Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Federal Court Issues BIGGEST Ruling in Trump/Musk SCHEME

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

Elon Musk is forcibly returning to state court to defend against charges that he’s illegally running a lottery in favor of Donald Trump and he’ll be facing a very pissed off state court judge as well. Michael Popok reports on a new breaking order by a federal judge ordering Elon Musk out of federal court and back to state court to answer for the charges on an emergency basis to stop musk from trying to steal the election by handing out $1 million checks at a phony lottery Lomi: Visit https://Lomi.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF and checkout to save $50! Join the LegalAF 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

Get ready, Elon Musk. You're going to be facing a very annoyed judge in Pennsylvania State Court because your efforts to drag the case to federal court just died. A federal judge just ruled against Elon Musk and his lawyers in his attempts to take his illegal lottery case out of Philadelphia State Court and drag it to federal court. I'll cover it all. I'm Michael Popak from the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. Let's start with how he got here and why the judge in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia is so pissed off and may find Elon Musk in contempt.

First of all, just a few days ago, the DA in Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, sort of controversial person, but he decided that this million dollar giveaway by Elon Musk for his, with his PAC in support of Donald Trump to try to buy votes and buy voter registration in the battleground state of Pennsylvania is probably illegal under Pennsylvania's lottery statute. And when you have an illegal lottery, what do you do when you're a DA? You shut it down with an emergency application. And that's exactly what Larry Krasner did. And he filed in the Court of Common Pleas.

That's their trial level court in Philadelphia. They got a judge, Judge Angelo Folieta. I think every state, the judges should have a name that is reflective of the culture and the vibrancy of the community. That's why I love Angelo Folliata. And he said, everybody show up. This is supposed to be Thursday. Show up everybody, all parties, including you, Elon Musk. 10 a.m. City Hall at my courthouse, my courtroom. Elon Musk didn't show up. And his lawyer said, that's because, Judge, we're trying to take this case over to federal court. Now, there's a unique side story there about the lawyer that Elon Musk hired in order to try to drag the case

across the street to federal court, but let me leave that for a minute. And the judge said, well, everybody was supposed to be here. And the DA's office made a slight joke and said, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, he can put a rocket on the Mars or whatever it is, but he can't show up in court on time at 10 a.m. and they're right about that.

And the judge says, rather than hold a contempt hearing and for sanctions, because Elon Musk failed to show and blew me off, let's see what happens with his federal, his attempt to take the court to federal court, his federal removal papers is what it's called. And the judge sort of kept his powder dry to see what was gonna happen there. And so when it got filed in federal court, it got assigned to a judge. That's where

Judge Gerald Pappert, federal judge in Philadelphia comes in. He's a Republican, but he's moderate. He was appointed by Obama. And he said, all right, let me see the papers. And D.A. Krasner, who brought this case on behalf of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania against Elon Musk and the America PAC. He said, you know what? I want to see Elon Musk's reason and rationale for why I got to keep this case in federal court, because it's limited jurisdiction of federal court. What are your grounds?

Tell me by 10 AM this morning, which he did. And now, just about six hours later, the judge ruled. Now let me tell you what was wrong with the papers that Elon Musk filed. First of all, he went out and got a lawyer. I don't know who this lawyer is exactly, but I do know he's got an axe to grind against D.A. Krasner in Philadelphia, Matt Haverstick. He represented the Republicans in the Pennsylvania House who tried to impeach D.A. Krasner. You know, this is that era when all the Republican houses were going after all what they saw as the woke prosecutors who because there was crime going on,

oh my God, there's crime in Philadelphia. There's been crime in Philadelphia since I was a small wee child. And yet they were blaming Larry Krasner for it. He's a woke prosecutor, you prosecutor, supported by George Soros, that whole group of prosecutors that all got attacked by Governor DeSantis in Florida and here Pennsylvania, they went after Krasner.

This lawyer that Elon Musk just hired, Matt Haverstic, he was the lawyer that went after Krasner. So here we go. But in order to get into a courthouse that's federal, you got to have a ticket into the courthouse. First, you have to show you have a right to take your state case into federal court. And there's only two ways to do it, and they failed on both. The first one was almost laughable. The first way you can get into federal court is you have to argue that you have what's called complete diversity of jurisdiction, meaning on one side, the plaintiffs on the one side of the V, the plaintiff side, they reside in some state and on the other side of the V, the person or the

entity resides in another state and they're diverse, they're different. And the amount and controversy is about 75,000 or more. I think they failed for two reasons. First of all, you can't do diversity jurisdiction analysis when the party on one side, the plaintiff, is a state and they are suing in their state because the federal jurisprudence analysis says that's not diverse, that a state is, once they sue in their state, kind of home rule,

you can't drag them anywhere else. They get to stay right there and you don't use their state as a diversity analysis. So the way around that, not successful, was for Elon Musk lawyers to argue, oh, it's not the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that's suing Elon Musk, despite the fact that it says right here,

it's the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is Larry Krasner himself, it is Larry Krasner himself. It's Larry Krasner and Krasner lives in Philly and my guy lives in Texas. We've got diversity, right? Judge, nothing else to see here. The federal judge said, no. This is not Krasner bringing this case against the illegal lottery. It's the Commonwealth.

It's the state of Pennsylvania. And I also think there's an issue with the $75,000 requirement because they weren't seeking money per se. They were seeking an injunction to shut down the lottery. That's not a $75,000 amount in controversy. So I think they lose for that reason. What's better than a clean kitchen? A kitchen that doesn't smell.

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a ruse. It's just a disguise. It's just an excuse. Don't let him do it!" And the judge rejected that too, I am sure. I don't know exactly because the judge issued a very short order that just said, motion for remand granted, motion for removal denied, and the case now goes back to the state court judge in Philadelphia, who this is my artist rendering of him, just sort of waiting for Elon Musk to return to the courtroom, where I think he's going to say, now, Mr. Musk, this court issued an order for all parties to attend. You agree with me, you're a party, right, sir? Yes. Okay. And my order said 10 a.m. Court of Common, please, City Hall, Philadelphia,

all parties, right? You got that, your lawyers told you about that? Yes. You weren't here. It wasn't a figment of my imagination. You weren't in the courtroom at 10 a.m. or at any other time. You made a decision to let your lawyers show up and take the punishment. We'll sort of judge. Then you filed some sort of federal pleading, try to get away from me, and now you're back. What I said at the time, you weren't here, but I'm sure your lawyers have told you, is that I will deal with your contumacious behavior, the fact that you're in contempt of court at another time. Well, I've just looked at my watch, Mr. Musk. It's that other time. That's sort of what I think is going to go on.

Really, they're there for an emergency application to shut down that lottery and stop handing out those checks. Would you believe that Elon Musk has handed out not one, not two, but several million dollar checks? Talk about having too much time and money on your hands to try to buy the election in this important battleground state of Pennsylvania. I'm glad Krauser did something about it. I know he got some criticisms, so there was some tittering going on in the back, like that's the best he's got, but he couldn't bring federal charges.

First of all, he's a DA, so if he's not in the federal court system in that way, and the feds aren't touching this while we're only hours away from Tuesday. So it's the only thing he could do, and I thought it was very creative and I like it. And I think Judge Fogliati is going to find it very interesting also. So what's the headline? Elon Musk and his little trickery to try to hire a lawyer that had an axe to grind against the DA

that failed before is now a two-time loser against Larry Krasner. It's Larry Krasner 2. Lawyers against him zero. You know? And so, and we're not going to know what happens in the future in Judge Papert's courtroom federally because it's going back to the original judge in the Court of Common Pleas, which is in the historic City Hall in Philadelphia. And I will follow it closely. What happens next? I think he issues the emergency injunction. I think he shuts down the handing out of checks between now and Tuesday to try to buy voter registration and buy votes. I mean even Elon Musk knows he was doing something wrong because at some point the first two days he was like it's a lottery and I'm handing out checks which is exactly violative of federal law and of the

state lottery law. Then he said well no it no, it's not a lottery. It's a job. I give you a job. I give you that. You get a million dollar job when you win, when you win by random lottery, or maybe it's not really random. That's the problem. Give me all your personal data and tell me whether you're registered to vote. Then I'll give you the job and the job is your spokesperson.

Right. You're a spokesperson for the Trump campaign. Is that okay now? No. It's not okay federally. It's not okay by state either. And so I don't think this, I think that the judge in Pennsylvania, the common please judge is going to make short work of this, to be frank with you. And I'm glad we're following it. It's happening hourly. It's happening so fast. I did a hot take about the filing at 10 AM this

morning. We couldn't get it up in time and now I'm doing the update on it. That's how quick things move at the intersection of law and politics here on the Midas Touch Network. It moves so quickly, we had to form a new channel just to keep up with it. It's called Legal AF. What else would we call it? It's at the intersection of law and politics. Find out what's 62 million people a month. I'm not making these numbers up. Already know that Law and Politics Home is found on LegalAF and the YouTube channel. If you're searching for it, hit at LegalAFMTN for MidasTouch Network or just LegalAF and you'll find everything there. So until my next LegalAF, the podcast on Wednesdays and Saturdays, or my next LegalAF, the YouTube channel,

this is Michael Popak and I am 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.