Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Criminal Cases Against Trump STEAMROLL Over His DESPERATE Efforts

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Defense attorney Michael Popok & former prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo are back with a new episode of the midweek edition of the Legal AF pod. On this episode, they debate: updates in the NY Civil Fraud case and Trump’s new witnesses and attacks on the Judge and his wife; developments in the Georgia criminal case against Trump, Chesebro cooperating with the Feds, and why the prosecutor is not interesting in cutting a deal with Trump, Giuliani or Meadows; developments in the DC election interference case as the court sorts out new Trump motions aimed at delaying the trial; and new developments in the under the radar criminal case against Trump, the Stormy Daniels hush money cover up and business record criminal fraud case, and so much more at the intersection of law, justice and politics. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Factor: Head to https://FACTORMEALS.com/legalaf50 and use code legalaf50 to get 50% off Highland Titles: Go to https://HighlandTitles.com and use the discount code LEGALAF to receive a generous 50% savings. AeroPress: Head to https://Aeropress.com/legalaf to save 20% at checkout! SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop NEW LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal AF with your anchors defense attorney Michael Pope-Buck and former prosecutor and defense attorney Karen Friedmanek Nifalo. Trying something new for a change, I'm going to spice up the intro a bit and keep it short and sweet so we can get right to the topics of the week. We're going to debate and analyze four top stories all that hit within the last few days or even last few hours. First, developments in the Georgia election interference case, including, can Chessbro get permission to leave Georgia to cooperate with the feds.

And Fawni Willis, making plea deal decisions about who else, Trump, Giuliani, and Meadows, if you follow closely, things that Karen Friedman-Ignifalo says, that won't come as a surprise to you. Two, we'll talk about developments in week eight of the New York civil fraud case. It's all about materiality and intent as Trump puts on another Deutsche Bank witness and tries to have the monitor, former federal judge Barbara Jones testify, presumably on his behalf, at the same time or a day later, that she just reported today that Donald Trump and his organization moved $40 million of cash out of the bank accounts without letting her the monitor know about it. Probably not a good thing to do when you're trying to call the person and put them up on the stand.

Three, Karen and I will talk about developments, the DC election interference case with Judge Chutkin, keeping this case on track for trial in March, as Trump files ad nauseam motion after motion to slow it down. And new disclosures have come out about a sort of related issue in Mar-a-Lago and the prosecution there, and which lawyer is now testifying against Donald Trump today. You need a scorecard to keep track of all Donald Trump's current former lawyers and whether they testify for the grand jury,

whether they're cooperating with the Department of Justice or not. And then lastly, we'll talk about developments returning to New York in the story being Daniels Hush Money cover up business record for out case by the Manhattan DA's office. Where else would we be with Karen Friedman Knifleau on the show that is still on the books to go to trial. We think in March of 2024, we'll get down to it all this and so much more on the midweek edition of the legal a AF podcast where we sit

and analyze at the intersection of law politics and justice so you don't have to. Karen, what are you doing today? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm good and I feel very confident. I feel confident when you're in that particular room of whatever room you're in. I like that room with those books and that bookcase. Thank you. I think you're happy. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because you and I just, we travel, we go, you know, we're doing things in different places, but we never miss our legal A.F. So we have to do it wherever we are.

So now I'm back in my normal place. So happy to do it. I'm happy to do it wherever we are. So now I'm back in my normal place. So I'm happy to do it. I'm glad to see you in your normal place and your normal place here on Wednesdays midweek on the show. Let's get right into it. Let's kick it off with something. I'll frame it, turn it right over to you. You said an aisle paraphrase.

It's never good, quoting. Three or four episodes ago. No way, Fawni Willis, right? Prosecutor to prosecutor, no way. She's gonna offer a plea deal to the following three people if I remember correctly. Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and I think you said Meadows. So if you're playing Karen Friedman,

Nifalo Bingo, okay, you can now yell out Bingo because that is the new reporting about Fawni Willis and who she is and who she is not more to the point, going to offer a plea deal to take it from there, Karen. Yeah, so look, this wasn't something that anybody who's a former prosecutor could make that same guess. So it wasn't that hard to kind of see that that's where they're going. And the reason is because when we, as prosecutors, we, they, whatever, when we are deciding who to make a deal with, you typically don't flip down. You flip up. And what that means is there's

a hierarchy when you are prosecuting a group of people typically, right? There's typically, like if you think of the mafia or a violent gang or any other criminal enterprise, which she is prosecuting under the theory of Rico, which has to do with criminal enterprises. There's a hierarchy and a structure. And you've got people at varying levels of culpability. And whoever the upper echelons, the top people are, the ones that you're really looking to potentially convict and hold responsible.

And in this particular case in Georgia, it really looks like those are the ones that are most culpable. And so I think that it makes sense that this is where we are and how we got here. I also think she could have drawn the line with some of the lawyers as well. I think Eastman and Chesbro, for example, could have been or could be on that list as well because they're the enablers, the architects, whatever you want to call them, of this entire scheme to defraud the voters of Georgia of their rightful elector or electors. And so I could see also them being on the list, but I think the reason she's deciding to get the lawyers out of the case,

which is what so far it seems like she has done, is to try to neutralize any advice of council defense and get them to cooperate, because Trump has signaled that that's gonna be one of his main defense that look. I was just relying on my lawyers. You know, my really smart lawyers, they came out and they told me that this was okay. And that's going to be one of the defenses, right?

I'm not a lawyer. How was I supposed to know? I rely on lawyers to tell me what to do. Just like he's just typical of what he's doing in his civil fraud case in New York, right? I relied on the accountants. Like he never wants to take responsibility for anything and always blames somebody else. And the way this all seems to come out. So the Guardian, a reporter, Hugo Lowell is the one who broke the story. He's somebody who is a pretty good,

I think, a really good reporter. And he broke the story that she's not making officers to trump meadows in Giuliani. And how did he figure it out? Or how did people figure this out other than just, it makes sense. And I think what I'm gleaning from the reporting is there was a report by John Eastman. There was a request by Johnny Eastman, there was a request from Johnny Eastman,

one of Trump's former lawyers who asked the judge, MacAfee, to do this kind of strange divide up the case between two groups, you know, let Trump go by himself and let everybody else go in two separate groups. And you know, this way Trump can go at some other future time. And he's busy running for office and he needs to do that. So it's not worry about him and worry about security from the Secret Service, et cetera.

And I want my trial to end before. I want it to be completed in 2024. I don't want it to go into 2025 the way Fannie Willis has suggested because she asked for an August of 2024 trial date and she said it'll go into 2024. So Eastman said, look, I don't want that. I want to go sooner. And the reason I think that's significant is Fannie Willis said to the judge when she said, you know, look, Judge, I want an August trial date, and anyone who has gotten an offer, I'm gonna give them a deadline of June 21st

to take this offer or not. Because think about anyone can plead guilty at any time in a criminal case, right? A defendant usually pleads not guilty, and then at some point they can decide to either plead guilty or go to trial. Every defendant has that right. But the whether or not to offer a plea or a deal or cooperation is 100% in the control of the prosecutor. The prosecutor decides by themselves 100% whether or not they're're gonna reduce the charge For nothing or for an exchange for something and what Fanny will is saying

Anyone who I've given a plea offered to you have until June 21st to accept it after that It's pleaded a charge or go to trial and she wants to know a who who are her witnesses going to be who she's going to trial. And she wants to know who her witness is going to be, who she's going to trial against with all the different, I think there's 14 people left. She's going to want or 15 people left right now. You know, she'd have, they'd have to at least probably have two trials, but she's going to try to will, will, will, when oh it down further. And she said, and what Eastman said was, look, let's make all those dates even sooner, right? Let's move all those dates forward even more, not June 21st, let's make it even shorter so that we can all go to trial, et cetera.

And I think that little kind of signal of him wanting to do this and moving the plea deadlines, different, et cetera, I think that's how we know who got offers and who didn't. Because look, there's probably some kind of joint defense discussion. The defense attorneys are talking amongst themselves and they're sure that they said, hey, did you get an offer? Did you get an offer? They're sharing that information about who got what?

It's looking like Meadows, Trump, and Giuliani's lawyers had to sit there silently and be like, oh, we didn't get an offer. And that's how I think this is coming out. That's again, this is, this is not, this is me gleaning and reading tea leaves. Looks just be clear. But I think just given everything that's going on there, I think that's where that is coming from. And just one more thing before I turn it over to you, I still find Meadows to be the biggest headscratcher of all, because I don't understand how he can both be at the same time, somebody who so seriously responsible that he's not even going to get a plea offer and it's pleaded the charge,

and we're going to trial against in Georgia. And he's not even an unindicted co-conspirator in Jack Smith's case. It's just to me, like, if you would think that Jack Smith would view him as seriously or as important, or as, you know, he's at least an unindicted co-conspirator because it doesn't look like he's cooperating. So, I don't know, I'm still the head scratcher for me,

but that's my reading the tea leaves of everything that's that's kind of going on in Georgia. With meadows, I agree with you with the mismatch. I think it's a timing issue. I think at the time they brought the entitement meadows, they still held out hope that meadows would cooperate even more that he was already cooperating to the limited immunity deal that looks like he had. And then they have decided for various reasons since then not to do what they did in Mar-a-Lago, which is to bring a superseding indictment, which may have captured, you know, pun intended, caught meadows, but because of things that you have actually said, we've said in past episodes of Legal AF, where they don't want to have anything on their side delaying the March date. They didn't want to they don't want to f with to paraphrase the title of our show. They don't want to f with the indictment while in Let Donald Trump just shoot at that

one and not kind of raise the issue. So I think it's more of a timing issue. And the reporting is that it's also a farulty well-esignalling to everybody else who should like to get the settle. If you're waiting around and you think I'm going to settle out this case and plea out this case at the top and you're going to wait till the very end, don't do that because I'm not going to plead this case out. I'm going to try this case in the summer against these three guys and whoever else is left. So you're running out of time, folks, on your flip up metaphor to come in and talk to me.

And then the other thing I'll hit here briefly is that Ken Chesbro speaking of attorneys that Fannie Willis has worked hard to kind of get out of the way and have them cooperate. Ken Chesbro, the architect of the fake electric scheme, or what I call one of the midwives giving birth to the scheme along with John Eastman, the constitutional half-scholar, is a convicted felon now because he put guilty to one felony count in Georgia, but it's fully cooperating. Interestingly, of all of the videos that were released to the media of the proffer, the cooperating testimony of Cindy Powell, Jenna Ellis and Chesbro.

The only one that didn't come out was Chesbro. So you gotta think, I mean, there was already bad stuff against Donald Trump and those and I know that Willie, Missed, sorry, Miss D. Hampton, the coffee county election supervisors lawyer is the one that admitted that he really leaked all of the video. He confessed. Uh, yeah. Right. Yeah. He, he, like, I got a, I got a confession of make your honor before

you move on to the next person on the zoom. I did it. Uh, we never could figure out why, but he didn't do it. We were like, God, there's bad stuff in there against Trump. Every one of them says something really bad against Donald Trump. I would think he want that released. But he didn't release Chessbro. So you got to think Chessbro has got to be really bad. And he now is asked for permission because he is a convicted felon that is subject to the court's control under conditions of release. And he's asked Judge McAfee to give him a hall pass to go visit other states and the feds. This isn't a class trip, everybody. He's not going to Washington,

he go to the Smithsonian or check out the new museum. He's going to talk to Jack Smith. He didn't say it in his papers and the judge was like, where do I sign? One line, granted. And now he's going on a whistle stop tour to Nevada, Arizona, to go talk to the attorney generals there about their fake electric investigations

and his role in it, dump an undeniable Trump all along the way and talk to the feds, talk to Jack Smith. We always said, and we said it certainly on the midweek edition, Karen, that the people that were cooperating with Fawni Willis are gonna have their ticket punch because they're gonna have to cooperate with Jack Smith for many, many reasons. They've already profored,

and they have a duty to tell the truth. And so the first one that looks like who needs to ask permission, because he's a felon, Sydney Powell played guilty to a misdemeanor. Jen Ellis was a misdemeanor too, right, Karen? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think the only felon is Chess, bro.

And yes, so he probably had the greater conditions that had to be modified in order to go do the probably no power went to Sidney Powell and too, probably no, we just we just don't know that. She's a little crazy for Jack Smith. I don't see him. I don't see Jack Smith putting her on maybe Jenna Ellis, but if you're Jack Smith, you want Ken Chesbro and Johnny Eastman to say to completely debunk this advice of council about Eastman. And he's not going to get Eastman because Eastman is still out there drinking the Kool-Aid. You know, like, I want to be tried. I don't have secret service.

I'm burning through my wife's retirement money. And can't you try me quickly? I mean, I'm only barely paraphrasing what he filed with the court in Georgia. So we'll continue to follow developments in Georgia as Tony Willis moves towards her August trial date and who's going to be on that dance card who's who she's going to be trying We know Donald Trump's going to be there, but who else is going to join Let's let's take a break from criminal and criminals And in the rest of our podcast will next talk about the developments in the New York civil-fraud case

including new Deutsche Bank witnesses that want to about how much they're excited they were to have Donald Trump either customer, they're willing to just give them money and a profess, I guess that's, they think that's supportive testimony for their defense. And also that we just learned today from the monitor that she had a go look in the bank statements to figure out the $40 million was missing

from the Trump organization, while they've been under a court appointed court ordered monitor. That's not a good thing. And then we'll turn to DC election interference and wrap it up with your old stomping grounds that Manhattan DA's office get ready, maybe, for the story of Daniel's Hush, many cover-up case. But first, one of my favorite points in the podcast, a word from our sponsors. Did you know that your temperature at night

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You get a legal right to a plot of land you can visit at any time and a luxury gift pack too. The gift is so good, they made it legal. Check it out at HylandTitles.com and use the discount code legal25 to get 25% off your order. Welcome back, lady Karen Freeman-ignit fellow. By the way, I was reading the comments during the commercials and there were people commenting on my books and some people were like it's not real, it's a background. It's real.

Go grab a book. It's real and some people were also commenting that oh they liked it better when I'm sitting in the corner versus I moved my I moved my chair and my desk to show everybody it's real and now I'm in the now we did it in the corner. Well, first of all, as a close friend of yours, nobody puts KFA in the corner. For those that don't, don't remember that movie. That's a great movie. Dirty legal AF.

I'll just leave it. Dirty. All right, let's get back to what's going on in the New York Civil Fraud case. Just everybody, I want to just, we do have new people that join. So, we don't like to be repetitive, right? We like to be episodic and a serial at the same time in terms of building on each week's legal episode, legal study teachings. And so, the judge did already rule twice.

Early on in the case, that's why there's a monitor in place that it was more likely than not that Donald Trump's organizations were committing persistent fraud, requiring that there be a monitor installed over them to keep an eye on all their books and records, finances and bank accounts and all that. Then later, just recently recently about seven weeks ago on summary judgment,

the judge found as to count one of the petition or the complaint by the New York Attorney General that it was more likely than not for ponderance of the evidence that Trump and all the Trump entities, financial entities, were committing persistent fraud, what we call a standalone persistent fraud claim under executive law 63-12. And for that, you don't have to prove materiality or even intent. You can accidentally commit persistent fraud in New York as a business that still gets shut down

with the New York Attorney General in combination with the judge. But in order to go one step further, improve the other five counts that are remaining, that's the difference between what the judge. But in order to go one step further and prove the other five counts that are remaining, that's the difference between what the judge already ruled and what's going on now. What's going on now is that the New York Attorney General has to prove both materiality, meaning it wasn't just a small, diminimists amount of money involved. It was something material to the decision- making of somebody or

counterparty or stakeholder or lender or insurance company or whatever, and that there was an intent to do it. At the end of the day, I'm not sure it all matters because he could do under the first count that he already found on some re-judgment probably what he's going to do under all these counts in terms of the complete total annihilation of the Trump organization and its assets. But we're along for the ride. And it's interesting. First part of the case went on for six weeks or so in the hands of the New York Attorney General, her team of valiant lawyers.

There's about 10 of them. They all took turns at putting on 25 witnesses, thousands and thousands of exhibits, pages of information, you know, incalculable amounts of data that judge and gore on and is principal luckler. We sit right next to him, have to sift through in order as a trial effect to render the decision. That's what we're watching. And now we're in Woot 8, and we heard just this week that Donald Trump's coming back. I'm going to come back for another who knows what, getting trouble again, find, be found and contempt again. Maybe we'll see Eric Trump come back.

But right now they're in that part of the case. They're plotting through bringing in bankers. The primary lender for Donald Trump during all these years was Deutsche Bank It isn't any longer that I want to touch him with a 10-foot pole But it was for a long long time and I'm talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars And so they've been putting on these bankers to say we love Donald Trump low-end kisses Oh, you know, we gave him the biggest toaster we could find when he opened his account. We loved him. And we would have done anything for him and lent him any money. Well, that, but that's the banker. The banker is not making the loan.

I got news for people who don't understand how banks work, like the witnesses that are, that's the point, not our audience. The banker is the front person. The loan gets made in the back by the loan committee and the underwriting committee Who have who have who set requirements? Something like requirements you can't just come and say I'm Donald Trump. Where's my money? Which is how they're making it sound you have to have net worth of a certain amount in this case $2.5 million You have to have

hundreds of millions of dollars of liquid assets and cash on hand. You have to really have those things, not just say it. And that's where we're watching this hand-to-hand combat between the New York Attorney General and these bankers, as the judges made clear in most circumstances, you don't need a victim. I don't need a victim. I just need materiality that they would not have lent or it was a material to their decision to make the lending what the statement of financial condition look like for the year 2014 through 2021, yes or no, that's the only issue he's really trying to get to the bottom of. So Cara, why don't you comment now on these parade of witnesses already that ended on

the before Thanksgiving and picked up now. And then why don't you touch on the what we learn about I did a hot take on it but touch on it here what we learned about the movement of $40 million of cash without without without permission but without reporting it to anybody. They did put on a couple of these bankers. And it's interesting because, look, we got reporting and live tweeting from the courtroom, but we don't have transcripts, right? Certainly I didn't see any transcripts. I read everything I could find on people who are there about questions that were asked of these witnesses.

And so one of the witnesses that Trump's defense team called was this Deutsche Bank private wealth employee Rosemary Rabblich. And she was talking about how in 2011 she was excited to go, they called it whale hunting, which I guess is seeking a business relationship with a high net worth individual. Ivanka was a liaison, Don Jr. was a liaison, and they were very excited about having the Trumps as a client wanted to meet the dad. At one point, she said in 2014, I think that the families in the top 10 revenue generating names of asset wealth management, et cetera, et cetera. It was great, except what I didn't read or hear or see is that Trump lawyers asking

her the ultimate question, basically, was it material? Did it matter? Did you rely on this? And you would think if you're calling them as a witness, you would know what they were gonna say, and you'd be calling them to say something like that. And so the fact that they didn't ask if they didn't, because I think if they did, and she said, no, it didn't matter, I'm sure we would have heard that

and read about it. But it's just, I found that kind of a glaring omission. But then at the same time, of course, the prosecutor, the prosecutor also didn't ask that question either. And again, if I was sitting there, I'd wonder, okay, it wasn't asked, that must mean the answer is yes, of course that would have mattered. And so I'm looking forward to reading more about it, maybe seeing the transcripts because I really think that if you're going to put these bankers on, as you just said, that's the ultimate question. You got to get to that ultimate question. And I think that the

government did a great job at showing her during cross-examination certain emails, right? Like, there was an email from one bank committee executive member that what you just said, how it's a committee that makes these decisions that basically said, you know, I support this transaction, but we need ironclad, full recourse under all circumstances. And, you know, this is sorry about that, but this is a requirement in private banking, which basically means we can seize your assets in the event of default. And, you know, so there are emails it seems to show that, right, that this did matter.

But it doesn't appear that anybody kind of asked that ultimate question. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And you know, you're a very experienced civil practitioner. So I'd love to hear you were thinking about that and why it wasn't done. But as a again, just a trial lawyer, if it was my witness that I'm putting on and he was the Trump witness, I know the answer to that, right? I think I'd want to find someone, they promised, right? They promised that they were going to put on witnesses to say that you're going to hear from bankers that said we would have done business no matter what, this didn't matter.

I mean, just because she loved him as a client, you know, at the time, I don't think that really matters to this ultimate question. So, so they haven't delivered what they promised they were going to deliver yet, because again, I fairly certain that that we would have heard about that if that was the case. And they also recalled Patrick Bernie from the Trump organization as well to the witness stand. So I look forward to hearing more about what he said. But so they make a lot of promises about what they're going to show. But so far, I don't think I think they have failed to deliver that promise. And getting to the monitor, Barbara Jones, who's a former federal judge,

she actually, believe it or not, was the former, I met her when she was the chief assistant at the Manhattan D.A.'s office, which was a job that I had many years later. But when I was a young prosecutor in the 90s, she was the chief assistant at the Manhattan D.A.'s office, and then she left there and ultimately became a federal judge and then now's in private practice.

She's a very, very smart, very well respected, take no nonsense judge or former judge. And I wasn't surprised that they would have appointed her to this monitor position. But as a monitor, she has to periodically report to the court and what she did. What we saw today was that basically that Donald Trump or that the Trump organization failed to report about $40 million worth of transactions. And they're required to report up to, I think it's $5 million, any transaction that's $5 million

or more. And frankly, it's just very interesting that she says, oh, they failed to report and report or putting in heightened controls now but that the whole thing the way she said it was was very much kind of gives them the benefit of the doubt as if it was a mistake I don't know I I don't think the the Trump individuals are very smart but there are no dummies they're scheming these are scheming individuals who this was not an oversight in my opinion. And you know, some of the money went it looks like went into escrow for E. Jean Carroll, which is great. I hope she gets her money too.

So, so I thought that's what I thought was sort of interesting. And this and meanwhile, don't forget Popoq. They wanted to call Barbara Jones to the stand to talk about how great they're doing. So, I think that's interesting. The judge denied it. The judge said, no, you're not going to call her to the stand. But what was she going to say? No, they're not great.

We found $40 million of unaccounted transferred money that's unaccounted for. So, I don't know why they wanted to call her, given that. Well, let me see what I can comment on there. That makes it, makes an interesting point because you covered a lot. The Barbara Jones, they hoped would, and I talked to legal AF people about this having been involved in receivers, receivers of monitors before.

It's sort of weird not to call the receiver of the monitor even though the case isn't about receivership or what she's monitoring if they think that she's going to have some helpful testimony about the operation of the company inconsistent with the view that's been painted that it is a persistent fraudulent company. The problem with that is that she was only hired in 2022 and the case is about all the dates before that. So the most that she could ever say is, assuming this is true, the most she could ever say is, since she's been there, she hasn't observed anything that would rise the level of persistent fraud and she's been watching for it.

But that doesn't mean that in the 2014 or 2021 time period, about the statement of financial conditions and the assets, which is what this case is about. That's the fraud. The fraud is baked into the statement of financial conditions for Donald Trump that he signed and endorsed and participated in the rendering of that have inflated his assets to render him a triple billionaire instead of the single billionaire that he probably

was at any given time because he had to get over certain hurdles by the bank in order to borrow the money and and do all the rest. So, Barbara Jones, I don't think would have been very helpful, although I was slightly, only slightly surprised that Judge Angoran did allow her to be test, to allow her to testify, both finding that the request to have her testify by the Trump group was late, and that she was an arm or an officer of the court serving an independent role, and he wasn't going to allow her to take the stand, found it to be irrelevant. I think you had a good comment in one of our prep sessions about him drawing the line.

So it wouldn't be a slippery slope to them, trying to call the principal law clerk, right? To get on the stand. Didn't, wasn't that one of your comments? We were prepping. Maybe. Somebody made it. Somebody made it.

I'll take credit for something. Yeah, one of the leaders of legal law, if we were texting back and forth. That's what we do. What we see new information. Our producer just said salty said it. No, I don't. Maybe salty said it.

I bet salty said it. Did you say it? I'm looking at my chat. Okay, I think so. But you know, you've gotten such an education over the last two and a half years in legal law if you could have said it. So that, you know, he does what the principal law clerk being called on the stand. I mean, look, and we'll get to the DC election interference case there, but buried in a recent motion. I just did a hot take on it is a line in there that says, of course, this is from Trump, of course, senior department of justice leadership, Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general, Jack Smith,

will be witnesses in our case. In what case, Karen, in your 30 years, is the prosecutor, unless there's a prosecutorial abuse case, which therefore the indictment gets dismissed. Anyway, does the prosecutor, does the defense get the call, the prosecution to the stand? Yeah, so, well, no, I don't know. That's a good one. I've been called to do it. I had to do it.

Talk about it. That's the one here, tell me. So this is the thing, prosecutors, one of the number one rules of being a prosecutor is don't make yourself a witness because you don't want to be called to the stand. So, for example, if we would take a statement from somebody, you'd never do it alone. Even if it's recorded, you would always have someone there because you need to be able

to put someone on the stand other than you. And so you try not, and so like when even when you talk to witnesses, right? And if they change their story, like say you're talking to a witness and you get this whole, I always had a paralegal with me or somebody taking notes, because otherwise, if they change their story or they flip or something happens, I don't want to get myself off the case

and now have to be a witness. So it's rare and it doesn't happen often, but we definitely, it's something you have to be somewhat concerned about. I've even had to put a second scene on a case before during a trial so that in case I was called as a witness, I would, I would, you know, have to have to do that. But, you know, look, you also, it's complicated in front of a jury too, but it's possible. But I'm sure Jack Smith and Lisa Monaco, who are the best there is, frankly,

did not make themselves witnesses. I mean, it's kind of prosecution 101, you know. So I'm not worried that there's anything that they could be required to be testified and be called to the stand. I, and that's in that look at you know, you always have to read these different things and piece it all together here on legal a F. And so I think that could have been one of the reasons that Gora was like, no, you're not doing the monitor. You're not putting

Barbara Jones on pass, hard pass, what else you have in terms of witnesses today. And that's where watching in terms of answering your earlier question, why are they putting these people on? Or in the chat, I saw, why is Trump coming back? Why not? I mean, from a Trump perspective, he only got to testify in response to questions that were cooked up by, I must say, cooked,

cooked up by the attorney general, right? They were there crossing the nomination questions. Now he gets to answer softball after softball. We saw what happened the last time he got on the stand. There was a whole bunch of pontificating and soapbox and speechifying that had nothing to do with answering the question, which led the judge to say,

quite rightly, which now infamously, I'm not here to hear him talk, I'm here to hear him answer questions. So we'll just see another version of that because it'll suck the air out of the room and he'll win the new cycle that day and it'll raise another half a million dollars or whatever it is.

So that's the reason why for that. To answer another question in the chat, will they get penalized for the $40 million being transferred? No, because the looks like from the letter writing, which as Karen, you pointed out, is very diplomatic to say the least. Although I think there's a twist here, it says in her report on her letterhead, the judge, the former judge, that after she had figured out that 40 million had left the building,

who'd left the bank by looking at the bank statement, she pointed it out to the other sides of the drums. They came back and talked to her about it, told her that it was for putting up the, I think it's to put the into the court registry, the five and a half million dollars for the appeal bond for E. Jean Carroll. And then I didn't even know Donald Trump paid this much in taxes, but like 29. I saw that. Yeah.

39 million dollars in taxes. I was shocked by that number, but and she said you know, wrapped them on the knuckles like don't ever do that again. You know, it's $5 million and that and it's to be clear, she's a monitor. She's not an approver. She didn't have to approve the transactions. They could do whatever they want. They want to like blow the money on who knows what she'll just write it down. Dutifully, they blew 500,000. What's a monitor? Will you tell? That's it. Yeah.

The monitor is what it sounds like. She has to report the thought process is by having somebody stand over you, you will do less fraud. And she will, because she will be able to report it. So she's able to peer in transparently to all of the financial records in real time at any time, and be able to demand reports be made to her from the accounting system, accounting ledgers, and bank accounts, and then she's reconciling.

She got a whole team, it's not just Barbara Jones, believe me, that's a great gig of you and I could get it. She's billin' five million a month to the Trump organization for this modernership. I am sure, she's got 15, 20 people in paralegals work in this thing, reconciling bank statements against internal accounting. But all she's doing is reporting today, $3 million got spent to upkeep up a jet, a private

yacht to pay off, you know, Ivanka's student loans, whatever it is. So what's the heightened reporting that now she's... Okay. And this is where I think the twist comes in. So in it, because she's got to do her job too, that you can't act like it was no big deal. So it looks like they had a conversation on the Trump side and the monitor,

which the monitor, you reprimanded them and said, you better agree to something, because I gotta go to the judge with something. So they agreed, the Trump organization agreed to heightened monitoring without definition Which apparently I don't even know what it means and it's not defined in her report Which is where sorry? I got a noisy Wow, can people hear that streets of New York ladies and gentlemen real-time 8.42 p.m.

I would normally do a hot take I wait for for that to end but we gotta keep going. So in the, what's gonna happen is she's not a judge, she's a former judge. And so the judge, I think, is going to have to update his, amend his order to recognize, make a finding about this. And then he'll have to decide whether this enhanced pardon me, this enhanced monitoring that she's agreed to is sufficient or he's sufficiently pissed off that he's going to impose something else in terms of a sanction or a penalty. So I guess it's a long-winded way, a roundabout way to answer the question of the chat.

Could there be a penalty associated with the 40 million? It looks like the monitor doesn't think so, but the judge could in this judge and go on. I don't think he's gonna be happy that $40 million got moved without the monitor knowing about it, and she had a catch up in the act. So, I think we've covered that. Anything else you wanna add on the New York case that we'll move on to DCC?

No, not DCC. So, we're gonna talk in the remainder of the podcast about the DC election interference case and all the filings Donald Trump has made and the new rulings that Judge Chutkin has made. And even Thanksgiving was no holiday. Ben and I reported it on Saturday about all the filings related to the gag order, which we're still waiting for the three judge panel there to rule. Salty, we got a ruling in the gag order for tonight.

Okay. Thank you, Salty. Salty wrote, no. Thank you. And we'll also, we'll end it with returning to your old stomping grounds, the Manhattan DA's office, speaking of law and order. Karen, you'll tell people, you'll tell people why I'm saying that at the end. But we'll do all of that.

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of the recent rulings with Judge Chuckkin on the Jan 6th issue and some things that you thought were interesting in some of the new filings by Donald Trump, particularly. She got a chance to read the word about his attempts to expand the definition of the prosecution team for discovery purposes. I definitely read it, but I'm not sure I'm referring to. to expand the definition of the prosecution team for discovery purposes? I am, I definitely read it, but I'm not sure I'm referring to. That's all right. I did a hot take on that one. But just do the ones that you that you found to be really interesting about what Donald Trump's new positioning is, and then some rulings by Tonya Chutkin to keep the case on track for March. Yeah, look, there's a lot going on in the case and a lot of filings a lot of legal

filings decisions things that were waiting for and it's hard to keep track of actually uh... so thank thank god you'd do so many hot takes on so many issues that we can uh... keep up with them all and i'm trying to do more of them as well and uh... there you know there's been a couple of, there were two motions that the defendant made that are not related but similar.

And one of them was a motion to compel a subpoena. It's a rule 17 C subpoena for documents. And really what he's doing is he's looking for documents from the archives, from the clerk of the house, the committee, the house on the Jan 6th select committee, you know, the people who took over the select committee and certain individuals who are, you know, representatives, louder milk and Tontan, and Benny Thompson, of the house as well as other individuals,

including the General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security. And they want documents, right? And they're looking for all sorts of documents that are in addition to the discovery that they already got. And interestingly, a criminal defendant is able to subpoena records, right? And to subpoena documents. But it's very different in a criminal case versus a civil case.

You know, civil discovery and civil subpoena is very broad. In a criminal case, it has to be very narrow and targeted and specific, has to be relevant to your defense, it has to be admissible. And you have to be very specific what you're looking for. And this motion to compel discovery that he filed was essentially saying, look, the select committee, the JAN-6 committee, they compiled this huge archive of information. And there was a letter that, from representative Barry Lautermilk, who was the chair of the oversight committee, who said that the select committee didn't transfer all the records

to them, that they got certain things, but not all of them, that they claimed publicly that they accumulated four terabytes worth of materials, but the committee only received 2.5 terabytes. Therefore, there must be missing videos. There's also a letter, another letter saying that they loaned some records to the White House special counsel's office and the Department of Homeland Security as well. And so Trump saying, I want that too, right? I want all of this stuff. They're really just looking for information. And what he basically said was in his papers that Rule 17C allows the defense

to subpoena these documents. And as long as they are produced before they go to the court, and then the court gives them to the defense. And that's under US versus Nixon. And it's important for an accused to be able to secure evidence that might be favorable to them. And they have a right to this information and this is all relevant, right?

So think about what they're asking for. They're saying, we got this amount of information, but we know there's more out there, so we want it all to see what's there, right? And that's what they're looking for. However, the judge already denied this and basically said rule 17C, the federal rules of criminal procedure are, is not a disc, it's not for discovery, right? What this is instead is to expedite things before trial so you can inspect material ahead of time. It can't be a fishing expedition. And there's a limitation on the discovery that you can get.

And rule 17C requires a defendant to clear three hurdles. It has to be relevant, it has to be admissible, and you have to be specific. And essentially at the end of the day, what he was asking for is just way too broad. And saying there are missing materials that just doesn't cut it that's not enough and and you have to be more specific about what you're looking for. You have to at least make an effort to say I'm looking for documents that would tend to show something or that may say something specific because this is my defense and but he doesn't even make an effort to do this right. He's looking for say something specific because this is my defense.

But he doesn't even make an effort to do this, right? He's looking for videos that he wants to use for this. This is the one area, by the way, that I'm not sure I 100% agree with the judge. And that doesn't always happen to me because I typically agree with this judge. One of the things he was asking for was videos. Okay, and this one, this particular request is apparently Jack Smith transcribed any videos of any witness who's going to be testifying at trial. So we know that the JAN-6 committee took videos of many individuals, right, and the JAN-6 committee took videos of many individuals, right? And they played some of the videos,

some of the video, or snippets of the videos, and Jack Smith has all of those. And what they did was they transcribed them all and turned those over to Trump and the defense as part of discovery, because they're prior witness statements, which they have to do. And but Trump wants the actual videos themselves.

Tonya Chutkin, the judge, actually denied that and said, look, the videos which he wants to use for impeachment purposes, he already has those transcripts. And the defendant provides no basis for concluding that the video recordings contain any impeachment evidence, like things that go to credibility, because credibility is always important, and he has the transcripts. You can't merely seek to examine general categories of documents with the hope that they contain helpful information. The reason I'm not sure I agree with this is, what about the best? There's something called the best evidence rule in, um, in criminal law. You know, you're supposed to be able to, like transcripts aren't

as good as the videos that they show. The best evidence rule is like, what's admissible is originals, you know, not photocopies or it's like the best evidence of something, you know, the best version of something, the most original of it. And I just think that, look, yes, there are these written transcripts. But you don't see in a transcript demeanor and tone and expression, or if somebody's eyes are looking all over the place, they're not really wanting to answer a question. And those are all things that when you're looking at credibility that you would do.

I think Judge Chuck can kind of put a carrot out there for Trump and said, look, if this is something you want, you have to at least make an effort. You have to give some reason why you believe the recordings are better than the transcripts, and they don't even make an attempt. So I bet they amend it because I shouldn't be too hard to do. It should be fairly easy for them to say, look, the recordings obviously are better than a cold transcript and credibility is an issue. I just think they didn't spell it out. So I don't know, I think in that particular instance, I think they're going to get those videos of the witnesses who will be testifying. I don't know. So that, that, I found that motion and that decision. Again, I agreed with everything she said, but that one little thing, I think that I think they should get the videos and probably will eventually.

The next motion, you want to come in on that before I go to the next motion? No, I think you covered it well. So that, well, thank you, Popo. That by the way, I don't want our chat to explode. I was not being condescending. I agreed that I thought that Karen, my partner, covered it well. And I didn't think you were...

No, I don't think, no, you never do, and I never do. But people watching us, sometimes we talk in code, like, oh, Pop up, cut off Karen, Karen, Karen, cut off, pop up. Nobody's cutting off anybody. We're having a, having a cup of coffee, having a conversation, hopefully mildly interesting. And I was complimenting my partner on covering something I had, when I have nothing to add, no value added, I don't need to say anything. Well, thank you for the compliment, Popus. Anyway, so there's another motion that has not been decided. And this was a motion

basically to compel discovery. And so the difference between what I just said, which was a subpoena, that's a motion to compel subpoena to third parties, right, to the House of Representatives, Congress, the archives. Motion to compel discovery is a motion to compel Jack Smith to give more information to Trump. So that's kind of the difference. He wants more discovery from the special counsel. And the motion to compel discovery was couched in terms of there's Brady, Jigglyo, and Janks material. And people are saying, what is that? So Brady material is anything that tends to excalate or is favorable to, it tends to support the defense, right?

So that's what Brady materials, jiggly or jillio material, different people have pronounced it differently, and Jank's material is impeachment material. Anything that can be used, well, jillio is impeachment material, anything that can be used to impeach a witness. So it's not necessarily like prior, you know, things that excalate you or things that tend

to help your peace, some way, or help your defense, but something you could use to impeach a witness like the prosecutor, bought them, moved them to a new apartment and because of safety reasons, you could, they could make an argument that that's something that was to curry favor with the prosecution and anything like that. It's like anything that you can use to impeach a witness. And then Jank's material

is just discovery, it's just prior statements. It's things that you're entitled to. And so that's what they couched all this in terms of. And this motion was basically saying, we think there's all sorts of stuff out there. The indictment, Jack Smith in the indictment said that Donald Trump is responsible for the events of January 6, right? Okay, if you're going to hold him responsible for it, you have to then, and that's in the indictment, I want every single thing you have in your possession of witnesses who have said, he's not, right?

Anything that says otherwise, whether you credit or not, it's not up to you, prosecutor, to make a decision about whether someone's credible or whether it helps the defense or not. I want anything about that. I want to know about informants or under covers who may have infiltrated the group. You know, that's something that I would say is also impeachable or a Brady material. I didn't trust the election results, right? I

thought there was political bias in the decision making of government officials, so I want anything that that goes towards that. I mean he's really looking for a ton of information. And the other thing is is you know the he throws in Smith Jack Smith's face that he said in the indictment that whether Trump believe the election was stolen is Matter for trial, right? And he's and Trump's lawyers saying I agree with that I agree with Jack Smith when he says it's a matter for the trial Therefore I want everything that could show that I had a good faith basis for believing that I won

the I won the election and The reason that little section bothers me is, I don't think him thinking, he, or even having a good faith, he believed he won the election or that there was fraud in the election. That's not an element of any of the crimes, right? You know, I might believe that the bank owes me money, and that they don't want to give it to me.

I might have a good faith belief that it's mine. I can't go in there and steal it. I can't hold a gun up and go commit a bank robber because I have a good faith basis that they're holding my money. So I to me I don't think that's an element of the crime, but you know, the fact that they have said this now opens it up to because now they're going to litigate this issue at trial, it opens it up to now, Jack Smith is going to have to provide absolutely everything that is in his possession that helps Trump prove that he believed that he won the trial. And so this has not been ruled on yet. But again, that's the problem with a talking indictment. That's speaking indictment or talking indictment.

You're not just having a bare bones, elements of the crime with a few facts. They put lots of stuff in there. And again, that makes this an issue that is now relevant part of the indictment and the defense can say, I want things that go towards, you know, that you have in your possession that goes towards supporting my side. So, for example, the indictment says things like there's, and there was a national atmosphere, right? Or that, and the office's perceptions of public faith, you know, in the election. You know, that's in the indictment. So they're saying, so okay, great. We want everything that's out there on that. Or, you know, that there was foreign influence findings relating

to the 2016 election and the Trump issued an executive order instructing the director of national intelligence to assess this, right? I want all those reports. I want that because that will go towards my good faith belief that the election was stolen from me and that there was fraud. It's not for the prosecutor to decide whether or not any of these defenses have merit. They're putting it out there, that these are their defenses. It's clear that Donald Trump is going to relitigate

what he has relitigated already in the courts, that there was fraud in the election, that he believed it. And he's going to look for absolutely anything he can to prove that, or to show that, or to show that he had that belief in good faith. And therefore, he wasn't trying to do anything other than question it because look at all the stuff that's out there. So this I don't like this motion. It'll be interesting to see

how Jack Smith responds and what the judge ultimately says about it. So my two takeaways on the motions have been filed as there's two things missing. It was one thing missing and one thing horribly conflated by Donald Trump that I don't think we'll get past a ton of Chuck in the judge. First thing is, he doesn't carry his burden in any of these motions to demonstrate that any of this information exists. Just listing in emotion practice, all of the major agencies of our federal government and all of the lawyers who draw a paycheck from the federal government and suggest that maybe somewhere, if you let me in judge to their filing cabinet, electronic or real, I'll find

something that'll help me in the case. That, once the government has produced, but they have produced under any of these cases, somebody in the chat said, why do legal cases? Why does the law have such weird jargon? Because it's usually named after a case, and you don't have any ability to pick your case. If the case makes that precedent, that's the name, that's what we refer to that concept as. As I used to joke, and it's true. In Florida, the leading case on the issue

of personal jurisdiction over a person is called Venetian Salami, not kidding. So you got to stand up and court and say, well, John, the Venetian Salami standard, but when I first moved there, I was like, I have to say Venetian Salami, how loud that sounds ridiculous. But you're stuck with it, whatever the name it, that's why we, all the things that Karen referenced are all names of cases, you know, Brady, Jiggly-O, and all of that.

So, I don't think they've carried their burden. I think you've done a good job outlining the lack of connective tissue between the things that they say may exist and any argument that it really does exist. The other is this conflation. This is Donald Trump until he made his filings and three years later and got his third round of lawyers, has always argued that the big lie for him, the big lie, the fraud is, there was fraud in the election that was outcome determinative at the ballot box through software, through hardware, through stuffed ballot boxes, through dead people voting at the ballot box. That's the fraud, not outside influence, unless the outside influence by Iran, Iran, China, Venezuela, Russia, India, and the like, is causing votes to flip in

the box. The fact that there is, and has been for decades, attempts by foreign powers and foreign enemies of our state and state actors to try to put Americans at each other's throat and cause discord and make them vote a certain direction, manipulated through social media and disinformation campaigns. That's when going on, I mean, it's not a spoiler alert for anybody, I hope that's an audience here. That's been going on for 30 and 40 and 50 years, we do it in certain countries. So people who fall down the rabbit hole on social media or on the dark web who think that they're they're being influenced by a fellow American may well just be influenced by a

a Chinese spy or a Russian troll who wants Americans to hate each other and divide America because we are allegedly the only superpower maybe with China and the weaker we are the better it is for the rest of our enemies. And so that's election interference. That's interference by way of trying to get people influencing who they vote for. That's not the fraud. The fraud that Donald Trump used to bang on the heads of state, uh, secretaries of state in Georgia, election officials, elected officials, speakers of the house of various states and the battleground states, um, members of Congress was the election was stolen. Votes for Biden should have been for me. There was software in hardware and a thumb drive in Georgia that flipped votes and Chinese

bamboo ballots and all the other, you can just spend the entire podcast listening, listing all of the crazy Q and A theories. That was the fraud. Now you have this conflation in the middle of all their motions, which is we need to get to the bottom of Russian interference. By the way, we think there was Russian interference in 2016, or as I said, I'm myotic. He finally did it. He finally admitted to Putin, God of elected president.

That's different. He can go search for that needle in whatever haystack he wants, but that's not the case. That's not the indicted case, and that's not what's been brought against him. He wants to put on this new cap. He wears basically two capes. First Amendment, man, I can do and say anything as core political speech because I'm the leading candidate for president wrong. That's a complete misstatement. It turns First Amendment on its head. Secondly is I am foreign interference protector man. That's all I was doing.

I didn't want to stay in power any longer than I had to. I was just looking for foreign interference and influence by the Chinese and all those other people. And that's all I was doing. And then he thinks that that defeats men's ray or criminal mind or criminal intent because he didn't have a criminal mind. I didn't want to commit a crime. I want to solve a crime.

I was undercover in all the other craziness. It's all, it makes for great reporting like we're doing here and pages and pages and pages of filing that you and I have to go through. But fortunately Judge Chutkin as the gatekeeper, I believe, is going to sift through all of this and maybe grant a couple of things here and there. But she's not going to expand the prosecution team to include every prosecutor, the Department of Justice, wherever they may reside, who may have touched a file related to Gen 6th. Right? And he's trying to argue that the other interesting thing was trying to justice wherever they may reside who may have touched a file related to Gen 6th, right?

And he's trying to argue that the other interesting thing was trying to attack the prosecutors and arguing that they've taken inconsistent positions in the January 6th defendant cases and those words should be used against the prosecutors here. And there is a body of law that says prosecutors can't take inconsistent positions across multiple cases that are somehow related. But they never said Donald Trump wasn't responsible for his own criminal conduct in those cases. They just told the court and the judge and the jury's

and in sentencing, they just said, it's no excuse that these people thought they were following their fearless leader and their cult leader in storming the Capitol. They can't say, I was ordered to do it. I did what the guy said, and don't I get off for that? No, you don't get off for that.

But that's different than they, since they can't blame Donald Trump, Donald Trump is absolved of criminal conduct because of the position the prosecutors took in that case. It's almost a headscratcher, but it won't be for, fortunately, for Judge Chuck, you know, I think it's going to very quickly with like a giant, you know, just blade like just cut down all of these arguments, give him a couple of things here and there and say gentlemen, everybody ladies and gentlemen, we're going to trial the

march. You know, You got what you needed. I'm satisfied with the government's representation that they've satisfied there. They're Brady and Jiggly-O requirements and Janks requirements in providing you all the material that you need. She may find interesting and do an oral argument and we'll report on it. On a couple of them, the only one open for me is did the special counsel's office rely on investigatory material of other agencies, the federal government like Homeland Security, Postal Service, and things like that, Department of Defense, as

part of their indictment or their process and should you include them in the definition of prosecutorial team to require the matured of our documents that reside in those different departments offices and computer servers or not. That for me is interesting and I wanna see that debated and it will be and we'll report on it right here on legal AF

and on how it takes, Ben and I do during the week. Let's wrap up the show, Karen, with you leading a Manhattan DA. I'll just remind everybody, there is a case that got first filed. It was the first out of the box. The Manhattan DA's office broke the ice, broke the glass ceiling. They indicted Donald Trump for something. It just happened to be for something that people were like scratching their head like, that's the one he got indicted on. What was the story of me, Daniels? Hush money cover up business record fraud case, which is fine.

You know what? Everybody laughed and critiqued and criticized Alvin Brack. When you interviewed him, the Twitter version went crazy about him, but you know, he got He's got a lot of people who have been in the same position as the president of the state. He's got a lot of people who have been in the same position as the president of the state. He's got a lot of people who have been in the same position. He's got a lot of people who have been in the same position. He's got a lot of people who have been in the same position.

He's got a lot of people who have been in the same position. He's got a lot of people who have been in the same position. He's got a lot of people who have been in the same position. He's got a lot of people who have been in the same position. He's got a lot of people who have been in the New York Attorney General's civil fraud case be tried out. So I have nothing to say that's in that criticizes Alvin Bragg so far. But that case was on the books in March. We know there was a phone call between the staff and perhaps the judge, judge Chuck and

judge Rashan about trial dates because it was reported that there was by court staff and it's come up in the new proceedings. And it's still technically on the books to conflict with Judge Chukkin's trial in March. What are you, what do you know, Karen? What have you heard? What can you tell everybody about that? Then our colleague likes to call it the, not the zombie case, but the sleeper. It's the sleeper case that we don't talk about enough, but could be the one that helps bring down Donald Trump. What do you know? Tell our audience. So that case, I like to call it not the Stormy Daniels case, but it was the first election

interference case, right? This was him trying to suppress information from voters and trying to suppress information from voters and You know becoming involved in election fraud so But what's happening in that case is you know, there's a placeholder, right? The the judge moshan is not moving his trial date It's I think it's March 24th of 2024 and and some people will might say well How could that be if judge Chutkin is supposed to go March 2nd, I think, or March 4th, whatever it is, right? In the very beginning, the first week of March in 2024, that won't be done.

How could this case be scheduled? And what Judge Mershaw in the state court judge in the New York case is doing is saying, look, I'm no dummy. I know, because I'm a judge, that cases may or may not go all the time, right? It's some just because it's scheduled for that date, it might not go. Cases get pushed. So if that case gets pushed, my case is going. So he's keeping it there, but it could get pushed if judge

Shuttkins case does happen. And what what recently happened was the prosecutors at the Manhattan D.A.'s office, my old office, they filed their opposition to and response to Trump's omnibus motion. And New York State practice, the way we do it is a person gets arrested, they get a rand, and then the case gets adjourned for motion practice. And essentially what that is is it's put everything you want to say in emotion now. You know, they call it an omnibus motion, meaning it's everything you possibly want to do. You want to have statements suppressed and identification suppressed, evidence suppressed. You want, you know, arguments that whatever your arguments are, right, that you have as

a defense attorney, put it all in one omnibus motion and then the prosecution responds and then you have hearings as to some of the issues if they warrant them and then you go to trial and that's kind of how it, how it works. So, so Trump filed his omnibus motion and the prosecution filed a 99 page response and I thought it was extremely powerful and you know had many many I think I like six or seven sections and you know they really did a great job at calling out Trump where he was being disingenuous. Like in one particular place, they said, you know, look, Trump, they said Trump is being disingenuous about the effect of this case on his campaign, because he's saying, you

know, this case is like hurting him, his campaign, yet they pointed out his frequent public pronouncements that the indictment is actually strengthened his candidacy. And, you know, they also laid out, because one of the issues and one of the things that Trump argued was that the statute of limitations has passed. And there's a five-year statute of limitations in this case, but the case took, I think, six years and six-plus years to go forward. So how is it possible that that happened given the fact that, you know, it's not within the five years and they did a great job saying, look, you know,

yeah, the case was brought six years and 44 days from the time, from the last time, the last, the last entry in the false records. And so what the prosecution said was, look, we have to find at least 409 days that where the statute of limitations was paused or told is the word. And they spelled it out, they said, look, during that period of time,

there were two major tolling periods. One was COVID where Governor Cuomo filed an executive order pressing pause on all statute of limitations in New York. And so that was a 412-day pause. And also, guess what? Trump was president for more than 409 days. And because he couldn't be apprehended, why? Because he was continuously outside of the jurisdiction being president of the United States,

where he obviously can't get arrested and he was busy doing other things. And so for those reasons, you know, the statute, the five-year statute is told. And also, there's also a constitutional speedy trial, meaning you can't unreasonably delay for constitutional reasons. And they spelled out, we didn't have a single word, is told. And also there's also a constitutional speedy trial, meaning you can't unreasonably

delay for constitutional reasons. And they spelled out, we didn't unreasonably delay bringing this case. We only learned about it in 2018 after Cohen pled guilty, right? And don't forget the Southern District of New York, the federal prosecutors in New York prosecuted Michael Cohen for this. And then it was a very public plea. And the Manhattan DA's office routinely learns about cases in the news and opens up investigations. And that's what they did. And as soon as they opened up the investigation, and the feds found out about it,

they asked the DA's office to not to press pause and let them finish their investigation, which they did. And 10 months later, that's when the DA's office recommenced the investigation. And as part of the investigation, they were looking for tax and financial records and they subpoenaed measures, the accounting firm for Trump. But this litigation took time. It took, I think it was two years, almost two years

and didn't conclude until February of 2021, and the Manhattan De Azov has had to go to the Supreme Court twice and argue in the Supreme Court twice to get those records. I even went to one of those arguments actually and watched the argument in the Supreme Court, and they finally got the tax records. And right after that is when they brought the case that you just referenced, the 17 count conviction that happened, they brought that case, and then they brought this case. So there was no delay. And they were very clear about that. And they really did a good job. I thought spelling all of that out. The other kind of big picture issues that they spelled out that I thought was really interesting was that they basically said

there wasn't sufficient evidence before the grand jury and that they didn't have enough evidence and that the records don't count as an enterprise, which is one of the elements of the crime. But the major thing that they talked about, I think, was that falsification of a business record in New York is a misdemeanor, unless you're doing it to either commit or conceal a crime. And that's always been the rub in this case.

People have kept saying, what crime, what crime, what crime was either concealing or committing and to bump it to a felony. And, you know, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan D.A. was a little bit, didn't commit to what it was. He said, look, it could be this, it could be that, but we don't have to tell you, we don't have to commit, you don't even have to, the jury doesn't even have to agree. It's just like burglary in New York, which burglary is essentially a trespass, which is a crime,

going, entering, and remaining unlawfully somewhere. That's the elements of trespass, and that's a misdemeanor. What makes it a felony is with the intention of committing a crime therein. Your trespassing plus you have the intention of committing a crime. Most of the time, when you charge burglary as a prosecutor, you have no idea what crime that guy was going to commit because half the time they get caught in the act, right, before they got to even complete, hopefully, before they got to complete whatever horrible crime

they were going to commit in there. It could be anything, right? And so there's a case in New York people versus Mackie and it's a long standing precedent that you don't have to do that. And they were just saying, look, they don't have to do it here either. And that's what they've always said. But in this motion, and the thing that I thought in this motion that was so compelling is they kind of committed, right?

They actually spelled out the crimes in detail of what crimes the defendant intended to commit or conceal. And, you know, it's very common that you would put your strongest argument first, right? Like that's how you always say you call it primacy and recency, Pope-Pock. That's what you say. And that's a lawyer thing. And they're going to put their strongest argument first. And what crime did they pick? They leaned into the federal election crime. And the reason that's significant is for a long time

that people were debating. It doesn't count. A federal crime can't count as a bump up to a state crime. And rather than running away from it and saying, oh, it could be tax fraud that Michael Cohen was going to commit, you know, when they grossed up the wages or it could be something else, they leaned into it and they said, no, it's a federal offense.

That's the case, that's what they put first. They gave the argument for it. And then they said, you know, guess what? We looked through all our records, many, many, many other times. We have brought cases where a federal offenses the bump up. They, and they argued the law and they argued the statute and they basically hit a home run and leaned into it. And I loved that they did that. I thought that was the best part of their briefing, which was to say that the defendant does not identify one person who is alleged to have committed the crimes that are in the indictment that was not indicted by the office.

In other words, anybody that had that set a fact or anything close to it, it has been indicted. And so you don't have selected prosecution. And particularly they said that the people, which is the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, as prosecutors regularly prosecute first degree, falsifying business records, but you're so right about the leaning in. I always said, and you and you and Ben, and all three of us said, the bump up has to be the election fraud, that he did it for a reason. It wasn't covering it up because he didn't want Mulani to know about the affair. He was doing it because he didn't want the American people to know about the affair, right? He didn't want to be brought down the way, you know,

Bill Clinton almost lost his election when all these, the series of women came out from Paula Jones and the other, Jennifer Flowers and all the people during the campaign trail. People forget about all that. And he didn't want that to happen to him. And that's why he tasked Michael Cohen and Nala Weiselberg and the guy that ran the national inquirer, Mr. Pecker, Mr. Picard, to make a go away.

And that's the crime. And that's the rationale for it. Every judge that's taken a look at it, even Alvin Hellerstein, the federal judge who got to look at the case for a moment when he tried to remove it to federal court said, that's, yes, no, the crime is the election cover-up, or as you called it, election interference. So we have done a whirlwind tour in an update in all the different jurisdictions for civil and criminal cases involving Donald Trump.

Some person asked me snarkly recently, so don't you guys do, do you truly do Trump? No. Answer that is no. We are covering whatever, we do curate the episode, but we cover whatever we think is important at the intersection of law, politics and justice. Whoever that may be I've done a fair amount so of you and so of Ben of hot takes on abortion rights on constitutional rights on voting rights on the attempt to disenfranchise people and suppress the vote on a woman's right to choose

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Karen, Friedman Agnaflow. Yes, and this is Legal AF Shoutout to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AF. We'll see you next week.