Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump CRUSHED by Complete LEGAL IMPLOSION and it KEEPS GETTING WORSE
Episode Date: September 10, 2023Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back with a new episode of LegalAF. On this episode, the dynamic legal duo discuss the latest developments in the Fulton County, Georgia criminal RICO case against D...onald Trump, the New York Attorney General civil fraud trial against Trump, more Trump legal losses, and other breaking legal news from around the country. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: Rhone: Head to rhone.com/legalaf and use code LEGALAF to save 20% off your entire order! Eight Sleep: Go to eightsleep.com/legalaf and save $150 on the Pod Cover Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Burn the Boats: https://pod.link/1485464343 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://pod.link/1676844320 MAGA Uncovered: https://pod.link/1690214260 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
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A day after Donald Trump filed a notice saying he may,
he might seek to remove the Georgia criminal
Rico case to federal court from state
court the federal judge in Georgia Steve Jones denied Donald Trump's
co-defendant and former chief of staff Mark Meadows attempt to remove the
case to federal court. Meadows is now seeking an appeal to the 11th circuit we will discuss. The federal court
order denying Mark Meadows' removal attempt, how Mark Meadows testifying backfired big time,
including incriminating himself and the effect the removal will have on the efforts by other
co-defendants like Donald Trump and disgraced department of
Justice official Jeff Clark, fake electors, and others attempts at removing the case.
Just to be clear though, Donald Trump didn't actually file a notice of removal, just you
know, he just wanted to let the judge know.
He may.
Let's also talk about the first court hearing before Judge Scott McAfee in Atlanta as well regarding
other co-defendants can Chesbro as well as Sidney Powell and the denial of their severance
motion and the setting of a trial date, October 23rd. Speaking of removal, Donald Trump's
attempt to remove a new constitutional disqualification case filed against him by an organization called Crew
in Colorado under the 14th Amendment section.
Three, Donald Trump had to concede
that there were actually no grounds
to seek the removal in that action
as he had tried to do to federal court.
We will explain the filing by that organization,
Crew, which basically called out Donald Trump
for doing a frivolous removal to federal court
of that state court action there.
A New York federal court granted E. Jean Carroll's
motion for summary judgment in the next defamation case against Donald Trump set
for trial in January of 2024.
This is the E. Jean Carol one case that was actually filed first the E. Jean Carol two
case ended up going to trial first.
However, that's where E. Jean Carol was awarded $5 million for Donald Trump's
defamatory conduct and sexual abuse.
The federal judge found Donald Trump liable for defamation in this new case going to trial
or the new trial that's about to take place based on the verdict in the previous jury trial.
So now all the juries going to have to decide in January is damages. How many
millions of dollars will they be awarding to E gene carol seven figures eight figure nine
figures. I want to get popox. Yes. Then in New York State court judge Arthur Ingoron denied
Donald Trump's attempt at seeking a delay of the New York Attorney General's civil fraud trial set to start October 2nd,
where New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking at least $250 million
against Trump, the Trump Organization, and others. And she's seeking an injunction effectively
shutting down the Trump Organization from doing business in New York. New York
Attorney General, the Tisha James also filed a very powerful opposition brief to
Donald Trump's summary judgment motion calling out his frivolous arguments. I'm
Ben Myselis. This is legal a F joined by Michael Popak, a lot of new whose popak.
It's never going to be a slow week from here on out or for many weeks ago here on out,
but they're keeping us busy.
I'm waiting for you.
It's not right now, but sometime in 2024 when you're done with a segment and it's introduction,
we're going to be able to say, and Attorney General, Atecia James joins us,
or, and Fonney Willis joins us for more conversation.
We will eventually be able,
once these cases are over,
to reach out to these people
and hopefully be able to bring them on,
the way that we brought Alvin Braggon
with Karen Friedman, Ignifalo,
sort of right in the heart of the Stormy Daniels matter,
but as soon as things cool off, we'll get some special guests and try to get some of these
prosecutors to come on with us and talk about hopefully the conviction of Donald Trump
and the others.
I'm so proud of that interview that Karen Friedman, Agnifalo did have been at an
district attorney, Alvin Bragg, because I remember how she was getting so criticized for doing that interview and Alvin Bragg was
getting criticized during the interview.
I was reading the chats.
I was getting all of these comments.
How are you platforming this guy?
He's not holding Donald Trump accountable.
And Karen Friedman Agnifalo, despite that there was a lot of that sentiment that wasn't
overwhelmingly the sentiment, but there was a lot of that.
Karen Friedman-Agnifalo was just like, look, I've worked at the Manhattan District Attorney's
Office for three decades.
I was the number two at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
You may be upset with what I'm saying, but I'm just giving you the objective data about
where I think this is going to go.
And ultimately, I think it's going to go
in the direction of an indictment of Donald Trump.
I am in hadn't a grand jury in people.
No, that's never gonna happen.
And that's exactly what happened.
And I think that is very close to our motto
and everything that we do.
Objective data follow the evidence.
And people may be upset sometimes at, you know,
how we predict things, but we're trying to follow the data. Fortunately, a lot of the data is
predictive of Trump losing because he's a loser, and his arguments are frivolous and extrajudicial,
but we tell it how it is. Yeah, and the two guests that we've had on,
is this isn't a guest-driven
show. This is a content-driven show where you and I and Karen to the analysis bringing
to bear our collective 75 years of experience in courtrooms, just like this one, the two that
we've had on, we've had three, Daniel Perry, who Karen interviewed, who's very well-known,
is representing Michael Cohen down in Florida. I brought on E. Jean Carroll's lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, to talk about E. Jean Carroll.
We ended up talking about the DOBS decision because it came out that day, and it's hard to
believe that was a year ago, and Alvin Bragg.
And I know people were a little bit upset with, well, we're not asking hard hitting enough
questions.
Like, listen, this isn't like Mike Wallace on 60 minutes.
If you want these people to come out, we have to be both respectful and dignified
in our dialogue and ask them the hard questions, yes, but you know, we're not here to interrogate
people that we brought onto the show.
That's not the purpose of the show.
If we bring on a guest that we do it once a quarter or so, it's somebody that we think
it's important that you hear from them in this audience directly and not just the way that we compliment them
or comment on them.
Couldn't agree more with you, Pope.
Let's go into developments in Georgia.
Let's first start off with the hearing
that took place September 6th.
You know, I always have to look back on these dates
because there's so much news that develops.
And I'm like, did this happen this week
or like two months ago?
This hearing took place September 6th of this week.
There were cameras in the courtroom.
We got to see how Judge Scott McAfee,
the judge presiding over the Rico criminal case,
will be conducting his court,
how he deliberates on issues.
And I thought he was very, very impressive.
He ultimately denied a
Severance motion filed by Ken Chesbro and Sidney Powell. Both of them demanded
speedy trials, but then, especially Ken Chesbro, did not want to be next to the
Kraken lady. He was like, please sever my case, separate me from her. I want to
do my own trial and the interest of judicial efficiency and the fact that it is a
Rico case as well where severance would rarely be granted the court said no I'm
not going to be granting a severance. That first case is going to go October 23rd.
So we're going to have a Rico trial next month. Just think about that. We have the
New York Attorney General, the Tisha James Civil Fraud Case, October 2nd.
The first Rico criminal case against Trump,
co-defendants then, October 23rd, 21 days later.
You know, Fulton County District Attorney,
Fony Willis' team took the position,
Popok, that they still want to try every case,
all of the 19 defendants on October 23rd.
Judge McAfee said he was skeptical of that.
Would you make Popack of how Judge McAfee ruled denying that severance, but also more broadly,
some of these other developments in Georgia, including Mark Meadows, losing his attempt to
try to remove the case to federal court in a very, very, very powerful order by Judge Steve Jones.
There was so much this week in Georgia,
as you said, it's hard to believe it was all this week,
that we could do a whole podcast on it, just on that.
Spinoff show from Legal AF, Legal AF, you know, Georgia,
sort of like law and order, special victims unit.
Just on packet, first of all, Scott McAfee, who on paper
has similar credentials to Eileen Cannon down in Florida, and that he's a federalist society,
30, something never been a judge before, but he's running his courtroom under Georgia law
and Georgia procedure, which moves at a velocity I'm not familiar with, even though I practiced
on rocket dockets before.
So far, I'm complimentary of the way he's running that courtroom and the rulings that
are coming out of it.
I think he is a stickler for the rules of Georgia.
He's not going to give anybody favor and he's going to make good, practical, pragmatic decisions.
We've already seen it.
We have that. We have
the decision, let me give the three data points we'll talk about now. We've got the couple
that jumped forward from the 19 that wanted to catch Fawney Willis flat footed. Good luck.
And catch her unaware and unprepared and ask for speedy trial. I assume knowing that speedy
trial could mean six weeks after they requested it.
And I guess they thought, well, the she won't be ready for me.
But look, Faudi Willis had a year and a half
with a special purpose grand jury.
Whose report we've just gotten to see in the last two days.
We'll talk about that, the 28-page report that came out
and the recommendations the special purpose grand jury made,
double the size of the indicted group of the 19 if the special purpose grand jury made, double the size of the indicted group of the 19, if the special purpose grand jury had its way, it'd be almost 40 people,
including three senators or former senators, but that aside for a minute. The things that
we're seeing in the uncorntinated efforts, as I've referred to as sort of these defendants
and coast conspirators being crabs trying to crawl out of a bucket,
is some group is trying to get the federal court.
We'll talk about why they've hit a brick wall there
with Judge Stephen Jones,
based on the ruling we just got against
Mark Meadows attempt to do just that.
Then you have a group that said,
no, I'll stay in Georgia, but I want to go really fast.
I want to do it in a speedy trial,
and I don't care if it's next Tuesday, or six weeks from now. And the judge said, it's fine. You're
going to get your speedy trial. And two people step forward for that. The rest, if they
step forward, the other group that is willing to stay in Georgia and not fight to go to
federal court, they step back about as far as they could, because I think they were caught
unaware by Chesbro and Powell,
and Chesbro and Powell were caught unaware, well, not Powell, she went second.
That Chesbro, I think, thought he'd have table for one at his own trial and didn't anticipate
which or if any of them, he knew Donald Trump wasn't going to ask for a speedy trial.
But the one that stepped forward and said, yeah, me too was Sydney Powell now. It's a table for two.
And we'll talk about what the judge just ruled in terms of his attempt to separate, to
sever not only himself from the others, but sever from Sydney Powell and pull the pin
in the crazy roller coaster, you know, roller coaster card of crazy town that they're
all kind of linked up in.
And so we had a debate with the judge on that. Then we had the hearing
in addition with Judge McAfee and Fawty Willis' team about trial day, trial setting the
amount of witnesses and when this thing's going to trial. Now look, I've seen, I'll start
on that. I've seen the headlines. They're like four to six months potential for trial.
Forget that. I just saw a filing by Fawney Willis
in federal court in which she's trying to stop removal.
Somebody to go from state to federal court
and she said the trial could be up to a year.
So you're talking about a up to a year long trial
of anywhere between a dozen and 19 total people
or 17 because two are going in six weeks or whatever it is for yes, six weeks.
And she's saying up to a year, six months to a year. Look, in the speedy trial setting, she's got
to pick a jury quickly. She's got to pick it within the term. So she's got like a month or so to
pick her jury or two weeks. But if she doesn't have the speedy trial problem,
she has a lot more time to pick a jury
and historically, on complicated cases like this,
it takes her a couple of months to pick a jury
in that other recocation did against the school board members
who participated in a bribery scheme.
It took her almost two months to pick that jury.
So we're gonna be in jury,
where you and I are gonna be talking about jury selection It took almost two months to pick that jury. So we're going to be in jury,
were you and I are going to be talking about jury selection for eight weeks before just to get a jury of nine or 12 in the box.
And then we're going to start the trial and that could go six months, eight months or a year with lots of witnesses, maybe up to a hundred witnesses.
Just to show you how prepared, just to show our audience how prepared she is, she wasn't
afraid of the October possibility for a trial.
She's ready and as told the judge, I'll do all 19 on October 23 and put on all of our
witnesses and says, well, is that really realistic to do all of that?
Do we really need to do that?
Especially when others are fighting and are willing to waive their speedy trial.
So she's check made it, check made it all of this crazy strategy of if we force her to go
fast, maybe we'll win our trial.
The other thing I want to back into, lastly, is that Chess Brode filing a piece of paper
that said, I barely, if at all, no, Sydney Powell, the captain of team crazy, the legal team with Rudy
Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, her, John Eastman, and Ken Chesprobe.
To say he doesn't know her, but was busy writing legal memos to justify the fake electric scheme
that he and Eastman basically invented, along with Peter Navarro
will get to him later today, is disingenuous at best.
Not only that, but better than you've caught it in the special purpose grand jury report
that we finally got our hands on from December in the section listing who should be indicted
for what crimes?
He is listed, Alawis Sidney Powell and Lindsey Graham and David Perdue, the former senator
and Kelly Loffler, the former senator for Georgia, in the coffee county cyber breach
case where Kathy Latham, a fake collector, let cyber ninjas and others into the data room
to download voter data from coffee county. Obviously putting the pieces together,
that data ended up being given to the senators who then used it to pressure the governor
to set a special session to try to overturn the will of the people and to lobby for Donald Trump.
But Chesbro is connected to coffee county along
with Sydney Powell. For him to say, I don't want to, I want to pick which Coke is spirit
or I want to be tried with. A, that's not how it works. And B, it's a lie that he doesn't
know who she is. It's how privileged and delusional he and these
co-defendants are. He thinks that he's better thandefendants are he thinks that he's better than Sydney pal like he thinks that he's in this ivory tower
This was an argument that he made in his severance motion
All Chesbro did was send 18 emails. Okay, who cares the number if it was 18
12 24 or one if you sent an email trying to overthrow our
24 or one, if you sent an email trying to overthrow our democracy, that is a problem. If you robbed one bank, 12 banks, 18 banks, I mean, just think about the argument if a
bank robber was like, it was just three banks, okay?
Three banks, we're just, we're just, we're just a bank.
You know, and then Ken Chuzbro, in many ways, the, the, the main point of his severance is she's the crazy Kraken lady.
And I don't want to be associated with her.
He didn't say that, but that's basically the thrust
of what his argument was.
Ken Chesbro, you were the Kraken.
See, this is from Chesbro's motion right here.
Chesbro's never met her, never touched her,
never looked at her, never sent an email to her.
You know, No, never physically met her.
Many of the, many of the zooms and videos, I'm sure.
But here's the thing, Chesbro, you are the Kraken.
You were the one with John Eastman and Giuliani and others who came up with the plan to overthrow
our democracy.
Your memos are publicly available.
We could read them just because they are called
a memo. A memo can still be part of a criminal conspiracy if the memo is to overthrow our democracy.
That is not just a memo, but Pope Bach. So that's what happened in Fulton County State Court.
You still then have all of these removal actions
taking place.
And just so everyone knows what that is, that is where there's a statute that basically
says, if you are a federal official, acting under the color of your authority, of your
official federal duties and responsibilities, and that you have a credible federal defense.
You have to satisfy all three, but it is considered to be a minimal threshold showing to make
those three points.
You can say to the state court, you don't have jurisdiction anymore, I'm going to remove
it to federal court.
So in that process takes place, what happens is, is a party that thinks
they're subject to this statute,
files a notice of removal,
it then automatically goes to federal court,
and then the federal judge can look at it and say,
you know what, this is so frivolous, I'm remanding it,
and I'm sending it right back to the state right away,
which is rare for that to happen,
because usually someone has some,
it's tethered to reality in some way,
enough for the judge to do what Judge Steve Jones,
a federal judge in the Northern District of Georgia,
did here, which is to say,
I'm gonna hold an evidentiary hearing.
Evidentiary hearing is like a mini trial
where there needs to be evidence that's
actually presented to try to prove and establish those three elements that I said.
Are you a federal official acting under color of authority of federal law?
Do you have a credible federal defense?
There's cross examination, there's evidence, and then the judge can look at the record
and make a ruling.
Guess this case belongs in federal court or no,
I'm sending it back to state court,
sending it back to state court is called a remand.
And so on the last legal AF, Michael Popak
and I talked about how Mark Meadows actually agreed
to testify at the evidentiary hearing when he sought a removal.
Meadows was the first to seek the removal.
24 hours after the indictment was brought.
He filed a notice of removal and then begged the federal court to try to help him not have to surrender.
Thereafter, you had Jeffrey Clark, the disgraced DOJ official.
File a notice of removal.
Then you had a number of these fake electors,
file notice of removals. They're basically claiming by virtue of us being fake electors
and Donald Trump telling us that we should do this, we believe that we're now federal
officials. And as Fulton County District Attorney Fulton County has put into the briefing
with the fake electors, you don't get to have a fake badge and call yourself a sheriff.
It's like a direct quote from her brief.
You're not an federal official.
You are criminals.
You committed a forgery.
Your forgery doesn't make you the federal official.
So those other cases involving the fake electors,
they're set for evidentiary hearings later in the month,
but Mark Meadows was the first,
because he filed it first, and Pope Ack,
how did that go for Mark Meadows?
Not well.
And I'm not sure he's out of the woodshed with perjury,
either, although the judge gave him a pass in the way he formed
and fashioned his order,
it doesn't mean it's over, especially if the US attorney's office in the Northern District
wants to indict him for lying under oath about his role in organizing the fake electors.
So, but let me back up. You're so right. Mark Meadows went first. We called it last week,
the Canary and the Colmein, the Canaries did.
And therefore, the others should turn back because they're not going to be successful.
If Mark Meadows wasn't able to prove that his actions as chief of staff, everything
that he did, all of the quote unquote, overt acts that are listed in the Rico conspiracy
indictment all fall within his scope
of work, his job responsibilities, no one else is going to be able to either. And I really
liked the way Stephen Jones, the judge walked through methodically in his briefing why he was denying
the attempt to take it to federal court, a court jurisdiction that he noted from the outset at the top of the
order is supposed to be sparingly used and almost never granted when the attempt is to interfere with
an ongoing state criminal prosecution. That is like a danger zone for federal courts. They're
very sensitive to it being dragged into a state local criminal matter. They don't want to do it
unless extraordinary circumstances exist. There were a couple of other things I thought were very
very, uh, area-dite by this judge, um, in his analysis. One, he said, even though we keep talking about
the 28 overt acts or the 161 overt acts that are listed in the indictment as being part of the
conspiracy.
Those aren't the elements of the crime.
In fact, he said the prosecutor didn't have to list any overt acts at all.
So the fact that the parties, including meadows, got all caught up with, well, these nine
things that I'm accused of doing, scheduling calls, and I just happened to be in coffee
county, and I decided I just would
wander in with a cup of coffee and see how the audit's going or when I'm not making this
stuff up or when I offered on behalf of the campaign to, I don't know if it was a bribe
or it was some sort of funding, we'll give if we give you more money inspector from the
Secretary of State's office, can you do
your audit faster if the Trump campaign contributes?
We have it in by the January 6th on behalf of the Trump campaign.
He said, well, some of the, most of those things or all of those things are part of my job
responsibility.
Jones took him to the judge, took him to task and said, here's my first problem.
This is where he said, I didn't find the witness credible
having taken the stand in waving his Fifth Amendment privilege.
He said, the least credible I found meadows
was on the issue of what were the outer boundaries
of his job responsibilities.
Almost incredulous the judge wasn't writing it.
Like I could not get out of him what he thought the outer boundaries because what the judge is trying to figure out as most judges
do in the circumstance is first what is the outer boundaries of the role of the position
because because one of the three factors that he has to analyze for federal removal,
federal officer removal is is it a federal officer? Okay. Assistant to the president, chief of staff, he's a federal officer, Trump,
federal officer. They're all not Kathy Latham, the fake
collector, but, but the ones that really worked for the executive branch.
Yes. Check one first element. But you need all three.
Second one is, is the thing that you're alleged to have done?
That's a crime part of the crime conspiracy, is that right?
Is that in your job description?
Is that within the outer boundaries or boundaries of your job, your role?
And so he has to know what those outer boundaries are.
So he knows what's in and what's outside the tent.
And then third, you have a, you have a colorable federal defense.
But you never get the three if you, if all of them Trump included when he tried it with
Stormy Daniels case in New York, they always found her on the second element, right?
On the rocks in the show of the second element.
They can't get past the second element because, you know, bribing your mistress is not part
of your job duties as president.
And, and, and what the judge said here is out of the eight
things that you're alleged to have done that are at the heart of the indictment. So you
got to have outer boundaries of job responsibility. And then the judge has to figure out what
is the heart, the beating heart of the indictment related to you. And then I look at those two
things together. And if the heart of the indictment is inside
your job responsibilities, then maybe you're coming to federal court.
If it's outside your job responsibilities, then you're not.
And the judge said out of the eight things that you're alleged to have done, seven are outside,
definitely outside of your job responsibilities.
And the only one that's inside maybe is you texted representative Scott Perry and Pennsylvania,
I'll give you that one.
But you know, you and I were speculating when the judge
asked for further briefing after the evidentiary hearing
about the overt acts.
If any of them are inside the tent or outside the tent
of the job responsibilities, does that matter?
He's now concluded it doesn't really matter
because he said in his briefing, the prosecutor
didn't have to list any over-tax just the elements of the crime.
I've seen the heart of the indictment against you, the conspiracy to interfere and all the
actions that you took.
I know you didn't help me, Mr. Meadows, but I figured out the outer boundaries of your
job responsibility because I looked at the Hatch Act, which is what Foddy Willis was pushing, which is the body of law that says, if you're
a federal paid employee, you can't campaign or do political things on the dime of the taxpayer,
not even in your off time.
So you have a first of them to do certain things, which you can't do it while you're wearing the hat
and the chief of staff.
And he said,
all of those things,
I'm using the hat jacket
to establish the outer boundaries
and the things that you did
fall right in the hat jacket bucket.
And therefore,
you're outside of your job responsibilities
and you're going back to state court.
My last comment on this, Ben,
is if he can't get it this to work
Donald Trump's not going to be able to either and I'm not sure he's going to be even trying having lost once
With Judge Hellerstein up in New York about the Stormy Daniels case. I'm not sure Trump's going to try it again
But we will see you know, I want to hear you're of course opinion on that and the others
Kathy late them the fake collector her, as you laid out is either,
I am a federal officer because I was a fake elector, but I call myself a contingent
elector, which is a made up thing.
There is no contingent.
Let me just explain this once and for all.
Before there is a popular vote and it's certified in a state. There is potentially two slates of electors.
There's the ones for the Trump people and there's the people and the Biden people. And one group
says, yay, when the popular vote gets certified. And that's the winner. So Biden's group wins.
They then do an audit. They do a hand count, and the popular vote.
So he won not once Joe Biden in Georgia, he won three times in Georgia, right?
And so his group of electors get to say, yay, they're certified governor, Secretary of
State, sent to the National Archive, sent to Congress, or the Senate for Mike Pence,
sitting as the president of the Senate to certify.
The other group of electors that could have been the electors of their guy one are not
a contingent group of electors, they're non-electors.
In any event, they're not federal officials.
That whole function of states running their own election process just means that there
is a federal aspect
of a state function, but it doesn't,
the Supreme Court of the United States has already said
that presidential electors are not federal officers.
And then the other thing she's left with this,
but I was ordered by John Trump himself
to be a fake elector, which is a lie.
She was asked to do it to sign her name to the bottom of a conspiracy
literally by the lawyers for Donald Trump and his campaign, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani,
Chesbro and the like. I mean, I'd love to pin this on the president, but he did not call up
Kathy Latham in Coffee County and tell her to go be a fake collector. The presidential campaign told her to do that. So
she's she should just withdraw it now because she there is
no way she's going to win. This is going back to Scott
McAfee all 19 to going in October. And then we'll figure out
the other 17 over over the course of some more hearings.
agree with you the the evidentiary hearing framework, I think, is also going to be a barrier for Donald
Trump to want to pursue a removal. Donald Trump has gave that interview with you, you,
it earlier in the week saying, I'm going to testify. I'm absolutely going to testify. Well,
if he saw a removal, that would be the first opportunity he would have to testify
and he's not going to testify because he's a liar about every single thing that he
does.
I completely agree with you on Kathy Latham, Sean Still, who's a Georgia state senator
who also is seeking a removal.
There's a few other fake electors seeking a removal based on their status as fake electors. To the extent, somebody has a somewhat better argument than the others, even though he's
a complete disgrace and he engaged in criminal conduct.
It's Jeff Clark, because what he's going to argue is, look, my role at the DOJ is to prepare memos and you're saying that I wrote an illegal memo to try to
tell states to basically overthrow the results of their election. I wrote a proposal as
the head of the civil division in the DOJ. That's the type of memos that I would write.
I'm not saying I agree with that argument, but where
Meadows lost was that the court was like, you're just a walking Hatch Act violation. Like,
you're not allowed to be even involved in politics at all. Yes, then there is the criminal
Rico conduct. You are engaged in on top of the fact that you were engaged in political
activity. But even in the cross exam, you admitted that this was outside the role,
you didn't even know what your role is.
Jeff Clark is gonna be arguing a little bit differently.
Look, I was the acting head of the Civil Division
of the Department of Justice,
and in that capacity, I write memos to states
all the times about issues,
and this was an issue that was of importance
to the Department of Justice.
I totally disagree with that argument.
That's what he's going to argue.
And then Fulton County District Attorney Fony was, I think they're going to call in in
that evidentiary hearing, which is in the next two weeks, the other acting head of the
DOJ, the other DOJ officials who testified before the January 6th Committee, and they're
going to say this was absolutely not authorized. This is, they're gonna use the key terms
in the examination outside the scope,
not something of the DOJ,
and then she's gonna check all,
funny well as we'll check all the boxes
of how to get that thing remanded to you.
You know what was interesting on your point right there?
I don't know if you caught this in the briefing,
the memo written by Judge Jones,
the 11th Circuit case from 1980 about the FBI agent bribing judges. Did you see that case?
Yeah. Yeah. So I read the his analysis of it. And I'm like, Oh, an FBI agent caught in
a rico conspiracy bribing judges. That has to be outside the scope of his duties because an FBI
agent's duties, I don't imagine, is bribing people.
But because the investigation that he was allegedly working on was looking at judge corruption,
they found somehow that even bribery by an FBI agent can sometimes fall within the scope
of his duties, depending upon the
project he's working on, or the assignment he's working on.
So that I thought that was very interesting, and that I think gives credence to your argument.
You know, we're just managing expectations.
We said the 11 circuit law is a little bit mushy, doesn't have to find much.
I thought Jones did a good job in his ruling in embracing that.
And the next step on the train, you's, Metos is filed a notice of appeal
as we anticipate it, as we said on hot takes,
going right to the 11th Circuit.
We'll have to see what the three-judge panel
of the 11th Circuit sitting just next store in Atlanta
from where Judge Jones applies his trade.
And then from there to the US Supreme Court.
In the meantime, Metos is back.
I mean, unless the 11th Circuit stays the, stays it, I think he's, he's back in front of Judge McAfee, unless and
until, and we'll have to see what the 11th Circuit does. You think the 11th Circuit, based
on what your understanding of the law and the facts now that have been developed, do you
think that they, um, they cater or overturn what Judge Jones just did? Maybe. You never know. It depends on the panel. I think it's actually 50-50.
I have to see the composition of the panel. I think Judge Jones gave a detailed analysis.
I don't think they will issue any type of stay because their stay can impact the state court proceedings.
It would violate basic principles of federalism and the removal statute doesn't allow actually
the state proceedings to stop a federal court until it has jurisdiction really can't do
that unless it makes a finding that there's federal jurisdiction. But yeah, I look, there was the horrific fifth circuit court
of appeal ruling over yesterday, where they agreed
with the right wing judge about when the Biden administration
was telling social media companies requesting,
hey, can you remove disinformation about vaccines because it's killing
people. You had a three judge, fifth circuit quarter. It's just happened yesterday, three
circuit, three judge panel on the fifth circuit, say that constituted coercion and intimidation.
It's like, okay, the goal of the government is to promote safety also and where there are people spreading lies
for a government.
This is just how privileged these right wing federalists are that they believe that
is coercion.
Like, there's real coercion taking place every single day.
And you've got right wing courts saying, how dare you buy an administration, reach out
to a social media company and say, hey, it
would be our request if you could remove disinformation about vaccines because it's killing
American.
Just like, let's put that in person.
So why am I even buying that up?
Yeah, let the 11th circuit has many judges like the 5th circuit.
So that, and I want to ask you one last question about who wasn't indicted and if you were
surprised and what your view is on it.
You know, on the on the fifth circuit, they did a little bit of narrowing of what the crazy
Texas judge did, but not enough and for you or my liking about what the Biden administration
can do going forward.
And it would be like, it would be like telling the FDA that they can't go after an entity
that's selling some sort of snake oil that's hurting people.
Well, that's the first amendment right snickle oil that's hurting people.
Well, that's the first amendment right to sell that and say that it cures diabetes.
Really, we're going to stop the FDA from doing that.
I thought that was, we'll do a deeper dive, I think, on Wednesday or next week on it.
But let me ask you something before we take a little bit of a break before the next segment.
We got our hands on the 28 page, special purpose grand jury report.
We've been waiting for it, judge McBerney
who oversaw the grand jury, finally released it
to the public, it's not redacted.
We were able to see the whole darn thing.
And we saw not only the 19 people that were indicted,
we saw another 19 people who weren't indicted.
And two of which were lawyers. I did a hot take on one that's coming
up soon about Boris Epstein, better known as a co-conspirator, unindicted co-conspirator number six
in the Jack Smith prosecution in front of Judge Chukkin and unindicted co-conspirator number three
in the Fawni Willis indictment. So he wasn't indicted, but the three senators,
I think Lindsey Graham just skated by by the skin of his teeth.
Lindsey Graham recommended to be indicted,
including for his role in the coffee county,
cyber security data breach,
and along with two just former senators,
law flur and Purdue, the ones that were replaced, thank God, by the
Democrats in those election of Ossoff and Warnoch.
But they were all recommended after hearing 75 witnesses, thousands of pieces of data in
information and from investigators.
That grand jury, there's a little bit of a split.
We got to see 14 said, yes,
and six said no, but they were going to indict senators and former senators, including
Lindsey Graham. Why don't you think Fawni Willis indicted Lindsey Graham?
Well, first off, the funny thing is when Lindsey Graham, I remember after he fought like
heck to not have to go before that special purpose grand jury. Then he sat before the
grand jury. I remember when he left, he's like, I thought I did great. They loved me. They
were laughing. They don't seem to like you that much. Lindsay Graham. They loved me. I killed.
To your point, that special purpose grand jury report was technically signed December of 2022,
but it remained under seal until this past week.
And it was unsealed by the judge, the old judge who was presiding over the special purpose
grand jury because now that the grand jury indicted, there's no reason to keep it unsealed,
to keep it sealed and confidential anymore.
So that's why we're even talking about this.
I want to share with everybody my thoughts.
I want to hear your thoughts about a Popeye. And I also, while we're talking about removals,
I want to also talk about the disqualification case filed
by crew.
We had the head of crew and their general counsel
on lights on by Jessica Denson here.
She's done some great interviews with that organization.
Then let's talk about more Trump losing in court this week.
But let's take a quick break.
This is Michael Popeok from Legal AF.
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So, so just so you know, we really do love our sponsors.
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When we last left off, Popok was asking me my thoughts about the prosecutorial, We really do love our sponsors and it was great that they're supporting our pro-democracy content.
When we last left off, Popok was asking me my thoughts about the prosecutorial discretion
decision by Fulton County District Attorney not to seek the indictments by Fony Willis,
not to seek the indictments of a current senator, Lindsey Graham, and former Georgia senators,
Kelly Leffler and David Perdue. And my thought is, is that I
agree with the decision not to seek their indictments and exercising
prosecutorial discretion there. Here's a few reasons why. Her indictment was
already, Phony Willis' indictment already very aggressive going after state
senators, inditing very powerful people in Georgia and Donald Trump and Giuliani and lawyers.
It already has a layer of complexity to it.
We saw this week as well, the mischief that Trump's fascist lackeys,
like Jim Jordan are trying to do, to already interfere with a state investigation.
And I did a hot take on Fulton County District
Attorney Fonywell's his incredible letter
just slamming Jim Jordan and saying to Jim Jordan,
if you really wanna learn about federalism,
if you wanna learn about states rights,
if you wanna learn about Rico,
I could recommend a book for you, the non-bar member fee for it. It's
$249. Because Jim Jordan's not a licensed lawyer. Just think about that.
Like the Maggar Republicans have a non-licensed lawyer running the judiciary
committee. Doesn't mean that non-licensed lawyers aren't capable at doing many other things.
It does with respect to Jim Jordan.
He's incapable of doing anything other than corruption,
but you wouldn't put me in charge of the aviation committee.
You wouldn't put me in charge of a maritime commission.
You wouldn't put me in charge of things
that are outside of my province.
Anyway, I digress, but we have to forget sometimes
that MAGA not only gives us the worst in terms of corruption,
but also in terms of just qualification
and why are you putting someone who's not a license
lawyer on the judiciary committee?
But I digress, the point I'm making is
that Fulden County District Attorney Fony Willis recognized
that even bringing in three federal
people, you know, even former, while they were senators, would then give people like Jim Jordan a
hook to claim that there's some federal reason why there needs to be involvement, to run more
mischief like Jim Jordan's already trying to do. There's also the speech or debate clause in the Constitution, which would
even though the conduct at issue is outside the bounds, I believe, of legitimate speech or
debate clause. And in fact, Lindsey Graham lost that all the way up to the United States Supreme
Court when it came to his testimony. How would that impact an actual criminal prosecution is a different question, but my short answer, Popak,
is it would cause massive delays.
And Foni Willis already put forward
a very aggressive indictment, more aggressive
than any other one.
And she had to make a decision, okay,
is this side show of Graham and Leffler and Purdue
and the, you never know how federal courts are
going to respond to that.
Is that going to actually harm my prosecution?
And if you go back to what we discussed earlier in the show, think about the rapidity,
how fast this is moving right now.
And it's because of the strategic decisions that she has made.
But Popo, what's your thought? Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that she had already,
look, her, her indictment not only is Georgia specific, it also touches a number in intersects
with a number of battleground states, in which some of her over-dacks or some of her rico claims
are tied to other states.
She's got that already.
She's got the former president overlay.
She's got Department of Justice in there.
She's got Mark Meadows in there.
I'm not saying that Lindsey Graham didn't commit his crime.
When he called up and pressured the Secretary of State and the governor to try to get absentee and
mail-in ballots thrown out.
I mean, Raffin's purger, the Secretary of State, said it was clear to him, this is his
testimony, that the reason that Lindsey Graham, a senator from another state, yes, who's
on the Judiciary Committee, but what does that have to do with anything?
That in 550 gets you a cup of coffee.
That's nothing to do with the certification process or his role in doing that.
But that he felt pressured to disenfranchise voters in Georgia because Graham was trying to do
the bidding for his cult leader, Donald Trump. And yes, that's a bad thing. But she didn't need to
take on the battle of Lindsey Graham and the others.
I think she might have already served her purpose knowing that the special purpose grand jury
report would be issued and that and knowing what was in it, right? She got the benefit
of knowing months in advance of her own indictment that now the the the body politic future voters
that now the body politic future voters now know of the criminal involvement and the almost indictment of Kelly Loffler, David Perdue, and Lindsey Graham.
When their obituaries are written in the first line of their obits, it's going to be that
they were recommended for indictment in Georgia for their role in overthrowing democracy.
Now the voters have if if Kelli Loughler ever runs for office again or tries to go after
Ossoff or Warnock, the senators or Purdue tries to come back from the dead. This is now she's now
tired and feathered them with that and Lindsey Graham too, but you're right. She having made the decision to go sprawling
in a way that Jack Smith made the decision to go surgical
and get his one defendant for count a trial
in May off the ground.
She didn't need to add up.
She didn't need these other layers.
It's already gonna to take her a
year to try the case. She's already pushing up against the November election. And this would have
just added, as you said, a level of complexity that really was unnecessary. The Special Purpose
Grand Jury report calling them out has served the purpose. And just so everybody remembers and is
in confused, the special purpose grand jury is different than the grand jury.
The special purpose grand jury makes recommendations. You don't have to use a special purpose grand
jury. It doesn't even exist in many other states. Every state has different types of rules
and procedures. It's just a unique procedure that exists in Georgia. And it's something
that Fawni Willis availed herself to to put 75 witnesses
before this special purpose grand jury.
They make recommendations.
You don't have to follow the recommendations.
You don't even have to show those recommendations
to the grand jury, the grand jury that ultimately
indicted on August 14th.
But this special purpose grand jury
is a criminal investigative tool.
And then the district attorney can take
the recommendations and do it as they please.
Want to talk also about this lawsuit filed by crew, CREW, and they filed a very powerful
disqualification case, probably the strongest one I've seen yet, just because of their reputation
and the lawyers who are involved.
The other ones are also, I think, I'm glad they're being filed and we're seeing more
and more filed, but, you know, crew also has a track record, and they've been the only
organization to successfully disqualify an insurrectionist before from running.
So they know what they're doing also and very surgical in these filing. So they brought an action in Colorado
under the 14th Amendment section 3. We've talked a lot about the 14th Amendment section 3 those who give aid and comfort and aid and a bet and insurrection are moment they engage in that conduct from holding office and constitutional scholars, including
many right wing, so-called originalist, federalist, conservative, say, Donald Trump is disqualified.
A lot of them momentum for the 14th Amendment Section 3 cases stems from the fact that
a group of people who consider themselves conservative originalists
said, Donald Trump's disqualified.
That's where it came from.
And then you had Judge Ludwig, a right-wing judge, also agree that he's disqualified.
And then you have kind of just constitutional scholars from all sides of the spectrum.
It's one thing everybody agrees with that Trump's disqualified.
That's why it's gaining steam.
Donald Trump responded to the Colorado State Court filing by seeking a removal
to federal court. You now know removal, right? This is a civil removal versus a criminal removal,
but the concept is the same. You have to say that there's some sort of federal jurisdiction. And then the organization crew very quickly pointed out to Donald Trump. You don't
have the ability to remove this because you don't even have the consent of the secretary of state
of Colorado who's also named in this action. And she's a necessary and indispensable party,
and she's already been served. And by the way, Donald Trump slayers,
you lied to the federal court and claim that she wasn't served.
If you just looked at the docket,
you would see that the Secretary of State
of Colorado had been served.
And therefore, State Court has jurisdiction on that basis
because there's not what's called
full diversity jurisdiction.
There is a state court,
there is a state actor in the case. And also more fundamentally, crew pointed out, there is an
Article 3 federal jurisdiction over cases like this. Case law is very clear. Again, state election
decisions are for states. And so it's not a federal thing in general. And so for those reasons that case should be remanded or sent back to State Court, Donald
Trump's lawyers didn't even oppose this motion.
But I do appreciate how crews spent more than 12 or 13 page motion, an unopposed motion.
They could have just done it in one sentence if it was unopposed.
And it would have got remanded.
But I think they wanted to educate the public also and everything that I just said what the law is there
But popok
Educate the public if you can't educate us on this ruling that took place in New York federal
Court where judge Lewis Kaplan
Granted E. Jean Carroll's motion for summary judgment. This is the E. Jean
Carroll one case that was filed in 2019, the E. Jean Carroll two case that was
filed in 2022 regarding Donald Trump's defamatory October 2022 statements as
well as the fact that there was the Adult Survivors Act which allowed cases for sexual abuse to be brought after the statute of
limitations in New York for this one year period. Those were the claims brought
in E. Jean Carroll too in 2022. That case went to trial. Jury Verdick, May of 2022.
Donald Trump was found liable, but Popeyes, that decision, that jury verdict, that finding,
right, something called collateral as stop all.
And there were that $5 million jury verdict had implications on the judges order, explain
that and how big is this?
So like, what's this trial going to be about?
Big, big, big news.
Donald Trump has already lost his second trial against E. Jean Carroll before it even
started because the judges ruled as a matter of law and as a matter of a doctrine that will do a little
teachable moment here called issue, preclusion or collateral, a stop all that which already
happened impacts what's what was going to happen. In other words, you don't get a second
trial to try to convince a second jury that the almost identical
defamatory statements that you made against your victim, that she is a hoaxer, that it
never happened.
Look at her.
I would never, I would never do that.
She's not my type as if there's a type for rape.
All of those statements, it's a shakeown that were identical to the statements that were already
tried by a jury in New York. He's not going to be able to try to convince another jury that very
exactly the same or virtually the same statements that were made in this case in 2019, almost identical
to the 2022 statements at the heart of the May jury verdict. It's hard to believe we talked about
at the top of the summer, and now we're here after Labor Day, because you don't get that right
under two different concepts in the law, because we don't waste scarce judicial resources and jury
time to try a case that's literally already been tried, and that's what happens to you as a defendant if you've already lost
once. And you have to, another reason he should have probably testified, but didn't. So let me explain
quickly. In the E. Jean Carroll case that went to trial that went to jury verdict in May, it was It was all about the statements that Donald Trump made in 2022
After he was president, they were all along the lines of what I just said
There's a series of things that he said denying he knew her denying that he touched her denying calling her a hoax
Dura fraud, shake down artists and the like and the jury also had a determined in that trial whether she had been raped,
sexually abused, or something akin to that under New York criminal law. That jury already decided
that all of those statements were defamatory and done with malice or actual malice because
they also found in the same breath that she had been sexually abused. They were this close to finding
that he had raped her under a very specific technical definition of rape under New York
law that requires a penis be involved and not digital rape, which is what she was able
to testify to that he put something else inside of her to, as a way to put it. And the
judge, whenever he writes
about the case, reminds Donald Trump that the case was about rape and that he was technically
found guilty of rape, no matter what he says. Because Donald Trump has tried and failed,
for instance, to bring claims against E. Jean Carroll, the victim, claiming that he's
been defamed because he didn't rape her. He sexually abused her. And the judge said, it's the same thing. And your case is dismissed.
And that happened about a month ago. Here, the judge said, let me look at the two sets of
statements, the 2022 statements that the jury already found were defamatory, having found
that you sexually abused her or raped her, as he said in his order.
And let me look at it in compared to the 2019.
And we may not even have to have a trial at all. Let me see.
And he said, you know what? They're almost identical.
And we have a word for that when something has been tried involving the same parties on the same issue.
We have a word for that, a doctrine for that under law.
It's called issue, preclusion, or what we used to call collateral,
a stop-al. And that means you can't litigate again.
You're precluded from litigating again.
That which you've already lost on from an issue basis.
There's also something in the law called claim,
preclusion, where if you have the exact same claim against you,
breach a contract, some sort of tort,
you can't litigate that either. That's usually called race,
judicata, or claim preclusion. But here we have issue preclusion, the issue of the defamatory statements.
And the judge said, there's two reasons you're not going to get another trial. And I'm going to find
for the plaintiff, E. Jean Carroll, again, on her second defamation case for you, leaving only the
amount of check that the jury is going to force you to pay in damages left for it a future trial.
That's the only trial you're going to get. And he said the other reason I'm going to do it is one is
issue preclusion. The other is we have a standard in federal court for summary judgment, which says that if as a
matter of law on an undisputed factual record, there are no facts in dispute. I'm going to apply the law and find as a
matter of law that that's
the family. Given the guidance I've already gotten from the jury in May. And so he said,
all right, there is no dispute of the public statements that were made by Donald Trump.
He could quibble which Donald Trump did in his briefing about, well, what I meant was,
but it says what it says. They're, he made statements on a social media. He made statements at rallies
and interviews. They're all public and that's undisputed. And on that undisputed factual record,
the Judd says, you'll lose for another reason because I'm going to find as a matter of law,
which is my right, I'm going to find that you committed defamation again with actual malice.
And then Trump tried to move for some re-judgment,
because why not?
He's there.
And he asked to have at least a credit for the amount
that he hasn't yet paid,
but the jury awarded her for $5 million.
He wants a credit because the new defamation
would overlap with the old defamation
and he should get a credit.
And the judges, I'm not doing that.
The jury is going to hear the evidence concerning the injuries that she suffered and the defamation
amounts put on by a presumed expert and E. Jean Carol testifying.
And they'll be the judge of literally of what the amount is that they're going to award
you.
So the end result is there will be a trial.
I don't know when given the fact that he's going to trial you. So the end result is there will be a trial. I don't know when,
given the fact that he's going to trial in criminal and civil cases, seven different times in
nine months, but somewhere in the near future, there's going to be a trial of Donald Trump, where
the jury is going to be told after that they are selected. And during the selection process,
that the judge has already ruled the Donald Trump defamed
E. Jean Carroll. You are to assume for the purposes of your deliberation on the amount
of damages that you are to assume and to find that there has already been a defamation.
The only thing left for you to do is determine if she's been damaged and by how much, how
big of a check. That's it. And it's very easy to go, well, that's easy.
And then you've got a smaller group of witnesses.
You've got E. Jean Carroll.
You've got psychological experts,
like she did in her first case,
and you've got probably an economist
who's gonna talk about the damages.
And then they're gonna go for punitive damages,
which is that category in our society
of punishment damages that aren't necessarily
tied to the actual damages suffered by somebody, which is done based on how much money they
have, right?
Mr. Braggard up the street at the Attorney General's case by Judge Angoran.
Braggard about the fact that his personal wealth is even greater than the Latisha James is arguing in that case.
Great, because the bigger your wealth, the bigger the punitive damages have to be in order to
make you suffer. Because if a jury says 100,000 in punitive damages and you're worth 5 billion,
that doesn't mean anything. You're carrying that around as pocket money. So they have to know how
much your net worth is. This is gonna be fun during that trial.
When Donald Trump, who used to brag about his net worth,
is now gonna shrink before the jury.
So, well, I really don't have as much money
as I said I had,
because he's gonna try to shrink the punitive damages.
But that's what's gonna happen in the near future.
Another win for justice, another great win
for Robbie Kaplan and her client, E. Jean Carroll.
E. Jean Carroll.
E. Jean Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, is going to take that deposition that Donald
Trump was just that was just released in the New York Attorney General's civil fraud
case. That's going to be evidence in the punitive damages as it relates to Donald Trump's
net worth. E. Jean Carroll's lawyer is going to take this briefing as Donald Trump is
boasting and frankly
lying about the amount of money he has, but EGIN carols lawyers are going to say, look,
here's what he claims that his net worth is, and that's actually one of the considerations
that are done when it comes to a punitive damages assessment.
Also recall that EGIN carols lawyer added amended this complaint to add the
fact for purposes of punitive damages that after Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse
and defamation in May, he did that so-called CNN town hall and then thereafter continued to defame
E. Jean Carroll, which goes to the importance of punitive damages here.
I think that E. Jean Carroll's lawyers are going to ask for somewhere in the range of $10
million in compensatory damages. And then I think they're going to ask for somewhere in
the range of $50 to $100 million in punitive damages. And I think they're going to say
the jury look, this number
may seem high, but the law says that it should be consistent with the net worth of an individual.
And we hope this is what E. Jean-Carrie's lawyer is going to say. And it's going to be so powerful.
Roberta Kaplan is going to say, we had hoped that after we prevailed in the first trial,
that she could just go on with her life and reclaim
her name and reclaim her reputation, we weren't even considering that we were going to have
to be here.
But then immediately thereafter, Donald Trump went on CNN in front of millions of people.
They're going to get data also that shows that not only was it viewed millions of times by
seeing it, by people watching CNN, but also the amount of impressions and views will be in the
hundreds of millions. Hundreds of millions of people saw Donald Trump make the same defamatory
statements about her. The purpose of punitive damages, ladies of the gentleman jury, is to punish to stop this behavior. The only
way we can stop this behavior is if you hit him where it hurts, which is in the pocketbook.
And so we're going to be requesting $100 million. I think that it'll be very similar
to that mark the tape. We will see what that argument is. But Popoq, I want to talk about
that.
I just want to say one thing, just one thing.
I like the $100 million number.
The only thing I think it's limited by is,
there is a body of Supreme Court precedent,
US Supreme Court precedent on punitive damages,
being a certain multiple of the actual damages
that are awarded.
And when it's not, so I'm not sure they're going to give her,
I agree with you on the 10 million, by the way.
I think it's 10 or 15 million in the actuals.
Even with him arguing that there's an overlap between the prior, even though he's not going
to get a credit for it, the prior payment.
But so maybe it's only three or four or five times that.
It's still $50 million.
I'm just not sure they're going to be able to do discipline court president, get a 10 multiplier on top of actuals.
But it'll be a huge number.
And it'll be the right number because, you know, E. Jean Carroll can never recover what
she's lost.
I mean, she testified in her trial that in the ensuing 30 or 40 years, she has not ever
had another, no, not another.
She's never had a romantic relationship with a man
after what happened to her in that dressing room.
Yeah, you know, it'll be interesting to see, you know, that there's of course the BMW
of North America, Inc. V Gore case, was the case that you referenced by the Supreme Court,
you know, you know, five times, ten times, you know, what that multiple will be, it's going to be up there.
It's going to be a significant number, though, and we will keep everybody posted there.
But you mentioned this New York attorney general case.
We're going to be talking a lot more about it, the civil fraud case.
It's going to trial.
October 2nd, Arthur and Goran said, come hell or high water.
It's going to trial many, many months back.
We've been keeping you updated here on legal AF.
This is the civil fraud case civil, meaning damages.
It's not criminal.
This is being prosecuted by New York attorney general, the Tisha James, the only Trump
family member who's squirmed out of it by basically pointing to the other family members
is Ivanka.
Trump, she's no longer in it,
but the other Trump adult baby kids, kids are in it, as well as, you know, Trump, people
who work at the Trump organization, the trust that Trump runs, the revocable trust in
all of the various kind of Trump entities, and New York Attorney General, Alicia James,
is seeking $250 million on the low end
based on her summary judgment filings. We believe that to be, she's going to be requesting significantly higher
because she said that Trump's net worth has been inflated by billions of dollars every single year.
She put that in her summary judgment with some great charts also, which basically show
what his actual net worth is, how much it's inflated by real meticulous work.
And by the way, she says in her filings, look, I'm accepting the data provided by Trump's
own people.
That's why this is undisputed.
So for example, if you just look at the apartment where Trump lives, Trump claims it's 30,000
square feet, and that's how he gets a valuation of $237 or $300 million.
Okay, well, if it's actually 10,000 square feet, so just take the numbers, multiply it by
10,000 square feet, and the delta is how much he's inflated it by.
And so there's just some concrete data
that she's saying to the judge,
you can't dispute these facts that these are lies.
And then by the way, you go into his deposition,
he claims he has a worthless clause
or he can lie about everything.
Folks, there's no such thing as a worthless clause.
It's probably somebody just telling Trump
that his disclaimer is worthless because his former,
because his former accounting for am for measures puts in the disclaimer.
You can't rely on us, measures rely on Donald Trump and Donald Trump thinks that that means that
his lies to people are make his statement to financial conditions worthless so he can't be sued.
That's just not the law. It's utterly absurd.
New York Attorney General Titia James not only seeking that $250 million in damages,
but she's also seeking injunctive relief that would effectively shut down the Trump organization
from doing business in the state of New York, again, which would basically shut the business
down period. This is a big, big case folks and Donald Trump filed a motion
for summary judgment to try to get the case dismissed. New York attorney general, Latisha
James filed a motion for summary judgment. Similar to the concept that we just talked about
with E. Jean Carroll filing a motion for summary judgment, except not involving collateral
of stop all and preclusion and all of of that just basically telling the judge though look
There aren't any disputed facts right in the E. Jean Carroll case
There's no disputed facts because here's what a jury already decided that's called issue
Proclusion here New York Attorney General Attisha James is saying to the judge
There's no disputed facts because here are the facts
Here are the facts judge in a 30,000 Judge. It ain't 30,000 square feet.
It's 10,000 square feet. Here's what the appraisal is. Here's his absurd valuation. This is just
objective data, Your Honor. And by the way, he is Trump is, it's one thing if he comes up with
evaluation for a property and sticks with it on all of his filings. But here he's saying to the IRS, it's
valued at this. He's saying to the taxing authorities, it's this. He's telling you
the banks, it's this. So, Judge, you have to just look at his own filings. There is no
dispute about the fraudulent valuations taking place. So again, Judge, just make, allow this
case to be just about damages, find Donald Trump liable for the underlying fraudulent
valuations without even having to do a trial. So what did Donald Trump want to do? Donald Trump,
they filed the 20-page motion, delay, delay, delay, telling Judge Arthur and Goron,
could we just have a three-week delay judge so that we can see what your summary judgment order is first before the trial, Michael Popak, what a judge
and go around do.
Last week we said, isn't it weird
that Donald Trump didn't file a motion
to stop the case from going forward on October the second,
given how close it was?
You know what I was scratching her head,
it's like, you know, this is not like Donald Trump.
This is the Donald Trump that I know. Donald Trump that I know tries to throw every monkey wrench
and sand in the gears possible to try to delay anything that's going on against him,
including this one, which could cripple his business. But, you know, he was eerily silent.
And then all of a sudden, we get the filing, which is, well, judge, there's summary judgment.
So we need a gap, as you said. And the judge said, I told you a year ago, El or High Water, his words,
judges words, we're going to trial in October.
And we're going to trial in October second.
So you better be ready.
And that's going to be, I assume Chris Kice,
who we haven't heard much about lately, even though he's technically on the papers
in, pardon me, on the criminal
case down in Florida. And not Alina Habba because she's hung up her spurs, she's retired from the
practice of law. She's just out there lying away on right wing media as the head of his pack or
the legal director for his pack. But her partner apparently is going to be trying the case against
but her partner apparently is going to be trying the case against Godzilla, which is the New York Attorney General's office and Leticia James. Under there, the most robust and muscular
of law out there for any Attorney General on the civil side is Leticia James a 63-12 under
the executive law. It gives her so much, so much powers. You and I keep talking about
because that was the last time we've heard her say it, that this is a $250 million
discouragement case, meaning taking ill-gotten gains and ripping it away from the party and making
them discourage it, throw it up. But I'm not sure it's that anymore. Because if she's right,
that there's a valuation issue here problem and it's gone now up in a week from, she said
last week, it was a two and a half billion dollar misstatement by Donald Trump. Now in
her recent filing, she said it was a three up to a three and a half billion dollar or just
over it, misstatement and its financial condition.
Then I think by extension, the amount that he borrowed and all and the values that have
been up and down, I think it's more than $250 million and we'll see.
The issue of the remedy that she's seeking is to basically put the company that he inherited
from his father, Fred Trump, out of business if she's successful.
And that he and all of the children, not Tiffany, but all the rest of the adult children besides
Ivanka and Tiffany will never be able to serve as New York corporate officers ever again.
That doesn't mean they can't form another corporation somewhere else in some red state,
which is what they've
either done or they're planning to do.
In fact, a year ago, she caught Donald Trump trying to set up a Trump organization corporate
entity in Delaware to try to get away from her, because the reason she has authority over
him, there's only two ways that an attorney general has authority over you.
You either are doing business in that state, which they are.
I mean, they're headquarters as at the Trump Tower and next to Tiffany's on Fifth Avenue
and all.
I pass it almost every day, but I'm off to work.
And the second is if you're incorporated in that state or both.
So look for once they're no longer, and they get the scarlet letter, impressed on them,
burned on them by Latisha James if she wins.
They'll just form another company with another name in Florida, or in Alabama, or Mississippi,
or South Carolina, or even Delaware, and try to do it that way. Because now, if they're in a regulated entity,
they're going to have to always admit forever more that they've been barred
from being a public officer of a company.
If they're going for a loan, which you assume they're going to,
because they usually don't spend their own money,
as we've seen from their grift of raising it from small donors
and getting investors to give it to them. They'll have to it. They'll have to if they need a
banking or lending relationship, they're going to have to admit forever more on their questionnaire
that they have been found to have committed civil fraud and are barred from being officers in a
in New York state. Our certain banks going to look past that some might, but the ones that are publicly traded and owe their shareholders a
fiduciary duty, I'm not sure where Donald Trump will do his banking in the
near future or in the future if he is found liable for civil fraud. And if I was
a betting man watching the Latisha James and her team of season professionals
and investigators who have developed this case over the last three years, and Donald Trump represented
by Chris Kies who operates out of a two-person law firm based in Tallahassee, Florida, and Coral Gables, Florida, two people.
Maybe they have a paralegal.
Make it three people.
And Mediah at the Haba Mediah Law firm, which sits in Bedminster, New Jersey, doesn't practice
law in New York.
If they try to case in New York, I haven't been able to find it.
I'm this, listen, you know, Muhammad Ali, we talked about him recently about Donald Trump's
height and weight.
Muhammad Ali used to make a prediction about what round he was going to knock out his opponent.
This is going to be a knockout pretty quickly with this jury and then they're going to be
off on a pill.
They are going, my view, I know they're going to try to argue there was a victimless crime.
There were no victims.
The banks were all happy.
I took out too much money, but I paid it all back.
That's not how the crime that you're being, the fraud that you're being charged with works.
And I think that the litigia, James and her people are going to be able to explain that
to a Manhattan-based jury that is going to pull from a tremendously blue democratic progressive
jury pool.
And I think he loses loses along with the children and
the company big time. And I think we'll get a jury verdict starts in October. I think
it'll be over before the month is over. And you and I will be talking about a jury verdict
end of October beginning of November.
I agree with you there 100% Pope. One of Trump's arguments on summary judgment, which New York attorney general
Leticia James says, it's unmoored from reality and prior judicial rulings is Trump argues
that he has a statute of limitations, defense.
And what New York attorney general Leticia James points out is, Donald Trump, you made
this exact argument to the appellate division.
There's actually an appellate division holding on point here, which says that you are wrong.
The fact is that you put forward all of these statements of financial conditions and you
put them out into the public within the relevant period for the statute of limitations here,
which is a six year statute of limitations extending through, I think it was February 6th of 2016.
And Trump, you're claiming that when the loan transaction closed, that that is when
the statute of limitation should be, it's when you committed the fraudulent conduct, which
all of those are within that six year statute of limitation period, not when artificially
a transaction closed and the person didn't realize
they were defrauded, that would go against every legal principle. So that's the one technical
argument Trump made. That's how New York Attorney General Leticia James rebutted it, but a lot,
a lot, a lot happening this week and a lot is going to be happening in the coming weeks as well as
we start preparing for all of these trials that we have been talking about
and that everybody here on Legal AF now knows about and knows what to look for. And as Pope
Bakken, I always say, Pope Bakken, I have opinions and we'll share with you our feelings and our opinions,
but we don't lead with that. Try to give you as much data and evidence as possible that you make the decision.
If you agree with our opinions, great. If you don't agree with our opinions, great. But
know that our opinions are coming from a place of evidence, the law, and painstaking research,
which we show you here each and every week on.
Are we going to do, you think we're going to be able to do a
mightest touch legal a f feed of the chest pro powell trial in October since
it's televised. We're definitely making plans to live stream the trials and we
want to balance though live streaming the trials with all of the breaking
news that's going to be happening in all of the other
cases and all of and just in general in our country. So we're coming up right now actually with
the strategy of how do we live we can do both at the same time on
and chew gum. But how do we do that in a way that's user friendly and
you know and make sure that we keep hitting the breaking
news?
But we will be discussing that soon.
But of course, we're not going to miss any of the key breaking news and elements here
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