Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump NIGHTMARE ARRIVES with TOP Prosecutor KAMALA

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Trial attorney Michael Popok and former prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo are back for the midweek edition of the top-rated Legal AF podcast to discuss 1) the likely success of the “Prosecutor v Felon” campaign theme for VP Harris; (2) MAGA’s efforts to undermine VP Harris through lawsuits and election law complaints; (3) Trump’s appeal of the NY $465 million civil fraud judgment and its impact on the election; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Thanks to our sponsors: HumanN: Get a free thirty-day supply of SuperBeets Heart Chews on all bundles and 15% off your first order by going to https://GETSUPERBEETS.COM and using code LEGALAF. Armra: Head to https://tryarmra.com/legalaf or enter promo code: LEGALAF to receive 15% off your first order! Trust And Will: Get 10% off plus free shipping of your estate plan documents by visiting https://trustandwill.com/LEGALAF Zbiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. 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

We are Legal AF Midweek Live. We have the honor of following after President Joe Biden's address to the nation from the Oval Office about his decision about the country moving forward, passing the torch, the defense of democracy being more important than any title. And I think it is appropriate that this president made the decision and soon around the same time was at or will be at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library. As Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And what we're finding is some convergence here historically, another Democratic convention in Chicago, another president making the decision not to move forward, except in this case, Joe Biden will be celebrated appropriately at the convention and for his decision of putting the people, putting the country

and the defense of democracy above anything else. And this has always been for the Biden-Harris administration, now the Harris campaign, has always been about the people versus Donald Trump's ego, is Donald Trump's ego, which was a compelling campaign theme then, it is one now. And now we have Kamala Harris, vice president, who is going to be the representative of the Democratic Party, the candidate for president. She is the natural leader of the party now. She was the constitutional successor to Biden always when people voted for her. And we're going to frame our show today, the midweek edition. We're going to talk about things related to Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party.

talk about the prosecutor versus felon thematic that is going to be used very effectively by Kamala Harris against Donald Trump. We'll bounce that around with another former prosecutor in Karen Friedman and Nic Nifilo, our co-anchor here on Wednesdays. We're going to talk about the attacks that have already started, the willy-hortonization of Kamala Harris by the dirty tricks of the Republican and MAGA and Trump party to go after her as a woman, as a woman of color, as somebody who's a prosecutor, trying to pick through her record as a prosecutor and try to find flaws in it to allow Donald Trump to attack it and to file lawsuits against her to try to keep her

off the ballot and apparently Joe Biden on the ballot and deny her the ability to use the $90 million or more that's in the war chest that was accumulated by the Biden Harris campaign before the convention. We'll talk about the likelihood of any of that being successful before the election. We've got some other Trump related litigation to report on. We're gonna talk about his appeal as we expected of the New York attorney general's successful $465 million civil fraud case

and appealing Judge Angoran's decision, finding his company's, Donald Trump's companies, to have committed persistent fraud for the last 10 years, at least, in the operation of his business, which is how he made his money. And we'll talk about Letitia James, who is not only has a response to the appeal that's been filed, but also has a strong position about the future of our democracy and the role of Kamala Harris

related to that. And then because we cover it all, there's a new decision coming out of Okeechobee County in Florida. That's right around Lake Okeechobee with a judge there, Judge Pegg, who has decided that the ridiculous lawsuit brought by Donald Trump against the Pulitzer Prize Board related to their awarding the Pulitzer Prize to the New York Times was somehow defamatory and has sued the Pulitzer Prize Board for that. And the judges decided that he's not going to dismiss the case. And we'll talk about the rulings there on this momentous occasion. I feel proud to have Carol Spring-Keran on.

I feel proud to have my partner Karen Freeman-Ignifilo, who's got a unique perspective here, going to talk about her as a female prosecutor and the road ahead for Kamala Harris, who's got a unique perspective here, going to talk about her as a female prosecutor and the road ahead for Kamala Harris, who's going to have to defend herself and defend democracy. Carol, what's your initial gut reaction? We talked about it. So much has changed since last week when you and I were last on. Would he, can he, did he, he has. And now we move forward as a party in a unified way. There was speculation about primaries and whether there was going to be a contested primary selection process. And quickly, the Democratic Party looked at each other and said, we've got a successor to Joe Biden and what he's done. And her name is Kamala Harris.

Talk to me about your initial feelings about Kamala Harris, former prosecutor, former attorney general, former vice president, former senator, and could be the first woman president of the United States. Well, first, I just have to start by saying I'm a little misty eyed from that speech from President Biden. I mean, what a great guy. They just don't make them like him anymore. And what I love about him is he never changed. He never got dragged into the mud. He never allowed himself to get dragged into mud. He always kept his head up high and remained the same really decent person who's a fantastic president and he's just a public servant.

And he was quoting the Constitution, he was quoting the Federalist Papers. He was just absolutely, I feel like wrapped in the flag and very patriotic. And I just love listening to him. And really, I'm so grateful that I got to, in my lifetime, have him as not just vice president under another probably greatest president, also in my lifetime Barack Obama, but also here. And just also the decency to know when to step aside and to do what's best for his country. He just really is a true public servant in the best possible way. And boy, is that a contrast to who Donald Trump is, who only thinks of himself. So I just loved what he had to say.

And I just feel so grateful. Anyway, but to get to Kamala Harris, I have a little Kamala Harris story that I'd love to tell. In 2010, when Cy Vance, who was the Manhattan DA, was elected, and that was the first year he started, he tapped me to be the chief of the trial division, which is basically the head of all the trial lawyers and the head of all the investigations. And there were a lot of people who said to me, who thought that I was not the best person for the job. I was too young.

I was not qualified. I didn't have enough experience. All the things they say to women that they don't say to men. And Cy Vance, he know, he definitely elevated me a lot higher than certainly, certainly at the time, I was honored and really excited to do the job. And he said to me, I want you to meet a good friend of mine, Kamala Harris.

She is probably the best prosecutor I know. She's brilliant. She's an amazing woman. I think you'll love her. And I think she'll give you some good advice. And at the time, she had just been elected the attorney general of the state of California. She had been the district attorney of San Francisco. And before that, she was a prosecutor in a nearby county, it's Alameda County in California. And so she came up as a career prosecutor a lot like I did, and we are of similar age and we're both from California, that's where I'm originally from. And Cy Vance thought that she could kind of teach me and mentor me and just give me advice

on how to lead a prosecutor's office that handled 100,000 cases a year. And I had 350 lawyers that were under me. And it was a really, really big job. And so I flew out to California for something unrelated to that. And we asked if she would meet with me. And so I went to Sacramento, which is the capital of California. I went to her office and I was sitting in the conference room waiting for her. And I'll never forget it. In walks, the most dynamic, put together woman I probably ever met in my life, Kamala Harris. She walks in and for an hour she spoke.

I did not speak and she says, I'm going to give you advice. And she gave me, I took notes, I just sat there and wrote and wrote and wrote and gave me notes about as a woman, as a prosecutor, as someone in public policy, as somebody who's going to work for the elected DA, all the things I could do, all the lessons she learned, all the things you can do to not just manage cases and people, but to also make

meaningful policy change and to maximize every issue that you have on your agenda, whether it's through community involvement, whether it's helping agenda, whether it's through community involvement, whether it's helping people, whether it's legislative change, whether it's education, that everything has multiple components. And it was like the best advice anyone had ever given me. And it was one hour.

And then she walked out as fast as she walked in, and it was absolutely, I was stunned at how brilliant and amazing she was. And that was in 2010. And so when Joe Biden tapped her to be vice president, I wasn't surprised at all. I thought she was just one of the most impressive women I've ever met in my life.

And now I think, of course, she's stepping up and she's going to be unbelievable. And I just love, I love what she's doing already and how she's really just coming into her own and taking command. And I don't know if this was intentional or not, but I love that the timing of it was that the Republican convention was all about Joe Biden. He's too old, he's this, he's that. They spent all their energy and all their money and all their efforts basically tearing down Joe Biden. And he eliminated that issue right after

and turned it over to Kamala Harris. So I'm not surprised that they're already starting with the same exact things that they were talking about, Letitia James or Fonny Willis or every other woman of color that they love to talk about. I just love how she's giving it back to them. Of course, they're using things like, oh, she's a DEI hire, which is sort of code for the N-word, it seems like these days. which is sort of code for the n-word, you know, it seems like these days and and just again, you know She cackles and she laughs and it's like since when is a woman who smiles or laughs a threat, you know it's like crazy to me the things that they're saying and

She's just coming out and she's like, you know, I love the contrast that she has prosecuted Sex offenders. He's a sex offender, right? He's been adjudicated as a rapist She's prosecuted fraud cases. He's been adjudicated to be You know fraudster in the Arthur and Goran New York civil fraud case. She has prosecuted Criminal fraudsters, which he's a 34 count felon for fraud in Manhattan as well I mean just everything the contrast could not be there. That's like opposite day. And she's the anti-Trump.

And it's just such a breath of fresh air. And it takes away the Hunter issue. It takes away the age issue. It takes away everything. I mean, they'll manufacture things to say about her. And we'll go from there. But I'm just loving every second of it and I'm not surprised and it brings a smile to my face. Yeah, I'm glad that you told that, that Kamala story. So as our audience, that setting up

the thematic of the prosecutor versus the felon is so smart for so many of the reasons that you touched on. we actually have the clip I mean right out of the box her first rally. She this was this was the sound bite So as Leah told you before I was elected vice president before I was elected United States senator I was elected attorney general of the state of California and I was a courtroom prosecutor before then and in those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.

So hear me when I say, I promise you, I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week. I love you so much. Oh my God. She's amazing. As I said on my social media, it just got real. And she can make arguments as a 59-year-old woman of color prosecutor with a successful track record, body of work

that she can put up against anyone, let alone that airbag criminal that's running on the Republican side. And I think if this is going to be, and it fits so neatly on a bumper sticker, the prosecutor versus the felon, and it's going as they, as they corner Donald Trump as only Kamala can, as they corner him, like the rat that he is, he's going to, we know because he does it every time. He's going to fight back with misogynistic racist comments that are going to go after her. He led. Let's not forget that not only is his party racist, this is the party that in 2001 after john mccain,

that in 2000 went after John McCain, the war hero, part of the party, when they ran a robo calls in South Carolina that asked people, would it matter to your vote if you knew that John McCain had an illegitimate black child? He had adopted a Bangladeshi girl. And it's that low ball, you know, below the belt that even in their own party they went after. They call it, you know, this is a group that first cannibalized their own, and of course they're going to turn their attack on somebody of color. They've been using this DEI,

diversity, equity, and inclusion label, as you said, as a substitute for many, many racist tropes, including the N-word. You've got Donald Trump when he had another top law enforcement who happened to also be black and a woman in Letitia James in New York. He called her Peekaboo James, which is not even code word for jigaboo, which is a terrible racial expression. His constant pattern is to dehumanize his opponent, especially if they're black or brown. Alvin Bragg is an animal in his words that should be put out of his misery with a baseball bat. Letitia James, Peekaboo James, Kamala Harris refusing to get the pronunciation of her name right. They're all being made

into the other, into subhuman. And now in addition to that, and I want to hear your opinion about prosecutor versus felon, and then I want to talk about the lawsuits, the inevitable lawsuits, the floodgates that the Republicans following the Heritage Foundation are going to file against her to try right now in July, not November, to delegitimize her presidency should she win, we believe she will, should she win, and to, in order to try to act like she is invalid and doesn't have the right to occupy the Oval Office if she were to win. And they're doing it now, not waiting. They were started it with Joe Biden, but now that they know that it's Kamala Harris, it's

Kamala Harris. Let me go back to you on the felon verse versus prosecutor versus felon thematic. A, do you think it's effective and B, will it work and C, is she ready? You've met her. Is she ready for the inevitable having to counterpunch when they do fly spec her record? And I'm sure there's going to be something in her record, somebody that didn't get the death penalty, something that she did about the drug policies in California, there's going to be something that they're going to try to Willie Horton her and try to make it racist on top of it. Her approach to Black Lives Matter and bail

reform, whatever it, George Soros, you can see it, I could write it now. So give me your overview of how her as a person, as a candidate, now four years, she's not the same Kamala Harris as when she went in. This Kamala Harris, how does she in the next four months make the closing argument that she needs to make against Donald Trump? Well, they can look in her background all they want. They're not going to find that she has sexually assaulted anybody, that she's lied, cheated, stolen, you know, thievery, committed crimes, I don't know, paid off her porn star.

You look at her background. Is there going to be a case that somebody thinks she should have done differently? Could she have made a mistake? Perhaps. She was the elected DA. She was the attorney general for the whole state of California. So of course there's going to be cases that people think should have gone differently or mistakes

were made or whatever it is. Of course that will happen. But is she ready? Oh, she is more than ready. This woman is so smart, so put together and And frankly, she's a trained prosecutor. And the thing about being a trained prosecutor is you learn how to have thick skin, because you have to. You learn how to build your case, which she will for herself. And you learn how to, as a trial lawyer, how to break it down and explain it to people so they can understand it. And

she has all of those skills. That's what she has done her entire career. So it's not, it's not. Yes. Has she been an elected official? Yes. But she came up as a line prosecutor. Also just like me, right? Like that's what that's what her background is. And P.S. prosecutors, you're tough. You take on violent gang members. You take on rapists. You take on serious, serious criminals. So she's tough. So whatever you want to say about women and, you know, they like to make women weak and all that kind of stuff, she is as tough as nails and she will be able to fight. She's a street fighter. She's a state prosecutor, not a federal prosecutor. So she's a woman after my own heart, because that's where you get your street fighting street

cred. And that's how she came up. And so she can handle her own. I am not worried about her whatsoever. And frankly, she's going to be an unbelievable president. I cannot wait to watch her win this election. But I agree with you. They're already trying to delegitimize it.

They're panicked. And they're already trying to sow the seeds that the election is somehow stolen, because he doesn't like to accept fair results. So I think it's a brilliant move. It's funny, because people were thinking, who's it going to be? And it is absolutely the most brilliant move.

She is ready, she is qualified. She has spent the last four years essentially looking over the shoulder of the president and watching, you know, training for the job. Like she's had on the job training. And so if that doesn't prepare you for the president, she has literally been in the room where it happens. So she is absolutely ready.

She is the best candidate by far and she can take on Donald Trump. I mean, in some ways, I think this is her comfort zone because if she were to take on some super intellectual historian, you know, she might, you know, whatever, to like debate some great orator. I'd be intimidated by that. But as she said, she knows Donald Trump's type. He's just a common criminal. She can take him on and wipe the floor with him with her eyes closed. So I'm super excited to watch her. She is, this is her sweet spot. To your, to your point, I remember when my wife and I, we were engaged then, watched the inauguration and we watched her come out with her white outfit. My wife and I both turned to each other and we instantly, I looked at my wife and like,

how do you feel right now with a woman vice president? She said, my hair is standing up on my arms. I'm so proud and we were. I think she will be, for those that faulted her at times for being whatever, as a vice president, in other words, I think she had a difficult job. She had a president Biden who we love, and we had a post-COVID era, and there were certain things that were her remit that were given to her by the president, but they weren't as public. She really came into her own after the Dobbs decision in advocating for women's rights

and for women not to be second class citizens in this country and reproductive rights and all of that. They're gonna go after her for the border issues and some other things that may or may not have been part of her remit as vice president, but she wasn't co-president, she was vice president. And there's a certain lane that you have to stay in. And she did a very good job in supporting the president of the United States. But when people voted for Joe

Biden, they knew there was a possibility he was older than that. She could at a moment's notice have to step into the presidency. And they voted overwhelmingly for Biden Harris, knowing that it could have been Harris as the president by over 7 million votes popular, and then of course, a good clean wipeout in the electoral votes. And now, like you said, Karen, she spent the last four years learning from one of the best about not just, you know, the how to get policies passed, because Joe Biden, one of his gifts, great gifts, and the reason he was so accomplished and has been so accomplished as a president in getting bills passed and getting legislation passed is because he's from the Senate.

He spent 40 years there. He knew everybody and they respected them. And he knew how to work legislation and get it through. That was one of the, one of, if Barack Obama had any weakness, it was working Capitol Hill and getting certain after the big push, the big heavy lift of Obamacare sort of didn't continue throughout the rest of his presidency, not for Biden. Biden has been, as they said in the Hamilton show,

he wrote like a man who was running out of time. And I mean that literally. He knew he was either one term or, you know, he was a certain age and he definitely moved with a vitality and an energy level that we have not seen before from much younger people occupying that office. But now it's Kamala's turn. Look how quickly the entire party got behind her. I was sitting with friends before he announced,

speculating that he would announce over the weekend. And we quickly started talking about what would be the process to pick the next person. And it kind of broke out into, we need a primary, quick. We need to contest it. That's what Pelosi wants to. I don't think so. I think we have the person that's been trained for this

and we voted for in succession, and she's right in front of us and her name is Kamala Harris. And look how quickly the delegates all got behind her. Now we have to work as an audience and on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF to sort of circle the wagons around Kamala the way the Republicans and MAGA have done so around their felon convicted rapist, the judged candidate. And we, the Democrats have to take a page from that book. She's going to get attacked for her relationship with, you know, an older man in the California who was the Speaker of the House, who they claimed she had an affair with, and that's how she got her job. Another inappropriate attack on women that would never come if the role, if the gender was reversed. We're going to hear that. I've already heard it from MAGA

people in the periphery of my life, when they're in their little palm cards and talking points about trying to tear down Kamala. And the other way to delegitimize her, especially if they know they're gonna lose, which I believe they really think there's a chance now that they're, now even Trump wakes up with a sweat in the middle of the night that he's gonna lose against her, because all the, she can just run on the Biden-Harris body of work

without having the baggage of Joe Biden. And now that Joe Biden has done this patriotic thing, there's a lot of halo effect around him and a lot of respect and adulation about Joe Biden, which I think actually transfers down into the energy flow that's now going towards Kamala Harris. He's no longer potentially a drag. We can just celebrate Joe Biden and what

he's done and her role in that administration. So it all comes together. And when we come back from our sponsors, which are important to the show and to our audience, because they support our progressive pro-democracy network in every way, shape and form. We're going to talk about some of the lawsuits that they're planning, the dirty tricks that they're planning on the Republican side, including trying to take $90 million away from her, Kamala Harris's war chest in the transfer from Biden to Kamala Harris. But as we've said before, people wonder how do you support this network because there's no outside investors. Well, you're

doing it here by being with us. We've got over 16,000 people that are watching us live that transferred many of them over from the Oval Office speech, free subscribe to the Midas Touch Network, help them get to 3 million before November 5. I can't even, I don't even have to tell you how important that is to the network. And that's a free subscription Just go out boom hit free subscribe stay with us throughout the entire show It helps the algorithm and tells and tells the algorithmic gods you like shows like this and content like this

We've got a patreon patreon.com Legal AF if you want to get to the nitty-gritty of the law at the intersection of law and politics that we're doing, we've got sister podcasts like Mistrial that's a co-anchored by Karen Friedman, Nick Nifilo, Donnie Perry, and Kathleen Rice. And they take it from a different but collaborative perspective about events during the week as well. So these are the way, and of course, our pro-democracy sponsors, that Jordy, myself, has spent a considerable amount of time curating with us,

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That's t-r-y-a-r-m-r-a.com slash LegalAF. And we are back. Thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors, without which it would just be Karen and me and Ben talking to each other. And we're back. Let's pick it up with the lawsuits. The personal ad hominem attacks, we know. It's a party that attacked itself. We're not surprised by any of that. Barack Obama was a secret Muslim who went to school in a madrassa. John McCain had a black illegitimate child. So why does any of this surprise us? Now let's talk about the lawsuits that are inevitable. The Heritage Foundation, it's been reported, issued an emergency memo.

For an organization we never heard of a month or two ago, we certainly can't stop talking about them and their role, whether they're having created the Project 2025 first 180 days, God forbid, of a new Trump administration or what he would do to issuing these kind of alerts and trying to argue that Joe Biden has to stay on the ballot or no Democrat should be listed on the ballot to try to make this some sort of you know 50 state ballot for for uh trump but 45 state ballot for the democrats And they're going to trial file lawsuits and especially in wisconsin and nevada and some other places to try to keep Kamala off the ballot despite the fact that the delegates haven't even voted yet for their nominee and there's no way in hell any of this will work. But it never stopped MAGA

before. They filed 70 lawsuits to try to cling to power in 2021 and none of them worked and yet they did it anyway. And then they've got this attack on the Federal Election Commission with a filing and a complaint. I'll take that one and then I'll turn the lawsuits one over to you, Karen. Does that make sense? Whatever you want to do. All right, let's do federal election commission. $91.5 million was in the war chest that was made out by people who donated to the Biden Harris campaign. See Harris's name was always on those accounts, was always part of it. And so she has a right and it is appropriate under election law for her to have received the transfer, if you will, of the funds that were in the account for her administration and her campaign,

the Biden Harris campaign now being the Harris for President campaign and her campaign, the Biden Harris campaign, now being the Harris for President campaign. And that's really it. But after Joe Biden filed the papers with the Federal Election Commission, the FEC, which just between all of us on this podcast, and no pun intended, it's pretty feckless. They don't have a lot of power, they don't have a lot of teeth. There's not much they can do. Their fines are very low. They can't like, they don't go to court and stop things. But you know, this is who we have in charge of our elections.

And so he filed the paperwork in order to move the money over. And they immediately, the Trump people, the MAGA people, immediately filed an objection and an administrative lawsuit within the FEC to have them reject the transfer of the $90.5 million over to the Harris campaign. First of all, they have to exhaust administrative remedies, meaning the FEC has 120 days, we can all do the math on our fingers of where that time's out, to make a ruling based on that complaint

before you can run to a federal court and ask them to expedite it or to make that ruling. We're already, let's say, August 1, that's four months, 120 days, and so August, September, October, November, December, that's after the election. So the chances of, first, they're wrong on the election law, the Trump side.

And so the transfer is appropriate. But the FEC, which is sort of bipartisan but is democratically controlled, is not going to be making a ruling before the 120 days is up. They're not going to put themselves in the middle of this. And the money has already been moved over appropriately

to the other candidate on the ticket who's now moved into the lead driver's seat in Kamala Harris. But that's one way. And then of course they can run around at rallies and talk about how they got $90 million and it's a fraud and it's false and all that. Trump's already telling his supporters that they should be reimbursed for all of the money that they paid to do

ad campaign against Joe Biden because there was never an intention to have Joe Biden be the candidate and now Donald Trump wants to be reimbursed. It's these ridiculous arguments that just again try to undermine the validity and the credibility and the integrity of the other side and make them subhuman in this case for Kamala Harris. And then there's all the, you know, the emergency memo by the Heritage Foundation talks about going after battleground states and trying to keep Joe Biden on the ballot and or Kamala Harris off. Kara, what can you tell us about those? It's just crazy what they're trying to do and it takes some time to try to wrap your head around it because when you think about it, the Democratic convention hasn't even happened yet. So they haven't nominated a person yet to be the candidate. So it when they first started making this claim, again, like I said, it's not very at least to me, I don't always understand what my mag is talking about, because it's, it's based on false premises. And so this is one of those times that it's based on, on false premises, in my opinion, but started with I think, speaker Mike Johnson, actually, on Sunday said that Democrats could, quote,

run into some legal impediments. And he thought it would be, quote, unlawful for someone other than Joe Biden to be the Democratic nominee. And again, how is that possible? They haven't even had a convention. There hasn't been a nomination yet. So I don't get that.

The convention that has happened is a Republican convention, not the Democratic one. But anyway, the other thing is, no ballot access deadlines have passed yet. And so it also makes no sense what they're talking about. But again, there's this issue about one state, it's Ohio. And Ohio had a deadline that originally was prior to the Democratic National Committee's convention and what they decided to do, and this was before Kamala was put forth and Joe Biden stepped down. At the time, they were worried that Biden wasn't going to meet the Ohio deadline in time because of this deadline that they had.

And so what they did was, so Ohio had a ballot access deadline of August 7th and the DNC announced that they would have a virtual roll call beforehand to ensure that the Democratic nominee at that time was supposed to be Joe Biden, would appear on the Ohio ballot. But then Ohio passed a law that temporarily extended this deadline to September 1st. So either way, they were either going to hold an early roll call to

put Biden on. Now they extended it to September 1st. Either way, it would have applied to Biden or Harris. So, I mean, yeah, so it's not, is not a Kamala Harris issue. This is a the date of the Democratic Convention. So but they're using this even though they passed a law to say, oh, well, that can't possibly be the case. But it's it's totally moot. It's totally moot because Harris is going to be in the same position that Biden was in and she will be nominated at the convention. And so I don't think it's going to work. But other so other than Ohio, I think that's really the only one that they're sort of that they're sort of talking about. But again, like you said, they're going to fight it, they're going to go and they're going to fight it, and they're going to bring lawsuits. And what's really weird to me is that you can bring frivolous lawsuits. I mean, again, as a practicing lawyer, and I am one now in private practice,

you are so careful. Every little thing you do is so careful. You don't like there was something I wanted to do recently in a filing because I thought it would be more effective to put certain things in a filing now. And I learned you can't do that. You just can't do that. It's not appropriate at this time. You can do it later on in the case,

but you can't do it at this early stage. And so we don't do it, right? Lawyers are very careful. They don't bring frivolous motions. You don't do things when you're not supposed to. You don't say that the law says something when it says something totally different. Someone like me would be sanctioned and probably

disbarred. But somehow the MAGA people, they get away with it, they do it over and over again, they handpick their judges, and they get them to do crazy things like Eileen Cannon has done in Mar-a-Lago, and they get them to do things that have nothing to do with the practice of law as we know it. But that's what they're going to try to do. They're going to try to somehow contort arguments to make it so that in the swing states and the battleground states that that they're going to argue that Kamala Harris shouldn't be on the ballot, even though nobody's been, nobody had been nominated yet as the Democratic nominee. So that's, that's about, that's, that's as much as I can understand this new MAGA thing as possible. So, because I barely can understand them half the time. Their arguments are so frivolous and ridiculous.

And I don't want to give them more credibility by talking about them as if they're legitimate arguments. What they'll do is they'll lose. They won't get a federal judge to bite at this at all. Even the Supreme Court, which likes to stay out of quote-unquote politics, except when they want to stick their big fat noses in it or put their big fat thumbs on the scale in favor of a candidate that they enjoy like Donald Trump, they'll say, oh, it's a

political question, it has to do with the electorate, we're not going to get involved. They are not going to even get involved with this, I would predict. There's nothing to get involved with. The party has the right to choose who is going to be their candidate. And nobody on the other side can tell us who needs to be our candidate or to force Joe Biden to stay on the ballot or to argue that there's a blank. And I think if that happens, we'll just have X millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of Democrats, independents, and other thinking people

just write in the name Kamala Harris. Or as people are now writing in our chat, yes, we come or can play on Yes, we can by Joe Biden. So I have zero, that's pretty face a fair bet. I have zero worry that any of them, but what will happen is they make this noise now, then they have the excuse when she wins. And then they file the lawsuits on the other end,

arguing, stolen election, fraudulent election. I mean, I got people around me that are like MAGA, who said to me like the elect, I said, I said to somebody recently, you thought before Biden stepped down, you think Trump's gonna beat Biden? What did you think? And just tell me, I just want to know, what did you think in 2020? He's I thought Trump is going to be Biden. I said, right, Now that didn't happen. Now why do you think that didn't happen? And he said, come on, you know. And then he started me down this rabble all of fraud in the election.

And I was like, stop. The Republican head of cybersecurity and infrastructure for the election, who was picked by Trump, said it was the safest and most secure election of all time. And while there may have been fraud, there's always some bit of fraud, 0.001%. It's not outcome determinative. I mean, so, but they're gonna start that now.

And so they're gonna claim stolen election, we'll have another unfortunate Jan six repeat, hopefully this time with a combination of the Secret Service, Metro Police, Capitol Police, and National Guard ready for anything like this again. Because if people think Biden, as gentlemanly statesman-like as he was, winning the election led to Jan 6, what do you think is going to happen when Kamala Harris wins the presidency? And here we go.

And Trump, of course, is backed into a corner of his own making because if he's going to attack her as a woman of color, he should look over at his vice president candidate, JD Vance, who was married to Usha Vance, who's an Indian American woman, who's a person of color, and they practice Hinduism, which I'm not criticizing, I'm just saying it's very hard for him to go after Kamala Harris when his own ticket is diverse. Let's just put it this, at least, at least with a 39 year old, inexperienced, fabulous to wrote one book, if you can call that qualified for the office. So let's transition, go ahead.

No, I was just gonna say, he wrote a book where he made some very strange admissions about a certain relationship with a couch. I was like... Yeah, I didn't read it or watch it. Is it in the movie? Well, it's a little too X-rated for me to be able to say on this channel what J.D. Vance... Our producer is saying that may or may not be true. So I don't want to continue with it. Let's... but he had some... more importantly, he's got some recorded history of saying that Donald Trump is America's Hitler and, and the needle in

the arm of America and narcotic that's not leading it to a bad place. He's terrible for the white working class and he's an idiot and shouldn't be elected president. That was in 20, that, as I said, and I think I did it with Ben when it's easy to tell, when JD Vance isn't wearing the beard, he's telling the truth. And when he wears the beard, he's lying. And that's the easiest way when you look at the clips

to figure out which JD Vance is which. And that alone, just to show you the, again, not to keep coming back to the differences, but we have to. Joe Biden picks Kamala Harris, qualified to be his number two and to step into the role at a moment's notice. Put all the beams aside. I don't care about coconut trees and syntax and something taken out of context.

I really don't care about that. I care about the fiber, the moral fiber and character of the person and she's demonstrated that she deserves the job that she got and earned it. On the other hand, a guy who was in Pennsylvania and almost didn't make it through the campaign chose days, moments later, a 39-year-old person who's been a part-time senator for six months, who's never done a darn thing and admitted that in the foreword of his book, that he hasn't done anything great in his entire life, who just wrote a book and that's who he thinks should step into the role of president of the United States. If that is one of your first major decisions

that you're to be judged on, it's a loser. And he's starting to get, and it's starting to backfire on him because people are waking up to who JD Vance is. Let's, are you- Before you move on, did you see what Midas Touch uncovered about him? Midas Touch is true. I think it was Ron Filippowsky uncovered a clip

of JD Vance talking about how basically criticizing that she's a childless cat lady and saying that because she doesn't have children, she doesn't have an investment in the future etc It's just so beyond about Kamala. Yeah. Yeah Yes about Kamala About Kamala, so he's an he's a was salty is gonna look around for and see if we can find the clip that you're talking about it

the Offensive to say I mean, I just, I can't even, I can't even. What's the phrase? To talk about how offensive it is that the way, because she's a woman, because she doesn't have children, because she has a cat. I mean, I love and I love, I hate to say it, I love the social media. I love the memes that are going around talking about, they basically are like, okay, you want to see a childless cat lady come out, hell hath no fury,

and they put up Taylor Swift, you know, because she's a, you know, but like, it's just crazy. But the fact that they just, they are so anti-women and so offensive to women that I think it's going to bite them, you know, really come back to bite them. Well, he should read his he should read social media when they when when Maga woke up and realized his wife was brown Indian, and they practiced Hinduism. They all they all went after her. They all said, How is this guy going to be good on immigration? And why are they Hindu names? And, you know, Nick Fu saying, what happened to good old American names? How is this? And he put up, this is Nick Fuentes, who is alt-right, proud boy, but a supporter of Donald

Trump. He put up two pictures in his podcast, one of an quote unquote, all American, blonde, blue-eyed family, and said, these are the Democrats. And then put up a picture of JD Vance and his loving children and bride. Salty found the cat video. All right. I wish we had the cat sponsor today. Maybe we do. Let's roll the video....saying is that we're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. And it's just a basic fact.

You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it? Well, I mean, if this, they think, is gonna be the winning strategy to attract women and those that support women over to their party, I think they're in for. Well, I think the easy counterpunch for Kamala is going to be that America is not ready to entrust a 39 year old inexperienced white guy who's flipopped about his own head of his party, calling him America's

Hitler when he was trying to shill a book or trying to sell a book. And now we're supposed to believe that. And of course, he leaves out that, first of all, Pete Buddha just has children. He just happens to be gay. He and his husband have a child. Okay, so that's wrong. Kamala is a stepmother, a loving stepmother, and aunt has talked about her relationship with her children in her life over and over again. I don't know about the cat part. They call her Mamala. Yeah, right. They called herself Mamala and they adopted it. Exactly. Right. So this, if this is how they're going to position the us against them, they're going to lose by more than 7 million votes. Like how can they say she doesn't have children anyway?

Like, you know, Because it's a talking point that goes unchallenged on Fox News. Even so, who cares? Like, it's okay to not have children, like to say that you're somehow less than because a month ago, I was childless. I'm less of a defender of democracy. Exactly. I'm not I'm a cat lady and my name is Karen. So I better be careful. I have to be really careful. You're everybody's favorite. Karen, you're everybody's

favorite. Let's, let's transition to our home state where we practice in New York. Surprise, Donald Trump. We'll probably do it after an ad. Our producers are glaring at me. Sorry, salty. But when we come back from our ad break, we'll talk about Judge Angoran's decision now being appealed.

We'll talk about Letitia James' response as the New York Attorney General and her comments about Kamala Harris to keep our thematic going for our particular show. And then we'll talk about what the heck is going on. First, where is Okeechobee? I happen to know having practiced in Florida, in Okeechobee County, the 19th judicial circuit for Florida. And why did Donald Trump even file that case four years ago there against all the Pulitzer Prize board? And why didn't this judge just finally do what was appropriate and get rid of the case on a motion to dismiss? We'll cover all of that and so much more, but we have another break for our pro-democracy sponsors.

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zbiotics.com slash legal AF and use the code legal AF at checkout for 15% off. Thank you zbiotics for sponsoring this episode and our good times. good times. I'm gonna need a lot of z-biotics on hand when President Kamala Harris is sworn in January the 20th of 2025. God, it sounds so far away. Go ahead, Karen. So far away. Did you see in the New York Times today, Hillary Clinton wrote an op-ed? I saw it on my phone, but I didn't get a chance to download it. It's worth reading. It's worth reading. Yeah. It's really, it's just interesting. It's about basically, uh, obviously she ran against Donald Trump and how'd that work out as a woman and she has a perspective, but it was,

it was, it was great. I loved reading it and I highly recommend it. I think the one that we're all waiting on is when Barack Obama decides that he's going to step forward. You know, he's been, he's, you know, the problem with Barack, and this could change like while we're on the air or like tomorrow morning, but the problem with this vacuum that he creates by not immediately endorsing her is that it lets idle hands make mischief. So you have like the New York Post, you know, like a MAGA right-wing newspaper gets to write, there's a reason he's not doing it. He doesn't support her. I don't think that's it at all. He's made it clear that he doesn't want to put his words, his thumb on the scale. He wanted the process to play out without his influence. But now that it's played out and the delegates are

going to support her, it would be nice to hear from President Barack Obama. And I'm sure we will. He's always liked Kamala Harris. He's always supported her in her career at every turn. And I'm sure we will. That last little button will be sewn on very, very quickly for Kamala Harris. So now we'll move to New York. I'll kind of frame where we were,

and then we'll talk about what's happened. Everybody remembers that there was a multi-week trial with dozens of witnesses about Donald Trump's business operations and how he runs his organization and how, according to the New York Attorney General, on behalf of the people of the state of New York, he committed fraud and persistent fraud as that term is used under a body of law and powers that are given uniquely to the New York Attorney General since the 1950s and 1960s to go after fraud in one of the, if not the, business capital of the world and at least the United States and New York. And the attorney general of New York is always seen as some sort of sheriff of the business community, sheriff of Wall Street or sheriff, you know, because other than Delaware where there's no business really transacted, it's just people being incorporated there with

a court system that developed a body of corporate law. New York is obviously the financial capital of the world. And so it's important that that attorney general, particularly have the power to take fraudulent companies and put them out of their misery and take them away from the public where they can harm the public and where there's a tilted playing field,

try to level that tilted playing field. And that's always been, we've always in New York looked to the attorney general to do that, whoever occupied the office, whatever color and whatever gender. I mean, Elliot Spitzer was the, before he became governor and then had his own issues, was the sheriff of Wall Street. And he went after Wall Street hard in regulation. And he, and if it wasn't Letitia James, it would have been some other person, male and white in that job, going after Trump the exact same way.

And so after the trial, it was a bench trial because that's what's allowed under that particular body of law as the New York legislature and legislators have deemed it. It's not a jury trial setting. You put on your evidence, this case dozens and dozens of witnesses, most of them who worked

for Donald Trump or had worked for Donald Trump or were bankers or insurers for Donald Trump or friends of Donald Trump. And this is all, it has nothing to do with the White House, it has nothing to do with his operations. It has to do when he was either operating the Trump organization or he had given it over to Don Jr. and Eric and for a short time, Ivanka,

and what they did with their insurance practices, their fraudulent financial statements and personal financial statements, and how they defrauded banks and insurance companies, lenders, all that. And that was the case. And the judge, after hearing all the evidence and sifting through a mountain, to paraphrase Judge Angoran, the evidence against Donald Trump could fill this courtroom, you know, it was printed out in written format, in document format, could fill the mountains, mountains of evidence

against him that the judge evaluated as a trier of fact, and then issued, you know, a few months ago, his ruling. Boom, against Donald Trump, $465 million running with interest at a very high interest rate in New York, pre-judgment interest. So it's almost, it's over 500 million at this point that he owes. And he had to post a bond in order to stop the enforcement

of the judgment, meaning the sale of his assets to pay for it. And he posted a smaller bond because he got a little bit of a relief from the appellate, the intermediary appellate court in New York, the first department who said, well, you can post 175 million, that's fine. You know, we'll deal with the legal issues another time,

but you can post 175. But everything else about Judge Angkor on his decision to have a monitor in place in the form of a former federal judge, to have a independent compliance director appointed to install financial controls over this company that had no financial controls and nothing to stop it from committing fraud. That all stayed in place.

Some other elements of his ruling were suspended until there's an appeal and there is an appeal. That appellate issue was gonna time out for after the court gets back into session after the summer break, there's a summer break in August, I think in October. And so there's briefing that's going on related to all that. So Karen, do you have a chance to take a look at the briefing or what he's filed related to it?

All right. So why don't you take it from there and tell the audience what you saw there. And then I can comment on Letitia James and we can move on to Pulitzer. Look they made a couple of arguments, but they boil down to this. I've essentially said that the statute of limitations has run and this was something that was already appealed and this is what got Ivanka off of the case. She was originally a defendant and they argued that Judge Angoran applied the wrong statute of limitations and reversed it, reversed her and got her out of the case and gave the statute

of limitations date. It was 2016 or 2014 depending on if the pause button was pressed with an agreement to toll it. And what there are are are a couple things. First of all, that the person who signed this agreement to toll it was not allowed to sign it. It had to be the individual defendants. Therefore it's not valid. That the judge applied

the wrong legal standard, that there's a legal standard, that the appellate court said they weren't supposed to use this continued crime, this ongoing crime doctrine, which is something that prosecutors use all the time, saying that essentially, the statute of limitations, if it's an ongoing crime, it's still going. So the statute, even though it started before the statute of limitations, the fact that it's still going, it's, it, it, or kept going, that the statute of limitations gets extended until it stops. They're saying that, that he did that, that was inappropriate. That's

one of the arguments they're going to make. They argued that this statute was not applied properly in this case, that it's there were no victims, it's a victimless crime, that there has to be a victim and everybody made money. And so since there's no victim, there's no fraud. What other arguments did they make this? Oh, that the that the that the disgorgement of profits calculation was wrong. And if you take out a couple of the transactions that they claim are beyond the statute,

it wipes out 350 million of the $450 million judgment. I mean, they really are working hard to get some of the fraud out because then the money that has to be returned would also come out of the judgment. So those are the types of arguments that they're making. But you know what's interesting is they don't in any, first of all, some of this was already litigated and so that'll be, it is what it is. But also, they just this whole victimless crime thing is so interesting to me, because, first of all, we're all victims of crime, right of the crime,

if, if, if some people in business are moving forward or getting away with or getting a lower interest rate, because they're lying on paperwork. I mean, the rest of us play by the rules and do everything right and we get screwed, right? We get screwed because we get charged more or whatever it is, whatever the consequences or don't get a loan because he got the loan because he's lying. Like, you know, it's not okay. That's why it's fraud and not theft, right?

Theft is when you steal something from someone. Fraud is when you basically lie, cheat and steal. And fair market society, a lawful society is the victim. So I just don't buy that. But they have to make the arguments that they have to make. And Judge Angoran is definitely a judge who's an excellent judge, but he's got a reputation of somebody who can sometimes push the law

in ways that the appellate division might think pushes it a little too far. So we'll see what they say. I think that there's no way that the whole case is, I mean, the case is, the judgment is going to stand. Will they shave off some of the edges a little bit? Perhaps, you know, that happens sometimes in appeals, but that's essentially what they're arguing. Did I miss anything, Pope? No, I think you got it right. The appellate court has overwhelmingly upheld Judge Angkoran's decision making in this case.

A couple of places, they thought he'd gone too far in the statute of limitations. They dismissed Ivanka from the case because they thought her role would have been outside the statute of limitations. That was more of a Latisha James didn't file. She could have filed a little bit earlier and captured some of those transactions but they kind of fell off the statute of limitations continuum and therefore they were time barred you can't go after them that doesn't mean the conduct can't be included in some of the analysis it just means the

transactions may have fallen outside and so they're gonna have this fight about this scalpel approach where Donald Trump is just trying to slice these giant swatches of the number of the 465 out and try to get it down to some 20, 30, $40 million number. I don't think they're ultimately going to be successful. Some commentators thought that by the court reducing the bond amount to 175 that they had set a ceiling for how much, 175 million, that they were setting a ceiling for how much that they thought they were ultimately going to uphold in an appeal.

I didn't think that at all. I don't think they did that math. That math wasn't presented to them in the briefing. I think they just picked a number that was big, big enough, big enough to choke a horse and just put it out there to get away from all the arguments Donald Trump was raising, which is, I can't get the money, I can't find the money, nobody will lend me the money, it's too big a number, it hurts my head, you know, whatever he said. They were like, all right, 175.

And so it's not nothing. And it doesn't stop anything because they were secure as an appellate court in the knowledge that Donald Trump had the assets. We could see them. We walk around New York, we see the buildings that have his name on it. It's not hard to find. It's not like they were worried he was going to secrete assets or go transfer them. There were enough things in place, restrictions in place that would prevent

him, including a monitor. So knowing there was a monitor keeping an eye on all transfers and his assets are so visible, they were like, you know, let's just call it 175 million for now. So that's what I think. And I think we're gonna see, you know, we'll see the full briefing. Leticia James took one look at what was filed and was like, yeah, no, none that is gonna is gonna fly we'll get our brief in on time And then you know you and I or and or Ben will be reporting on the oral argument. It's not televised It's not audio. Maybe one of us can slip into the room at the first department. Where were you sworn in? Are you a first department person?

Maybe we can slip in and like show our first department card And go to the ceremonial courtroom and watch the action. It's a small room, so we'll see. But we'll get the reporting on it. I don't want to divulge any, I don't want to compromise any of my relationships. And I won't say that he's a fan, but I will tell you that judge Angora knows about my dissection legal I will just leave it at that. So having having said that, what did I say? That's all I said. Let's turn to Hi, judge. No, I'm kidding. See you at lunch next week. It's a joke. It's

a joke. Do you want to play? Do you want to play? Do you want to play poker? I'll play with you. Is this true? Oh, no, no. You're saying. Right, right, right. You're not creating. You know. I'll make the sandwiches. Let's do it. Yeah, I'm not good at that. So let's turn to something that we originally laughed at when we saw the filing three years ago, two and a half years ago, Donald Trump, when he was in that mode where he was filing lawsuits, like he was changing his underwear. No, he's probably filing more lawsuits than he was changing his own underwear. He was filing them all over the place, like Hillary Clinton. I know I had a lead. Is that a great image? No. We have a time for it. We have a time for one of your sponsors.

So disgusting. I should send him some loomie. Some loomie. So all around the same moment in like a cluster set of filings, he did like the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Hillary Clinton down in Florida in the federal, in the southern district of Florida, got to sign Judge Middlebrooks. That went horribly awry for him, sanctioned over a million dollars of the Lena Haba for a fake lawsuit, whereas Judge Middlebrooks put it a political screed masquerading as a lawsuit. So we're like, oh that one's crap. Then it was Michael Cohen lawsuits. Remember those days when Donald Trump would file lawsuits and then dismiss them right away when things, little things like

depositions would come up that he'd have to sit for. So he files against Michael Cohen for tens of millions of dollars. So he has another political screed and another talking point. And so that got dismissed and that was- I have to say, that was my law partner, Dona Perry, who is also a cohost of Miss Trial. She prepared for a couple, for a week to take Donald Trump's deposition.

And he literally chickened out at the last minute. Yeah. It was unbelievable. I would love to see. She is a just brilliant, incisive lawyer. I would love to see her do that. Yeah. I knew the judge well.

I knew Judge Darren Gales well. He used to be on the Miami Circuit Court. Phenomenal guy, phenomenal judge. And he would do what this judge, we're about to talk about, you know, Cachobee County State Court wouldn't do which is he certainly was going to dismiss that case and that case got dismissed then right around the same time as all these cases we were trying to catch our breath of all these filings these ridiculous filings he was making we then he then makes the filing in Okeechobee County of all places to try to get away from Judge Middlebrooks in West Palm Beach in

federal court get away from federal Middlebrooks in West Palm Beach in federal court, get away from federal court completely because he pulled the black gay judge, I'm just talking Donald Trump terminology here, not mine, in Southern District of Florida, the Michael Cohen case. He pulled the Clinton appointee judge in Judge Middlebrooks twice in the Southern District of Florida, including a case. Oh,

he filed a case to get away from the New York Attorney General and have his Florida trust, the Donald J. Trust, Revocable Trust, be under the auspices of a judge. So he filed in Palm Beach County State Court. That got transferred back to Judge Middlebrooks in federal court, and he dismissed the case. And then he filed this little sticky thing against the Pulitzer Prize Board, because they awarded the Pulitzer Prize board because they awarded the Pulitzer Prize for journalism to, I think, the New York Times in the Russia, in basically proving what Robert Mueller, the special counsel, didn't, which was that Donald Trump was in bed with the Russians or that they wanted to get him elected.

Everybody believes that. Everybody knows that. There's indictments going on right now in the country about people working with or for Donald Trump who were Russian nationals and wanted to get Donald Trump elected. That's received with, that's an article of faith. That's received wisdom at this point.

But he went after the Pulitzer Prize board and their members and he sued them off of this agricultural region, a lot of sugar cane in Lake Okeechobee. If you wanna know what Lake Okeechobee, for those that follow from around the country, from a satellite, you see a giant hole in the middle of Florida, that's the lake.

It's part of the ecosystem, it's part of the Everglades, it's very important to the environment and to the agricultural community in Florida. And there's a court system there, which I've never been to, even though I practiced in Florida for 20 years, in the 19th judicial circuit. And Judge Pegg, P-E-G-G, decided to issue an order

about the motion to dismiss, which they made, meaning, let me just explain that, we got a pleading, which is the complaint. The complaint is either answered or you file a motion to dismiss arguing that as alleged, even if you assume all facts are true, because that's the benefit that the non-moving party gets on a motion practice like that,

even assuming everything in there is true, it doesn't state a claim for defamation for the following X reasons and should be dismissed now as a matter of law. So that was the argument by the Pulitzer Prize or at least one member of it, the board, and they all joined in on it. And we have our ruling.

And what'd you make of that ruling? Speaking of nonsensical rulings, what'd you make of Judge Pegg's ruling? That was weird. That was really weird. That was a, I mean, first of all, it survived the motion to dismiss, which means the case gets to proceed. And I thought it was a strange ruling. First of all, Trump finally won something in court, right? You know, it's not like he didn't win the ultimate case, but he finally got something, a judge to rule in his favor. ultimate case, but he finally got something, a judge to rule in his favor. Um, but I thought it was very, very strange how the judge essentially said

that the Pulitzer committee or the Pulitzer, uh, prize board, um, the statement that they wrote was not pure opinion and that it had facts, it relied on secret facts that wasn't in there that the reader wouldn't know about. And therefore as a result, it could be defamation per se. I thought it was strange, because then the judge goes on to say there were seven things that the reader would be curious about.

It just felt like the judge was on to say there were seven things that the reader would be curious about. It just felt like the judge was adding stuff in there and adding facts and information in there. I thought it was sort of a strange ruling, but you could tell that the judge basically what the judge was, this is the kind of thing where the judge was taking what he thinks something should be and contorting the law to meet what he wanted it to meet. And what I gleaned from that was the judge was basically saying that the Mueller report proved that there's no Russia collusion. And therefore, the New York Times and the Washington Post articles saying there was had to be false. So whatever your independent Pulitzer board people, whatever your

independent investigation was, doesn't cut the mustard and therefore, I mean, you know, it was like this weird, weird decision. And so it proceeds, it lives to see another day, it gets to proceed to the next stage. But it literally said the statement left off seven factors that make people wonder whether you know It's a mixed question and therefore survives the motion to dismiss and can't proceed. That's the the legal language that they used But it took a lot of effort to get there. I thought that was my mind He I agree as we like to say around here. He cracked a lot of eggs to make that omelet and And I don't mean, listen, you know, Florida is a weird place. The appellate court there. Don't say gay. No, you're right. Well, that's for many reasons. I was there when like normal Republicans and or

Democrats ran the state primarily. I left seven years ago, eight years ago. I mean, I still have, I still practice there but I left living there that long ago. But that region of the state is very conservative. The district court there, the court of appeals there, I think it's the, I wanna say the fifth and then it would go up to the Florida Supreme Court which is dominated by right-wing MAGA

appointed, DeSantis appointed people on the, I know some of them, they practiced law with in my area or they came out of Miami court system. But I don't know, we're going to have to watch this one. I think it's a loser of a suit. I don't think the Mueller report proved that at all. The journalists who were rewarded with the award, I assume, practiced independent journalistic and had independent journalistic integrity in reaching their conclusion, even if Mueller even if Mueller, you know, wimped out at the end and left it to his, his, the actual attorney general, which was Barr, to make the final, you know, decisions. He

should have just done what Robert Herr did in his special counsel report, you know, his special report, or what we've seen now in Jack Smith, We didn't talk about it all tonight because not much talk about it until we, I think by the way, just as a, as a heads up for next week or the week after, we're getting close to when Judge Chuckin is going to call the parties back into her courtroom and talk about the DC election interference case and how she plans to progress that case. And it's four counts or that she's gonna evaluate. And this is now having, they haven't filed it yet,

but she's gonna have to consider the motion to dismiss the indictment because special counsel Jack Smith is illegitimate and unconstitutional and whatever else the Trump group's gonna argue out of Judge Cannon's ruling. That's gonna be things for us to talk about over the summer. The other thing I want to talk about over the summer when we have moments is how the Supreme Court is gearing up for the October term and the things they've already decided

to take in terms of next year and their briefing because there's some doozies in there and I want people to start thinking about and be prepared for it. On this momentous show though, Karen, where our lead in the opening act was a heroic act, a patriotic act of President Joe Biden, who I'm sure when they write the history books will go down easily as one of our best presidents ever of all time. He'll be in that top quarter of that ranking, I am sure about that, as a contrast to the guy that's running on the other side, who will be in the bottom. I think there's two, historians have already put him at the bottom. There's only one or two that are worse than him. I think Herbert Hoover is one of them. But that is that we will see that and we will see adulation and support for him.

And we're so proud to be on this network where we have that as a live feed. And then you and I could react to it and particularly react to the Democratic Party, our audience progressives, rallying around as there as we rightly should Kamala Harris who earned the job and if things go the way we think they're gonna go and with our support and those of our audience who have to now vote this thing through early voting, absentee voting, mail-in voting, and voting voting on May, where am I, November the 5th, we will have a historical moment that rivals the one of Barack Obama breaking the glass ceiling of old white guys becoming president.

We'll have our first woman president. And why don't you close us, close out our show tonight with it. Again, again, how do you support the show? You're doing it. You're here in large numbers Wednesdays Saturdays we do this show we do hot takes along the way. We've got other podcasts and contributions That karen's on for instance in mistrial Uh, which I think is going up the next day or so, right karen. Yeah thursdays. All right Oh, is it is it now locked in on thursdays? Okay on thursday? Yeah, we're we're

All right, you like to keep people guessing. I understand. Then we have that. And then we've got our Patreon, legal AF, patreon.com slash legal AF, where Ben and I are doing teachable moments and Professor Ben's and Popak talks, sort of Ted talks meet a law school class and had a baby. And that's legal AF AF on our official Patreon. We've got a place where you can buy shirts. We're still selling shirts on our store, and there's rstore.mitustouch.com. And then just free subscribe and leave comments

and review us on, we haven't gotten as many reviews lately. We've got 5,000 reviews for Legal.io since it was founded, but lately it's kind of slowing down. So it is important. Go over, review us, give us five star, leave a comment and all of that. It helps in every way possible for an independent network without outside investors, which we are.

Karen, leave us with or take us out with, you know, your view about Kamala Harris against Donald Trump, democracy against fascism, black, I'm talking about Trump now, dark versus light, not the other way around with Kamala Harris. Talk to us about that. You know, look, as a woman, as a strong woman who was a prosecutor for her whole career, as the mother of three daughters, now you're the father of a daughter, a little girl, I hope she's doing really, really well. It's great. And it'll be amazing if she wins. And for our children and

that generation to finally see somebody who looks like them, who can have the top job, who earned it and is going to be amazing at it. And frankly, she looks like this country, right? She looks like everybody else in this country. She doesn't, she, to this, this, this kind of, I don't want to to say I don't want to offend white men because you know obviously I love all people but you know it's time for somebody else right it's it's time for a woman the fact that in the history of our country we've never had a woman leader it's just it's kind of appalling but putting aside the woman card putting aside um, um, she's a person of color. No, she is by far the most qualified, right? Look at, just look at them side by side. Look at Donald Trump.

Look at his, his convention. He had Hulk Hogan and Dana White from the world wrestling, whatever. I was like, what is going on here? And people think he's so tough. Why he's tough because he somehow got away with, he didn't get put in jail all the times he should have been put in jail. He's been convicted, but he's still out.

He got a case dismissed and he got shot, you know, where he barely got a little boo-boo on his ear. I mean, come on, he's so tough. You know, you look at what tough is, and frankly, tough is what Joe Biden is. Tough is the fact that he lost his wife, he lost his child, he lost his adult child. He was president of the United States

while his son was being prosecuted by his justice department. He then stepped down. He then stepped down for what was good for this country because he saw Kamala Harris to be what's good for this country. That is strength. That is courage. And I am honored and proud to be an American and to support the Democratic Party. And Kamala Harris is just by far the most qualified person

to step into the role at this time or anytime. I'm just really excited. Like I said, I've met her once and she blew me away. So I cannot wait to watch what she does for this country. It's time. It's time. It is time. Legal AF midweek and on Saturdays. And I appreciate the audience being with us.

Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers. Thanks, Carrie.