Legal AF by MeidasTouch - A good week for Democracy: Trump losses at the hands of NYAG, Georgia DA, and SCOTUS

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

You come for the law and stay for the truth. Anchored by MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok, the top-rated news analysis podcast is back for another hard-hitting, thought-provoking look in “real time” at this week’s developments.  On this episode, Ben and Popok discuss a very bad week for Trump and his minions: 1. Fulton County (GA) District Attorney seeking a special grand jury concerning Trump’s attempt to commit election fraud. 2. The New York Attorney General filing a 160 page petition with a New York court outlining all of the evidence she has about Trump’s loan and tax fraud, including almost 1 MILLION pages of documents. 3. SCOTUS in an 8-1 decision permitting the National Archive to turn over 700 pages of documents Trump wanted blocked to the Jan6 Special Committee. 4. SCOTUS refusing to accelerate any further legal challenges to Texas’ 6 week ban on abortion before it rules on the constitutional right in the summer, and Sotomayor’s dissent. 5. Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginny, and her support for right wing extremism including cases before the Supreme Court, and whether that requires his disqualification or recusal. 6. Possible prosecution of the people who participated in the “fake” and forged electoral certificates sent to Swing States and the National Archive, including Rudy Giuliani. 7. Speaking of Rudy, a federal special master has just released to the US Attorney’s Office, Southern District of NY, 7000+ pages of texts and communications from his 18 devices grabbed in a dawn raid in April 2021. 8. The first “OathKeeper” indicted for seditions conspiracy has his pretrial detention hearing before a federal magistrate in Arizona, and his tweets get him in to trouble. 9. Ghislaine Maxwell may have another day in Court: Defense team files its motion for new trial based on improper conduct of one of the jurors in deliberation. And much more. Support the Show! Masterworks -- Join an exclusive community investing in blue-chip art at https://www.masterworks.art/legalaf today! Smith.AI -- Work uninterrupted, run your business with less stress, and get more leads from your marketing efforts. Save $100 when you sign up using promo code "LegalAF" at https://www.smith.ai AG1 by Athletic Greens -- Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune supporting FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit https://athleticgreens.com/legalaf today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Midas Touch Legal AF. If it's Saturday, it is Legal AF live. If it's Sunday, it is Legal AF. But if it's any day of the week that you listen to Legal AF, you got us. Ben Myceles, Michael Popock, delivering the key legal cases, key legal issues of the week in digestible ways that you can understand. Some have said this is legal AF university and people feel that they are getting that law school experience.

We are not an accredited law school. I put that as a disclaimer. We are not an accredited law school. I put that as a disclaimer. We're unaccredited. We're unaccredited. But Popaka wanna just say to you, I heard the new LegalAF podcast that's on Wednesday. It's on the same podcast channel. It's you with Karen Friedman Agnifolo

for those listening now. Karen Agnifolo was the number two at the district attorney's office in Manhattan. She was side-vances number two. So we're honored and humbled to have Karen Friedman Egnifalo on there in Popeye. I like the way you announced that podcast. When I heard it, I knew there was going to be great energy. You started off. You said, Popeye here with Karen, Bradenman, Agnifalo. Very inspiring, Popeye. 42 episodes with you, my friend, a bit of it is rubbed off. And I realized now, not that I didn't always have tremendous respect for you and admiration for you, but you got

a hard job because I kind of played the Ben Roll with Karen and we're still trying to find our way. We had a great show. I think people complimented the chemistry and what we were able to accomplish in 30 minutes in a drill down. But you know, this is like a fighter jet. You know, I consider you for our our show, the main league of the pilot. I'm the navigator and you and I take turns being the gunner. Karen and I are

going to find our way through this. One person wrote it or wrote up and said, let her talk more, like as if I'm the interviewer and she's the guest, as opposed to two co-anchors that are having a conversation that hopefully is interesting. We'll get there. Give us more time. Ben and I are on episode 42. Karen and I are on episode one, but it will come. We'll figure out who's the navigator, who's the pilot, who's the gunner, and it'll be a really fun time. But you have a very hard job in making this show run smoothly. And that show drops every Wednesday and popok. There are a lot of qualities I like about you. your smart, your intelligent, some have even said silver fox popok, but what I like about you, Pope is that you are self aware. The self awareness

right there is what adds to your brilliance, but that said, let's go into this week's legal issues. We've been following Gilein Maxwell's motion for new pronunciation. Good pronunciation, but great pronunciation. Great pronunciation. Really good. But not a great situation going on in the Southern District of New York right now. And for those listening to Midas Touch Legal AF, you know about the jurors who spoke with the press.

There are jurors who spoke with the press in the UK in the United States. This motion for new trial, as we mentioned on the last podcast, is drilling down on one specific juror who checked on the juror questionnaire that they were said no to the question. Have you ever been a victim of sexual harassment, sexual assault? This individual was a victim of sexual harassment, sexual assault on the juror and used that experience apparently to convince jurors to find guilty on the counts that Gilein Maxwell was ultimately found guilty of. There was multiple days of deliberation and Gilein Maxwell's team filed this motion for new trial.

I've predicted on prior Legal AF podcast that this motion for new trial, I believe is going to be granted. Popo, what do you think is going on here? Yeah, I think it's exactly what you thought it was and what we talked about last podcast last week. Jure number 50 is the entire focus of the motion for Neutrall, and that's the juror who gave an interview to the guardian in London, or actually the daily mail in London, and disclosed that not only did he tell the other jurors in the

deliberation room that imperfect memory of sexual abuse does not mean it didn't happen, and he referenced personal experience, basically becoming a pseudo expert in the room, bringing into the room, and really improper opinion, that if the jury, if the jury was persuaded by that juror

to accept some of the testimony that was put on by the prosecution, and to credit or bolster the testimony of the expert witness on memory memory recall that was put on by the prosecution. That's a problem. And then you'll be right. And the way to get to the bottom of it is Judge Nathan Allison Nathan who we've talked about soon to be on the second circuit is going to have to get to the bottom of this with an evidentiary hearing now that the motion's been filed She will be interviewing jurors. She will be finding out if what happened in the room,

what was said, and how that may or may not have impacted or influenced individual jurors, individual jurors, and the collective of the jury's deliberation process. If she finds it was not a great thing to have happened, but didn't did not overwhelm or overcome the deliberative process, then she's going to find the new trial is improper and Galein Maxwell is going to be sent and stuck to 65 years for sex trafficking. If she finds that on the balance,

and here I think it's going to be a, I'm going to ask you your opinion, I think it's going to be a preponderance of the evidence standard, not clear and convincing and for her to determine whether the jury was severely impacted. If I'm right about that, she'll pull the jury. She'll interview the jury one at a time in a closed courtroom under oath with the prosecution there again, the defense there again. And apparently, juror number 50 has retained his own lawyer. So juror number 50's lawyer is going to be asking

questions too. And the judge is going to get to the bottom of it and make a decision on that record that she's now developing in this in this post trial, evidentiary hearing proceeding is going to be part of the record. It's going to go up on appeal regardless of what her decision is. Either the prosecution is going to appeal it or certainly the defenses It's going to go up on appeal, regardless of what her decision is. Either the prosecution is going to appeal it, or certainly the defenses. So what do you do if you are a good prosecutor here, exactly what the prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are doing? They can't control things. They can't control.

They couldn't control what juror number 50s doing, but they take a realistic approach. They recognize that juror number 50 filled out the form incorrectly. But what they try to convince the judge is that juror 50 may have went out and spoke to the press and had these kind of puffery like statements to kind of puff that individual's chest that they were this powerful and persuasive person, but in reality, your honor, this juror did not impact anybody. Go ask all the other jurors.

This was a person who just wanted some attention afterwards, which we acknowledge was wrong, but at the end of the day, that was harmless error. That is what the prosecution was gonna do. 1,000%. And it's really going to come down to the, I think this was a jury of 12. It's really going to come down to the interviews under oath and the cross examination led by the judge as well. She's going to ask questions as well.

And she's going to say, talk to me about the deliberation process, talk to me about juror number 50. What did he say exactly? And we're going to get this is going to be a little rachimonic because we're going to get 12 different versions and they're not going to be exactly the same about what juror 50 did in that in that juror room, jury room and how it impacted the individual juror one through 12 and how it impacted the entire process of the deliberation and the judge is going to remind the juror that she interviews, one at a time, this was your jury instruction as it relates to the evidence and you being objective and you only only making a decision and reaching a verdict based on the evidence that was presented

and your estimation of it as the find your effect under the law that I gave you in the instruction. Did you do that? Or can you say with confidence that you were influenced, you would not have voted for conviction if this juror 50 had not said whatever juror 50 said. And look, there may be a couple that say, hmm, I was on the fence. It's all I heard from juror 50. We're going to see how important the memory recall was as an issue in that six week trial. Popok, when you use some incredible terms, I may just need as a going forward basis on legal app,

just to point it out, Rosh Amanek, right? That is... Salty is going to do a graphic tonight. Rosh Amanek, for those who don't know. It's based on the film directed by Akira Kursawa, psychological thriller crime, a classic. And it basically uses these flashbacks where they reveal the complexities of human nature as four people,

recount different versions of the story, of a man's murder and it goes back and forth. And a sexual assault. It was also a rape in the, in the, and four different versions of that. And they're, they're just completely different. And so the phrase, Roshamonic means nobody's, nobody's memory here. It's ironic. We're talking about memory and recall again.

Nobody, nobody's memory is completely perfect, usually. And so we're going to have, And so the judges can have to piece together 12 different versions of what happened. And then having heard the evidence, and as you said, and laid out so beautifully, the arguments of both the defense and the prosecution, she's going to have to make a ruling. That's what judges get paid to do. And then from there, one side's going to be pissed off and not agree. That record now with the post trial of all the post trial evidence that's developed is now part of the record that's going to go to the second circuit. Two other G-Lane Maxwell stories. And I guess just for

to put a little fine point on why we talk about G-Lane. Oftentimes at the beginning of these legal F shows, our first story is not necessarily a overtly political story. It may have political undertones, but it's to provide a learning vehicle for all of you listening and watching because the same analyses, the same processes that you see go, we go through in the judicial system with a case like Elaine Maxwell's in the Southern District, issues of conviction, sentencing,

bail, these issues repeat themselves in the political context. So it gives us a way to kind of teach you about these areas of law while focusing on cases that are in the headlines. And this other update on the Gilein Maxwell is that Gilein herself has agreed in a lawsuit that was brought by one of the victims of hers and Jeffrey Epstein, Virginia Geferi, to release the names of eight John Does. In certain cases, individuals can petition that their names be kept confidential. There are sometimes in cases where there are victims of sexual assault on the plaintiff's side.

So a victim like Virginia Geofairy may not want her name out there. And there are laws and rules in different states that would allow someone like Virginia. And this is not the case here. She wanted her name out there right now, but in the past, she may not have wanted her name out there, where someone could petition to be a Jando or Jando, who's a victim of sexual assault, where their name doesn't actually have to be on the complaint, and nobody knows actually who the filer of that lawsuit is.

This is an interesting one because on the defense side, these are individuals who were alleged to have been co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein, who wanted their names to be John Doe names and there's about six to eight of them previously in connection with this litigation. We had Gilein Maxwell not wanting these names to be released and she was actually fighting to keep in secret and Gilein Maxwell said I really don't care anymore. It's an issue between the individual men who wanna keep their names confidential and the court. Anything to add on that one, Popeye?

Well, thanks. I think you got it right. I think that Prince Andrews and a world of heart, the royal family has already moved to defrock him and take away most of his titles as they are, as they're putting him behind a bomb shield before the bomb goes off. He's losing it every turn in the Southern District in front of Josh the motion to dismiss that he found. Yeah, we talked to our legal appers last week. He made two arguments. One, he made a

jurisdictional argument that Virginia, Gifari, she lived in Australia now, so she can't file in New York, the judge rejected that. There was also a settlement agreement between Virginia, Gifari and Jeffrey Epstein for many, many, many years ago that reported to release claims against Jeffrey Epstein and quote all other defendants. And even though Prince Andrew was not actually a signatory to this agreement, he tried to claim that the all other defendants applied to him and the judge said no dice were proceeding to the next step.

Those are all issues you could raise at a trial, but I'm not dismissing this case. Yeah, you got two judges. One is handling the Tertiawitz case that's brought by the same person in this one is the one brought against Prince Andrews. But I think Judge Preska, LaReta Preska, the Southern District of New York is going to expeditiously move this case forward now. And, you know, we'll see a trial probably at the end of 2022, 2023, if there's not a settlement earlier. All right. Let's get into politics. We talked last week about oath keepers being charged with seditious conspiracy. It was the first time in connection with January 6,

the seditious conspiracy charges were brought everyone. We've heard those talking points from the radical right wing extremists like Tucker Carlson and elsewhere. Well, name me someone who's been charged with seditious conspiracy. Well, now there has been seditious conspiracy charges. One individual Edward Valleau, he was an oath keeper who was indicted last week on charges of seditious conspiracy to prevent the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Biden. He's now been ordered by a magistrate in Arizona,

who he appeared before this past Thursday, order to be detained pending trial. Edward Vallejo argued that he should be released. And one of Edward Vallejo's main arguments was, look, you just arrested me now. You knew what I did months ago know, months ago. You let me, you know, be free then. So why now all of a sudden is it a major issue? One of the things the prosecutors pointed out is you are still out there every single day tweeting

in support of the January 6th insurrection. So one of the things that the judge pointed out is that the leo was showing no remorse whatsoever. And so the leo is represented by a federal public defender. This is someone who's appointed for individuals who can't necessarily afford a lawyer of their own choosing. The federal public defenders, they got tough jobs to do. Like the federal public defender is not someone who likes Edward Blahow.

It's just his or her or their job to defend whoever is before them, whether it is a terrorist, whether it is an insurrectionist or whether it's a DUI, you know, defendant or runs across the end. The mastermind of the World Trade Center, World Trade Center bombing had a public federal public defender, the Oklahoma City bombers had a federal public defender. I don't want to live in a country where the other side who is innocent until proven guilty, even with an overwhelming amount of evidence in the public record, doesn't have a federal public defender, state public defender, or you and I, a private citizen that's

maybe either doing it pro bono without charge because of the importance of having representation, or doing it for a fee. I don't want to live in that society. There's a name for those societies called North Korea, China, Russia, Burma, those kind of places. And Popak, one of the tweets that came out of this oath keeper, he said that the, you know, I'm quoting right now. I love Twitter. He said I'm Twitter. He said I'm Twitter. The real insurrection happened in the wee hours of November 4th, 2020.

Was one of those days that he's at. Exactly. And another tweet was this. This was another tweet. I have news for you. You will never achieve vaccine equality as long as I and others like me are alive. I will die first.

And that's only when I run out of ammunition. And in this particular individual, Pope, he was someone who allegedly, although we seems to be more than just allegedly, but until someone's found guilty, I'll still use those terms. He shut all the large cache of firearms and other weaponry into Washington, DC., think they kept all of these guns and bombs in the comfort in. And they were ready to bring those weaponry and bombs to bear if an order was given by some other oath keepers. That order was never given because everyone was able to storm into the capital. But that's who this Vallejo is. Yeah. So, I'm going to use this segment, which is consistent with what you just said earlier,

but the Maxwell, to sort of teach our listeners and followers about magistrate judges, article three judges, and the sentencing process. And then of course, that'll be part of our toolbox that we'll use in future legal AFs for our legal AF law students. And to remind everybody, we have a total of 22 zero oath keepers who have been indicted on two separate indictments. The one that got a lot of press two weeks ago that you and I covered was Stuart Rhodes, the founder, the one I'd, you know, the guy with the patch, who shot himself in the head. And that's how he ended up being blinded.

But the Stuart Rhodes, the leader, founder of the Oathkeepers and 10 others, were all, have all been indicted federally by the US Attorney's Law Department of Justice and on charges of, as you said, seditious conspiracy. And the New York Times today, using the federal indictment, did a very nice job, and I commend everybody to the New York Times today, to a timeline of not only the involvement and how each of the 11 were involved, but starting at minus 62 days before Jan 6th, all the way to the day after Jan 6th.

And what each of their roles are in the indictment, including Edward Vallejo, who is basically, as you said, the ammo holder, the cash master, who had everything ready to go, all this weaponry ready to go and to be brought in at Stuart Rhodes's command. So he was his

munitions leader or chief. And now, and then you have another nine oath keepers who are being indicted, not for seditious conspiracy, but for obstruction, that big O obstruction charge that gets you 20 years, which is one of the highest counts that you can get under the federal prosecutions that are going on in the district of Columbia. The Edward Vallejo lives in Arizona, so he was arraigned in Arizona, meaning he was brought to make a first appearance in a criminal proceeding in his home state. In the federal court process, you have federal judges who are what we call Article 3, referencing

the U.S. Constitution, Article 3 judges, who are what we call Article 3, we're referencing the US Constitution, Article 3 judges who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. And that's a process that's been going on now. And we've talked about Biden having a good track record this year of getting diversity and equity and the numbers onto the federal trial level and also at the appellate federal level. Just not the US Supreme Court yet until Briar retires. The federal magistrates are not Article 3 judges and they're a step right below in the process. They also, they apply for the job.

They are not appointed by the President of the United States. They are selected through a process, but they handle a lot of both on the civil side, were ben and I practice primarily, and on the criminal side, they handle a lot of the day-to-day administration of justice. So a federal magistrate will often be the one, depending upon the size of the federal district and how many cases are going through it. Well, handle a fair amount of the arrangements. First appearances, pretrial detention motions, determining whether the person should be detained, pretrial, and then even bail and bond. Now, sometimes they do it with a report and recommendation to the federal article three judge, and sometimes they just have the power to do it.

Just depends on the type of proceeding that we're talking about here. Vallejo with a federal defender appointed to him comes before a magistrate who who makes the ultimate decision whether this particular person is going to be a reigned, sorry, detained pre trial. We talked a lot about that when we were talking about, you know, all of the Jan 6 subpoenaed people that are refusing to appear and the prosecution of people like Banan. And I know a lot of our legal aephers were like, why isn't he detained pretrial? He should be, he's disgusting. And we all agreed about that. But if you look at the federal detention guidelines, sorry, rules that have to be applied, he didn't really fit the bill.

This guy, Jackpot, Jackpot, himself into fitting the bill because of tweets just the way that you outlined them, Ben, which he did while after arrest and before the erragedment, he starts threatening the World Health Organization leaders, referencing violence and ammunition, starts talking about the insurrection. So his federal public defender said, Judge, he's been a good boy for the last year since he was arrested and released. And if he was going to do something bad, you know, the federal government let him out. And so they can't have it both ways. I mean, I thought there was a unique argument by the federal public defender. IE, my guy hasn't bombed anything lately. And the federal government let him

sit on his couch. So what's the problem? Federal government, of course, prosecutors brought in all the tweets that he's done and laid out this guy's role as the ammunition master of the entire plan. He didn't, the only reason he didn't bring the ammo, as you said, into the Capitol is because they were able to, you know, overrun the Capitol police without firing a shot. But if they couldn't Stewart Rhodes was ready to give the command and the conspiracy to do something, doesn't mean that the objective was ultimately achieved. You can have a conspiracy to commit murder without having murdered the person.

So the fact that he says, oh, all my stuff, all my ammunition stayed at the comfort end. That's not a defense to conspiracy. So now he seems to be the first one of the 20 or at least the 11 with roads that's coming up for pretrial detention hearings. But I think a lot of them are going to be detained pretrial, including Stuart Rhodes. I think Balako is the first of many and we will report on them as we get new information. Popeye, as you talked about Biden's judicial appointments there, I do, and I said he's made great judicial appointments. People from diverse backgrounds bringing diversity to the bench, bringing women to the bench,

which is so critical and vital in our judicial system that it's not all white men on our judiciary. And I have these flashbacks of the Trump appointment processes and the confirmation hearings before the Senate of all these unqualified white males. And when I say unqualified from bipartisan groups at the American Bar Association who says that these individuals who Trump nominated and people who were appointed never did a deposition and never did a trial. Why I'm bringing this up is, from time to time, people who I don't talk to

for many, many years or some cases, decades, who have gone down this Trump rabbit hole will send me a DM on Instagram like completely out of nowhere or shoot me a text message. And so yesterday I got a DM from this person who I haven't spoken to probably 11 years who sent me something from conservative review

with Senator Republican Senator Kennedy. And this is what it's titled, Senator John Kennedy slams Biden nominee and embarrasses her. And they're talking about a nominee named Jessica Clark, who went before the confirmation here. And let me give you Jessica Clark's background. She began her career as a law clerk for judge Solomon Oliver Jr. of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Ohio

from 2008 to 2010. From 2010 to 2016, she was a trial attorney in the Housing and Civil Enforcement section of the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. So fighting for fair housing rights as a trial lawyer. She did trials after trials and has trial experience. She worked at boutique law firms and then she served as the chief of the civil rights bureau at the New York State Office of the Attorney General with work including violations of federal state and local civil rights law to fair housing and addressing police reform. And so she comes from this diverse background.

She has this experience as a trial lawyer. And she was asked the question from Senator John Kennedy, you know, when he does this like all Shucks routine where he's like, can you tell me what a 10 B five lawsuit is? She answered the question and she said a 10 B five lawsuit relates to fraud, but I don't practice in that specific area, Senator. And he goes, so you're telling me that you don't know what 10 B five is and you are going to be a judge on the Southern district of New York. Let me tell the people who are listening to Midas Touch, legal AF right now.

Lawyers don't know every aspect of law. There are billions of areas. Other than you and me, we do actually have a big varied background here. But as she said, I will follow the precedent. I will delve into the cases. That's why judges have lawyers brief the issues and a good judge reads the issues, issues spots and makes the rulings, but you want someone who has trial law experience. That's exactly who you want. That's what I told the person when they sent me the message. And of course, they know what

I already assigned. Yeah, of course, yeah, they only appear, they only pop up out of the troll village for that one little comment. Now look, when I was a kid and I wanted to be a lawyer, I was like 11 or 12, I thought about it. I thought that a lawyer had to memorize and have at the top of their head, the index of all statutes and laws.

And I was like, wow, that's a daunting profession. I wonder if I'm up for it. But I realized later, is when you go to law school, while you do, while you and I did learn a fair amount of law, including, I'm sure you and I could, we could have a competition to name cases just off top of our head that we learned a lot. They're drilled in that are burned into our memory.

However, that's not what you do in law school. That's not what you're doing in legal AF. What you're learning is how to think like a lawyer, how to organize your brain in a way to be logical, organized, be able to use a secratic method, be able to drill down on new and interesting ideas, topics, subject matters. One of the reasons I became a trial lawyer or a litigator, and this might resonate with

you, Ben, is because I wanted case by case to learn different areas of the law, become expert in them, different areas of the industries and segments of the industries, every one of my cases that I'm handling right now, I've got about 30 cases around the country. Every one of them is different under a different body of law in a different industry. And I love that. I've always loved the mental challenge to be able to become expert and do subject matter mastery,

but not because I went into a, I knew it going in. That's not what a judge has to do. What you're looking for in a judge is somebody who has a nimble mind who is an intellect, who can drill down and learn those areas through the briefing, through the law, through the assistance of law clerks, not getting a pop quiz from some, you know,

foghorn red, you know, foghorn leghorn, you know, Warner Brothers cartoon character who's sitting as a senator from where is he, Mississippi? I go up by that for you right now in a second. Right. But it is beneath the process to do stump the candidate. Louisiana to do stump the candidate. Most candidates would say, I know that I took securities law in law school, which is where 10 B five comes from. I took securities law, you know, Mr. Senator, but before I rule on a matter, I'm going to fully understand all the law that's involved, both from the briefing and my own independent research, along with my clerks.

And I will render a fair, just an unbiased decision. That's the answer. I'm sure she gave some version of that back to him, but this bullshit of, especially was she a person of color too or just, or I was just a woman, was she a person of color? Yeah, it is these microaggressions and this racism and misogynist approach. He would never do that to a white man. I bet you if you go back in the history of his asking questions on that panel, he's never done that. And he certainly hasn't done it to the unqualified group of men that Trump appointed 40-year-olds with no trial experience, who's only got a position experience. Never took a deposition in their life. You know, I mean, tons of them put on

federal bench. I scratched my head 12 year lawyers. They're barely able, they're barely formed. They're infants. And now they're sitting as federal judges. But that was misogynist, that was racist, that was anti-woman. And that was beneath the process. And hopefully he was chastised for it by his fellow, at least Democratic senators.

Also just sucks that his name is John Kennedy. You should just go by Jay. That's another thing. John Neely Kennedy. He's no Kennedy. He's not a Kennedy. I know JFK and he's no JFK. We have a lot to talk about on the podcast today. Of course, we're going to talk about the supreme courts ruling relating to Trump trying to prevent the documents relating from January 6th, which are housed at the National Archive from being turned over to the January 6th committee. I'll give you the spoiler alert, the Supreme Court in a 8-1 ruling rule that those documents would go to the Jan 6th committee and did not issue an injunction.

Who is the one? Ben Clarence Thomas. And we'll go into that later. And we talk about that with Clarence Thomas's wife. We'll talk about that. Ben, but first I want to talk about one of this shows partners, master works. This podcast is brought to you by master works. Let's just take a break from news talk for just a nanosecond. Because believe

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at masterworks.io slash disclaimer. Pope, no, I love fine art. I'm a big look at this painting. Now, long as we're onto paintings, I want to get something quick in the chat for tonight because it keeps coming up. This painting behind me is not crooked. I know everybody says it's an opt, it is an optical illusion. It's because my camera is not an angle that we have looked at this. I

have actually glued it to the wall at bubble. It is straight. It is, it's, if you think it's crooked, it's either my head or the camera, but it's not the art. Okay, but. Okay. So going into the news, I'm glad you cleared that up. Pop up a lot of controversy, a lot swirling the United States, swirling Micronesia, where we're the number one podcast in all of Micronesia and swirling other areas where Cyprus, we are the number two podcast in Cyprus. So thank you. It's beyond my wildest dreams. I literally go in Cyprus, we are the number two podcast in Cyprus. So thank you. It's beyond my wildest dreams. I bitch myself every day. In Cyprus, as we go on to more stories,

pop-ok legal stories, we talked about this on the last podcast. And this is the issue of the phony electric slates, these certificates that were prepared as part of the coordinated coup plot led by Trump and different states were putting their own These are Republican Legislatures. These are like legit people like even though they're you know, they've gone down the Q and on a rabbit But they listen to this they hold legit titles like state senators, but these are people who prepared alternative electoral

Slates that they were going to send to the National Archive for processing from the National Archive to Congress. And so when the electoral votes would be certified based on the plan that was a coordinated conspiracy with people like Senator Cruz, with people like Senator Holly who were objecting to the electoral slates. Popox got, what is that? A legal AF cup that you got there? Is it? One that I just made during your introduction. I like that you made a legal AF cup with Penn.

Very scrappy over there, Popeyes. But this was a coordinated effort to, then they were gonna, when there was doubt that was gonna be cast by these objections to the actual legitimate, the legitimate electors, then what Trump wanted Pence to do was hoist up these other electors that were given by these Republican, by these Republican GQP states that were trying to put forward their

own electors. And there was no governor or secretary of state that went along with it. Thankfully for this last election, for the upcoming elections, one other thing that Trump wants to do is take away any power. Really that governors and Secretary of States have vests that power purely with the radical right extreme state legislatures. So these fake electoral slates can actually get into place. And we kind of knew about these electors a while back, but it kind of seemed so far fetched to even be taken seriously because these like forged documents, literally forged documents that they were creating is like, what the hell is going on here?

And now we also learn, of course, Rudy Giuliani was one of the people coordinating on behalf of Trump with these forged electors, but a lot of state AGs are asking that prosecutorial action be taken. There's five states in particular that went all in, you know, well, these Republican legislators that try to elect their own electors. There were two that kind of hedged a little bit that said, well, if I was a fraudster, I would hedge like Pennsylvania and New Mexico. Yeah, the Pennsylvania. So break this down a little bit more for us.

Yeah. Pennsylvania, Mexico. And by the way, shout out in a weird way, evil shout out to Rudy Giuliani. He's like the energizer bunny of fraud and forgery and conspiracy. That's a thing. Evil shout out. He's involved with every effing bad thing that happened. You know what it's like to explore?

People may know, have no clue what this reference is, but there's something going around TikTok now of someone called West Elm Caleb. And he used this dating app hinge where he basically did the same like ghosting routine, love bombing routine with every single woman in Manhattan where all the women were like, wait a minute, you know West Elm Caleb. So Giuliani is the West Elm Caleb of fascism.

Is he West Elm because his all of his furniture was West Elm? He works at West Elm. He works West Elm even better. Okay. Yes, West Elm Giuliani. So let's start with fake electors. Where did they get this idea from? So some num-nuts, some lame half-wit came up with the concept from a Hawaii, Hawaii, which was a state in 1960 during the Kennedy versus Nixon election. What happened there? Very close election, as people probably recall between Nixon and Kennedy, Kennedy obviously prevailed in the 1960 election. And it got really close in one state in particular, Hawaii, came down to like 200 or 300 total voters. So there were some legitimate people in Hawaii for Nixon that got together as a slate of electors and alternate state of electors signed some certificates, making it clear not

forging anything, making it clear that if in, if after a recount it is determined that Nixon has won Hawaii instead of Kennedy. In other words, Nixon finds 201 votes somehow. This would be the slate of electors for him and they sent it in. Well, these idiots decided, let's do the Hawaii 1960 strategy, but let's forge our documents, let's send them to the national archive, let's send them to the election officials in five different states and act like these are the real, including seals and signatures and language, all probably written by Rudy Giuliani, because that's now come out in CNN reporting. So the two states where they had a little glimmer of conscience and decided maybe they're committing

federal crimes and they don't want to go that far. As you alluded to, Ben was Pennsylvania and in Mexico there, they changed the template, the form document that probably Rudy created. And and and theirs they typed in instead, that if it is determined by a court after appeal, after final appeal that Trump has beaten Biden. If that, then I'm an elector. Here's my slate of, here's my slate of alternate electors. You and I actually heard about this back on the Certificate, Jan 6 itself. There was just so much chaos in the form of an insurrection and a riot

going on that it sort of got lost in the shuffle. Ben, do you remember that when Pence was announcing each state, each 50 state, he had this weird phraseology that was not part of the script that every vice president has used for like the last hundred years. All of a sudden he started talking about, and I have checked with the rulemaker for the House of Representatives as to another set of electors. And that will not be recognized only this as the official. Do you remember that Pence comment? We're all like, what is he talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was saying and this is the legitimate signatures from the CLL. It was this whole, you know, it was all right and look Pence is the most spineless coward

but What he was the central figure to the plan that's why Look, that's why they it's fucked up to say it, but that's why they wanted to hang him, you know, and that's why Trump and a lot of the right wingers were encouraging people to kill Pence. Like, that's not sugarcoat what it is. He had to accept those elect, he had to accept those phony electors in order in the five swing states in order for this plot to work.

But just take, but just take it back for a second. There are so many people in Trump's orbit who would have actually done that, who would have accepted fake electors. No, I'm saying in Trump's orbit. 1,000 percent who would accept the fake electors. Who is the fact guy that was the, that was the Secretary of State? Yeah. Pompeo and and Pompeo definitely would have done it. Yeah, yeah, you know, Pompeo's lost a lot of weight to. I know. That's why it's that, you know, since then, good and and you know, I mean, he's a bad dude, but also, you know, good for him for, I guess, getting healthy after the Trump, but I think Trump would make you a very, you know, and healthy person. But I shouldn't say good for Pompeo on on anything. But yeah, Pompeo would have allowed the fake electoral slate

to go on and then just think what would have happened. Our country would have been in a civil war. Our country would have been thrown into massive, massive chaos. Yeah. That's what would have happened. Like, that's why it was a coup attempt and we need to call it what it is. But back to you, Popeye, other Giuliani news, though, that I want to talk about. So the short of it, there are in the five states, there are multiple AGs.

We talked about the AG of the AG of Michigan and other AGs like that who are looking into criminal referrals and potential criminal prosecutions around those who are involved in the forging of these fake electoral slates Giuliani's apartment. His electronics were seized. Giuliani said, you can't seize it. This is my work product, my attorney client privileged information with Donald Trump. I am his president, although apparently Donald Trump didn't pay Giuliani any money. I need an update on that one to find out if Trump actually paid any of Giuliani's bills. Because I remember there was a story about a paid any of Giuliani's bills, because I remember there was a story about a month ago that Giuliani claimed, or two months ago, that he wasn't even paid at all by Donald Trump, which just makes the whole thing ever more baffling. But the issue over attorney client privilege communications, the communications between an attorney and their client under law and precedent is deemed to be confidential.

We want clients that have candid discussions with attorneys. So that means in legal cases, criminal or civil, you can't ask for those communications. Or if you ask for it, an attorney would object and say, that's my attorney client privileged communications. But with every privilege, there are exceptions. First, the communication has to be in furtherance of the attorney client relationship. So it can't be like outside of that. It has to be actually an attorney client relationship. And there are exceptions like a crime fraud exception. An attorney can't aid and abet a client in criminal conduct and then say,

hey, you can't get into that conduct. It's attorney client privilege. There's also issues of waiver regarding attorney client privilege. So if the client who holds the privilege with the lawyer starts writing books about it, is this the case sometimes with Mark Meadows. That wasn't an attorney client privilege. That was an executive privilege issue, but the same concept applies. You waive the privilege by talking about it publicly, because you're saying that relationship between me and my attorney, if you're going to talk to friends and the news and the media about it, well, you could talk to courts about it, and opposing counsel about it. So Pope, tell us what happened here with the special master, what a special master is and what the ramifications are with these Giuliani

documents. So, back in April, you and I talked about, Scott, seems like a lifetime ago, you and I talked about the raid on Rudy Giuliani that was executed by the FBI on behalf of the Southern District of New York's and the Department of Justice or the US Attorney's Office here in the Southern District of New York. Why is that so? Why is that so earth shattering because Rudy Giuliano used to be the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York in his own office in a dawn raid decided that he did not deserve the opportunity to turn in these items by himself and they were going to take it out of his hands. So they grabbed

18 devices and you and I joke at the time, then even you don't have 18 electronic devices to you, but you can use for communications or otherwise. I got two. I got one. You got one. What's that's on? I got two phones. I won't say the rest of it, but I got one phone. Yeah. All right. I got a phone. I got a laptop. That's about it. So he had 18 devices. He's either a pack rat of the first order or he likes using burner phones if we got to burn them all. So he had, he had them on the day of the raid. So people might be thinking, well, April, May, June, July, August, seven, eight months later, why haven't been in the Pope, pop up data to sound that? Because

there was nothing to update on the judge that's overseeing the prosecution of Rudy Giuliani again for the issue of whether he was an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of the Ukraine and his role in trying to throw out the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine and other things related to diplomacy that the president was allegedly trying to conduct with the Ukraine. So they're focused on whether he violated this criminal act. And what I'm saying is diplomacy. I was saying he's trying to extort the president of Ukraine.

I'll give you $450 million worth of arms if you start an investigation against Hunter Biden and Joe Biden about charisma. And the Ukraine was like, hello, what? Sorry. It sounded like you're trying to extort me with with weapons that have been approved, you know, whatever. So this Juliet is all part of that. And there's some other related things you and I have talked about that are all sort of tied into this web of the Ukraine, including Igor Fruman, including others who want to just got sentenced to a year and a day in jail this past week, which is Igor Fruman related to this Ukraine conspiracy. There's another one that you and I have

talked about that hasn't yet been sentenced. In any event, a special master, you mentioned that earlier, what is that people are saying at home? That is when a judge usually has the obligation to do what's called an in-camera, it's a Latin term, in-camera review, to determine whether, for instance, privilege applies or not in documents that are going to be exchanged between the parties. That can happen in a civil case, that can happen in a criminal case. That can happen in a criminal case. So that in-camera review is either done by the judge themselves. They literally look at the documents making decisions about the privilege application of the privilege. Generally, in a civil case, the party is obligated to, who wants to preserve the privilege, is obligated to produce and prepare a privileged log, L-O-G,

which is what it sounds like. It's a spreadsheet that lists the document, the unique serial number that's been assigned to that document in the case, which you would call beats, B-A-T-E-S numbers, and the privilege that the privilege that's being asserted and the judge goes line by line, document by document, to determine the application of the privilege. That takes a lot of time, especially when you have

tens of thousands of pages of documents. So the judge can turn it over to, if you're in a, if you're a federal system, a federal magistrate, that is a non-article three judge we talked about earlier. But if it's, if the project is so voluminous, that even that would overwhelm the federal magistrate, then the judge could appoint a special master, which is a private lawyer who had a firm behind them who is hired for that particular task. And that is usually paid for, well, first it's paid for by the Department of Justice at some hourly rate or negotiated rate, but ultimately the Department of Justice will try to get it back from the person who's being prosecuted if they are successful in a, by way of a fine.

So this is probably costing, I'm not making this up, a million dollars or more to review all of these properly and to issue a report and a privilege log analysis back to the judge to make a decision. Who was hired to be the special master? You may be asking Ben, go ahead, ask me. Who would be the special master in this one, Popeye? Do you know who, do you know who former, pardon me, former Southern District, New York federal judge Barbara Jones is. Does that sound familiar? Sounds familiar now.

Do you know why? Tell me why, Popeye. She was the special master for the Michael Cohen case. So she reviewed all of Michael Cohen. She was hired by another judge. She's a former federal judge that now is a private lawyer of the big law firm. She gets hired for these things because she's got an impeccable set of credentials and a foreand being a former judge and all of that. And so she did the Michael Cohen review of all of his data and information for his particular prosecution,

and she just did it for Giuliani, resulting in 3,000 messages being turned over to the to the Southern District, New York office of the, you know, US attorney's office by, by former judge Jones and her team and a report back to the judge. Now let's not get too excited. I want to manage expectations from what the early reports are for people that have seen it is. There's very if any, communication between Trump and Giuliani. Trump is notorious for doing everything on the phone and not doing anything by text on purpose, so he wouldn't leave a paper trail. So I would be shocked if there's any Trump communications between Giuliani and Trump in any of this data that was collected because that's all going to be testimony of people that

have heard the phone call, that were on the phone call, the recordings that were made in the White House because everything that's actually done and conducted in the White House is supposed to be done through recorded lines, but it's probably not going to come from these texts. But what a fall from grace, just reiterating, the tremendous fall from grace for Rudy Giuliani. You mean not only is he involved with all these efforts to overturn a fair election and a seditious way, but here his own office is prosecuting him for violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Really a really sad come up for this person, all based on his own behavior. None of this is accidental. It's all based on his own decision making, usually for

greed and for profit to throw in and throw his lot in with President Trump. Absolutely, Propokin. Now, I've asked people to do psychological analysis of Giuliani. There's obviously a profit and money motive. A lot of people have told me he's also just someone who wanted to stay relevant. He threw his lot in with the fascist lot of Trump and others just so he could be in the action and got deeper and deeper and deeper into it. There's another kind of less psychological analysis.

There are a lot of people and sources I know who are very close to him. And it's a serious issue to talk about, but it's one that I've heard is that he also drinks very heavily and does a lot of the types of conduct that we see when he's inebriated. Yeah, I would be surprised by that. But you know what all this conversation about lawyers and clients reminds me of what it

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Don't let another day go by, try Smith, AI. Popak, great ad read. And as you were doing that ad read, it reminded me, I got a message from some members of the Midas Mighty. You know, after we do the podcast today, we actually have a Midas Mighty meetup in downtown Los Angeles, a number of members of the Midas Mighty on their own

organized a weekend in LA. So special shout out to Midas Jules, Midas Jerry, Midas Aaron, Midas Zo Beth, C Midas Smell, and Midas Lauren, A. Let me show you just some photos for those watching of the Midas mighty trip in Santa Monica. Putting it up there. Oh, pretty cool. Right. You know, this was from dinner last night wearing the Midas Touch gear with a welcome package. And it's one of the most humbling things to see on its own organically members of the Midas Mighty. And I encourage this to go and meet up, you know, safely, if everybody's vaxed and boosted, you know, to meet up and make this virtual community

into physical communities where people can take action, whether that's registering voters, whether it is going to school board meetings, whether it's to convincing family members and others either to register to vote or to explain to them what you learn on legal AF. But I encourage everyone listening, go do meetups like reach out to other members of the Midas mighty in your town in your city.

What a New York city meetup. How do we do that? How do you do it? We just put it out there into the world, Popo. We give the positive vibes and then it happens, but special shout out to all the Midas mighty. And after this, I'm going to go and meet up with Van Meta restaurant in a downtown Los Angeles called 10E, the number 10E. And so that'll be interesting and fun. So Popak, I want to talk about updates relating to

SB 8. We've kind of covered SB 8 for those who don't know is the bounty hunter law, which banned abortions after six weeks in Texas. It did this through a very unusual scheme that find those who facilitated abortions by finding them $10,000 or more. It moved the regulatory structure away from the state. So the state wasn't enforcing it because that would run a foul for now to Roe v. Wade. Of course, those legal affers who are listening know that the dobs versus Mississippi case, which threatens to overturn Roe v. Wade. Of course, those legal affers who are listening know that the dobs versus Mississippi case, which threatens to overturn Roe v. Wade. There probably be a decision. Sometime June or July oral arguments were last month in that issue and it does not look

good in terms of Roe v. Wade surviving. But given that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land currently, this SB 8 scheme was a way around it, so the state wasn't enforcing it and that you'd have to bring individual lawsuits under the constitutional abortion right against individuals who were actually suing for the $10,000 and because it was hard to find individuals who were actually suing the threat of $10,000 for all purposes prevented medical providers from providing abortions and abortion health care in the state of Texas and made it very difficult to enforce. So this went all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court basically allowed SBA to remain in place for now. They did say that you could bring certain discrete federal actions, potentially against licensing government entities, but not against other government entities. But the issue then the Supreme Court kicked it back to the fifth circuit court of appeals

because the underlying case was again in Texas, the fifth circuit court of appeals, which is in New Orleans, here's the cases that are from Texas. The fifth circuit is a very radical right extremist court like the current composition of the United States Supreme Court. And the fifth circuit said, well, we need to defer this issue to the Texas Supreme Court

about what rights exist with respect to those licensing agents, or whether they're even real proper parties to begin with. And so basically, this whole thing was a coordinated concerted effort to delay and prevent abortions from happening in Texas and delay a legitimate challenge to abortion care from happening while the dobs be Mississippi case is working its way in the Supreme Court, which is likely going to overturn Roe v. Wait, did I miss anything, Pope Acro, did I hit it at the park? No, no, this was all the conservative right- wing members of the Supreme Court and their 63 decision to kick this can as far down the road as possible. They must have gotten together

and said, how do we push this off until late June when we're likely to issue the ruling in Dobbs versus Mississippi as to whether a 15 week ban, which is lower than the 23 or 24 week ban for Roe v Wade, is constitutional or not. And we don't want to decide anything about a six week ban or anything else in the meantime. It's all lined up for Mississippi in pardon me, in late summer. And we know we're just celebrating this week, the 50th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, that's speaking of participatory democracy, and the Midas mighty, there was a march in Walt in Washington, a green-headed march on Washington related to Roe v Wade. So how do you do that? Well, then you make the people that are, the people that are in the groups that are

trying to overturn SB 8 and the six week ban in Texas, you make them jump over every procedural hurdle without being expedited that they can think of. And the monkey wrench that, that the fifth came up with is the one you said, let's kick it off to the Supreme Court to make an issue, to make a ruling on a legal, a sort of very, very nuanced, very who cares decision about whether medical licensing boards or the proper party here or not. That all could have been decided by Judge Pittman, who is the district judge sitting in Austin. And that's what the providers said, why are why are you going to do it? You know, we don't need to hear Texas Supreme Court. Let Judge Pittman do it. And then bounce it back to the US Supreme

Supreme on an expedited basis. The fifth said, no, no, no, let's kick it off for another three or four or six months and let it run its course through the Texas Supreme Court. So they went back to the US Supreme and said, please force the fifth to send it to judgment and take it away from the Texas Supreme and on a six to three decision and that the the set written by Sotomayor, a very, very passionate to set written by Sutt and Mayor, joined by Briar and joined by Kagan, the six to three, including Roberts this time, which is odd, said, no, we're going to let it keep its course, let it go through the Texas Supreme Court,

see everybody in late June, when we decide Dobbs or Mississippi, and Sutt and Mayor came out of the box and said that extending the deprivation of a fundamental federal constitutional right through procedural manipulation is ghastly, uncalled for and a front to women everywhere. So let me break that down. Popact just in plain term. Just a so to my arm was like, what are you doing? We have Roe v Wade. We know this is illegal. Cut the bullshit and just

issue an injunction and say, you can't enforce a law that we know is unconstitutional. Cut the shit. That's what he said. He said, at least send a, send a to pitman and let judge pitman make a record, a proper record that we could try to take back ultimately to the US Supreme Court. But look, the writing is on the wall. They're not going to do jack shit about abortion rights. As you've always said, Ben, and you've been right on this. And I was off. I was slightly right, but not as right as you. They're not doing shit about abortion rights until they make the decision in the summer. And that's going to be a huge maybe all abortion rights episode

of legal AF when that decision comes out. They're going to overturn Roe v. Wade. Like I want to be clear what they're going to do. Like, but Ben, what does that mean when you say overturn Roe v. Wade? Do you mean that the constitutional right to an abortion at every, at any period of time, any trimester is going to be outlawed or do you mean that it'll be reduced substantially to somewhere in the sixth to 15 week mark, down from the 23, 24 week mark. Here's when I have a great degree of confidence is what's

going to happen. I can't say I'm 100% sure, but reading the tea leaves of the oral argument. The Supreme Court is going to uphold the Mississippi ban on abortion, which is 15 weeks, which is the 15 week ban. Can't have an abortion after 15 weeks. And what the ruling I believe is going to say is that states like Mississippi are empowered to make their own analysis. and it will be up to the states to make those

determinations on a state-by-state basis. They will use this concept of the fetal heartbeat, which is a concept that was used in the six-week ban in Texas. There will be Dicta to that effect. I'm not sure that will be the binding precedent there in the Supreme Court. Dicta is just some other things that the court said that may not be binding precedent, but I think they'll refer to an example of the fetal heartbeat being a way to make the determination.

And so what will come out of that hearing, I'm sorry, what will come out of that ruling, what we'll come out of that ruling, is that it'll be a state-by-state issue, not to ban abortions generally, but it'll be a state's issue and states will enact what Mississippi's gonna do. What will then happen is Texas will take SBA'd off the books. Texas will say, we don't need SBA'd.

Why do they not want SBA'd to be on the books? Well, they now have the abortion ban from the Mississippi case, so they'll just institute an abortion ban. They don't need a circuitous kind of scheme like they have with SBA. They also don't want SBA on the books, because they don't want non-radical right extreme estates to use the S.B.H. structure for things like gun record, gun record regulation of military type weapons on the streets and by schools. That's where we are in this. Yeah. I think you're right. I think I think that's I think that is a very good sort of template for our future discussions. And all we're seeing

is that writ large by the Supreme Court's six right winged justices to delay, delay, delay every way they can until they get to the DOBS decision in general. Hope I can somewhat better news though. The attorney general in New York, Tish James is moving methodically on all of her actions against the Trump organization, particularly though the civil action. She filed a petition in court this past week. It was like 100 plus pages, 120, 160, 80, 60 petition to compel Trump, Don Jr.,

Ivanka, Trump family members to testify. We learn from those filings as well that Eric Trump and Alan Weiselberg and others invoke their fifth amendment rights hundreds of times, 500 times in connection with this pro, but she wants their under oath statements. And she put into this filing, and I think this is a headline to carry away that we have substantial evidence that the Trump organization engages in fraudulent conduct to inflate the valuations of their properties. I mean, she also has a parallel criminal investigation.

So the fact that she's saying that we have that in, well, she does, she does the man had the office. Remember, the AG's office is cooperating with the Manhattan DA's office in the across the street. Right. But don't fall into their trap that she's conducting a criminal investigation. She's cooperating with it as mainly, mainly civil and criminal does, but her office is not conducting a criminal investigation. They are, they are sharing information with the organization, the prosecutorial body that is, but she isn't because I don't want us to fall into the trap of, oh, look, even legal AF said she's conducting a criminal investigation, not that we would be quoted by her lawyers.

Although at the rate we're growing in our audience, we may be one day, be referenced in one of the things that we follow. But did you have more to comment on that before I broke that? What's going on there? Yeah. Yeah, this was a, this was an unprecedented filing by a New York Attorney General. I know you put it in context. This does not happen every day. The New York Attorney General, I've been doing this a long time while they'll do press releases. In this case, she tweeted her press release a couple of days ago, test James. They rarely do we get to see kind of inside a pending civil investigation. The way we have with this 160 page supplemental verified petition that was filed

with a New York State Supreme Court, which is the trial level court in New York. Why do I think she did it? Then let's talk about what's inside of it. Why do I think she did it? Then let's talk about what's inside of it. Why do I think she did it? She did it for a number of reasons. One, she did it to fire back. She's had it. She's had enough to fire back at Trump, you know, hiring some three-person law firm in New Jersey to go file some bullshit case in the Northern District of New York to try

to get her disqualified several weeks ago, people might be saying, what happened to that case? Nothing. And nothing's going to happen to that case. And New York Attorney General is not going to be disqualified because the target of the investigation thinks that she's being mean to him. That's not a standard, okay, or mean to the family. Well, she's mean to me, she gets to be removed. That's not how investigations work. And that's not how recusals work or just qualifications work. And this is, this is Tish James, you know, like in full fighting back in the media, in the press, reestablishing her credibility, it's the extent that it took a hit, which I don't think it did, reestablishing the power of her

office to say to the, and also to report to the American people who are wondering the way they're wondering what's the Jan 6th committee doing? This was Tish James saying in 160 pages that I have looked at and look at these numbers, Ben. I have looked at 930,930,000 pieces of evidence that have been supplied by subpoenas, by third parties and the Trump organization and their accountants and their lawyers. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. Remember that number, 930,000. We've had dozens and dozens and dozens of people come in here voluntarily to give testimony. And we've gotten major law firms. Morgan Lewis and Bocchius is named in the verified petition. That's a major American lawyer top 20 law firm who obviously represented the Trumps, maizeer and associates, which is an accounting

auditing firm for the Trumps. Deutsche Bank will get dragged in. She'll get as much from these third parties, like law firms, accounting firms, banks, lenders, counter parties, taxing authorities, as she will ever from the Trump organization. That's icing on the cake. And she's saying to the world

having spent a year reviewing with my team almost almost a million documents and testimony. We have reached some preliminary conclusions about financial fraud conducted at the highest level by Trump, Trump, his son, Eric, his son's Eric in Don Jr. and his daughter, Ivanka. And you'll see the breakdown. We'll post this tonight on one of our Twitters or both in the actual report. You'll see that it's lone fraud. He inflated assets either in order to obtain bank loans. He deflated the value of the assets in order

to avoid paying taxes. He lied about things, just like he lied about the size bend of the inaugural people that were on the lawn leading at the leading leading into his inauguration on the mall. He lied about stupid stuff, but that has real life consequences in terms of loan valuation. He said he lives in a 30,000 square foot apartment, double apartment in Trump Tower, about three blocks from me. It's not 30,000 square feet. It's 11,000, which by the way, it's gigantic, but it's 11,000. What? I mean, it's not like, you know, it lives, no, it's only a thousand square feet studio. No, it was 11,000 square feet anyway.

But what is the difference? The difference is not just this ego, which is also part of it. The difference is $200 million. The difference between a 30,000 square foot apartment in Manhattan on Central Park and Fifth Avenue and an 11,000 square foot is $200 million. He does this time and time again. How he values the brand of Trump, which is like a an ethereal amount of money based on how he feels when he wakes up in the morning, where he inflates his finances. She also pointed out in this filing, which I thought is, is, is, is going to get him,

is going to get Trump dead to rights, which is they have thousand, seven thousand pages of documents that have, that Trump is involved with signature emails, text messages. Do you know how many in the last 18 months, do you know how many documents the Trump organization and Trump have turned over to the New York Attorney General total? Three. Three. That's not a typo. Trump has turned over in 18 months and only in the last week, three documents. She has 7,000 that other parties have with his name on it that he participated in. So they're like, wait a minute, how do you only have three out of 7,000 pieces of paper that other people on the other side of the email, the other side of the text message, the

other side of the loan application have with you. He's got a problem and this judge is going to order the Donald J Trump, Trump Jr. And there's one more that they want. Sit for a deposition under oath based on the 160 pages. Did she need to file 160 pages and put out her entire case basically? No, but it was a shot across the bow and into the gut of the Trump organization that says, you think I'm playing? Go read my report. The public thinks I'm not doing my job. Go read my report. The right wing thinks I don't have anything. Go read my report and the volume of and the volume of information that I have. And by the way, the implicit part, which she never says out loud, the quiet

part that she never says out loud is everything I have, the federal, the, the, the, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, which is prosecuting the crimes related to all this, they have it too. Now, this is the part of the podcast that you've all been waiting for. We go over to for we go over to Tish James motion to compel to a victory in the Supreme Court for the January 6th committee to get those documents from the Trump White House that have been at the National Archives. That Trump did not want out there. But before we do that, I want to tell you about our partner, athletic greens. If you've been watching this podcast, you see I'm drinking athletic greens on this podcast,

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they really need in the simplest manner possible. That's essential nutrition. To make it easy, athletic greens is going to give you an immune supporting free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. If you visit now, athleticgreens.com slash legal AF today. Again, simply visit Athletic Greens ATH LETIC GR EENS.com slash legal AF L-E-G-A-L-A-F and take control of your health and give a G one a try. Popak, let's talk about the archives. The National Archives has the Trump White House records relating to January 6th. We know that Biden waived executive privilege

the claim with executive privilege. That Trump tried to assert with past presidents. This worked its way up to the Supreme Court. You know, the DC Circuit basically held, it's not even an executive privilege issue. So the issue over past versus current president, while the DC Circuit said, we think that a past president doesn't have the right to assert executive privilege.

The DC Circuit said these documents would not meet any test. These documents should be turned over forth with to the January 6th committee. This was appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump wanted an injunction. He said, stop it. I'm litigating this case. Do not turn these documents over now to the Jan 6th committee. And the Supreme Court in a 8 to one vote only Clarence Thomas de-cented. There was a statement by Justice Kavanaugh over the fact about narrowing it to this case and saying that he's not making a decision about whether past Presidents do or don't have executive privilege claims. This is just about the facts before him. But on an eight to one, only one descend Clarence Thomas, these documents are going to the Jansics Committee, baby.

The terrible week for Trump and an amazing and great week for the Midas mighty and legal AFRS. Trump loses the Supreme Court at the National Archives 700 documents immediately go to the JAN-6 committee. We're already hearing about what's in that amazing treasure trove of information. And this isn't the 700 pages, like when you and I are in civil cases, the other side gives me a data dump with like phone books, newspapers, kids report cards. This is the choices of material that Trump has been fighting tooth and nail to stop from being disclosed. That's one, two, we're going to talk, we're going to talk about Fanny Willis, the prosecutor in Fulton County in Atlanta, who is, who is convening or asking to convene a special grand jury against Trump for election interference on his phone call to the Secretary of State there. And Tiss James, we just talked about New York Attorney General issues 160 page report, outlining Trump and Trump organization fraud at the highest levels. Isn't this a great week for Midas Mighty?

Great week for the Midas Mighty. I think we should, so what's going to happen? These documents are going to go to Benny Thompson, the chair of the committee, Liz Cheney. Others on the John VI committee are going to get to see it. The documents are going to trickle in. As the last week, Benny Thompson said he hadn't gotten most of the documents, but they'll come. So he'll, he will get, they got the, they got the order of seizure for the voting equipment. And I think you guys talked about your brothers and you talked about it on your, on your other pod. So buried in the 700 pages besides Mark Meadows,

seven page or 10 page notes, call logs, speeches that Trump was going to give apparently when he was going to take over the country illegally. One of them was the order that they had written up in fashion to seize that, I mean, I just have a chill down my spine again, to seize voting machines as part of this bullshit ruse about, you know, basically what it would be the takeover of the country by a despot. You know, it reminds me, Ben, I don't know if you remember, there was a movie in the 1960s called Seven Days in May, which starred Bert Landcaster as an out of control

megalomaniacal general who decided that the president was too soft on so at the then Soviet Union. And right before the president was going to sign a peace treaty, this general got together with other seditionist members of the military and they were going to hatch a plot to actually take out the sitting president and replace him with this general. And of course, fortunately, patriots interceded and made sure that didn't happen. Anybody wants to, I thought it was fiction. When I was a kid, those kind of movies always like, I was like, holy shit. Thank God we don't live in a society like that.

We were this close to it with Jan 6th and those 700 pages are going to lead us to that conclusion. We talked about it. I mean, look, you talked about the, you know, that with kind of a military coup. You know, one of the things Trump did was he got rid of a number of leaders, you know, in the military, put in this guy, Cash Patel, who was made chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense. He had this radical right extremist patell actually calling

the shots, not deploying the national guard on time when there was an insurrection. And so that's actually what Trump was trying to do. But I guess one thing I want to drill down on too, that's just a bit on the periphery, but we should talk about it with our legal efforts though, is Clarence Thomas. So Clarence Thomas wanted an injunction, wanted none of these documents being turned over. In past Supreme Court's Clarence Thomas, he never spoke. He never really asked any questions. It's a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, one question in 25 years.

And now this is Clarence Thomas' time to shine for all intents. He won't shut up. Now he won't shut up. And so what we learned also, you know, one of the things that it's been written about, the New Yorker did a great article. And the article was called, is Ginny Thomas a threat to the Supreme Court for Virginia? Thomas Clarence Thomas', was one of the people who were cheerleading the insurrectionists and saying this is a beautiful day and saying the

insurrectionists were great people and words to that effect on Twitter. She had a lobbying, a small lobbying firm called like Liberty lobbying group that nobody's ever heard of in the past, but increasingly, what the issues that this group is facilitating and what they're helping with our issues that are before the court in terms of the second amendment, in terms of abortion healthcare rights,

and not only is, it'd be one thing, you know, if she's, you know, she's just the wife or the husband of a Supreme Court justice, but she's very vocal, she's very out there. In fact, with this New Yorker article talked about is, there's actually like a private group chat that goes on of justice, Clarence Thomas' law clerks is prior law clerks. Former law clerks, yeah. Former law clerks who are out there now as practicing attorneys

and have high level positions. And she's in there basically encouraging them to engage in litigation that would go before the court. Ultimately, these issues would be taking away a woman's right to choose. These would be putting military style weapons in schools. These would be issues that would probably take away your health care. But these are, she's acting as an official capacity, basically, in the chat room, stoking this up

on cases that are being heard before Justice Clarence Thomas, this is completely unethical. This is completely absurd that this is happening. But it shows you that elections have consequences and it's why we need to make sure that Biden gets a second term. We need to make sure that we vote and we elect Democrats

because what Mitch McConnell did with our judiciary, the machinations, the scheming to have this radical right extremist Supreme Court with people like Clarence Thomas, engaging in this conduct by proxy through his wife on these lists serves Serbs is absurd. So let's just use this quickly for people might be saying, and I've seen it on our, on our feeds to qualify, the qualify justice Thomas.

He should accuse himself. You know, there's a judicial code of conduct that applies to federal judges. Supreme court judges are federal judges, but there is no independent Supreme Court code of conduct or code of ethics, if you will. There relates to when a Supreme Court justice should or should not recuse himself. The difference between recusal and disqualification is the following.

Recusal is something that the judge does themselves when they recognize that either a rule has been violated of the judicial cannons or there's an appearance of impropriety that makes it improper for them to sit on the case. And that's usually the judge has to do the recusal themselves. Sometimes you'll see eight people of the Supreme Court hearing a case because the ninth member either may be represented that party in a prior life or maybe they're invested, they have investments in that particular company that's before them. Or maybe you'll see seven

people up there because two people recuse themselves. Disqualification is slightly a horse of a different color. You have to move to disqualify and you have to cite a canon of judicial conduct that's been violated. And then the judge has to make the ultimate decision whether they're going to be disqualified or not, having not recuse themselves. Just because a wife or a husband has outlandish and outrageous positions does not mean that that is visited upon the judge and the judge has to automatically recuse themselves because their spouse is out doing things that people find on savory. But here, Ginny, Thomas, and Clarence are getting closer to the line of appearance of impropriety,

because she is actually involved with organizations. She's on the board. She's on advisory committees. She's in listservs and chats with groups that are actively filing amicus briefs before the Supreme Court for which Clarence is not recusing himself or are going to be involved in the case or are funding the case in some way. Now, technically, there has not been a party that Ginny Thomas is a part of that has been a plaintiff or defendant in a case in front of the Supreme Court. So technically, he hasn't had to recuse himself, but we're really getting borderline here on the on the submission of Amicus briefs.

Now this is not the story. Look, you know, James Carvill has been married to Mary Matlin, you know, one of a left-winger and one or right-winger forever, including during the Clinton campaign. But this is different. This is, she is actively involved. And this is what your point is in lobbying on behalf indirectly or directly on behalf of matters that are in the Supreme Court's stocket or going to be. And you know, but everyone's like, well, in peach, it's not going to lead to the impeachment

of Clarence Thomas, much as manage expectations, but he should be recusing himself if he finds that there is an appearance of impropriety, because Amicus briefs are being submitted by organizations, funded and supported and on the, for which he's on the board of directors. So such a just bizarre popuck. I mean, to have this situation happening in the highest court of our land, but it's why the Supreme Court's popularity and approval rating is the lowest it's ever been, and it will get lower when the dobs versus Mississippi ruling comes out. I'm telling you, there will be protests across the country. And finally, popck turning to an update out of the Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis out in Georgia's

requesting a special grand jury to aid in her investigation of former President Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results by a letter sent to the honorable Christopher S.

Brasher, the Chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court, the district attorney, uh, Fannie Willis requested by letter that this special grand jury be empaneled under the court's supervision. One of the reasons she requested a special grand jury is because in her requests to speak with people in the Trump administration and others, guess what? They don't want to cooperate. So by impaneling a special grand jury under court supervision, that would give her subpoena power to start requesting with court enforcement mechanisms and individuals discuss.

Of course, this relates to Trump reaching out to Brad Raffensberger saying, find me 11,780 votes and other intimidation tactics by Lindsey Graham and others. This relates back to what we talked about at the beginning of the show, because Georgia is one of those states where the GQP extremists were having radical Republican legislatures prepare their own slate of electors that they were going to submit. And they were what they were trying to do was extort co-orce threatened Raffensberger and the governor to not certify the election results. So the fake electors could then be submitted and that Georgia could flip to Donald Trump despite that's not what the vote count was. Donald

Trump responded to this inquiry by repeating the big lie over and over again. What can be expected of the biggest liar in the history of mankind? But you know, it's why we need accountability because Trump's out there still talking all these lies and still talking this shit. And we need to hold this, this ridiculous monster accountable. I like Fannie Willis's prosecution a lot, as I said in the last podcast. She's the only prosecutor out there that has Trump dead to rights because he actually picked up the phone and made the phone call to Raffin's perger.

We got corrected again. It's with a P not a B Raffin's perger of the Secretary of State. He made the phone call in search of the 11,780 votes, extorted them, threatened them with criminal prosecution if they didn't agree to his plot. She's the only one that's got his fingerprints directly on a prosecution and what just briefly, because this is why legal lay efforts come here week after week for this inside knowledge. Special grand jury is different than a regular grand jury. Regular grand jury in Georgia, for instance, meets every two months and they do a lot of felony

drug cases and you just bring the prosecutors just come in at Serietim one at a time and they bring in their cases and then that jury, that grand jury disappears. And then another grand jury with new people is sitting in the box another month later, two months later. She's asked for one special grand jury of 16 to 23 people to sit and listen to her evidence in order to issue subpoenas and compel testimony in aid of her investigation because no one is cooperating with her voluntarily. She said, I've reached the limits of what I can do without compulsory, compelled testimony. Now, here's the interesting thing, Ben, you did, you may not have known and I didn't either. Here's the question I have for you. Special grand jury in Georgia can it indict or can't indict in their role? Can they can they issue an indictment?

You tell me, Popeye, they can't. So the special grand jury takes is actually an investigatory body only, taking compel subpoenas of all these people, including Raffin's perger, who is said he wants to be subpoena in order to give his testimony. At the end, when she gets all of her evidence together in a bundle, then she goes back to the regular grand jury, which meets every two months and presents all of her evidence in testimony there to have an indictment issued. So we're going to watch this closely, but things are beyond heating up against Trump and the criminal prosecution. And maybe even though it wasn't mentioned directly in the letter that was said to the judge, Lindsey Graham's got a problem,

too, about his is attempt to influence and interfere with the election in Georgia because we believe that that based on reporting that that is part of her investigation as well. Well, look at her letter, you know, uh, this should be attorney Fanny Wilson. This is what she says. These are very strong words. She received our office, Fulton County D.A. has received information indicating a reasonable probability that the state of Georgia's administration of elections in 2020, including the state's election of the president of the United States was subject to possible criminal disruption. Big words, strong words from a DA, Popeyes, as always, love spending these weekends with

you. Want to definitely plug Midas Touch Legal AFs Wednesday edition, Michael Popack and Karen Friedman Agnifalo, breakdown issues mid week in more detail and more depth focusing on less issues than we cover on the weekend additions of legal AF, but really drilling down on areas. And I thought 30 minutes, a simple 30 minute session,

but everybody check that out. Every Wednesday. I want to give a special thanks to all of our sponsors. I want to thank Masterworks. I want to thank Smith AI. I want to thank Athletic Greens. As always, support our sponsors. It helps us continue to do the shows. We appreciate everybody who's contributed to legal AF. Everyone said, here's my little tuition in the chat. So if you're able to contribute to legal AF, just click that dollar sign on the YouTube and you can contribute to legal AF, whatever you want to contribute. We appreciate that. And even if you can't do it, spread the word, you could always help us no matter what by subscribing to this podcast by leaving a five star review, the five star reviews, help this podcast grow in the algorithms that we appreciate you

so much. I'm going now to see the Midas mighty meet up out here in Los Angeles. We'll see you next time on Midas Touch Legal AF, Ben Myceles, Michael Popock signing off and saying a special shout out to the Midas Mighty. you