Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Biden/Garland & Jan 6th, SCOTUS & Vax, Trump Kids Going Down

Episode Date: January 9, 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: 1. Attorney General Garland’s & President Biden’s Take On the Insurrectionists and Trump. 2. SCOTUS’s Right Wing Super Majority’s view of Biden’s Vax Mandates. 3. Chief Justice Roberts’ “State of the Judiciary” Annual Report. 4. NYAG’s Investigation As it Turns its Sights on Ivanka and Don Jr., as Trump’s Counterpunch against NYAG stalls. 5. Cyber Ninjas facing $50,000 per day in court fines for the Arizona Fraud-it. 6. Cuomo Cleared of Two Sets of Criminal Charges. 7. The Sentencing of Ahmaud Arbery’s Killers. And much more. Support the Show! 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. Policy Genius -- Visit https://policygenius.com/legalaf right now and save up to 50% or more when you compare insurance quotes today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Midas Touch Legal AF. If it's Saturday, you know what it is. It is Legal AF. If it's Sunday, you also know what it is. It's Legal AF. And if it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, feel free to listen to Legal AF every single day of the week, but coming at you live on Saturday, Ben, my cellist and Michael Pope, Pope, Pope, wax and relax. I was going Pope, wax, Michael Pope, Pope, Pope, wax. Pope, how you doing? Michael, you have a good restful break. Happy New Year to everyone, by the way. I appreciate we had no, we had no break, but I did have a restful break.

Although I'm a little bit, I was a little bit saddened this morning with something that I read on the way over and prepping for today's today's podcast. What is that? I read that the winner of the US national figure skating women's competition was the oldest winner in 94 years. I was very proud of her. She was 25 years old. That was the oldest winner in 94 years. Ben, she's even younger than you. Hope, that made you wax poetic in an existential crisis while you were preparing for legal a F. I'd be I'd be double out of figure skating. If that was my chosen profession. Thank God you made me a podcast host.

Well, Po Pock, the podcast host, you know, I'm sure you heard I beat Jordi in a Peloton competition. Jordi claims I cheated. He's going to prepare some legal arguments for the Midas Touch podcast to explain how it is I cheated, but I did not cheat. Such as we set up and I reminded you because I've been doing palatine for a couple of years. It's not a paid sponsor. We just do it. We have a hashtag Midas mighty for those

on the leaderboard that want to look for a group. We're always LF, LFG. There's an LFG for palatine for Midas mighty. Let me just get ahead of Joradi's argument. The class we took was called the Latin Fiesta ride. And Jordi claims because he can speak Spanish that he was disadvantaged in the ride is going to be the question of his argument. Why? The instructor did the instructions in Spanish? Totally in Spanish.

But I think you could watch and see what's going on. You see the numbers. Anyway, that's going to be the crux of Jordoradi's legal argument on the Midas Touch brother podcast. But let's get into the real law. Let's talk about some real serious, you know, cases, serious issues, a lot to update for it. But I guess at the start of this podcast, I just want to make this one observation. Because in a few cases, we're going to be talking about the vaccine

mandate or testing requirement cases that have reached the Supreme Court and the oral arguments that took place this past week. Neil Gorsik, who was a Trump appointee, one of his arguments during oral argument was that COVID was no different than the flu. And I want to start that from the outset because I just want to break this down in normal human terms, how wild that is. We talk about all these cases. This is the Supreme Court.

This is the highest of the high. This is people who are supposed to be the most educated who come from the top law schools who did all the top work and who are supposed to be entrusted with all of the highest decision in our judiciary. And that was actually an argument that a Trump appointed justice made which from the outset, you know, we talk about all of these cases, but at the end of the day, this court system, though, is a human process as well, which is why elections matter and you need good judges who'd exercise common sense and who don't engage in that kind of political.

Well, let me weigh in on that and set the stage even more for our listeners. There were, there are nine members of the Supreme Court who sit on that bench and listen to oral argument this past Friday on the two vaccine mandate cases, one being the OSHA mandate on large employers, the other being a health and human services, Medicare, Medicaid mandate and healthcare services, Medicare, Medicaid, man, data, healthcare workers, nine justices, one of the justices who is an underlying health condition that she's announced. So to my or actually did it

from her chambers instead of from the bench because of the fear of Omicron and COVID. The other remaining eight justices that sat on that bench, guess how many of those eight justices during the oral argument about the scourge of Omicron and of COVID? Guess how many Ben wore masks? How many? Eight. Guess which justice did not wear a mask, the only holdout who did not wear a mask during oral argument. I'm going to have to guess it's Neil Gorsuch. It is your favorite justice, Neil Gorsuch. Usually since next is Sotomayor, Sotomayor wasn't there, I guess he figured he was far away

from the next justice, but they're sitting there. Oh, I left out something. Two of the lawyers arguing against the mandates from solicitor generals from two states had COVID and had to participate by phone because they had so two COVID infected solicitor generals from states had a phone in. One justice is sitting in chambers because of her fear of catching COVID. Eight of them are wearing masks and yet the oral argument went in the direction that you would argue

to talk about next, which is not good for federally mandated vaccine. Yeah, and a bit surprising. We'll get into that later. Meanwhile, you also have Clarence Thomas, another radical right wing judge whose wife, Ginny Thomas, she was, she was rallying on the insurrectionists. And she said, quote, God bless each of you standing up or praying during the insurrection. So that's a Supreme Court justices wife, radicals, Supreme Courters, but I digress, Popok,

let's talk about what's going on in the Jazein Maxwell case. A lot of people wanted to correct my pronunciation of her name. Mine too. Mine too. I think we're getting it right. As you know, on December 29th, December 2021, Maxwell was convicted by a jury in US federal court on five sex trafficking related counts carrying a potential sentence of up to 65 years in prison. But that verdict, that guilty verdict, Popak, is really in jeopardy right now. And what's happened was even before the sentencing, a juror, who after the juror is relieved from their juror duties, they're able to speak with the media. But it's just like when you're a prosecutor or when you win a high profile case, you're okay if they talk to you, but you don't want them giving interviews and putting the verdict in jeopardy. And so before these jurors are selected in the process called the Voidier, the jury selection, where the lawyers from both sides assess the biases of the jury. They want to make sure that it is a fair jury pool and they have the ability to disqualify jurors for cause.

And then they have a number of what's called preemptory challenges where they can disqualify jurors for cause. And then they have a number of what's called preemptory challenges where they can disqualify jurors without cause. The rules vary from federal and state court and sometimes based on local rules, but the idea of a for cause challenge, if someone can be a fair and impartial juror, is always something that's there. And on this particular juror questionnaire,

as would be the case in cases involving sex trafficking, they ask whether prospective jurors were victim of sexual assault, whether victims had experiences like this. And this specific juror had an experience, but check the box. No. And was picked to be on the jury. Apparently, that's also happened with the second juror. But what we now learn based on an interview from this juror that he gave to a British paper, I believe, the guardian, I'm in a second juror who gave an interview to the New York Times is that they were victims of sexual assault and they told the juror, based on their own experiences, what it was like to have faded

memories as a result of being sexual assault victims. And that it helped convince the jurors to get to the guilty verdict. Hope I, that's not okay. You're not allowed to do that. I think the Giselle Maxwell verdict is certainly, I'll put it at 90 plus percent is going to be declared a mistrial. It's going to be overturning. New trial is nothing to mistrial.

A new trial is going to be granted. The trial is already. Yeah, look, I'm not sure I'm out there at the 90 percent mark, but certainly this is juror misconduct at the highest level. Right. At the highest level, right at the highest level, that is grounds for a new trial motion to be filed and judge Nathan, Allison Nathan,

who we mentioned the last podcast, is waiting patiently to take her seat on the second circuit, court of appeals and get out of this trial, is not gonna get out anytime soon. She's set a date of January 19th, so we'll follow it to podcasts for now for the defense to file a motion for a new trial. And these are really proper grounds. So the first jerk pops out and it was sort of like, uh-oh, if you're the prosecution. And the prosecution, the US Attorney's Office, the US Attorney's Office for Manhattan

and the Southern District did the right thing. They brought it immediately to the judge's attention. They didn't wait for the defense to do it. And they said, we've got a juror who's given an interview who said that he was effective of sexual abuse. And that was not disclosed on the questionnaire. The second juror who gave an interview, not only he went further, or that person went further, and said, not only was I a victim of sexual abuse, but at a critical

moment in the jury deliberation, when they were questioning whether, as you mentioned, Ben, repressed memories, or faded memories of sexual abuse, you know, how hard it is to recover those memories. And there was an expert that was used by the prosecution to testify about repressed memory. So it took the stand, was able to be qualified as an expert on this unique scientific psychological issue. The juror said that he helped

convince other jurors on the issue of repressed memory. And if you recall, then the jury did ask as part of what they wanted to see more of in the jury room. They asked to see the specific testimony, the written transcribed testimony of that particular expert, which, you know, actually corroborates that this juror had an outsized impact in the jury room. Now, look, jurors are allowed to talk to each other in deliberation. You're allowed to talk about your personal experiences, but you're supposed to be evaluating the evidence and not sitting there

as a quote unquote alternate expert. Hey, I was sexually abused. I have repressed memories. Let me tell you how this works. That's not what you're supposed to be doing in the jury room. And I think that's why you're at that 90% or higher level for a possible, for a possible new trial. The other thing that really troubled me is that that same juror reported that that he went so fast through the questionnaire. He doesn't remember whether he didn't, he didn't disclose sexual abuse in his past because he doesn't remember being asked about it. Come on, that was front and center.

You know, the Vaudeer process, V-O-I-R-D-I-R-E for our legal AF law students out there, is that process of jury selection where it's in a federal court, it's a two part process. The judge has a questionnaire that's developed with both sides, prosecution and defense. They submit the questionnaire to the judge and the judge takes a red pen, usually edits out a lot of the questions and gets it down to the 20 or 30 things. And usually the federal judge asks the questions or gives the questionnaire in advance. He then allows, and in federal court,

it's more limited than in state court. He allows both sides to get a limited amount of wild deer, meaning individual prospective juror questioning. Where you go, juror number nine, juror number eight, you said in the questionnaire of this, has anybody thought about that? Does anybody have bad feelings about rich people? Does anybody have bad feelings about yachts and airplanes?

Do you think that the rich people, you know, the defense is gonna do their own thing, you know, do you have, because they want to suss out who might have predispositions against the prosecution or against the defense. And you do that. And plus, you're trying to build credibility and you're trying to present a bit of your case through the voidier process.

That state court, you almost can do an opening statement in voidier and really try to see how that's going to resonate and vibrate with the people that are sitting there as perspective jurors, federal court, you're more limited. But certainly on the questionnaire, there was a question about, were you the victim of sexual abuse? And then why does that matter? Because you and I, when we're picking juries and I picked 15 juries already in my career, you go up to the, after you're done with the questionnaire, you're done with the

Vwad near process and you're looking at a box of 40, 50, 60 jurors to get down to 11 or 12 or whatever the number is. You then go to the judge and each side gets what's called challenges, either challenges for cause or what's called preemptory challenges, which mean I can challenge for any reason, whatsoever. And let's say I got three challenges and they've got three challenges, then you just and it's like jur, you know, perspective juror number one who challenges and eventually you're able to pick a jury Certain ones get thrown off for cause and maybe sexual abuse would have been a four-cause challenge The judge would have done it on his own and each side would not have had a burn one of their challenges The problem is sometimes jurors, and this is your fear of Ben,

want to get into the jury. They lie or, or misspeak or intentionally don't answer the questions properly on the form because they want to be in a celebrity high profile jury, because they want to give an interview, they want to be paid and they want to write a book. And that's a problem. because they want to give an interview, they want to be paid and they want to write a book and that's a problem. Great. So we'll keep you posted on that, but it just goes to show you how even something you could

have this trial that lasted, how long was that trial? A month. A month. I mean, they deliberated for a week. You know, can be jeopardized based on that. There's a name for this popok that a lot of criminal defense lawyers are very fearful of, and it's called a stealth juror. You know, oftentimes people don't want to be on juries for a lot of reason, but there

are some people who genuinely want to be on it and want to be on it to make a name for themselves to write a book about a very high profile case after and to do interviews and to run to the media immediately after which this person did. And this seems like a classic example of a stealth juror, you know, and it shouldn't it's not a pejorative term. I mean, here it is a little bit, but here's someone who had a horrible experience in their life, who was out though to prove a point against anyone else. But the problem there is is that the mind couldn't be impartial. And then they ran to the media and jeopardized this whole very delicate legal system.

So Popok, just moving on briefly on the civil case, when it with Prince Andrews, one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims and an alleged victim of Prince Andrew. What's her name? I'm horrible. Virginia is Virginia Jeffrey or Joffrey. Right. Virginia Joffrey or Jeffrey will let the mightest mighty correct the last name pronunciations on Jeffrey or Joffrey. But she's brought a lawsuit against a presand. He's filed a motion to dismiss two major issues at the Threshold kind of stage. You know, one is jurisdictional. One is a settlement release. Virginia Jeffrey settled her case with Jeffrey Epstein, that document was unsealed as part of this Prince Andrews case. This week, she settled her case for half a million dollars, but part of her settlement deal

with Jeffrey Epstein was a release against Epstein and, quote, any other person or entity who could have been included as a potential defendant. That's very weird and unusual language. I think that's an invalid release about future people that aren't named. I agree with you, Popak. And so just to break down what Popak said there is, unless you're a signatory to the agreement, you really can't be releasing random people in the world who are not even subject and aware of that agreement. But that's one of the things that Prince Andrew's saying.

So I don't think that that will hold up and oral argument. It doesn't seem like that was going to hold up. And then there's this jurisdictional issue, Pope, if you want to touch on. Yeah. So last week, we've got Lewis Kaplan, a judge in the Southern District, New York federal court, who's handling the case related to judge Andrew to Prince Andrews or Andrews sorry and then Alan Dershowitz has another case and involving the same the same victim. Judge Kaplan has been moving this case along as a locomotive full steam ahead and is not letting Prince Andrews stop it for any and no speed bumps and no procedural delays. First thing that Prince Andrew tried to do is say, I don't want to have to provide any documents

or give any discovery, the exchange of information, pre-trial, or give a deposition while my motion to dismiss is pending. And sometimes in federal court, Ben, you and I have discussed in the past. Sometimes a motion to dismiss will stop. I've been in civil cases where the filing of a motion to dismiss alone stops the discovery process until the judge rules on the merits of the underlying complaint or pleading in the case. Judge said here, no, you're going to produce all your documents. I know that you've asked for documents from her as well.

And we're going to have full discovery while we go over and what's your grounds for motion to dismiss. And Prince Andrew said, oh, first of all, she lives in Australia on some, you know, you made a point of talking about that she lives in some nice house in Australia with her husband. And the judge was like, OK, she's got jurisdiction or personal jurisdiction.

And we have jurisdiction over you, Prince Andrew. I've already ruled on that. This case is going to stay in the United States. You're not going to get a dismiss, so she has to refile it in Australia, of all places. So that did go well for him. And, you know, they've already leaked out all sorts of defenses that you and I will follow. As we follow in parallel, the Jazein Maxwell case, you know, it is important. You tweeted last week, you and I had a little bit of a kerfuffle over somebody's tweet about why is it only Jazein Maxwell? That's that's going to be seeing justice. The only female in this all bunch. What about the, what about the men? Well, this is one of the men cases. One of the men hanged himself in prison.

That's Epstein. This is the one that's going to trial and Tertiewicz will go to trial. And, you know, you and I will report it. The Prince Andrews leaking out or it's come out in court proceedings, two defenses so far that you and I have to follow. One of them is he doesn't sweat apparently and therefore he couldn't possibly have sex with or break tour. I guess that's the proper term to use here, raped an underage girl. I don't see the connection between the two, but will the connection was is that she had claimed in her statements that he was sweating. He was perfused. He was a profusely sweaty person.

So that's why he said that. All right. Okay. I don't see that as being a defense. It isn't, but that's where it comes from. All right. And the second one, which is sort of related is, and this one is talking about bottom of the barrel, you know, I guess she claimed that she was sexually assaulted

on a certain date when she was a minor. And he went back to his records and they found out that on that particular date, he couldn't possibly have sexually assaulted her because he was at pizza express, which is like the Chuck E. Cheese of London with his Princess Beatrice, who's now in her 30s and marry, but at the time was a little girl. And he was at Chuck E. Cheese,

and he couldn't possibly have sexually assaulted her. I mean, talk about grasping its straws and Lewis Kaplan, the judge, is not buying any of this. And I think this case is going to trial. You know, really, really, really, really soon. And Prince Andrews got a lot of problems in that case against them rightly. So more law to discuss. But first this podcast is brought to you by our partner, athletic greens. I love athletic greens. The energy you are seeing here today, you know, where that comes from, it comes from the green athletic greens is just really incredible. It's a super food. The best way I describe the Pope, I can let you go on because you could

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Demitting charges for filing with the court with a reason you don't do this charges for filing with the court. Without a reason you don't do this. There's a usually filing DA who would do it. And you know, he filed these charges. Then he blamed the judge for accepting the charges and said, well, I just wanted to tell the judge about these charges and the judge just accepted the papers that happened to be a charge filing document.

And so the prosecutor was caught off guard. The victim was caught off guard, Cuomo, of course, was caught off guard. And we had talked about that in legal AF, that because of the very bizarre and peculiar politicization of it, this was really doing damage to the victim because this whole process was going to be called into dispute. And this week, the Albany County District Attorney's Office said Tuesday that it would be moving to dismiss a misdemeanor charge

of forceable touching against former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who was scheduled to appear in court on Friday. Quote, while we found the complainant in this case cooperative and credible, after review of all the available evidence, we concluded we cannot meet our burden at trial district attorney David source said in statement, quote, as such, we have notified the court that we are declining to prosecute this matter and requesting that the charges filed by the Albany County sheriff be dismissed. And they made that point very clear. Which the court has dismissed as of yesterday. And so what's going on there, Popeye? Did

I just say it? Is there anything going on on that? No, no, no, I'm going to link it together. This is a rare good week for Andrew Cuomo. If you want to call it that, right? Well, I mean, I, you know, it's, well, look, he's trying his rehabilitation plan. It, I don't think it's any coincidence that in the very same week as the, as the, as his team was able to get the Albany prosecutor to drop the charges for forceable touching brought by Brittany Camiso, even after finding her, as you said, to be very credible. They were that same team of lawyers and PR people, reputational, armed PR firms was able to convince the Manhattan district attorney, the new one, Alvin Bragg,

not only to find that there's no credible evidence to bring a criminal charge against Cuomo, for cooking the books on the nursing home deaths, COVID deaths during the COVID crisis, but actually get Alvin's office to issue a press release clearing Cuomo and saying that they've concluded that no law was broken, no criminal law was broken concerning Cuomo, and that he had not violated, you know, the elder abuse laws and other criminal laws. It's one thing to get the prosecutor to decline

or what you and I would call declination of prosecution. It's another thing to get that office to do an official press release. And I don't think it's any coincidence. I think Cuomo is not done with a political career. At least he doesn't want to admit that he is. And I think this is part of, you know, whereas, you know, Elliott, Elliott Spitzer sort of left the public stage

after his step down from governor over his, his issues and went into private, basically private industry and private practice. Cuomo wants a second. I believe wants a second act. And this is the start of it. his issues and went into private, basically private industry and private practice. Cuomo wants a second. I believe wants a second act. And this is the start of it. Let me clear my name with the forcible touching.

Let me get the nursing home thing out of the way. I'll keep fighting. But Tisha James about the all the other women who came forward and said they were sexually abused by me because in 2023 or 2024, I want to run for something else. Now, I don't know. What do you think about that? I think he does want to rehab himself. You know, it raises, it raises really complex debate that it's probably not the time to

debate on legal AF, but with all of the horrible conduct that Republican governors and politicians engage in on the daily and have kind of full and complete processes in place. The quomo, the information that came out about Cuomo was horrible, it was disturbing, you know, and the question though is, is, you know, was it criminal, you know, and if it was criminal, he should definitely go. And, you know, it's just also hard because he's a good governor in many respects. And, you know, Democrats, we hold ourselves at a higher standard at the end of the day. And when someone engages in conduct like this, you know, they have to go. But it just raises such complex feelings, Pope, because on the other side, there's zero accountability ever. On our side, there's, you know's so much accountability. And it just makes you think. We're very good at, we're very good at cannibalizing. One stray video 10 years ago for Al Franken

while he was still a comedian. And his political career is over. And look with the Republicans tolerate and celebrate for their leadership. Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gates are going to take people on a tour of the park to the Capitol, you know, to the walk of patriots in their view. I mean, I tweeted, you know, that's like the equivalent of OJ Simpson giving paid tours to the Bundy to the Bundy condo. They're cult leader, Donald Trump, at the end of the day, you know, has dozens and dozens and dozens of complaints for being a sexual offender that are all very credible. He said it on video tape, what the type of conduct and sexual molestation that he engages

in. The grab the P word. Remember that one? The grab. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you know, and that's where they hoist up as, as they're, as they're leader, but we can go on and on on this forever Pope, let's keep it back at the loss. Let's talk about the topic of the cyber ninjas. Everyone. Oh, this is your favorite. I'm going to be sad when cyber ninjas

personally sad off of this next segment when we're done talking about cyber ninjas. So the cyber ninjas have no experience in conducting any audits whatsoever on election audits. They're hired by the Arizona Republican control Senate to conduct an audit of was it just a Maricopa County? Yeah, it was just Maricopa County because Biden had won Maricopa County that hadn't happened in a significant time. There was all of the conspiracies about, you know, I mean the crazy ones about Venezuela, Ugo Chavez, bamboo from China was used to change the paper ballots, just all the sharpies, stolen ballots. So all the crazy conspiracies that was embraced by the Arizona Republican Senate. And the cyber ninjas who literally went in there with like certain, you know, infrared,

they showed up like inspector gadget with like infrared devices because that's how they were going to look through the bamboo. They had no clue what they were doing whatsoever. And so they took over like a convention center spot, but because they couldn't even go through the numbers, they had to get moved. And then they didn't complete it on time. And then they like took all of the, all of the voting machines and all of the information and like moved it to some facility in Montana in the woods where they were like secretly counting. At the end of the day, they allegedly found that Biden had one, but then they found in their

findings, like just all those bullshit that like talked about the bamboo and the Hugo Chavez and all. If this was a Netflix episode of a show, it'd be canceled on the first day. This is unbelievable. You couldn't believe that this is actually real in being blessed by the Republicans and encouraged, but not only encouraged the Republican controlled legislatures in other states, like in Pennsylvania and Florida, they looked at the cyber ninjas and are actively engaged in trying to bring groups like the cyber ninjas into those states to basically undermine and do the exact things the cyber ninjas did so the cyber nin made a public records request, the request, the

Cyber Ninjas didn't turn over any records. And these were records about all the illegal and lawful conduct that they were engaged in and all the lies that they were telling. And this Maricopa County Superior Court judge, John Hannah, said that he would impose a $50,000 fine. He increased it per day per day, but the newspapers asked for a $1,000 fine per day. And he said, no, no, no, this conduct is so egregious. 50,000 fine against the cyber ninjas every day. They don't turn over the documents.

But now the cyber ninjas have said we're bankrupt. We don't even exist. We're not a real company. We're a total sham. So how could we turn over documents? Because we're not a real company. Is there a defense? But they're going to get sanctioned, Popeyes. And it's going to be a huge multi-million dollar sanction number. But here's the heart of it. Are they going to turn over the records? Yes. Well, yes, because they their defense that the company is out of business is not going to fly. The judge is going to hold the principles, the owners and the managers, 13 employees that are listed on LinkedIn and on their website. The owners of it, you just can't

dissolve the company and just say, judge, you have no more jurisdiction over me. The judge now has jurisdiction over the people that were running the company, and they'll either pay up, turn over the documents, pay up, or ultimately be put in jail for director, indirect criminal contempt. I give a lot of credit to Maricopa County's elections office. If you go on their website, which I did before this podcast, they have a very good section called correcting the record and issued a report called correcting the record, which goes through the 80 false charges of cyberdenges from the sharpies. As you

said, to the counters, to the machines, to the abandoned ballots and all the other BS. And they found out those 80 claims and they go, they go methodically through each of them on the website. 22 of the claims by cyber ninjas was misleading. 41 were inaccurate and 13 were just out and out false. And they explain, they explain why. And look, who do you blame for this? Where do you lay it at the feet of? It's the Republican senators, state senators

from that state. They're the ones that brought in cyber ninjas to do this audit. And now you've now what's the result? You've got a state judge who's, who's penalizing them $50,000 a day for failure to turn over documents. And you have Maricopa County, the issues report that says it's all in joke. And this was the fairest and the freest and fairest election they've ever held. And that's it. And I think that will now end all of these attempts around the country. Look, 2020 is over. Now, where they're going to get their revenge, which you and the brothers have talked about at length, is in voter suppression laws that are being passed in 27 or 28 states, and gerrymandering

that's redistricting out Democrats from historic democratic strongholds or splitting them up. And that's where the ultimate revenge of the nerds, revenge of the Republicans is going to, is going to happen. And that's where we've got to motivate people to fight at state houses and in court houses. Important. But, you transitioned into a good point there, though, about 2020 is over on the anniversary, though, of Jan 6, 2021. We heard speeches one from Merrick Garland the day before, which you have stayed on Twitter was the greatest speech in the history of mankind. No, no, no, Joe Biden's. Joe Biden. So Merrick Garland, what do you think about Garland's speech the day before? Yeah, we, sorry. So, Eric Garland, what do you think about Garland speech the day before? Yeah, well, you, sorry, so we have two Spajan five.

I'm glad he did it on Jan five is exactly. I could have written Eric Garland speech for him before he gave it. All you got to do is go back to his day one speech when he became attorney general. And look at all of the underpinnings and all the tonality, the tone of the speech for Merrick Garland on Jan 5th is a year ago when he took office because everyone forgets that he is taking it over an office that was in tatters because of Bill Barr and Donald Trump using the Department of Justice as a place to go after his personal and political enemies. And the credibility and the authenticity of the Department of Justice was ruined. And so just as, you know,

a Carter follows a Nixon, a Reagan follows a Carter, an Obama follows a Bush, a Garland followed a bar and a Trump. And he's had a lot of repair. There's been a lot of breach and a lot of repair that he's had to do. And I know I take a lot of grief for this, not from you, but from others. That Marik Garland is the perfect guy for the job right now at this particular moment in time.

Why? Because he's an adult, because he can be trusted, because his investigations are done privately and in secret in order to balance civil liberties because people are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. He's not a leaker. His department is not leaking. I don't want a attorney general who's like Mario like Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo during COVID was giving a news press conference every day to give updates. I don't want updates on the investigation. I'll know when the

investigations are complete when he files indictments and he obtains indictments from grand juries and people are being prosecuted. In the meantime, let the department of justice do its job and and you and people should take away from his speech. The confidence to know that he, as he said on day one, will follow the facts wherever they lead at the highest levels and prosecute along the way. And that's all that you can ask for. This fevered, this fevered pitch of talking heads, Keith Oberman, who had another crazy rant where Mara Carlin must be immediately replaced. Joe Biden is feeding into this feeding frenzy over it. No, he shouldn't be. He's doing exactly the right thing. He's letting the Gen 6 committee and investigations and the 40 former prosecutors that are in the Gen 6 committee to their job

without having it seen as politicized while the, while the uh, Department of Justice does a parallel investigation of 700, and he's got 700 potential trials in the courthouse, the federal courthouse in, in the, in, uh, DC. What more do they want the Department of Justice to do at this particular time? And when he has credible evidence that Donald Trump should be prosecuted for obstruction or conspiracy or treason or sedition, I am sure that Maricar will be the first one to bring that indictment. Look, and under the Sixth Amendment

to defend in an criminal case is a right to a speedy trial. A violation of that means that any conviction and sentence could be wiped out. So one of the things you also want to avoid and when you file is, if you file and all of those 700 defendants basically, one of the trial and didn't agree to waive their right to a speedy trial, you would have to do 700 trials immediately. And you may lose the cases because you're not prepared and you're not ready.

To your point, the courthouse in DC is already overwhelmed by the 700 indictments and charges that have already been brought. And there's probably another three to four hundred that are going to be brought. So you have a thousand trials just to put this in perspective for our listeners and followers. You have a thousand trials. Each federal judge, I think there's about 30 of them in the DC and the DC courthouse, already has six or 700 cases. Criminal gets priority over civil.

And how are they getting, we're not setting up a special, you can't set up a special courthouse and a special court system to try a thousand people. How are you gonna shove, you know, a thousand pounds of manure through a 10 pound sack in the right to speedy trial time period? You just can't. And the other thing that I want to make clear about this in terms of, you know, indictments and what he's done or what he hasn't done, I think he's, I people might think that the pendulum is swung a little bit too much towards, you know, him being so sober and somber. And why is it he pounding the pounding the podium when he speaks?

That's not Merrick Garland. And I don't want it to be. He is the right person for the job right now. And the body of work, you know, his runway for prosecution is much longer than the Jan 6th committee. The Jan 6th committee is runway to get this thing off the ground is between now and the summer because midterms come right on top of that. That's the time that they have. That's why they're accelerating the pace of their investigation.

I don't know if you saw last week, Ben, they had not won not to, but three key witnesses give sworn statements on the same day at the same time to the Jan 6th committee. You had Melania Trump's press secretary. She's the one that said, I'm out of here on Jan 6th after watching Trump in his dining room. She's on the attack. I'm gone. She testified on the same day that Ali Adams testified. I mean, Alex, it's Ali Alexander, Ali Alexander testified, one

of the proud boy Oathkeeper types. And the same day that John Eastman testified, what more to the people want this, we're going to be getting in the first quarter of 2022. Major revelations coming out of the Gen 6 committee. And I'll leave it on this bed. You can say whatever you want about Merrick Garland, but he is completely depoliticized. Any attacks on his office that he's that he's that he's on a political witch hunt. Republicans can say whatever they want. The grief that Merrick Garland is taking is not by the Republicans. It's by the Democrats. The Republicans can't say, look, he's politicizing everything. He's doing the opposite. He's draining the politics out of this process, which is exactly what we need

at this moment in time. To that point, there's been a number of articles about whether a terrorism enhancement should or should not be added to some of these charges. At this point, it hasn't been added, although it's been discussed. And it seems that it's been used as a negotiating lever for plea discussion. And, you know, and, but no enhancement yet to that effect. Now, Popok on Biden, the greatest speech you've ever heard. And you think that it will be, what are you showing me? You're showing me a paper. I'm showing you the New York Times headline

the next day of this speech, which says, Biden condemns Trump as U.S. remember his capital riot accuses his predecessor of holding a dagger at the throat of democracy. Now, with that photo, okay. Now I made a tweet, which you took issue to, which said that Biden just made, and I did this right in real time as I was watching the speech, Biden just made a more powerful and compelling closing argument against Trump and the insurrectionists than even the Gen 6 committee will ever be able to do

when they, when they issue their final report. And I have a reason for saying that. It has a lot more to do with Biden and a turning point in his presidency than my undermining what I think the power of the Gen 6th Committee is going to be. But you go first, then I'll give you my point of view. I thought it was a great speech, a great speech. I don't agree with your tweet that it will be a better closing argument than the Jan 6th or that any prosecutor can make because he still spoke in very broad generalities

and we don't have all the information yet. And so while obviously the president of the United States speaking on the solemn day itself and directly criticizing and condemning his predecessor, his actions and making a very logical argument about how stupid the claims within the big lie actually are. I just think that the Jan 6th Committee, we've got some great lawyers on the committee, we've got some great orders on the committee, and I think that they will ultimately,

with all of the information that they have when that process completes, you know, on a bipartisan basis between Liz Cheney and Thompson and others, I just think that, I don't think that Biden's definitely will be better than that. That's all. All right, so here's my slightly different point.

30 years from now and 40 years from now, it's going to be Biden's speech that's considered to be what I consider to be the closing argument in persuasiveness. I'm not saying he's Jamie Raskin's equal as a constitutional scholar. I sat through as you did the impeachment hearings, powerful people, powerful congresspeople who stand up and walk through

the evidence of the video clips, that's going to happen. But there is no powerful, more powerful orator or bully pulpit than the president of the United States standing in front of two flags in a way that he's never done in the last year, saying two things that came out of that that will live on forever. One, this isn't just a former president. This is a defeated former president by seven million votes or more. And secondly, that phrase, the dagger at the throne of America, that's going to be remembered. I don't care how eloquent

Jamie Rasket is. He's a congressman, he's a congressperson and constitutional scholar on the Jan 6th committee. We're not, I barely remember the, and I watched it intently because of the show with you, the, the impeachment hearing and all the evidence. But when a president of the United States calls out a former president and basically calls him an insurrectionist, a seditionist, and a treasonist, I mean, it, my blood ran cold. I mean, I had to take a blanket. I mean, I would never in our history, even if you go back to the founding fathers who didn't really get along with each other, you know, Jefferson didn't call out Madison that way. He didn't call out

his patriotism. But when the president of United States says it looks in the camera and says the former president tried to do something in the first time in over 200 years, which was stop the peaceful transfer of power. I don't care what Jamie Raskin says. That's going to resonate in history. I think that was the point. And as in artful as it may have been in 120 characters that I was trying to get across in the tweet. Let's talk about policy genius. This podcast is brought to you by policy genius. Life insurance can give you peace of mind that if something happens to you, your loved ones would have a financial cushion to pay for things like rent and mortgage payments loans education costs and every day expenses having coverage through your job may not be enough. I don't know if you know this popok, but most people know need up to 10 times more to properly provide for their family.

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30 million people shop for insurance and placed get this $120 billion in coverage. So head to policygenius.com slash legal AF that's policy genius.com P O L I C Y G E and I U S dot So, yeah, so every every new year's Eve the chief justice issues sort of a state that we're going to be talking about. And so, yeah, I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to be talking about.

I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to be talking about. I think that's what I'm going to talk about Chief Justice Roberts. Yeah. So every New Year's Eve, the Chief Justice issues sort of a state of the federal judiciary, report and speech. And so Chief Justice Roberts did it on New Year's Eve. This year, we didn't have a chance to talk about the last podcast. So we held it over for this one. And, you know, you'd think with everything

that's going on, and all of the attacks on the Supreme Court, on its bias or lack of independence, it's the politicization, the politicization of the Supreme Court, the federal judiciary, and you and I talk about, this is a Trump appointee, this is a Biden appointee, and sometimes we can predict the outcome. Sometimes, although there's going to be an exception that you and I are going to talk about today when it comes to some of the sentencing, the Jan 6. But you think with everything that's going on and all the attacks on the credibility of the Supreme Court as a co-equal branch of government

and the Justice Department. He touched on some of that. You've got Biden instituting a commission to talk about whether we should expand the Supreme Court and the numbers of the Supreme Court. But that's not what Justice Roberts did. What Justice Roberts did is really two things. He wanted to talk only about two types of independence, what he called decisional independence, and the other one is called institutional independence. And he kept quoting a former famous chief justice of his, which was known as Big Bill, Big Bill Taft, William Taft,

who talked about the independence of the judiciary. And Robert's comments were all basically the following. We can handle our own independence. We don't need outside actors like Congress or the president to tell us how to run the judiciary. And he only focused on really two things that he thought was interesting for this year. One, he read the Wall Street Journal article

that reported about a month ago that judges that he thought was interesting for this year. One, he read the Wall Street Journal article that reported about a month ago that judges have not been disqualifying themselves in business cases when parties are in front of them, including big companies, where they hold stock positions. And isn't that a conflict of interest and what's going on with the conflict of interest rules? Because when you and I file a federal lawsuit

We're supposed to file an Interested party statement that gives an outline of all the public companies and private companies and subsidiaries and major shareholders and we thought you you and I thought we were doing that So if the judge the judge would look at it against their portfolio and investments and say, ooh, I shouldn't sit on this case. I own a major position in Apple, Google, down the blank. Apparently, that's not been going on

because the Wall Street Journal found that in 685 cases, 131 judges felt it was okay to preside over a case in which they held an economic interest in the form of stocker securities. And Robert said, ooh, that sounds bad. I don't like that. We should really enhance our conflict of interest clearing process. So he did that. And then, I guess he, a couple of Congress people talked about maybe some sexual harassment or discrimination

issues that are going on even in the federal court houses and he acknowledged that but said basically we can take care of ourselves, we don't need any help. So he completely ignored the, he made no reference to the Biden commission related to Supreme Court. And of course, he made no mention of the attack on shadow dot that use of the shadow docket, you know, the ultra conservative or right wing super majority on the court or any of the other attacks on the independence of the judiciary. What did you think then? kind of bipartisan votes on this judiciary transparency act or has a name to that effect. Passed the House of Representatives

with only four Republicans who voted against it, ten didn't vote, but an overwhelming support for that bill for judge is to disclose. And basically the point of Robert's was we got this under control. We don't want oversight from any other branches. Now, traditionally, this is about independence of the different branches. You know, the executive branch wants to always assert its rights and authority. Congress usually wants to assert its rights and authorities, except when you have an obsequious cult following Congress to a Donald Trump, or even previous Republican administrations

where this idea of a unitary president where Congress would give up a lot of their rights and their views and their importance. But the judiciary wants to flex its muscle as a co-equal branch under the Constitution, but you know the support for the judiciary nationwide is around 40% When Roe v Wade I believe unfortunately is going to be overturned or at least significantly diminished over this summer. I think it's a foregone conclusion

I think that approval rating is going to be even less. And what I expect is going to happen, what I expect is going to happen, Popeyes, is that there's going to be massive, massive protests across the country after the Dobs Mississippi case is ruled on. And, you know, whether the 15 week ban banning abortions after 15 weeks is upheld, which I think is a foregone conclusion, yes, or row is overturned. You're going to see a complete and utter erosion in the trust of the Supreme Court as an institution. So I don't think he did himself any favors with that speech. You know, I just think he knows where this is going.

He's saying what, you know, the Chief Justice's are supposed to say, but it's so incongruent to the time and to this moment. And let's be honest, it's not cheap Justice Roberts court anymore. While he may have the name chief in front of it and Popoq, that for people out there, the reason he's the chief justice, it wasn't like he was voted by other justice to be the chief. It was just when the prior chief justice, Request, passed away.

Did he pass away while he was on the bench? Yeah. The next judge who fills that vacancy becomes the chief and it just so happened to be Chief Justice Roberts, right? That's how he becomes the chief. Well, yeah, but the president knows who that position is going to be. So he's, the president is basically picking the chief justice. Oh, absolutely. But, you know, nonetheless, I mean, that's, he's picking someone with an eye turned to it, but that's how he became the chief justice. He filled the vacancy. Yeah, that spot was open. The chief justice spot was open. Right. So, Popak, let's go into though from that speech

to the oral argument, which is how can you take this Supreme Court seriously when we started at the top of the podcast, I said Neil Gorsik's argument during the Vax oral argument, whether the OSHA Vax mandate, which is a Vax mandate or testing, that's the wildest thing about it. Just saying if you have a company of 100 employees or more, either mandate that your employees be vaccinated or they need to test regularly. So you're not spreading fucking virus that's killed over 800,000 Americans

and for Gorsuch to compare that to the flu, which is deadly, but is, you know, kills about 30,000 a year. There's a big difference, 30 to 50,000. 10 times. 10 times. 10 times. To 800,000 people, you know, since COVID started. So that's the OSHA requirement.

And then you have the human services centers for Medicaid and Medicare, Medicare and Medicaid services within the US Department of Health and Human Services centers for Medicare and Medicaid services within the US Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which requires health care workers and hospitals and nursing homes, which participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs to make sure that their health workers, that health care workers are vaccinated. So that nurses and doctors and people who are treating patients aren't making

patients sicker. You're a heretic. And the most wild thing there is that these are Republican, the anti this is coming from Republicans. The the the the carrot and the stick here basically is, well, then we're just going to cut off our government aid to you. You could get an exemption if you're not receiving Medicare and Medicaid money. You're not in this, you know, but the moment you are taking government aid, the government saying, we want you to be safe, we want you to be healthy. And so both these issues made its way to the Supreme Court. Go listen to prior legal A.F.s and hear how it got to the Supreme Court, but it got to the Supreme Court. Popo, I was based on prior Supreme Court rulings in the area on state specific VACs requirements.

I was a little bit more bullish that the Supreme Court was going to uphold both. The OSHA employer mandate testing requirement and the US Department of Health Human Services centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. What appears based on what I was saying with Gorsik comparing it to, you know, saying that the flu is the same thing, not wearing a mask, saying the flu is the same thing as COVID. And other statements made by the radical right justice. Alito, how about Alito? Alito said that Unvaxed have made a decision about their own risk calculus, which he's allowing them to make under personal liberty. And since they've already made that decision, why are we imposing a risk on them of taking the vaccine? As if science has demonstrated that there is a legitimate risk to taking the vaccine.

I mean, that is amazing that people get the personal choice to remain unvaccinated during a worldwide pandemic that today hit 300 million worldwide victims of COVID. Absolutely. And so you get in those statements from the radical right extremist justices. There's five plus justice Robert, who's right wing, but I wouldn't call him radical right, but he's right wing. You know, when they're going to, in my opinion, strike down the OSHA requirement on employers, I do think based on the oral arguments,

they will uphold or allow the, I don't know. You think both will be struck down? I don't know, you think both will be struck down? I don't know. I look so to, to, to bring everybody up to speed quickly. This Supreme Court doesn't have a problem with states, state by state, imposing mandates. Let's just make that clear. They think that's something that's reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment. Their big problem is, that's why in the past, you and I have talked about them upholding Indiana University, a state, New York, a state, Massachusetts, a state when they have

done, they have done vaccine mandates in this patchwork quilt of 27 states say you should have mandatory vaccine and 20 states are against mandatory vaccine. They're okay with states making this choice state by state. What I underestimated was how much they were going to that probably shouldn't have. How much of they were going to be putting on federalism, arguing that where does it say, where has Congress given the right, and that's where you really have to start in this area, it's not the president, it's Congress, where has Congress legislated in the area of public vaccination for COVID and required it. We all agree, and this is Roberts now, we all agree that there is

nowhere in expressed congressional legislation that says that in this pandemic, mandatory vaccine will be required at a federal level for these circumstances. By the way, while we still have the Congress, they could pass such a law. It's almost like Supreme Court is itching for them to take the hot potato away and pass a law that can hopefully get through a Senate and Joe Manchin that mandates this very thing. Instead, the Biden administration has to rely on agency rulemaking to do what Congress has not

expressly done. And so now we're always in that world that Ben that you and I love to be in. And now our followers and legal a efforts love to be in, which is administrative rulemaking under the APA or the Administrative Procedure Act. And whether an individual agency, OSHA Medicare Medicaid have in their rulemaking the ability to issue rules for this particular COVID vaccine. OSHA robert threw up his hands and said, listen, it's a 50-year-old agency. I don't think they ever anticipated a vaccine, even though there is public vaccine that's mentioned, being part of their remit, being part of their jurisdiction. I know what he was the thing.

I think they did. I think what they didn't anticipate was fucking idiots. 60, 70 years later, who would want to inject COVID, you know, in their fucking veins. And then you see this New York Post article, like, you know, basically talking about this Unvaxed couple who died holding hands together and holding them up as a harder. Don't you call it a death call? We've always called it a death call, but people are like, oh, that's hyperbolic and, you know, you know, it is a death call, you know, speaking of which, it may be good to announce that you know, Popo that mightest media network is going to be doing a new podcast.

We're distributing on the network with Steven Hassan, a PhD. It's going to be called the influence continuum. Hassan, I call it, I said, Hassan, it's Steven Hassan. And so I want to plug that. That actually is going to launch on Monday. But we're going to have a lot of fun things to announce this year for might as mighty. But pop up that.

But the point I have the why I want to announce that though is just simply because we have to recognize this as a cult and the treatment and prescriptions that we have to give our cult prescriptions. But I think we'll follow with the Supreme Court. We expect to ruling it. It has a special question. They're going to rule. It's an arthick.

Yeah. Yeah. They're going to rule soon. I think they're going to rule soon. And I think they're going to find that on the OSHA side, which is the 100 employee-sized company mandate for taxing and vaccination mandate, they're going to find that OSHA needs to go back to the drawing board. They can't do emergency rulemaking. Even though there is a COVID crisis, they need to go back and do full public comment and industry comment and follow there, you know, year-long deliberative process to issue a rule while people die in the wake

of that year-long process. And they're going to get out by saying states can do whatever they want. But if you want the federal government to act, then Congress has to act. And they're, let's put the pressure back on, you know, on, on a Nancy Pelosi and on her counterpart in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, to try to get legislation passed to allow for mandatory federal vaccination. And then it'll be over. And then once and for all on the Medicare Medicaid side, it looks like Amy Coney okay with making federal healthcare workers be mandatory vaccinated because there's a link between the funding and the and the Medicare policies and procedures. And so you you're right, that might squeak by. But you know, look, this is another call to arms for the federal for

Congress. Get on the Voting Rights Act, and get on, if you really care about people dying, get on a mandatory vaccine law being passed. I think I read that one of the scientific studies that with employers having their employees requiring they vaccinated that about 6,500 lives would be saved as a result of those requirements. And just putting that in perspective, like, how is that not compelling evidence enough?

Like if you could save 6,500 lives with robust vaccine requirements or testing requirements and people are fighting that as though that's a personal liberty thing. It's just incredibly strange and odd time. Wait till one of the Supreme Court just kills over during an argument from COVID. Yeah and you know, and all these people who think they're like immune to it, like you hear all of these stories every day of these anti-vaxxers and all of these people who I believe there are legitimate exemptions. Okay, there are legitimate health exemptions could exist. There's potentially some legitimate religious exist.

But it's clear when these are being used and abused for agendas and overwhelmingly. That's what we're seeing happen and overwhelmingly. We're seeing happen and overwhelmingly, we're seeing people who are pioneering the anti-vaxx movement dying of COVID, but I digress. Popo, let's talk briefly about Trump's kids and the crosshairs of the New York attorney general. It became, it was released this week that in connection with Tish James's civil case and civil investigation into the Trump organization that she had subpoenaed, the Trump kids for depositions, they objected to the, they're allowed to object, you know, their

objections are on really stupid and baseless grounds, but how this became news is not that the subpoenas were just issued for the first time this week. That was kind of under the radar. It became news that that happened because the Trump kids were fighting the subpoenas. So tell us about that, Popeye. Yeah, and just to put it in perspective, there's three Trump kids, right?

Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric, Eric's the one on Saturday at live. They've made out to be the Frado or the not so smart one. He already testified. Just to remind everybody, Eric already went in to the New York Attorney General on her civil investigation, Latisha James's civil investigation. And why am I emphasizing civil so many times?

Because there are two parallel investigations going on, you and I have talked about at length and other podcasts, the New York Attorney General's office is doing the civil side of the investigation. The Manhattan District Attorney's office, once headed by Sy Vance, now headed by Alvin Bragg, is doing the criminal investigation. That's why when you and I announced the Trump organization was indicted, that Alan Weiselberg, the CFO, the chief financial officer for Donald Trump was indicted.

That came out of the Manhattan State Court, State System, Manhattan District Attorney's Office. The prosecutor for the, the, the, the, the borough of Manhattan. The state, again, state, not federal, the state attorney general, who is the highest law officer of the state of New York, may bring criminal proceedings, but it's not bringing criminal proceedings in this context. Her office is focused on civil fraud. She went after the Trump organization in the past.

She shut down the Trump charity and some of these other Trump academies for fraud. She's, her people are focused solely on civil fraud, particularly as if we believe the media reports, whether he was inflating artificially the value of his properties and assets in order to get loans and then partly deflating them

when he was needed to pay taxes on them. So the building is worth a lot when I need to borrow money on it and the building is worth a little when I need to pay my taxes. And that's a fraud. You're defrauding the taxing authority, you're defrauding the financial institutions, the banks, the lenders.

And so she's focused on that as part of her investigation, which has not led to any lawsuit yet being filed. There's been no civil case filed, New York Attorney General Versus. They're still in the investigatory stage. That's what people forget. So she hasn't really run to court for too many things, but she is able to get subpoenas issued from her office. And if you don't like the subpoena, and if you're the target of the subpoena, you can run into a court to quash or to suppress the subpoena or to have the subpoena not have any merit

or wait. That's where we are now in this battle with Don Jr. and Ivanka, while at the same time their father has run to federal court in the northern district of New York. We talked about this three podcasts ago to try to argue that Latisha James is so biased against him that all of her civil investigation should be ended. By the way, that case has gone nowhere fast. There hasn't been a hearing. There hasn't been an injunction. James served the complaint.

I don't even know that that case, which you and I called a press release, masquerading as a lawsuit was just done for shits and giggles by Trump. But that's daddy. The kids, one kid testified already. I guess Don Jr., in Ivanka, forgot that. And now they're saying they're making a very specific argument, then, which is that Latisha James is office, the New York Attorney General is really quasi criminal. And since they're asking me to provide documents in a subpoena, I have a fifth amendment privilege not to provide those documents because they

could be used against me. That's not quite how the privilege applies to documents. And secondly, I should be given immunity because if this was a criminal prosecution like the Manhattan DA, and I was called to testify before the grand jury, I would have to be given immunity under New York and other states' grand jury proceedings. So they're not giving me immunity, and I want to assert the fifth, but they haven't even moved to quash the subpoenas. This is another press release. They file the letter with the judge arguing that they should not be subject to the subpoena and they should be given immunity because, I don't know, their last name is Trump, not going to work. They're not going to be able to argue

that you can't have parallel and cooperating civil and criminal investigations as long as everybody stays in their lanes, as long as she doesn't try to bring criminal charges. And the New York age, she doesn't try to bring civil charges. It's okay. The two agencies state, federal to state, a city and a state cooperate together on parallel. And it doesn't, while it's interesting and novel, it doesn't give the target the right to argue. You don't get documents or testimony out of me because I have Fifth Amendment privilege. They are going to be compelled by a judge to testify under oath in front of the New York Attorney General investigators

and lawyers. If they want to put up the Fifth Amendment in response to civil questions, they can. If it's a proper assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege, then they will not have to give an answer to that question. If it's an improper assertion and a judge will ultimately rule on that, they will have to over that objection testify. So, and now the New York Attorney General just said, great, you don't want to be a third party target of a subpoena. I'm now making you a respondent, a party to the investigation. So now it's the New York Attorney General versus Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, instead of what it was before, which is her doing an investigation against the

Trump organization. And these were just interested bystanders. They now have bought themselves being a party to the, uh, announced party to the investigation. And they're going to be in due time a party to the criminal case as well. They are absolutely. Um, the question is when, um, we've previously discussed how, the Manhattan district attorney and their investigation, they impaneled the grand jury for another six month term at the end of last year. You expect an indictment within the next six months of the Trump organization, any of the kids or Donald Trump out of? Well, we remember there already is an indictment of the Trump organization and of Weisselberg. The question is whether Trump is going to be entited with the new grand jury and Alvin Bragg.

And you know, the longer this goes on, even though Alvin's only been an office for 10 days, the longer this goes on, you know, Alvin's going to have to review all of the evidence that was provided by the institutional investigators and prosecutors that stay in the office even after a side dance retired. And he's going to, you know, I'm sure he's having a presentation made to him.

Give me all of your evidence against Trump. What do you have so far that will meet the standard we talked earlier about prosecutorial discretion and whether they decline to bring a prosecution under the whether they feel they can meet their burden as the prosecutor beyond a reasonable doubt to bring forward a prosecution. They are a gatekeeper for for improper prosecutions and he's got to be convinced that there is enough evidence that's been developed against Trump in New York state related in Manhattan, related to the operations Trump organization to bring those particular charges. He hasn't yet, we're only 10 days into his tenure. Let's give him a little bit more time to answer your questions. I hope so. I don't have you and I and no one does as a full handle on the scope of the testimonial evidence and the documentary evidence that they have developed so far.

But they got a grand jury. It's been re-empaneled. They're meeting three days a week, eight hours a day, evidence is being presented. I assume there'll be other indictments of the Trump organization. And I know they're going to try to get them against the kids and and against Trump. It's going to be up to the grand jury and the presentation that's made to see if it comes out. In the next six months, I think we'll have a better handle and you and I will follow future indictment. So another big announcement to close out the mightest touch legal AAB show.

Popoq at the beginning, I said to you, before we start of the show, yeah, we'll save the announcement. But as you talk about side vans, sailing into his sunset, switching it over to Alvin Bragg as the Manhattan DA, it's probably worth mentioning that we have a big announcement to make on legal AF as well. We will be doing a second legal AF episode a week with Popak. Unfortunately, you're not going to be seeing Ben on that one. You'll still see Ben on the weekend legal AFs. But why the transition here feels so natural is that Manhattan district attorney side dances top deputy during all of this is none other than someone named Karen Ag Nifalo. And could you guess Popak who we have who's going to be co hosting the weekly episode? It's going

to be mid week airing on Wednesdays, not next week, but probably the week after that. We will of course be announcing the first episode with sufficient notice to all the legal efforts out there, but we will be Michael Popeye Karen Friedman Ag Nifalo K F A is what Karen goes by and K F A was side vanses number one side vanses right hand. So she will definitely have some interesting important perspective on all of the issues being discussed on legal. I'm looking forward to you and I and and and and and and egg Don and encouraged by the Midas mighty who talk about, you know, I don't know about tongue and cheek, but I think seriously, can't we do more than one legal a half a week? And you and I talked about it, I wish we had more time, you know,

you and I try to cover as many stories as possible. Six, eight, nine, 11 stories we'll do on our Saturday live. And the question is, can we do like a 60 minutes drill down of one or two stories, maybe with someone to interview and do that sort of mid week, like first cut or first watch for League of L.A.F. and we we we we think we found the right co-host for this in KFA and Karen and Shane I will be doing it and we'll we'll take stories that you and I develop from Saturday

and on the next Wednesday or new things that should show up that week and we'll just spend a deliberative time going through one or two things. And I think our followers and listeners will be thrilled by this development. OPAQ and KFA as we conclude today's legal AF justice served in the Ahmed Arbery murder trial, his killers and the individuals who killed Ahmed Arbery have been sentenced to life in prison, which is the right

outcome. Horrably horrific murder, we covered the trial against the murderers of Ahmed Arbery. That's how I should say it as well, not the trial of Ahmed Arbery, but the trial of the murderers who killed Ahmed Arbery and those individuals have been sentenced to life and prison anything else to add their Popeye? Yeah, I think a couple of things. The judge, we talked a lot about the written house case about the judge there and making a mockery to circus out of the proceedings.

Here, Judge Timothy Walsley, who I didn't know in the original coverage of it, is not actually a judge who sits in Brunswick County, Georgia, where the murders happened. He sits at another county because every judge in Brunswick County recused himself probably because of their relationship to Roddy Bryant used to work in the prosecutor's office, one of the defendants.

So it went to a whole different county and this judge has been acquitting himself in exemplary fashion throughout the trial. And at sentencing, I don't know if you caught this Ben, he did a purposeful one minute moment of silence. And he didn't say why, but he stopped talking for a full minute in a solemn pose. And at the end, he said, that one minute reflects one out of the five minutes that Ahmed Arbery was being chased for his life and the amount of horror and terror that he must have felt for a full five minutes, as these three defendants chased after him. I mean, that was a powerful moment in the sentencing.

And the result, and the result was that the family of Ahmed Arbery, who gave powerful victim impact statements before the sentencing themselves about what the murder of their son and their family member meant to them led literally in this in this case injustice being done. You have two gentlemen two that's the wrong word two defendants who are going to jail and will never see the light of day life without possibility of parole and Roddy Bryan who's being given a slim chance of parole when he's about 80 because of the circumstances behind him joining the other two in the, in the ultimate murder. But you had first time in a long time, you know, victims family that felt like justice had been

done. They walked out the chairs on the street in front of the courthouse where, where the protesters chanted that justice had been done. And it's an example first time in a long time where victims families felt like the justice system, especially in a formally racial south, had not let them down. A powerful moment for that judge. Powerful moment, just deserved and able to close the loop on our coverage of the trial of the murderers of Amen Arburet here on Midas Touch Legal AF.

We appreciate all you legal AFers as always. Thank you for listening to this edition of Midas Touch Legal AF. Here is how you can help Popok and and my cellist on legal a F, please leave a five star review and a written review if the podcast app that you use to listen to us allows you to do that. That helps us with the algorithms and allows us to keep on being one of the top ranked legal podcasts

in not just the United States but the world. So leave that five star review for Legal AF and try to give a written review of the podcast if possible. Covered a lot of law today. We'll see you next weekend on Midas Touch Legal AF. Ben Myceles, Michael Popo, wishing you a great rest of the weekend. Great week, and let's keep fighting together for democracy. See you next time and shout out to the Midas Mighty.