Legal AF by MeidasTouch - DOJ Makes STUNNING Witness DISCLOSURE in Trump Case

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

It’s the DOJ 71 and Trump 0, based on the shear amount of witnesses for the prosecution who all worked for or around Trump now testifying against him in the DC election interference case Michael Popok examines closely one witness in particular (#9) a former White House lawyer for Trump Eric Hershmann who alone will rock Trump’s world and could lead to his conviction. Sign up at https://MoinkBox.com/LEGALAF right now and listeners of this show get FREE hot rolls in your first box. Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF 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 MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial 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 Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is Michael Popak, Legal AF. The Department of Justice 71, Donald Trump zero. Is it a score and a game? Sort of. 71, Donald Trump zero. Is it a score and a game? Sort of. 71 witnesses are testifying against Donald Trump at least in the DC election interference criminal case. How do I know that?

Because of the new filing that we just got our hands on that have been revealed by Judge Chutkin, which identify from one to 71, all of the witnesses that are going to be testifying or have testified already to grand juries and or to Jack Smith in his investigation, who will be corroborating and first person, recipient witnesses with knowledge testifying against Donald Trump. And if you to group, and I'm gonna focus on one or two on this particular hot take, especially Deputy White House Counsel and colorful bon vivant around town, Eric Hirschman,

who used to work at a major law firm, who was a partner, I think he's returned there, a major law firm that used to represent Donald Trump a long time ago, run by Mark Kasowitz. Remember the name Eric Hirschman? If you don't remember it, I'm going to show you a couple of clips from his Jan 6 committee testimony so you know how devastating what he's told the special prosecutor and counsel is to Donald Trump. Let's start with the big number, 71. That falls into a number of categories. That's lawyers who are all on Donald Trump's payroll, private capacity, lawyers for Donald Trump's campaign,

lawyers who worked in the White House, like Deputy White House Counsel Eric Hirschman, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Deputy White House Counsel Pat Philbin, and the list continues. That includes, and we'll just stay lawyers for a minute, of the 71, Department of Justice employees, including the Attorney General Bill Barr, the Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen, the other Acting Attorney General, the other Acting Deputy Attorney General.

I mean, Donald Trump went through so many Attorney Generals starting in December and January until he left. It's almost hard to keep track of, but you know who kept track of it? Jack, Jack Smith. We then have aides, people that worked in and around the White House for Donald Trump and others associated with Donald Trump, like Mark Meadows, you know, like Cassidy Hutchinson, and, and, and Ms. Westerhout,

the people that were the eyes and ears and flies on the wall to history, they're gonna testify and have already testified. That's the point I'm trying to make. They've already testified. They're gonna testify again at trial. Everything I'm saying about the 71, isn't like the Department of Justice

is gonna call these people into the court in front of a jury and then look at each other and go, I wonder what this person's gonna say. They know what this person's gonna say. They know what this person's gonna say. There's a transcript. They already gave a sworn statement or an interview or a proffer to the Department of Justice. And if they lied there, a penalty of perjury and a crime,

they've testified to the grand jury in the District of Columbia against Donald Trump. You know who else knows what they're gonna say? Donald Trump and his lawyers, because they've gotten all the transcripts in advance. It's only news to us exactly how all of this, this jigsaw puzzle was gonna be assembled by Jack Smith and now we know by the 165 page presentation.

Lawyers, Department of Justice, private and campaign. Aids, assistants that ran around for the various people. Top people and bottom people at the campaign, Donald Trump's campaign in the White House that worked for Mark Meadows, that worked for others, other external quote unquote advisors like Steve Bannon. I mean, they may not be testifying against them, but there's evidence to support statements that all these people made, so they're going to end up testifying against them.

Close personal aides to Donald Trump, since they were teenagers like Dan Scavino, who ran his social media and Twitter account. Not all the mean tweets came from Donald Trump. Many of them came by Dan Scavino masquerading and ghostwriting for Donald Trump. Now I want to talk about one in particular. And then we've got, of course, other officers in the campaign and that type of thing. When you total it all up, you've got 71 cooperating witnesses or witnesses against Donald Trump in a sprawling new report in a way that wasn't in, you know what, if you line up the indictment, and this makes sense, the indictment next to the new report, 165 pages, there's a bit of a mismatch.

The indictment, the superseding indictment and the one that preceded it are surgical. They're surgical, they're efficient. There's not a stray word or extra word listed. There's not more evidence that needs to be disclosed to satisfy the elements to avoid dismissal. But now, because of the commands by the Supreme Court that Judge Chutkin undergo a fact-based analysis of context and evidence compared to facts in order to find out what fits into the immunity buckets, whether Donald Trump's gonna be immune or not. Then Jack Smith had to put 71 witnesses in information

before the American people before the election. He had no choice but his fault. Timing was, the timing was set by the Department of Justice and Donald Trump's delays. That's why we're in October. I should have been doing this hot take in March, but I digress. Let's get to Eric Hirschman. I've done commentary and analysis on Eric Hirschman before. Colorful character, very New York, and I mean that in a good way, as also a New York lawyer. I don't know how he got his way into the White

House. Many of Mark Kasowitz's law firm served in the administration of Donald Trump. I think the ambassador to Israel was another partner at that firm and Eric Hirschman got in there as well. That's a firm that likes to be sort of politically connected. So it's a little bit of a revolving door at the time between that Kasowitz firm and Trump's White House. And this is how Eric Hirschman, I believe, got there.

Now, Eric Hirschman is famous for a number of things that he told the Jan 6 committee and will testify at trial for Jack Smith. First of all, he had two interactions. I'm going to play you the clip of his testimony before the Jan 6 committee. One with John Eastman, who's that half-baked constitutional scholar, you know, too smart by half guy, who along with Ken Chesbrough devised the plan to try to overthrow the will of the people by using fake electors and lawsuits to try to get Mike Pence to pressure him not to recognize the legitimate Biden electoral votes and give the election over to Donald Trump. That guy used to be a law professor, right? A federal judge in California already ruled

that he should be stripped of his attorney-client privilege because he was participating in a fraud or crime with Donald Trump. He's been indicted. He's lost his bar license or is about to. He lost his position in the law school. That John Eastman. Did you know that four companies control

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Let me tell you about a company that's coming up swinging on behalf of American Family Farms and your family's food security. Moink. Their farmers are given an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. And they deliver meat straight to your doorstep at prices you can actually afford. Keep American Family Farms farming by joining the Moink movement today

at MoinkBox.com slash Legal AF. Sign up today and get free hot rolls in your first order, spelled M-O-I-N-K box.com slash Legal AF. Oink, oink, get Moinked. MoinkBox.com slash Legal AF. Oink, oink, get moinked. Moinkbox.com slash Legal AF. And there's a conversation between Eric Hirschman that I've known about and John Eastman towards the end. Because one of Eric Hirschman's major jobs that he testified to, no doubt to the special counsel, was to regularly daily update Trump directly

with updates about the quote-unquote fraud investigations in the battleground states to see if there was any outcome dispositive fraud, which there was not. And every day, Eric Hirschman and Pat Cipollone would tell Donald Trump, can't find any fraud, all these fraud theories are ridiculous. If you bring it, this is Eric Hirschman now to Donald Trump, if you bring these fraud theories into a courtroom, they're gonna get laughed at because they're bullshit. That is a direct quote from Eric Hirschman.

Why is that testimony important? Because it shows you the criminal mind of Donald Trump, that he was told information that he was willfully blind and buried his head in the sand to avoid knowing. And knowing that information from people that he paid, the people of trust in the White House, he went on television, he went in social media, he's continuing to maintain that he thinks there was outcome determinative fraud and he should have won the election when he knows from that alone and forensic

audits that he paid for from outside vote examiners who told him the same thing, that there was no outcome, determinative fraud. That goes to Menzreya for Donald Trump. Eric Hirschman has a conversation with John Eastman where John Eastman raises again some crazy lawsuit that he wants to file in one of the battleground states and John Eastman cuts him off at the knees with a withering comment and we have a clip for you here. Let's play it It was the day after Eastman I don't remember why he called me and he or he texted me or called me Wanted to talk with me and he said he couldn't reach others

And he started to Ask me about something dealing with Georgia and preserving something potentially for appeal. And I said to him, are you out of your effing mind? Right? He said, I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth for now on. Orderly transition.

And then he screamed and said, I don't want to hear any other effing words coming out of your mouth no matter what, other than orderly transition, repeat those words to me. And I screamed and then he said, eventually he said, orderly transition. I said, good, John, now I'm going to give you the best free legal advice you're ever getting in your life.

Get a great F in criminal defense lawyer, you're gonna need it. Then I hung up on him. Okay, all I wanna hear is peaceful transfer of power out of your mouth. And here's some free legal advice, get a criminal defense lawyer. Boy, was Eric Hirschman right about that.

The second interaction where they're gonna use Eric Hirschman is in his interactions with Rudy Giuliani, who he famously named and titled Captain Crazy. He was captain of Team Crazy. And Giuliani, who was brought in apparently, according to this new filing, by Steve Bannon, the right wing MAGA podcaster, QAnon conspiracy theorist, who had a lot bigger role in the

pressure campaign against Mike Pence than was ever first known until this filing. Bannon also apparently brought in Giuliani and anointed him captain of Team Crazy. On Team Crazy, we had this list of 71 witnesses, including another six co-conspirators. Rudy Giuliani lost his bar license twice and indicted twice. Sidney Powell indicted once and pled guilty. Ken Chesbrough indicted twice and pled guilty once. Jenna Ellis pled guilty. And we could go on. There are others. And so there's this conversation, which I love, that was reported and testified to to the Gen 6 committee by this same Eric Hirschman. I don't want to play you that clip. Let's play that clip. Said about his call

with Mayor Giuliani on the morning of the 6th. The morning of January 6th, he called me out of the blue. Right? And I was like getting dressed. And we had an intellectual discussion about Eastman's, I don't know if it's Eastman's theory per se, but the VP's role. And he was asking me my view and analysis and other practical implications of it.

And when we finished, he said, I believe that you're probably right. I think he thought when we're done that it would be something he'd have to consider if he was sitting on the bench, but he'd probably come down and that you couldn't interpret it or sustain the argument long term. 71 to 0.

That's what we're watching. And it's the reason this list, I could do 71 hot takes on each and every of these witnesses. Now, they're numbered, but we know who they are. And don't get excited. Don't be like, don't out everybody. The ones I'm going to out, don't worry. They're all MAGA, died in the wall, true believers. Number one, literally number one

in the new filing by Jack Smith is Bannon. Number 21, Mark Meadows. Number 45, Dan Scavino, who did all of his mean posting and tried to implore Donald Trump to stop the violence and stop the rioting, only he could do it and he didn't do it. A number four, Jason Miller, worked closely, still works closely with Donald Trump.

Number 52, former Attorney General Bill Barr, who left after Jan 6th and started the revolving door. And I could go on. And maybe on our next podcast on Legal AF, I will. But I wanted to focus on somebody like Eric Hirschman so that you understand now multiply him and make him a five, six, seven hour testimony about everything that he saw in the White House,

advising Trump without attorney client privilege being asserted, because it can't be, it's been stripped away, make him testify in front of that jury, and now multiply that by 70 more people. Every day, think of the trial. This trial is going to be a six to eight month trial. It's just going to be weeks devoted. I think there's many different ways.

I'll talk about this as a trial lawyer. There's many different ways that the government can present their evidence. They could do it chronologically and bring in the witnesses on that. They could do it thematically or they could do it by title. And if you did it by title, by position, there would be like two weeks of nothing but lawyers

against Donald Trump, his lawyers against him now. White House lawyers like Eric Ershman, campaign lawyers, private lawyers, Department of Justice lawyers. That takes two weeks or three weeks of time. Then it's like executive assistants and aides to the president at the time, or people around the president, or Mike Pence at the time, and bring all of them in. Then bring in people who are fact witnesses like Michael Ludic, a judge, conservative, Republican, icon, constitutional scholar, defender of the presidency, regularly appears with me on the Midas Touch Network

and illegal AF for interviews because he's the one that Steve Bannon, number one on the hip parade, said, F him, F that lawyer advising Pence not to recognize Donald Trump's fake electors, F'em. Well, we'll bring on the guy that he said F'em to, and we'll have an interview with him really soon. I'm arranging it right now. So then you've got those kind of people. Then you've got the, after you get through the Lord, you've got the elected officials.

Mike Pence, all the people that Donald Trump picked up the phone and called. All the people that were hunkering under their desks, including Republicans, while the capitals rioted and sieged. All the people that ran in to Donald Trump to try to convince him to call off the dogs. And he wouldn't. His former press secretaries and media advisors. Everybody's going to have an R next to their name. I mean, there won't be a Democrat for like maybe the entire trial testifying. How is it political? All the witnesses against him are Republicans, to their name. I mean, they won't be a Democrat for like maybe the entire trial testifying.

How is it political? All the witnesses against him are Republicans, including ones he put on the payroll and hired. And so there'll be weeks of elected officials and election officials in the battleground states and speakers of the House and secretaries of state of the various states that Donald Trump picked up the phone and called. And so on and so on and so on, filling out the rest of the 71. We'll continue to follow it and give you our perspective without blowing smoke or sunshine on Legal AF. Find out what 40 million people a month already know. That Legal AF is the home of legal and political commentary and analysis like no other. We have so much to talk about. Midas Touch and Legal AF got together and formed a new channel. We call it Legal AF MTN for Midas Touch Network. Go on YouTube, free subscribe. We're gonna hit, this is like a record, we're gonna hit

200,000 subscribers in the first month of our existence with your help, of course. And I'm personally inviting you to a free subscribe and join us. That's where I'll be curating. And as the executive producer, all of the type of analysis and commentary you've come to love. I'll be bringing over people from the Midas universe, other legal and political commentators and outside voices you haven't heard from yet.

I don't wanna spoil it. We got a big gap. We got a big group, a pro-democracy court accountability there, a group that's going to come join us and do regular updates over there. We got an exclusive new show called Unprecedented. Once a week, we're going to look at the United States Supreme Court top to bottom, side to side, including its ethics scandals, things that they hear in oral argument, their rulings, the things they don't rule on, how they get to those rulings and all, unimpressed in it, only on Legal AF MTN. So free subscribe there.

Until my next hot take and my next Legal AF podcast, this is Michael Popak and I'm reporting. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories the intersection of law and politics Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at legal af MTN that's at legal af MTN