Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump’s LAST DAY for Bond, Manhattan DA is READY

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Defense attorney Michael Popok & former prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo are back with a new episode of the midweek edition of the Legal AF pod. On this episode, they debate: whether the Supreme Cou...rt played politics in ruling for Trump in the insurrectionist ballot case and what it means for their next big decision on whether Trump has immunity; whether the Manhattan DA will call the convicted perjurer Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s former chief financial officer and henchman, at the Stormy Daniels hush money business record fraud case; how Trump will be able to raise the $600 million necessary to stop the enforcement of 2 civil judgments against him; whether 1400 text messages just disclosed in a civil suit will prove to be Trump election lawyer Ken Chesebro’s and Trump’s undoing, and so much more at the intersection of law, politics and justice. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! AG1: Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase exclusively at https://drinkAG1.com/LEGALAF Nom Nom: Go Right Now for 50% off your no-risk two week trial at https://TryNom.com/LEGALAF Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Rhone: Head to https://Rhone.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF to save 20% off your entire order! SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop NEW LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, I'm Tom Power. I'm the host of the CBC podcast Q with Tom Power. I get to talk to artists from all over the world, writers, musicians, actors, directors, all kinds of creative people. And we try to have the conversations you have with really, really good friends. The conversations you have when you share a love of something,
Starting point is 00:00:18 about ideas, when you wanna hear about everything. I feel really lucky to have these conversations. Q with Tom Power, available now on Spotify. when you want to hear about everything. I feel really lucky to have these conversations. Q with Tom Power, available now on Spotify. Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal AF, your two co-anchors, Michael Popak, Karen Freeman, and Nifolo. Here's the stories we just have to talk about this midweek.
Starting point is 00:00:44 The Supreme Court in the Anderson decision by, well, let's call it a 9-0 vote with an asterisk, decided that Congress has to create a new set of laws and procedures, maybe a tribunal, in order to figure out who's an insurrectionist or not, and to whether they can be on the ballot and state states can't do that Were they right or were they sticking their big fat thumbs on the scale of justice in favor of Donald Trump did Amy Coney Barrett in her two paragraph concurrence say the quiet part out loud that they were meddling in political affairs exactly what they claim democratic judges do and activist judges do. Were they activist judges in favor of Donald Trump?
Starting point is 00:01:33 We'll break it all down. Then we gotta go. I mean, my co-anchor Karen Freeman, Ignifolo, former number two with the Manhattan DA's office, we gotta talk about the Manhattan District Attorney's Office getting ready, gearing up for a March 25th trial. There's one person on this network, and she's my co-anchor, who told you that the only trial that was likely to happen before election day is likely this one, not the trial you may have wanted, the trial you're going to get
Starting point is 00:02:03 against Donald Trump for business record fraud related to Stormy Daniels' hush money affair. Will Michael Cohen, also a member of the Biden's Touch Network, will he take the stand in favor of the Manhattan District Attorney and against his old nemesis, Donald Trump? What about Allen Weisselberg,
Starting point is 00:02:22 just pleading guilty to two felony counts of perjury? He's a key witness. What happens to him? I want to hear it from Karen, our favorite former prosecutor about how this battle of Cohen versus Weisselberg, how a prosecutor uses the fact that one of their lead witnesses is staring down the barrel of being sentenced for another, I don't know, six or eight months in jail on key issues. We'll break it all down with the Manhattan DA. Then, Judgment Day, Donald Trump got to dig deep into his pockets or those of his contributors to come up with $83.5 million running with interest to pay off Eugene Carroll's judgment, post a bond, get a stay of the enforcement of that judgment,
Starting point is 00:03:12 and the $460 million plus, oh, running with interest, $464,940,000 running in favor of the people of the state of New York through the New York Attorney General's civil fraud case. Why is this judgment day? Because on Thursday tomorrow, he's got to come up with the bond or the cash for E. Jean Carroll, or she's going to start executing on her judgment. He can take the appeal, but he can't get the stay of the enforcement of the judgment and the clawing back of his assets without posting the bond. We know he's got a hundred million because he just told the New York Attorney General emergency appellate judge that he wants to post a hundred million dollars over there. Well, he better post a hundred million dollars because
Starting point is 00:03:55 that's about what it's going to be through a bonding company over here with E. Jean Carroll, or she's going to own his penthouse, or I don't know, Mar-a-Lago or something that gets her here, 83 and a half million dollars. We'll break down what it means. Why is it taking Donald Trump so long? What is he waiting for? Can he even get a bond? If he doesn't get the bond, where is he going to scrape up the $600 million or more that he needs to stop the enforcement of these judgments. And then we'll talk about Ken Chesbro. A civil lawsuit has revealed 1,400 text messages and emails between him and a guy named Jim Trupas, a Wisconsin lawyer who worked with Chesbro on the fake
Starting point is 00:04:40 electors scheme at the behest of Donald Trump. You may remember Ken Chesbrough as a convicted felon having already pled guilty in Georgia to election interference and then was given permission by Judge McAfee in Georgia to go on the road and cooperate with the Attorney Generals of Michigan, Arizona and Nevada. Now it looks like he lied and may have committed perjury in the information he gave them. Yes, he did it under a proffer agreement and an immunity agreement, but if you lie, the immunity deal is off. We'll talk to our former federal prosecutor about that. What am I talking about? He told the prosecutors and the attorney generals that his recommendation and advice as a lawyer was the only way you could use the fake Electors the only way you should use them and those certificates those alternate slate of electors is if there's success in the lawsuits filed by
Starting point is 00:05:34 Donald Trump in the 60 or so cases that were filed and only if a judge in the battleground states The election results then you use the the the the alternate slate of electors with Mike Pence. That's a lie. How do I know it's a lie? Because in his own emails between him and Jim Trupas, at or about the same time. And in social media posts that he made using a a burner account labeled it'll come to me, don't worry. Badger, badger pundit. There it is. Badger pundit, his burner account.
Starting point is 00:06:09 He posted his true feelings, which were, you don't need the lawsuits, just use these fake electors. Throw them in, throw a monkey wrench into the process, and maybe it'll get turned over to the House of Representatives to pick Donald Trump as president. You can't talk out of both sides of your mouth,
Starting point is 00:06:26 the prosecutors, there's a word for that. It's called lying under oath and perjury. And you can go to jail for it, we'll break it all down. Where else at that podcast, hopefully you've come to love, called Legal AF, only on the Mightest Touch Network. There she is, Karen first.
Starting point is 00:06:43 Are you feeling better? Cause last week you were under the weather. Last week I was under the weather. I spent the whole week being very under the weather and I'm starting to come out the other end of it. So I feel much better. So even if I sound not a hundred percent. Hey, hey, Popak, do you have a burner social media account?
Starting point is 00:07:00 Like it's so funny because so many people, so many people. No, but I just, you know, it's funny. My kids had always had a finsta, you know, like a fake Instagram. They'd called it a finsta It's like whatever but it's just interesting You know, it's amazing to see a Harvard educated lawyer who is advising the former president of the United States that he too Has his finsta or whatever it is where his truth you ladies come out It's just when you sometimes when we talk about these things. It's just shocking to me at its dates that he too has his finsta or whatever it is where his true feelings come out. It's just when you sometimes when we talk about these things, it's just shocking to me.
Starting point is 00:07:29 Well, wait till we put up in our production here the picture of just to remind everybody Ken Chesbro who's a self-proclaimed election law expert, half-baked constitutional scholar walking around during the insurrection. Ken Six wearing his MAGA at as a guest of Alex Jones You can't make this stuff. I really can't if you made it up. Nobody would nobody would make this movie or watch it So let's let's dive into our first our first story first story today which is the
Starting point is 00:08:02 People know what happened, but we like to talk about what happens next and follow these events on legal AF at that intersection of law, politics, and justice that we like to talk about. So we got a Supreme Court decision. We thought it was nine zero, but now having seen the metadata, which I'll let Karen talk about, I'm not so sure. But at any event, at least nine justices thought that a state cannot ban a federal officer or federal candidate from the ballot in their state under their interpretation of Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, which has always been interpreted as an enabling statute, which allows Congress to pass laws to effectuate the intent of a constitutional amendment or a piece of legislation. For instance, I get that the 14th Amendment, in attempting to protect new newly installed rights of newly freed slaves
Starting point is 00:09:07 now black Americans to give them back the civil rights that of course they lacked, give them back and give them voting rights that they lacked to give them equal justice and equal process under the law and due process under the law passed a series of actual laws that ended up on the code books. I get that But that's not what section three of the 14th amendment says So the Supreme Court started off on the wrong foot on purpose because they wanted to put their big fat noses into politics as Amy Coney Barrett and I'll do it after you're done with your analysis Amy Coney Barrett, and I'll do it after you're done with your analysis. Amy Coney Barrett said in her concurrence, which is exactly what they were doing. And they said, oh, well, there, right, it's right there the whole time.
Starting point is 00:09:55 Section five, everything goes through section five in the 14th Amendment, even section three. No, it doesn't, it couldn't possibly. So their ruling is that Congress only, only Congress can set up a procedure, a new set of laws in the code of federal regulation to remove a federal candidate who's an insurrectionist and engage in insurrection against the Constitution, even though it doesn't say that at all. And section three, by its very terms, does not require any enabling laws to go along with it. It stands alone the way that it is written. And to undermine their own analysis,
Starting point is 00:10:34 talk about internal inconsistencies, they say in this exact same paragraph and in this exact same breath of their analysis in the Anderson case, they say, we're okay with the states under the 14th Amendment Section 3 taking state candidates who are insurrectionists off the ballot, but not federal. So what happened to Section 5?
Starting point is 00:10:57 I thought Section 5, Congress has to pass enabling laws, but they don't, if it's a state, even though it doesn't say that, I mean, this was so upside down, reverse engineered to land right where the MAGA majority wanted it to land, which is that there's got to be one more step, and we will kick the can down the road and see what happens until after the election and who actually controls Congress to pass any of those laws because we know what happens if the Republicans get the house. We'll never see these laws ever passed ever again. And God help us for the next Jan 6th. So I want to talk through with you your takeaway from the Anderson decision.
Starting point is 00:11:42 What do you think the next steps are? And what did you make of Amy Coney Barrett's like commercial interruption for the United States Supreme Court? This, you know, this, this is brought to you by the Supreme court. We lower the temperature in America. We don't raise it. Really? Tell that to the Dobbs majority. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:12:03 Where was she on Dobbs when she said the purpose of the Supreme Court in this trying times is to turn down their heat and turn down the rhetoric? Well, where were you when a woman's right to choose was being ripped away? Yeah, exactly. It's crazy. I mean, look, this decision was, I definitely was in the minority of the Midas touch people because I said there's no way that that decision is going to stand. And this will 100% be overturned, the Colorado decision. And look, Judge Ludwig, who's one of the smartest people, one of the smartest lawyers,
Starting point is 00:12:37 is certainly much smarter than I am on these issues and much more of a legal scholar. I never pretended to say, oh no, my analysis is better than his or the other extremely brilliant lawyers who opined on this issue. But from a just practical standpoint, there's no way this Supreme Court could let that stand. And so it never surprised me that this would be the case because it
Starting point is 00:13:05 can't be the case. Otherwise, there would be chaos in the country. You have to have some uniform standards. And the thing is, unlike age, or you can't serve more than two terms, whether or not you engaged in an insurrection is a little murkier it's not black and white like whether or not you're thirty five years old or whether or not you were born in this country and is a natural born citizen etc. And so as a result and language in the constitution that exists only in this area but not in other areas. this area, but not in other areas, like the things like age, qualifications, etc. that is self-executing. There is murky ambiguous language in the Constitution. It just doesn't surprise me that they all, not just the MAGA ones, but 9-0, they all decided that this has to be legislated by Congress. So I do think sometimes the court has to be the grown-up in the room and bring calm into the United States. They didn't do it for dobs for sure, but here they did.
Starting point is 00:14:13 And although we don't like the answer or like the results, sometimes I think it is good to have a body that just tries to not, tries to bring peace to the country and certainty. And this in some ways brings certainty at least with respect to this one particular issue. However, there were lots of things that they went too far. They could have just narrowly voted on this one issue, but of course they went too far in my opinion. That's where Amy Coney Barrett came in and said, look, why do you have to go so far? Let's just decide this one question.
Starting point is 00:14:54 There's no reason necessarily to go so far. That's the same thing that the concurrences, the three liberal justices also said it was interesting. It was sort of girls versus boys. The three women all carved out and went off to the side, even Amy Coney Barrett with the three typically or traditionally liberal justices. And they all did this concurring opinion. But what I thought was so interesting was that the Supreme Court did a little bit of a rookie move. It's the difference between, when you send something to someone, you have to PDF it, when you email it.
Starting point is 00:15:30 Because if you don't PDF it, you just send it as a document. The people on the other end could do the reveal codes, and they can tell where were the edits, where were the changes because it's called metadata in a document. You have to be careful with that, especially as a lawyer.
Starting point is 00:15:46 And every one of us has gotten burned by it. I don't know about you, Popak, but I've gotten burned by the metadata thing before when I was at the DA's office in the beginning when these things, I don't want to say when computers were new, but when this sort of thing was new, we all know now. But years ago, we didn't necessarily know about metadata. And of course,
Starting point is 00:16:05 prior drafts of a speech that SyVance was going to give might have come out, or prior versions of a press release, or prior versions of things that you don't necessarily want out there. Right? So, so, but here we are in 2024. And this is the Supreme Court of the United States. I was a little surprised that this could still happen. And they forgot to PDF the concurrence. And what it showed was that the three liberal justices, when they looked at the metadata, when they did the reveal codes, it was originally fashioned as a dissent.
Starting point is 00:16:39 It was not a concurrence. And so apparently, that's probably what took the Chief Justice so long to come up to this decision was negotiating that this would be a concurrence. Keep the language the same, keep your issues the same. Let's change it to a concurrence. Yeah, there it is right there. It's a dissent.
Starting point is 00:16:59 Keep it, make it a concurrence so that they could say it's a 90, it's a 90 decision with a concurrence. Because if it would have been a dissent, the three people, it would have been six to three. And then it would have looked political because it would be the conservatives, the liberals. This way, because if you say it's 90, it takes it out of the realm of politics and makes it much more legal. And so that was important, I think, for the Chief Justice to bring legitimacy back to the court. They've lost a lot of legitimacy, especially with the Dodd's decision and other decisions like it. And I also think they know they are about to rule, well, about to,
Starting point is 00:17:39 in April, oral arguments will happen on the Presidential Immunity case, right, in the January 6 federal case in Presidential Immunity. They have that, and they have a few other cases that I think are also ones that they're going to want it to look legal, not political, right? There's also a case, I think it's Fisher. There's a Fisher versus the United States, which was Joseph Fisher is one of the participants of the violence in the January 6 case. He was charged with corruptly obstructing and official proceeding in violation of Section 1512 C2. Why am I bringing that case up? Because two of the four charges against Donald Trump are that same obstruction of an official proceeding statute, and they're going to have to decide whether that statute was properly
Starting point is 00:18:33 applied to January 6. Now obviously, the whole world isn't really focusing on Mr. Fisher, but they're focusing on whether that will stand in the Washington DC case. Will it apply? Will those charges stick if it does go to trial before the election? And so they have a lot more cases to decide, and I think it was important, because whatever they do, they're going to want it to be legitimate. And it's fairly clear that if they follow the law, that they will find that Donald
Starting point is 00:19:06 Trump is not immune. And so therefore, because the law, if you read the law is not that, right? We saw the DC circuit oral arguments when the SEAL Team 6, the infamous or famous SEAL Team 6 SEAL Team 6 hypothetical that Judge Pan gave, you know, that shows the absurdity of giving full immunity even for things that are in, within the outside perimeter or the job description of the president. He can't have full immunity from criminal prosecution. So there are several decisions that the Supreme Court will be coming up with soon.
Starting point is 00:19:49 I think that show why they have to instill legitimacy in these decisions. Yeah, I'm not as optimistic as you are. I don't think this was an attempt to stay and not play politics. I think it was actually the opposite. I want to see how Amy Coney Barrett and the rest apply this new principle, apparently. The new principle is the court in certain circumstances should turn the national temperature down, not up. I want to see how they apply that. I would think that the immunity decision would be an easy one for them to make to uphold the
Starting point is 00:20:26 District Court of Appeals decision that there is no absolute immunity for criminal conduct that's done by a president outside his official duties or others. And I am heartened by the narrow grounds that the appeal is going to rise and fall on because they did reject almost all of Donald Trump's grounds to overturn the D.C. Court of Appeals decision that he didn't have immunity. They've completely overturned and they've rejected the argument of due process and First Amendment and you've got to be impeached and convicted for all that's gone. In fact, the only narrow issue is the one that they framed. Can a former president of the United States use immunity against official acts? And I think that's very telling. I did a hot take on it. I think that's
Starting point is 00:21:18 not a life preserver for Donald Trump. That's an anvil that's being thrown his way because all they have to do is rule that either, I think they liked the and found pretty much airtight the analysis by the district court of appeal. However, they don't want to keep touching the third rail of presidential immunity decisions and they only want to do it once. So they're only going to do it once, then they want to just get a couple of other things right that weren't exactly addressed in that in that 60 or 70 page order. And I think the two loose ends that they want to tie up is whether it matters whether the person's a former president or not, when he attempts to apply the immunity, they want to get that settled once and for all. And because they want to make this like one fell swoop of a decision. And they want to settle the issue of official conduct versus things that are
Starting point is 00:22:13 outside the outer boundaries of official conduct, which is something we constantly talk about on the civil side about what is inside and outside the outer boundaries of the official duties of the president. I think that's what they're going to try to do. And if that is all they're doing, and that's all they say they want briefing on, then that does not bode well for Donald Trump in that decision. We'll know more on April 25, because we just got it set today. The oral argument is going to be, we thought it was going to be in the 22nd.
Starting point is 00:22:41 It's going to be in the 25th, the last oral argument that they're going to hear, I don't know, not for the term, but for that, for that session, is going to be that one. And we'll see what lawyers stand up to the plate. Is it going to be the same lawyer, John Sauer, you know, and John Loro, or is it they're going to bring in a new team, because that team didn't do great in front of the DC Court of Appeals. I think they're going to, sort of, they're going to ride the horse, you know think they're going to ride the horse, they're going to ride the horse they brought to the race and they're going to use Sauer again. On the metadata, it was not exactly. Sotomayor's originally was going to be a dissent in part and a concurrence in part. They were able, Roberts obviously, was able to work it and make it be a concurrence
Starting point is 00:23:27 in the judgment so that it got to, they could make the announcement of 9-0 and let Amy Coney Barrett to her, her proclaiming, you see it there, her proclaiming that we're just doing what's right for the country, we're not playing politics. They're supposed to stay out of political questions. They're not supposed to actually say out loud that they're going to settle a politically charged issue. I almost had to rub my eyes when I read that. The United States Supreme Court and the conservatives on the court constantly using the political question doctrine to not make decisions and not stick their face and their nose and their thumbs onto the scale of justice.
Starting point is 00:24:12 Now they're saying, we got to do exactly that. We got to solve a politically charged issue because there's the presidential elections coming up. Really? So, so I, I, and as to the minority majority on the, um, I'd be remiss if I didn't remind us that Ben Miesala said 9-0 and he was right. I said 7-2. I was more hopeful until the oral argument.
Starting point is 00:24:34 Once the oral argument happened, despite my interviewing, speaking of Judge Ludic, I'm doing a follow-up interview with Judge Ludwig for Legal AF this week. And we're gonna talk about what happened, what backfired with the analysis on the Anderson case and what he expects to happen with the immunity decision. And then we can talk, I'm gonna try to bring him into what's going on, have him comment on Judge Kennan
Starting point is 00:25:00 and what she's doing down at Mar-a-Lago with some new reporting today. We won't do it as a segment, but some new reporting today that she thinks it'll be very helpful to read some briefs by Stephen Miller, who used to work for the president and has some phony law society thing that he set up. And she thinks it's very interesting to find out
Starting point is 00:25:18 if Jack Smith was actually properly appointed and his budget was properly approved or not, and thinks it's very interesting to find out from these right-wing MAGA briefs, whether the National Archive and the role and whether they've overstepped. I mean, it's just fascinating to watch somebody that is, I used to just say, you know what she's inexperienced, and I can't say that anymore. What is going
Starting point is 00:25:45 on with Cannon? Let her make her, let her make her decision and let the 11th circuit, who was I'm sure chomping at the bit to rule here against her, Jack's got to like find the moment. I'm surprised it hasn't happened. He's just waiting, I'm sure, for the decision on the witnesses and her order on the motion to reconsider. And I think we're gonna see Lickety split an appeal to the 11th Circuit and a request to have her removed. He's just, he's like waiting for the order to come out.
Starting point is 00:26:17 The order hasn't yet come out at the hearing having been last Friday on that. From what you're saying right now, this issue about Judge Cannon and hearing these amicus briefs that are just kind of outrageous, right? Saying this is gonna be helpful, these right wing amicus briefs. Lisa Rubin, who is just really somebody to follow on Twitter, it's Law of Ruby, She's super smart. She just tweeted out
Starting point is 00:26:46 today that in the Mar-a-Lago Records case, two lawyers from the special counsel's team just entered notices of appearance. One argued the gag order at the DC circuit. The other argued the immunity appeal at that court to folks watching for when and if the special counsel's office will appeal a canon order, this could be a sign that they're gearing up for one. So I just thought that was interesting that today, that's given this what you just talked about that that's triggered this. Yeah, I agree with you. As you've noted in the past with the Manhattan DA's office, where we're gonna go next in a moment,
Starting point is 00:27:26 we can read a lot into how the prosecutors strengthened their bench and the talent that they assign at any given moment and what it means for the future. We're gonna break it all down. We're gonna talk about the Manhattan DA's office and its March 25th trial and the motions that have been filed against Michael Cohen,
Starting point is 00:27:44 taken the stand by Donald Trump's side. What does it mean that Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer, the moneyman through which all of the decisions about money and business records for Donald Trump flowed has now admitted to perjury and is now a convicted felon again, and is looking at another six months in or more in jail. And then we're gonna talk about a judgment day. What's Donald Trump gonna do?
Starting point is 00:28:14 Is he gonna come up with the money? He's gotta come up with $100 million by tomorrow. Where is he gonna get it from? How is he gonna post? If he posts that, where is he gonna get the money for the other judgment that's 20 days later for the New York Attorney General? And then we're gonna talk about how big of a mess Ken Chesborough has made by getting permission
Starting point is 00:28:32 to go on a whistle-stop tour of attorney generals and then apparently lying to them about the fake elector scheme. And what does it mean ultimately for Donald Trump? We'll do all of that. But first, a word from our sponsors. Taking care of your health isn't always easy, but it should at least be simple.
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Starting point is 00:32:53 Why don't you pick it up, Karen, since it's your stomping grounds and talk about the Allen Weisselberg perjury, what it means for the case, how you would play your hand of having him now testify in front of the jury. What do you do? Do you tell the jury up front about the fact that he already perjured himself? How do you make sure he plays nicely in the sandbox, having now been prosecuted and convicted by the same office? And then what to do about Michael Cohen and how does this impact, do you think, the Michael
Starting point is 00:33:22 Cohen credibility issue because of his prior perjury and criminal convictions, as the Manhattan DA's office, your old office, gets ready to put on the trial of the century against the former president? So I want to start with a question for you, Popak. Okay. Do you think the Manhattan DA's office needs Allen Weisselberg for this trial? And do you think they need to call him? Okay. So let's, let's, I'll do it this way. This has very, this trial has, this case has very few moving parts about business record fraud after Michael Cohen, on behalf of Donald Trump,
Starting point is 00:33:56 made a series of payments to Stormy Daniels in order for her to, as hushush money to cover up a sex act that she and Donald Trump had together while he was running for office against Hillary Clinton So that this wouldn't come to light while he was running just like his Holly access Hollywood tape about bragging about sexually assaulting women wouldn't come to light same thing and then the payment gets made through Allen Weisselberg, but Michael Cohen could testify to that. The business records get altered, meaning this is the fraud. The fraud is, instead of writing down pay off to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet, which would have been accurate,
Starting point is 00:34:36 it said instead, payment for legal services to Michael Cohen and a bonus to Michael Cohen. That was the lie. That's the business record fraud combined with the election interference crime that bootstraps it up to a felony in New York. So Michael could certainly, although Michael has his own baggage, Michael could testify about all of the things
Starting point is 00:34:58 that I just said, but doesn't have, and there's other people you and I haven't even talked about yet, which are those lower level vice presidents that Donald Trump can't remember the name of, that work in his organization, that were his undoing in the New York Attorney General case, who came in and said, yeah, I work with Al Weiss in and replace Jeff McConnie, he's still probably around and Allen Weisselberg, he could. And if you never mentioned, although Allen Weisselberg's name gets mentioned a lot. All right, so I guess I'm coming around to, if you could get a Allen Weisselberg
Starting point is 00:35:42 who's going to tell the truth under penalty that he's already looking. He's already going away to jail. The jury finds out about that. I think it could be compelling. I think it makes a stronger case. That's what I think. But could you answer your question? Could you do it without him?
Starting point is 00:35:58 He disappeared tomorrow. He stepped off a curb and a bus said, I'm sure you could still try the case and win, I think, for the Manhattan DA's office. So what do you think? So I think the conversations, with all complete candor, I have no inside information, even though I obviously have friends who work at the Manhattan DA's office still. I have zero inside information. So just as an outsider looking in, if I were the prosecutor on this case, knowing what I know about the office and etc., I would be having a conversation among my team about whether or not we need
Starting point is 00:36:30 Allen Weisselberg. The reason is as follows. Allen Weisselberg this week was charged with five counts of perjury, felony perjury, for lies that he made under oath. And that's a very important distinction. He made lies under oath about material facts, whether it was during deposition or at trial in the New York Attorney General's civil fraud trial that just recently happened in front of Judge Angoran.
Starting point is 00:37:01 And the reason I would be asking myself, do I need him as a witness is because Allen Weisselberg is currently in the posture and has been for quite some time as a cooperator for the Manhattan DA's office, right? He was originally charged with a 17-count indictment of tax fraud along with the 17 count indictment of tax fraud, along with the Trump organization, back in November of 2022, I believe.
Starting point is 00:37:32 And at the last minute, he pled guilty and became a cooperator and agreed to testify. Now, he never threw Donald Trump under the bus, but he did testify to certain facts. So that makes him of limited value, by the way, because he's telling the truth about some things, but not about everything. So if he were telling the truth about everything, then he would also give up Donald Trump. Why do we know that that's the truth? Because if it wasn't the truth, there wouldn't be any charges being brought against Donald Trump. So if his facts, he has two choices. He either
Starting point is 00:38:06 has to completely tell the truth about Donald Trump, which would mean giving up Donald Trump, right? And testifying against his former boss and whatever else he is to him. They're clearly very close. Or he's going to lie. And if he, cause if he says anything different other than what the facts are alleged in this, that has to be a lie because that's at least a lie. It goes against the theory of the Manhattan DA's office case. So I don't think they would put him on note. They're definitely not gonna put him on if he's gonna lie. That, you know, here, this is a case against Donald Trump.
Starting point is 00:38:42 So either he's going to testify against Donald Trump or they're not gonna put him on their direct case. The fact that he has a perjury conviction. Now, how does that one might say, well, how's that any different than Michael Cohen? Don't forget, Michael Cohen is testifying and he too has a conviction for lying to Congress. I don't think it was actually perjury per se. That's just a particular charge, but I do think he's been found guilty of lying to Congress. So the question is, why is that any
Starting point is 00:39:13 different? Why isn't he just the same as Michael Cohen? And I think it's different for a few reasons. Number one, Michael Cohen, when he lied, he was still under the spell of Donald Trump, right? He was still very much one of Donald Trump's henchmen. And that was part of the crime he was committing on his behalf. He has since completely renounced that and has spent the last portion of his life trying to make amends for that. And he has totally been consistent for the last, what, six years, seven years that he has been trying to redeem himself and make up for what he, the harm he caused for the crimes that he committed on Donald Trump's behalf. He's
Starting point is 00:39:59 paid his dues, he pled guilty, he went to prison, and he's been trying to make amends. And by testifying, he will continue that. And his statements will have been consistent all of this time. On contrary, or I should say, compare that, contrast that to Allen Weisselberg, who has never come clean, right? He came clean a little bit and testified against the Trump Organization, never against Trump. And as recently as a month ago, or two months ago, whenever it was that he testified
Starting point is 00:40:32 in the New York Attorney General Civil Fraud trial, he was under oath, right? He swore to tell the truth and raised his right hand in court. And when Push came to shove about giving up Donald Trump once again, what did he do? He lied. He lied under oath. And he lied recently, and he's still lying. And the timing of that is important because he lied after he was a cooperator with the
Starting point is 00:40:58 Manhattan DA's office, right? He lied while under a cooperation agreement. He lied knowing what the consequences would be. So the fact that the Manhattan DA's office this week took a plea to Perjury tells me they want to keep their options open and they want to keep their options open to be able to call him, which is why they made sure to do it before trial. They also allowed him to plead to two, not all five, which the significance of that is going to have to do with, I'm sure, how his potential testimony at this trial will play out. There's a reason why they made him plead to certain ones and not at a minimum,
Starting point is 00:41:41 what they did though, was they neutralized him. So by making him plead guilty and admitting under oath to what the facts are and agreeing to go to jail, and he's going to be in jail, he's going to be sentenced to his jail time during this trial, right? Right before this trial. So he is going to be neutralized so that if Donald Trump calls him as a witness, at least he has to say, he has to admit what he just admitted under oath in his perjury conviction. And then they can always cross-examine him if Donald Trump calls him.
Starting point is 00:42:15 So they neutralized him so he can't now, because otherwise had they decided, oh, well, he lied to Judge Angoran, so we're not going to call him as a witness. But then Trump could put him on the stand, right? Trump could put him on and say, no, no, it wasn't Trump. It wasn't the way they're saying it is. They had to get him to admit what the actual truth is so that he can't now be a witness for Trump. So, I'm not sure they're going to call him or not, but they're keeping their options open.
Starting point is 00:42:42 And as I said, they wanted to neutralize him as a potential defense witness. And I think that's what's going on there with this Weisselberg perjury plea, just given the timing, the charges, and that he's doing it. That's my opinion on that. I think you're exactly right. I think they are inoculating him just in case, as you said.
Starting point is 00:43:08 If he takes the stand for Donald Trump, you just pled guilty to lying under oath to a New York State judge related to Donald Trump and business record fraud, didn't you? And then there that, so that is a inoculator in case Trump was considering calling him because now flipping over to the trial side, the trial thought process for the Trump team is how do we put Alan Weisselberg on now that he just played guilty to perjury? Hasn't that removed him from the running of being a witness for us? And so like you said, playing offensive, offensively and defensively at the same time, the Manhattan DA's office takes him out of the running, right?
Starting point is 00:43:50 You know, just picks him off because there's no lawyer in their right mind. And I know what I'm saying has a certain amount of irony baked into it with the Trump lawyers. But no lawyer worth his salt is going to like Susan Necklace is not going to call Allen Weisselberg. And then as you said, if things go a little awry with Michael Cohen's testimony or somebody else's testimony, and they think that to bring it home or to fix something, they need Allen Weisselberg, well then sort of like Silence of the Lambs, they wheel in Allen Weisselberg, well then sort of like Silence of the Lambs, they wheel in Allen Weisselberg with a mask on a gurney, in front of the jury, you know,
Starting point is 00:44:34 and they put him in the box and the same prosecutors that are prosecuting him and he hasn't been sentenced yet in front of, don't you think the judge for the sentencing, even though it's the Manhattan DA's case against him related to the New York Attorney General is gonna be Mershan? Isn't it the same judge? No, 100% way, yeah. Right, so picture this, wheeled in on the gurney. You know, the judge that's about to sentence you,
Starting point is 00:44:58 who already, who already has problems with you if you're on Weisselberg, the last time you testified, because he thought that Weisselberg. The last time you testified, because he thought that Weisselberg didn't properly cooperate, and that's why he sent him away for 100 days to Rikers Island. But now Allen Weisselberg fired his Trump lawyer, Trump appointed lawyer, and hired a well-known
Starting point is 00:45:16 white collar lawyer here in town that I think Karen, you would, I know, you probably know him too. And they're starting to make better decisions, including taking this plea deal. And so he goes, he steps in there and they stick him in the booth and he's staring the prosecutor that's prosecuting him.
Starting point is 00:45:32 The plea deal that they'll yank from the table if he doesn't properly testify and the judge is gonna sentence him. And, you know, he's being forced within an inch of his life to testify to the few facts that they may need. Like you said, should they need him? So he is break the glass emergency witness and they have completely conditioned his conduct
Starting point is 00:45:59 by getting him, it's not, it's not, it's not, what's the word I'm looking for? The timing of the conviction, it's not, it's not, um, what's the word I'm looking for? The timing of the conviction, the plea deal, as you noted, Karen, is on purpose. Just to send the message to the other side, you thought you were going to use Weisselberg? You're not. If anybody's going to use them, it's going to be us. And we have him on such a short leash. Leash, he made hang himself in front of this jury and get convicted again if he doesn't play ball. So you have to do it if you've got the gut. And we've been hearing
Starting point is 00:46:29 about, you know, again, a shout out to Alvin Bragg, who took a lot of heat in the first year of his tenure as the Manhattan District Attorney's office, including a little bit from this podcast about how masterfully they are conducting themselves in advance of the getting ready for the seriousness, the gravitas of the only criminal trial that are probably likely to happen against Donald Trump before the November election. And so we've been hearing about the perjury for over a year. And then it happened again. We knew they were squeezing Allen Weisselberg to get him to flip. And then we said, oh, well, it didn't really happen with the conviction, the tax evasion conviction. And then they got him again by the short airs when he lied on the stand during the New York Attorney General case
Starting point is 00:47:16 about the size of Donald Trump's penthouse to Forbes magazine, where Forbes reported in real time while he was testifying, Allen Weisselberg just perjured himself on the stand. I mean, talk about having a Prasaproscator, having the entire package with a ribbon tied around it, delivered to your doorstep. The Forbes in real time said, we were told the exact opposite in emails, here they are, by what he's saying on the stand,
Starting point is 00:47:40 he just perjured himself. And Manhattan DA was like, let's get Allen back in here with his new lawyer and see what we can do. Yeah, let's make a bet. Yeah. My bet, they don't call him. They don't call him.
Starting point is 00:47:53 I wouldn't call him. He's willing to commit perjury for Donald Trump. Why would you risk that? I agree with you. They only call him if, in an emergency, something bad has happened in the courtroom in front of that jury, and only Allen Weisselberg can fix it,
Starting point is 00:48:10 which is a lot of stuff there. But they've totally, like you said, they've taken him off the witness list apparently, obviously for Donald Trump, which is a win, which is a total win because you know he's a puppet. All Donald Trump has to do is shove his hand up his backside It's like watching the Muppet show, you know, and though he's like the two old guys up in the Up in the in the opera house, you know, like he'll say whatever Donald Trump wants him to say
Starting point is 00:48:37 Not anymore Not anymore. So let's let's move on. We'll follow it There's lots of activity and action between now and the day of the jury. It starts to be picked on the 25th or 26th of March, and we'll cover it right here on the Midas Touch Network on Legal AF. But let's turn to Judgment Day. Judgment Day. We're going to talk about Judgment Day, and Donald Trump having to scrape up $600 million
Starting point is 00:49:03 or so. How is he going to do it? The bond process the cash process? All of his efforts with Lloyd with judges have fallen on deaf ears to try to get the judges to let him out from under his Obligations including a pellet court judges. So what does he do with tomorrow? Is he gonna cat is he gonna go find that hundred million dollars? It's lying around in his in his couch and Post it or is it going to do something else? We'll talk about that. And then finally, we'll talk about Ken Jessbro, fake elector scheme and what it means for Donald Trump. But first, the word from
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Starting point is 00:53:13 All right. And we're back. And again, we thank the sponsors for being in here and we support them. And we hope you will too. Judgment day. Karen does Donald Trump will he or won't he? Does Donald Trump come up with a hundred million dollars cash to stop the Eugene Carroll judgment from being enforced against him or does he do an unforced error? He serves the ball into the net and allow Robbie Kaplan representing Eugene Carroll to go start using the Sheriff's Office to execute the judgment against his assets.
Starting point is 00:53:46 The judgments against Donald Trump. How many Donald Trump assets are there as opposed to being in the trust or in other LL limited liability companies? How hard is it going to be to collect that money? And then even if he comes up with a hundred million dollars for that, he's down to a self-proclaimed three hundred million dollars. He down to. He's down to $300 million in his bank account, which is not enough to put up the cash bond for the other New York Attorney General judgment, which means he'd have to go to a bonding company or get a letter of credit. So let's talk about all that. What do you think happens next? I have a question. I love asking you questions. So I read in the paper today that Donald Trump was meeting with Elon Musk. Do you think that was in an effort to get money to pay these judgments? I did until Elon Musk came out today and said, well, I guess that's a, we have to interpret
Starting point is 00:54:38 this. He said he's not going to contribute to either political campaigns. Correct. Is he going to be the funder and the financier for Donald Trump? Exactly. That's what I was wondering. I read what you read and I thought,
Starting point is 00:54:50 that's not why he's meeting with Elon Musk. He doesn't care about a campaign contribution. He's looking to have him fund his judgments and making some secret deal on the side of, you know, like pay this, let me get get me to be I'll get the money to become president and who knows what the agreement is between them. Yeah. And as our producer just put it so so bluntly and correctly, Musk needs Trump. He's become very Trumpy. He's got a lot of issues that would be helped by the restoration of a Trump presidency. But Elon Musk has his own
Starting point is 00:55:22 money problems. I mean, he just we didn't cover it here because it's not quite at the intersection of law and politics, although it's getting closer based on your observation. But a Delaware chancellery court just shot down a 56 million, sorry, 56 billion dollar pay package for Elon Musk saying that it was improperly approved and he's not allowed to get that money. He's lost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in his failed experiment called X,
Starting point is 00:55:51 as we know. He'd have to sell off more Tesla stock. That's a lot. I mean, look, $30, $40, $50 million between friends, $500, $600, $700 billion between friends. I'm not sure they're that000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Asked the judge for six billion dollars in fees. They said they were entitled to a third of the 56 billion But they'll just take six billion. I I know that firm We're the wrong kind of lawyers we're for politics and justice and justice That doesn't make us as much money. Anyway, um, I like the Elon Musk We're gonna have to keep you know, like one eye open about all of that. But tell me what you think about,
Starting point is 00:56:48 what is Donald Trump doing? Where's he gonna get the money from? Is he gonna get the money? If he doesn't, what happens on Thursday? And two weeks from now. I mean, he's either gonna come up with the money somehow or he somehow wants, he likes the political theater of being the victim. And so he would like
Starting point is 00:57:07 to force the hand of Letitia James to have to put a padlock on his airplane. Oh, you know, look, look, the Democrats trying to steal my airplane or steal my building or, or whatever. I mean, I'm sure he's, I'm sure he's making that calculation because he could come up with this money, not because he has it, but he has access to at least $100 million, right? Because we know that because that's what he told Judge Angoron case. He said, is it okay if I put up only $100 million, not the $500 million that we'd have to put up if you do the judgment plus interest, which is what you normally have to do.
Starting point is 00:57:46 I have access to a hundred million. So I think it's probably likely that he has that. And of course, Judge Lewis Kaplan in the E.J. and Carol case probably reads the paper and reads court decisions, et cetera. So he knows that he has access to that hundred million. So when Donald Trump came, when his lawyers came to Lewis Kaplan and said, can I have a stay on whether or not I have to, whether the judgment gets enforced in the $83 million in the next couple of days? And I need a decision by today. And of course,
Starting point is 00:58:20 Judge Lewis Kaplan, instead of just not ruling that day, it was like he was trolling him because he then issues a decision that says, basically, don't call us, we'll call you. I'm aware of your deadline and I will rule when I rule. And so I think he'll have to come. I don't think he's going to want that enforced. I think he's probably going to put that up and then we'll see if he comes up with the money for the larger judgment. What do you think? Do you think
Starting point is 00:58:50 he's going to come up with the money? Do you think he's going to go for the political theater part? No, I did a hot take on it. I think he has to come up with a hundred million dollars. I think it'll probably be cash in Eugene Carroll and then he's going to try to continue over the next 20 days to scrape together the $600 million that he's going to need with interest in 120%, which is required with interest running for the People's Judge, I call it the People's Judgement, the People of the State of New York's Judgement in the New York Civil Fraud, the Attorney General Civil Fraud case. Problem there is he doesn't have the cash for that.
Starting point is 00:59:32 They're not going to take an IOU or, you know, like I know I did a hot take about him being the king of debt and he loved bragging in 2016 about, I love debt. I love negotiating with my creditors about how much I owe them. You can't do that with the little thing we call the justice system in judges. You know, they are not business people. And in this case, that's a good thing. And it's either every dollar on the barrel head or the judgment is enforced. And so he's scrambling right now. There's no doubt. You know what's an interesting legal question about that?
Starting point is 01:00:00 So let me tell you what you think about. Let me ask you what you think about this. And maybe people have already discussed this and I just haven't seen it. But you know, there's campaign contribution limits, right? There's people you can't just, you can't, one of his friends can't just give as much money as they want to his campaign. Do you think it would count as a political, as a donation to his campaign, if somebody put up that money for him, for this judgment? I think there'd be an argument that it's an election law violation.
Starting point is 01:00:33 Yeah, that's a contribution. He'll say, no, it's a loan. Well, everything's a loan. I know, but I'm just throwing this out because I wouldn't be surprised if that's why he was meeting with Elon Musk. He's going to try to drum up the money somehow and just put that out there, let's start to do some research on whether or not that would be considered a campaign contribution.
Starting point is 01:00:56 Because if so, there are limits obviously on what he can accept. And I think calling it alone is going to be, I don't know that that will immunize the legal issue. Yeah, the panel, he'll be willing to pay the penalty as a cost of doing business because the FEC, the Federal Election Commission is pretty feckless, no pun intended, and how they go after people and the fines that they have for that. And so even if it's proven that, I mean, I just don't think Jack's, I agree with you that it would probably be that.
Starting point is 01:01:26 The more likely candidate to make that kind of contribution to him or loan to him is the Adelson family out of Nevada. The father died but left it all to the wife. They're a huge MAGA right wing and they've got money that rivals Elon Musk's. But that's still, as I said before, I's not like $50 million among friends. I mean, $600 million, $700 million, that's a huge sum of money. Now, the issue is he's got it. He just has to liquidate assets in order to acquire it. And he doesn't want to do that. I mean, look, he's got
Starting point is 01:02:02 real estate. He owns buildings. Some of them have his name on it. Some of them are license agreements, but some of them he has fee simple title to them. He owns them. He owns Mar-a-Lago, whether you call it $100 million, which is more likely the value of it, maybe $150 million. He's got some money. What he's got to do is what I'm sure he is doing, which is he's going to private equity or hedge funds who are not New York registered or chartered banks. And we can name a bunch of them. They're all out there, ladder, capital. There's a whole bunch of them that he's used in the past or smaller banks. So this number is so big, I doubt a smaller bank is going to touch it.
Starting point is 01:02:42 And he has to get what's called an irrevocable letter of credit in order to get an irrevocable letter of credit as an asset, saying that the person's going to make good on it. The bank or the hedge fund or the private equity fund will take this as an investment and they'll take a pledge of assets. If he doesn't make, and they'll charge him 12 or 15% interest on the amount that he's borrowing as a return on the investment for their investors. So they just see it as a numbers, a dollars and cents thing. So there are, there are hedge funds and private equity that would be willing to lend him money.
Starting point is 01:03:18 In return and to give him that irrevocable letter of credit, he then takes the letter of credit to a bonding company and the bonding company charges them another four or five percent on the amount as well. Everybody gets their piece and they put up the bond. And if he violates the bond, in other words, he doesn't pay the judgment. If after appeal, what we're talking about is if after appeals are exhausted, he has lost and the judgments are undisturbed in whatever dollar amount that they are He has to pay them and if he doesn't pay them they go against the bond and the bond has to pay it The bond goes against the letter of credit the letter of credit Has title to the properties and that's how everybody gets paid. He's got to be doing that
Starting point is 01:04:01 He's he's played with fire and played chicken with federal and state judges and appellate courts long enough. He's got to do that. But it's back to your original point. No, I don't think he's going to allow Trump won Air Force, whatever, to be padlocked or the look of a sheriff's office. Think about the media, not just Might as Touch, of a padlock on one of his properties with a sheriff's sale.
Starting point is 01:04:28 I mean, I was outside the country for a vacation some people know about who followed social media and there in this country was a giant sign that said that the mega yacht owned by the Russian oligarch was now the property of that country and was being sold at auction that Monday for $63 million. Donald Trump does not want that look right now. And so what I think the silence that we're watching is while the lawyers are out in front trying to act like we need more time, people in the back are, I don't know, it's Eric Trump, Don, I haven't heard from Eric Trump or Don Jr. lately, or maybe Jared are working their relationships. I mean, look, the Saudi government, the private investment fund, the PIF that was going to
Starting point is 01:05:14 put all of its money into the PGA could put their money into Donald Trump. There we go. Now we've got a presidential candidate bought and paid for by the Saudi government. There's no limits on where the money can come from. It's just up to the American people if it's going to be the Saudis to say, you know what, I'm not okay with our president being bought and paid for by the Saudis. But that's, you know, look who's got money. When everybody, when anybody, I'll just give you my Wall Street experience,
Starting point is 01:05:41 having been, having worked at a giant Wall Street company for a period of time as their global head of litigation When you need money you go hat and hand to the Middle East you go to Dubai Right, you go to countries there you go to the Saudis hat in hand and you get money And there's a lot of free flowing money there used to be the Chinese It's more the Saudis now. So could be on Musk, it's going to be somebody. And the other issue is I'm not sure it's going to be revealed because he doesn't have to reveal it. All he's got to do is come up with a piece of paper that says the bond and how he got that bond. Now, the monitor, just to leave it on this, monitor Barbara Jones to the extent that assets under her
Starting point is 01:06:26 Monitor ship Established by the New York Attorney General through the judge and Goron through the New York Attorney General case She'll have to know and if he has assets outside of all the things she has he's got a problem So if he takes out a personal loan and There's a promissory note with a commitment. She's gonna have to see it So back I guess I'll have to retract I'm gonna retrade what I just said We will know because she'll know and therefore she'll have to make a report to Judge Angoron about what the source of the cash is you know interestingly if
Starting point is 01:06:59 One of Trump's billionaire friends like Elon Musk or you know, MBS or any anyone else, right, who wants to pay Trump's judgment. If they say this is a personal gift has nothing to do with the campaign, I think that the campaign finance laws don't get implicated, which is just shocking to me as a workaround. Because to me, it's a illegal campaign donation. I can tell you right now, there is no way any of these people would be contributing this money but for the fact that he is running for president and they want to install him in office. How about if it's the Saudis, Foreign money, which is illegal as a contribution.
Starting point is 01:07:46 Yep. So... But all they have to do is call it a personal gift, and the election laws don't get implicated. So... All right, we'll follow. Like, not only follow, let's call it out because, like I said, there's this but for test, right? If he was just, you know, there's no way they're doing it just so they hope to get invited
Starting point is 01:08:04 to Mar-a-Lago. They're doing it because they want to make him president. Right. Speaking of wanting to make him president, Ken Chesbro, Jim Troupas, two lawyers wanted to make Donald Trump president, and they helped develop, along with Peter Navarro, the fake elector scheme, at the behest of Donald Trump and the campaign as alleged in the indictment and Jack Smith's indictment. And now Ken Chesbro has a new problem of his own making. He lied apparently to the Michigan attorney general, the Arizona attorney general, and Jack Smith,
Starting point is 01:08:32 I would think about his advice and role in the fake elector scheme. Let me frame it, you can care and comment on it, and then you'll know more than you did before you joined this podcast about poor Ken Chesboro Ken Chesboro is a self-proclaimed election expert election law expert and half-baked constitutional scholar he and and John Eastman who was a Constitutional law professor cooked up a scheme to create an alternate slate of electors in seven battleground states
Starting point is 01:09:04 Use that certificate have them meet Saraptiously in the middle of the night somewhere on the capital grounds of each state in the basement or somewhere else Sign a certificate get fake electors to join in on it Send it through a circuitous route using a mule in Mike Roman who's been indicted in Georgia also at the heart of the attack on Fawnie Willis and Nathan Wade, by the way, and use Mike Roman, the election day coordinator for Donald Trump. Bring those fake elector certificates through the halls of Congress, not making this up, through congressional aides that work for a member of Congress out of Pennsylvania to deliver them at the feet of Mike Pence to try to pressure him to recognize one or all of those certificates instead of the real slate of electors for each state to make Joe Biden the president and throw the entire thing into some sort of chaos
Starting point is 01:09:53 so that it would be the election would not be decided by the electoral vote based on the popular vote in each state, but by the House, which is if you just count congressional delegations, not by size, but by number, there's more Republican delegations than there are Democrat. And so Trump would win the presidency despite our vote. That's all Ken Chesborough did. But when he gave his testimony to Fawney Willis and to Arizona and Michigan, he just said, no, no, no, my advice, I'm just a lawyer. I'm just a
Starting point is 01:10:23 poor country lawyer wearing a MAGA red hat red hat walking around on gen six with Alex Jones All I said was create the fake elector. Sorry the alternate electors But only use them if one of the lawsuits is successful in any of these battleground states and and there's a decision by a judge Based on evidence that there's been fraud. That's all I said. That's not all he said, because there's 1,400 emails that have come out of a case that we followed in Wisconsin, brought by different fair government and fair election groups against the fake electors there and Jim Troubus, a lawyer from Wisconsin who worked with Ken Chesborough, and they sued them directly, and they had to admit that they participated in election fraud, and they committed to never doing it again. Yay.
Starting point is 01:11:11 But there was also 1600 documents, emails and text messages, mainly between Trupas and Chesborough, which is completely different than the testimony that he gave to under oath to all of these people and the basis for his immunity or proffered deal, meaning they could now prosecute him for perjury. Because in those texts, he said, yeah, we just need the fake electors for political cover. Just get us into the halls of Congress. And then Mike Pence can sort of recognize them. No mention of the lawsuits. We don't need the lawsuits.
Starting point is 01:11:44 We don't need no stinking lawsuits. All we need is fake elector certificates, which is exactly the opposite of what he told to all the investigators who were just trying to do their job and investigate what really happened here. And then there's a new version of what went down when Trupas and Chesborough met with Donald Trump for a photo op in December right after the election before Jan 6th, that was arranged by Rantz Priebus, who you, what a name, who used to be the Republican National Chairman. Then he became a short time chief of staff, one of the many chiefs of Staffs for Donald Trump, and he arranged his photo op and instead it became Ken Chesboro whispering in like the horse whisperer, the Trump whisperer, into Donald Trump's ear telling him,
Starting point is 01:12:32 really the last day is Jan 6th. It's all about Jan 6th. And then when Trump tweeted, come Jan 6th, it's gonna be wild. We have a text message between true percent Chesboro where he said, see, you did this. We have a new found context for what, we know what this means. And then when Troopa saw, what's his name? Chespiro wearing a red hat, walking around as an insurrectionist.
Starting point is 01:13:01 He said, yo, you made this happen. Clap, clap, clap, clap emoji. Oh, my God. Prosecutor, Madam Prosecutor, what do you do with a problem called Ken Chesborough now that you know what is, that he lied to the prosecutors? What happens next? Lier, liar, pants on fire, right? I mean, I just, he, this, this guy, he is just can't stop lying. You know, he is, this is another one where he's clearly going to get in trouble in Nevada, right? He's going to get in trouble back in Georgia.
Starting point is 01:13:40 And I really just think he, this Chesbro is proving himself to be Somebody who can't really be a witness for Fani Willis because he's such a liar You know, I look I never really was a hundred percent sure he was going to to be a witness for Fani Willis because his plea Allocation if you recall was so weird. He didn't really admit to anything It was it was almost it was one of those It was one of those plea allocutions that was a non-allocution. They basically said, if I remember correctly, something like, I admit to whatever count 17. He said nothing. Same thing with his apology. His apology was, I'm sorry for hurting people, for the things I did in count 17. He never admitted to any facts.
Starting point is 01:14:30 I remembered that there was a detailed factual allocution, but when I went back and re-listened to it, it was the prosecutor who said these are all the facts they would have proved. He never said that he was going to do that, and they didn't make him do that. The reason I say that made me wonder whether he's going to do that. And they didn't make him do that. And so the reason I say that made me wonder whether he's going to actually testify and cooperate for Fonny Willis was because if he was, they would have wanted him to under oath, admit to the facts, so that, again, A,
Starting point is 01:14:57 you know that he said it, that he's going to say it under oath. And if he doesn't, he can't go turn around and say, oh, no, I didn't mean it later or change his mind later because they lock him in. So I was never, I always thought just based on that flimsy allocution that there was some, he was in some weird purgatory state. He wasn't really a cooperator. He wasn't really a cooperator.
Starting point is 01:15:19 He was kind of a, he was neutralized or inoculated to use your word popock. But then when you see what, so then, then if you remember, he was under house arrest, he couldn't leave the state of Georgia. And he asked for permission, right, to the, to the court, to Judge McAfee to say, I want to go cooperate and in the other states. And now it's coming out what you just described. It's all coming out that he's still lying. He is still lying on behalf of Donald Trump. He will not give all this up. He will not let it go. That he really, I think, is digging in and digging his heels in on the fact that this whole thing, that he could still go along
Starting point is 01:16:08 with this fake-elector scheme. I think he's maybe got a new spring in his step. He thinks that Donald Trump is now, he unfortunately is leading in the polls. He's going to be the Republican nominee after Nikki Haley just pulled out. And so maybe he's making a different calculation here that now he can kind of go back to his other... It's like he keeps switching, betting on different horses, right? First, he bet on Donald Trump in just the whole fake elector scheme. And then when his whole, when his ship started sinking, you know, he then flipped to the other team and then now he's, I guess, sees the winds blowing in a different direction and he seems to be flipping back to the Trump team.
Starting point is 01:17:01 And you know, people are calling him on it, right? People are calling him out on his lies. So it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to see what happens. But he's made himself out, I think, to just be somebody who's just not credible and really can't be of value to anybody. So I think he's going to get slammed pretty hard. Yeah. These lawyers, I don't know, they're like in some sort of voodoo trance of Donald Trump. They really are. And I've never seen anything quite like it. They just are willing to follow him over the precipice and sacrifice on the altar of his megalomaniacal power grab, their ethics, their law licenses, their profession. we see it sort of time and time again.
Starting point is 01:17:46 But we're going to follow all this. We're going to follow by next week at this time. We may have the decision by Judge McAfee and the Fawnie Willis, Nathan Wade, will they or won't they be replaced as prosecutors in the Georgia election interference case? Will Judge McAfee ever get around to setting the trial of the election interference case arising out of Georgia law there at all, speaking of Wilhe or Wonhe. We'll also be that much closer, probably end up seeing some further briefing in the Mar-a-Lago matters related to whether she's going to make a
Starting point is 01:18:25 false step. We think she has already, but in a way that Jack Smith with his new bench, his new lawyers, can take advantage of it and take that appeal that we've been waiting for to the 11th Circuit to get them to weigh in. 11th Circuit can't weigh in unless there's an appeal. I think they're just waiting for that opportunity on both sides. We'll know more about that next week. Ben and I will have an opportunity to read through the new briefing that's now been invited by and accepted by Judge Cannon and Mar-a-Lago. So we'll probably spend
Starting point is 01:18:56 on Saturday a lot of time talking about Mar-a-Lago. I'll have the interview with Judge Ludig, who interview with Judge Ludig, who was busy running around to mainstream media, but literally wants to be, told me personally how much he wants to talk to our audience and made time on his schedule to do that. I can't think of anybody finer to talk about the constitutional issues than somebody who was this close to being on the United States Supreme Court and is by all accounts a federalist and a Conservative but at bottom is a patriot. We'll have that interview as well If you want to support what we do here in the Midas Touch Network It is as about as simple as it can be you're already here on the Midas Touch Network
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Starting point is 01:20:26 Now, it's not like cable news. Eyeballs are not enough to register as ratings. The way things register on YouTube and tell the world, including the YouTube gods, that we are at the top of our game is if you kind of participate and interact with the content by way of these comments and thumbs. So we ask you to do that as well. Then we've got a whole nother set of algorithmic gods over on the podcast world, the audio
Starting point is 01:20:49 podcast world. So go over and listen, we'll drop this audio in a few more hours after we're all done here. And it'll be up on Apple, Spotify, Google, wherever you get your podcast from. And you can rank and rate us there as well. That really helps us in kind of going back and forth. We've got these, what we call legal AF after dark. We take the four segments or so that we do tonight and on Saturday and we release them as individual. I like to call them potlots. And that's really for people that didn't have time to watch the entire show.
Starting point is 01:21:20 It's an investment. We're an hour and 20 minutes in. It's an investment. But, you know, but we break it down for you in bite-sized pieces. the entire show. It's an investment. We're an hour and 20 minutes in. It's an investment, but we break it down for you in bite-sized pieces. But it's also a way to promote the show. You can take the pod. You can take that clip when you see it. You'll know it because I introduced it as Legal AF After Dark. Take it and send it to people in your life like, hey, you know that podcast I like, Legal AF? Here's an opportunity to listen to it and
Starting point is 01:21:43 see why I like it, and maybe they'll join our audience. And then we also posted for people who, frankly, are on the Midas Touch Network, and they follow other content providers, but they don't know anything about Legal AF. I know that's hard for people to believe, but there are people who don't know about us. So that's a way to do it. And then finally, besides all of that, there are, in our interviews that are sort of related to this and we do guest appearances on other shows on the Midas Touch Network like We've Been on Lights On and I've Been on Michael Cohen and Karen will be too, maybe one day. We will, you can fly the flag of Legal AF and you can do that by buying merchandise
Starting point is 01:22:21 that we redesigned recently, including t-shirts that are properly sized and shaped and colored and logoed. You can get it there at store.mitestouch.com. And the other way is I'm just gonna be crass for a minute, supporting our sponsors. It really does matter to them and they like to sponsor because they're getting, let's be frank, sales from people that watch our show.
Starting point is 01:22:43 And we like to be able to tell them that our show is a good place for them to Advertise and don't take their advertising dollars and put it somewhere else. So now that we've reached the end Karen I'm glad you're feeling better much better And I know that while you don't have sort of you know insider knowledge to the Manhattan DA's office I can't think of anybody who's better to talk about things, especially in the world of prosecutorial landscape than you. And it's always my, my honor and my pleasure to do this show with you.
Starting point is 01:23:16 You too, Popak. So until our next Legal AF, until our next series of hot takes by Ben, Karen and me, shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AF, till our next series of hot takes by Ben, Karen, and me. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.

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