Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump INDICTMENT and WHAT’S NEXT

Episode Date: June 11, 2023

The top-rated legal and political podcast Legal AF is back for another hard-hitting look at the most consequential developments at the intersection of law and politics. On this special edition, all three Legal AF anchors, Ben Meiselas, Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo, join together to discuss the historic 37 count criminal federal indictment of Donald Trump for violations of the Espionage Act and for conspiracy to obstruct justice, among other things and what happens next including the arraignment next week, and so much more.  DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! NOM NOM: Go right now for 50% off your no-risk two week trial at https://TryNom.com/LEGALAF AG1: Head to https://athleticgreens.com/legalaf to get a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D and 5 FREE Travel Packs with your first purchase! ZBIOTICS: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. FUM: Head to https://TryFum.com and use code LEGALAF to save 10% off when you get the journey pack today! SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Burn the Boats: https://pod.link/1485464343 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://pod.link/1676844320 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump has been criminally indicted for his willful retention of national defense, information, false statements, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice in federal court in the Southern District of Florida by a grand jury there in a powerful, detailed speaking indictment with 38 criminal counts, special counsel Jack Smith lays out the case against criminal defendant Donald Trump and his criminal co-defendant and personal aid Walt Nauta. The criminal indictment contains photographs of boxes with highly classified information in bathrooms, on the floor, in auditoriums, all totally unsecured.

The indictment contains text messages from Trump's employees like Walt Nauta and others, showing Donald Trump was directly involved at every step in trying to deceive the FBI and the Department of Justice by trying to keep these classified records. The indictment also includes under-o-testimony from witnesses against Donald Trump and it quotes audio recordings of Donald Trump showing classified documents to people and bragging about it. Donald Trump will be criminally arraigned in a Miami federal courthouse this Tuesday and already Donald Trump and groups like the proud boys and other right wing extremists are trying to incite

violence in front of the courthouse. Meanwhile Donald Trump's lawyers, Jim trustee and John Rowley, who led his legal defense in connection with special counsel Jack Smith's criminal investigation into Trump's theft of these government records, have officially left the legal team. But get this, the case against Donald Trump has been randomly assigned to disgraced federal judge, Eileen Cannon from the Southern District of Florida, a 2020 Trump appointee, who we all know because she was previously reprimanded by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, not once, but twice for improperly asserting

jurisdiction for Donald Trump over the Department of Justice's search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago last year. We will break down all aspects of this criminal indictment and what happens next. Also, let's not forget that special counsel, Jack Smith has another criminal investigation still taking place of Donald Trump relating to the January 6th insurrection. And Donald Trump's attempt to overthrow our government and destroy our democracy. And Jack Smith is moving closer to another criminal indictment

in that matter. On Friday, the federal judge presiding over that grand jury in Washington, DC partially unsealed his order from March when he compelled former vice president Mike Pence to testify before the grand jury. And when you read this order, it also shows how very, very damaging the evidence is against Donald Trump in that matter. A historic episode of Legal AF, and no other way to do this one with both co-host, Michael Popack and Karen Friedman Agnifalo,

how are you doing both? Popack, how are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm proud to be an attorney in American, a patriot, and a part of the Justice system in my own way. And here with you and Karen, to unpack it all, we've done it in hot takes kind of on the fly. But this is our first opportunity together to analyze what's happened. Talk about things that are agitating our listeners and followers. Hopefully give them some remedy, some bomb for that, and then talk about what's going to happen next with Tuesday's arrangement. Hi, Karen. Karen, how are you?

I'm good. Thanks for letting me join. I'm excited about it. It's always not only is it an honor when you join, but it is, it adds extra delight to these weekend legal AFs when the gang is all here together. But let's dive right into it. First, let's talk about what this indictment is when we learned about it, what the various counts are, 38 counts, what the charges are. Let's just break down Michael Popak. What is actually in this indictment? I laid out in very broad terms. What's in there, but let me pass it to you. Great.

I'll do that then. And secondly, I do want to address the elephant in the room, no pun intended with the GOP, Eileen Cannon being assigned. I have a different theory about what may happen on Tuesday, and I will share it and analyze it here. But I'll tease that. But let's get back to what you asked me. I'm going to give two keys, key K, E, Y, that people can use when they read this indictment. We of course have posted it all over and we'll talk about it at length today. There are 37 counts against Donald Trump and including some that he shares with Walton Nauta, his valet Butler body man, it depends on what era you grew up.

That was his role from the White House all the way forward to Mar-a-Lago. And one count alone against Walton out of a false statement that gives us a total of 38. The easiest way to group it is, of course, the way the government has grouped it. 31 of those counts are for individual violations of the Espionage Act by document by document. That's why there's 31 of them. So there's a list here that we're showing on the screen from the chart within the complaint that shows the 31 times at least based on current knowledge to the Department of Justice and the Grand jury of times when the S.B.A.N.A.G. Act Donald Trump using secreting, not returning, transmitting national defense information, NDI, which includes, as a subset, classified and top secret, and

the highest levels of national security documents that this country owns and possesses, including nuclear, the fighting capacity of our adversaries and of our allies, things that if any of those pieces of paper found their way out of the bathroom, ballroom, storage room, or any other semi-public area of Mar-a-Lago, or Bedminster, or the airplane, or the SUV, or all the people's hands who touched it who

aren't qualified or to have classified top secret information. This country would be imperiled. That is the Grav among the foundation of this complaint. And think about how many people, there's 150 people or more that work at Mar-a-Lago. There's another dozens and dozens that work at Betminster. We know what we know. We know what was returned forcibly by execution of search warrant and subpoena and a little bit that was dribbled back by Donald Trump to the National Archive back at the very beginning. We don't need, we don't even know what's missing. We don't know. There has to be a working hypothesis that there are documents that are no longer within the care custody and control of even Donald Trump because of the way he carelessly maintained these documents. So that's the breakdown of the 38. It goes across

eight different federal statutes, but I'll give you the big picture on them. You've got conspiracy to obstruct justice, which is what we always thought this was going to be an obstruction case. We talked about frequently in legal AF, and this was going to be a espionage act case. We've been talking about that since day one. Both those counsel there, both those counsel are shared, well, the conspiracy counter shared with Walt Nauda, he's a code of then in that one, the SB&AGE Act is right now just against Donald Trump himself. Then you've got various counts that sound the same, but arise under different federal statutes, concealing documents, a conspiracy to conceal documents, a

scheme to conceal documents, and then you have the stuff related to false statement. Both the false, so what are the false statements? For Donald Trump, it is his efforts to allow, because he misled his lawyers on purpose, Corcoran, and we'll talk about Corcoran and Bob, who certified under penalty of perjury on June the 2nd, 2022, before the execution of the search warrant, that they had done a diligent search

when Trump knew or should have known that at least 30 boxes that he directed be taken out of the storage room remained in his personal residence at Mar-a-Lago. Therefore, could not have been searched by a cork or in prior to his meeting with the FBI, Trump didn't want them searched. They remained with Donald Trump until after the search was completed, that Trump allowing them to sign that, knowing that they were meeting with the government the next day, that they needed to comply with the subpoena.

That is him also participating in a false statement. And then you've got the false statements that Walton now has made independently. And this is, you know, we all speculated the best we could that Walton now was in deep trouble. Because not only do they have him on video, and that's reflected in the complaint by timestamp, moving boxes in and out of the White House, sorry, of Mar-a-Lago's various locations, and always ending up in the personal residence section of Mar-a-Lago in the Pine Hall, which is some sort of hallway in front of the bedrooms in the offices that Donald Trump resides in there at Mar-a-Lago, putting Trump right into the jackpot. He's reviewing the boxes that he's making.

Trump is making the personal decision based on his own personal review about what to spoon feedback to the National Archive at the very beginning of this process when only 15 boxes arrived, even those had classified documents inside of them. And then Trump coaching his lawyers, Corcoran and Halligan, we'll talk about Lindsey Halligan in a minute, to why don't we say that we, isn't it better if we tell the government in response to the subpoena

that there aren't any documents? Wouldn't that be better? And then using examples that he thinks come out of the Hillary Clinton server era to suggest to them their testimony, to tamper with them, And then using examples that he thinks come out of the Hillary Clinton server era to suggest to them their testimony, to tamper with them and to obstruct justice. Wouldn't it be better if some of those documents just, and then he made a plucking, according to Evan Corcoran's notes, which are referenced in the complaint, he made a plucking motion,

just if they just kind of disappeared when they were in your hotel room, Mr. Corcoran, it wouldn't that be good? Or how about that IT person for Hillary Clinton that made a bunch of emails disappear? And he didn't get in trouble. He's telling that story because he's trying to coach his lawyers into obstructing justice with him. And Evan Corcoran takes it all down on his notes.

If you're on trying to unlock the key of the complaint ban and for our audience, I'll give you some of the names that are obvious. Attorney number one for Trump is obviously Corcoran, who turned over 50 pages of notes and audio tape of his musings and testified to the grand jury. Attorney number two has to be Lindsey Halligan because Lindsey Halligan was present during the search warrant

and during some of the other attempted document collection by Corcoran. And attorney number three has to be Christina Bob, because she's the one that signed that certification. The other fascinating, like bombshell, there's so many. I mean, you've done a million hot takes on them. And I could do that's in the complaint is that Christina Bob without participating at all in the search of even the documents that Donald Trump self-selected for Corcoran to look at, she didn't even participate in that. He called, Corcoran called her up,

told her to come over, put a form in front of her and she signed it having not looked at the documents and didn't even know there was a subpoena or what was in the subpoena. That was gobsmacking to me. And the other thing that was gobsmacking to me is based on the timestamp, Evan Quarkman spent like 35 minutes looking at what was in the storage unit in order to find or not find whatever Donald Trump had had placed there for him, you know, this this this theater that was going on, this kabuki theater for Donald Trump,

he spent 35 minutes, I've been doing this a long time, I've gone into a room full of boxes that I've had a search for discovery purposes or or or because there was a subpoena outstanding and you can't even order order your cup of coffee in 30. How do you review that picture of documents that we've just put on the screen, piled high to the ceiling and wide to the edge of the room in 35 minutes, but he did, because that's what it's that you came in

and came out and have the time stamp for that. So you have all of that. The other person that is you can kind of piece together is there's two instances that are referenced that we talked about on legal AF where highly compartmented sensitive information, including what's called the five eyes, meaning only five of our allies, Canada, Australia, Austin, two others can look at New Zealand, can look at this material. It's called Five Eyes Material. He was showing Five Eyes Material, Donald Trump, at Bedminster because he secreted documents

and boxes through Walt Now to got them to Bedminster on his plane and then was showing them off to people, including Taylor Butowicz, who just testified earlier in the week in Miami at the grand jury. That's the guy who's member of the pack that got shown at least one of those war maps or or or or a war planning documents. That is another violation under the 38 other the you know the one through 31 counts of espionage act that is cited. That is is ridiculous. And then lastly, there's even a little, I think, a little warning, not only to the people who are like Walton

out around Trump who have not come forward to cooperate with the government. They could be next in being indicted, but you have a reference. It has to be to Melania Trump within the document. Now they could have left it out because it doesn't really It doesn't really move the ball ahead in terms of the crimes that are being alleged. But there is a reference We put up up on the screen. There's only one female Member of his family that would be responsible for moving from house to house and that's Melania. It's not the daughters, it's not anybody else. It's Melania and you can tell from the way this is written in sort of not English as a

first language, type language, that she's telling Walt Nauta, there's no room on the plane to bet Mr. for all the boxes that Donald Trump wants to take with him to get them away from Mar-a-Lago and the prying eyes of the FBI and the Department of Justice. That's Melania. Why is it in there? Because they're sending a shot across the bow to Donald Trump that says, nobody is safe. We've got text messages. We've got emails. We've got video. We've got testimony. We got it all. And if you don't play ball with us, and if you think we're not serious, we're putting your wife in there as well. That's my takeaway from where we're at.

I want to do one thing in Eileen Cannon because I have a different view and I just want to give people a little bit of, I know that this is an agitating issue that she got, quote unquote, assigned to this. I'm not sure that's going to happen on Tuesday, and I'm not sure she's the permanent judge. I'll tell you why. First of all, here's time for the Popeye quarterboard. First of all, the chief judge in Miami is Altenaga.

Her chief magistrate is Torres. Torres opened the unsealed the indictment, not Bruce Reinhart, who's listed on the complaint on the indictment as being the magistrate judge. See up top right it says Reinhart, but Reinhart is sits in West Palm Beach and he did not unseal, Torez unsealed. The clerk stamp on the top right corner is the clerk, Madame Clerk of the Miami Court. So yes, I understand that there was a grand jury

that may have been West Palm Beach based that ended up in Miami for COVID reasons, but all signs so far points in Miami. And then finally, Cannon's magistrate when she sits in Miami, because these judges sort of run the circuit. They run the Southern District from Fort Pierce down in Miami, is not Torres.

Her magistrate when she's in Miami is O'Tazzo Reyes and so far that person's not involved. So I am not yet on board with all the reporting that it's definitely Eileen Cannon because her name is listed at the top. We're gonna see on Tuesday. Yes, there's a random wheel selection in the Southern District. Um, so people

are like, how could it be? There's 15 and plus senior judges. How could that possibly be? I'm not sure it is. And then the chief judge is permitted under the local administrative orders of the Southern district to change the trial judge if she so fits, if she, if she, she's fit. So Altenaga can change her out by Tuesday or thereafter. And if the Department of Justice doesn't like Canon and it really is Canon on Tuesday, they file either Canon recuses herself, which she is required to do if she believes there's an appearance of impropriety or bias based on her prior rulings when Donald Trump ran to her courtroom to get, to stop the moral

law, go investigation in a tracks. And their leaven circuit slapping her back, I think she recuses. If she doesn't recuse, they can file a motion and it ultimately goes up to the 11th circuit and the 11th circuit decides which judge presides over this case. Having said all that, I don't think at the end of the day, Eileen Cannon is going to be the presiding judge for the trial of Donald Trump. I have my own thoughts that I want to share about Eileen Cannon, which is similar,

but slightly different, but I think it will still be very reassuring to all of our viewers out there that I'm ultimately not worried about that assignment. I also want to talk about some of my views within the indictment, but I really want to get your perspective, Karen Friedman Agnifolo. You were the former number two at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. As a former prosecutor, you've prepared indictments at the state level, but you know the process you've worked with special counsel Jack Smith before,

from the very outset, when special counsel Jack Smith was announced as the special counsel, from the very, very, very first moment you were here on the minus touch network, I remember that day in November very vividly, because a lot of the public had no clue who this guy was. A lot of the large media networks were basically trashing this guy and you came on and you said I've worked with special counsel Jack Smith. He is one of the most diligent prosecutors

there is. And if he is getting on this case, then this is very, very serious. And Karen, you were right. I wanna get your thoughts on this indictment, but first let's take a quick break. Your pets, a member of the family, my lily certainly is. Don't feed them like they're in the doghouse. Give them no-no-m. No-no-m delivers fresh dog food with every portion personalized to your dog's needs.

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Go to AthleticGreens.com slash Legal AF. That's AthleticGreens.com slash Legal AF. Check it out. Welcome back. We are live here on legal a f a historic edition. Donald Trump indicted by a grand jury in the Southern district of Florida. In the first segment, we heard Michael Popox take on the criminal indictment. And now I want to hear from Karen Friedman, Agnifalo, former prosecutor, number two,

at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, you've prepared very, very serious indictments. You've been in the room working with top prosecutors, prepared documents, just like this. In fact, you've worked before with special counsel, Jack Smith, before he was a special counsel, back when he was a prosecutor in the office where you work. So, Karen Friedman, Agnipfilo, your thoughts. Yeah, so this indictment, I want to just talk about some overall

observations. So, first of all, this is what's called a speaking indictment or a talking indictment, which is different than a bare bones indictment, which is the other type of indictment, which the more usual kind of indictment. If you recall, Alvin Bragg, when he brought his case against Donald Trump, that was a bare bones indictment that just lists the legal language, honor about this date, this location,

the defendant committed the crime of falsifying a business record. And they really bare bones and indict diamonds are what they typically look like. It's just to inform you of the charges. But there is a tool that prosecutors use sometimes, which is called a speaking indictment or a talking indictment. And that's usually when the charge is either conspiracy, which there are conspiracy charges in this indictment,

or if there's a rico or racketeering charge, which is the type of indictment that we know Fannie Willis is considering bringing down in Fulton County, Georgia. So I would expect that there would be a speaking indictment there. And a speaking indictment, all it is is a story. You're telling the story of the crime and of the defendants and of the what's

happening there. And this story that that Jack Smith told you can tell, it was written so that anyone can understand it. So that the American public can understand it, a court can understand it and a defendant can understand it. And it's what's required in a conspiracy indictment. You have to spell out the conspiracy, the agreement, and all of that. But Jack Smith did this in a way so that there was a coherent story that anyone can understand. And that's because this is such a historic indictment. Inditing the former president of the United States for violating the laws he sort of uphold to indict a former president and charge him with obstructing the very agencies that he used to lead and to indict the former commander in chief and charge him with endangering our

national security by violating the SB&A Act. I mean, there is no more serious accusation you can make. And so this is such a significant indictment because of what it is doing that in order to sell this indictment to the American people, Jack Smith, had to write this in a way that really justified it. It's more of this indictment is more than just, these are the charges and what he's charged with.

This indictment is a story and it's a justification for why this indictment is so significant and why Trump's conduct was not at all like the accidental possession of classified or national security information the way, you know, Hillary Clinton's server or the way Pence found some and Biden found some. Those were accidental possessions, all of them, unintentional. And so what happened when they found them, they discovered them, they gave them back. And I think that's significant because that's another thing, Jack Smith, puts in his indictment, is all the efforts that the Department of Justice made to try and get the documents back. Had Donald Trump just said, oh, here I didn't realize I had them, here they are, and give them back,

this indictment would never have occurred. This, we would never have him be charged, but this isn't just about possession. This is about him thinking that he's above the law and nothing, no laws apply to him, and he can do whatever he wants. You know, the one thing that wasn't in the indictment that struck me was motive. Their motive isn't required to prove these cases, you know, and motive is why. Why did someone do it? And we know that Jack Smith was looking into whether he had, whether Trump had business dealings in the countries where these, the documents pertained to.

And so that was not in here. Now, that doesn't mean that that doesn't exist. It just means that Jack Smith wasn't able to prove that or to get that information in time for the indictment or maybe it didn't happen at all. So we don't know what the motive is. And I was reading an interview that someone gave who knows Trump well and said he thought that he kept this stuff as a trophy.

So he thinks he won the election and he still thinks he's president and so he still thinks he can keep these and use them to show people that he can do whatever he wants. But who knows? Motive wasn't in there and it he can do whatever he wants, but who knows? Motive wasn't in there and it doesn't have to be proven, but that was the one thing that I noticed that was missing that, frankly, could help with the court of public opinion and persuading people that this is a righteous prosecution.

Now, Jack Smith, when he brought this case, there was a lot of chatter that this was going to be in DC, and the reason that's the case was there were aspects of this crime that happened in Washington, DC, right? He was president in Washington, and these documents existed in Washington, and they had to be taken from Washington to be brought to the various locations, whether it's Florida or the ones in Bedminster that are in the indictment. And we know that there was a grand jury in Washington, not because the Justice Department

or anybody leaked it necessarily, but because witnesses were called to testify and defense attorneys, a lot of the witnesses had defense attorneys or attorneys. And so people talk and there were reporters stationed outside and would know who went in, and so you could tell that there was activity going on in the Washington Grand Jury. And then at some point towards the end, and we know we were at the end of the presentation because of the types of witnesses who were being called

and the types of cooperators, you know, they move up the chain of command in order of importance, and you could tell where they were based on the types of witnesses that they were getting to. And again, we know that largely because attorneys, we think leaked this information, not the attorneys at the Justice Department, but attorneys representing the witnesses who went in to testify. And so when you knew we were at the end, and that's what all the experts were, you

can sort of read the tea leaves and say, okay, based on what's happening now, we can tell we're sort of near the end and turns out people were right because it's fairly, it's not that complicated to understand when you put all the puzzle pieces together. And so we knew we were at the end, and then all of a sudden everything stopped. And at that point, I had surmised, at least in my mind, I thought, well, I think that's when he's, Jack Smith is talking in America, Ireland.

That's when he's presenting his recommendations and his prosecution memo. And that was just a guess, But that's what I was thinking. And towards the end, on Wednesday, when we had legal AF, Popok and I were going back and forth, because a lot of people were saying, is this going to be in DC or is this going to be in Florida? Don't forget, at that point, there was information

that this case was also being presented in Florida. And one of the things we discussed and that I posited was, I think this whole thing is going to be in Florida and not in Washington for the following reasons. Getting a trial, if you're Jack Smith, getting any trial going before the presidential election is what you want. That is the goal.

You want this case to go to trial because we know Donald Trump will never plead guilty. That will never ever happen. So you want. That is the goal. You want this case to go to trial because we know Donald Trump will never plead guilty. That will never, ever happen. So you want to trial. And the only chance you have at going to trial because we know Donald Trump's number one trial strategy, it's what he does everywhere is to try to create delay. And how do you create delay in a federal criminal trial, you make motions, you make legal arguments, and you make arguments that you think you want the judge to rule on. And then if the judge doesn't rule your way, you know Trump. What does he do? He appeals it. And then what does he go from there? He appeals it to the Supreme Court of the United States. And so what does that do? All of that takes time. Because Donald Trump does not want a trial. He doesn't want a trial

in DC. He doesn't want a trial in trial. He doesn't want a trial in DC. He doesn't want a trial in Florida. He doesn't want to trial anywhere because a trial will expose all of this evidence in excruciating detail and it will risk him being a convicted felon. The first in our nation's history. So his goal will be to delay. And the number one problem with bringing this case in Washington is something in the law called a venue. And the venue is, is where do you bring the case? Where does it have to happen?

And the law says, the policy says, it has to be where the essential elements of the crime substantially happened. And here that is Mar-a-Lago and you can see that now in the indictment. And so in order to take venue off the table as a legal argument, because that really is his number one legal argument that I think has the most, would have had the most legs or at least the most appellate legs, I think he would have ultimately lost, but he could at least make the argument. And so that would have delayed the trial. And so if I'm Jack Smith in Merrick, Garland, I think, okay, if I take this down to Florida, it takes venue off the table. And at least I have a chance of a trial. And there's, depending on how many judges

were in the mix of who could get this. Some people say 15, other people say fewer, because, but I don't really know how Florida works, so I defer to Pope Hawk and he says it's likely there were 15 judges in the mix. If that's the case, I'm thinking if I'm the prosecutor, there's a one-in-15 chance it's my lane cannon. We know she was a disaster. So I'm going to take my chances because I want to have a trial. And of course, lo and behold, where are we? We're in front of my lane cannon. But I think that's why the prosecutor, Jack Smith, here decided to take it down to Florida. And look, are there gonna be some logistics

with trying a former president of the United States? Yes, I mean, one of them is assuming Fannie Willis also brings her case in July and August, and Jack brings his January 6 case. It's going to be, so we know they're gonna have to coordinate at least three criminal trials maybe four, which one goes first, is anybody's guess. The biggest logistical hurdle, though,

I think in this case is the fact that this trial involves evidence of classified documents. So on the one hand, these are our nation's most top secret classified documents. And you know, Donald Trump had, you know, had over 300 documents that had classified markings that we know of, and over 100 were recovered during the execution of the search warrant. He took over 12,000 government documents total.

But so let's say there were over, let's say there's either 100 or 300 classified documents that were in play that Jack Smith could have used in this indictment. He chose 31 of them. And one question we all have to ask ourselves is how did he choose those 31 counts? And because that's a very careful, careful thing that prosecutors do. When you have lots and lots and lots of evidence,

you know, I remember when we used to charge crimes that had, you know, you'd recover, you know, thousands of images of child porn, for example. You wouldn't necessarily, each one could be its own count. You wouldn't necessarily charge a thousand counts. First of all, it bogs down the jury. It's a giant indictment. And so what you do is you carefully select a representative number. And so he would have done that here. And the 31 counts that he would have chosen, he would have carefully selected. And the question is, why did he pick these documents? And, you know, one question I have to ask myself is perhaps he chose ones that wouldn't endanger our national security

if he, if they come out in public, right? For example, did he work with intelligence professionals and only use those that could be used in open court and shown to the jury? But that cuts both ways, because Trump will say, see, they're not national security documents. The jury sees them. You see them. The whole world sees them, right? So kind of by their very nature, you can't necessarily use the most secret ones because they can't possibly be shown to everybody because they would endanger our national security. And so there, or perhaps there's another, there's another question, maybe, maybe Jack Smith worked with the intelligence professional professionals to say, okay, if you can get Donald Trump to agree, not to show these to the public and the jury,

you can use them until that point. But there is something called the Classified Information Procedures Act, and the judge will have to utilize the procedures there that have a hearing. They call it SEPA, they'll have a SEPA hearing to determine how and in what capacity these documents can be used while still ensuring that Donald Trump receives a fair trial. And it's complicated though. So Jack Smith would have chosen these charges very, very carefully when creating this indictment. And that's how these 31 documents got in there. Another couple of things just to put some more,

other thoughts out there, to keep in mind, to keep in mind about this is, you know, Jack Smith will have to, when he tries this case, really keep it simple for the jury, and it really is a simple case. This isn't a complicated case and that's what any prosecutor does is you you you simplify it so that anyone can understand it and and you have to do it in a way that again shows this isn't inadvertent, this isn't okay.

You know, Donald Trump is going to say, well, I can declassify things with my mind. You know, that defense will easily be debunked. And like I said, venues off the table, which is good. And, you know, Donald Trump has come out and said also the Presidential Records Act allows him to possess these documents. I guess that's going to be one of his defenses. Well, anyone can read the Presidential Records Act. It's written in plain English, not legalese.

And it very clearly says the opposite of what he's saying. And so the jury will not, you know, will be sworn to follow the law. But you know, but Jack Smith has to get this case going and has to get this going quickly because once if it has to happen before the general election, and hopefully before the the nominating process, because otherwise they'll have to press pause. And it will not get tried if he is elected president. And of course, if a Republican wins,

they could pardon him or stop the prosecution. These charges are very serious. He faces over 400 years in prison, if convicted of all of them. But of course, people who have been charged with this type of crime before didn't get anywhere near that. But certainly I've never seen a case this serious of somebody who held the highest office in the country and swore to uphold the law. So, so who knows what he will get. And there's just one other thing I want to talk about, which is something, I watched Ben's hot take on Eileen Cannon

and how he's not worried if she is ultimately the judge. So let's talk a little bit about what is going to happen if she's ultimately the judge and what are some of the mischief rulings she can do in this case. So number one, as Ben and Michael Popok both said, I can't believe I called you Michael, I always just call you Popok,

but as Popok and Ben just said, it's not clear that she's going to ultimately end up with the case, but there's a couple of issues with this if she does end up with the case. So number one, she could be, for the reasons Ben has talked about in his hot takes, and I'm sure we'll talk about more here in detail, there could be an issue that she has to be recused from the case because she has already shown that she's not competent to, you know, to have the case. And I think that, you know, I think that she has made

a couple of rulings in the prior, it's a civil case that she had, right? The, there was the execution of the search warrant and then she inserted herself in a civil proceeding and appointed a special master and was reversed. So I think there's a chance that you can bring a, like Ben has said, you can bring an action to recuse her from this case because she has shown

that she's biased and not competent to hear this case. So I think there's a good chance of that. But also, let's say she's not recused from this case and she does take this case. There is some mischief she can do, and there are ruling, first of all, she can delay it so that it doesn't happen before the election, which would be potentially fatal to this prosecution. She could rule, for example, that if you recall, Barrel Howe ruled all the attorney-client conversations between Evan Quarker and Trump and others and Trump, they fall under the crime fraud exception, which is why the DOJ got all of that evidence and that testimony.

Well, that ruling doesn't follow. It's not the law of the case because that had that case, this is a trial judge who can make trial rulings. So she can reverse that if she wanted. Now, I don't think she will, but she can. She can create mischief. The other possibility is she wants to redeem herself if she keeps this case and suddenly becomes a real judge and wants to because she was raked through the coals by the 11th Circuit, which is the circuit that rules her and

reversed her and essentially called for lawless. So maybe she wants to redeem herself. Who knows? So there's lots of possibilities with Eileen Cannon, but for anyone who says, oh a a judge is just a referee and just calls balls and strikes. And this is Smith's prosecution. There isn't much she can do. They're 100% wrong. A trial judge can make or break a case. They can suppress evidence.

They can rule evidence in admissible, important evidence, or rule other evidence admissible that shouldn't be. And a lot of that is not appealable mid trial. You have to wait until appeal. And if there's an acquittal, there's no appeal for Jack Smith. So, let's hope and pray that it's not Eileen Cannon. I don't trust her. I think she's a terrible judge. And I think she can harm this case significantly

and even possibly make it so it not go to trial. So whatever anyone can do to figure out how to get her off, I think it'll be the best thing for justice. I think at this point, that's about all. I have to say I'm going to bring in my my my co hosts But I think that's those are my overall observations and comments about About this case about this indictment and about this prosecution. Well, I think the analysis both from you Michael Popeok from you Karen Friedman Agnifalo is incredible One of the cases that I think the prosecutors are going

to lean on and trying to get Eileen Cannon recused is a 2006 case called US versus Martin. And I want to talk about it, because it's binding 11 circuit precedent on the issue of recusal or reassignment of a judge, where a judge has made multiple rulings in the past that the 11 circuit court of appeals has overruled. So it seems to be directly on point. But then I also want to touch upon SEPA, which you mentioned, because I think we're going to be hearing a lot about SEPA.

This is a case involving the theft of classified information, top secret information. As you mentioned, Karen, it stands for the Classified Information Procedures Act. We're going to be hearing a lot about that. And I think in particular, Section 6A and Section 6C, which basically deal with the hearing regarding classified information and whether or not stipulated facts could be substituted in place of actually showing a jury classified information while preserving the due process rights of criminal defendants in the case. There is a whole procedure for how the different parties petition to have a document be determined

as classified information. And again, this is where if Judge Eileen Cannon is conducting the initial review, there could be some mischief done there. But SEPA also has a process where petitions are made to the circuit court, given the unique nature of classified information. But in theory, what the substitution does, so that jury and the public are not actually exposed to the highly classified information, they get a stipulated set of facts, or there's some other way to convey the exact same information about what the documents are. So, for example, when we go to the 31 counts on page 28 of the indictment, and they talk about these records, it page 28, 29,

they go, you know, documents relating to military records of an adversary, military records of an ally, nuclear records. That description would be similar to what a substitute it stipulated as a fact can be. So everybody will start introducing that term, ZEPA, the classified information's procedures act. And I want to give my own view about Eileen Cannon and I want to go over a little bit of additional facts that are in that speaking indictment that was just unsealed, that and more after this quick break. Let's take a quick break to talk about our next partner, Zbiotics.

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That's tryfum.com use code legalaf to save 10% off when you get the journey pack today. That's TRY FUM.com. Use code legal AF to save 10% off the journey pack today. Welcome back to legal AF. We are live. I want to thank Karen Friedman Agnifalo for her analysis. Unfortunately, Karen had to go. So you just got me and Popak here. But I really always love to hear from Karen Friedman Agniflo. And by the way, remember, she was the first person. I remember that day so vividly last November when everyone was saying, who's this Jack Smith guy? Merrick Garland is just trying to, you know, you know, put this on someone else so that they could, you know, not actually charge Donald Trump

and Karen Friedman Agnifalo was the first voice that pushed back on that and pushed back on it powerfully. And then the large media network started catching up to it and saying, hey, this Karen Friedman Agnifalo is right. And I was like, yeah, she ran them and had a district attorney's office. She was like, the acting of Manhattan District Attorney, she was the number two, of course, she's right. Karen Friedman Agniflow is absolutely the best where we last left

off before we took that brief break. I was talking about the case law in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. That's the Court of Appeals, the Circuit Court that supervises or oversees Florida federal courts among other federal courts like those in Georgia. And I talked about the binding precedent on reassignment and recusal here, and it is very much in favor of Eileen Cannon recusing herself. Whether she recuses herself on her own, she's previously has demonstrated a propensity

for not doing the right thing. Will special counsel Jack Smith on his own seek the recusal or will the DOJ seek a recusal motion or will the 11th circuit kind of sue a sponte or a presiding judge basically say no, Eileen Cannon, you are not on this case and and and demand a reassignment and make the reassignment happen. But here's what happened in this US versus Martin case. On section four, reassignment, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reviews the record in that case, where a district court judge continued to make rulings in a sentencing matter, that the 11th court of appeals continued to

overrule not once but twice where the 11 circuit court of appeals said you're not following the guidelines you're not following for whatever reason with respect to this specific defendant who by the way was not the defendant to appointed you to the position but you keep making the incorrect ruling and we're giving you the guidelines. So finally in this section the 11 circuit, our settled practice is to direct a specific judge to reassign a case, you know, whereas here, the district court on multiple occasions has been overruled and reprimanded by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. And let's not forget, Judge Eileen Cannon was not just overruled once by the 11

circle court of appeals. There are two orders by the 11 circle court of appeals stating that Eileen Cannon never had jurisdiction in the first place that she intentionally interfered with the Department of Justice's criminal investigation. And by the way, not in just any all matter in this matter in the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago by the Department of Justice at Mar-a-Lago back in August 8th of 2022. That's where she improperly illegally unlawfully interfered with two 11 circuit court of appeal orders saying that she impermissibly and improperly

interfered and didn't follow 11th Circuit precedent. I think that the 11th Circuit will not want her to be a stain on that circuit court. And as a result, I think they will ultimately, I think that she will be recused. However, I do think while there is a ton of mischief, as Karen mentioned, that a district court judge could bring, I do think that, and again, this is why I'm very, very confident here. This indictment is so powerful and so bulletproof.

You even had people like Jonathan Turley, who is the right wing kind of legal spokesperson for all things kind of mega legal conspiracy theories. It's so unfortunate that that's what happened to Jonathan Turley's career. He's a con law professor at the George Washington University where I went to undergrad, not where I went to law school. I went to the competing school at Georgetown, but I think that when even Jonathan Turley looks at this and goes, wow, this is very, very

damaging. And he did it on Fox. That speaks volume. So I want to go into, oh, and by the way, have you seen this New York post cover as well? Chamber of secrets. And it's showing the photographs from the indictment. And these are the boxes that are in the bathroom right by the shower in Mar-a-Lago.

And by the way, you have a lot of right-wing, disinformation, sources, all basically saying, looks like the FBI did it. Again, is it the FBI's taking these photographs and making them as he knows? If you just read the lawsuit, if you just read just read like we have the photo up now for those who are listening in audio and obviously for all of our All of our YouTube watchers you can actually see this but This is Walt Nauta texting another Donald Trump employee so Trump employee who's been indicted now to Texting Trump employee to saying I open the door and found this. It's Trump's employees' photos.

This isn't a DOJ photo. And then for all of the people who say, oh, I don't see any classified information, just read the indictment. Like that's the thing with these right-wing people. You know, they lie and they don't show their viewers the actual text. Because if you read this, the next sentence says, now to also attach two photographs,

he took of the spell. Trump employee to replied, oh, oh, no. And I'm sorry, POTUS had my phone. One of the photographs now to texted to Trump employee to is depicted below with the visible classified information redacted. Trump's unlawful retention of this document

is charged in count eight of this indictment. So it is redacted. That is why you can't see it in the photo, but if you look on the kind of, the right of the box where the documents are flowing out of, you can see the cover page with the classified border, and it is redacted. They're not referring to the newspapers. The issue is that the classified information is being hidden within the newspaper clippings, and the classified information page is redacted and if you just read the document,

it says that. That's why it's important that we read this document. Let's just read some portions of this document. Let's go to paragraph three of this, which I think is one of the most powerful of the paragraphs, which says the classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries, United States nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put out risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human

sources, and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods. And then if you go to page 28 and 29 of this indictment on the 31 counts for the willful retention of the records page 28 and 29, like they list what is in paragraph three. Like that's why you gotta read these things and you gotta follow them. So here's an example. Count number three for willful retention of national

information national defense information. And it gives the classification top secret sensitive information, no foreign meaning it can't even be shown to any foreign governments at so top secret even among their intelligence communities. Undaated document concerning military capabilities of a foreign country in the United States with handwritten annotations in black marker. Okay, that's Donald Trump and black marker doing it. As you go to count five, documented June 2020 concerning the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country. Count six, documented June 4, 2020 concerning White House intelligence briefings relating to various foreign country. Count six, documented June 4, 2020, concerning White House intelligence

briefings relating to various foreign countries. So on and so forth with all of the counts, they're all like that. Going to paragraph 6a and 6b of the complaint in July 2021 at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, during an audio recorded meeting with the writer, a publisher, and two members of the staff, none of whom possessed a security clearance. Trump showed and described a plan of attack that Trump said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official. Trump told the individuals that the plan was highly confidential and secret. Trump also said, as president, I could have declassified it. And now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret. And then 6B in August or September 2021 at the bed minister club, Trump showed a representative of his political

action committee who did not possess a security clearance, a classified map related to a military operation and told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close. And then if we then go kind of deeper into the complaint where we actually see from 6A and from 6B, let's turn to page 22 and 23 for a second. These are messages, text messages as well, from Walton Outa to members of Donald Trump's family, and on page 22 and on page 23, as Popoq described earlier, these are communications with with it seems to be

Melania where she's saying Donald Trump wants very specific documents pulled Donald Trump wants to you know bring certain ones with him but not the full boxes and so again you have very detailed factual allegations here. Here's the actual message on May 30th 2022 at at 12.33 p.m. A Trump family member texted now to good afternoon wall. Happy Memorial day. I saw you put boxes to post this room just FYI and I will tell him as well, not sure how many he wants to take on Friday on the plane. We will not have room for them. Plane will be full with

luggage. Thank you. And so again, they're talking about Donald Trump taking very specific documents. And this was right before June 3rd of 2022, where the Department of Justice showed up at Mar-a-Lago to obtain all of the classified records in response to the subpoena. Finally, I just want to show you from that allegation that we just mentioned 6a and 6b. Turn to page 15 and 16 for a second. And when you look at 15, it has the entire audio recording of Donald Trump racking about this classified information. I mean, just just look at this, this dangerous idiocracy here. Trump goes, well, with talking about a senior military official who we believe to be General Milley chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he goes,

well, with the senior military official, let me see that. I'll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack country A and we believe country A to be Iran. Isn't it amazing? I have a big pile of papers. This thing just came up. Look, this was him. They presented me this. This is off the record, but they presented me with this. This was him. This was the defense department and him and then some random writer who's like ghost writing a book for Mark Meadows who Donald Trump is showing this classified information about a plan of attack on Iran goes wow and then Donald Trump goes we looked at some this was him this wasn't done by me this was him all sorts of stuff pages long Look Donald Trump is showing him here the classified information and a staffer goes mm and Trump goes wait a minute Let's see here and then the staffer it like starts laughing and Trump goes I just a minute, let's see here. And then the staffer, it like starts laughing.

And Trump goes, I just found this, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know? And the staffer who has to be like a yes person with him goes, uh-huh, uh-huh. And Trump goes, except it is like highly confidential. And then the staffer goes, yeah, and starts laughing. And Trump goes, secret. This is secret information. Look at this, you, and starts laughing. And Trump goes, secret. This is secret information.

Look at this. You attack and, and by the way, isn't this incredible? And then the staffer goes, yeah, and the Trump goes, I was just thinking because we were talking about it. And you know, he said he wanted to attack Iran and what staffer you did. Trump, this was done by the military and given to me, I think we can probably write staffer. I don't know. We'll have to see. Oh, I think we can probably write staffer I don't know. We'll have to see. Yeah, we'll have to try to then Trump goes declassify it and staffer goes figure it out

Yeah, then Trump goes see as president. I could have declassified it and the staffer goes yeah Trump now I can't you know, but this is still a secret. The staffer, yeah, now we have a problem. Trump isn't that interesting. This is life or death stuff, folks. This is life or death stuff. You know how many of our assets, people in our military, people who defend our country could have been and may have been killed because of this. And they're laughing at it. And Trump's showing it to just random people, don't have security clearances. And if he's just showing it to random people

and saying that kind of lunatic stuff, imagine what he's doing on a daily basis when it wasn't recorded like that. Herific, horrific, horrific, but I just wanted to drill down on those portions. Finally, I just want to mention that Donald Trump's lawyers have left Jim trusty that is and John Rally, who were the leaders of his defense and connection

with the investigation prior to the indictment being issued and then unsealed. Donald Trump put out a message that seemed to imply that he fired them. And then I wrote on my Twitter account, I go, how soon after do we find out that they resigned? Like literally within three minutes later, they stated that they tender their resignation. And they claim the reason they are resigning is because special counsel Jack Smith then you this, he filed the case in the southern district of Florida. And that's why they don't

practice there is what they said in their resignation, which absolutely makes no sense to me because the lawyer who Donald Trump now has leading the legal team Todd Blanche is a New York Wall Street lawyer, not a Miami lawyer, not a Florida lawyer. And Jim trustee previously was handling Donald Trump cases in Florida, in federal court in Florida, as well as before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. So I don't buy that at all. And then Popeyes finally, what do we look forward to next week? We have the arrangement. Can you just maybe briefly explain what an arrangement is?

There's not going to be cameras in the federal court building. There aren't cameras in federal court houses. I think they should be. So what happens on Tuesday? All right, well let me start there. I'll back up a couple things. Karen said a couple things that you said that are though are interesting that I can amplify.

We're gonna have an arrangement on Tuesday. We're gonna know who the initial judge is gonna be. The initial part of the arrangement is usually done by a magistrate judge, even though it says Reinhart, who was the magistrate judge that issued the search warrant, I don't think it's going to be Reinhart, the speculation, and people to practice down there, I think it's going to be Chief Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres who unsealed the indictment. And they'll be kind of what we call first day orders.

Let's talk about trial in this case, gentlemen. Let's talk, ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about when it can happen. Motion practice related to that. Let's talk about pretrial conditions of release from arrest because he is gonna be Donald Trump. We'll be arrested second time in two months, indicted second time in two months.

He has to go through the same process, DNA, fingerprinting, pictures and all that. It's less, it's more stringent than even what happened to him in the Manhattan side. He'll do that with the federal officers, come back through the doors with his attorneys who, ever they may be in addition to Todd Blanch. Where is Chris Keis, by the way? Chris Keis is a Florida lawyer that it gave over five million dollars to through his political action committee because supposedly he was a Florida lawyer that knew what he was doing. He's nowhere to be found. Lindsay Haligan is a insurance defense lawyer, a very young one at that in Fort Lauderdale, even

though she's been brought to various meetings. There's no way she's going to remain in the case. But we'll see who the lawyers are going to be on Tuesday, who the magistrate is going to be on Tuesday, ultimately who the judge. If this judge issue is not resolved by her recusing between now and Tuesday, and we've been involved with cases, Ben, you and I have been involved with cases where we thought we had one judge federally and then they recused or disqualified themselves for various reasons. We had another judge or two other judges. We've been involved with cases where a third judge got assigned within a week. So I think that could all get

sorted out even before it. You can't bury the lead there of what the case was. It was when we sued Marjorie Taylor Green and she ended up settling with us. Let's talk about that. I forgot. The whole talk was the lawyer for Midas Touch sued Marjorie Taylor Green for blocking us on Twitter. Marjorie Taylor Green settled with us, paid us $10,000 and then we took the $10,000 and then we donated it to two groups that were for support a responsible gun ownership.

And we had three red total of $3,000, $3,000, $3,000, $3,000, based on the signed settlement agreement, is not allowed to block anybody ever again on her Twitter account. So anyway, I'll back to you. But we had three judges within five days. So I think it gets sorted out on Tuesday. Magistrate, when I hear the reporting for those that are in the room, I won't be able to get down to Miami for this one. I'll know Edwin Torres Magistrate because Edwin Torres is not Eileen Cannon's Magistrate

when she goes to Miami very rarely. She is the least senior as we've talked about in the past of the 15 judges in seniority. She is still the least senior because there hasn't been a new appointment by Biden, the Southern District, because judges in sorry, seniority, she is still the least senior because there hasn't been a new appointment by Biden, the Southern District, because there hasn't been an opening and there hasn't been an expansion of those seats. So that's going to tell us a lot. She either gets out, Chief Judge Altenaga takes her out under the discretion that the

Chief Judge has under the local rules and administrative orders or ultimately on motion by the Department of Justice on the case law that you cited been the 11th Circuit ultimately takes her out. So I don't think we have to worry about her. But if Jack Smith comes into the room and Jay Bratt, who signed the Certificate of Trial Lawyer, which we have here in the back, in which he picked West Palm Beach, by the way, as the venue, as the court division within the Southern District said, it's about a 21-day trial.

This is part of the speedy trial that Jack Smith said in his press conference when he said, we believe the people are innocent until they're proven guilty. So we got to get the trial quickly in order to do that. They are going to go like full steam ahead as Karen outlined to get this thing, the trial, whether it's cited in Miami or back at West Palm Beach, whoever it's going to be, and if it's not Eileen Cannon and it is in West Palm Beach, it probably rotates a judge middle Brooks. Wouldn't that be a special delight for everybody? Judge middle Brooks, who already sanctioned Donald Trump once for civil filings that had no merit. So we'll see how that plays out on Tuesday.

Will he be detained, pretrial, pending the trial? No, not based on the crimes, even as egregious as they are. Will they pick up his passport? It'll be discussed. Will they limit his travel? It'll be discussed. He has to assure everybody that he'll appear back in these courtrooms for the various proceedings, almost all of them that are done live and not by video. So he'll have to appear for those.

And they'll set a potentially set an initial trial date or come back for a hearing in 30 days, for an initial trial date and set that as well. Government wants to do what they say is a four-week trial, maybe six weeks or eight weeks, but that's it. And they want to do it in, you know, early 2024. I'm sure they've, of course, Donald Trump's other concern. He's got another criminal trial in May of 2024 in New York, May, March of 2024. So you got all that going on. In terms of the counts that we talked about, I think it's important as Jay Bratt signed in his own filing at the penalty sheet. God, I never thought I'd see the day where there'd be a penalty sheet assigned to Donald

Trump and federal court. Most of the Espionage Act claims are 10 years, but for each count, with supervised release of three years and 250,000 in fines. The obstruction of justice conspiracy is 20 years, withholding a document or record 20 years, concealing a document 20 years, concealing a document in a federal investigation 20 years, scheme to conceal that's five years and there's a false statement is five years. Yet all up, it's like, you know, 400 years in prison if they were done, not concurrently. But that's the government's position. In terms of the things, you hit all the

highlights, but I just wanted to give a couple that were interesting to me. The DOJ's indictment through the grand jury says, emphatically, that Donald Trump misled the secret service as well. That the secret service didn't even know he had highly classified top secret documents. That's one. I was shocked by the level of involvement, personal involvement by Donald Trump

in the search for documents in With holding documents for the National Archive and the president of the records himself selecting the 15 boxes in the dress rehearsal that he would try to serve up to the National Archive that he personally Donald Trump reviewed those that he personally gave the commands and had boxes Donald Trump reviewed those that he personally gave the commands and had boxes. 80 of them removed from the storage room and only 50 of them returned. And Lord knows what happened within those boxes. Those were based on Donald Trump's personal review of those documents, the quality of the evidence that they have developed to be able to say that

emphatically in the complaint was mind boggling. I always suspect that that he would be involved, but that there would be levels of buffers between him and others. No, he was doing the bring me two more boxes texting himself to Walt Nauta. Give me another box. I need a new lid for one of these boxes. And then, you know, get him to Bedminster. So they were this shell game of moving them

all out of the White House. And then him, Donald Trump picking which ones would go back to the National Archive holding back 70 or 80 other boxes, including classified, but even screwing that up because they had classified documents in the initial return to the National Archive, which led to the DOJ referral, which led to the summons and then to the search warrant, and then just the brazenness in which he thought he'd be protected by attorney

client privilege to tell Evan Corcoran, hey, when you get that envelope, when back to your hotel room, if kind of puff, some of them disappeared, you know, that wouldn't be bad. Like the Hillary Clinton, IT guy, do that. I mean, the fact that he would even say that out loud and thank God, we've got judges been sitting in the District of Columbia, chief judges like Barrel Howell and now Jeb Bozberg, who listened to this evidence early on. We didn't have a privy to it.

And we're able to decide that there was a crime or fraud perpetrated likely by the president of the United States in the way he dealt with his attorney. And thank God, Evan Corcoran. He didn't know it at the time, but that his 50 pages of handwritten detailed notes about his interaction with Donald Trump and his audio musings. Thank God they got turned over to the government. And we said when that first happened, I think you remember the legal IF then, we were like, wow, notes, attorney notes.

I mean, I'm thinking, well, maybe some random scribblings, 50 pages of detail. This guy was like methodical. The other thing that was fascinating about it and really damning for Donald Trump for me in the indictment. And it may answer the question that Karen posed before she left, which is, what was the motive? The motive apparently looks to me like these were my papers. These are mine.

He said to his staff, these are mine, mine, mine. He told his lawyers, Corcoran. So what do you got to do for the subpoena response? Well, I got to look through all of your documents, Mr. President. I don't really want this is quoted in the indictment. I don't really want you looking in my boxes. I don't want you're really looking in my papers. They're mine. So this mine, this possessiveness, this narcissism is how he is,

how he treated these documents. His own staff joked, and this is in the indictment, referencing the movie, A Beautiful Mind about John Nash, the troubled economist. And if you people remember the scene in the movie where he's lost his, literally lost his mind and is living in a shack behind his house where he writes on the windows of his house all sorts of crazy formulas and the house is just packed with documents piling out of things. So they joked that they called it the beautiful mind paper boxes which were just stuff that this guy in Larsony Trump threw into the box, is spilling out with classified top secret.

He wanted the beautiful mind boxes for his own. That whether it was a memento, he thought he was going back to the presidency. He wanted to show it off transaction or use it, whatever. That's the motive. Because otherwise, right, doesn't make any sense. Like why is he just give it back? What? He doesn't give it back because he believes that he owns it and not the American people and sees nothing wrong and

And then finally Ben I love that they hoisted him on his own petard Donald Trump in Jackson, it's the way they wrote this really elegant efficient Word economy every word Every word every sentence advanced to cause there was no wasted word, every word, every sentence advanced the cause, there was no wasted sentences in this indictment, very, very elegant, really written, but simply written in the narrative. I love that they said to him, hey, you, you yourself in 2016 and 2017, 2018 made a lot of statements about classified documents. You made a lot of statements about how you would protect the national interest and how

people who leave office that continue to have access to classified documents would only, you know, who have a political partisan role in their future life should never have access to these classified documents. That is a moment of inadvertent self-admission by Donald Trump because he just described himself leaving office, having no reason to hold on to these things.

He's a partisan running for office, holding on a top secret documents, really, really well done. Everything, it was about, I learned about 40 new things that we couldn't even have speculated about the deep, deep involvement, personal involvement up to his elbows, Donald Trump himself in the document scandal. Yeah, and I definitely think the motive also, and you touched on it, was transactional, was money, you know, the examples that we have in this indictment where Donald Trump just showing it around like trophies and bragging it about it as a tool of trying to have continued relevance

based on being a malignant artist. Isn't this cool? I really am the winner here. Like not only is it so dangerous, like just a complete and utter idiocracy, which is what we always call out here on the Midas to Network, But Donald Trump has said before, he's like, Nixon traded his documents for $18 million. So clearly in the back of his mind, he had views as a prior criminal who held the office.

And Donald Trump makes up these stories in his head. And Donald Trump, again, what we have in the indictment are two examples where it was recorded of him bragging about these documents and showing it. Those are exemplars. Those are not the totality of instances when Donald Trump did this. They're just, it's on tape. So how could a jury ever go, well, that didn't happen. Here it is. Play tape. But if he did it in those two instances, I think the point of those is think about every time he did that before as well and would continue to do it. If he's not stopped, you mentioned the ruling by the federal judges in Washington, DC presiding over the grand jury, finding that the crime fraud exception applied that Donald Trump was using his lawyers for

the commission of ongoing criminal conduct such that they couldn't assert the attorney client privilege to shield documents and try to preserve their class, their confidentiality from being turned over to the Department of Justice. And a lot of those rulings were by federal judge, Barrel Howell, who used to be the presiding judge in Washington DC over the criminal grand juries there. And now it's someone by the name of James Bozberg who goes by Jeb Bozberg, who presides over the grand juries as the presiding judge in Washington DC district court.

And he's made a number of very important and favorable rulings in the other case that's still being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith for Donald Trump's election interference for Donald Trump's attempts to overthrow our democracy. And we've got some insight into the type of powerful evidence that has already been presented before. First Judge Barrow Howell and now Judge Bozberg. In that case, that investigation is proceeding. We expect the same way we were predicting the indictments on the case involving Trump's theft of government records and obstruction of

justice to land pretty much precisely. We were spot on, I think, when we, if you go back and rewind the episodes of when we said that one was coming, I think we said May or June, you know, potentially a little bit later, but definitely summer, probably early summer. We all think that the other indictment

is gonna happen sometime in September, October, maybe late August, but we believe there's definitely another indictment coming from special counsel, Jack Smith. And again, that's from everything for the conduct on January 6, the day of the insurrection itself, leading up to it, wire fraud, campaign finance, violations, threatening, state and local election officials and the fake electors scheme, all of that criminal conduct by Donald Trump. But an order that was just unsealed by Judge Bozberg. And it's very rare that we get insight into what's going on in the grand jury process.

So what Judge Bozberg did because Pence gave a media interview and there's just been a lot publicly discussed about former vice president, Penn's testifying before the grand jury. Trump's talked about it. Penn's has talked about it. Trump's lawyers have talked about it. And so the judge basically got a motion from media, interveners who said they want to get their hands on the transcripts and everything relating to former

vice president Pence is testimony before the grand jury and the judges like look. Grand jury proceedings are confidential. They always are in secret. However, I can release portions of the order compelling former vice president Pence to testify where the court overruled the assertion by former vice president pens that the speech and debate clause privilege, a privilege for senators and members of the House of Representatives not to have to testify in other actions and immunity from various types of cases, when the court overruled that largely. The court found that the speech and debate clause

in a limited sense applied to former vice president Pence in his ceremonial role as the president of the Senate. So when he was in that capacity and leading up in his preparation for his role as having the ceremonial duty of counting the electoral votes. The court said, for that limited purpose, I'll acknowledge the speech and debate clause applies, but for everything else, and everything else is what special counsel, Jack Smith really cared about.

All of Pence's observations of Donald Trump committing crimes, all of Pence, Donald Trump threatening Pence, all of that is fair game and former vice president PENZ can testify on that. I just want to show you just a few pages here where the judge seems to, you know, certainly hint at the evidence before them that, yes, it's fair game because Donald Trump was committing crimes. So if you go to page 16 of a Bozberg's order that was just unsealed again, this order comes from March of this year, but it's now first being unsealed on Friday last Friday.

And the court basically says having set out the ground rules, the court may now get down to business. It assesses the specific topics and those are redacted. In order to provide guidance to the parties going forward, it notes several areas within those categories that the privilege does or does not cover. The bottom line is that the conversations exhorting pens to reject electors on January 6th are not protected. They fall under Brewster's rule. Brewster's just a, the Brewster is a case involving a senator who was taking bribes.

Okay, so that's what Brewster refers to. They fall under Brewster's rule that communications urging a legislator to act unlawfully or ultravirus are not preparatory or at most only incidentally so to a legislative function. There is no dispute in this case that Pence lacked the authority to reject electoral votes, then there's a redaction. And Dean has Pence described in his book, he never believed that the vice president's role in January 6 was anything more than ceremonial. So here, the basis of the court's ruling is that where someone is being instructed to act

unlawfully, those are not legislative in nature. So they're analogizing Trump to this other case where someone acted unlawfully. And then finally, if you go to page 19, it goes and explains this privilege that Pence is inciting and how the court is construing it applies in a way that is broad enough to ensure the historic independence of the legislative branch, but narrow enough to guard against the excess of those who would corrupt the process by corrupting its members. Okay. So in compelling former vice president Pence to testify, what the court is saying there is that Donald Trump was corrupting the process by corrupting its members if Pence was trying to claim an immunity like being the president of the Senate.

It's subtle but very, very powerful and tells you that that case is moving towards very, very serious charges. Well, and I'll pass it to you, Popok, but if we saw 38 charges that were brought in this case in the Southern District of Florida for the Wilphal Retention of National Defense Information and Obstruction of Justice, I've always said, I thought you're going to see hundreds of counts in connection with the January 6th case that's being investigated. I think you will see hundreds, 200, 300, you know, close, definitely, I think close to 200 counts in that indictment, Popeye.

I think you just made a hot take for all the Pence things there. I don't think that's it. You're done. So I'll take cut it. You're ready to go. But let me see what I can hit. I want to make a statement as you and I have been talking about things for over two years to the audience members globally and locally.

What we are describing in sometimes excruciating but hopefully entertaining detail is a justice system that works. I know that we talk about how many times is he going to get away with it, Donald Trump? How many times is he going to be, yes, there'll be a suit, but will he be forced by a jury to pay anything? The answer to that has been yes. Look at all the suits that he files, 90 of them attacking the election. Will maybe one of them will be successful. They weren't. Maybe he'll his appeals to even to the Supreme Court that he has packed with MAGA right wing six to three majority will give him a, will give him wind and a sale. It doesn't. The federal judges on the circuit court, some of them are pointed by him. Maybe they'll come to his rescue in response to something.

They haven't. They won't and they can't. And so we talk about Eileen Cannon at length for good reason. And she was a poor example of the federal judiciary at a moment that was important to our nation's history. But for everything else that you and I have talked about in the last two years involving Donald Trump, Trump, his henchman and his grotesque. The justice department, especially the federal one, but even state works. So, and it's something to be proud of. And I'm proud today. I know there's a whole

bunch of lawyers and lackeys and and and hangar honors and bootlickers for Donald Trump, like Alina Habba, who got on television. And they're still doing it. Carrey Lake made a comment during a press rally that there's a second amendment solution to Merrick Garland and Jack Smith's indictment of Donald Trump. I mean, that sounds like the secret service should start opening an investigation at a Carrie Lake's threats against the Department of Justice and they should. So the right wing maga are coming out with, oh, sad day, sad day in America, sad day for justice. I'm ashamed to be a lawyer. It's, it's the opposite. This is what the founding

fathers wanted. It is a major protection guardrail firewall, firewall for our democracy, the conscience of our democracy. And every time you and I tell, tell this of what's happening, whether it's Jebbo's, Berk Barrow Howell, the judges of the DC Circuit Court, even the judges of the Supreme Court in rejecting Donald Trump's and treaties to interfere in justice. We are watching this in real time. Some people get frustrated and get fatigued and like, I'm tired of hearing about it.

Tell me when he's in jail, but this is the process, the journey that we're on together, this journey that we're on together, this journey that we're on together is our justice system. It's like the old John Lennon line. Life is what happens when you're making plans. We are in, this is the justice system in all of its glory and and and warts and all, but at the end of the day, when adults are in the room wearing the black robes, and you have lawyers like some of the finest at the Department of Justice, handling the case with Jack Smith. Good things come out of it. And thank God that they do. This is our, this is why the rest of the world should be proud of our system of justice because we just indicted twice in two months, a former

president of the United States for the first time in American history. And although it may not mean something to those that are continuing to run for office and to grift, it means something to everyone else that cares about democracy and justice. And we are so proud that all of the legal aeifers, everybody watching this who has been with us from day one, or if you're just joining us now, welcome. But none of this is possible, you know, without you. This community, this pro-democracy community that speaks the truth, you know, Michael Popeye, Karen Friedman, Agnifalo, myself, my brothers, all of the other hosts on the Midas Touch Network. We just got sick and tired of large media networks

gaslighting us and not giving us the facts and not spending the time to explain the justice system and not spending the time to go through what's actually stated in the complaint and showing the photos and explaining the complexity and talking about issues that may be difficult or complex but we ultimately know that that's why you're here. You wanna learn about that.

We wanted the media to be like that. And so when we didn't see the media doing that, we just said we're gonna create it ourselves. So we did it. We built the Midas Touch Network. We built out Legal AF and all of the other shows on this network, but most importantly, what you built is what's been most impressive to me,

and that's real community, a real unapologetically pro-democracy community. And I know after you watch these shows or after you listen to these shows on the Midas Touch Network, like Legal AF, you share this knowledge with your family, friends, co-workers, colleagues. You spread the word. You let people know these facts so that we can rebut all of the disinformation out there. We're so grateful for you. And so from the bottom of all of our hearts here, at Legal AF, and the Midas Touch Network, we say thank you

and it's an honor to be working by your side. Historic episode today on Legal AF, we'll see you for the midweek edition with Michael Popock and Karen Friedman Agnifala, which is always live on Wednesday evenings. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of information to report. I'm sure there'll probably will even be a lot of breaking news, live coverage here

that we will be bringing to you on Tuesday and perhaps even Monday as we learn more information Make sure you subscribe to the MidasTouch Network. It's free to subscribe to our YouTube channel If you watch this on YouTube be sure to subscribe on audio as well wherever podcasts are available Just search for legal a f and subscribe and leave a five star review. If you listen to this on the audio feed of legal AF, make sure you search on YouTube and subscribe to the Midas Touch network where you can get all of the video of these episodes as well. Check out store.mitustouch.com for the best pro-democracy gear out there. That store store. Mightestouch.com. We have

Legal AF gear. We have Convict 45. We have no one is above the law gear. Some great timely stuff store. Mightestouch.com I think as the indictments as the indictment was released our producer salty cooked up some new designs that were very relevant at store. MidasTouch.com. We'll see you next time here on Legal AF. Always a pleasure and honor to be with you Legal AFers, you Michael Popeye, Karen Friedman, Agnifalo. We'll see you next time on Legal AF.

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