Legal AF by MeidasTouch - CORRUPT Judge GIVES SURPRISING HINT about Her Ruling

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

Has Florida federal Judge Aileen Cannon just signaled that she is about to rule against Trump on several of his motions to dismiss the Mar a Lago felony counts? And if so, why does she continue to use a secret shadow docket of her own much to the chagrin of Special Counsel Jack Smith? Michael Popok explains it all through the lens of her latest order. Get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to https://shopbeam.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF at checkout! Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Michael Popak with the Legal AF Hot Take. We're continuing to watch this cat and mouse game between Jack Smith, the special counsel, and Judge Aileen Catt in the Southern District of Florida, Judge, who is presiding over the Mar-a-Lago espionage and obstruction of justice case over 40 counts of felony counts against Donald Trump and his co-conspirators.

What am I talking about? Well, there, let's just say that they don't get along when it comes to how documents should be filed, when documents should be put on the public record, when classified and secret documents should be revealed to the public at all, and the fact that the judge has slow walked the case so that the motions to dismiss about the indictment that was filed over a year ago, the hearing on one of them or two of them is just happening on the 14th of March. I'm not making this up. And then when the judge set the hearing, and she set a hearing for March

14th to hear several of the motions to dismiss that Donald Trump has filed, he's filed about seven or eight of them. She's only given herself like two hours of time. I'm not making this up to read the final papers related to each of the motions filed by the parties. So in her docket, and the docket is a very strange place. It's almost like Aileen Keddon has an allergic reaction to managing her docket. Usually it's not this difficult, but for her,

she sort of created a side secret docket of her docket. Usually it's not this difficult, but for her, she sort of created a side secret docket of her own making because she requires now the parties to give her the motions and give the other side the motions before they're even docketed on the court. This is a judge who proclaims with great fanfare that she is a believer in the transparency related to criminal justice system in the public docket. Yet she has created an intranet, if you will,

where she's not allowing Jack Smith to file his motions on the public docket. Or on the other hand, she's forcing him to file confidential motions on the public docket, or on the other hand, she's forcing him to file confidential information on the public docket, which of course he cannot and will not do. But this little secret side show, send me the motion. You're not supposed to send the judge a motion

or what you're, you're supposed to just file it. Your communication with the judge, frankly, even in a case like this involving classified information procedures act, it's supposed to be through the public docket, redacted and sealed appropriately to protect confidential information, classified information, the names of confidential witnesses who participated in the grand jury process,

not keeping the information from the other side in order to hamper their defense, you're just keeping it from the public and the prying eyes until the appropriate time. So Judge Cannon not only has set up this sort of don't docket anything, send it to me first for me to approve, which creates an inordinate burden on the prosecution. And now the prosecution and the cat and mouse came back and just said, you know what, we're not going to wait around for Judge Cannon to look at what we've're not gonna wait around for Judge Cannon to look at what we've sent her to approve it for docking.

We'll just dock it. They had to fight over the judicial use of the jury questionnaire. And rather than go back and forth, they just, Jack Smith said, screw it, we'll just dock it the jury questionnaire. They didn't wanna dock it the jury questionnaire so the public could see it so that potential jurors couldn't game

the system, know what the questions were going to be in advance so they could come up with the right answers to get on the jury, right? Then you've got, you know, like a potential for a runaway jury. You got somebody who's actually trying to get onto a jury because they know the answers to the questions in advance. The test answers and questions have been posted by the professor. They don't want to do that, but because of the way Judge Cannon is forcing them to and Ches created this shadow secret docket they have to. And now we have a new order that I can't make heads or tails out of, and I've been practicing for a long time. She said, we're gonna hold the non-evidentiary hearing

in her order on certain motions to dismiss filed by Donald Trump, including this ridiculous one, arguing that the charges against him are based on a law so vague as applied to him that they should be dismissed. His argument is, well, I was president and I had some security clearance through the energy department.

I had a Q clearance, you know, that was a little shout out to his Q and on people. And in addition to that, the Presidential Records Act covers me in certain places and the top secret clearance covers me in certain places. And I may have mentally ripped off the classified and declassified documents. So somewhere in there in that little gray area,

it's very vague, it shouldn't be prosecuting me. I mean, that in front of any other seasoned judge and certainly the 11th circuit is not gonna prevail. But she's gonna hold an evidentiary here, Judge Cannon on the 14th of March. But the confusing thing is she's giving herself very little time to hear the full argument because she's forcing the reply papers just to go back over how you

fully brief a motion. The motion gets filed by the movement, this case Donald Trump on his motion to dismiss. There's an opposition paper that comes in the middle. That's in this case by the government, by the special counsel. Then there's a reply paper. That's by the movement. So Donald Trump again. Each one of these motions that are Smiths, they're all separated,

means there are three total briefs, two by Donald Trump and one by the government in the middle. She's just ordered that the reply papers by Donald Trump come in at 8 a.m. on the 14th of March, while the hearing is at 10am. So she's gonna do a final read an hour and a half or so over a cup of coffee before the one of the most momentous decisions she needs to make and what could be the trial of the century of a former Former president about espionage and obstruction of justice. She's given herself all of 120 minutes to make to get prepared

I and read the cases and understand the cases and be ready for questions for a full day of an entry hearing. I don't know if it's just crazy or if it's like crazy like a fox. I don't know if she's got an ulterior motive to help Donald Trump by making him file so late and she's gonna deny them anyway or she's just betting over backwards to do things procedurally and correctly in order to drag out the case so that there's no way on God's green earth it gets tried before the November election, which is looking more and more like the behavior. This is not the conduct of a judge who is who is efficiently trying to move this case

forward to its effective trial date before the election, even though she set a date so that nobody can take potshots at her. This indictment motions to dismiss should have been filed nine months ago, 10 months ago, just like they were in the DC election interference case. The motions to dismiss are about the indictment. The indictment was generated or issued by the grand jury a year ago. Motions to dismiss about what the indictment says, the four corners of that piece of paper should have been done back then, not on the eve of the trial, not leaving enough time for

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That's shopbeam.com slash legalaf and use legalaf the code when you check out for up to 40% off. These are not the motions that is Mr. Donald Trump wants to raise. He wants to raise, uh, presidential immunity. The problem is he's not the president of the United States when these things happened. He was already out of office. And so his, his attempts to use even what he sees as a favorable possible ruling by the Supreme court is severely limited. But what to make?

And we're going to put it up on the screen. What to make of this order, this strange order, this strange order which Aline Cannon said that I'm going to hold the hearings on the unconstitutional vagueness and the dismissal of counts one through 32. And I'm also going to talk about whether the Presidential Records Act somehow dismisses the indictment or provides Donald Trump with a defense, which was also raised by Walt Nauta. I don't know how Walt Nauta could raise the Presidential Records Act. Given the indictments, very intense allegations about Donald Trump's obstruction of justice, hiding boxes, hiding documents from the Department

of Justice, from federal judges, from magistrate judges, from subpoenas and search warrants from his own lawyers, and giving direction and using henchmen within the Mar-a-Lago and members of his staff to hide boxes and documents, instructing his lawyers to destroy evidence, to rip up incriminating material that's in the folders before they produce it to the government. I don't know how on God's green earth, alien Canada could think about, even think about dismissing anything. Maybe that's why she's only giving yourself 120 minutes to get the final briefing in, understand the case

and hold the oral argument. But I doubt it with everything, like everything down in Florida, where I practice regularly, this is a dumb founding. This is maddening. This is frustrating. And all we can do is bring it to you here and tell you what I think.

What I think is going on is that she is, at least for these particular motions to dismiss, she's inclined to deny them, so she's giving Trump very little time. But there are other motions to dismiss that go to the heart of the case that she's not yet scheduled. And why hasn't she? She's already said she's not going to try the case in May, take it off the docket. She says that July is too soon. She's, she's wondering if August is enough time and Donald Trump has said, let's do it in 2025. Well, we can all get back together after a presidential election.

So we need to follow all things that happen and try to be as transparent as possible in our analysis about Aileen County down in Florida. We do it on the Midas Touch Networks Legal AF, only on this YouTube channel. And then on our Wednesday and Saturday podcasts, we call, you guessed it, Legal AF at the intersection of law, politics, and justice. You like lawyers who know what they're talking about,

podcasts about law and politics, you've come to the right place. I'm Michael Popak, I co-anchor the show on Wednesdays and Saturdays, again, 8 p.m. Eastern time. And then we do hot takes like this one about every hour at the intersection of law, politics, and justice. And you can show your support by leaving a comment and a thumbs up. It really does help. It's not ego. I mean, let's be frank. There's a fair amount of ego in what we do on legal layup in the Midas Touch Network.

We couldn't get in front of a camera and a laptop and a microphone and do this regularly if we didn't have a healthy sense of self. Let's just put it that way in confidence. However, we hopefully are doing it for good and for justice and for democracy. And the way you can contribute is easy, thumbs and fingers, comments and thumbs up. And the algorithmic gods read that and say, yeah, we like this show, it's a popular show, let's keep the show on the air.

And the whole big ecosystem just works because we are the network that you are helping to build. No outside investors, grass roots, the paraphrase Barack Obama, you are the change and the network you were looking for. And we appreciate you being here with us for the ride. So until my next hot take, until my next legal AF, this is Michael Popak reporting.