Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Gets CRUSHED by Law in WORST WEEK Yet

Episode Date: August 20, 2023

Anchored by Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok, the Weekend edition of the top-rated news analysis podcast, Legal AF, is back for another hard-hitting look at the most consequential developments at the intersection of law and politics. The anchors discuss: 1. New developments in the Georgia indictment of Trump and 18 others, including arrest and booking, the doxing of the grand jury, and state v. federal court issues that have arisen; 2. New developments in the Mar a Lago indictment of Trump including pressure on Judge Cannon on issues related to the review of confidential documents, lawyer representation and her trial date; 3. The upcoming hearing before Federal Judge Chutkan in DC to set the trial for Trump's election interference indictment, including her reaction to Trump's attacks on prosecutors, judges, and grand jurors since she last warned him about his conduct; 4. the likelihood of all or any of the 4 criminal trials against Trump going to trial before the Election; 5. the indictment of George Santos' chief fundraiser for impersonating Speaker McCarthy's chief of staff in a fundraising grift; 4. The DOJ seeking over 30 year sentences for the Proud Boys leadership who were convicted of seditious conspiracy, and so much more. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! RHONE: Head to https://rhone.com/legalaf and use code LEGALAF to save 20% off your entire order!| BETTERHELP: This is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://BetterHelp.com/LEGALAF today to get 10% off your first month and get on your way to being your best self! 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 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

A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia in Didadon, Donald Trump, and 18 co-defendants this week in a sprawling, rico criminal case for crimes relating to the 2020 election. ages, 41 counts, and 30 additional unindicted co-conspirators, over 160 over-axx identified in the indictment and furtherance of the criminal enterprise led by Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, Giuliani, Eastman, Clark, Chesbro, Powell, and others are all co-defendants in the action, Fulton County, District Attorney, Fawney Willis was fiercely in that indictment. Now, that the investigation is done, the criminal case has been brought in indictments handed down. The prosecution begins and events unfolded fast and furious this week in that

prosecution. Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows filed a notice of removal to try to get the case transferred to federal court. A hearing on that removal is going to be taking place pretty soon. Fulton County District Attorney, Fawni Willis then filed a motion for a scheduling order

requesting a trial date of March 4th of 2024. A few weeks before the Manhattan District Attorney criminal case against Donald Trump for fraudulent classification of hush money payments to an adult film actress is set to go to trial. Donald Trump then said that he was going to holiday press conference, which he soon thereafter retracted stated he would holiday press conference where he had a super secret report that no one has seen yet, that the courts haven't seen yet, that nobody has been provided where he said he was going to prove that the 2020 election was stolen. But like the coward, he was then canceled that event. So he does what Donald Trump always does, which is to threaten funny willis, threaten witnesses, and engage in other truly despicable and heinous

conduct. We then turn south to Florida where Trump appointed federal judge Eileen Cannon is making a complete and utter mess of her. Docent, her corruption matched by her incompetence in the case where Donald Trump was indicted for willful retention of national defense information by a grand jury where special counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting that matter. Donald Trump filed an unusual notice before Judge Cannon basically asking her for help to please do something about the other case brought by special counsel Jack Smith where Trump was indicted by a grand jury in Washington DC for crimes relating to the 2020 election in Washington DC is the Donald Trump filed a brief requesting a trial date in that matter for April 20, 26, essentially trolling and testing federal judge, Tonya Chutkin,

who presides over that case. Then in Florida, that's when Trump filed that notice with Judge Cannon asking her to do something and arguing that Jack Smith requesting the January 2nd, 2024 trial date before Judge Chutkin now conflicts with the date set by Judge Cannon in December 2023, even though the Canon trial is set for May of 2024. Doesn't make much sense. We'll get pop-ok to break that down. Also, speaking about not making any sense or simply making a lot more crimes, a top campaign aid for Maga Republican member of Congress, George Santos, Santos is under indictment for wire for it.

Well, the top campaign aid was just indicted this past week also for wire fraud for impersonating Kevin McCarthy's chief of staff to illegally funnel campaign contributions to Santos and take commissions. What is pathetic Kevin McCarthy doing or saying? Oh, can you hear that? I think I hear some crickets.

Last, the Department of Justice is seeking its longest prison sentences yet in any of the criminal cases against those involved in the January 6th insurrection against the proud boy terrorists who were convicted like Enrique Tariot and Joe Biggs and others seeking over 30 years in prison. ominous for Donald Trump, but perfectly beautiful for our legal justice system and law and order. This is legal AF. I'm Ben Myceles joined by Michael Popak, you know, just a quiet week, a quiet week, Popak.

We don't have much to talk about. First, let me apologize. I did a 19 minute hot take about the new date for Georgia that was proposed, first proposed by, or for DC that was proposed by Donald Trump. And I did the entire hot take with the wrong year. But that, it happens, man. We're moving fast. But I like to be right. And so I apologize for that. One organizing principle for today's show, as you like to say, sometimes a popokian logic organizing principle is sort of my view and your view about what's most likely to go to trial against Donald Trump before

the election. I think there's a couple of immutable facts. One, they're not all going to trial before the November 2024 election. It's just impossible. I know he's to blame for his own predicament, but there are just too many criminal trials to pack into too short a period of time. The ones that are really important to democracy and to the justice system is to get the guy tried for clinging to power about the office that he's currently

running for. That is something that the voters should know before they go to the poll in November, whether he's a convicted felon for that. So for me, the one that is most likely to get tried before November, 2024, and done surgically, as we've said before, is Jack Smith's new indictment in the district of Columbia in front of Judge Chuck and four counts, one defendant, Donald Trump. That one has to go and likely will go. The others will talk about the 98 page Georgia indictment. I have a copy of it here. We flashed it on the board with 19 total co-conspirators. That is not, I'm just, I don't mean to burst bubbles. That is not going to trial before November of 2024.

And I'll give you my rationale for that. Although I think those are the top two cases that need to go. Jack's got the most likely chance of going to trial. Mara Lago is falling quickly for me into third position in terms of its, if it's being tried. And again, I don't think that's a bad thing. You got a judge that you've already criticized, and so if I judge Canon, who Jack Smith

would rather not be in front of, and fortunately, fortunately his bigger more important impactful case for democracy is in front of Judge Chutkin. So I think Mar-a-Lago starts falling way, way back and may not get tried in 2024 either. We'll talk about that. And then Stormy Daniels up in New York, while important Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor has already said, I'll take a backseat to everybody. Let the feds go first. So he said that on a press conference, an interview a month ago. So he's going to fall way off the pace. So we're going to clear out him. And then all

those civil cases that are interesting and are important, like Eugene Carroll's second case of punitive damages and defamation and the Ponzi pyramid scheme against Donald Trump, the $250 million civil fraud case brought by the attorney general, all important stuff. They're not getting tried before November. They're going to fall way back behind the back. We got to get Jack Smith's case going first. And I think George, I think George's case, I want to hear your opinion when we get there. I think George's case, while important, sprawling, robust, muscular 19 people, 13 counts,

four conspiracies, ain't going to try. She knows she's not going to trial before November. We'll give the four or five reasons why I don't think she goes to trial before November of 2024. Off to a booming start here on legal AF. Popok begins by acknowledging a mistake that he made goes into letting everybody know that a lot of these cases are not going to go to trial. But that's why that's why here in legal AF. I can say a lot of these cases are not going to go to trial. But that's why that's why here in legal AF, I can say a lot of things about legal AF, but the breakdown that you're going to

get is going to be analyzing the data with as much accuracy as possible. There may be some disagreements that Popeye and I have, but I think the broader takeaway is that in 2024 though, there is going to be a trial, a criminal case involving Donald Trump. And specifically, we both agree, we both think that special counsel, Jack Smith's case against Donald Trump for crimes relating to the 2020 election, that that is at least one of the trials that will go. I think there will be at least two criminal trials that will go in 2024. Both, let's be very clear, have the consequence of putting Donald Trump in prison, though,

for a very long period of time. And towards the end of the show, and we talk about the types of sentences that the Department of Justice is requesting for terrorist groups like the proud boys were their defenses. We were following what we believe Donald Trump was telling us to do. I can assure you that special counsel Jack Smith will be seeking many many many years and what would essentially amount to a lifetime in prison for Donald Trump. The one thing I'll say from the outset Popeyes though is I think the Manhattan district attorney case in March probably stays in March Depending on when special counsel Jack Smith's cases set in Washington, DC, that there's a status

conference there scheduled for August 28th of this month where Judge Chutkin is going to make the decision. Should we go with Donald Trump's proposal, the trolling proposal where Trump just filed a motion this week seeking April 2026, or as Judge Chutkin previously admonished Donald Trump's lawyers at a hearing held on August 11th, regarding the protective order. If Donald Trump continues to harass, continues to intimidate witnesses, and engage in this carnival-like behavior on the internet. Judge Chutkin said she is more inclined to set the trial date as an earlier trial date.

I think hinting out that Jack Smith's proposal would be the one that she is more likely to follow through on. But we'll break that down in more detail. but I think the headline is Trump will be going to a criminal trial in 2024 and also let's not forget about New York attorney general latisha james civil fraud case which as of now seems ready to go for October of 2023 where latisha james is seeking on behalf of the state of New York over the Tisha James is seeking on behalf of the state of New York, over $250 million against Donald Trump for fraudulent financial valuations and also an injunction effectively shutting down the Trump organization from doing business. But let's travel to Fulton County, Georgia.

We've done numerous hot takes. I don't just want to be fully duplicative, Pop pop up of all of the previous takes that we've done. But in a summary fashion, if you can, walk us through this sprawling, racketeering, criminal case, brought by the Fulton County District Attorney's office, where a grand jury indicted, it was the jury, the grand jury voted the last Monday. We were expecting the date to be closer to Tuesday, but 18 co-defendants, some names that we all know, some fake electors and others who are involved in things like breaking into the coffee county election offices,

dealing election data, but very detailed, very specific. Popo, tell us about this. Yeah, I'll open up a couple of threads for you and I to bat around about Georgia as well. And it will eventually get to my point about why I don't think based on, I'm not saying she should not have brought this indictment. We always thought it was going to be big sprawling muscular, lots of counts, civil, rico, criminal, rico at its heart under the Georgia Rico statute, racketeering conspiracy statute,

and lots of people. I said a baker's dozen. It was a little bit more than a baker's dozen of defendants. But because of that and state court and fights over some people going to federal court, we'll talk about that. Next, I just don't see this happening before on her date and six months

or even before November. We'll get there. Let's talk about just the broad strokes of the indictment itself. We've got, of course, Donald Trump, and I'll break it down to the little sub-buckets of defendants. You've got Team Crazy, which is his attorneys, I'm putting that, that word is using of is a very heavy lift in that sentence. Quotes, air quotes, attorneys that were indicted.

Sydney Powell, the Kraken, we'll leave it at that. Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Ken Cheesebro. Those are the lawyer group. The picture there has Mark Meadows in there. The lawyer group is the group that ran around the state of Georgia and all the other battleground states doing various things, holding phony, legislative hearings, pressuring, legislative, legislator speakers of the house, as secretaries of state, local willing, GOP, MAGA party heads, and then help, help run the ground game on the fake electors, meeting in secret on the second floor of the Georgia

State House in Atlanta, while the regular real electors were meeting on the first floor at the same time. So they're at the heart. That's one group, right? And Ken Cheeseborough, who along with John Eastman, I left out John Eastman. John Eastman, also part of Team Crazy. Cheeseboro and Eastman are the absent-minded constitutional

law professors who come up with the scheme that which they don't even believe in their own writings is ever going to work at the Supreme Court level or a constitutional level to have Mike Pence recognize this fake electors in order to do what I want to clear up something. The defense when they're on television keeps saying all we wanted Mike Pence was to do to do was pause.

Just take a break. Go get a Coke, Mike, while we go out and do an audit or we let the state houses take a look at that thing. That is not the end result of the scheme. The end result of the scheme was either Mike Pence's Mike Pence recognized the fake electors as real electors and declared Joe Biden the loser and Donald Trump the winner or say, I can't figure out I can't make heads or tails of it. It goes to the state houses and. It goes to the state houses. And when it goes to the state houses and it gets voted by state house, there are more Republican and Democratic state houses in the country.

And they would have voted for Donald Trump, a la, and they would have, and he would have been the president by way of that vote, like in the 1860s. Okay. That was, so it's not first the men that we were just having a chat with Mike Pence. And see what do you, what do you would do? That's first group of defendants. Next group of defendants are the fake electors who aren't cooperating, who are not cooperating with Faudiwellis.

She has eight that are, but a bunch that aren't, including David Schaefer, who's the head of the former head of the Republican Party for Georgia, and a couple of other people affiliated with that. Another one or two Georgia lawyers who were involved in the scheme, and then you got Misty Hampton, who along with Kathleen, Kathy Latham, are, and a few other people, are the coffee county watergate style break-in,

except they open the front door for the burglars this time, and let them, along with cyber ninjas, go in and download, vote confidential and private voter data in order to then use it to try to promote the big lie, which is the fraud that happened in Georgia that gave the election to Joe Biden. And so those people all got caught up in the conspiracy. And the good thing about the conspiracy,

and then a few people that just to leave the last little batch of of of the 19 total are there's a group that also pressured election and election workers like Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, including Kanye West's former stylist. Don't ask. And a reverent and and another person who who tried to pressurize Ruby Freeman to say that bad things were happening in Fulton County, stadium during the election county that wasn't happening. She's also the plaintiff that's suing successfully Rudy Giuliani and a major right wing MAGA network for defaming her for saying that she stuffed the ballot box with phony Joe Biden ballots when all she was doing was counting and

putting discarded counted ballots away in a lock box under her desk. And when she, when they said that she was passing, for instance, a thumb drive containing, you know, votes for Biden, I don't know where it was, she and her daughter passing a mint M-I-N-T between each other, like a piece of candy. Okay. So then within there, the heart of the indictment, of course, is the Georgia Rico Statue. And that, under the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organization Act, allows a prosecutor

to do a very broad speaking indictment, which connects all of the co-conspirators together, like a bicycle, think of a bicycle wheel, hub in the middle, that's Donald Trump, and the spokes around it are all the other people doing bad things. You need two underlying crimes, and then a series of overt acts. The indictment lists 161 overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy,

and now you can pin on each one of these defendants, co-conspirators, the bad acts of the other, even if they weren't directly involved. So you're in for a penny in a conspiracy, you're in for a pound. You didn't do the break in and coffee county and download the data. Like, let's just say Jenna Ellis. Here's here's I love this video. It's like literally a video of Watergate, except, you know, somebody opens the door for them, like this person, Kathy Latham. So, Jenna Ellis is not accused of going into coffee county and breaking into the servers, like these people,

but she's only up and, she's only doing a bag holding, litigation bag holding for Rudy Giuliani and filing crazy lawsuits and pressuring let state legislatures, okay? But she's responsible for what happened in coffee county and let them responsible for the bad things that Giuliani did and Trump's responsible for it all, right? Jenna Ellis may not have been on the phone call, the quote unquote perfect phone call by Donald Trump to get Brad Rathin's perger to throw out 11,000, almost 12,000 votes, mail in an absentee ballots, but she's responsible

for it. And then there's a series of unindicted co-conspirators that are mentioned and we can figure out a few of them, meaning just as Jack Smith has a series of unindicted co-conspirators and there's some overlap between the two of them. They could be indicted really, really soon. Roger Stone, new video suggesting he was more involved with creating the fake electric scandal and scheme than before, could be indicted by either one or both of them and really should be. She, the interesting thing for me, and I'll end the indictment

overview on this. The interesting thing for me in the indictment was who Fanny Willis indicted that we believe was in some capacity cooperating with Jack Smith. Just shows you what a state prosecutor can do. She's like, all right, Mark Meadows may be talking to Jack Smith. He's not talking to me and he's a bad guy. I'm inditing Mark Meadows. Mike Roman, who is the ground game head of election day activities for Donald Trump and was really the courier to get all the electoral,

fake electoral certificates together and deliver them to National Archive and Mike Pence. We believe he's cooperating based on what we've seen with Jack Smith and wasn't named in the indictment. He's indicted in Georgia. And so, you know, this lack of coordination is now Jack Smith having to pick up the pieces about it all.

The last thing that's the threat I want to open that we'll talk you and I will talk about here is what of course happened with the grand jury being virulately racist based and violently attacked by Donald Trump supporters while he sits idly by and does absolutely nothing to stop it. Sound familiar? Like when Jan 6 was happening while he was diddling in the dining room. Same thing here. I mean, by Georgia law, they had a list of 20, the 23 grand jurors that indicted by name. But that didn't mean that his followers and on the not only on the far right dark web, also on the truth social for Donald Trump getter.

They're listing their date of birthplace of employment, where they live, social media, who they donate to, and saying that they're signed their own death warrant. We're coming to kill you. You guys, if they're black, you're the N word, and the like. And what is Donald Trump doing? You know, nothing.

Zero. And this is all playing out in front of Judge Tonya Chuck and we'll get to next about what she's gonna do next about this. It's gonna be very difficult to pick a jury and he knows it in Georgia based on this. There's not a jury now, a juror, a potential juror that doesn't know what happened to the grand jury

and isn't gonna be loath and reticent about serving on this jury. You know, just like January 6th, you wanna talk about overt acts, right? Donald Trump encouraging, inciting, aiding and abetting the conduct. And then when the conduct takes place to your point pop, doing absolutely nothing about it. And then also making more posts on his social

media platform to encourage it and to reward the threats to reward the behavior. I want to talk about right now. Here it is, for example, right here attacking all of the various judges on a social media platform. I mean, every half hour, he's on that social media platform, saying disgusting and hateful things about the judges' prosecutors and witnesses. But I want to go back to the point you raised earlier in the show, which is you don't believe, Popoq, that a sprawling Rico indictment with all of these defendants, while this is a incredibly powerful criminal case that was brought incredibly detailed, whereas Special Counsel Jack Smith

went very surgical and Jack Smith could have filed a thousand page indictment if you wanted to. Jack Smith could have charged Donald Trump with similar federal based recost at yous, although the state law of Georgia recost at youd is more powerful, it is more sprawling in its kind of scope and expansive nature. But Jack Smith could have dealt with the financial crimes

committed by Trump, but Jack Smith very surgically wanted a 2024 trial date and to do that limited the counts that he brought in both of the cases. But specifically, you talk about the 2020 election case against Trump for the crimes committed by Trump in 2024 counts could have brought 4,000 if he wanted to, but he brought four. She brought this sprawling indictment with all of these individuals and what's going to happen. They're all going to have lawyers.

They're all going to file tons of motions and appeals. And you know, they're just as a data point, I don't think there has ever been in Fulton County, Georgia or Georgia, a racketeering case one, this expansive and that has gone to trial in under a year if we're just analyzing the data. And we already see the moves that are starting to potentially cause delay. So Mark Meadows, for example, filed a notice of removal to take the case from state court to federal court. We would anticipate that Donald Trump is going to seek a removal as well.

The only other person there who I think has the opportunity to at least classify themselves as a federal officer would be Jeff Clark, who was the corrupt DOJ attorney who tried to overthrow the elections and have states throw away their results. It was almost the point in acting attorney general for a period of time right there. So in order for a removal to take place, what people would have to show, the defendants would have to show is one, they're a federal official, two, they're acting under the color of law and three, they have a credible defense under federal law. We saw Donald Trump try to do this removal in the Manhattan district attorney case and failed there.

The case got removed to remember Southern District Federal Judge. We talked about it here on Legalaya. Judge Hellerstein and Judge Hellerstein basically said, okay, I'll accept that Donald Trump is a federal official for the sake of argument, but he wasn't acting under the color of law when he made hush money payments and misclassified it to an adult film star.

That's not under the color of law of what you do, and you don't have credible federal defenses. That's just not what people in federal offices do. So you're gonna see Fulton County District Attorney, Foney Willis argue what we've seen argued in some civil cases against Donald Trump that were not on the issue of removal but on the issue of presidential immunity.

For those legal AF watchers, you probably remember when we talked about the civil cases for personal injury and wrongful death filed against Donald Trump in Washington, DC where Trump has been claiming presidential immunity saying he was acting in the course in scope. And if he acts within the course in scope of his federal duties on January 6th, he would get absolute immunity. But in DC, we saw federal judge Amit Mehta, and even the DC Circuit basically say,

trying to rip apart and overthrow the democracy in this unique setting is one of the very small areas where someone who held the executive office was not acting under color of law. So Trump's argument there was rejected. I expect Fulton County District Attorney Fony Willis to make that same type of argument trying to destroy the Constitution is not under color of law. But there are some other considerations. Pope, I want to hear your take about because the federal judge, judge Steve Jones, who Mark Meadows removed the case to an Obama pointy law and order, no nonsense judge.

And when we take a look at the judge who's been assigned to the case in Fulton County, the state court judge, that's Judge Scott McAfee who's been a judge for about six months, seems like a law and order guy, but was appointed by the Republican governor, Brian Campy hasn't run for election yet, the way he got his judgeship at the state level is appointment, just a unique, you know, federal judges are appointed, state judges are appointed, but in many states also then have to run for election to keep their judgeship or run in the first place. So the ultimate question I want to ask you is, here's what we've got. Here's the lay of the land right now, right? We've got a Fannie Willis requesting in a scheduling order a March 4th, 2024 trial date with all

of the defendants that's likely to cause a lot of delay with all of the motions. But what if this was a miscalculation in a way? Now that this case goes before federal judge Jones and now if Trump were to remove it, there would probably be a notice of related case so that the case would go, so that the case would go before Judge Jones. And if you're Fonnie Willis, do you think to yourself, well, maybe what I do is this is like an elegant solution.

I now take the case against Trump and Meadows and maybe Clark in federal court, and then I can try all of the kind of wacko bozo, but seriously dangerous criminals in the state case. And is that a solution? I want to hear your take, Michael Pope, about what you think about that. And then let's talk briefly about what's been going on before Judge Cannon, what's going on in Washington, DC Judge Chuck in the first let's take a quick break. This is Michael Popok from Legal AF. If you like me you understand the pains of choosing what to wear. Let's face it, most clothes are uncomfortable or too tight

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That's better H E L P dot com slash legal a f. Welcome back to legal a f and of course I want to remind everybody about the new home page for all things might as touch that's mightestouch.com. You can follow along with the court documents and get a look at all of the breaking news even while we are live right here. Mightestouch.com with our fearless new editor and chief Ron Philip Kowski who is doing an incredible job with a great team over there where we last left off Michael Popak we were talking about the removal by Mark Meadows what we anticipate to be a removal by Trump and Jeff Clark as well a hearing on the

removal evidentiary hearing will be set in the next few weeks. It's already scheduled. Mark Meadows lawyers are saying, hey, let's not delay the Meadows removal hearing because others are going to seek a removal. What do you make of this? All right. Well, let's first talk about removal, what it means, and then I'll answer your question about the impact on faulty willis's decision making, and then I'll end it with why I think this does this means whether it's in federal court,

state court, or some high-bred for Fondi Willis and it going in March. And I don't think it's going before November. Doesn't mean justice isn't going to be done. Doesn't mean a case or two won't happen. I just don't think this is the one. And I think she knew that when she brought the indictment. If she wanted a guarantee that it was going to happen before March, then you would an indictment like that looks like all had all she had to do is look over at Jack Smith's in terms of removal.

Just to reopen the class on that, the law school class that we do here on legal A F, the reason that people like Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, Jeff Clark, and maybe others and I'll leave a dot, dot, dot, there and explain why. Those that say they were acting under the color of a federal officer, under the color of his office, sometimes get the benefit of removal under this particular statute that we're talking about. To take the case, just the case, not the law, and it doesn't shed the prosecutor. It doesn't shed the Georgia law. It just takes

it to a different courthouse across the street in federal court. So some people might be asking, why would you bother doing that? Well, first of all, it changes the jury pool makeup. The jury pool for Fulton County is just like Atlanta proper. And the one for the northern district of Georgia for the federal court is a broader pool. pool may pull in, it's still red, it's still blue, but it may pull in a couple of other maggot people. So that's one, two, there's a delay that's inherently baked into this process. They're going to move for removal, which they've already had. The judge assigned judge, Joan sets up briefing schedule. Then he holds evidentiary hearing. That all played out over about a month and a half up in New York when it was tried there.

Let's just say it's the same month and a half or two months now before a ruling comes out. Well, that delays the trial of any case until that issue gets resolved. And then others are now watching. Yes, the law, I agree with you, Ben. They'll be assigned to the same judge Jones and Obama pointy, but, but, um, they're all filed their briefs and the judge is going to have to make the ultimate decision. One, jury pool, two, two, it puts the, it slides the case over if you're going to have a

federal defense, which the only one I can think of is they're going to try to argue some sort of supremacy clause under the Constitution for the federal officers. I don't think executive privilege works, but supremacy clause privilege or supremacy privilege may, it may work in terms of having a viable defense. I'm not saying it works in a courtroom. And so they'll try to argue that in front of the judge that they have this defense. And we should stay here. They then get the benefit of the federal appellate system, appeal system, not the system that leads to the Georgia Supreme Court, but the one that leads to the US Supreme Court through the 11th Circuit, which is the court

that also sits over Florida, that's based in Atlanta, which Judge William Pryor, the Chief Judge. So if they wanna get in front of Chief Judge Pryor, the 11th Circuit, fast-tracked the Supreme Court, you slide it over if you can, if you have the ability to it, the others are not going to be able to. The Georgia people, the Georgia lawyers, the Georgia election officials, the Georgia fake electors, they're not going anywhere, right?

This is just a small subset of people. Now having pulled to answer your question. Now having pulled the person that's not bad for her, probably good for her, especially when compared to McAfee, I'm not that concerned that McAfee is a Trumpian. He is, if anything, a champion Republican and camps don't get along with Trump, it's like Hatfields and McCoy's in the Republican party. Every time Donald Trump comes out and says,

fraud in the election in Georgia, and I'm gonna do a press conference, Governor, Governor Kim says, I don't know what the F you're talking about, there's no fraud in the election and Georgia, and I'm gonna do a press conference. Governor, Governor Kim says, I don't know what the F you're talking about. There's no fraud in the election and you'll lost fair and square. So they don't like each other, okay? And Trump is campaigned against Kim, unsuccessfully.

He's reasonably popular in Georgia. Trump is not. He's so unpopular that there are already speculating that Trump unpopularity is going to turn the state blue again for Joe Biden. And the GOP there is really afraid of that. So this guy, McAfee, 34, was the office of inspector general, like the chief boy scout for the state before he got this first gig as a judge.

But he's inexperienced and they don't teach this in judge school, how to handle Donald Trump and a coup against America and Donald Trump's acting out constantly through himself or through his proxies. And so Jones, you know, another federal judge may not be a bad bet. She may take, as you said, the elegant way out, let these three or four stay there,

which might give her a better path towards a trial before the end. I'll tell you straight in state court, these three or four stay there, which might give her a better path towards a trial before the end. I'll tell you straight in state court, one of the factors that's weighing on my mind about why she's going to have a tough, a tough time to get this thing tried before November. It's just jury selection. Jury selection in state court is much more to use our word of the day sprawling than it is in federal court.

Federal court, the lawyers have very little ability to ask questions of potential jurors. It's really conducted primarily by the federal judge with a questionnaire and you kind of wrap it up. Let's go two weeks, maybe three weeks, stops. You got a jury in state court in Georgia based on history. They're picking juries for six, eight months to pick a jury, not to try the case because the lawyers get to put on their case through the jury selection process. What we call for a deer or what they call a Georgia for diary.

And this goes on and on and on, even with a judge Maccabee trying to run a tight ship. So jury selection alone. And now jury selection just got infinitely harder because of what Donald Trump and his people are doing, calling the prosecutor a rigor, which is just code word for the N word, and then giving the permission to his followers to try to attack the grand jurors, threaten them, I mean, threaten to assassinate them, calling them the N word and everything else. This is just gonna make it infinitely harder for Scott McAfee to administer justice and make sure the jurors are willing to serve.

And that, again, delay, delay, delay, all part of the plan for Donald Trump. And some of which this prosecutor's not gonna be able to do anything about because it's just what it is. So, reman, I think, solves a, I mean, a, removal may solve a problem for her. She may be able to get a trial out-to-date faster through a much more efficient rocket-docket of federal court than being quagmired in what looks to be a more complicated and longer process in Fulton County, Georgia. Fulton County Sheriff's

department is now currently investigating numerous threats made to the grand jurors, numerous threats made against Fulton County District Attorney, Fony Willis. You gave the analogy to January 6th where Donald Trump aided, abetted, stoked, it caused it, encouraged it. And right now we're going to talk about later in the show as well, you know, with thousands of January 6th insurrectionists convicted many serving, you know, some serious time in prison, and Donald Trump then not helping them out at all except perhaps releasing a song with

them on the Apple charts, the January 6th insurrection, is the anthem, they call it the January 6th anthem, that Donald Trump is himself grifting off of and making money off of. So I would expect to see numerous of these keyboard terrorists being prosecuted and very quickly going to jail for probably the rest of their life in Fulton County as a result of their threats and intimidation. I mean, there's serious sentences for that. You've also see like the Maga Republicans in Georgia who are slightly different to your

point than the champion Republicans in Georgia slightly different. But for example, you example, the Magger Republicans led this campaign this week, lying and saying that Trump will be facing death by lethal injection as a result of the prosecution and they went on Newsmax and all of their right wing shows to say that. It's untethered from the real world is there is right there Colton

Moore, who's a Maga Republican from Georgia, saying that the Republicans in Georgia need to intervene and hold an emergency session. Kim is going to hold an emergency session. In fact, Kim stated that he would be willing to testify against Donald Trump if he is called to do so in that action. But in the same interview, I think Kim said he'd also probably vote for Trump again or he wouldn't rule out voting for Trump because that's the modern day Republican party for, yeah, folks, but let's go down a little more south to Florida. Let's talk about judge Eileen Ken and the mess that she's making

from her doc. Let's compare that to what's going on in Judge Chutkins court. So this week as well, we saw Donald Trump had to submit his opposition brief to Special Counsel Jack Smith's request for a trial date. Jack Smith requesting the trial date in the DC case against Trump for crimes relating to the 20, 20 elections. Smith requesting January 2nd of 2024. Trump filed an opposition brief requesting April 2026. And then Trump filed a notice with Judge Eileen Cannon, basically like, I don't even know what this

is, a tattletail motion, and saying, look, Judge Cannon, Jack Smith set a December 11th jury selection date before Judge Chuck and Judge Cannon. That's the date that you have for pretrial motions in the trial you set on May of 2024 in your courtroom. You set pre trial motions December 11, 2023. Isn't Jack Smith bad do something take, quote, take appropriate action against Jack Smith. Them judge Eileen Canada. So corrupt in an experience.

She probably will do something. But but here's the thing, Pope, the judge, Chuck, and schedule has not been set yet. The way you would deal with this as responsible lawyers representing the parties is you'd show up at the hearing. First off, you'd live in the same reality. And maybe Trump's lawyers wouldn't say April 2026, you would say, hey, let's pick a trial date.

We want 2025, but we can't do that date because remember, we've got a pre trial motion hearing. And then Jackson Smith would go, Okay, well, we could do this earlier, then do jury selection later in the afternoon. The first day of jury selection anyway would probably just be showing up to the court. The jury maybe gets brief. So there's not like, you know, the potential jury pool gets brief. So it's not like even a day that is, you know, disruptive to anything else. It's not like Trump's gonna be showing up to the pretrial motion hearing before Judge Eileen Cannon.

But you work out those issues. But for Trump's lawyers, they go 2026 and then wine to judge Canon. And then also, and I'll get you a take on that and also this pop-up. But then I think what Jack Smith's learned from the first experience with Canon back in 2022, where she was overturned twice in two scathing orders by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, is she's so dumb and corrupt. But if she's not even intellectually curious and in this case involves SEPA,

the Classified Information Protection Act, and there's very complex rules about it. Like the most basic one is you can't have SEPA hearings in public, right? So she said a SEPA hearing in public over the protective order. And then she had to basically say, okay, actually I'm canceling that on August 25th.

I'm not gonna give you the date about it, but I also wanna hear from Dale Rivera, the new co-defendant, the maintenance worker. Hey, Dale Rivera, what do you think about SEPA? Who the hell cares with Dale Rivera? Thanks about SEPA. He's the maintenance worker. He's not like, he doesn't have a classified document.

The maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago doesn't get access to classified information. He's not even charged with willful retention of national defense information. That's not what he did. He did the maintenance at Mar-a-Lago. And so why is he even relevant to the analysis? But she did that, Popak, where she said, I want to hear from Dale Rivera. And now I'm going to cancel the hearing,

because she screwed up. And she didn't want to just admit that she screwed up, that it was, you know, not allowed to be a public hearing. So now she created this other date where she's screwing up again. And what we see is Smith filing, you know, Garcia motion after Garcia motion, pointing out the conflicts of interest in Donald Trump's lawyers, and the lawyers that he's paying for through his political action arm,

representing the co-defendants who are also representing witnesses who want to testify against the co-defendants. So for everybody saying, why isn't Jack Smith gone to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal? Yeah. Why hasn't he? He's going to.

And he's now created a situation where when he goes there, he's going to be armed with all of these mistakes that she's made. And then I think we're going to see a real scathing. What's your take on? What's been going on in her dot? Yeah, so many spinning plates, but we got them. We're there to catch them. So a couple of things, I'll respond to a couple of ways that you portrayed this, which

I think are right. A couple of data points we'll try to connect here. First of all, Canon is often wrong. This is one of the problems with being a new federal judge who seems not to have a proper, her compass seems to be cracked on a number of occasions. I've already reported on a hot take that she screwed up in another case. She's not good on what's public and what's not public. Like she threw the, she threw observers out of jury selection, which you're not allowed to do in the United States of America, because it's the public process and she got chastised by both the defense and the prosecution.

She just doesn't seem to have a handle on complicated things. No surprise. She was chosen to be a federal judge through Marco Rubio in a sleepy little backwater town at the very top of the southern district of Florida in Fort Pierce. She thought she'd probably roll out the rest of her career, handling an occasional

drug case, some immigration fraud cases, and the occasional, maybe, maybe a breach of contract case that was large enough to be in federal court and I doubt it. This is how she thought she was going to roll out the rest of her career. Instead she got assigned arguably in history one of the most important cases in the history of America out of Fort Pierce. And she's showing constantly that the Empress has no clothes, right? She doesn't know what she's doing procedurally and nobody's there apparently to guide her. So one, and then she's cleaning up behind herself, trying to figure out, well, no, I can't

do the secret seep by hearing in public. So we'll have to do it at another time in place. And like you said, what do you think? What's on the maintenance workers minds about all this? I like to hear from him. And then she still has this grand jury, multiple grand jury issue in her brain that she probably, as you noted on a hot take, picked up from Fox News and a former lawyer of Donald Trump the day before mentioning, why are there multiple grand juries? And why are there still things going on in the DC about Florida and the moral logo?

Maybe there's a problem there. And the next day she was like, maybe there's a problem with the multiple grand juries and they should be evaluated. And so there's still briefing this issue, which is a total non-issue about how Tau Jacksmith is running the grandjuries. We just got a ruling, for instance, that really relates to Mar-a-Lago, where Jeb Bozberg, the chief judge of the district court, sitting in DC, made a decision that as of right now, the testimony of Evan Corcoran, the former lawyer for Donald Trump, who participated

potentially in the crime and fraud of hiding the documents from the government at Mar-a-Lago. His testimony of the grand jury is going to remain sealed for now. Who made that decision? Not Judge Cannon. Judge Bozberg up in DC because it related to the grand jury work that was done up there. That's one. As to this, what are they doing with trying to get Cannon to step into this issue about trial dates even for ones that haven't been set yet in front of Judge Chutkin and salty You'll put this up. Look there is a speaking of cannons. No pun intended. There is a federal Judicial Canon of ethics that does allow and actually suggest that judges should

Talk among themselves in what's called an exparte fashion. If you go to canon 3a, little 4, little b in the hole, it says that a judge in performing their duties and the office fairly impartially and indiligently when circumstances require for the administration of justice may have an ex-partite communication with somebody else like another judge, as long as the judge believes reasonably that having that discussion about administration coordination of dates is not giving one side or the other an unfair tactical or substantive advantage. So judges talk, and frankly, as I outlined at the very top of the show, judges are going to have to get together and talk here.

And not just about this, and judges do talk. I know we always see them as these impassive, you know, sort of, sphinx-like characters until we read their opinions that are making decisions, but they have stuff to do. And so Canon can call Chutkin and Chutkin can call Canon, and they could all have a conference call, oh, when I love to be on that conference call, they could all have a conference call with judge, even Judge Mershan, or they could have a conference call to include, you know, you know,

all the new judges, Judge McAfee, to talk about the trial calendar. It doesn't have to be a binary where they're not communicating and they got to read about it in the paper. They can get on a call under this Canon 3a4b. And I think they're trying to get Canon to take the bait to get into a conversation with Chutkin about administration and about trial dates. And from there, they can set the checker board, the calendar that we're talking about, about getting, getting things to trial. Sooner rather than later, Chutkin, we'll talk about next, is going to take over as the

lead criminal judge for Donald Trump. It's just the nature of the case that's been filed, her personality and reputation and, and the issues that are in front of her. There is no doubt in my mind that Judge Chutkin, as Jack Smith and his team, have always hoped and expected since she was selected, is going to be the first among equals of all these judges. And as she goes and her courtroom goes, so go the rest of the cases because she's going to be setting hard deadlines,

the others are gonna have to catch up and yield to her because of the type of case who she is and the rest. And that includes Eileen Kan and Sitna Fort Pierce, Florida, about document issues. And that's just gonna happen. Sooner rather than later, it's gonna come to a head. I believe in Ben, you and I will cover it as soon as that hearing on the 25th or 28th of August happens in front of judge

Chuck in about trial setting one thing. I want to mention about that in the in the brief that was filed the one that I screwed up about how tick about April of 2026 is a great date, which is basically let's not ever have a trial, your honor into Chuck in I could not believe I want to get your opinion on this, that in the language, the verbiage that they used, that Mr. Singer for John Loro's office who wrote the brief, used two things. One I anticipated, because I said on this show, they're going to talk about how if you stacked all the, all of the government's production of documents to them and it'll reach to the moon, they didn reach to the moon.

They didn't use the moon analogy. They use the Washington monument. Let's put a pin in that for a minute. And in the beginning, the first quote talked about a mob rule out of control and that this judicial system should be respected and it shouldn't be the equivalent of a mob out of control. Okay, either they're missing the, these are already some blibberal messages.

What mob, what mob are we talking about? When we're talking about a Jan 6th, you mean the one that your client lit the fuse of and weaponized and pointed them at the direction of elected officials and the Washington Monument, you mean the place where the proud boys met at 10 a.m. to lead the charge and the assault on the capital?

Why you would use in front of Judge Chucket and give her the ability to do an overhead forehand smash right back on you with those words. I have no earthly idea. They live in another planet even in their filings. I just saw the two filings back to back by in, I just saw the two filings back to back by, uh, Loro and Blanche in, uh, Miami and South Florida and the one in DC. In one, they call him the president of the United States Donald Trump. And the other, they call him the former president of the United States Donald Trump. You know, they can't even get their act straight there. But look, this whole Mar-a-Lago thing is, is a dress rehearsal for, for, for, for, for Jack Smith, as he

pressurizes her, Eileen Cannon to get something up to the 11th circuit. But the big show, the big stage for him is going to be as far, in my opinion, Tonya Chutkin, who's going to have a hearing at the end of the month about trial setting and everything else that Donald Trump has done since he was warned in her courtroom two weeks ago that all of your actions outside of this courtroom are going to be evaluated to see if you are interfering with the proper administration of justice, which is frankly the only concern that I have as a federal judge. And now she's going to say, well, let's look what happened since you were last with me. And if they think she hasn't seen it and Jackson it's not gonna put it in front of her, they got another thing coming. You know, I have a unique take and I think you share this view, which is I really don't fault

anybody in theory for representing Donald Trump. If you're a criminal defense lawyer, that's what you do. You represent people who are accused of crimes. I know a lot of criminal defense lawyers. I started my career working for a criminal defense lawyer. That's what criminal defense lawyers do, folks. But for me, the issue becomes where you're no longer acting as a criminal defense lawyer, right? Where you're acting in the most egregious examples as a codependent, like many who were indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, and as many of Donald Trump's lawyers actively then

commit the crimes with him, or when you're acting as a propaganda machine to overthrow our democracy, then to me, you're not really acting as a lawyer anymore. You are acting as a corrupt actor trying to destroy our democracy. And I believe that is a disgrace to the legal profession. And I think the arguments that are being made before Judge Chutkin and some of these other cases by Donald Trump's lawyers are a disgrace to the legal profession. And to your point, they are not making legal arguments. What they are doing is they are stroking Donald Trump's malignant narcissistic sociopathic ego in the filings. And they are utilizing it so rupert Murdoch and Newsmax and others can take those passages

and put it on their media platforms and say, look, here's a court document, here's the language that is being used. And then when a judge rules against them because they're not even making valid legal arguments, they cry and play the victim, oh, the system's out to get me, the system's out to get me. You know, I'm reminded of the New York Attorney General, the Tisha James, preliminary ingestion motion that she filed. This goes back to October of 2022, but the order issued by Justice Arthur and Goron, who again, Donald Trump, wine again, who goes, uh, Gorons out to get me,

the judge is out to get me. Like Justice on Goron in his order was like, you haven't put forward a centilla of evidence, you know, that case involves fraudulent valuations. And I understand that that time, Trump was invoking his fifth amendment, right? Again, self-incrimination has where many others. But in the court, what you do if someone files a preliminary injunction and you want to rebut it, you submit at least one affidavit.

You normally submit dozens from people who rebut the allegation with evidence and with facts and you follow the procedures that exist within our judicial system. And frankly, that is not what Maga lawyers do. They want to rip apart our judiciary. And that is why this show Legal AF and others on the Midas Touch Network and the news coverage we give at MidasTouch.com though I think is so critical and crucial at this moment, at this time, specifically

because it needs to know where else is that stuff being rebutted with this evidence based approach? And speaking about Donald Trump and his lawyers believing that they are outside of the system, extra judicial, extra, you know, that they're not law and order. They want to like negotiate with Fulton County District Attorney Fawni Willis, which we talked about a little bit earlier. You know, he's got a. He's got a surrender. The surrender date is August 25th for them to show up and surrender and be booked into the Fulton County prison.

And Fawni Willis is like, I'm treating you like anybody else. You just show up. When you want to show up, you're going to get booked. You're going to get a mug shot taken. You're going to stand on the scale. You're going to be treated like everybody else is treated. And that is anathema to mega Republicans. And you just take a look at even kind of the spineless Kevin McCarthy here.

Oh, let's talk about the spineless Kevin McCarthy here for just one moment. And that's really how I want to talk about George Santos. Because George Santos is such a clown, this mega Republican. He represents the district that I grew up in, Lyle and Sturd Congressional District, which is just such a shame that it even exists that way. But here you've got a situation where you've got George Santos

who's under indictment, who admitted to crimes that he committed in Brazil, who's admitted to lying about the most heinous things after being caught, lying about it from parents dying in 9-11 to his college, to the, like literally every aspect of his life. And then someone who defrauded veterans by saying he was going to raise money on GoFundMe for their dying pets, and then he would steal the money and let the veterans pet's die. Like, I mean, some of the sickest stuff,

but Kevin McCarthy doesn't really say, you know, anything about him. And then, and then we knew about this before, one of the things Santos Top Campaign Aid was doing, who was just indicted this past week. He was impersonating McCarthy's chief of staff, telling people to donate to Santos on using an email account with a fake email account that was impersonating McCarthy's chief of staff to earn commissions and Santos benefited from that.

And Santos just like walks around the halls of Congress, you don't hear anything from Kevin McCarthy. And now you have this guy, the top eight of Santos, who was indicted this week, Samuel Mele, and this guy indicted in the same courthouse that Santos is indicted on, for Santos's wire fraud. I don't think we need to do a deep analysis into that one, Popeyes.

I just have one line. I just have one line. The irony is dripping that the person who impersonated people has a person that worked for him that is being indicted for impersonating somebody as well. And there's that link because he sent an email, Milly, Miley, whatever his name is, to George Santos, in which he told George Santos,

I just impersonated some big name in order to get money. Big risk, big reward. And he actually wrote that to Santos, which of course the prosecutors who have 13 indictment counts against George Santos found in all of their things. Both these guys are going down and Miley, Miley is assigned to a brand new, but picking up brand new judges,

a brand new Biden judge in that Eastern District of New York that covers your old hometown. Couldn't happen to nicer people. Again, the lack of courage, balls, gravitas, and other things for the Republican Party leadership is breathtaking. And I think we're really, as I said to you, just some pre-production and also just gabbling when you and I talk, that the worm from me, I think the worm is turned for Donald Trump. And now we're really seeing in the rate in the in the approval ratings and in the head-to-head contest predictions in the last two weeks, a real hit to Donald Trump's

numbers. And the fact that 63% of Americans do not believe he should be the president of the United States. They can say what they want about Joe Biden, and I don't know why they complain about Joe Biden the way they do, given his record of a phenomenal body of work. But if 63% of the people on off your fourth indictment, don't think you should be president, you're not going to be president of the United States. I still is shocking that you have 35% of the population, but look, the bottom line is that there are billion dollar interests, very powerful billion dollar interests, pumping disinformation into the veins of Americans every single day and convincing Americans to

be divided, to hate, and to vote against their own interests. And that's why MidasTouch.com, you know, this podcast and others on this network, Simon Cass are so important as is law and order. And you know, before you move on, you said earlier about lethal injection, you know what they're trying to do to democracy? They're trying to give it a lethal injection. And that's why Midas Touch Network is so important because we've got to keep that needle out of the arm of democracy because that's what these people are trying to do the democracy. They're trying to give it a lethal injection. And that's why I might as such network is so important because we've got to keep that needle out of the arm of democracy because that's what these people are trying to do.

Anything to get into power because patriotism is gone. Being an elder state's person is gone. It's all about the grift and the grab. And that's why, you know, that's what the party of the Democrats for democracy stands for, which is fighting against this. I never thought I'd have to say that. I always thought I'd live in a world, boy, was I dissolutioned. I always thought I'd live in a world where there were two coherent parties that could both

claim to be patriots based on their leadership, their values, and their policies. And then we would just debate over the margins about, you know, money for this and the budget allocation and the pie chart and military and, and social programs, but not like this, not with one party is still that. And the other party has completely, you know, just done a murder suicide pact with their fearless leader, Donald Trump. Well, look, you also have this past week, Maga Republicans led by Matt Gaetz introducing a resolution to condemn censure and investigate federal judge, Tonya Chutkin, the federal judge in Washington, DC, presiding over Trump's case who we've been talking about. And then earlier this morning, you had Donald Trump spokesperson say that Donald Trump will

primary any member of Congress, any Republican member of Congress who won't vote to defund Jack Smith and they want an immediate bill introduced to defund Jack Smith. This is the message from Trump spokesperson. Literally earlier this morning. And we'll see Kevin McCarthy will probably do something to that effect. And we'll see that out of the judiciary committee with Jim Jordan, Maggie Republican who leads that who is not a licensed lawyer. And someone who covered up sexual abuse at his previous job.

And someone who just has absolutely no clue at all what he is. I ask your question because nobody knows this better than you. Name for me. I'm being serious. Name for me one substantive bill that has helped America that's been passed by McCarthy's Congress since they've been in. Go ahead, we got all I got time. Yeah.

Yeah. The reality is, is that all we've heard about were Hunter Biden's Newtie photos and that there was going to be a whistleblower this week who it missing or was a spy of China or there were 17 audio recordings of Biden and then those didn't really exist or didn't exist at all or Twitter hearings and then when when you go into them, it's like, hey, aren't you complaining about things that happened when Trump was in office? Well, well, well, Biden was running a campaign.

Well, who was the bill? Where's the law? Where's the law to help America? There is no way. No, they are simply an extension of the right wing propaganda machine. And so much so that Matt Gaetz hosts a show on Newsmax now. Like how like you have Newsmax Matt Gaetz is like the main guest hosts.

So like Gaetz interviews, bobert. And it's like it is a clown and it is a total clown show. Um, but look, I want to talk about, look, I want to talk about real law and order right now, which is that there are some real sentences being requested by the Department of Justice. You and I both have expressed, I think, some frustration in some of the other sentences that have been handed down because, you know, even people who are serving 10, 15 years for their role in the insurrection, you know, I'm thinking that's light and there are some

people who are even serving less than that. But the proud boys in Rique Tario and Joe Biggs and Zach Rell and Ethan Norton and Dominique Pizzola and others are the subject of the most recent sentencing recommendations by the Department of Justice after being convicted. Many of them for seditious conspiracy. There you have tario, biggs, nornian, rel, and pizola. You see 33 years, 33 years, 27 years, 30 years, and a 20

year recommendation, respectively there with terrorist enhancements. That's how you get there. But, you know, let's not forget, as we talk about the prosecutions of Donald Trump. Right now, I mean, the DOJ under Merrick Garland has really brought claims against thousands of insurrectionists and they continue to do so and have gotten convictions of thousands of insurrectionists close to a thousand. They haven't lost a single trial yet, jury trial. Think about that. That John Durham, the special counsel appointed by Bill Barr to go after Trump's enemies, took two trials, two cases to trial, lost both of them, whereas Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice, whereas Merrick

Garland and the Department of Justice have secured victory after victory in their trials. Michael Popock, what do you make of this sentencing? Yeah, this is a Department of Justice that is immune from political pressure doing what it needs to do and asking for the appropriate time. I compared it contrasted it just to show that we're playing fair. You know, it's not the Biden weaponized Department of Justice last week. The Department of Justice got a 22 year sentence for a woman who sent a package of rice in poison to Donald Trump. So they go for the appropriate where the facts lead them,

the justice leads them. Here, the reason people might be scratching their head about, was that true? I just saw you say something in chat. I'll mention that in a minute. Okay. All right. I'll stand corrected, even though I didn't say it out loud. The sentencing of the difference between

Proud Boys and Oathkeepers, some people might be saying, well, the highest sentence that's ever been set is 18 years for Stuart Rhodes, the leader of the one-eyed leader of the Oathkeepers. And the reason is not all paramilitary soldiers for Trump are the same. Even within them, they're not monolithic. And some of them did even worse things than others.

They all did very, very bad things. They're all guilty of seditious conspiracy. But within that, there is a range of people that are even worse. In other words, oath keepers are scared of proud boys. I mean, I'm joking, but that just to show you, they're not all alike. They're not built to say in the proud boys.

We're the tip of the spear. They assembled a 10 a.m. at the Washington Monument, and then they marched with their minions to attack for the purpose of attacking the Capitol. And they broke through first. They broke through the door of the Senate first. They were the first in at the West Portico at the at the worst scene of the worst fighting and the rest. So you have that. That is slightly

different than the Oathkeepers who did a lot of talking and seditious conspiracy talking, but did less on the ground hand to hand combat than the proud boys. And Rique Tario, hand combat than the proud boys. And Rika Tario, he got two days earlier, got busted for burning a flag at a black church and wasn't technically, wasn't there, but let it from behind. It was tipped off by a, of all things of a DC cop, tipped him off, Tario, about not coming into the Capitol because you're going to get arrested. But he did it all with C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. C. easy. And why the numbers get up that high. Look, federal sentencing guidelines is relatively simple. You start with the offenses that they've been convicted of. I want to remind everybody, they've been sitting in federal detention or in the DC jail. Some of them since 2021 and and once since 2022, they've been in jail for a long time because they're really bad, bad people.

They've been convicted of all these crimes already. Now it's up to the sentencing. You go down the chart, you pick out the crime, the sentencing guideline tells you the base offense level for that particular crime. These people started with a base offense level, and this is high with a terrorist enhancement, which some judges have given and some judges haven't, but they're definitely going to give the terrorist enhancement for the proud boys. And you start at level 32. That's really, really high. That already leads you to a series of month recommendations that are in the, that are in the dozens of years. Then because they were leaders, you get

a role enhancement. You're the leaders, you get plus four. You obstructed justice. You get plus two. You have a criminal history. You get plus four. And then you end up with a number. It's relatively simple. And their number is between 32 and 38, depending upon the four people of the proud boys leadership that's been convicted. And that gives you either 360 months to life or 210 to 262 months. And so that's why they're asking 30 years for Joe Biggs and Enrique Tario, 30 years for Zach Raul and slightly less, 27 for Ethan Norton, just slightly less. And now they got there in front of a judge who was appointed by Trump,

but everything else in his background doesn't really say Trumpian. And he's ruled for the Department of Justice in this particular case in the past. So I don't think he's going to back off much, although the defendants are making it easy because they're saying time served two and a half years. We're good. Let us go probation. All right. So do I think that this judge is going gonna end up at 33 years for these people in 30 years and 27 years, probably not,

even Judge Mehta, who you and I love on this show, because of what he does for justice, even he shaves off a number of years from recommendations and he's the one that gave the 18 years to the Oathkeeper Stewart Rhodes. But is it gonna be in that range of the upper with a two in front? I think it's gonna end up with a two in front for everybody.

And that's going to be the end of the end of that. But we need this society and justice system needs this. We can't have another to kind of bring home what we said at the beginning. If you don't have a Jack Smith Jan 6th, use your patient of power and coup case in DC in front of Judge Chutkin. And you don't throw the book at Donald Trump. And these others, it, it will just give license and permission. This will not be the only Jan 6th. We will have others. Or as they said in the sentencing memo submitted by the Department of Justice for these four individuals. This is not stuff of political violence that we look at in faraway lands or have now landed on shore.

And although our justice system held that day, it didn't do it without a cost. And now this is exactly where punishment comes in. Now you have to not only punish these people for what they did, but you have to send a message to the rest of the future Enrique Tariots and proud boys about this will happen to you. And that's a proper purpose of punishment in our justice system. And the message we send here on legal AF is support our democracy support and evidence based system that law and order is found and on. Look at the facts, look at the documents, look at the evidence, and we'll look at it together here on legal AF, covered a lot today. Want to remind everybody to go to mitestouch.com, the new home for all things might as touch

the perfect complement to the shows that we do here on our digital platforms. That's mitestouch.com, check that out. Also go to store.mitustouch.com for the best pro democracy gear, including the official legal AF gear. We've got those great shirts designed by Karen Friedman Agniflo and one of the best designers, logo designers in the game. Those are selling out pretty quickly. Go to store.mitustouch.com. And just so you know it's a hundred percent made in the USA, 100 percent union made here. At the Midas Touch Network, Popock always enjoys spending this time with you. Legal A.F.ers, thank you so, so much. None of this is possible

without you. Popock myself and all of our contributors here on the Midas Touch Network are so honored to be a part of this community with you. We'll see you next time on Legal AF Shoutout to the Midas Mighty.