Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Gets UTTERLY DEVASTATED in ALL Cases
Episode Date: January 14, 2024Trial attorneys Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back with a new episode of the weekend edition of the LegalAF podcast. On this end of 2023 episode, they debate/discuss: the upcoming E Jean Carroll ...PUNITIVE damages case against Trump that starts this week, with the Judge taking steps to protect the anonymous jury from Trump sowing chaos at the trial; the closing arguments in the NY Civil Fraud case against Trump, with Trump violating all rules and jumping up to attack the judge and attorney general again; the DC Court of Appeals grilling Trump’s lawyer and turning his arguments to ashes over whether Trump has immunity from any criminal prosecution; and whether Judge Cannon is about to dismiss the Mar a Lago indictment; and so much more from the intersection of law, politics and justice. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Beam: Get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to https://shopbeam.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF at checkout! Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://RocketMoney.com/legalaf Earth Breeze: Subscribe to Earth Breeze today and save 40% at https://EarthBreeze.com/LEGALAF SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop NEW LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Bet on the NFL with Bandual, official sports put partner of the NFL.
Download the app today to see why we're North America's number one sports book.
19-plus and physically located in Ontario, gambling problem called 1865-3126-100 to visit
connectsontario.ca.
Tuesday, January 16th, 2024 at 9.30am, Donald Trump's next trial begins.
This is in the E. Jean Carroll, other defamation trial.
This for statements, Donald Trump made in 2019 while he was disgracing his office, Donald
Trump, was already found liable by a jury in a previous E. Jean Carroll case for sexual
abuse and defamation back in May, a5 million dollar judgment was entered against Trump then and in this upcoming trial it
is all about damages against Donald Trump for those 2019 defamatory
statements and lots of damages indeed per usual Donald Trump tried desperately
to delay trial including invoking the death of his mother-in-law,
despite the fact that that ain't stopping him
from going around the country and attacking prosecutors
and doing all the other things that he's doing.
But Donald Trump unable to delay trial.
It starts this week.
Trump is now onto the wine and threatened stage
of the predictable behavior we've seen.
Closing arguments were held in the New York Civil
broadcast last week after 11 weeks and 44 days of trial.
Donald Trump wanted to give part of the closing argument himself, but originally would not
agree to follow the rules that every other lawyer and litigant must follow.
Despite being told if you're not going to follow the rules, then you can't give a closing statement.
That didn't stop Donald Trump from jumping in during the closing statements and giving one of the
most unhinged and bizarre performances ever. And then storming out of the courtroom and running to one of the properties
he has an interest in at Forty Wall Street which is also the site of the fraud that's being alleged
in that civil fraud lawsuit. Justice Arthur Engoran said he expects to deliver a ruling by January
31st. Then we're going to go to Washington, D.C. where oral arguments were held earlier
in the week in the federal criminal case involving Trump's attempt to overthrow the results
of the 2020 election. Donald Trump's lawyers argued that absolute immunity means that Donald
Trump could directly order the SEAL team six to kill political opponents. And there would be no criminal consequences
unless he was impeached by the House, convicted by the Senate,
and he would be granted absolute total immunity
for engaging in conduct like that.
Later in the week, including at this bizarre press conference
Donald Trump held after closing arguments
concluded in the New York Attorney General Civil
for on-case, Donald Trump reiterated that yes, indeed, he believes that he has the
power to order seal team six to kill political operative political opponents.
And he would receive absolute immunity for that. Finally, we're going to go to
Florida, the Southern district Florida district court where judge Eileen
Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago document case where
Trump's being charged with willful retention of national defense information, Judge
Cannon continues to just butcher her docket and the law.
She's invented her own procedures at this point under the classified information procedure
act rather than following what the statute makes very clear she's supposed to do. She's also denied without prejudice the government's fairly standard request
that Donald Trump or any criminal defendant in that position disclosed if they
will be making an advice of counsel defense which just means a blame your lawyer
defense before trial. Judge Cannon says requiring Donald Trump to do this at this stage is premature. Well, she uses the term premature trials for months away based on her nonsensical schedule in order set to start on May 20 of 2024. I F I'm Ben Myceles of course joined by my co-host Michael Popak a very
Eventful week indeed Michael Popak and I just want to start off by just showing you the stakes right here
And this is why you and I do this show and why it's so important that we promote a literacy in our legal system because this is exactly
What Donald Trump is trying to create.
And this is what Trump posted this morning.
He goes, thank you to Sammy the Bull.
I hope judges and Goran and Kaplan see this.
We need fairness, strength and honesty in our New York courts.
We don't have it now.
Donald Trump citing Sammy the
rat grovano, a murdering psychopath, former under boss for the Gambino crime family,
who admitted to killing in cold blood at least 19 people, including his closest friend and brother-in-law, Trump is citing him as a character witness
in his court cases that we are talking about, and using it as a way to threaten no doubt
the judges and our judicial system.
This is what we are dealing with, not from a both sides perspective.
It's coming just from one side, and it is a shameful thing to see.
But I want to get into that because it's why evidence, admissible evidence, our judicial system,
following the rules is so important. Popak, how are you, sir?
I'm doing great. It's a great lead. Yeah, at any time you're citing a mob boss who was in witness protection and killed 20 people
as your character reference, it's probably, I don't know, what a constituency of your base
you're appealing to there, those that are in witness protection or wannabe.
And I went back and there's a hot take, well, I'll do, I won't do it here, there's a hot
take that I've done. I went back to the clip of Sammy, the bull gravado,
who has a podcast, not on our network, thank God.
Commenting about Donald Trump.
And even there, it's not a favorable comment
about Donald Trump.
He didn't say that he's incorruptible,
which is what Donald Trump wants that to say.
What he said was that Donald Trump has a mafia
organized crime like cocoon around him in the 1980s and 1990s because
of his father's money combined with X FBI agents that were protecting him and he couldn't
get to him. That's different than I got to him. He wouldn't take a bribe. That's much
different. So if you're going to cite Sammy the Bull Gravano for some sort of moral character
reference, at least get it right. Look, the leading candidate for the Republican
party on at least 48 state ballots, this last week alone is facing a $400 million or more
verdict or judgment by a judge who's going to finally lay waste to the lie that Donald
Trump is a successful real estate mogul without having perpetrated
persistent fraud in all of his operations over the last 10 years as he comes up on a trial not the trial that we all want here on legal
AF not the criminal trial, but another civil trial very important, especially to the victim and to justice
about him raping and then defaming and it's not another
the victim into justice about him raping and then defaming. And it's not another defamation case
as the press has reported it.
It is a punitive damage case only.
Liability has already been established in E. Jean Carroll.
So he faces that this week with his lawyers
as the DC court of appeals basically performed,
especially led by Judge Pan,
and we'll talk about later,
performed basically on the air live autopsy of John
Sauer, the lawyer for Donald Trump ripping out his heart and showing it to him based on
questioning that went searingly right to the heart of the illogic of their multiple arguments
strung together to try to argue that Donald Trump had immunity from criminal prosecution and should have his indictment dismissed.
All that and so much more on this episode of Legal AF.
Love the imagery, Michael Popak.
And here's a simple way to think about who's winning or losing in these various Donald
Trump cases.
Donald Trump's always losing, okay?
Other than before Judge Eileen Cannon, but there has not been a final
resolution, obviously, of that matter yet. And later in this episode, I'll tell you what
I think is going to be happening there. I mean, he's prevailed in these procedural skirmishes
where Judge Eileen Cannon is desperately trying to avoid making any order and trying
to delay the proceedings, because she knows she's
going to get immediately reversed by the 11 circuit court appeals as soon as she makes
her first substantive order.
Think about this, Michael Pope, we're recording this on January 13th Saturday and Judge
Eileen Cannon in that case on a very simple case.
Did Donald Trump steal the documents?
Did he willfully possess these documents? Did he fail to return them? That's simple case. Did Donald Trump steal the documents? Did he willfully possess these documents?
Did he fail to return them? That's the case. She's failed to make a substantive order,
just issuing these paperless scheduling orders because she's learned all the wrong lessons
from when she was previously overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals because she issued an
order there too soon. And the 11th Circuit said, no, you are doing something here that no judge in the history
of America has ever done one of the most scathing reversals I have ever read.
So her lesson is, nah, should I do the right thing?
No, let me just do the wrong thing, but let me just delay the inevitable.
But that is one of the mo's of Trumpism, right?
Delay, delay, delay the inevitable.
Compound and make matters worse.
And that's what Donald Trump has always tried to do.
But your simple chart is if Donald Trump is the one doing the suing,
if he's the plaintiff, he will lose.
Donald Trump suing Michael Cohen, loser.
And Donald Trump dismissed his own case
because he was afraid to have his defosition taken.
The case this week that we talked about
in one of the hot takes,
where Donald Trump previously sued New York Times
and tried to get around New York's anti-slap statute
by not pleading defamation,
but trying to call it torsious interference
with contractual relations.
Another Alina Haba specialty, Donald Trump hit with $400,000 in attorney fees.
Donald Trump sues Hillary Clinton, Alina Haba Donald Trump sanctioned nearly $1 million
for filing a merit list lawsuit.
And then on the defense side, whether it's civil or criminal, the Trump organization,
Donald Trump continuing
to lose and lose and lose.
And that brings us to the E. Jean Carroll case, which you previewed Michael Popak because
Donald Trump's already lost.
He lost in the May trial.
He was already found to have sexually abused, which Judge Kaplan, the federal judge, makes
clear is the same thing in New
York as rape.
It's a technical difference in the statute, but in a recent order and in previous orders,
Judge Kaplan says, no, you were found to have raped E. Jean Carroll by a jury and defamed
her back in May.
There's a doctrine called collateral, a stop, which says that the jury findings basically
Transfer to a new trial. So already the same there's the same claim same types of statements Not a sexual abuse claim in this new trial coming up
But these are based on statements that Trump made in 2019 the other case involved statements made in 2022 and the underlying
Sexual abuse based on the adult survivors act
But this case got delayed a little bit per Donald Trump's delay because Bill Barr tried to substitute the United States in place to Donald Trump
And that ended up backfiring so that it went ultimately to this trial
So that's why this one even though it was filed first then it's technically technically Carol one is going to trial second next week.
But here we are now at a trial purely about damages.
And Popok, Donald Trump wants to make this case about anything but damages.
So he's trying to introduce all this other stuff, E. Jean Carroll's brilliant lawyers,
led by Roberta Kaplan,
know exactly what he's trying to do.
Trump says he's going to show up,
and E. Jean Carroll's lawyers have been filing
all of these documents, making sure it's very clear
the rules of what this trial is, the limitations
of this trial. Donald Trump
continuing to try to delay this.
Again, he cites that his mother-in-law's death is a reason.
But tell us, where are we right now, Michael Popock,
with what Donald Trump can and can say,
because of the prior rulings and what this case is about,
how impactful is that gonna be
as Trump going to show up?
What can we expect from this trial, Michael Popak?
Yeah, it's Robbie Kaplan and her letter briefing
that we've been really following very closely.
We've had Robbie on the show before to talk about matters.
They're really concerned and they're getting the judges attention
with what Trump is going in as lawyers,
I'll talk about those lawyers in a minute who they are, who they aren't.
I'm going to try to do it the trial. The trial is only about the amount of damages punitive
that E. Jean Carroll suffered just to prove that. Based on the defamation that the jury will be told to assume, they'll be instructed
by the judge, that the judge has already determined that there's been defamation, malice against
E. Jean Carroll by Donald Trump while he was president in a statements that he made which were
and they are to, they will be instructed to assume for the purposes of all of their deliberation,
that the defamation
happened. Now, and they're only there, the sole purpose of them being there is on the punitive
damages. That's why I called it a punitive damage case. That's the headline. It's not a, and tens
of millions of dollars are at risk against Donald Trump. Donald Trump and his lawyers, Alina Habba,
again, we'll talk about her throughout today's podcast and not for good reasons.
And Medio, who had been Donald Trump's original lawyers in the first EG in Carol case,
but it's so screwed the pooch and screwed that case up time and time again, including
failing to raise presidential immunity as a possible defense, having that ultimately waived, failing on basic issues
of evidence in that case, involving the DNA
of the coat dress that Ms. Carol was wearing
on the day of the attack.
Elina Habba screwed that up, and no DNA evidence
was ever allowed to be introduced into evidence at the case.
She screwed up her other experts and experts were barred and banned from testifying in the
first case.
This is all the scripts of Alina Haba and she did it so often and so spectacularly that
even Donald Trump broke up with her.
It's paraphrase Karen Friedman, Knifalo, one of our colleagues and fired her effectively
from being lead trial counsel 90 days before the first trial that started and ended in May over the summer. It replaced her with Joe Takapina. Joe Takapina did no better,
did probably a lot worse, especially how he crossed exam and so ham fiscedently and
terribly, roughly in front of a jury, E. Jean Carroll herself, the victim, and there was a big
loss for Donald Trump there. But now, Alina Hobbes back, and in conversations that she's had with the lawyer for E. Jean
Carroll, it's become clear that they think they're able to retry the entire case again.
This is a case of Donald Trump the first time didn't bother to appear in, never showed
up at all.
That's what I call Trump 1.0.
He's learned since then, he shouldn't stay away.
He should come and do maximum collateral damage whether inside the court room or just outside the court room rather than not show up at all, but he didn't show up. He didn't testify
despite threats that he was going to. And now they've dropped the lawyers for E. Jean Carol.
Now, Haba and Mediah back have told Robbie Kaplan, the lawyer for E. Jean Carol now, Haba and Mediah back have told Robbie Capel
and the lawyer for E. Jean Carol
that Donald Trump is likely to testify.
In fact, he only had two witnesses
that he thought were gonna testify.
Carol Martin, formerly a CBS news reporter,
local for New York that I used to,
she's very beloved, people loved Carol Martin,
who was an outcry witness in the first trial,
a special status type of witness that is used when you have a hearsay statement, even
of the victim, but it's said almost spontaneously or contemporaneously with a terrible event.
And that witness is given sort of special class in our evidence, our evidence presentation
because it's said if somebody cries out and
somebody hears it, then there's a special quality of credibility that goes along with that.
And Carol Martin was one of the two people that E. Jean Carol called the Night of the
Attack in spring of 1996 in the Berkdorf Goodman department store dressing room when she was as the jury determined
technically raped under New York law or
sexually abused but
effectively raped as the judge has said time and time again in his orders. So Donald Trump had her on the list
and also he's gonna testify and then through commentary that they had in the meet and confer process that lawyers have to have in advance of filing motions
It became clear that they thought they were gonna the Trump side thought they can try the meat and confer process that lawyers have to have in advance of filing motions, it became clear that they thought they were gonna,
the Trump side thought they could try the whole case again.
Let's put her E. Jean Carroll through the mill again
on her sexual background and her conduct
and her relationship with her husband
and statements that she made here,
they are in the other place.
And let's just try that case again.
And the judge said, you're not trying that case again.
That case is over, This is about damages.
Nothing that you're telling me about the things
that you want to say about E. Jean Carroll
and her credibility or her DNA or her code
or who she spoke to or how many CNN episodes she went on
doesn't matter in terms of the damage of the jury
will have to assess.
It's not probative, meaning it doesn't tend
to prove or disprove a fact that's relevant
to the case.
And so the E. Jean Carroll's lawyers bring it to the attention of the judge in a series
of motions, two of which we'll talk about here.
One is, judge, don't let them in front of a jury.
We saw the acting out already, and it's detailed, specifically in a recent motion that was just filed by Eugene
Carol's lawyers.
Donald Trump just made a shambles and chaos of the civil fraud case doing exactly what we
fear with good reason.
He'll do here.
He's going to ignore your orders, Judge Kaplow, where you've already ruled on summary judgment
that defamation has been established, just like he ignored the orders of judge and go around right next door in New York State
court. He's going to stand up and start attacking and violating your rules about what can
it can't be said. And you have to do something about it because we have a jury that needs
to be protected. That motion about Donald Trump's appearance either sitting in the courtroom
and blurting out things or doing it out in the hallway near the jury or taking the stand.
He needs to be disciplined and guardrails have to be put up according to and I agree with it, E. Jean-Karles lawyers.
Before this jury even comes into the room and before evidence is even presented to them in opening statement, and if you don't do it, look what just happened across the street judge just recently.
That's still pending.
I expect that there's going to be a ruling very, very soon, maybe right off the podcast
where the judge is going to grant that.
He's already granted a order, a motion, an issued an order that details exactly what
can and cannot be argued or said in the courtroom.
Anything that goes to liability, whether she's her credibility and who's paying the freight
for her lawsuit, whether any of the costs are being defraided by a political action group
or some of her litigation funding group, the DNA of her dress, any of her statements that
have nothing to do with damages, all are not
coming in.
That's just a judge reminding Alina Habba what this case is about.
Now the problem with that, and I'll turn it over to you, the problem with that is Alina
Habba, I don't know why I put this nicely, it's not a tremendous, it doesn't have a tremendous
ability to properly both take in information and transmit it properly.
What I mean by that is let's take her recent performance in her close part of the closing argument
of the New York Attorney General case. She spent a fair amount of time in front of the judge
talking about Latisha James, the New York Attorney General, having a Starbucks cup of coffee in the
room and potentially taking off her shoes
at a certain point to rubber foot.
This seems to be where Alina Hobb is out thinking she's scoring some sort of points for
I don't know what audience in trying to attack Latisha James.
That is the same person that this very delicate case of a rape victim already established by jury and judge in front of a
new jury federal jury to decide punitive damages.
I mean, talk about a bull in a china shop.
So this judge is going to have to be on high alert about what this, this unscrupulous,
I'll just call it for what it is legal team on the other side that knows no boundaries
and is not tethered
to the rules of ethics or conduct or laws and what they do in front of a jury.
The number one thing here, Ben, is that this jury be protected, not just because we need
that, that E. Jean Carroll's entitled to have a jury that's properly not afraid of making
decisions and isn't nullified, their decision making isn't nullified.
But Donald Trump too, I mean, this is for the justice system.
This is for the, even though it's civil, the entire court system being protected and this
jury, what he does in acting out and telling Judge Engoron the New York civil fraud judge
off to his face and laughing.
And that's one thing.
That's bad enough.
I would refer them to the bar if I were the judge.
But in front of a jury, things have to be taken seriously
and judge-caplains the judge to do it based on his prior rulings.
You ask which audience, somewhat rhetorically,
which is the audience of right-wing media
that does not want to consume the evidence or maybe they do want to consume
it, but they are used to being fed a diet of complete and absolute crap where Alina
Haba goes on these shows and they talk to her about, you know, how great is it to be so
pretty and attractive and how do you think that works with your legal skills or the lack
thereof? And she talks about that guy like being attractive?
I was asked you know if you'd rather be pretty or smart and I've said I rather be pretty because you can fake smart
I mean that's what she's saying on these right wing media channels when she goes and and speaks to them
But that's why evidence and facts matter, you know
But that's why evidence and facts matter, you know, for example, Donald Trump will win and say, and he has when he did that so-called CNN, back when he did the CNN
town hall, when he did the recent so-called Fox Town Hall, when he's giving his
speeches and talking about E. Jean Carroll, when Donald Trump on his own brings up
and they won't let me talk about the dress, the dress, the dress, well, in a very detailed order, the judge explained that for basically two to three years, you could have
turned over your DNA sample and there could have been a test that was done. You chose to wave that
by not turning over your DNA sample. And then on the eve of the last trial,
you wanted to make some deal and have some negotiation.
Hey, I'll agree to turn over a DNA sample.
If you agree to turn over some of the DNA test swabs
that you've previously done on the dress.
And that's not the way it works.
You had ample time to turn over the sample
and you've refused to do that and you've waved the opportunity
That's a hoppa screw up
Similarly, you've waved putting an expert in because you didn't disclose it
You've waved the deadline of challenging eging carols expert because you didn't you didn't do it on time and
Going into the judge's order. I mean, this is such a powerful statement right here,
where the judge says that this, the jury in Carol 2 found by a preponderance of evidence
that Mr. Trump sexually abused Miss Carol and injured her in doing so, too.
His conduct was willfully negligent or reckless in doing so or he acted with a conscious disregard for Miss Carol's rights and three
Miss Carol was entitled to compensatory and punitive damages for sexual abuse of 2.2 million dollars
Consequently the fact that Mr. Trump was sexually abused in the fact that Mr. Trump sexually abused
abused in the fact that Mr. Trump sexually abused, indeed raped miscarrel has been conclusively established and is binding in this case.
I mean, think about that line.
Consequently, the fact that Mr. Trump sexually abused, indeed, raped miscarrel has been conclusively
established and is binding in this case.
And so I know we're talking about a lot of cases and what do you think's gonna happen
at the next E. Jean Carroll case?
What do you think's gonna happen
at the New York Attorney General Civil Fraud case
where New York Attorney General Patricia James
is asking for at least $370 million
plus 9% compounding interest,
which can take that up to the $500 million range.
But we're seeing a federal judge say the leader
of the Republican party has been
conclusively found to have raped somebody. Like, I don't want to lose track of what that statement is.
And now we have a trial that is taking place next week that starts on this issue right here about
the damages that are being caused by Donald Trump's defamation
and from the punitive damages perspective, his continuing to torment his victim and that
he needs to be punished for doing it, that is what is happening now.
And as you and I have said before February 1, before February 1, there will likely be somewhere in the range of 250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
maybe even more in damages, in judgments,
hard judgments against Donald Trump with these two cases.
And we'll talk in a moment how Justice Engoron has said that he expects his order to issue
on honor before January 31st.
I pulled back.
I want to get one last comment on that.
The same expert who testified for damages for Ruby, Ruby freman and Che Moss leading to
$148 million against Rudy Giuliani is the same expert that will be testifying alone without
any counter expert by Donald Trump because of another Lena Hombas grew up in the trial
this coming week.
And so the new number for me is reset.
Whereas the jury in May gave a Eugene Carroll for what happened then $5 million, $5.5 million
including punitive damages.
Those numbers are way off.
Based on how you said, relentlessly continues to go after the punitive damage number here,
will be tens of millions of dollars maybe approaching 100 million.
It's Professor Humphries over at Northwestern University, a reputational damages expert who
will be testifying and we will be covering that here on legal a f and the
mightest touch network when we come back we'll talk about what's happened at the closing
argument in the New York Attorney General's civil fraud case. We'll talk about oral arguments
in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and what in the world is Judge Eileen Cannon doing well,
she's just pulling a cannon.
We'll be back after this quick break.
Did you know that your temperature at night
can have one of the greatest impacts on your sleep quality?
If you wake up too hot or too cold,
I highly recommend you check out Miracle Mades bed sheets
inspired by NASA.
Miracle Mades uses silver infused fabrics
and makes temperature regulating bedding.
So you can sleep at the perfect temperature all night long. Miracle Maid uses silver infuse fabrics and makes temperature regulating bedding so you
can sleep at the perfect temperature all night long.
Using silver infuse fabrics inspired by NASA, Miracle Maid sheets are thermoregulating and
designed to keep you at the perfect temperature all night long.
So you get better sleep every night.
These sheets are infused with silver that prevent up to 99.7% of bacterial growth,
leaving them to stay cleaner and fresh three times longer than other sheets. No more gross
odors. Miracle sheets are luxuriously comfortable without the high price tag of other luxury
brands, and feel as nice if not nicer than sheets used by some five star hotels. Miracle
sheets are the perfect gift for your spouse, friends,
or family who doesn't want better sleep and luxurious feeling bed sheets. And since these
come with 3 free towels, you get 2 gifts in one just in time for the holidays. Stop sleeping
on bacteria. Bacteria can clog your pores causing breakouts and acne, sleep clean with Miracle.
Go to trymiracle.com slash legal AF to try it today or gift it to someone special this
holiday season.
And we've got a special deal for our listeners, save over 40%.
And if you use our promo legal AF a checkout, you'll get three free towels and save an extra
20%.
Miracle is so confident in their product, it's back to the 30-day money back guarantee.
So if you aren't 100% satisfied, you'll get a full refund.
Upgrade your sleep with Miracle made.
Go to trymiracle.com, slash legal AF, and use the code legal AF to claim your free,
three-piece towel set, and save over 40% off.
Again, that's trymiracle.com slash legal AF to treat yourself, a friend, or loved one
this holiday season.
What's more important than sleep?
It's the foundation of our mental and physical health, and when you're sleeping well, you can
perform it your best in every way.
Proper sleep can
also increase focus, boost your energy and improve your mood, introducing beams dream powder.
It's a science-backed healthy hot cocoa for sleep. If you know me, you know that dream has been a
game changer for my sleep. Sometimes I find myself up at night in bed with thoughts on easiness,
going on my phone. Well that was the case until I started drinking Beams dream powder prior to this dream powder. The poor sleep in late nights
staying up, affected my mood and affected my energy, but not anymore. And today, our listeners
get a special discount on Beams dream powder. Their science-backed healthy hot cocoa for sleep with
no added sugar. It's now available in
many different delicious flavors. It's really good. Like chocolate peanut butter, cinnamon, cocoa,
and sea salt caramel with only 15 calories and 0 grams of sugar. Better sleep is never tasted,
better, and other sleep aids can sometimes make you feel groggy the next day. Take it for me. I
have tried them and they do, but dream it contains a powerful
all-natural blend of Raci, magnesium, L-thienine, and melatonin and nano CBD to help you follow
sleep stay asleep and wake up refreshed. The numbers don't lie in clinical study 93% of participants
reported that dream helped them get better sleep. Beam dream is easy to add to your nighttime routine.
Just mix it in hot water or milk froth and enjoy before bed.
Find out why forbs in New York Times are all talking about
beam and why it's trusted by the world's top athletes
and business professionals.
If you want to try beam, best selling dream powder,
get up to 40% off for limited time when you go to shopbeam.com slash legal AF
and use legal AF as a code at checkout. That's shopbam.com slash legal AF and use legal AF
the code when you checkout for up to 40% off.
Well, that was a treat right there. We got Karen Friedman Agnifalo, even though she's not
host in the weekend edition to see the KFA ad right there. It was great to see her on the
show KFA. We see it in the chat as well as as always. And she's being dream. What did you
say? She's being dreaming during the chat. beam beam dream and who was not beam dream in but may have been beam in a bunch of
Nonsense nice little smooth transition there
defeated by calling out the transition is
Alina Habag Donald Trump during their closing arguments before the New York Attorney General and the New York Attorney General
Civil Broadcast, Justice and Goran, of course, is the judge presiding over this matter.
It was an 11 week, 44 days of trial, but really, three years when you include the investigation
itself that led to the lawsuit that was filed back in late September of 2022 that brought us to this
moment. And that's why covering this every step of the way Michael Popak to get
to that closing argument and then to get to that judgment that Justice and
Goron has promised that we'll likely take place before January 31st. I think it
shows everybody out there how the law works. If you've been following legal AF in this network from the outset, we've been going through every single
step of this proceeding. And the last step, of course, is this closing argument. So first
up in the closing arguments was the defense, then the New York Attorney General gave their
closing argument. Before closing argument took place, Donald Trump again tried to delay these proceedings,
the same way you tried to delay the eging carol case,
and he said that his mother-in-law's passing
was one of the reasons why he wanted a delay,
but that hasn't stopped him from holding
so-called town halls on Fox and doing a bunch of other things.
Donald Trump, through his lawyer, Christopher Keiss
said Trump wanted to give the closing argument or part of it, wrote an email to Judge Engoron requesting that
in New York. You can send emails to the judges, but they get docketed eventually on the docket
as formal correspondence. Judge Engoron basically to kind of shorten it was like yeah, okay, I have the discretion not to allow it
It's against the law under New York if you are represented by counsel to give your own closing argument
You could fire your lawyers proceed what's called pro-pror and then give your own closing argument that's fine
But otherwise here, you know, I have the discretion to decide whether or not you're going to give the closing argument because it's prohibited conduct.
But in my discretion, I'll allow Donald Trump to give the closing argument. Just here's the thing.
Trump has to just state that he will agree to follow the rules.
That he will follow the same rules, that you, the lawyers have to follow, that any litigant in this court, he can't go on random rants attacking the prosecutors, personalities or saying things about my law
clerk.
If he sticks to the facts and evidence and gives a normal closing, I'm okay with that happening
in my courtroom.
Then Donald Trump's lawyers said, that's unfair.
I don't know why that would be unfair.
That's unfair to Donald Trump. He wants to go by his own set of rules. So Judge Goren said, then no. I don't know why that would be unfair. That's unfair.
To Donald Trump, he wants to go by his own set of rules. So Judge Goren said, then no,
I'm not allowing it. And then Trump and everybody on his legal team wind, they're stopping him
from speaking, they're gagging him again. They're not letting him speak. You know, and it's just like,
come on, he said you can do it. Just just follow the rules that every other American has to follow
when they're in a court of law. then you had the closing arguments take place.
Popoca, I want to get your thoughts of what went down.
But before getting to the Trump part, which I'll throw to you and your overall take, I
mean, Alina Habba's argument was in addition to trying to mock New York attorney general
attisha James for holding a Starbucks coffee and for the way she was sitting on her chair,
which the judge cut off.
Hoppa said, we're all just human beings here.
And Donald Trump did his best.
Any of the things that the New York Attorney General's office are saying is fraud, that's
human error.
And he was just trying as hard as he can.
That was one of Alina Abba's main argument.
She said, explain to me, if you're trying to commit fraud, why would you put the fraud
in writing?
Why would you send it to other real estate agents, as though people don't commit fraud in writing?
And then her other point was, why would they hire one?
Why would the Trump organization hire one of the largest accounting firms in
the state of New York, Mazeers, which I don't even think they're one of the largest
accounting firms, but they're a big accounting firm. Why would they hire one of the largest
accounting firms if they were going to commit fraud? Like, okay, and run hired every big
accounting firm. So did Bernie Madoff, people who hire accounting firm still commit fraud.
Those were her arguments.
And then the New York Attorney General's office was like, you did not hear anything there
to rebut the fact that their numbers were wrong.
They did not argue ever that they provided correct valuations.
What they argued is that based on their own subjective valuation methodology that they think that they
that their numbers which are completely off are correct but your honor as we've said time and time
again what they neglect is not the valuation methodology the fraud is the writing. It is the inputs that go into the valuation methodology. So when you lie and commit fraud and say
Mara Lago, which is a commercial club, is a residential property and value it as a residential property with no incumbenances on it, that's fraud. When you say your triplex is 30,000 square feet and it's 10,000 square feet, that is a fraud.
When you say your buildings are fully leased out, fully occupied at the highest price per
square foot, but they are actually rent controlled and they're not fully leased.
The input, the data that you put into the valuation model
and methodology, no matter which model you use,
will be false because it has fraudulent data in it.
And when Alina Habba says we're human beings
and they just did their best, that is not a defense.
And Popoq, those are just the cold, hard facts
that we have to stick to, right?
Then you're being so unreasonable
that your case against Donald Trump
is based on facts and evidence
and not on Starbucks coffee cups
and whether the Latisha James kicked off
or heels at some point.
How dare you?
There's a salty put back the clip of when the report the cameras allowed to be in the
courtroom for the very beginning. Look at the facial expressions on the lawyers Chris Keiss
to Donald Trump's right on our left. Alina Haba that's Cliff Robert on the far end of the table.
Chris Keiss looks like he's got a secret. He looks like he's a Cheshire cat, a little Cheshire cat smile. What he does, what he knows is at the end of his, when,
end of his version of the closing, because they split the closing up and Chris Kice was the
main lawyer, Elena Hoppe did another part of it, that he was going to, at the end, he was going
to ask the judge once again if he could allow Donald Trump to speak. Now, as you noted, and at one point of clarification,
you don't normally email your judge in New York.
What happened is that the principal law clerk,
Alison Greenberg, doing her job
back to what she does actually does for a living,
she wrote to the parties right off the holiday
and said, okay, let's get back to the scheduling issues.
Our courtroom is being used by another case by the New York Attorney General because she
can walk in Chukum at the same time, unlike Alina Habba.
She's trying the case of the National Rifle Association, a fraud case in that same courtroom.
I don't think it's with Judge Angora, but in the same courtroom.
So she's just doing some logistics, hey, everybody, we're gonna, the courtroom is gonna be a little differently
arranged, how much time does everybody need?
And somebody asks, are we gonna do it the old fashioned way
where the defendant goes first and the plaintiff goes second,
we flip it for closing and who's gonna be arguing
and that kind of thing?
To which the lawyers for the attorney general,
properly responded, we need an hour.
It's gonna be a split between me and another,
you know, special prosecutor counsel for this.
And then Chris Keiss goes completely, you know,
Kuku Krazy down another rabbit hole.
He leads, I love when he leads in the email
to the principal law clerks before the judge jumps on
and says, happy New Year, Allison.
Allison, this is the woman, the person who has been mercilessly
misogynistically bashed by Donald Trump,
Alina Habin, and Chris Geiss from day one,
arguing that she's a co-judge, that she's a hack,
a Democratic hack, she's partisan,
leading to threat levels going up against her exponentially,
people wanting to kill,
mutilate her and the worse.
Happy New Year.
Sure, you know, we're gonna, that's fine.
And this and that.
And by the way, we want Donald Trump.
He literally writes this in his email.
And we think Donald Trump is gonna,
he's gonna get part of the closing.
Like, sorry.
Without any citation to any case law
that allows that or supports that that because it doesn't.
That people think, is that unusual?
Yeah, that's really unusual.
That doesn't happen.
He had his chance to speak twice.
He only took one of those two opportunities.
He got subpoenaed to testify against his interests
cross examination style in the case in chief
for the New York Attorney General.
But then when he had his chance to just get softballs thrown to him by
I would imagine Alina Habba
To talk about what a great sexy real estate mogul you are
He passed as we you and I predicted that he did not show up despite threatening on the campaign trail
I'm gonna testify. No, you're not and you didn't and that was your opportunity in your case in chief to say what you wanted to say, you
know, within, within limits, under oath.
Now when the issue of Donald Trump came up, then the New York Attorney General jumped
in with case law that said you can't do that.
Yes, this is in the court's discretion, but the discretion should be not exercised in
favor of it.
Don't do it, judge.
And if you do it, it's got to be like on very strict orders about what
he can and can't do in this courtroom. And the judge also mindful that it's just him. There's no
jury president. I think did some things that are unusual that I he probably regrets having done.
He gave he jumped on to the chain. And he said, I have discretion. I think it's important. If he
wants to speak and he can do it the right way.
This is what I liked about the judge.
It just shows he's no bias.
He just wants everything and he said,
I think he can be helpful to try or affect,
which is me, to hear from the person
who's most impacted by my ultimate ruling.
So sure, it's unusual, but I'll allow it.
As long as he plays nice in the sandbox
and colors inside the lines.
And acts like a lawyer.
The acts like a lawyer, maybe not his lawyer,
but if he acts like a lawyer, normal lawyer,
we can speak.
Now what I would have done,
and I said this on a hot deck is,
I would have said, and he's under oath,
and he needs to be sworn in under oath.
A lawyer gets the benefit as an officer of the court
to give argument that's considered argument
without having to be sworn, but not this guy.
So this guy should be under oath.
I would have done that.
He didn't do that.
And it said they went back and forth in minutes apart about the issue.
And Chris Kiesitz unfair.
My guy needs to freely speak.
Yeah, the opportunity freely speak about anything wide ranging.
You're gagging him and all the rest.
And the judge said, take it or leave it if you want to speak
This is it and I said on the Wednesday podcast with with Karen Friedman Knifalo that that was the final word
There was no way he was gonna let Donald Trump at the last minute try to get the closing again
But it came up again because at the end when Chris Keiss was done with his kind of walking through why there was no evidence
They're they're major argument which I've seen five times now, because they filed four
or five different motions to, to dismiss the case as a directed verdict, directed judgment.
You know, Michael Cohen helped us. We win. Yeah, you know, they kept jumping up and down.
We've seen these arguments before. They've been rejected time and time again by the judge.
The major argument is as the
as mocking part of me as mockingly presented by the New York Attorney General in their
office, they said, their entire defense boils down to Donald Trump's So Rich Guy and Banks
like Rich Guys. And they gave him a lot of money, and they didn't look at any documentation or any representations that he made under oath in lending and money.
He just went into a bank and they just sent him to the vault and let him take out all the
money that he wanted.
That's basically their argument.
Ignore that banks at his level of borrowing don't look at statements of financial condition or audited financial statements
that were manipulated and cooked by Donald Trump using the outside auditor, but not giving
them all the information.
I mean, you can, you can cook your books with an auditor, Alina Habba, by not providing
the auditor with full and complete access.
I mean, every public company that's ever gone down for fraud had an outside auditor, many
of which are no longer around anymore, like Mazerssoon, because they got into bed with
their client and didn't do their proper control duty to the public.
So that whole argument just shows you how juvenile and how they don't understand how business
works in America. The fact that, well, he needed outside
auditors because banks would not have accepted Alan Weisselberg, who admitted he's not a certified
public accountant, but was serving in the role as the chief financial officer just to provide
him whatever on the back of an envelope and say, here, banks are funny that way. Underwriting
departments and banks making loans are funny that way. Underwriting departments and banks making loans are funny
that way. They have a little concept called due diligence and somebody is going to get
fired if when they open the file on the audit committee or the loan committee and all they
see is a napkin filled out by Alan Weisselberg. There's got to be like, where is your statement
of financial condition? Where is your audit of financials? Obviously, they relied on it.
There was testimony as they pointed out in the closing
that Deutsche Bank, the main lender for Donald Trump,
required a certain amount of liquidity cash on hand
by Donald Trump as part of his assets,
not just all the real estate.
Money he could actually, without having a fire sale,
everything, he could actually stroke a check for if he defaulted.
And his net worth
hadn't be at a certain certain level.
And that's where the cooking of the books and the pumping up of the numbers came in.
And that's the focus.
Talk about, you know, to paraphrase in Lena Habba, they're not in the real world.
They're the truck, they talk like gaslighting.
The truck people are not in the real world.
They're not in a business world.
They're not in a commercial world.
They're not in a banking world. And they not in a commercial world. They're not in a banking world.
And they're not in a world where evidence and facts matter.
And so when the New York Attorney General
was putting on their closing,
it was reference to all of the testimony
both inside the Trump organization,
not just Michael Cohen, others.
Alan Weisselberg statements against his own interest.
Trump's own statements against his own interest
where he said, I looked at the statement
of financial conditions.
I would make comments on them.
Meaning he put his hands on them,
the ones that were used and relied on by the banks
with the cook numbers.
Statements made by people at different levels
of the organization, the flies on the wall
in the finance department and the control department,
that Donald Trump couldn't even remember their names during deposition.
They killed him in terms of their testimony about conversations they had with Alan Weisselberg
and Michael Cohen about pumping up the numbers and cooking the books and pieces of evidence,
thousands of pieces of evidence and documents and handwritten notes by, you know, the controller
of the company
Jeff McConnie, you know McConnie, you know in which he said DJT told me to do this pump up this number
Should we be putting this on our financial statements? These are deals that haven't happened yet
Yes or no in writing the Marginalia we like to call it on the side of the document right right? That's the evidence. So when people hear the Donald Trump lost $500 million people on our audience
I don't want you to think it's because the judge
liked Latisha James or something
It's because he has been the fact finder for the 11 weeks of trial with Donald Trump having ample opportunity to defend himself and
he came up with nothing more, frankly, than four experts who were completely rejected by
the judge rightly because they had no information that would help the judge determine whether
fraud had been committed or the level of damage or discouragement that was in place.
They were all hired guns and I'm being polite.
Judge went further and said,
you can pay a person anything to say anything
in dismissing one of the experts.
And that left Donald Trump with what?
A Don Jr. giving a tour of the family history
starting with, you know, the Grand Pappy Trump
running brothels, which apparently is what happened,
all the way to Fred Trump,
leaving a half a billion dollars to his son in 1999
to start off his career.
So that wasn't helpful to the issues
that are at stake, did Donald Trump use
cooked statements of financial condition
and use that with counter parties
to in order to get loans approved,
deals approved, transactions approved, tax breaks, insurance breaks, diddy or diddy, it's
binary.
And we know where the judge is at because he's already found twice that there's been persistent
fraud in the company.
Now, we're just down to like, you know, the a dust settling, and how big of a number for discordment, and to correct Chris Keiss.
It's not damages.
He keeps talking about damages of the closing.
He drove me nuts.
It's discordment.
It is the ill-gotten money that somebody obtains
from doing something fraudulent,
where they take the playing field,
and they tilt it to their advantage,
and all that money that comes in their direction,
that's what gets ripped away from them
and clawed back in a discouragement proceeding.
And that money doesn't go to the Tisha James.
It goes to the people of the state of New York
who have been defrauded by Donald Trump
and his ilk in a crime spree, a fraudulent crime spree
over the last decade or more.
Think about what Donald Trump's defenses are across all of his cases.
So you heard Alina Habasey, if you write it down, it can't be fraud.
What was their other argument here?
That they had a worthless clause, that you could commit all of this fraud, but if you had
a worthless clause, it makes all of your
agreements.
It makes your word, right?
I grew up and my pops said to me, Ben, be a man of your word.
That's what I was taught growing up.
Be a person of your word.
Well, Donald Trump views it.
If I have a worthless clause, then my word doesn't matter.
I could defraud you, which is, of course, not what the law allows law allows nor does his disclaimer which he refers to as a worthless
Clause allow any of that conduct so it can't be in writing what about if it's oral what about if you speak it well
Then he has a first amendment right he argues to say anything and he can't commit crimes if you
Engage in speech according to Donald Trump because he has an absolute first amendment right to say anything he argues
Donald Trump because he has an absolute first amendment right to say anything he argues. And then when it comes to the 14th Amendment section three case, disqualification, what
is Donald Trump argue?
I never even took the oath.
I never took the oath to support the United States Constitution.
And what is Donald Trump argue about trying to overthrow the results of a free and fair
election?
I have absolute presidential immunity.
I can do whatever
I want. So going back to the first thing we talked about, the E. Jean Carroll case, when
Donald Trump talked about his proclivity for sexually abusing women, he said that when
you're rich and famous, you can do whatever you want to do. And they just let you do it.
And you get away with it. Donald Trump has trans-immuted his abusive behavior as a
defense across everything that he does. And as we talk about the cases, these are not arguments
that I didn't do it. And that's what the New York Attorney General Lawyer said. You didn't hear
any evidence that these numbers were accurate. You never heard any evidence that these numbers were
the correct numbers. All you heard about was worthless clause or come on, he just made a mistake.
He didn't mean to do it.
Or so what?
This is what goes down all the time.
This is just how rich men do business, which is not the case.
And so I think it's important that we frame in and talk about it.
How Donald Trump is making excuse after excuse after excuse,
and what we talk about on the show and what these prosecutors stand for and what our system
stands for is law and order.
We're going to get to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals argument right now where Donald
Trump's lawyers literally argued that Donald Trump should be able to use the Navy SEALs
SEAL Team 6 to kill political opponents and
then receive absolute immunity.
And Donald Trump, when he gave a press conference later in the week, agreed with that statement.
Of course, he did.
He was the one who told his lawyer to argue that and his lawyers fell right into a trap
that was set by the three judge panel in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals because they went
right to the heart of, so are you really arguing that he can do this?
Right away the judges went there and Trump's lawyer, because this is what Trump believes,
had no argument other than to, he tried to weasel out of it, but basically he said, yeah,
yeah, that's kind of what we believe.
We'll talk about that and more.
Let's take our last quick break of the day
Dear, I feel like money is just flying out of your account. You have no idea where it's going. I know that feeling
It's all the subscriptions think about it between streaming services fitness apps delivery services parenting apps. It's endless
I'm guilty of it. So I use rocket money to help me find out what subscriptions I've actually spending money
on and I had them cancel the ones I didn't want anymore.
Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions,
monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills.
I never have to get on the phone with customer service.
They'll even try to get you a refund for the last couple of months of wasted money and negotiate to lower your bills for you by up to 20%. All you have
to do is take a picture of your bill and rocket money takes care of the rest. Rocket money has over
5 million users and has helped save its members an average of $720 a year with over $500 million in cancel subscriptions.
Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash legal AF.
That's rocketmoney.com slash legal AF.
Rocketmoney.com slash legal AF.
Have you ever wondered why laundry detergent comes in massive plastic jugs?
They're heavy, messy, and hard to store.
First of all, 91% of plastic doesn't get recycled, leaving laundry jugs? They're heavy? Messy? In hard to store. First of all, 91% of plastic
doesn't get recycled, leaving laundry jugs to sit in landfills for centuries to come.
I wanted to ditch the jug. Fortunately, I found a solution, Earth breeze. Imagine for a moment,
something that looks like a dryer sheet, but it actually replaces that cup of goo. A pre-measured, liquidless laundry detergent sheet that dissolves at all wash cycles hot
or cold.
No measuring, no mess, and no heavy lifting.
That's right, no plastic jug!
Earthbriezes my new favorite detergent.
The packaging is a cardboard envelope that saves so much space.
I can fit 720 loads of sheets where I used to fit 1 60 load to
turgent jug.
And I didn't realize how itchy old-fashioned a turgent made me, but Earth Breeze is dermatologist
tested, and I truly feel the difference.
I signed up for their subscription immediately.
I love that it's delivered with free, carbon offset shipping right when I need it.
I have full control to adjust, pause, or cancel the subscription without hidden fees or penalties.
I'm happy to never walk down a plastic-filled laundry aisle again.
Most importantly, I still get a powerful clean.
Earth Breeze is tough on stains, fights odors, and my clothes come out clean every time.
Now, this is what really convinced me, with every purchase Earth Breeze, donate 10 loads of detergent to a charitable cause of
your choice.
Over 100 million loads have been donated.
Now every time I do laundry, I get this warm, fuzzy feeling.
Join over 2 million Americans making a difference with Earth Breeze.
If you're still not convinced, they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
If you don't like it, you'll get a full refund.
No questions asked, and no return necessary.
Trust me, there is no reason not to switch.
Right now my listeners can subscribe to EarthBrees and save 40%.
Go to earthbrees.com slash legalaft to get started.
That's earthbrees.com slash legal a f for 40% off.
Earth breeze dot com slash legal a f.
Here back live on legal a f check out all those pro democracy sponsors.
Jordy here at the Midas touch network goes and does the vetting for these
sponsors. We do not allow anybody to advertise on our show.
We're very proud of our pro-democracy sponsors.
So check it out.
The discount codes are in the descriptions.
You can see the links below.
And so check out those sponsors.
And we appreciate them for helping
to support the pro-democracy content we put on here.
Let me set the stage for this DC Circuit Court of Appeals,
oral argument for you, Popok, and I'll let you take
the lion share of this one.
As you know, I'm a geek when it comes to the classified
information procedures.
I'm angling for a very dorky finale on some
SEPA analysis that I know everybody's gonna be just
waiting for that my cell is SEPA analysis that I know everybody's gonna be just waiting, just waiting for that micella CEPA analysis.
But, but Popoq, we had Donald Trump's motion to dismiss the indictment before Judge
Tanya Chutkin was denied by Judge Tanya Chutkin. Donald Trump argued for absolute presidential
immunity as to claiming that all of his conduct that's alleged in special counsel
Jack Smith's criminal indictment about Trump's attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election
constitute official acts that Trump says fall within the outer perimeter of his official
responsibilities under Article 2 of the Constitution when he was in office, even to try to overthrow the
results of a free and fair election.
Judge Chutkin rejected the very notion that this concept of absolute presidential immunity
exists to immunize crimes committed by former presidents while they were in office.
Donald Trump filed an appeal to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
They expedited the briefing.
At the same time, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a direct request with the United States
Supreme Court that it skipped the appeals court.
It goes past the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and goes directly to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court rejected that, I think, in large part because there was an expedited
briefing schedule before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals where oral argument took place
on January 9th.
It was a three-judge panel.
One-judge was Judge Henderson, who was appointed by Reagan and then George W. Bush and then you had Judge Pan and Judge Childs appointed by Democratic
administrations and Judge Pan and Childs elevated to the positions right now in the DC
Circuit Court of Appeals.
I believe both by President Biden.
And so you had a three-judge panel right there.
Donald Trump's lawyers arguing for absolute presidential
immunity and the judges got into it right away. I think on two issues, Popok first, the issue
of jurisdiction. And we've been talking about this amicus brief that was submitted by a group
called American Oversight. And amicus brief is a third party friends of the court brief
that is submitted by parties, the courts of appeals
and Supreme Court, they don't have to accept these outside
briefs and when they accept it,
it doesn't mean they have to rely on it,
but it means they're gonna read it
and it could help inform them on issues
that the parties did in brief.
So there was an issue about whether there was even
jurisdiction in the first place.
A lot of time was spent on this jurisdiction issue about whether Donald Trump even had
the right to bring this appeal on the issue of absolute presidential immunity at the
stage.
And then it got to the issue of merits and absolute presidential immunity.
So Popeyes, take it away.
As I thought, Judge Pan was the leader of this panel. Florence Pan, remarkable credentials as they all do.
But she in particular, remarkable credentials.
I made a mistake.
I said she was Filipino American.
She's Taiwanese American.
I had a friend of the show reach out to me who's also
Taiwanese American, say they're very proud of Judge Pan.
And we all should be started out working.
She worked in Goldman Sachs as an analyst.
She worked in the Department of the Treasury.
She's worked as a US attorney.
She was the head of the Appellate Division
for the US Attorney's Office in the District of Columbia.
She was elevated from Superior Court Judge.
In the District of Columbia,
she then became a DC Circuit Court Judge under Biden
and quickly elevated to the DC Court of Appeals.
That's a, we're talking about a rocket,
a rocket, that is a rocket career trajectory.
And I wouldn't be surprised if Biden gets,
and when he gets another opportunity to put somebody
on the Supreme Court, if she's not on the short list,
Judge Childs is another person who was on the short list
for the United States Supreme Court.
She was pushed by Lindsey Graham.
She came out of South Carolina originally.
And she lost out, if're going to call it that to
Katanjee Brown-Jaxson, Judge Henderson, as you said, was appointed by GW Bush, but they all are
aligned in how they grilled the lawyer John Sauer for Donald Trump who did not do a very good
job because he couldn't answer or refuse to answer, the most basic
questions that are implicated by his legal arguments.
The problem they had from the very beginning is they threw everything against the wall
in their briefing, hoping something would stick, but many of the things they threw against
the wall are internally inconsistent with each other.
And so if you're going to argue, for instance, and you're going to spend a considerable amount
of time in your argument and in your briefing.
In order for there to be a criminal prosecution at all of a former now former president, there
needed to be an impeachment process in the House.
First, a complete misreading of the impeachment clause in the Constitution about what is required.
In fact, you have to just ignore basic principles of reasonable reading and
comprehension in order to come away with the conclusion that if a person is impeached,
which Donald Trump was, for elements of Gen 6, not the entire focus of the Gen 6 prosecution
in the District of Columbia, but elements of it, but was not convicted, obviously, by the Senate,
because A, there was no time. And B, people like Lindsey Graham, I'm sorry, people like Mitch McConnell is on record
as saying, we're not going to have a lot of time here because he's already not no longer
a president, but there's a criminal justice system out there that will take care of the
rest.
And people voted accordingly and said, yeah, we don't want to convict the guy.
He's an ex-president.
Let the court system handle it.
And then when the court system tried to handle it, Donald Trump says, aha, I needed to be
convicted by the Senate.
And if I wasn't convicted by the Senate, you can't take me out in a indictment in real
world criminal justice land, wrong.
But that right, the fact that they doubled down on that instead of focusing on some, like all their
arguments are weak, but some were weaker than others. That was, I thought, the weakest of
all of their ludicrous arguments. If I were them, well, if I were them, I wouldn't have brought
this case, but if I were them, I would have leaned in on some of the other arguments having to do
with just constitutional analysis of why public policy, you don't want
presidents, who are now ex presidents, to be criminally indicted and just stretch the scope
of the job description and powers of the presidency.
Just stretch it out as far as you can to say that everything that Donald Trump is being
indicted for falls within one of the categories of something that's legitimate and therefore
He shouldn't be indicted chilling effect on the presidency, whatever
By the way, none of that got bought by any of the panelists it led by judge man
But it would have been a better place to be than where he ended up
Right out of the get go. It was led by I think each of them had each of the three judges had concerns
And they kind of led on
different topics.
Henderson was concerned about kind of the scope of the presidential, off of the official
office and the powers of it.
What was ministerial and what was official and, you know, maybe we should send it back
to Judge Chuck and to figure it out.
Going back to Marbury versus Madison from 1803
and which is a leading preeminent case that we all a foundational case about the role of the
United States Supreme Court as a co-equal branch of government. But so she that was interesting,
but that really didn't drive. That wasn't the driver for the hour and a half roasting of John Sauer.
driver for the hour and a half roasting of John Sauer. It was really child's out of the box
about the jurisdictional brief, as you said,
filed by friends of the court.
In other words, the parties didn't brief this issue
about whether the court had jurisdiction or not.
This was raised by an outside group
that was allowed to submit a brief
and the judge has found it interesting
and asked the parties to be ready to be prepared.
So nobody was caught flat-footed about this argument. And the argument is follows. There are certain
things, there are certain limited things that you're allowed to appeal during the course of a case.
Everything else, virtually everything else has to be done at the end of the case.
Things that are allowed on discretion or otherwise are called interlocatory
appeals. So those are appeals that happen before the end of the case. So there's an
argument that this type of immunity is found nowhere in the expressed language of
the Constitution. I defy anybody on the other side of the aisle to go through the
United States Constitution and tell me where there is language literally written
in with the Quill on the parchment by the drafters of that particular provision or those provisions that say the president of the United States has immunity from criminal prosecution for anything he did while he was in office, but it's relatively easy to write. I just wrote it.
It's not there. There is by contrast when the drafters and the framers wanted to include immunity, they knew how to do it because they wrote it in for certain types of, certain classes of people within the government.
Speech and debate immunity, if you're a member of Congress, and you do things within the
core sense scope of what you're been paid to do in Washington, which is the legislative
fact-fine investigating, you know, reporting around that and actions that are consistent with your role
as a legislator, you're not gonna get criminally prosecuted
or have to respond to criminal process as a result.
They wanted to do that.
It's self-preservation provision, if you will.
People that wrote it were all legislator,
so they wanted to protect themselves.
The second one is double jeopardy.
And this is how they try to get in there.
And she whorne it in with Donald Trump's people.
That's another type of immunity that if you've already
been tried for the exact same crime, you're not
to be tried again.
And you don't have to wait till the end of the trial
to find out what happens.
We'll allow an interlocutory appeal.
But that's really it.
And it has to be written in the Constitution.
That's their problem.
It's not written in the Constitution for the Trump side.
It was created through case law.
We know it happens to case law on the hands of this particular Supreme Court, and precedent.
We know what happens there.
Coming down a long line for 237 years, and the the problem with John Sauer also in his arguments for Trump
So they ignore the leading cases that even have Trump's name on it from 2020 that kind of get to the water's edge of the issue of
Criminal process and prosecution of a sitting president in that case is the Vance side Vance the Manhattan district attorney at the time versus Donald Trump about his tax returns
side-vants, the Manhattan District Attorney at the time versus Donald Trump, about his tax returns. So there is some precedent that stacks on other precedent about civil liability and immunity
that you could argue from, but they just throw that out completely. That's not the toolbox
that John Sauer wants to use in making his argument. So the jurisdictional argument is
we have no jurisdiction to hear this matter because this is interlocutory
about an issue that's not immune by way of the written word of the Constitution.
Goodbye, there's the door.
And so Judge Childs led on that.
Why are we here?
Which I've always told my colleagues who I trained for trial practice that judges have
two questions in their head and they're tapping their foot waiting for a response as soon
as you enter the courtroom, which is why are you here and what do you want?
And here is the existential, why are we here?
And so I gave a lot of credit to the Department of Justice lawyer, James Pierce, who argued
for Jack Smith.
He said, we understand the jurisdictional argument.
We didn't make it on purpose. It's not like we missed it.
We just think for justice, given the President being the stakes of the issue having to be resolved, that you should assert
at least what we call artificial or temporary or substitute jurisdiction now and make the ruling on the merits.
We don't want a technical win.
In other words, we understand if you find no jurisdiction, we'll get this case maybe restarted
relatively quickly, which is what, of course, the accusation is across the aisle, which
is he, they're rushing a judgment.
They just want to tear him down Trump before the election.
And here was an opportunity where he could have just said, that's a great idea.
No jurisdiction.
Why are we here?
Let's go back to Judge Chutkin in the draw court.
But Pierce being a man of honor and a lawyer, an officer of the courts, and we don't think
that's the right way.
And we think you have the ability to issue a ruling on the merits in Judge Pant sort
of jumped in with that and said, yeah, I understand that we could as long as it's not a fundamental
article three jurisdictional issue, we can do that.
And so then the entire focus was on judgepan.
And so once we were doing jurisdiction, it was judgepan.
And judgepan wanted to, as all, and when you and I talked about this, all appellate judges,
trial judges do it too, but appellate judges are notorious for taking an example to stretch the limits
of your position to see, a, to test it, to give it an acid bath, see if it works, and to see
how you will navigate around an obvious implication of what you're arguing. And the obvious
implication of what John Sauer was arguing is, let me give you, let me give you
an example. I hear you. You agree with me that there may be certain conduct, for instance,
that may be official. He's allowed to do it technically. He's a commander in chief, but
assume this for a moment. Commander in chief president, orders team six while he's president to give the order,
he gives the order to take out a political rival. But there's no time or there's procedural
you understand it takes a while to do an impeachment process and an a Senate conviction or maybe it's
in the leaning days of an administration where there's no time, last five minutes of a presidency where there's no time, and you're saying that what, that immunity, you want absolute immunity
because there wasn't enough time to do the impeachment and the Senate conviction.
What are you saying?
And he said, yes, there had, well, first of all, that kind of president would be immediately
impeached and convicted by the Senate.
But what if he wasn't, Judge Pansett?
What if there wasn't enough time to do that,
or for some reason political or otherwise,
the Senate didn't convict him.
Are you saying that that type of president
that just gave that order would be able to go Scott free?
Yes or no?
And he said, conditional yes, and Judge Pan said,
no, no, not conditional yes, yes or no,
under your absolute immunity theory,
does that type of president get avoid criminal
prosecution in the justice system?
He said, yeah, I'll put you down for yes, maybe you might know, basically, it was the
answer to that.
And so, when that was going on, all of us on the LA effort texting each other because we
were listening to the oral argument and you and I jumped to the hot take on it.
And we all said, oh, that was it.
That was the moment where John Sauer didn't just shoot himself in the foot.
He shot himself at the argument in the head, no pun intended.
And she was a sniper.
She took him out on that question and he never recovered.
And I would, so that went on for a while, the limits of that argument.
And she even reminded him as Jack Smith had pointed out in the brief,
for instance, Judge Pan also took him the task and said, well, if you go to the congressional
record, I can see where he's probably his heart was sinking at that moment. There was
a position that Donald Trump took at that time. And his lawyers took at that time that the
criminal justice system can handle a president like that, even if they even even he doesn't
get impeached and convicted.
And that was a position that your client took then
that's now inconsistent with the position he's taking now.
And senators and other people relied on that position
in order not to vote to convict him, didn't they?
And so, okay, that was the hour to half.
James Pierce did great in terms of his arguments and now we're just waiting
literally, I mean, it could come out any moment now.
We're waiting for the order from the DC Court of Appeals, which is going to find, I'm sure,
I want to hear your view on it, Ben, that any president like Donald Trump who's been
indicted for the allegations and the crimes that he's been indicted for are going to stand for, stand for justice and trial in the regular criminal court system.
All the rest of the arguments that were in the briefs that we heard about, first amendment, it was a first amendment right, all went by the wayside.
It all came down to jurisdiction and his impeachment clause thing and then that's going to fail and they're going to rule quickly.
And then we're going to see what happens next with the Supreme Court.
One last point.
We talked about the E. Jean Carroll case earlier
in the podcast and as you and I had said earlier,
he did not, this case is going to trial on Tuesday
because Donald Trump elected not to take an appeal
to the United States Supreme Court on an emergency basis
to find that he had presidential immunity
to defame E. Jean Carawal, he was
in office.
We said it was unlikely he was going to try to push that onto the Supreme Court while
they're trying to figure out whether he belongs on the ballot, whether his indictment
charges against him or valid, and whether he has ultimately immunity from criminal prosecution.
He wasn't going to, I don't think he was going to like go to the well that often.
And he didn't, and that trial starts out to say because if he went to the well and
had the Supreme Court and said, I need you Supreme Court to rule on an emergency basis
on the issue of absolute presidential immunity, it cuts directly against what he argued
when special counsel Jack Smith went to the Supreme Court and asked for absolute and said
that you should be ruling on this issue of absolute presidential immunity on an expedited basis.
And it does give you some more insight though into Donald Trump, though, in terms of what
he is ultimately fearing in the calculation that he is making, that in the E. Jean Carroll
case, which is about money, I think Donald Trump in his mind
has probably earmarked a judgment against him from somewhere in the range of $10 million
on the low end to $150 million for a runaway jury on the high end right there, which I
think Trump in his own mind says, well, then I'll try to appeal that.
And then I'll try to appeal that. And then I'll try to delay that.
But what I can't do is let this DC case go first.
And if I make a blunder, and I think this is, you know,
with some of his other lawyers instructing,
and this is not an Alina Habawon right here,
his other lawyer is basically saying, you know,
you need to do anything you could try to do
to delay this DC case from going to trial
and that should be your priority because you're going to lose this DC case and that's going
to put you in jail for the rest of your life.
So that's kind of the chess moves taking place behind the scenes and he doesn't have judge
Eileen Cannon in Washington, DC or judge Eileen Cannon's on the panel that we talked about.
And like, you know, there's such a big distinction between a judge Henderson, right?
A judge appointed by a Republican administration from Reagan to George H. W. Bush, whose law
and order to what a Trump-magged judge looks like in Judge Eileen Cannon.
And even if people didn't think initially that
she was going to be a Maga judge and some very wise and brilliant legal scholars thought
that judge Eileen Cannon was going to exercise some modicum of rationality. She's not, she's
not. And as I always say about Judge Cannon, her incompetence is matched and sometimes exceeded
by her corruption.
And by the way, that's a similar line I give to Maga,
which equals fascism plus idiocracy.
And fortunately, the idiocracy far exceeds the ability
to implement the fascism at this stage.
And there's a mix of this with judge canon as well
like it seems that her goals and objectives are to try to help Donald Trump delay delay delay
and at the same time she's trying to figure out how to do that in a way that positions her case to
try to block the other cases, the Washington DC criminal case
and maybe even the Manhattan District Attorney case, which is scheduled in March, but she
doesn't really know how to go about do it.
So Canon keeps on like trying to delay.
She knows that if she makes an order that is not the appropriate order on any of these issues related to SEPA, the
classified information procedure act, because the statute allows for interlocutory appeal,
unlike the Midland asphalt decision where if there is no statute or direct text in the
constitution, like there is none on the issue of absolute presidential immunity.
That's why the American oversight argues there's no interlocutory appeal allowed for Donald Trump.
An absolute presidential immunity. Jack Smith can appeal on an interlocutory basis from what's
called a collateral order and order that's taken in the middle of the case before trial,
before final judgment
to the 11 circuit court of appeal.
So what we see with judge can in over and over is she doesn't make substantive orders.
She masks the substantive orders as scheduling orders because trial judges have almost complete
discretion to move dates and that stuff isn't
appealable. So when she messes with the calendar and makes rulings that are without prejudice
about scheduling, they're not viewed as interlocutory appeal issues. So for example, here's
what Judge Cannon did with respect to SEPA this
past week. She goes in advance of this upcoming SEPA section 4 hearing and to
assist in the courts evaluation of defendant's motion for access to SEPA
section 4 filings. The court hereby schedule a hearing with the special counsel
on January 31st, 2024 at 10 a.m. this hearing shall be conducted on a
sealed, ex-part a basism. This hearing shall be conducted on a sealed
X part A basis and a facility suitable for the disclosure of classified
information contained in the special counsel's section for filings. The court
resolve reserves ruling on the defendant's motion for access to CPISection
for filings pending the February 2024 CPISection for hearings and review of
defendant's forthcoming CPISection for hearings and review of defendants forthcoming
CPISection for challenges.
When I look at this, I'm just like, what in the world are you doing, Judge Eileen Cannon?
The answer is very simple, where she says the court reserves ruling on defendants motions
for access to CPISection for filings.
In the CPIS World, that's basically elementary school stuff of what's one plus one.
And Eileen Cannon here is saying, I reserve the right to determine of one plus one equals
four.
I'm trying to sort that out.
So I want to have a hearing to determine if one plus one equals four.
Okay, it doesn't.
It equals two.
And SEPA section four specifically states that the defendant, Donald Trump, doesn't have access
to section 4 material at the section 4x part day in camera hearing, which takes place just
with the judge and just with the prosecutor in a secure facility without the defendant
being present, that happens in every SEAPA case.
It says it in SE seepacase. It says in in seepacection for this is not a complicated, difficult issue,
but notice here, what judge Cannon doesn't do, she doesn't say that she is actually allowing
Trump's lawyers to show up. Instead, she's saying, I want to hold this pre-hearing,
this seepup pre-hearing. Like, no, just follow the rules, Canon,
seepa section four says, you hold the hearing,
it's you and the prosecutor.
Then you look at the documents, the prosecutor says,
these documents are so highly classified
that we want to withhold producing these documents
and do some sort of substitution or summary and say these documents involve nuclear codes these documents involve war plans but not actually turn over the war plans and then judge cannon if you think the war plans are nuclear codes or whatever the material the government wants to hold should be turned over you order that they be turned over and then that order gets stayed while Jack Smith or whoever
the prosecutor and whatever the case where this statute is evoked, they file an interlocutory
appeal to challenge your decision. That's section four in a nutshell. You don't get to say,
I want to hold a presection for hearing to determine whether or not the defense can participate
in the CPISection Four here, but they're not allowed to participate period end of story.
So what is she doing here?
She's just trying to screw around with the prosecution.
Like it's obvious that what she's doing is she doesn't even know what she's doing.
So she's trying to learn on the job because she's never had a CEPA case before
in her entire career.
And she wants to hear what the prosecution is gonna say,
so then she can figure out what she's going to try to do.
It's exactly what she did back in 2022
when she tried to exercise and did a cert
equitable jurisdiction over a search warrant
that was signed by a magistrate judge.
And she asserted jurisdiction over this case
to try to block the search warrant
from being executed in the 11th Circuit.
It was like no court ever has exercised
equitable jurisdiction in anything like this.
You can create some new standards
and she's creating a new,
extra statutory standard right here that doesn't exist.
So that's on that one. And then on Friday, she issued this other notice
paperless order and that's why I want you to focus on the subtleties here of what she's doing notice paperless order paperless order
Every word has meaning and that's why I want to focus on this that other legal shows don't paperless order denying without prejudice
on this that other legal shows don't. Paperless order, denying without prejudice,
special counsel's motion to compel disclosure
regarding advice of counsel defense.
The court has reviewed the motion,
defendants opposition.
The special counsel's reply
and is fully advised in the premises,
assuming the facts and circumstances in this case warrant
and order compelling disclosure of an advice of counsel trial defense.
The court determines that such a request is not amenable to proper consideration at this juncture prior to at least partial resolution of pre-trial motions,
transmission to defendants of special counsels exhibit and witness list, and other disclosures as may become necessary. The special counsel's motion is therefore denied
without prejudice.
So focus on paperless order denying this motion
without prejudice.
So she tries to cast this order in a way
that can't be appealed on an interlocutory basis.
Would you now know what that means?
My special counsel, Jack Smith,
all Jack Smith is saying is, look,
if Trump's gonna blame his lawyers, which he claims he
may and throw the lawyers under the bus, that waves Trump's attorney-client privilege.
If he's gonna say, there are the reasons why he willfully retain national defense information
that he shouldn't have.
And my dogs are upset about that, too.
My dogs are very frustrated that that would be the request
that Donald Trump would throw.
His lawyer is under the bus, but Jack Smith very reasonably,
Jack Smith very rationally wants to say,
hey, if you're gonna make that defense,
don't do it at the time of trial
because then your waiver of attorney client privilege
and you're gonna have to turn over all of these documents
and records is gonna cause chaos in the trial. So Judge Cannon just do what every
other judge does in this situation. Make them disclose an advice of counsel
defense right now or start the process where at least 60 days or so before the
trial they disclose the advice of counsel defense.
And then we can all be prepared.
Like you should have an orderly scheduling order.
And judge can goes, that's premature.
Your trial date according to your trial schedules in four months, it's May 20th, 2024.
So why would it be premature to go through the normal steps that we go through, and also it should be noted that Judge Cannon similarly rejected
in a paperless order,
Jackson Smith's request under SEPA to set a section five hearing,
which is for Trump to disclose the classified information
that he wants to inject that trial,
so the government can protect against blackmailing or graymailing,
which is the
whole point and purpose of SEPA which is to protect against criminal defendants accessing
national defense information and extorting the government to dismiss the criminal case
against them or else they will make these classified documents public and under my national
security.
That's why you have the SEPA statue to protect against that. That's why it's so important. That's why
courts just follow it per what the statute says. And by the way, these
issues were before Judge Chutkin also because there are classified information
in the Washington DC case. You don't hear this even being discussed or
debated because Judge Chuck
and made one order to Donald Trump's lawyers and said, if you have case law that directly
rebuts what SEPA says and what every court has done in this country, please present it
to me by date X. They did not and she said, denied. We're moving on. I'm not dealing with
this stuff. Popo,, that just shows you though.
Judge Eileen Cannon, why judges are so important,
why elections matter?
Because Donald Trump appointed Judge Cannon,
and you see the difference between a canon type of judge,
and even a George H.W. Bush judge in a Henderson.
It's night and day, what it it means now if you're a judge
appointed by MAGA versus a judge appointed by a conservative like a judge
Luddling who I agree with on a lot of issues versus this new breed of MAGA
judge. Yeah, Judge Lutig we're gonna have on a legal AF special. You and I have a corresponding with him to join us
and he's looking forward to that.
She's been over her skis since day one
on the Southern District of Florida regular practitioner.
That's a sleepy backwater branch of the division
of the Southern District of Florida,
other than drug cases and some other immigration type matters.
It doesn't get.
Things of the magnitude of trying the first president, former president of the United States
in a criminal matter related to espionage and obstruction of justice that goes without
saying.
But a more seasoned, more experienced, more sober judge would resign to it, even one that was as new to the bench
as Judge Cano would be doing a much better job regardless of the party that appointed them.
It's really not, to be frank, it's not the right judge in the right court to be handling this.
We know why Jack Smith picked Southern District of Florida.
He was concerned that even though there were plenty of allegations that tied back to Washington,
DC, the Sixth Amendment requires that the suit be brought and that the jury be picked
of appears in the community in which the crimes were committed.
And well, it could have been an argument that some of the crimes dealing with the National
Archive, the interaction with the White House, coming out of the White
House with the confidential documents, see the documents were done in DC.
It was a stronger case to have it located, the site of it in Florida and in Southern District
of Florida, which runs up and down the East Coast.
Probably that is once you eliminate the senior status judges and the judges that weren't
taking any new cases
You were only left with a couple of judges from which to choose it would have been middle Brooks who would have been great
So you know 25 years on the bench
Sophisticated commercial litigator in his own right before that and has stood up to Donald Trump in cases like
Finding a key in Alina Haba a million bucks for that fraudulent
merit list case against Hillary Clinton and the DNC and others for fraud that Donald Trump brought
as a campaign piece of literature instead of a lawsuit over a year ago. But then I left
Aline Cannon and I have to believe that Jack Smith knew the risk he was taking and took the risk. I read for you or I recited a bit of judge pan who was Karen free
many the flow said we have a girl crush on her. I have a boy crush on her and we listen to her background background is just the people that you're buying this picking the put on
just the people that Joe Biden is picking to put on on different panels and filling these openings, Treasury Department, Goldman Sachs analyst, US Attorney, Judge, just as Alian
Cannon, Federalist Society, short time in a sleepy backwater office of the US Attorney's
office doing appeals.
All she did, now you think she'd reach out.
There's senior judges on the Southern District that are very, very good that I know well and
I practice in front of.
She's just not one of them.
And then she compounds it as you outlined with being over her skis with what appears to
be a bias or putting her thumb on the scales of justice in favor of Donald Trump, which
even the appearance of it is unsettling and just wrong.
I'll do a separate hot take on the second part of your breakdown, if everything is going on,
the breakdown is the right word in the Southern District with Judge Cannon on the lawyers.
This is much to do about nothing. There is no way on God's green earth that Donald Trump is going to be able to use
any argument that he relied on the advice of counsel to obstruct justice, to hide the documents, to not provide them to the National Archives, and not properly respond to the
subpoena, and to try to burn drown or otherwise get rid of and erase the video recordings of him telling his henchmen to move
the boxes away from his own lawyers and ultimately from and hide them from federal judges the
Department of Justice.
He's not going to be able to rely on that.
I'm going to do the hot take where I'm going to go over very carefully Evan Corcoran in
his cooperation with the US Attorney and what he has told Jack Smith and the US attorney
about his advice and what happened during the logistics of him searching and what Donald
Trump told him about pulling out documents and just losing them conveniently at the hotel
that he was staying in before he met with the lead lawyers for the Department of Justice.
Christina Bob, no better, and Alex Cannon, who will ultimately testify that Donald
Trump told him to tell the National Archive that he had completed and fully produced everything
that was responsive to the request when that was not true. And then finally, Jennifer Littel,
who's going to testify because she's already told the Department of Justice that she told Donald
Trump to stop screwing around with the subpoena.
Now that the subpoena had been issued, this was his moment to turn over all the documents
or face criminal conviction.
These are not the kind of lawyers that you'll be able to rely on for a defensive counsel
defense, which is very difficult to do anyway.
You have to thread a tremendous needle,
a tremendously small needle in order to get it.
You have to have asked for certain advice
that's completely consistent with the conduct
that you're being charged with.
You have to have obtained that advice,
having given full and complete information to the lawyers.
The lawyer's advice has to be followed to a T
and then upon that, you may have a common
law defense to an indictment.
None of that's going to be relevant here.
So we're just playing, this is just a referee of the first degree because he's never going
to be able to rely on that.
And I don't know why she's not allowing Jack Smith to call it out now the way he called
it out in the District of Columbia with Judge
Chuck in early and often.
You know, he's just responding, the Jack Smith side of the equation, is just responding
to the comments that are made outside the court, or the extra traditional comments made by
Donald Trump and his lawyers on talk shows and at rallies that they're going to rely on
the advice of counsel.
So he equally wanted that called out now. If that's true, let's get to
the bottom of it and let's brief it. And I want to know about it now because
she's not really ready to try her case in May and all indications are that
any going to happen to put despite the fact that it's still on the docket
because she's not doing any of the things that are required preliminarily to get
the case lined up for May.
Trials don't, I'm in the trial,
I just finished a trial yesterday.
Trials don't just happen.
Like you don't just show up on trial day,
and hi everybody, I'm here for the trial.
It's not how trials work.
There's preliminary pre-trial activity,
civil cases and criminal cases,
and deadlines that have to be met,
and discovery that has to be obtained in exchange,
and depositions if you're in civil case.
And all of these things have to happen in an order
without delay and on a set schedule
that's been enforced by a judge.
We have none of that here, which is why I'm back
to your original position that I fought for a while,
because remember the bar down there, is that she's doing it on purpose
as opposed to just being incompetent. And it just at this point, her, she has to
know about the criticism that's been lodged at her. I'm sure she's talked to,
or if not, she's, Dumber than we think, talk to senior or if not, she's dumb or they were, they were think, talk to senior people in
her kitchen cabinet, senior judges, including Judge Ungaro, who's the senior judge for
the Southern District of Florida, down in Miami, about how to handle things.
Judges reach out to other judges, or they're supposed to, and have that conversation over
a tuna fish sandwich.
And I don't think she's doing that, because if she's doing it, who's giving you this terrible,
terrible advice?
So if she's not doing it, she's not doing it on purpose because she wants to be the
one judge that seems to be on in favor of Donald Trump against all other odds, courts
of appeals, federal judges, state judges, not one of them thinks that Donald
Trump is a credible, trustworthy, participant in either of the court systems federal or state
criminal or civil, except apparently Aileen Cannon who bends over backwards to credit Donald
Trump's lawyers and give them the benefit of every doubt and tie to every
runner on every issue, which only is going to result in, sorry folks can't do may, we're
not really prepared are we? No, because you didn't allow us to be prepared.
And Popoq, I think it's even worse than that. I mean, I think what her plan is is that
she's going to try to, I think, dismiss the case, which actually may end
up being a good thing because it'll be immediately appealable to the 11 circuit court of appeals
that's going to reverse her.
I expect her to make the worst rulings.
And when she does, then that's when the 11 circuit can step in and potentially remove
her at that time and reverse her.
And there is case law in the 11th circuit
that there's like a three strikes rule
in some of the other cases
where they previously have removed a judge.
But if I look at the schedule coming up
and I impute the worst motives to judge Canon,
which I don't know why I wouldn't at this stage,
we have defense motions to compel discovery coming up on January 16th.
We got defense challenges to section 4 motions on January 23rd.
We have a hearing on the section 4 motions mid-February.
Then you have the pretrial motions scheduled on February 22nd.
You have a scheduling conference on March 1 with that May trial date remaining in place.
I expect Judge Cannon to rule, I mean, she's going to have to rule on these motions.
And look, she's been dealing with the SEPA issues, Pope, for what, nine months now, it seems, eight months,
dealing with very basic SEPA issues
that could probably have been dealt with
in less than a week.
It's taken her.
So what is she gonna do when she gets
the absolute presidential immunity argument
that Trump claims that because he was a classifying
and declassifying source while he was in office.
Those powers impute to him even when he leaves the office.
You know he's going to make an argument like that.
What does she do when he makes the argument of prosecutorial misconduct and says that
Jack Smith breached attorney client privilege and seized all of these documents despite the
fact that that's not what took place
and you actually had a Washington DC grand jury
that was empaneled and you had a Washington DC federal judge
make the orders and judge barrel howl and bozeburg,
who are the ones who were involved
in making kind of important orders in this.
And other cases, what do you think she does? Let me ask you this, in other cases, what do you think she does?
Let me ask you this, Popok.
What do you think she does if she was sitting
where Judge Chutkin was, and she got Donald Trump's
absolute presidential immunity argument?
Do you have any doubt that she would have granted
absolute presidential immunity?
Do you have any doubt that she would,
when she would be given the arguments
about SEAL Team Six? I can tell you why she would, when she would be given the arguments about seal team six, I can tell you why she would
grant absolute immunity because she exercised equitable jurisdiction over the search warrant and she
said that special rules apply to Donald Trump that don't apply to anybody else. So she's already
applying that standard, but why I want to tell everybody one that will be bad,
but why I actually think it's actually a good thing that that's going to happen.
I want to both create a sense of the reality of what's going to happen, but then let
you all know why I actually think that that's not a horrible thing to happen for real, is
because she's going to have to make ruling soon.
This paperless order crap can't go on forever.
Let me interrupt.
She asked me a question.
I didn't get a chance to answer.
Let me ask you a question that I want you to answer.
You said she's going to dismiss it.
What's the grounds to dismiss the indictment based on the espionage act and the obstruction
of justice based on the facts allegedly indictment under
what grounds which he'd dismiss it?
You're thinking like a logical lawyer and I think that's where you missed the mark on
the question.
Although, it's a fair one.
She will find, I believe, whether it's absolute presidential immunity, some claim that because Trump was a declassifying
authority while he was in office, that that imputes to something in the future, she'll
try to find that there was prosecutorial misconduct here and an overreach.
I just have a hard time believing that this judge who has made the exact wrong
rulings every time she's been confronted with a ruling will now make the correct ruling
so when she is when she is present.
So if you're right, if you're right, let's just play it out, play out the thought, the
thought game here.
Why hasn't the lawyers for, or when will the lawyers for Donald Trump
file such a motion to require her to have it ruled upon? They did it late in the game
for Chutkin to maximize collateral damage and try to take out the trial date. They could
have filed that same set of motions early on in the indictment because nothing in it was based on new information that they obtained in discovery process.
They just wanted to wait until the last possible moment in order to f with the trial date.
So why haven't they done it here?
Same exact reason.
They're waiting.
They're waiting.
And the more they can delay it, it's a two-fer for the Trump team. Delay it as long as possible.
And then finally, when Judge Cannon does whatever she's
going to do with it, it'll either be delayed so much
that it won't happen before the election,
or she'll grant a dismissal.
But here's the thing I want to let everybody know.
This is not double jeopardy.
Trump doesn't just get off if that's what happens.
That would get appealed to the 11th circuit,
which would very swiftly and immediately
reverse what Judge Cannon does.
And again, I just, you're right, Popoq,
all of the law suggests everything that she says
there is no basis to dismiss this case.
So I hope that I'm wrong when it comes to judge, Canon,
but everything, every data point that I have about her tells me that whether it's
granting a motion to dismiss or finding that the prosecution engaged in some
discovery abuse that will allow her to do something. I think that we will have
one of those things take place. And I think the headline will be initially kind of bad. And everyone's
going to react a certain way. But ultimately, Jack Smith will take very soon an expedited appeal
to the 11th Circuit Court. They're going to reverse her. The question is, is on what order is
that? When does she make the order? Is it a seep a section for order that maybe Jack Smith goes
first before any of that stuff can happen and then gets her reversed? Is it another discovery order
that she makes and then Jack Smith can finally go to the 11th Circuit? Jack Smith has diligently
filed all these things.
She hasn't ruled on anything, but to everybody wondering, well, you know, this is not great
with Judge Cannon.
I actually think that if you play it out, the repercussions will happen to Judge Cannon
in due course, I do.
And where I'm still not worried at all is I think your Washington DC case, which is on an expedited
basis is, you know, is on track for that trial to take place still in 2024.
You have the Manhattan District Attorney case that will occur in 2024.
You will have Donald Trump as a convicted felon because he's committed felonies in 2024.
You have Donald Trump by February one.
He's going to be hit with somewhere in the range of $250 million to $500 million in
judgments, not just in 2024, but in the month of February that will be taking place.
In the next week or two, we will learn that Donald Trump lost before the DC
Circuit Court of Appeals and he will continue to lose these cases. So I just want to paint an accurate picture for everybody here on everything that's going on and where I
Have concerns where I don't have concerns where Popeyes, don't, but where I think this nets out
as we know justice moves the way it does,
and that's why as we started the show,
talking about what was going on
in the New York Attorney General Civil Fraud Case,
how that investigation reached a closing argument,
and now there will be justice served there.
So in a look, a lot going on,
Michael Popeyes appreciates spending this weekend with you. will be justice served there. So it'll look a lot going on. Michael Popak
appreciate spending this weekend with you. It's always a pleasure. I want to give a
special thanks to Salty, of course, for all of the great work he does behind the
scenes and our entire team here. And thank you all to the Midas Mighty. We
appreciate all of you so much. We're grateful for you and we will
talk with you soon.
We'll see you soon. Legal A. F.R. is your the best. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.