's no debate. He doesn't have the cash. He's only got maybe $400 million and no, he can't use his pack. We'll leave SPAC aside for a minute. Pack and SPAC. He can't use his political action committee money to pay the judgments. He can pay the attorney's fees. He can set up a go fund me page or whatever he wants to do. That's a lot of money, even for his MAGA extreme supporters to kind of just dig deep into their pockets and give them a 500, it's not even 500 million. Because think about it, Ben, it's 460 million at 120%.

So now you're pushing 530, 540 million and eging Carol same thing. So now you're looking at $650 million. He's got to come up with no cash. So then you got to go and get a bond. But to get a bond, that you either have to pledge assets to a bonding company, and they don't like being in the asset pledging business. Or you got to get a revocable letter of credit, an LOC from a bank or a lender in order to do, and you can pledge your assets there. And it's really expensive, by the way. The going rate for a letter of credit is like 12 to 15% of the amount that you need.

So he's looking at $15 or $20 million worth of fees for bonding companies and letters of credit. I assume they're scrambling behind the scenes with his moneymen trying to find some bank somewhere, some small bank in Florida or in somewhere in North Jersey or some latter capital, some private equity firm or something to lend him the F in money. His arguments to the judge and to the emergency appellate judge have all fallen flat and are deaf ears. They are not going to let him pay a hundred million in, you know, negotiate the number. He either puts up the money or the judgment will start to be executed by the New York Attorney General and by Eugene Carroll. I think he's got to post the Eugene Carroll one, whether he gets the bond or not. He's going to have to dig deep into his cash and put it in. Otherwise, she's going to go and grab his triplex apartment at Trump Tower, where some other

known asset. And collecting here is not like when sometimes you and I get a judgment, we're like, oh, crap, this is going to be judgment difficult or judgment impossible because the person's assets are hidden. We know where all of Donald Trump's assets are, and we know where the monitor knows where all of his assets are. The only distinction, and I'll kick it back to you, Ben, the only distinction is Eugene Carroll's judgment is against Donald Trump personally. The other is against Trump Organization and Trump and Eric and Don Jr. and all the entities and the and his trusts.

Eugene Carroll is going to have to find assets that belong solely to a guy named Donald Trump or to which he has access to. That's going to be a little bit of piercing the veil on getting through different layers of limited liability companies and trusts and this and that. I mean, they've got a monitor that'll help them who's in place in Florida. The other thing they could go after, depending upon how he took the interest, is he's waiting on these 79 million shares of his special purpose acquisition company merger, Truth Socials merger, to go public. Shares are also assets that can be levied upon, and they could try to get, depending

upon whose name they're in, they could try to get those assets as well. So that's where we are. He's playing with fire. He's either gotta get a bank slash bond in company to put up the money with him or he's gotta, I don't know what, get loans from friends and family to put up over $600 million of bonds, some starting as early as next week.

You know, my one view about the special purpose acquisition company, though, is that even though those shares may have a value as a meme stock right now, it's not... There's very difference between Elon Musk borrowing against Tesla stock and Donald Trump borrowing against Trump media stock. Trump has stated in his own financials that Trump media is valued at between five to $25 million. The blank check company that's to merge into Trump media put in their S1 and S4 documentations that the type of company that they were required to merge

with is between a $500 million on the low end to a $2 billion valuation company on the high end. If you look at the revenue from Trump media, it is very low and it is consistent more with the $5 million to $20 million valuation and nowhere near anywhere in the billion. So the question there is, and we're not going to spend the time discussing it, on this episode is, when are the retail investors going to get screwed? Is it going to be kind of too late? Is Trump going to fully fleece them?

And any lender with any shred of credibility lending against those true social shares may have a better time lending against Trump bucks, which of course we've reported on here, which is another way of grifting off of these Trump supporters. But I digress. Let me just show you what this order was from the Appellate Division. The one thing that they did grant a stay from temporarily though was with respect to Donald Trump not serving in a financial control function of any New York corporation or similar business entity registered or licensed in the state of New York and are serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity and which

enjoined Trump and others from applying for loans in financial institutions, chartered by or registered with the New York State Department of Financial Services for a period of three years. Now, this is only temporarily stayed. I believe the court's doing this because in order for, they're making it feasible at least for Trump to try to come up with a solution to post the bond while also requiring that he posts the bond. But this isn't a permanent injunction

or even a preliminary injunction. This was kind of a temporary restraining order style injunction. There will then be a hearing on those other aspects of it. But for now, the big headline is, is that no Trump has to post a bond or Eugene Carroll's going, or sorry, or the New York Attorney General's going to have to collect.

I got ahead of myself there because we're about to talk about E. Gene Carroll, and Donald Trump there is requesting of Judge Lewis Kaplan, the federal judge, that he should stay the enforcement of the $83.3 million verdict there. Trump had the audacity to argue to Judge Lewis Kaplan that that E. Jean Carroll is cool with this, that E. Jean Carroll essentially has consented to the fact that Donald Trump has the assets and doesn't want to collect any of Donald Trump's money. E. Jean Carroll responded in a fiery opposition through her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, and just says, that's the most insane thing we've ever heard. That's not the case. Of course, we want to collect this money.

Just because for purposes of showing the jury in this case, punitive damages statements about Donald Trump saying how rich he is, that doesn't mean that we consent that his statements where he's bragging about how rich he is, gives him the right not to have to post a bond which other litigants have to do. Here was my favorite line from the Eugene Carroll opposition to Donald Trump's request to stay the enforcement of the $83.3 million judgment there. Eugene Carroll says that basically it's worth the same amount as something being scribbled on a paper napkin from the most worthless type of lender that there is, referring to what Donald Trump is offering here.

And then the opposition goes on to cite Donald Trump's history of not paying people, the New York Attorney General's civil fraud verdict. Judge Lewis Kaplan here basically gave Donald Trump the ability to file a reply this weekend, which he's doing. And then, of course, Eugene Carroll, they'll then be a ruling sometime, I think in the next 48 hours or so. And I think Popak, the doomsday date for Donald Trump is the sixth or the

seventh is the doomsday mark six or seventh but the judge set the briefing schedule on Trump's request right up until that date so when he denies it Trump probably has 24 hours to try to scramble and file with the second sir on your on your court we love following dates here. On your crushing date, crushing of the innocent investor, not innocent investor, the investor in Donald Trump, beam stock, I think that's March 22nd, because that's the date, right? That's the date when he's going to ask the shareholders to allow him, along with the sponsor, to not be subject to the standard six month lockup where he can't sell his shares for

six months because you don't want to crush the investor. The investors will be like, sure, we like being crushed. Sure, go ahead. So he'll, he'll, I mean, right now, even though when that lawsuit got filed, I did a hot take on the Delaware lawsuit that got filed by his co-founders, trying to stop the March 22nd date from happening because they're screwing them out, Trump's screwing them out of their 8% interest, assuminguming it still goes forward, the stock took a hit, but it's still trading at like $35 to $40 a share. He owns 79 million shares. I mean, you know, Sucker's born every minute, and there seems to be 79 million of them out there for Donald Trump giving him. But it's

interesting. He purposefully does not mention his getting that SPAC money, as if the monitor won't know about it, the courts won't know about it, and the judgment creditors won't know about it. When, of course, we know about it, we're talking about it here on Legal AF. You know, I think it's the, from my own perspective, having studied SPACs, it is the worst of the worst case scenario for the retail investors right here because again all you have to do is look at Trump's own valuation for it. You know Trump always likes to inflate anyway so Trump saying the valuation is five to twenty five million dollars it's trading like a meme stock right now and the moment there is any type of kind of massive move made by Trump with respect to the shares, what you're going to see happen is, and we've seen this with a lot of SPACs. That's why SPACs in general have a bad reputation. In my opinion, of the way that Donald Trump has handled the SPAC,

is the worst of the worst of the worst forms of SPAC. We've seen all of these SPACs go bankrupt and they may have a loft evaluation when they go public, but what ultimately happens are the retail investors get so utterly screwed. And in my opinion, that's what's being set up here right now. I wanna talk more about what's going on in some of these other cases as well. Let's bring our

listeners and viewers to the courtroom in the Southern District of Florida, then we'll go to the courtroom in Fulton County, Georgia, and then we'll go to the United States Supreme Court and back to Manhattan where the first Trump felony criminal case will be taking place on March 25th, 2024. Come hell or high water and Donald Trump's filing a, he's filing motion after motion to try to exclude like all of the key evidence in the case, including trying to stop Michael Cohen from testifying, Stormy Daniels from testifying, from having the Access Hollywood tape entered, from having Rudy Giuliani's own statements that he made on

Hannity entered and much more. We'll talk about all of that, but let's take our first quick break up the show. Legal AF is brought to you by bookshop.org. You may be watching or listening to our show right now, but are you reading enough? It's time to dive back into books and conquer that reading goal you set for yourself this year with bookshop.org. There's so many great books out right now that help you make sense of this moment. Or maybe you just want to get away from the political noise and unwind with a good novel.

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journey pack today. Well, we started off this episode in New York and now we're heading south to the southern district of Florida. Let's talk about what went down in the hearing on Friday before Judge Eileen Cannon. This was a hearing that had been scheduled for a little bit of time right now and the purpose of it was a trial setting conference technically. The trial was already set for May 20th of 2024, but as we've been discussing, that was never a realistic date where Judge Eileen Cannon had not even set like normal SEPA deadlines

under the Classified Information Procedures Act that one would expect in a case involving classified information. Last week or a week and a half ago, Donald Trump had first, for the very first time, filed the motions to dismiss the indictment, 10 of them, each of them 25 pages or so each, or the limit was allowed to be about 25 pages or so. So it took her, it took Judge Eileen Cannon like months and year, months and months and months to be able to rule on very basic things. And so how long is it going to take her to rule on dispositive motions to dismiss when she couldn't even make basic scheduling decisions about SIPA? That's why I'm like, there's no way this May date is happening. Special counsel Jack Smith requested that the trial date start on July 8th. Donald Trump's briefing before this hearing said that he doesn't think there should be trial in 2024,

but Donald Trump suggested that trial take place in August and specifically, you know, suggests that there be, if you look at the schedule that Trump puts right there, commence in court, voir dire and trial. Trump and Day Oliveira, August 12th, 2024. So it says it there. But then of course, during oral argument, Donald Trump's lawyers, you know, or during their discussions with the court on Friday, Trump's lawyers said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we just wanted that as a placeholder. We didn't really mean August 12. I know a lot of people out there were saying, really, Trump wants this trial date in August 2024. And I think Judge Eileen Cannon wanted a test of Trump's lawyers really wanted

that data if they were just kind of putting it there, because she probably would have given it to them knowing Judge Eileen Cannon, if that's the date they wanted. And then Trump's lawyer's like, yeah, we just put that in the filing. We don't really mean that. Set this thing for later in 2025. Popak breakdown would happen. And there was a surprise, if you will, that happened there when Special Counsel Jack Smith's team stated a position that we hadn't heard from them articulated publicly yet. And we also learned a little more information about the amount of witnesses that are expected. Take us through what went down, Michael Popo. Yeah, well, let's set the stage here for this little theater in a round in a courtroom. Jack Smith's there. He's not arguing, but he's

in the courtroom. His team led by Jay Bratt, one of his other lawyers is the lead prosecutors for the case. Donald Trump there, he was there for that as well, showed up with his lawyer primarily led by Todd Blanche. And we had Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Donald Trump, who for those that are just tuning in for the first time, the legal AF, she already got sideways with her bosses at the 11th Circuit before the indictment even came out at Mar-a-Lago and got slapped twice, not once, but twice for doing inappropriate things as a trial judge. The question is, is third time the charm?

We'll talk about that issue that came up during the hearing. The troubling thing about the 60 day rule DOJ internal policy discussion is that it came up because Aileen Cannon, the judge raised it and said, well, what about the 60 day Department of Justice internal handbook that there will be no investigations within 60 days of a election because of election interference concerns, public policy concerns. Does that apply here? Well, obviously it doesn't. We just read the language of the DOJ manual. You know, it only applies to existing investigations

and not to ones that are already up and running, but they'd ever have that sort of clarification there. So in response, the lawyers that represent the government, the Department of Justice, Special Counsel's office said it doesn't apply. It doesn't apply because we're not starting an investigation or an indictment. We're beyond that. The person's already been indicted and it doesn't mean we can't continue a case all the way through trial and verdict because it's within 60 days of an election. But the fact that she even brought it up, I thought, was slightly troubling. It was.

So those that were in the room, and again, unlike what you and I are going to talk about in the fauny Willis Fulton County, where everything's on YouTube, including on the Midas Touch Network, nothing in federal court is on YouTube, Midas Touch Network, or anything. We either have to have people in the room that give us that information, and that we trust based on past credibility.

And we know certain people that are in the room in our legal political world that report like Hugo Lowell for The Guardian that we just posted there. And there's others that we like as well. And so we know what went on in there. It was combative against the prosecution team. Most of the firepower was being trained by the judge, not on Trump's team, but on the Department of Justice and Special Prosecutor. Now look, she's not the only federal judge that sometimes holds the prosecution's feet

to the fire. You know, we are in a system of justice where the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and the prosecution has to meet its burden, and sometimes judges take that to an extreme. But coupled with all her other prior rulings and weird ways of managing, and that's a heavy lift in that sense,

the word managing this case till now, that's a heavy lift in that sentence, the word managing this case till now, it's a bad look. And it got even Jack Smith concerned because the reporting in the room is he almost fell out of his chair, eyebrows raised and almost aghast when they got to the issue. There were a number of issues at this multiple hour hearing. One was the trial setting that you just talked about, but it was also about a motion for reconsideration hearing because the government has convinced that Aileen Cannon has royally screwed up.

That's a legal term. We sometimes refer to it as clear error or reversible error, a major decision about the identity of witnesses that should be kept confidential and secret for now, including ones that are grand jury witnesses revealed only to the defense who needs it to defend their case, but not to the public and not on a public docket.

And they pointed out to the judge and their motion for reconsideration with big red letters, radioactively glowing that said, clear error, you're not applying the right standard. Even the case law judge, you cited in your own order is you're not applying the right standard. Even the case law judge you cited in your own order is you're not applying the right, you're holding us to higher standard than what we have to to prove that the witnesses should not be disclosed in the public docket because they could get doxed, swatted, attacked, and everybody in and around cases involving Donald Trump have had that happen to them. Aileen Cannon has had an assassination threat made to her. Every judge has. Mershawn, Chutkin, I don't know about McAfee, I haven't heard that one. All the prosecutors have death threats, all of them. All the Attorney General of New York, all of them, and staff, and jurors, and grand jurors, and the rest. And so that's already well documented.

It's an immutable fact that if you're involved, if you're somehow connected to the justice system and Donald Trump, you are going to be violently veiled and persistently attacked by Donald Trump and those around him. And so that's like a no-brainer. And yet she pushed back and doubled down again at this hearing.

I thought she'd see the light and say, oh, I don't want to get reversed the third time from the 11th circuit. And I'll talk about the lemon law that I think exists in the 11th circuit about three times you're out. And she said, no, no, I take very seriously the my responsibilities to ensure

that the public is informed during a criminal trial and your attack she she almost she didn't say my attack on me but she got close she said you know she like she like took umbrage that they would they would accuse her of of not understanding the law and she said well I understand the law in fact why do you think this law that comes out of the civil context applies here? And they're just rolling their eyes. And that's where Jack Smith is reported to almost fell out of his chair

about her taking this position. But it does, there is a silver lining. If, and based on what she did during the hot bench, if she makes this major clear error, which they've also called manifest injustice, they are taking a direct appeal to the 11th Circuit and it's going to be, there she goes again, here we are. And if they get, for instance, the Chief Judge William Pryor again, who was on one of her panels that shot her down the first time and say, Judge, you know, judges, what are

we supposed to do? Okay. She's not only made a series of reversible errors about an incredibly important case to our justice system and to democracy, including at the beginning of the case before even the indictment. I mean, before the case was a case, she was making inappropriate things that got reversed. And now look what she's doing. And then you can point to all the other things. Like, why are we talking about motions that dismiss indictments a month before trial? Why are we talking about that eight months ago and nine months ago to give time for the case to actually occur? And there's another body of law ban in 11 circuit and other courts too that talk about a judge effectively painting themselves into a corner and then having to defend themselves and feeling put upon by the prosecution.

It's either referred to as a stalemate or painting themselves into a corner. She's painted herself into a corner with a series of weird decisions that she's now doubling down on. That hopefully, hopefully the 11th Circuit when Jack Smith has this opportunity, he can say, look, she needs to go. They have the power as administrators of all things within the 11th Circuit, including in Florida, to remove her and replace her. And now I would think would be the time, especially, and I'll leave it on this one.

And maybe you can turn Ben to the witnesses that were disclosed, the amount of witnesses disclosed by the federal government here. But the trial setting, take May off the board. We don't blow smoke or sunshine here. May is not happening. The question is whether it's gonna happen at all before the election. And what they're doing, and I'll give them

a little bit of credit here, it's evil genius by the Trump side. They say, well, we got a judge, we can kind of lead to error. So why don't we use her here? Have her sit on the calendar in August and continue to box out like she's rebounding all the other cases. Because if the, and we'll get to the Supreme Court later in the podcast, if somehow the Supreme Court immunity decision gets made fast enough and Judge Chutkin can slide a

case in in July or August, She won't be able to because Gaylene Canada will be sitting on that date and neither will McAfee in Georgia So and then she'll say off and when August comes off I can't do August and now it they haven't been preparing for the other cases So they'll argue due process violation. We don't have time. And that's what we're doing here because she's never going to try this case before. She doesn't want to try the case before November, and she's not going to try this case before November, but she's not going to let us officially know that until it's too late to reset the rest unless the 11th Circuit intervenes and takes her the, you know

what, off the case. I think the 11th Circuit is going to do that. I think this is all kind of coming to a head right now with the fact that she actually has to make rulings. You know, one of those rulings is the most basic one where she wanted in the courtroom. She tried to get special counsel, Jack Smith's team, to list all of the witnesses that they were going to call, including ones that for now are confidential witnesses and potentially confidential informants where you would never disclose it at this phase. Special counsel Jack Smith's team did say the number is around 40 witnesses, but that's not the type of thing that's disclosed publicly at this stage.

It's not like Donald Trump doesn't know about who those witnesses are. He does because those are turned over pursuant to the protective order in the case. But the issue is that it's only a good cause standard for the government to say, we're not disclosing witness reports publicly yet and witness interviews and the identities of confidential informants. The whole reason that you have a protective order in discovery is that you need to protect this exact type of situation. So what Trump's lawyers had tried to do was say, okay, well, maybe that's the good cause standard for discovery, but what if we just file a bunch of frivolous motions to compel and then attach to the motions

to compel all of that discovery that you turned over? And now we're going to say, aha, now the public should get access to it because we're putting it on the public docket. And Judge Eileen Cannon bought into that logic and she's like, well, that seems to make sense to me. And then Special Counsel Jack Smith responded, that's not the law just because you take the confidential discovery and you try to throw it on a public docket. It doesn't change the standard that we, the government, have a good cause basis to keep this stuff confidential.

So I think she's going to make an error there because she seems to be inclined to do so. I also think she's going to make an error when it comes to not allowing the government under SEPA section 4 to withhold certain types of classified information. We're not talking about confidential now. We're talking about the classified information and provide substitutions. For example, the government doesn't want to turn over the actual war plans themselves or the nuclear data to Donald Trump. Instead, they want to turn over a substitution or a summary. This involves nuclear codes or nuclear information specifically that relates to this, but not

the underlying data. This relates to war plans and you kind of summarize it. What Judge Eileen Cannon did last week and many people were saying, oh, is Judge Eileen Cannon actually ruling against Donald Trump because Judge Eileen Cannon rejected Donald Trump's request to access the SEPA section for filings themselves, which a criminal defendant never gets access to. So she was rejecting something that under the law, it's never happened ever the same way she tried to assert back in 2022 equitable jurisdiction over a search warrant that a magistrate finds, that a magistrate judge grants, which never happened ever. But if you actually look at her order, what seems to be what her plan was, remember how

she set all of those like, you know, ping pong hearings. First, let me get this session. Then I'm going to have this session with the government. Then let me bring Trump's lawyers in. Then let me bring the government in again. For all purposes, she basically gave Trump what he wanted by having all of those hearings over and over again, which are not supposed to take place in general, these kind of pre-CEPAS section for hearings. But notice what she says in her order, rejecting Donald Trump's access to the filings. She's not rejecting Donald Trump's eventual access to the documents. She's just saying you can't see the filings, but she says here that as best the court can discern, following its rigorous analysis,

defendants' rights will not be impaired by today's ruling. In other words, she's saying there, she's looking out for Donald Trump. I mean, that's why it's important that we show you what these documents are actually saying So my prediction is she ends up showing Donald Trump the sepa section for documents Jack Smith appeals to the 11th Circuit and I think all of that happens in the next 60 days and Ultimately, I think if she sets an August trial date because all of these appeals to the 11th Circuit will be interlocutory, I think they will stay the proceedings that will be taking place before Canon. And I think that August date is going to be kicked. That 60-day rule is an interesting one, Popak, because I could see a special counsel, Jack Smith, saying,

okay, Supreme Court, you want to take this up and we're going to talk about this in a little bit. The Washington, D.C. Trump absolute immunity claim, you want to take that up on April 22nd. Bet, okay, you do that, but when we get the ruling in May, we're going to tell Canon that we want the trial in October. We don't care. You're the reason that it delayed. Trump's the reason it delayed.

We're going to try the case when the case is ready I want to hear your thoughts about that Michael Popak and I want to speak about what's going to talk about what's going on in Georgia as well Let me tease what happened in these hearings in Georgia first by playing a clip of Donald Trump's lawyer Steve Saydown and this was the closing arguments on Friday. This is what Trump's lawyer, Steve Seydow. And this was the closing arguments on Friday. This is what Trump's lawyer, Steve Seydow, was arguing to the judge about why Fulton County District Attorney,

Foney Willis, should be disqualified. Let's play this clip. No one knew that there was a relationship between Wade and Willis, according to Wade and Willis. Not a soul was ever told that they were dating or that there was an intimate relationship ever. They concealed it from all parties, from daddy. Daddy didn't even know they had a relationship. Suggest that somehow in the beginning of 2021, January to whatever it was into April, that they couldn't have met in Hapeville, they didn't meet anywhere that would allow the public to see them. So despicable to watch that. Michael Popak, I mean, I want to get your take on that. Let let's break down what happened in Georgia but let's take our last quick break of the day.

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the clip of Donald Trump's lawyer, Steve Seydow, talking about and Fawney Willis didn't disclose her relationship to nobody with Nathan Wade. And she didn't even tell Daddy. She didn't tell daddy. I mean, let's be very clear and not mince words. If Fulton County District Attorney Fawney Willis was not a black female prosecutor who was doing an incredible job, this would never be happening, period. Could you imagine them doing this to another

type of prosecutor and focusing on their relationships? I mean, the absurdity of it, she's supposed to tell her father when privately she's involved in a private consensual sexual relationship. She's supposed to go and ask her father or tell her dad, hey, do you know who I just had sex with today? And why are we even talking about who Fulton County District Attorney Fawney Willis is having sex with or when she first had sex with Nathan Wade? What this was supposed to be about was is there a conflict of interest that rises to the level of materiality that taints the ability of the prosecution to, in a good faith matter, prosecute the criminal defendants in this case, Donald Trump and his co-defendants. This is not supposed to put a prosecutor on trial for her intimate sexual relations.

In my view, this should have started with a proffer and a very carefully framed line of questioning into the area of actual conflict relating to this specific case. And the moment they witnessed, whether it was Terence Bradley or somebody else, did not have personal knowledge about when a relationship started, then they are not to speak on that. As I've said on the hot takes, courts are not supposed to be the courts of gossip. It's not supposed to be the court of innuendo, the court of rumor. People text messages and say a lot of things about powerful people. That does not make it admissible evidence. And so when a witness says, I don't have knowledge, personal firsthand knowledge

of when a fact took place, there's nothing else for them to talk about. We don't need to hear people speculating for 15 minutes about the potential sexual habits or private sex of prosecutors and their special counsels. And the only evidence that we had was that two consenting adults at some point in time had a loving relationship that didn't evolve into anything more than that. There was a few trips that they took together. Perhaps it was an HR

issue at worst. I'm not even sure it's it's an HR issue, but people fell in love for a short period of time and that's it and and so to watch this attack on her where they put a black female prosecutor on trial and to see Ashley Merchant up there you the lawyer for one of the code defendants, Michael Roman, with her whole shtick and routine, and to watch Trump's lawyers say, you know, oh, you didn't tell Danny, you didn't tell your daddy. You know, I was watching that and as a lawyer, that made me sick to my stomach to watch that.

Judge Scott McAfee, I don't really even care how he rules. Of course, if he follows the law, he should rule that there's no conflict of interest, and that seems to be where he's leaning based on the questions. But the fact that he let his courtroom be used like a circus like that, frankly, shows that he clearly did not have the experience for this job. It's not a political thing at all. It's just what the heck was that? I mean, pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. Popak, what are your thoughts? Let me start with the attacks on Fony Willis. I agree with you. I've said out loud that he got

I agree with you. I've said out loud that he got the approach to the hearing asked backwards. He got it exactly wrong. A more seasoned jurist would have done the legal issues first and have them made, as you said, and I've said before, the proffer. what do you got? What's your argument? What's your case law that allows it, even if I take your proffer, which is the lawyer argument about what he believes or she believes the evidence will show, what is your proffer? Who are your witnesses? What are they going to say? And then if I were the judge, and then I would put their feet to the fire to continue our theme here today and say, okay, well, tell me where under the case law that either presents an actual conflict. And this whole issue that you can see the judge struggling with, and I'm going to talk about the prior disqualification of Faudi Willis in a minute, about whether the appearance

of impropriety standard is the right one, or the actual conflict standard is the right one. He seems to be on the horns of a dilemma on the fork in the road about which one he's going to go down. Even when the lawyer for Fawty Willis and side note, I see why now, I think Karen Friedman-Igniflo put it well in a pregame chat with us. I see why now Fawty Willis, other than Fawty Willis herself hires outside legal experts to serve in her on her team. I was not blown away by the workmen like and that's the highest compliment I can give the workmen like presentation of the lawyers for the Fulton County DA defending Fuddy Willis They did they did okay. It's I'll just leave it at that

I've seen better But but hopefully that is not what's going to rule the day the issue is better. But hopefully that is not what's going to rule the day. The issue is whether we're under actual conflict of interest of which there is not one. The fact that she dated, you said love, I don't think there's to be love. The fact that she dated or had a relationship or had some sort of interaction outside of work with a person in her office on the same side of the V. I mean, this would be different if she had some sort of strange relationship or inappropriate relationship with the victim in a case that she was prosecuting, whereas something else that could challenge her ethics or something else.

But the fact that she, like most people, I met my wife at work. But the fact that she had some sort of relationship and that after he got the job, he used whatever money he had, both from this job and other jobs, and she used cash and they split the cost on some cheapo cruises off of Miami and a double tree in visits to Napa Valley. Who cares? You're exactly right. And the optics, the look of a bunch of white lawyers, I'm just going to say it for what it is, a bunch of white lawyers going after Fawni Willis as a black female prosecutor and a lot of white male

lawyers doing it and the way they did it. You think, and this is rhetorical, you think that Steve Seydal, a lawyer for Donald Trump, would start talking about somebody's daddy when they're in their 40s about their relationship. We're talking about an underage girl. We're talking about an elected Fulton County prosecutor, the Madame prosecutor in the case. I mean, in fact, her father even had to testify. Mac, if he should have put it into that. But having not put it into that,

for this guy to stand up and talk about somebody's daddy is racist, it's sexist, and it's demeaning. And all they're trying to do is make her inferior, right, which has those other racial undertones and overtones in their presentation. Now, this is the case law problem. You've got the whole body of law in Georgia that talks about two, there's only two ways to get a prosecutor off, but there's an exception to that, or there's a common law other way, potentially.

The two ways are forensic misconduct, which is a term of art in Georgia, which doesn't exist here, no one's alleging that there's so much, that there's misconduct by the prosecutor in prosecuting the case, hiding evidence, not revealing evidence, and the like, that they should be removed. So take that off the board. Actual conflict

is what it sort of sounds like. There is something about the prosecution that is benefiting the prosecutor in a way that an independent prosecutor should not be benefited. There's a conflict of interest that so undermines her professional judgment or what we say people's confidence in the criminal justice system that they should be removed for that actual conflict and based on the evidence that was presented Including Terrence Bradley who the judge is just going to take off the board as not being helpful to his fact finding At all on the issue because the judge put it best when he said to the lawyers when they said, oh He was obviously lying in court your honor based on the issue because the judge put it best when he said to the lawyers when they said, oh, he was obviously lying in court, your honor, based on the text messages. He's lying and you should take an adverse inference that he's lying to cover this whole thing up. And the judge said,

how do you know he wasn't lying in the text messages? How do you know he wasn't lying in the text messages about knowing when the relationship started and he told the truth in the courtroom? In other words, I'm taking him off the board as a fact witness that I'm going to rely upon. And they put no other witness up, not daddy, not anybody else that establishes that Fawni Willis lied to the court about when that relationship, whatever it was, started. She said it couldn't possibly be a conflict of interest or that I'm benefiting in any way because I had already gone through and cycled through other choices for the special prosecutor's position before I got to Nathan Wade. And that was after the I had already gone through and cycled through other choices for the special prosecutors position

before I got to Nathan Wade. And that was after the indictment, not before. Ah, she lied. Maybe she lied about that. Let's get daddy. Let's get her former law partner for Nathan Wade up there, who's completely self-immolated, self-destructed, before our very eyes. But my problem is the law. And the reason I said that is because when chief judge,

then chief judge McBurney disqualified Fonny Willis, so people might be coming late to the game here and thinking, wow, she was disqualified before, yes, in this case. And that one, this is before the actual grand jury, special purpose grand jury made its recommendation to indict Donald Trump and others. And then the grand jury actually did indict them.

And she was in the investigative stage. But one of the targets of the investigation was Bert Jones, who was at the time an elected official and a fake elector. And her office was investigating and prosecuting him. Unfortunately, Faudi Willis for whatever reason held a fundraiser or participated in a fundraiser for Bert Jones' opponent, Democratic opponent.

And Bert Jones is like, I can't get a fair shake here with this prosecutor. She's supporting my opponent. And they had a whole hearing in front of Judge McBurney. Judge McBurney did the judicial version of a head slap. He said, what were you thinking, Fonny? Ms. Willis, what were you thinking? And what he wrote, and this is what I'm worried about, that McAfee, who's a brand new judge, probably looks up to McBurney, who used to be, I think he's either Harvard or Yale trained and was the chief judge. He wrote in his decision related to

Foney Willis that he had to take her off the case and assign it to a new prosecutor Have it reassigned to a new prosecutor for Bert Jones because the proc this is a quote the prosecution Cannot be burdened by legitimate doubts about the district attorney's motives Now he didn't use the term appearance of impropriety attorney's motives. Now, he didn't use the term appearance of impropriety, but it came close. And then even when McAfee was questioning the lawyer representing the Fulton County DA, basically trying to keep Fawty on the case and said, well, I understand your actual conflict of interest cases, but in those cases, didn't they also mention appearance of impropriety? In other words, if a reasonable person

would believe that the justice system is being undermined and that she has a conflict and she can't be a fair prosecutor, that's enough to take her off the case. Now, I don't think it's enough, but the fact that he's even struggling with that and then has this language in McBurney's own decision about Fonny Welles gives me a little bit of agita about where he's going to go with this. Now, I'll just leave it on this. Even in McBurney's own commentary that McAfee may rely on, he says there has to be legitimate doubts about the DA's motives. And I don't see that here. I mean, there is a case in Georgia in which a prosecutor was basically working on commission.

They were getting paid only if they got the conviction. And the court said, look, you got a conflict of interest and an appearance of impropriety, because it would appear to the average public that you may be willing to put your personal gain of making money on the case ahead of your professional duties to only prosecute under the right circumstances. So we're gonna take you out of it. We're you're burdened with that. We're gonna relieve you of that burden. And that's exactly where I don't want McAfee to go. Having now flipped the script on how he was gonna handle the earring, now allowing all of the salacious stuff and trying to... Now he's got it. He's got to figure out what to do with it.

You know, all this all this all this evidence out there about it. And if he makes that, he's going to take two weeks apparently while the case sort of sits around, hasn't been scheduled for trial, they're getting all their benefit there. And then just one last thing on the presentation. Ashley Merchant focused on she's benefiting because she's going out on dates that are being somehow paid for with money that she gave to Nathan Wade, which is ridiculous. And the whole sequence doesn't work for her.

Steve Sadawes was different. Steve Sadawes and Donald Trump says, we don't like the speech that she gave Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend at the historic Black Church in Georgia, in which she got up for 40 minutes and used a rhetorical device of saying, oh, Lord, why do these people, and then without naming names, defended Nathan Way, defended

herself, defended her decision making. And Steve said, I was like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm trying to pick a jury one day in a predominantly black community. And she just went to a predominantly black church and just called my guy or whatever. He can't get a fair trial here. Appearance of impropriety, take her off." So there's a lot of this, you know, smoke that's buzzing around McAfee. And the question is, is he, and it's rhetorical again, is he sophisticated enough and experienced enough? The answer is no. To sort through this the way you and I wanted to and come out the other side saying no conflict of interest or does he do the easy cowardly thing and just say, she's out, turn it over to the prosecutor's council,

let them pick a new prosecutor's office and pick up the indictment. Well, and that effectively will end the case in my view because I don't think it's as easy as finding another prosecutor's office currently in this environment that's going to simply take over the baton right now and process. I could be wrong about that. It doesn't necessarily mean that the outcome would be what I just suggested, but I think it'll be hard to find another prosecutor's office even if it was assigned to it.

I think ultimately, if you apply the legal standard, as I said, courts of law are not courts of rumor and you went to a different gossip, there is no facts or data that goes to the fundamental issue of the conflict. To the extent there's an appearance of just that this is tainted now and it's gross is simply because the drama and innuendo and rumor, all of that is the behavior, the gross behaviors, the behavior of Trump and the code defendants lawyers, making this implication an innuendo and rumor.

And now this whole thing is like, what are we even talking about? So it's kind of self-fulfilled versus was there underlying conflicts to begin with? And to me, that's where McAfee really mishandled this, but we'll ultimately see what he does. And my view always from the outset was, if you show me that Fulton County District Attorney Fony Willis committed perjury, if there's data and admissible evidence that shows that, I think that not only should she have to be removed from the case, there should be serious implications. To her bar license, if that's what she did, that's simply not what the evidence showed.

I'm focused on the evidence and the data. That's where I stand on that pop-up. Let's talk about these two issues together because of what the Supreme Court has done on setting oral argument on Trump's claim that he has the right to order Seal Team Six to kill his political opponents on the basis of absolute presidential immunity. That's Trump's argument, even though the Supreme Court rejected hearing that back in December when it was, when it was brought to them by special counsel Jack Smith, they said, nope, we don't want to hear it now. Okay.

Had it go through the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, they issued a bulletproof order. And then Donald Trump then went to the Supreme Court and said, can you please stay the proceedings back in the in DC? And also, we're not sure what we want to do yet with certiorari, but just help us out there. And special counsel Jack Smith goes to the Supreme Court. Look, you previously said you don't want to hear this. This order by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is bulletproof. We now have Trump's briefing on these issues. You shouldn't even have to hear this thing that Trump's claiming he can kill his political opponents. What are we talking about? This is the United States of America's. You shouldn't hear this. Let it go to trial and then you can hear it after

a full factual record is developed. And the Supreme Court goes, first off, we're going to take about two plus weeks before even responding to any. What's the rush? What's the rush here? And then what the Supreme Court says is, okay, we will convert Trump's application for a stay into a grant of certiorari, which means we're gonna hear oral argument. They're not saying we agree with Trump. They're just saying that we are going to hear oral argument on it.

And let's set that for the week of April 22nd. Notice Popak and pull up the order right here for a second Salty, because what the Supreme Court did was they sidestepped the application for a stay. The application for a stay would have required five votes from the Supreme Court justices. So notably they say that's moot because they went first to the question of certiorari to set the oral argument and ignored the stay. I think that's moot because they went first to the question of certiorari to set the oral argument and ignored the stay. I think that's notable, Popak, because I think what was taking the time, if you read between

the lines in this order, is that they didn't have the five votes for the stay, but the justices Trump appointed, plus maybe one other or some combination of four judges or justices Ultimately, you had Clarence Thomas and you had Alito and I don't think I could be wrong I don't think that you had Roberts. I don't think you had the three justices appointed by The Democrats and I don't think and I don't believe you had Amy Coney Barrett or Kavanaugh. So I think they had to basically get, I think they had Gorsuch. So I think they probably found either, they probably found Kavanaugh instead of Amy Coney Barrett. I doubt that both of them joined.

So I think that's how they got to the four to grant the certiorari. Um, I, I, I'm, I'm just speculating there, but that's my gut when I read the order. And so now they set that April 22. So I want you to talk about the import of that order, Michael Popak. And then if you can, let's connect it to, I know you can, what am I even talking about? Of course you can, connected to why all eyes are on Manhattan right now, because undoubtedly that will be the felony criminal case that goes to trial, and we're about three weeks away from the first felony criminal trial against Donald Trump taking place.

It's hard to believe that you could actually say those words and that first to indict is the first to try with all the other. This is why you have to multiply indict Donald Trump because he'll weasel his way out of, it's like whack-a-mole, but he can't run the table and get rid of all four of his criminal prosecutions before the election. I mean, as much as he's tried and some judges have helped him accomplish that. The Supreme Court decision was surprising and inconsistent with the way you and I had analyzed it. I thought it was more likely than not that he would not get the four votes and that they

would use this opportunity to just support the 50-page well-reasoned, airtight, waterproof decision by the three- three judge panel of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals led by Judge Pan, Henderson, and Childs, and just find, no, their reasoning is right. We don't want to live in a society and we want to set precedent where a former president of the United States and occupant of the office can commit crimes outside of his official duties, hold that thought about why I'm using those words, and get away with it and have an indictment dismissed.

And there was a series of arguments that Donald Trump made that were all rejected one by one. Ciriatum, as we like to say, in the District of Columbia appeal, do first amendment. And I need to have been impeached and convicted first in the Senate and and do process and structural Supremacy clause and separation of powers and boom boom boom boom boom. They rejected all of it Then we get the actual decision Which is a thank you a continued thank you Salty a continuation of the stay But buried in it and I've done a hot take on this, buried in it, I think, is caused for some hope, some hope that they will rule against Donald Trump and relatively quickly, and that, and that Tonya

Chuckins case may be back on, particularly, is the way they have framed the only issue that they find interesting, for which there's the four votes that you just outlined when you did your part of the segment. They said, the only question is not due process. It's not First Amendment. It's not the impeachment. None of that is matter stuff. We don't believe any of that.

It's the following. Whether, Salty put it back up, I'm going to read from it, whether and if so, what extent does a former president, choosing their words carefully, enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. Now, one way to read that would be, oh, shit, they think whatever's in the indictment all relates to his official acts, and therefore, they're going down the wrong road already. I don't read it that way. You and I spent a lot of time unpacking and listening to a lot of time unpacking and listening to, speaking of listening to oral arguments only on the Midas-Stutch Network,

we'll plug there. You and I spent a lot of time listening to the oral argument at the DC Court of Appeals level. And you and I know, and we reported it, that Judge Henderson, for instance, was tied up a little bit in knots, which was why I think it took a month to write the opinion about whether they needed to send it back to Judge Chutkin to decide whether something was inside or outside official acts, non-official acts, ministerial duties, or the like. Because for her, she thought some of that was important. So my theory is that when they wrote that opinion, and they finally galvanized around

one and synthesized their three-judge thought process to come out with one coherent decision. The Supreme Court looking at it liked it except thought there were two things that needed to be further clarified because let's be frank. No Supreme Court, even one led by Roberts and the right rightist of right wing wants to keep going back to the well, talking about presidential immunity for criminal prosecutions more than they have to. So if they're going to do it one more time, and they're going to let the D.C. Court of Appeals basically stand on the books that decision, they want to make two clarifications. One, they're going to announce once and for all whether a former president at all could ever use presidential immunity to cover what he did when he's no

longer in office, as opposed to Joe Biden being prosecuted right now for an official act while he's in the office. This is post. And we already know there's, for instance, you and I talked about the 11th Circuit. We had the first ruling in 270 years. It's hard to believe given our body of law and the amount of cases ever a federal court ruled that a former federal officer in the form of Mark Meadows could not use the federal removal officer statute to take his case from state court to federal court because he was no longer in that office any longer. We were all like, wow, that's never been addressed in any case at all about former. So here they are interested.

They didn't just it's not a typo. They chose the word former for a reason. So I think they want to clarify once and for all whether it even applies to a former president. And secondly, they use the term official acts. Not because I think they think all the acts he did were official acts, but they want to say, this is what they could say. If you're a former, again, remember that the outer boundaries of your official duties kind of analysis, only that, but things that are outside. So if you're a former, you're not getting it.

And if it's outside your official acts, you're not getting immunity. Because those are the two kind of wishy-squishy parts of the DC Court of Appeals analysis. And like I said, if they're only looking to touch this once, they just want to tweak, at least four people at least, want to tweak that on only that issue leaving everything else undisturbed.

And if I'm right, and I've been wrong before, even on this matter, if I'm right, in that April 22nd hearing oral argument, after full briefing happens, remembering that the timeout for this, the cutoff for their giving a decision is June, because they all go on vacation and holiday that we end up paying for at around that time.

And they get all their decisions done before then. So if they take it all the way to June, then no, we're not gonna get a Chutkin trial, I don't think, because she's already on record of saying she needs to add plus 89 days. That's where the case was frozen. That Trump needs another 89 days to finish his preparation to put that trial on.

So if you do plus 89 from a June decision, you're in, well, you're in August, September, you could shove the trial in. So maybe there still is a chance, or they issue their ruling in May, and then of course I think you do have chance. So I was very dour and down and disappointed and despondent in all the D words when the ruling came out during our recording of the midweek addition of legal AF, we're all like, shit, there's no way that Chuckkin case is going to happen.

I'm not so sure now, especially if I'm right that this is the narrow issue. They crank out their order. Chuckkin holds an immediate hearing. But then we're back to tie everything back together again from today's episode. Then we're back to multiple trials going on because if the New York attorney, sorry, the Manhattan district attorney case, Stormy Daniels, Hush Money,

business record fraud coverup thing, when that trial starts on the 25th of March, everybody thinks that's about eight weeks. So that on March, April, now we're in, now we're June one. Then you got a, right? So you could get the plus 89 and all of that, but then you got Aileen Cannon sitting, you know, her brump on August potentially. And then Chuckin's got to go, well, what am I going to do with Aileen

Cannon? Am I going to take that date or not? And this is exactly the quandary that Donald Trump wants in order to use these cases tactically with his evil genius to try to block out things. So again, that's my working theory about the Supreme Court. I would be less... Let me just leave it on this bit. I would be less hopeful that my theory was correct if they didn't mention the narrow issue that they were interested in an appeal. If it was broader, like the appeal is interesting. Let's get to it April 22nd. It'd be like, oh shit, Lord knows what they're going to do. But this narrow issue, I think is a winner for the government

and as a winner for the DC court of appeals decision. You know, the judge Eileen Cannon holding August, that doesn't get me worried at all. I think Judge Chutkin knows that's a fake date. As I mentioned earlier, I think there's going to be a number of appeals and interlocutory appeals of Judge Cannon orders. I think Judge Cannon will issue outrageous orders on some of these motions to dismiss and dismiss chunks of the indictment as well that will be appealed right away. That gets appealed to the 11th Circuit. Judge Cannon's going to be overruled. I have no doubt about that. I think Judge Chutkin has no problem setting a date

assuming that the Supreme Court responds in time, to start it in September. But I wonder what the Supreme Court's going to do and the fact that they sat on this for two weeks Already, you know already before then and they're just taking their time with it We haven't heard from the Supreme Court on the 14th amendment section 3 case which were almost a hundred percent sure I'd say 90% just I'll say 98% sure that they're going to overrule what the Colorado Supreme Court ultimately did and they're going to find that Donald Trump can be on the ballots,

even though Illinois, Cook County judge there disqualified Donald Trump this past week. That's going to be overturned. I'm pretty confident by the Supreme Court. It's forthcoming ruling, but we haven't even gotten that ruling by the Supreme Court yet. I think one of the reasons we haven't gotten the 14th Amendment Section 3 ruling is that it's really hard to kind of just ignore the text of what 14th Amendment Section 3 states. And in theory, perhaps it was convenient for the Supreme Court to say this is the role of Congress and not the states, but that's simply not what's the history text and structure of the Constitution. But we'll see what the Supreme Court does there. But they've taken a long time there is my point. And I think that's going to be the factor about whether this DC case goes or not.

And just very, very briefly and finally, that means that we're three weeks away or so from the Manhattan District Attorney criminal case against Donald Trump, that case is going. And here, let me just share with you the types of stuff that Donald Trump is asking for Judge Juan Marchand or Justice Judge Juan Marchand to exclude from this trial. They say Michael Cohen perjury, but when you actually read it,

they don't want Michael Cohen to testify at the trial Well, if you're so convinced that Cohen's not going to tell the truth Why wouldn't you want Cohen to testify and then you could cross examine him when you actually read this motion? They don't want Cohen to testify because let's face it Justice Arthur and Goron found Cohen to be very credible and said that Cohen tells the truth and they're fearful of Cohen's testimony They want to exclude references to so-called election influence. They want to exclude evidence of Stormy Daniels. They don't want Stormy Daniels to testify at all. They don't want Karen McDougal to testify at all. They don't want this doorman at one of Trump's buildings,

at all. They don't want this doorman at one of Trump's buildings, Dino Sejudin to testify at all. They don't want the access Hollywood recordings coming in. They don't even want Donald Trump's own statements coming in when Donald Trump would call Stormy Daniels' horse face and say, no affair with horse face, no affair. They don't want his statements coming in at all that he made. And they also don't want an interview where Rudy Giuliani went on Hannity, Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, went on Hannity and basically said, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we did this. Of course we did it. And we concealed it through Michael Cohen. And of course, that's what we did. And they don't want that coming in as well. And so it just goes to show you that

what they say to the public, they don't want being admitted into court, which is why I'll leave it at this, Pope, I can give you the final word. It's why it's so important that we track what these court documents are saying. We track the rulings and that we are very these court documents are saying, we track the rulings, and that we are very faithful to the evidence. I think it's fair to have our opinions here, but my

opinions are tethered to the evidence and the facts and where I think it came out. Ultimately, for example, with the Fawnie Willis hearing, there's no evidence that came out, evidence, admissible evidence about the conflict. So I'm not just going to blabber about an opinion. I'm going to focus on, okay, what was this issue about? And here, in this case involving Donald Trump's falsification of business records so he can make hush money payments to a porn star to hide the affair from his wife who just gave birth to their first child, Baron, and also to hide that from the public for the election. If you want to exclude the person you claim that you didn't have an affair with from evidence, isn't that very telling? Wouldn't you want to call the

person up to the stand and say, look, you've lied, you had no relationship, you'd win the case right away, you'd establish reasonable doubt. Look, folks, Judge Mershan's going to reject that. I think the jury's gonna reject Donald Trump's BS. And I think we're going to be in a position by June, where Donald Trump will be a convicted felon, where he will owe $500 million in judgments. We will be very close to seeing if you're going to have this DC criminal case go or not a second

felony criminal case. Look, Judge Juan Marchand is within his discretion to sentence Donald Trump to four years of incarceration at the end of the trial if Trump's convicted. Ultimately, I'll respect the jury verdict no matter what. That's the system that we are in. In my view, the system we are not in should not be one where a Supreme Court or judges appointed by people like Trump, like Judge Cannon, are going out of their way to delay and deny justice. Justice delayed is justice denied for we, the people. And that's where I stand on it. Popak, I'll give you the final word. Yeah. Look, they, I'll just verge into the politics here for a minute. We always say that the American people get the president that they want, the president that they deserve.

And at the end of the day, I just have a lot more faith in the American people than some people give them credit for being part of the constituency that they're not going to to elect somebody who is a judged rapist, who's a failed business person, who has teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, facing $600 million with judgments and assets being liquidated. And by that point, a convicted felon facing another 50 or 60 felony charges. The delays are one thing, but the reality is that he is an indicted felon in all of these cases. And I just think the American people can do better and will do better in their decision-making. It's interesting when we tie all these trials together and I'll touch on Manhattan at the

end. The thing that might be disconcerting and is disconcerting, I know to our audience, including those that reside outside of the United States but are very, very interested and educated consumers about our legal system and enjoy our show, I think, because of that. There is no consistency. This is why Donald Trump continues to push buttons, hoping that something will win or something will stick depending upon the judge.

Some people may be thinking it shouldn't depend upon the judge. For instance, Donald Trump likes to constantly say when he makes a filing in every one of his cases, appellate, trial, state, federal, that he is the leading candidate for the presidency. He's far ahead of Joe Biden and that he's got a primary schedule and lists, as we just saw on the counting case, they list the primary schedule of all of that. Well, to Judge Chutkin and Judge Mershan, who are presiding over his cases, none of that matters because they've made it clear that his day job of running for president does not concern them and that he's going to be treated like any other criminal defendant that's before them in the criminal justice system.

But to Judge Cannon, him being the former president running for office matters when it shouldn't, that's what's gotten her. That judgment that her initial instincts that are just compromised is what's gotten her in trouble in making all of her decisions. Similarly, the argument that they keep raising in the various cases playing one against the other, which is obviously Donald Trump's strategy, is that, well, it's the same trial team. Yeah, he can't get other lawyers. He can only get this gang of four. And they're stretched so thin, Your Honor, that we can't be expected to prepare for trials,

one on top of another. It's the same lawyers. He can't be up in New York trying his case, as Todd Blanch said down in Florida this week in the hearing. We can't be up trying the case for Stormy Daniels and him be expected to be able to show up in Florida for important hearings about the matter. I mean, that's the reason he went to that hearing. He didn't have to go to the hearing on Friday.

He went to the hearing so they could use him as a prop and point to him and say, see, he wants to be here, judge, at all the hearings. He can't do that if he's sitting up in New York because he's a criminal defendant up there trying a case. So that was all political theater or legal theater, and Donald Trump willingly using himself as a prop. And so to judge Cannon, to judge Mershan, sorry, in the case we'll end with on Stormy Daniels, he said, I'm sorry're you're involved in both cases That's not that wasn't my choice. That was Donald Trump's choice Maybe he should have split the trial teams and you wouldn't have this problem, but the judge cannon

She's like, oh, that's very interesting. You're up in another trial March to July And yeah, that could impact down here. You're right. He has that right She takes every bait that that they provide when more sophisticated and more talented and more judicious and sober judges don't. And that's what we're watching. Stormy Daniels, as you and I, as at least I joke before we got on the air, may not be the exact trial that we wanted because I think everybody wants the DC election interference case first, the Georgia election interface, you know, the stuff that goes to the Jan 6th committee and the insurrection and the failure to transfer power, the interference with the peaceful transfer of power and the threats to our democracy.

Yes. But sometimes you get the case that you, you know, it may not be the case that you want, but it's the case that you need to paraphrase the lyric from Song History. And we're going to get the case that we need, which is a case in which Donald Trump, and I credit Alvin Bragg here, the Manhattan DA, for saying, this is just another example of election interference. It just happened in 2016 when he was candidate Trump. And I don't have the problems of immunity. I don't have the problems of him stopping this case for some sort of presidential immunity because he wasn't immune. He wasn't even president. And so I've got the best case with very few moving parts, so few that the witnesses here are not going to be that many. I mean, we're going to see Michael Cohen, obviously, a couple of guys from the National Inquirer, one named David Pecker, who was involved with the Catch and Kill program that paid off these people that had sexual relationships with,

sound like Bill Clinton now, with that man, with Donald Trump, and got paid off, at least temporarily, not to reveal their story, so that, no, not because Melania wasn't going to get it, so that the American people didn't think less of him when he was running for office. That's why it's an election interference case. Michael Cohen, David Picard, Allen Weisselberg, talking about a witness that you can't trust. Is he lying then or is he lying now? He's already gone to jail for 100 days for fraud, which usually impairs somebody's credibility when they testify, and is on the verge potentially of being indicted for perjury related to his testimony or non testimony in the Manhattan DA case. So Allen Weisselberg, who Michael Cohen says, all the money flow went through me and Allen Weisselberg about how to book this in the books and records

So you need the books and record people then you got that whole group of people we already know I feel like this is like sees this is like the spin-off of game of thrones We know all these same cast of characters all these low-level vice presidents that work in dildo Trump's organization Most of which he does not know the name of which we learned in the the deposition. Like, who is that? What's her name? What's her name, Vice President? Killed him in the trial of the New York Attorney General. They're all going to show up again about the books, the records, all the tedious things that go into this kind of trial. These are the people that are going to come off the, you know, who are now currently like melded into the woodwork all come to life in front of a jury. So we got that set of witnesses.

And then Stormy Daniels, sure. She got the money and she agreed not to say anything. You have to put her on. How would, I mean, Mersham of her like, how do you think we're gonna try the Stormy Daniels, Hush Money, cover up business record fraud case without Stormy Daniels?

It's just ridiculous. So they're going to try that case. It's going to go relatively quickly. Jury selection will take a little bit longer than usual. And then we're up. And early on, we're going to see our fellow podcaster and Midas Touch Network personality, Michael Cohen, testifying. We're going to get them on Legal AF, I think, midweek.

Talk to them about it one day But you know, that's it And then jury gets it and this is a jury just to leave for people that are just joining late to the show overall a Manhattan jury a year and a half ago hearing similar type evidence in similar type witnesses and a similar lawyer in in Susan necklace type witnesses and a similar lawyer in Susan Necklace defending Donald Trump came back with a unanimous decision of a 17 count criminal conviction against the Trump Organization for tax evasion and against Allen Weisberg too. So I mean, if Donald Trump thinks he's going to come out unscathed in a Manhattan, a Manhattan jury, he is not.

That's why I agree with you. He's getting convicted. If people are going to vote for him, they're going to vote for him knowing that he's a convicted criminal in not just the New York justice system, he's a convicted criminal period. Well, one thing I can guarantee all of our viewers and listeners that in addition to great legal analysis by Michael Popak, when it comes to the Manhattan District Attorney criminal case, you'll be getting analysis here on the Midas Touch Network from Karen Friedman-Agnifalo, who used to be the number two in that entire office. And many times, she was actually even appointed the acting district attorney in that office who oversaw

the entire office. So, to get her commentary, knowing that that's the first case is going to be absolutely invaluable and frankly as it always is. And then we'll have here on the Midas Touch Network commentary from Michael Cohen, of course, one of the key witnesses in the case as well. So nowhere else to put us kind of front and center stage and everything that's happening and to give you the best analysis from those who know first hand. Thank you all so much for watching this episode of Legal AF. Let's try to get to three million subscribers here on the Midas Touch Network. We flew past 2 million subscribers thanks to all of your support and you sharing

this network with friends, family, coworkers, colleagues. Let others know about our fact and data-driven approach here on Legal AF, our evidence-based approach here on Legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network. We're so grateful for you. It's always one of the best times of the week to be able to spend these evenings and whenever you're listening to this episode, whether it's live or whether you're listening to it the day after or the week or even months after we see a lot of people watching it. It's great to spend this time with you. Thank you for supporting the Midas Touch Network. Michael Popak and I will see you soon with some of our hot takes and we'll see you soon on the midweek edition of Legal AF with Michael Popak and

Karen Friedman and Nifflip. Thank you all so much and shout out to the Legal AFers and shout out to the Mid-East.