Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump LOSES BIG in KEY Election Lawsuit AT WORST TIME for Him

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

A Trump-loyal MAGA right wing “policy institute” led by Trump’s chair of his “transition team” is behind a new lawsuit filed in Georgia to allow MAGA aligned county election board members to REFUSE TO TIMELY CERTIFY the outcome of the November election. Michael Popok digs into a judge dismissing the suit on a technicality, and what is likely to happen next as Fulton County returns to being the epicenter of Trump’s election interference scheme for 2024 all over again. Magic Spoon: Get this exclusive offer when you use promo code LEGALAF at https://MagicSpoon.com/LEGALAF Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF 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 MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial 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 Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Michael Popak, Legal AF, Election Interference, Fulton County, Georgia. What could go wrong? Got a new lawsuit that's been filed by Julie Adams, who's one of five people who sits on the Fulton County Election Board. And this lawsuit that she filed, which is pending before Fulton County judge, Judge Robert McBurney, has all the hallmarks of what we can expect from MAGA right-wing activists and policy institutes and their attempts to sow discontent and to try to overthrow the results of the 2024 election using 2020 as its blueprint.

This suit brought by one member of the Fulton County Election Board against all the other members of the Fulton County Election Board, tries to rely on a 2020 constitutional law amendment in Georgia, which allows there to be an exception to the general principle and general doctrine that a person can't sue a government under the doctrine of sovereign immunity

unless the government allows it to do so, gives it permission. That is the standard. However, Georgia now allows for the suits against government and government entities if it's seeking what's called declaratory relief, meaning you're asking a judge to declare your rights. It's what we call a declaratory judgment suit, not a suit for damages.

It could have a component of it that has injunctive relief asking somebody, asking a judge to stop or stay or force a certain behavior, but that's the exception. And riding behind this change in the law, MAGA right-wing groups like American First Policy Institute, AFPI, which is behind this lawsuit being brought by one MAGA board member against the entirety of the board, is trying to have a judge declare that what the Georgia law says on the books, which is every county board shall, must certify election results once the data and information has been tabulated and certified by the employees, by the clerk,

and by the people responsible for running the election. They then have to, having reviewed it, they then have to certify it, shall certify it. Well, that's not what the plaintiff and MAGA want. What they want is to have not mandatory ministerial acts the way that Mike Pence, the vice president in counting the Jan 6 electoral votes has been declared to have had. They want discretion. They want the power to reject the recommendations, if you will, of the election workers and of

the election clerk for that county and ask to look at every piece of data and do an audit and not certify. That is not the process in America to challenge the outcome of election results. If you think they're fraudulent, you have to do what's called a contest. Usually, the contest is led by the loser, and the loser has a certain time period in every state to file a challenge in court and ultimately a judge, in this case a superior court judge, a trial-level judge in Georgia, makes the ultimate decision based on the evidence that's presented. But you have to

get through the ministerial acts of the mandatory certification at the county level and then ultimately at the state level before you have the right and have standing to bring a contest. So it's not like people would say, oh, what's wrong with having every county board member monkey around and throw the papers up in the air and do their own independent audit before they agree to certify? What's wrong with that? That can't be what happens from election day until the certification of the election that's mandatory and the reporting of those results

as part of the electoral college. We just don't have time, nor is that our process to let everybody be an independent gumshoe or detective who happens to be elected to the board to monkey around with the results. But that's exactly what MAGA want. Why you gotta look at who's leading America First Policy Institute, AFPI. It's led by Linda

McMahon, or as they refer to her on the website, the honorable Linda McMahon. I don't know what makes her so honorable. She's also the co-chair for the transition of Donald Trump if he were to somehow regain the presidency. She's co-chair of vetting thousands and thousands and thousands of positions that Donald Trump would be in a position to fill if he got elected again. So it's not like they're independent. They're not agnostic, no pun intended. They're a religious right organization

led by Linda McMahon, who is beholden to Donald Trump. And so they found this poor stooge, this Julie Adams, is that her name? This Julie Adams to be the plaintiff in the case. And Julie Adams, you may know, and if not, I'll tell you, she was already in the news because in May, after the primaries in Georgia, Julie Adams, along with the other four board members,

had to certify the primary results and she abstained. She said pass when they got to her. So picture this. And I've been involved with voting and vote counting and lawsuits related to voting and vote counting in the past, so I got a pretty good handle of what happens in these rooms. The clerk of the elections, right?

The clerk of the county has all of these, as a supervisor of elections, has all of these other as a supervisor of elections, has all of these other precinct captains, precinct heads and election workers that work for that person reporting into her as data feeds. They all report in off tabulations that are made, either electronic, usually electronic. It's either an optical ballot or it's a paper ballot with a receipt or it's some sort of digital voting, electronic voting, whatever it is, there's a tabulation at the end of the day

within of several hours after the close of the polls. Those from each precinct that you may vote in get reported up, right, to precinct captains and ultimately to the county workers who are responsible. And so they have a database, they have a spreadsheet, electronic, in which all of the reports come in. Then they are required, shall, through their board, their board of directors, their board

of election supervisors that is voted in by each county, who ultimately reports to the state election board, another five people, three of which are MAGA Trump, two of which are not. That's how Georgia is currently comprised. And this all gets plugged in with this data, which you don't have under the statute, nor could you if you ever were going to have a fair election, is to have one rogue county election board member say, no, I want to see every scrap of paper from every precinct in the county, all 10,000 of them, and I want to personally be counted myself. No way. They leave it, the system, the integrity of the system leaves it to the party that cares the most. That's the party that lost. And if they have a vote challenge, a contest, it gets filed with a court with evidence and hearings,

and maybe that particular race is held up. But so there are methodologies to do it, but this isn't one of them. So as a kid, I loved eating cereal, but as an adult, I don't want all that sugar, and most cereals don't give me the protein I need. Then I found Magic Spoon, a nostalgically delicious cereal

that tastes just like my childhood favorites, but without the sugar and with a ton of protein. And if you're already a Magic Spoon fan, I got big news. Magic Spoon has turned their super popular cereal into high protein treats that are light, crispy, and taste just like those classic crunchy cereal bars. Magic Spoon's brand new treats are so delicious, they've already become my favorite

before and after gym snack. Every serving of Magic Spoon cereal has 13 grams of protein, zero grams of sugar, and four grams of net carbs, so you can feel good about what you're eating. The most popular flavors are fruity and cocoa, and there's so many more. Magic Spoon's brand new treats are crispy, crunchy, airy,

and an easy way to get 11 grams of protein on the go. And for the first time ever, Magic Spoon treats are available in grocery stores with delicious flavors like marshmallow and chocolatey peanut butter. My favorite is Magic Spoon's chocolatey peanut butter treats. And by the way, they're my wife's favorite too. They're our favorite late night snack.

Get $5 off your next order at magicspoon.com slash legal AF or look for Magic Spoon in your nearest grocery store. That's magicspoon.com slash legal AF for five bucks off. Magic Spoon, hold on to the dream. Why are we spending so much time talking about it? Because groups like AFPI, groups like True the Vote, Catherine Engelbach's entity, groups like Turning Point USA, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing podcaster, are all working in American first policy institute. We talked about also American legal, American first legal, legal first America, whatever it is, the one led by Stephen Miller,

they're all working for Donald Trump. And they want to gum up the works of the election process and so disconsent and so doubt about the outcome of the election that hasn't even been run, it hasn't even happened. Here is the reality from decades of research by people who are scholars in the area of elections, election integrity, election results in the United States and comparatively around the world. These are the results of scholars who have studied this. All they've done is study reams of data, analysis, statistical analysis, algorithms, modeling, and here's what they come away with. While there is fraud in every election in every country and every place, including the

United States, it's never outcome dispositive in America, especially given the size of the American vote. Yes, somebody always votes their mother-in-law's ballot. Somebody votes a dead neighbor's ballot. Somebody votes outside of the precinct that they've been assigned to or they move from. Somebody votes twice. Somebody votes who's not registered. It happens. It happens in 0.02% of the cases. It's not enough to be outcome-determinative. In other words, in 250 plus years of this democracy, we've never had a situation where the election hung on the balance and fraudulent ballots determine the outcome of the election. No outcome-determinative fraud

in the election. You don't have to take my word for it, Michael Popak, on Legal AF and on Midas Touch. Take the word of Chris Krebs, who Donald Trump's head of cyber security and election integrity. He said there was no outcome-determined fraud and that 2020 was the most secure election we've ever had. All since 2000 after Borr versus Gorsh. Sorry, let's try it again. Leave that in there. Ever since Bush versus Gore, we've moved away from certain of the balloting issues, ballot integrity problems, ballot counting problems that we had before. It's been 20 years. We've solved those problems. We can put a man on the moon, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and we can figure out how to count votes in America.

That's why Chris Krebs said that, and that's why he got fired by Donald Trump. Every head of every intelligence agency in America that matters said that 2020 was the fairest election free of outcome-determinative fraud. So did Bill Barr, the attorney general for Donald Trump, so did the acting attorney general for Donald Trump, and everybody else that matters except for MAGA. That is the reality. For Donald Trump to continue on the campaign trail, and I assume in his debate, to say that there was outcome determined to defraud

and that's why he didn't accept the outcome of the election is utter and complete bolder dash. It's complete bullshit. That's a legal term. So what is going on with the lawsuit? Lawsuit's filed. Now, Judge McBurney, who has been responsible for the case, he got reassigned the case after the original judge, Glanville recused himself. Judge McBurney, you may remember, was the same judge who presided over

the Georgia special purpose grand jury that Fawnny Willis used to advise her about whether she should bring a regular grand jury indictment against Donald Trump. And McBurney at the time was the chief judge of Fulton County. He's no longer. He's now been returned to the ranks of the regular Fulton County judges. And he just dismissed Julie Adams' suit for a declaratory judgment that she along with others in the state are allowed to refuse to certify the election once the tabulation has been put in front of them for no good reason. He said no, but not for a reason, the rationale for dismissing the case by McBurney doesn't give me a lot of confidence. He is

generally a center, a centrist in terms of his rulings. We saw that a lot with Fonny Willis before the case got reassigned to another judge after she got the indictment. But the reason he dismissed the case is because Julie Adams sued the wrong defendant. It happens. You're supposed to under the Georgia constitutional amendment sue a state or local government as the defendant. They decided to sue the actual county board and the supervisor of the county board that she sat on. In other words, she was one of the board and she sued the rest of the board. And McBurney said, nah, you gotta sue like Fulton County

where you gotta sue the state of Georgia in order for me to have jurisdiction dismissed. Now, if anybody thinks that American First Policy Institute is not gonna get around to refiling this, now then McBurney's gonna have to determine if this is a proper request for declaratory judgment relief. It's an exception, as I said earlier, to the sovereign immunity doctrine, but he has to determine whether even if they have standing to make this kind of argument to have the statute

interpreted. Then if he ultimately does, knowing McBurney, and we did follow him for over a year on Legal AF, I think he's going to make a ruling such as this. He's going to have to go quickly if they're going to think it's going to impact this coming election. She already monkeyed around or tried to with the primary in May, just like sort of the canary in the coal mine, like, oh, here we go. This is what they're doing state by state. It's not just here, it's in all the battleground states. They're trying to find ways to empower people who are not supposed to have that power, to delay the certification, to buy time for Trump when he loses ultimately again, to file the lawsuits that he filed ad

nauseam last time and lost, you know, 070. He went 70 and 0 or 0 and 70 in the results. And they want to buy Donald Trump more time in case he loses again. That's all they're trying to do and get more advocates and allies on his side in the name, in the phony name of voter integrity. When you hear MAGA talk about voter integrity and transparency, I want you to hear voter suppression because all they're trying to do is suppress your vote and my vote and others vote and in terms of disenfranchisement. When they say we need to shorten the hours for early voting because of voter integrity, that's voter suppression. When they say we have to create additional hurdles and barriers to early voting, that's voter suppression, not voter integrity. When they say we need to create other hurdles and barriers to absentee voting and mail-in voting, that is voter suppression, not voter integrity. When they say we need to create other hurdles and barriers to absentee voting and mail-in voting, that is voter suppression, not voter integrity.

Anytime you hear MAGA trying to monkey around with the time the polls are opened or closed, the days they're open, the way you can absentee vote, the way you can mail-in vote, the way you can mail in vote, the no drop boxes, making it hard, spreading out the precincts, right? Spreading out the locations of early voting so far away that people will be dissuaded from voting, right? Trying to cut down. And the thing that scares the crap out of them is, for instance, the Souls to Polls movement, which is getting churchgoers in states like Georgia to go to the polls. It's always been referred to as souls to polls, and it scares the crap out of them because most of the souls that are voting are democratic in a state like Georgia and blue. And so they want to find ways to cut off churches and not let the buses get there. Also voter suppression. You see

where this is going? We'll continue to follow what McBurney does next when inevitably the American First Policy Institute refiles the case this time appropriately against the Fulton County entity. And then McBurney is going to have to decide whether this is like an emergency that has to be decided now, or we're just too darn close to the election to decide this to matter. Which is where I think he's going to go. I mean, we're in September. We're like, we're very, very close to the election. It's less than two months away. He's not going to change the rules and change the rules of the game in the middle of the

game. We'll continue to follow it one place on YouTube, the Midas Touch Network and there it is, Legal AF. There's our album cover. Find out what 40 million people a month already know, which is Legal AF is the home of law and politics analysis and commentary like no other place on the YouTube dial. You like what we're doing here? Join us on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. All right here on this Midas Touch YouTube channel, free subscribe and help them get to 4 million free subscribers. We have no outside investors. You are the network you've been looking for. We've been building it

with you with our bare hands and we thank you for that. If you'd like to pick up your podcast, because we do about an hour-length Wednesdays and Saturdays where we curate the top four or five stories at the intersection of law and politics so that you don't have to using our knowledge and our experience and our judgment as practicing lawyers. Wednesday, it's me and Karen Freeman at Nifilo. Saturday, it's me, Michael Popock and Ben Micellis, and then I do hot takes like this about every hour right here on the network. So if you like to get audio podcasts, that's cool. I like that too. Go and plug in Legal AF, look for that album cover wherever you get your audio podcasts from.

So until my next podcast, until my next hot take, until my next Legal AF, this is Michael Popock reporting. Heary, heary, Legal AF Law Breakdown is now in session. Go beyond the headlines and get a deep dive into the important legal concepts you need to know and we discuss every

day on Legal AF. Exclusive content you won't find anywhere else, all for the price of a couple of cups of coffee. Join us at patreon.com slash legal AF. That's patreon.com slash legal AF.