Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Federal Judge Has BROKEN Trump and she JUST GOT STARTED

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

“Presidents aren’t Kings and Trump isn’t the president” are words that put DC federal Judge Tanya Chutkan on the map last year in ruling against Donald Trump concerning the Jan6 committee investigation. But Michael Popok is Legal AF with assistance from some reporting by the New York Times gives a fuller picture of just who is Judfe Tanya Chutkan , her background growing up in Jamaica, and as a federal public defender & professional dancer, and her strong relationship with her accomplished mother, who was a pillar of Jamaican society. All of this goes into who Judge Chutkan is, and how she will rule this week as to whether Trump should be gagged from making violent attacks and what are the consequences when (not if) Trump violates that order. MASTERWORKS: Skip the waitlist and invest in blue-chip art for the very first time by signing up for Masterworks: https://www.masterworks.art/legalaf Purchase shares in great masterpieces from artists like Pablo Picasso, Banksy, Andy Warhol, and more. How Masterworks works: -Create your account with your traditional bank account -Pick major works of art to invest in or our new blue-chip diversified art portfolio -Identify investment amount -Hold shares in works by Picasso or trade them in our secondary marketplace See important Masterworks disclosures: https://www.masterworks.com/about/disclaimer?utm_source=meidastouch&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=2-17-23&utm_term=Meidas+Touch+Subscriber&utm_content=disclaimer Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Burn the Boats: https://pod.link/1485464343 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://pod.link/1676844320 Uncovered: https://pod.link/1690214260 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Popok, legal a f presidents aren't kings. And Donald Trump's not a president. Those are my words. Those are the words of Tonya Chuck and not even recently last year when she ruled against Donald Trump before she became the judge of the century, presiding over the DC election interference case. She ruled against Donald Trump in a case in which he was trying to stop his presidential papers after he left office

from being turned over to the Gen 6 committee to let them do their investigative work and issue their ultimate report and findings against him. He wanted to assert executive privilege, presidential power privilege, and she made those now immortal words, put it on the map. Certainly, we became very aware of our on legal AF on the Midas Touch Network, but I want to talk more about Tonya Chutkin as we hit that moment in the case, probably the second greatest moment in the case so far for Tonya Chutkin V Donald Trump, if you will, is coming up this week with a hearing in which she's required his lawyers, Donald

Trump's lawyers to appear as she considers whether to gag him. And because of his outbursts and attacks, violent rhetoric against judges and their family, prosecutors and their family, staff and their family, investigators, FBI agents and their family. And if she does finally draw the line in the sand from a federal level, does she then also have the brass ones, if you will, to be polite, to find him Donald Trump in contempt, in criminal contempt, and then put him in jail if he violates the orders. Those are the, those are the three questions that are up for grabs this week.

Will the judge gag him based on a request by the Department of Justice, in which they're also seeking and, and seeking to anonymize, to make anonymous the jury for their own protection on similar grounds. Will she then find him in the future in contempt, up to criminal contempt for violating her orders, and will she put him in jail if he does? Those are the three open questions.

But let's learn more about Judge Chucken, the person behind those words that the presidents are not kings. Interesting choice of words from somebody who came from Jamaica and had colonial fights and issues with the United Kingdom. And Donald Trump is not the president and how that impacts her decision making and how having been a former federal public defender on the defense side, on the Donald Trump side, if you will, how that shapes her jurisprudence, her judicial approach.

There's a great profile by the New York Times and Robert Draper, which I'm going to amplify here on this hot take, along with my own reporting and my own investigations about the background of Judge Chutkin, which I think when you put it all into this may launch, this stew, you'll better understand who Donald Trump is up against when it comes to Judge Chutkin. She's not the cartoon character that he's made her out to be, you know, the fascist, by the way, she's not doesn't come from fascist background. Socialist, wrong again. Former, you know, Jamaican.

What she really is, if you're gonna start blasting her on social media, Trump, she's a granddaughter of a one-time socialist who renounced socialism as Jamaica's struggled for its own independence. She's a former professional dancer who comes from a background of a mother who was a professional dancer, choreographer, in the head of the national dance company in Jamaica. She is somebody who left a cushy job working for private interests for a huge firm after she graduated from an Ivy League college

and University of Pennsylvania. But then got bored with that and became a federal public defender where she was frequently outmatched by the resources of the United States of America, meaning she has a natural instinct and sentiment that sort of sides with defendants like Donald Trump. Although he can't help himself to not recognize that and make her into a strong person in a cartoon figure as he bashes her on social media. Let's learn more about Judge Tanya Chukkin. Let's put up some current photos of her. Sometimes on the Midas Touch Network, we use an older photo of her. Here she is. And we also have photos from the

New York Times article with her and her family, very proud to be her mother's daughter, talks a lot about it when she talks about her biography, when people around her, like her sister, who's a well-known doctor and author, talks about her background. And the thing that comes away, that you can distill from people around her, she talks very little about herself, is that she is a US patriot. It comes from her family background and coming to America and how they've come to America. And so that's made her extremely loyal and patriotic to a fault, even though she lacks and let's say sentimentality in her jurisprudential

approach. That doesn't mean that she's not at core as much bleeding red, white, and blue as much as you and me here on the Midas Touch Network. That's part of who she is. She's also an athlete and somebody that's into physical fitness comes from her days of growing up as the daughter of a dancer and being a professional dancer herself in Harlem in the early 1980s. So before Donald Trump viciously attacked her and that rhetoric led to one of his supporters making an assassination threat by phone to her chambers, Judge Chuck in without US Marshall protection used to jog five miles from her house in Washington, DC.

Not sure exactly where she lives, but I could guess all the way to the courthouse by herself. Those days are over. She now instead rides a bike with the US marshals in tow who take different routes every day to avoid any kind of attacks on her. And when she shows up at the courthouse in the spring or summer, she's often wearing shorts, sneakers, and carrying a water bottle as she walks her way through the courthouse to make her way to chambers, passing suited lawyers along the way. And she has a very good disposition, people that report that know her and work with her. Why did she become a federal public defender? It's also another route to becoming a judge.

She didn't take the more traditional route. The easier path, the path of least resistance to become a federal judge, is that you go to a fine Ivy League law school like she did. And then you go into a clerkship, a federal clerkship at various levels, trial court clerkship, a pellet court clerkship, and if you can't get to the US Supreme Court

and become a clerk there and then you kind of work for some firms and then you end up, if you can be nominated for a federal clerkship, a federal judge ship, sorry, that wasn't her route. She went a path of more resistance. She became a federal public defender. There are very few federal public defenders that became judges and most are all of them are through Joe Biden. Joe Biden has nominated more public defenders

to be judges than any other judge. That's one of the things where he's changed the face of the judiciary, not just through the number of judges that he's appointed Joe Biden, but by where they're coming from, not just big corporate law firms, not just prosecutor side to fence side. And so Donald Trump pulled a defense oriented, at least initial disposition judge, which would normally be a good thing, except he can't help attacking her because she was appointed by Barack Obama. And he didn't like her decisions against him on the federal papers or things that she has said in sentencing, Jen Six, defendants. In fact, we all know that he moved to disqualify her recently

and she rejected it because he didn't have the proper grounds to show that she was biased or prejudiced against him or couldn't be a fair and impartial jurist. In fact, everything about her biography says that she's built for this case. Now, one of the parts of the reporting in Mr. Traper's article that I found fascinating is that as soon as she got assigned the case randomly, she called a close friend back in Jamaica and said to that person,

even though Judd Shuckett is not overly religious and said, please pray for me. I have the case. I have the case, which was a little bit out of character for her, but shows you that she understands the weight of responsibility that's been placed out of her slender shoulders.

And what it means for our democracy and for the future history chapters that will be written. You want somebody who's serious in sober in that position. And we have it in Judge Chutkin. She's 61 years old. She has children. She has a strong family foundation. And even the things that Donald Trump has said about her are wrong. She doesn't, she's not a fascist.

She doesn't come from a grandfather who was a fascist. That shows a fundamental misapprehension of the political and economic struggle in Jamaica, a supremely poor country that I visited a couple of times on vacation in the Caribbean, and their fight for independence. As per usual, the economy was also a huge topic of the day, and why wouldn't it be? It's changing faster than ever, and demanding that we all adapt to keep up. In fact, a stunning survey revealed that over half of Americans making six figures now live paycheck to paycheck.

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legal AF or just click the link in the description of this episode below. And her grandfather, who apparently Donald Trump is referring to, I mean Donald Trump knows, if he doesn't, he knows about, he doesn't, he knows about, he doesn't know anything about US history. He doesn't understand how the three co-equal branches of government work. He doesn't understand the US Constitution or as role as president or the office of the presidency

or the laws that empower the office of the presidency. So why would we think he understands Jamaican policies and procedures and history and law? And so her grandfather in the 1940s, right, when it was the right place to be on that side of history, was a socialist fighting for independence for Jamaica. And but at a certain point by the 1960s, he'd become completely disillusioned

with the socialist movement and its ability to help the people of Jamaica, and he renounced being a socialist. He even said in an interview before Judge Chutkin was even nominated or put on the bench, he even said in an interview that socialism is worthless. And I'm for Jamaicanism. I'm for the people of Jamaica. And so that's the person that Donald Trump is attacking that she comes from some sort of

socialist roots. If you want a trace based on the interviews that were conducted for the article, where Judge Shotkin's DNA fiber of her being comes from, it's from her mother and father, but primarily her mother. And watching her mother be an established respected pillar of society in Jamaica through the arts and culture and being the director of the National Academy, the National Dance Academy in Jamaica. And learning about how a woman can balance, work and life and public interest and public involvement with being a mother and a wife. And that's where she really learned it from.

That's where she got the strong iron rod that runs down her back from her mother having a tremendous role model. Very similar Ruth Bader Ginsburg who had a very similar role model with her mother and then had a very strong relationship with her husband as well that impacted her own judicial types of philosophies. When Judd, Judd, Judd, Juddkin has not taken the easy way or the path of least resistance,

she's taken hard ways to get her into the chair where she is. A position I will assert and posit on this podcast or on this hot take that has been, um, you know, at least 35 years in the making decisions that she made put her in the chair. She is now for the random selection for her to be presiding over and forever more linked to Donald Trump in the annals of history. When the obituary of Donald Trump is written, hopefully listing convictions and time served in jail, Judge Chuckid will have a prominent place with him. When her obituary is written, the very first line of her obituary will be she presided over the case of Donald Trump in an attempt to, as a coup to steal democracy and steal the election from Joe Biden.

That'll be in the first two sentences of her obituary. And she knows it and she feels that way to fit. But we want to know more about the person. I've done reporting like this, by the way, on Judge Cannon, Aline Cannon, down in Miami to try to understand where she came from and her background because there's some overlapping people and events in her life that overlap with mine when I practiced in Miami. And I try to bring that here. We try to not blow smoke or sunshine. We try to bring even balanced information

that we think is important to you as you evaluate with your own executive function, right? What you're seeing and why you're seeing it. And so this overview of this fuller picture, not a cartoon character, right? That's been portrayed and painted by Donald Trump and his proxies of a judge chucking out of control socialist, who's a puppet of the Biden administration against him and weaponizing the judiciary. It's the opposite.

She is sober. She's the opposite. She is sober. She's judicious. She comes from strong family values. She's defense oriented more than anything. She had a strong mother figure that showed her how to be with grace and dignity, a balanced professional and to be a patriot, which is very, very important to her can who she is as a human being, right? Human being first.

And I love the fact that despite having violent threats of assassination lodged against her by Donald Trump's hating racist followers, instigated by one Donald Trump, she hasn't taken the bait. She makes decisions very quickly, but with strong integrity at their core. In this case, we see it. We report on it on legal a f over and over again. She has a strong executive function. She can make quick decisions that are right and have intellectual honesty. We may not always agree with every aspect of it. We may want certain things to go faster, but we know why she got there, how she got there, and we can make the argument for her.

That's a good thing in our society. And now we have a fuller picture. I love the fact, as I started to say, that she's still running or jogging or basically to work with federal marshals in tow. She's not going to let attacks on her either influence her decision making or stop her way of life. And we have to be respectful of that and tip our hat to that. She has made it clear time and time again.

It will continue, including I'm sure this week with the hearing that we'll report on on legal AF on the Midas Touch Network that it is only the proper and swift administration of justice that concerns her in the Donald Trump case and in every other case. And she will treat him like any other common defendant in front of her, just like the ones that she used to represent when she was the head of the homicide unit at the federal public defender's office, when she was the head of the sex offenders crime unit at the federal public defenders office when she was the head of the sex offenders crime unit at the federal public defenders and all the places where she's not done the path of least resistance that have strengthened and hardened her right and stealed her for this particular job that she has been chosen for if not it by fate but she is ready and she's told her lawyers

Donald Trump's lawyers over and over again, I don't care. I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly. I don't care what your client's day job is. That means running for office or what his former day job was, present United States. I only care that he's a defendant in a federal criminal system and the swift administration of justice is all I care about. And I'll put up the appropriate guardrails.

And she's going on to tell these lawyers as recently as one of their first hearings, I will not let your clients first amendment rights come in to violate that administration of justice. It stops at the proper administration of justice. He doesn't get to do or say anything that he wants. I'm always using it. I'm always using the administration of justice as my rod, as my staff, to determine whether your client

is on the right side of that line or the wrong side of that line. I mean, there's a great quote. I started this hot take with a great quote that put her on the map for the rest of us. Let me end it with a great quote during a hearing with one of the lawyers for Donald Trump, Christopher Kice, he said to her in response to something that he agreed with that she was ruling on or that she had an opinion. He said, judge to judge Chuckhead, you hit the nail on the head.

And she responded to Mr. Laura, the lawyer for Donald Trump, Mr. Laura, that may be the last time you say that for a while. I love the sense of humor. I love the tartness of it. I love the way she's able to just quickly remind everybody who is wearing the black robe and who is going to make the ultimate decisions, but can still do it with humor. I mean, Donald Trump's lawyer may not have taken it as humor, but in a humorous way, I've been on the receiving end of comments from federal judges my entire

career, federal and state judges and magistrates. For the 32 years, I've been practicing in court rooms just like this one, but I love already everything that I've learned about judge, Chuck and watching her in the courtroom. What we've just talked about with the New York Times profile explains what we're seeing, right? It explains the machine that's been built, explains what we're seeing, right? It explains the machine that's been built, you know, built on intelligence and sober justice and reasoning and the orders that are coming out of that machine that we're watching in the hands of Judge Chutkin will continue to follow things like next weeks, this upcoming weeks, hearing about the gag order, what happens. And those three things I told you that we're going to be really focused

on one, does Judge Chuck in issue the gag order? What's the shape and contour of it, too? Does he violate that gag order or more likely, how soon after the order is in place? Does he violate that gag order? And three, does Judge Chuck in call everybody back for a contempt hearing? And then ultimately put him in jail. Those are the things we'll be evaluating on legal AF. On the Midas we'll be evaluating on legal AF, on the Midas Touch Network, on their YouTube channel, just like this hot tick. Free subscribe to the Midas Touch YouTube channel.

Help them get to 2 million. Watch legal AF, the leading podcast on law politics and justice. Yes, the name means what you think it means. Only go Wednesdays and Saturdays on the Midas Touch Network and follow me, Michael Popak, on all things social media at MS Popak. Until my next hot take and my next legal AF episode, this is Michael Popak reporting. Hey, Midas Mighty.

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