Legal AF by MeidasTouch - FELON Trump STEPS INTO IT + SCOTUS STRIKES Again…

Episode Date: June 16, 2024

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back for the weekend edition of the top-rated Legal AF podcast. On this episode, the anchors discuss and debate: (1) whether Judge Merchan will sentence Trump to prison time on July 11; (2) the Supreme Court’s new ruling allowing people to have automatic weapons and use bump stocks for mass shootings; (3) whether the Supreme Court just issued an invitation to a future case to declare illegal medicated abortions; (4) whether Judge Cannon’s new pro Trump orders will be reversed on appeal, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Thanks to our sponsors: Fum: Head to https://TryFum.com/legalaf and get a FREE GIFT with the JOURNEY PACK today when you use code LEGALAF Rhone: Head to https://Rhone.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF to save 20% off your entire order! Policy Genius: Head to https://policygenius.com/legalaf to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. VIIA: VIIA: Head to https://viiahemp.com and use code LEGALAF to receive 15% off + one free sample of their sleepy Dreams gummies. 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 Coalition of the Sane: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coalition-of-the-sane/id1741663279 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Around 1860, nearest green taught Jack Daniel how to filter whiskey through charcoal for a smoother taste, one drop at a time. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. Convicted felon Donald Trump had his first probation officer meeting this week. We learned that he had three firearms,

two that were already turned in to Manhattan after he was indicted in the criminal case in Manhattan. He still has one gun, apparently still in his possession, a felon with a firearm. What are the implications? We will discuss as we move closer to that July 11th sentencing date. Then we're going to talk about Supreme Court rulings this week. There were no rulings, however, on the issue of Trump's claim that he can order SEAL Team Six to kill his political opponents, claiming that he

has absolute presidential immunity in perpetuity, And there's no ruling for the obstruction of official proceeding case and that involves two of the counts against Donald Trump. But the Supreme Court did make rulings in the cases of Garland v. Cargill regarding bump stocks and FDA versus Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine regarding women's reproductive rights will break down the Bumstocks and FDA versus Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, uh, regarding women's reproductive rights will break down the rulings there and the implications also judge Eileen Cannon continues to make up her own rules as she goes along, or should I say whatever Donald Trump wants her to rule?

Can special counsel Jack Smith appeal? We will break this down and more on legal AF. Michael Popak, just because there are not a lot of developments in the Donald Trump related cases doesn't mean that there are not a lot of developments in other cases as well. We're at that point where the Supreme Court concludes its term by issuing all of its decisions and in kind of typical fashion for the Roberts court, which kind of in every way has caused major question marks, I think would be putting it lightly

regarding the approach that they have to basic law, basic precedent, and just kind of basic decency. They wait till the very end to kind of dump the most important rulings. And even to this date, they have not ruled on absolute presidential immunity and kind of thereby really stopping important cases from moving forward. Michael Popak, how are you doing today, sir? Fantastic. Ready to jump in with both hands and both feet and talk about SCOTUS, what's already happened and what we expect will happen.

Well, look, we're headed towards the July 11th sentencing date. Lots of people debating whether or not Donald Trump is going to be thrown into prison based on being a convicted felon. You and I have discussed that matter at length. We've also discussed it with Karen Freeman-Agnifilo, the former number two at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. matter at length. We've also discussed it with Karen Freeman Agnifilo, the former number two at the Manhattan district attorney's office. It should be noted that if you were probably to go back two years ago or so,

maybe more, when you and I really ramped up legal AF, and it's existed for longer than that, but as things were really ramping up and you and I were saying that, look, we think they're going to be criminal charges brought against Donald Trump. We think that they are going to be these civil cases brought. I think the prevailing narrative out there is that's never going to happen ever. happen ever. I remember very distinctly when we had Alvin Bragg on a interview with Karen Friedman Agnifilo, there were a lot of criticisms directed his way, would be putting it lightly, from people who were watching and saying, no that's your weak, you're not doing the right thing. And, you know, all we were saying is, I don't think that you are, um, uh, following all of the data, cause the data points aligned with pretty much where we are

today, um, and where we are today is that Donald Trump is a convicted felon on 34 separate felony counts, number one, number two, in the various civil cases, he has over $500 million in judgments against him. You know, what's a bit hard to predict if you are law and order people like you and me, although it is, you know, kind of clear to see the direction of where this Republican party has gone. I mean, you know, I think it would have been hard to predict

just how obsequious that they were going to be, that they would actually have MAGA Republican members of Congress who are supposed to be a co-equal branch get quite literally dressed up by Donald Trump in outfits that he wanted them to wear with Donald Trump ties, with Trump's face on their ties. And that they would invite Donald Trump back after becoming a convicted

felon to Washington DC. And as he rants about Hannibal Lecter and says how much he hates the city of Milwaukee and how he makes these just odd and false statements about potentially being in romantic relationships with Nancy Pelosi and says that that's what Nancy Pelosi's wacko daughter told him. And, you know, just the disparaging remarks about Nancy Pelosi's daughter lying about romantic relationships with her. And then the, you know, then the MAGA Republicans, you know, give him standing ovations as he's saying things like that. I think that's a little bit harder to, I wouldn't say harder to predict. I think it's a little bit harder to stomach that there's, that that exists.

But, you know, here we are right now. And now Trump's meeting with his probation officer, I want you to tell us about that meeting, and we're heading towards sentencing. about that meeting and we're heading towards sentencing. And if Justice Mershon, who's a law and order judge, follows the law, there will be prison time. Does that mean Trump will be serving time in Rikers or home confinement? That's a little bit where I think there's some ambiguity

and there's significant debate. But I think that Justice Mershan, when he applies the factors, is the person showing remorse, prior conduct, severity of the crimes, behavior during the trial, behavior before the trial. I think you put that data into all the inputs. You're a law and order judge,

you have to order some form of incarceration or, or home confinement for not an insignificant period of time, but walk us through the probation officer meeting, this idea that Donald Trump had, um, firearms, he still has one firearm, um, does he have to surrender that, you, you, you practice in New York, so you are a little bit closer to it than I am. And you've been speaking to a lot of New York criminal lawyers about this case as well. Break it down for us, Michael. Okay, Ben. So the process is we get a 34 count felon will be a judge to felon on the July

the 11th during that sentencing hearing. In the meantime, the judge takes in input from Donald Trump. Defense will write a sentencing memo arguing, I'm sure, for nothing. Arguing again because it'll be a campaign screed masquerading as a sentencing memo. So I'm sure when we see it, and I think it's coming up this week, memo. So I'm sure when we see it, and I think it's coming up this week, the week coming up, that it will be an argument for why there's reversible error and there is the judge overstepped his boundaries and he let evidence in that he shouldn't have and he'll be reversed on appeal

and, and or if there is any sentence that should be suspended until an appeal happens and or it should happen to after the election, otherwise it's election interference. It'll all kind of get wrapped up there. Prosecutors are going to have to do the same thing. Prosecutors are going to have to make their sentencing memo, which comes in later June, towards the end of June, right? Be about two weeks before the sentencing hearing. And they'll put in their survey of, I mean, there's no real comparable, there's no real exemplar for what a former president interfering with the election in order to get reelected. There's no comparison for that. But they will talk about the thousands and thousands of other people who are companies

that have been convicted of similar crimes. Yes, first time offenders, but what they've received and they'll argue for some sort of, I'm sure, incarceration. What the shape of that is, the contours of that are unclear. Is it home confinement? Is it on an army base? Is it, where is it? Because any incarceration means that the judge is sending the Secret Service to jail as well. Because by law, for now and for the foreseeable future, Donald Trump is entitled to

Secret Service protection. And so that's got a way on the mind of Judge Mershon as well. Then the third piece of the puzzle of an input into Judge Mershon's ultimate decision, because he makes the decision with broad discretion to do so as a trial judge in New York, comes from the probation department, which is an independent agency that's responsible for putting together a package of material and a pre-sentencing memo and recommendations to the judge. Part of it is an interview with a convicted defendant. That usually takes place in person.

Since COVID, they've been allowing some people to do it by video. The judge cut Donald Trump a little bit of a break and allowed Todd Blanche's lead trial lawyer, defense lawyer, to be in the room for the Zoom interview that lasted apparently about 30 minutes. I assume it lasted so short because most of what you need to know about Donald Trump for sentencing purposes is already in the public record. Just because the probation person spent 30 minutes doing the live interview, I don't think reflects the amount of a dossier that they are preparing about one Donald J. Trump, his past record, his past civil fraud record, findings against him

by judges that he committed fraud or perjury when he testified or lied under oath, civil judgments against him. All of these things are public. And so putting together a litigation report, a how many times has this guy been convicted or prosecuted report is in the public record. We know it, we do it, but probation can do it too. So that's not what they were trying to get out from him. They were going to waste anybody's time asking him about like acting like they didn't know who he was. Like have you ever had a civil fraud judgment against you? Yes. So they had all that. So they wanted to get down because it's, it is a part of a due process process to, to have the

defendant who's now been convicted speak. And he, shows contrition, to note that in the sentencing, we were confident that Donald Trump did not show contrition. To show acceptance of responsibility, that would be noted. We're sure he did not accept responsibility. There's a psychological background thing that may or may not have happened already that should be happening before it goes to the judge.

And then when they're done with that, and in this interview is where you and I reported about the revelations about the guns. We were all floored here on Legal AF when we learned in March that Donald Trump had weapons and had a active concealed weapons permit in the state of New York, which by the way is very hard to get until the Supreme Court made a recent ruling two years ago. It was almost impossible to get a concealed weapons permit. Somehow he got it and had apparently three firearms. Okay, he turned in two of the three firearms, either didn't disclose the existence of the third or failed to turn it in.

Because as a condition of his release, this is all before conviction. A, a felon holding firearms is a different issue. We'll get to that in a minute. Pre conviction while you're just a garden variety defendant in a criminal process as a condition of your release in four different criminal cases around the country. Every one of them said you can't have a firearm and it's for a good reason. We don't want law enforcement if they have to go serve you with a subpoena or a search warrant or go pick you up because you violated the terms of your release. They don't want to have, you know,

the guy, the person have weapons. It's good reason. So he turned in two out of the three, but he disclosed that at Mar-a-Lago, he had a third weapon that he never turned in, which is a violation of his terms of his release everywhere. And I'm sure the prosecutors are scrambling to go look into it. The Palm Beach, Florida, the town of Palm Beach, police department, having been alerted about it, say they're investigating because you're not allowed to have a felon, now we're into the world of felons, terms of release or otherwise,

if you're not allowed to have a gun, the local police wanna know about that, as may in the case of Mar-a-Lago and TC, the Department of Justice and the FBI. It only took Donald Trump, I don't know, 20 minutes into a 30 minute interview to reveal that he probably violated terms of his conditions of his release and probably crimes. Now that he is a convicted felon or will be on July 11th when the judgment of conviction is entered against him formally, along with the sentence, he can't have guns. If he has them and he hasn't turned them in,

then that's another crime. We just saw a person related to the president who for 11 days had a handgun that he probably shouldn't have had, a revolver, and just got convicted. It is serious business and it's risky for him not to have done that. Now with that information and the filings that you and I will be able to report on, the first one, I think it trumps first is sentencing recommendations. Then the last word is the prosecutors. And then it goes right to that hearing. It won't be a live hearing or audio recorded or video recorded, but we'll be able to get people into the room and understand what happens there. And then as you're right Ben, the judge has a difficult thing to balance here. On one hand, you've got somebody who in

all of the bad conduct that was not allowed to go to the jury to try to convict Donald Trump is fair game in sentencing. So all of the acting out in court, outside of court, bashing the process, bashing the judge, all of that can sort of go into the judge's stew of what he's going to mete out as a punishment. So if Donald Trump thought, oh, I get away with it, all these bicycle rack interviews that he gave, all these hot mic moments all around, they'll all be factored in. And if the prosecutors

don't pull it all together and they're filing, then you're going to be assured that the clerks for the court will also put that together. And the fact that he hasn't showed remorse, Trump, he hasn't accepted responsibility. And he made the prosecutors spend two and a half years and hard earned taxpayer dollars investigating, prosecuting him, going through a six week trial, putting on 23 or so witnesses. You don't get credit for that. And, and you, you normally, as Karen said, in a recent interview that she gave with Huffington Post, usually that means the whole prison sentence thing

is amped up and the judge throws the book at you. If you had cut a deal earlier, which we knew he would never in our wildest dreams ever do, but if he and his lawyers went to the prosecutors earlier and said, you know what, this is a misdemeanor at best, we'll take a misdemeanor, recommend probation or whatever, slap on the wrist and we'll take it. I'm not saying the prosecutors would have taken it, but Trump certainly wasn't going to go do that. And so he made the people go through an entire trial and there should be repercussions for that at the time

of sentencing. I think, I'll leave it with this, Ben, I think that the way the judge sort of threads the needle here is that he's going to put together a package of sentence components. One part of it's going to be, I believe, some sort of incarceration. I don't know if that's home confinement or that's real jail or something like that, but there's going to be. I don't know if that's two months, three months, four months, I don't think a year, somewhere in there. And then all these other things, probation and community service and some sort of fine. And then I think he's going to taking a page out of what Judge Nichols did in the Bannon

case, which although federal, you know, sort of as a recent exemplar, is that he'll allow him to be out pending an appeal. He'll give him a deadline to file his appeal and pending that appeal, which could take a year to 18 months in the New York court system, starting with the first department, the intermediary court that sits in Manhattan

and then going up to the court of appeals in New York, he'll let them stay out because first time offender, nonviolent crime, until that appeal runs. And just like we saw with Bannon after 18 months, the judge said, okay, enough is enough. You now have to report July for it to go to prison. And so I think that's how he'll do it,

to allow him to still be campaigner Trump, see what happens in November, not that that would affect the sentencing. Sentencing would already be given out, but in terms of when he would have to report. I don't think he's gonna say, okay, Sheriff, take off your belt and your shoes. You're going now with the sheriffs here, with the bailiffs here, and you're going to be

taken away. I want to manage expectations. I do not believe that is going to happen on July the 11th. I spoke recently with a former federal prosecutor who said, one of the implications of Trump's behavior that's not getting enough attention is the message it is sending to other criminals about our criminal justice system. That you can somehow not take our criminal justice system seriously, that it is totally for sale, that you can behave like Donald Trump and not have or sell that you can behave like Donald Trump and not have consequences.

And that is a, the exact opposite precedent that needs to be set, especially by people who purport to be leaders. And when the Republican party invites Donald Trump to the Capitol Hill Club, after already being found to be an adjudicated rapist, after Donald Trump's already found to have been found liable for massive civil fraud, liable for defamation, liable over and over again, and now a convicted felon. It sends a message to the country and it's not a good one. And it's not why you and I went to law school and it's not what our values of law and order should be.

One other point I'll just mention too is as of this show, Justice Mershon has not ruled yet on Donald Trump's request to be let out of the gag order. Recall that Donald Trump previously made that request in a letter motion. The district attorney's office opposed that. And what we can say right now is Justice Mershon is certainly not taking any sort of urgent or emergency action in response to Donald Trump's request that was presented now about two weeks ago or so. So we will keep monitoring that.

Now I've predicted that eventually when Donald Trump tries to back out of the debate, one of the excuses that he's going to make is that the gag order is in effect and he won't be able to do the debate among other things. He'll claim that President Biden's on drugs. He'll claim that it's all rigged and he'll make a number of other excuses. But I wanted to put that on everybody's radar as well. I also want to put on everybody's radar as well, some major Supreme court decisions.

Um, you and I are going to cover just two of the ones that were issued this week. You and I are going to cover just two of the ones that were issued this week. But then on our Patreon, one of the things I've prepared, which I'm going to post. I'll make sure I have it posted by the end of this weekend is a lecture on all of the major Supreme court cases. This term, it's going to be very geeky. It's going to go into a lot of detail. It's gonna be exactly how I would teach it at a law school level.

So if that's not for you, don't worry. But if you wanna take a deeper dive and hear that lecture, take notes and I think you'll enjoy it. It's patreon.com slash legal AF, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash legal AF. Michael Popok and I will continue to post lectures there and I'm excited to do the lecture on the Supreme Court other cases that we can't cover on this episode based on the timing. We'll be right back after our first quick break

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As I said, those are not just ad reads. Those are experiences. And Michael Popak has glasses for each and every ad read for each and every moment. And so that's one of the things I appreciate about you. Vaya, I thought orange tinted glasses for Vaya. And you nailed it. If you want to support our pro-democracy sponsors, the discount codes are in the descriptions below. Let's talk about the United States Supreme Court decisions from this week. Let's talk first about Garland v. Cargill.

Then let's talk about FDA versus Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Garland v. Cargill. The question in the case was whether a Bumstock, which is an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly re-engage the trigger to fire very quickly, 800 to sometimes a thousand rounds per minute converts the rifle into a machine gun. The United States Supreme court holds that it is not and therefore it can't be banned under a 1986 statute which banned civilian use of machine

guns. Just to give you a further definition of bump stocks, so you know, bump stocks are a piece of molded plastic or metal that replaces the butt of a rifle and the handle closest to the trigger. The piece allows a portion of the gun to slide freely back and forth. The recoil from a shot causes the gun to bump between the shooter's shoulder and trigger finger, causing shots to be fired in quick succession. Americans bought about 520,000 bump stocks between 2008 and 2017, while they were legal in response to the Las Vegas shooting

where 60 individuals lost their lives and hundreds and hundreds were injured. I know, Michael Popak, you were not specifically in that concert, but you were close by in Las Vegas that day as well. But in response to that tragedy, the ATF banned bump stocks for civilian use by looking at their enabling regulations about what they're supposed to do as the ATF. They looked at the 1986 statute that defines machine guns. They determined that they had the

ability to regulate this specific bump stock, this device, and so they said no it's banned and the fact that it wasn't banned before is not an admission that it was legal. It's just as an agency. It was a new device that was around. The ATF had always said it was looking into it. And when this tragedy struck, like that happens as tragedies happen across the country, that tragedy is an avoidable one, definitely an avoidable one that happens too frequently here, but then agencies which

are equipped with this authority, with these types of authority, take action. That's the way this, that's why we have agencies, right? But the Supreme Court, which has been taken hostage by this Federalist wing, in addition to their views on the Second Amendment, which they've basically held that the Second Amendment provides almost unfettered ability for Americans to have weapons of war. This case was decided on kind of another doctrine, not even necessarily the Second Amendment, but this other Federalist doctrine to try to basically take down the federal government

that basically says unless Congress specifically uses magic words, in this case specifically mentions bump stocks by name, an agency can't do anything. They can't take any action. And I'm sure if you go back to some of the other legal AFs that we've done, And I'm sure if you go back to some of the other legal AFs that we've done, you've seen that this is a way the Supreme Court has struck down common-sense regulations from agencies, whether they were related to COVID, whether they were related to the environment, whether they related to kind of other common-sense actions that could be taken by agencies across the spectrum saying, Congress has to specifically say magic words. If Congress acts in a broad fashion

and gives you kind of broad powers, that's not sufficient, it has to say the magic words. And look, we all know that Congress never does that. That's not something, I wish Congress could actually act and do that, but right now you have a Congress led in the House of Representatives by Mike Johnson and Republican who are utilizing Russian and Chinese spies to launder in false information. And then they're turning it over to Rupert Murdoch properties so they could run headlines Joe Bryman based on fake audio recordings

that don't exist that come from Russian spies. I mean, that's the status of Congress. So is Congress going to specific and they're bought and paid for by the NRA and other special interests? Are they going to use specific language? So it's also kind of a gaslighting by the Supreme Court so they can strike down really important things that help the American people. But then the Supreme Court can also then say, but look, what we're saying is we're not against the idea of banning bomb stocks. It's just Congress needs to act.

That's all we're doing. It's a gas lighting thing. The Supreme court does. Cause look, take a look at the definition of machine gun in the 1986 statute. It says the term machine gun means any weapon which shoots is designed to shoot or can be readily restored to shoot automatically more than one shot without manual reloading by a single function of the trigger.

The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun. And that's what the bump stock does. It's intended to convert a semi-automatic weapon into a machine gun like device. And that's what was made very clear in the dissent by Justice Sotomayor, who first and foremost said,

you all claim to be strict textualist. How much more textually strict can you be than what Congress said in 1986 about the parts? And then Justice Sotomayor said, Today the court puts bump stocks back in civilian hands. To do so, it casts aside Congress's definition of machine gun and seizes upon one that is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the statutory text and unsupported by context or purpose. When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. A bum stock equipped semi-automatic rifle fires automatically more than one shot without

manual reloading by a single function of the trigger. And she cites the statute, Section 5845B, because I, like Congress, call that a machine gun, I respectfully dissent. And finally, before passing it over to you, it's worth noting that Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion of the court that it was a six to three decision. It was a right wing Supreme Court led decision. The three justices in the dissent were the Democratic appointed justices.

The six justices who are now putting bump stocks in civilian hands are the Republican appointed justices, including three appointed by Donald Trump. And with all of the news that's come out recently about Clarence Thomas's corruption, which we knew about before, but every day it seems there's another million dollars he's received and been bribed by billionaires to do their bidding. I think we're up to four to five million dollars now with all of these trips that he's taken. Justice John Roberts, the Chief Justice,

assigns who writes these decisions. So the fact that Justice John Roberts, even in all of this, not only is part of that majority, but giving the decision to Justice Clarence Thomas to write is also, I think, a screw you to the American people as well and intentionally done. Popeye, I know I ate up a lot of that apple in that one,

so I'm gonna let you talk about the other case as well, FDA versus Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, and I'll let you take more of that one, but I know you wanna comment on Garland v. Cargill as well. I'll do it from a broader perspective. The problem with this Supreme Court is that they've spent last two terms with an agenda. And the agenda is to roll back administrative agencies

through their interpretation of the Administrative Procedures Act. And if they don't see literal text to support the delegation of authority by Congress to the agency that's responsible for regulating in that particular area, EPA, environmental protection for clean water, education for the education department, ATF, alcohol, tobacco and firearms for guns.

If they don't see it literally there, they have taken a position through judicial activism that the agency has gone too far. We all recognize, or we should recognize, that government would be immobilized if they could only rely on what Congress writes, sometimes in slapdash format, throwing it together, sometimes the last minute, five page, 10 pages, 100 page statutes. Sometimes they're artfully drafted usually in consultation with lobbyists or written by lobbyists. Sometimes they're not. But Congress always delegates and expects that the real rulemaking is going to be done through the Administrative Procedures Act and by the agency that has substantive knowledge in the area that takes in information from the industry and from consumers that holds hearings and that through rulemaking creates rules to implement.

What the law and policy that's been established by Congress. That's why we have a code of federal regulation, the CFR. The CFR is this giant set of rules that when Congress talks about aspirationally, and maybe with some meat on it, about clean water or clean air or what they're going to do about drilling or fracking or gun control, they leave it to the experts, substantive experts in these agencies to actually backfill with the regulations. It's always been and it always will be. We couldn't operate a government properly just relying on what Congress was generating in terms of the law, if you will. And that's why there's this, this is allowed to be this delegation.

They are unique among the three branches. The president occupying the second branch operates through will, force, and power is given to him by the constitution and executive orders. and powers given to him by the Constitution and executive orders. The Supreme Court is nine people and operates through issuing orders and decisions like the ones that we talked about on Legal AF and regulates things below them at the federal court system and through budget being allocated to them and sets those rules and procedures for litigants and for the public and then sets precedent and laws. Congress Article 1, right, it has the power

to do all those things to set the law of the land, the federal law of the land, and to regulate in areas where they choose to regulate and to oust state regulation where they find it appropriate. That's our system of federalism. In order for them to do that, however, that task of regulating all conduct and behavior effectively in industries in this country, from securities to environment to education to loans to consumer protection, so on and so on and so on. They have to rely. They don't have enough hands to pull all the levers. They've got to have these agencies. This Supreme Court thinks that the agencies have run amok primarily under democratic

control. And so they've spent the last, what seems like a lifetime, but at least the last two terms, including this one, trying to roll back administrative and even executive acts. Because with all due respect, Trump actually was one of the ones that signed an executive order related to the bump stock banning as well. Even he thought it had gone too far after 60 people died in Vegas the night that I was there. I'll talk about my personal experience in a minute. So that is counter to decades of proper discretion given by courts to the agencies charged with their responsibilities because they're subject matter experts.

That deference is over with this court. And you see it most acutely and most depraved in a most depraved way when it comes to gun control. Clarence Thomas is the same person who two years ago wrote the New York rifle and pistol decision which completely changed the relationship between guns and people in this country. And wrote out much to our chagrin, I know yours particularly, Ben, the well-regulated militia language of the Second Amendment and basically said people have the right to carry handguns and it can't be regulated or limited unless you find a historical analogy back in the 1800s

that was similar without reference to the fact that the 1800s had a lot of things contextually that of course the court ignores that we don't want to repeat women as second class citizens, black Americans, not even black Americans, second class citizen slaves during long periods of that. And yet we're gonna go back to old timey times to find historical precedent to decide whether a gun regulation, a particular gun regulation should survive or not. It's so bad now that even Amy Coney Barrett

in another opinion that came out this week involving of all things copyright took on the use, the consistent use of historical precedents instead of judge-made tests to set law. She said it's gone too far. What happens if you reach a regulation where there is no historical reference? Whatever you're doing, nuclear power regulation. Well, you can't go back to old timey times for that.

So you're just delaying the inevitable. Eventually you'll run out of regulations in the modern world on artificial intelligence. You can't go back and find an 1800 analog for that. So even she's getting annoyed, yet she sides consistently, of course, with the majority. Here, you've got what looked to be to every rational human being, except for this United States Supreme Court MAGA majority, to be the easiest way to take weapons of mass destruction out of mass shooters shooter's hands. The bump stock, and I'll just dive into this for a minute,

total coincidence, total negative serendipity. I'm in Vegas the night of the Harvest Festival shooting. I'm there because I'm going to court on that Monday and I came in a day early. And I'm waiting for colleagues of mine to arrive to have dinner. And while we're at dinner, we get a text from one of our colleagues who's about to land at the airport. The airport in Vegas sits alongside or nearby the field, open field, where the harvest festival was held. Many hundreds of yards away from Mandalay Bay, the hotel. And we get a text that there are people running onto the tarmac. And we were like, what is going,

what do you mean people are running onto the runway? What do you mean? And then within minutes, we get security coming into our dining room, because we're having dinner, telling us everybody's got to get up and move right now. And I had the presence of mind and I don't know why, and I wish I didn't have to do this, but I actually looked up and said to the person active shooter and they said yes. So they didn't know where the shooter was at that time. They didn't know if it was happening

at multiple hotels. And so they got us, they went into some sort of security plan and they got us out of that dining room as quickly as possible. Of course, by the time I woke up, I realized that 60 people had died because a mass shooter using a bump stock attachment to a semi-automatic weapon had done target practice and killed these people. And I traveled home with people who had been shot, you know, been grazed or had shrapnel. I got out of there as soon as that hearing was over on Monday because I was so shaken up by it. The fact that there is not a consensus, Republican and Democrat and others, about banning bump stocks and that you can't use existing laws the way the subject matter expert ATF did to say this conversion kit of creating and putting this piece and replacing the handle, the back handle, up against your

shoulder of a rifle or some sort of semi-automatic weapon, which creates an ability to shoot 6 to 7 to 800 bullets per minute. Clarence Thomas, relying on pro-gun propaganda as part of his opinion writing, thinks that, oh, well, you're pulling the trigger 800 times in a minute. You are not pulling the trigger 800 times for a minute. That's how we distinguish machine guns from what happened here. That's where the walk like a duck and talk like a duck came from with Judge Sotomayor. You are not doing that. Your shoulder and the recoil is creating a mechanism

that is allowing the weapon to fire that many times. And if you have a semi-automatic weapon, which is still legal, you just made it into an automatic weapon. And that's exactly what the shooter did at Mandalay Bay that night. So, but what you have is they've created for themselves, because we need to take on all agency work. And if we don't see it in the literal text, we're not going to allow for reasonable

interpretations by the agency. This is the result. The result is between now and the time that the Democrats take back Congress, and they can actually pass a bump stock law banning law but we're unfortunately you and I are gonna have to count the mass shootings using bump stocks between now and then and apply this logic or illogic by the right-wing Supreme Court right now every single agency action unless congress specifically use magic words and have the foresight to predict inventions in the future that didn't exist at the time it legislated. Everything an agency what all the action congress envision the agency to do. all the action Congress envisioned the agency to do, the agency will not be permitted to do. Bum stocks weren't created until the early 2000s.

So in 1986, Congress was pretty smart. They recognized the issues that were happening but that were on the horizon. They couldn't predict the name of all of these devices, so they described the devices that they wanted to ban. And Congress, when it functioned in a bipartisan way, did that. And they predicted the types of devices. They couldn't call it by the name because it didn't exist yet. So then when that thing came into existence, then the Supreme Court saying,

well, it's not specifically mentioned by Congress as bump stock, so we're striking it down. Just as Thomas said the following, Congress has long restricted access to machine guns, a category of firearms defined by the ability to shoot automatically more than one shot by a single function of the trigger. Semi-automatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machine guns.

This case asks whether a bump stock, an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger and therefore achieve a high rate of fire, converts the rifle into a machine gun. We hold that it does not and therefore we affirm. So that's how Thomas puts it, but take a look at what Justice Alito says, and this is what I mean with the gas lighting.

Justice Alito goes, in a concurring opinion, I joined the opinion of the court because there is simply no other way to read the statutory language. There can be little doubt that Congress enacted 26 USC Section 5845B, that's the machine gun ban. It says there can be little doubt that the Congress that enacted that statute would not have seen any material difference between a machine gun and a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bum stock, but the statutory text is clear and we must follow it. He's even saying in this opinion when Congress enacted it, they would not have seen a material difference between the exact thing, the machine gun they were banning and a semi-automatic rifle

equipped with a bum stock because if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. That's exactly what Justice Sotomayor is saying in the dissent. And then Justice Alito says there's a simple remedy though for all of this. Congress needs to amend the law. That's not a simple remedy because the MAGA Republicans in Congress are cheering this decision because they're bought and paid for by the NRA. I wish it was a simple solution. I wish our government functioned and worked, but we have MAGA Republican Congressmen's

dressing up in long red ties, showing up to a convicted felon's criminal trial and attacking a judge's daughter. We'll be right back. And when we come back, I wanna chat a little bit about that decision on women's reproductive rights. Then let's talk about Judge Eileen Cannon.

I wanna remind everybody that on patreon.com slash legal AF, I'm gonna be doing a lecture this weekend on all of these Supreme Court cases this term. It's gonna be thorough, it's gonna be detailed, it's going to be geeky. And if that's your stuff, go to patreon.com slash legal AF. I think you will enjoy it. Also, we don't have outside investors. So it does help the growth of this show. And this Pro Democracy Network will be right back after our last break of the show.

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I'm sure the legal efforts do as well. Look, let's talk about this FDA v Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine case. It was decided on standing grounds, but this is the case where, and you and I talked about it when, and originally this MAGA judge in the Northern district of Texas, Matthew Kazmarek, who's made a lot of rulings like this before. And prior to becoming a federal judge, he worked for a lot of groups that basically wanted to ban all types of women's reproductive rights and in the most extreme way possible.

This is someone who's now a federal judge. And so when he got this case, he made a ruling that Mifepristin is banned. It can't ever be distributed or sold. And then it went up to that ruling was stayed. It went to the fifth circuit. There was some circuit conflicts as well. Another case was decided in Washington. Anyway, the impact of the rulings banning Miffy

Princeton were stated, worked its way up to the Supreme court finally, But here the United States Supreme Court, notably if our viewers are saying, this case involves the FDA and FDA regulations, but Ben and Michael Popak, you just said that the Supreme Court is gutting any type of regulatory actions by agencies. So how was the FDA's regulation in this case

allowed to persist? It was a nine to zero ruling. It's a unanimous court rule that Mifflpristen can be sold, that the FDA, they didn't necessarily say that the FDA could do it, but they basically could have regulations to allow Mifepristin. But what the ruling was is that the right-wing groups that were that identified themselves as pro-life groups, which that terminology I never want to buy into. That's why I say they

call themselves that that were filing the lawsuits against the FDA did not have standing to enter the court. So on a technicality ground, the Supreme Court threw it out, but they didn't reach the issue or the merits of the case. So Mifflpristen can be sold and distributed as it always has, but I'll toss it to you, the Supreme Court, seeming though to give a somewhat roadmap for future litigants to try to find a way to ban it. Yeah, it's not as great as mainstream media has reported.

At nine-zero, Mipha Prystone has been, no, it hasn't been anything. The standing argument which courts use when they don't want to reach the merits yet, Kavanaugh writing for the majority, the way I reconcile what you and I said earlier about the rollback of agency discretion and deference to agency action with this case is they never reached the issue of the agency action, but they have invited a future case next term or while they continue to have the 63 majority in order to finally rule on the use of medicated abortion in the country, having already taken away a constitutional right for a woman to choose. More than 12 states, I think 13 states have banned abortion outright, meaning you can't use

medicated abortion pills, Mifepristone and its companion drug in those states. That was not touched by the United States Supreme Court. How you reconcile in a now a patchwork quilt country where it is literally the North versus the South, basically, when it comes to women's rights and women having equal rights. Kavanaugh created this standing argument, which he summarized as what's it to you, literally. I thought it was like a New Yorker writing the opinion, meaning in order for you to have standing you have to show that the governmental action

and your injury, there is a logical chain that connects those two things. And if you have no injury, or you have governmental action, but no injury, or injury, but no governmental action, you're not gonna be able to come into court and argue about it. And since none of these quote unquote doctors

representing this astroturf company that was literally created and incorporated in order to bring this case, they were literally incorporated in the very town that this Northern District of Texas judge sits in. They didn't exist before the lawsuit. And I'm sure even though you can find them on their website, they don't really exist. It's this Alliance of Hippocratic Medicine, which I call the Alliance of Hippocritical Medicine, which is a bunch of doctors who did not prescribe Mephistone, who did not perform abortions on women who had some sort of mishap using Mephistone, but wanted to stop others through a national ban of prescribing Mepryshtone. And the cabinet was like, what's it to you? You didn't do it.

Their argument was, well, if somebody uses it and things go awry, I may be called upon to provide an abortion that I don't wanna have to provide. Then we're in the whole world of EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treat treatment, federal law about what has to happen in hospitals that accept federal aid in terms of the life of a mother, which is going to come out in another ruling, I presume next Thursday. We'll talk about the timing of these rulings to challenge the FDA having approved in 2000 this drug.

Let me tell you straight. Most women obtain abortions through medicated abortions through male or telehealth. These are the products that you use. It has been determined by the FDA through years of study that it is safer than, not as safe, safer than aspirin or Tylenol for women to use for this purpose. But when the right set of plaintiffs come together, which would be, I used Mephibra Stone and something went bad for me, or I was the doctor for a patient who used it and something went awry. They're going to trust me. They're looking for that plaintiff right now. And they will refile the case in front of Judge Kasmeric again, because Texas will not recognize, despite there being recommendations by the federal judiciary conferences,

that there should not be forum shopping. Texas has said they're not going to recognize it. So you want to go file your case in front of the judge who used to be the general counsel for a right to life movement. I'm not making this up. And has been public about his being against abortion. Then you see in the opinion, another opinion written by Clarence Thomas. It's another I mean, I don't want to be rude, but it's another older male, childless male, talking about women's reproductive rights. And talking about and listen to the language he used, Ben, I'm

sure you saw you caught it. He talks about he paints the world into two places into two divides into two worlds. Abortionists. That's a phrase that had been used by people filing advocacy briefs and in different types of ridiculous literature, but never apparently in a Supreme Court decision by a Supreme Court justice. So he calls the people that are in favor

of a woman's right to choose abortionists. And with all of that negative connotation and morality that's embedded in that, I almost said impregnated in that, embedded in that. And he calls the people that the women that go to a doctor, it's always performed by a doctor, to have an abortion a client, not a patient. And he contrasts that with doctors who have patients. I mean,

it's just in the language that they have chosen, you see the moral legislation that's going on, the church-based stuff that's going on at the court system. And so, I took cold comfort with the nine zero. Like for now, you can use Mifepristone in the states where you can actually have some sort of abortion, which are becoming more and more limited. But there will be, and you and I will talk about the next case that will come where standing is not an issue. And then you're going to see them talk about, is there a right to use this? And was the FDA right or wrong in its research and in the delegation from Congress down to the FDA? And then we're right back to the administrative issues that you and I talked about. One last thing on the Supreme Court before you move us to canon. Look how long they

are taking to issue the ruling that we've been waiting for with the hope that if it comes out in one direction or another, we can restart the DC election interference case against Donald Trump or Judge Chuckin. They waited till the last day of oral argument in April to hear the case. They could have done it any other time, a month earlier at least. And instead of in that we've had three days or four days of oral art of decisions being issued. Okay. And we were waiting patiently. They said, we're going to do two. We're going to do this past week. We're going to do Thursday and Friday. We're like, okay, Thursday, Friday. Here we go. Here we go. First one comes out, you know, it's nine zero, Mipha Presston. Then the bump stock comes out. Then a few other ones come out. Okay.

Let's go. Let's go. Where's immunity? No. So now we got to wait till next Thursday, right, to get maybe the immunity and whether there's going to be a ruling on obstruction of Congress, which is two of the four counts for Donald Trump, and was used against 300 Jan six defendants already, including those that have been convicted and sentenced under it to determine whether that was proper or not. We're going to wait till the very last gasp of this term, meaning every day that goes by is one less day that Judge Chutkin has to get that trial up and running, even if she can before the November election.

Yeah, no, the Supreme Court did everything in their power to make sure that the Washington DC case, by all accounts, could have went, despite Donald Trump's ridiculous, absolute presidential immunity appeal, who this right-wing Supreme Court may not find ridiculous and may say that their definition of conservative is conserving the monarchy and reinstituting the idea of kings with absolute immunity.

We'll see what they actually rule. But what's been clear is that they've done everything in their power to prevent intentionally the right-wing Supreme Court to stop that trial from happening, and they will release that ruling at the very last minute. And I think when they release it, no matter what the outcome is, I think it will have strings attached to it that will, even if there is no absolute immunity,

which is the most ridiculous concept ever in the world to me, they will have Judge Chutkin in DC have to do some work that will also ensure that there's no way that trial can ever take place before the election. And that's what they want. But look, I mean, we know these justices. I mean, you have Clarence Thomas who's getting bribed. Like we know the right wing justice Clarence Thomas has been bribed over $4 million by billionaires to get him to make rulings. And for MAGA Republicans, that's okay.

And for justice John Roberts, that's fine. We know that you have justice Alito who violates the flag code, but which in and of itself is an issue, which is a violation of the law, but flies upside down flags, the sign of imminent distress to show solidarity with insurrectionists, then blames his wife for it, then flies the other insurrectionist flag at his New Jersey beach house. Then we have the audio recordings of the kind of just dystopian ways of Justice Alito even talking

about these things. Then we have the audio recording of his wife who, I don't know one way or another if she was a few drinks in or if that's just the way she is in general. I don't want to assume one way or the other, but the way she communicates with people at the event is by meowing to them. And she goes, Hey, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. And I'm listening to this popok. And I'm like, you're communicating via meows.

The person's name was cat, but I still doesn't give you the reason to go meow, meow. When you see the person. Yeah. I mean, your last name is Popak. I don't treat you like the Pope. I don't go, you know, I mean, I understand that people have names that doesn't mean that you go meow meow meow meow meow meow. Michael Popak. Anyway, going to judge, going to judge Eileen Cannon though, who fits the mold of a MAGA judge. Let me just set the stage super quickly of what she did. By the way, when you say Cannon, you don't go boom. Exactly, I don't go, hey, Judge Cannon, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

I mean, adults usually don't communicate via noises, especially at the Supreme Court level at those types of meetings. But I don't know, maybe I'm, I mean, look, they do have shaman, you know, QAnon shaman and, oh, and I should mention Clarence Thomas's wife being at the insurrection

and then sending messages to Mark Meadows, the chief of staff at the time, in like these like apocalyptic terms, like we need the armies from from having to descend and dethrone and destroy, you know by I'm like, oh, there's some strange stuff anyway Judge Eileen Cannon not boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Not that judge Eileen Cannon not cannonball So she issued a few orders this week cannon, not cannonball.

Um, so she issued a few orders this week. One of them was on the deadline for Donald Trump to disclose the expert witness in the Mar-a-Lago document case where the original deadline was November of 2023 and that date was then adjourned twice and then the new date was June 10th, You disclose your expert in the case, expert deadline. On the day the expert disclosure was due, this is how the arrogance of Trump and Trump's lawyers and how they know cannons in the bag for her, right? A bag for them is that on the day the disclosure is due, rather than disclosing the expert, they ask for an

extension the day it's due. And then they say the reason why they need the extension in the filing, which is right there, you can read the filing for yourself, is they say that the expert they were going to hire told them over the weekend that the expert can no longer be their expert. So they waited until the weekend, then the experts that I can't be the expert, then on Monday on the disclosure deadline, when you're supposed to give a pretty detailed disclosure, you go, hey, Judge Cannon, we need some more time. Any other federal judge would sanction you for that type of conduct.

By the way, Judge Cannon had previously admonished Special Counsel Jack Smith for not meeting and conferring for a length of time that Judge Cannon and whatever arbitrary view she has was sufficient for her when Donald Trump was lying and saying that the FBI was trying to assassinate him and the DOJ wanted to kill him. Trump's just like lying about that, taking the standard use of force policy that exists in every search warrant and claiming that, oh, they're coming after me.

They want to kill me. And Jack Smith met and conferred with Trump's lawyers. Trump's lawyers were like, you know, because Jack Smith wanted to modify the conditions of Trump's release and basically have a gag order saying, stop lying about that, you're going to get DOJ and law enforcement killed. And Trump's lawyers were like, yeah, we don't want to meet and confer with you. Let's schedule it sometime next week. So Jack Smith filed with the court sufficiently,

after giving Trump's lawyers sufficient time to meet and confer. And when Jack Smith did it with sufficient time, Judge Cannon admonished him and Judge Cannon goes, the court finds that special counsel's pro forma conferral to be wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy. And she rejected his request for not being courteous enough after Donald Trump was about to get law enforcement killed while Jack Smith gave plenty of time but Donald Trump the day of the deadline says you know what I

need I need some more time give us an extension and then she goes out of her way and says granting it for good cause this was her order the court finds that good cause exists for the extension request and that no prejudice to the special counsel or the proceeding will result from granting the relief sought. And then she says, moving forward, any requests or extensions or enlargement must be filed sufficiently in advance of the deadline at issue. So, hey, maybe in the future, Donald, you can just do it a little more in

advance than like the day the disclosures was due, but I got your back. That's the message that was sent there. The other thing that Judge Eileen Cannon did was while she denied a motion to dismiss filed by Donald Trump that frankly, I couldn't even comprehend what he was even saying the grounds for dismissal of the indictment were for duplicative allegations and saying that it was too long. I literally made no sense. Donald Trump's motion while she denied Donald Trump's motion to dismiss, she

struck certain allegations in there that she said were too prejudicial to Donald Trump. And here's the allegations that she struck. In August or September, 2021, when Donald Trump was no longer president, Trump met in his office at the Bedminster club with a representative of his political action committee. During the meeting, Trump commented that an ongoing military operation in Country B was

not going well. Trump showed the PAC representative a classified map of Country B and told the PAC representative that he should not be showing the map to the PAC representative and not to get too close. The PAC representative did not have a security clearance or any need to know classified information about the military operation. As George Conway says, it seems that in Judge Cannon's view, prejudicial means conclusively demonstrative of the defendant's criminal state of mind. He's absolutely right.

That paragraph is clearly an important paragraph to go in the indictment. It shows Donald Trump's intent. If he's saying to someone, you shouldn't see thesement, it shows Donald Trump's intent. If he's saying to someone, you shouldn't see these documents, it directly rebuts Donald Trump's other claim that he believes he was entitled to have them. It may be prejudicial to Donald Trump, but that's like saying all criminal complaints

are prejudicial to the criminal because they talk about the criminal's crimes. So Popak, that's what Judge Cannon did today. I think Jack Smith was certainly looking into whether there could be an appeal of that. It's still not necessarily one of those finite topics where you can seek interlocutory review because it doesn't address a SIPA issue where you can seek interlocutory review because it doesn't address a SEPA issue where you can have interlocutory review. There are a few other kind of finite areas

where you can take the appeal midway through, but I know on your hot take, you thought that there's a potential, at least that Jack Smith could appeal this. But anyway, that's what she did. But I wanna show the comparison because what I wanna show is that if Judge Cannon was a stickler for her calendar,

the way she's being with the DOJ, and she's hard on them all the time, and hey, it's a pro forma meet and confer. I want seven days, not three days. And that's who the judge is. Same way like an umpire in a baseball game, right? They establish a strike zone. And then if it's within the strike zone, you have a sense of, okay, this is at least the

strike zone of where it is. But for Canon, she truly just has one set of rules for the prosecutor and one set of rules for Donald Trump. And the set of rules for Donald Trump is whatever benefits you. And the set of rules for the prosecutor is whatever hurts you. One final point before throwing it to you, Judge Cannon's reputation, though, outside of this case is to always be unfair to the criminal defendants lawyers and to always be favorable to the prosecutors.

Almost no matter what the circumstance, that was the only rep that I got on her from people who have appeared criminal defense lawyers, who I know have appeared before. So she's adjusted the whole framing here as how can I help Donald Trump? And that's why I don't just want to like wine. Oh, Judge Cannon's a bad judge. I just want to show you. Here's how she made an order here. Here's how she made an order there. It's the exact opposite order with the very similar set of facts.

In fact, far more egregious facts when it comes to the fact that there's life or death of FBI agents caused by Donald Trump's behavior. Popeye, I'll give you the final word. I think I covered a lot of it. Well, I'm not going to cover that, but I'm going to cover something else that worries me about Kennan. I agree with you. Under 404B of the criminal rule, she should have allowed to stay in the indictment, the allegation that you read out loud. Suzy Wiles is the person that is mentioned there. At the time, it was listed as a PAC representative, but we know now it's Suzy Wiles is the person that is mentioned there at the time. It was listed as a PAC representative, but we know now it's Suzy Wiles, who's sort of this dark figure that's always surrounding Donald Trump, does all of his political action. She was involved with other communication between

the co-conspirators. She's going to be a witness in that prosecution, by the way, whether the paragraph that references her is taken out or not. The judge seemed very concerned about, well, when the indictment may go back in writing to the future jury, and since it's an uncharged crime, I can't understand why it's included, to which Jay Bratt and others have said it's because it goes to intent and motive. This is the guy who said he magically declassified everything on the way out of the White House. Well, if he believed that, then why was he worried about showing Suzy Wilde as a document that he shouldn't show her? Don't get too close because it's classified. See, that's inconsistent and that goes with willfulness and intent. I'm less concerned about that, although that's a terrible

decision. Maybe they can ask, even if they don't have an appeal as of right, they can ask the 11th Circuit to go up on that one. But the one, I think they're just waiting, and they're keeping their powder dry. Because the one that I'm worried about, and I did a hot take on, is the one about Evan Corcoran. It's gonna be her overturning a decision well made

by Judge Barrel Howell, the chief judge at the time of the DC Circuit Court, about Evan Corcoran, the lawyer for Donald Trump, having participated in a crime or fraud with Donald Trump, which stripped Donald Trump of his attorney-client privilege and forced Evan Corcoran, who was the main lawyer, for all things Mar-a-Lago and the documents and the interactions with the government and his own client during the relevant time period. He took 50 pages of single-spaced notes. I've got to tell you, I've been doing this a long time. I've never taken for a client that I trusted, 50 pages of single-spaced notes, including my mental musings and really damning evidence against Donald Trump, such as Donald Trump directing Evan Corcoran to make classified documents, poof, and this is a bare paraphrase, poof,

disappear from his collection before he turned it over to the federal government. And audio tapes, audio memo recordings that also this guy made, which you would never do normally, in which he's also has damning observations about his client, Donald Trump. That has been turned over to the prosecutors. We reported on it a long time ago when there was, you know, it's all secret hearings, but we were able to glean what happened as Evan Corcoran was testifying to the grand jury now stripped of attorney-client privilege and had to turn over all those documents. They have moved to suppress all of Evan Corcoran's notes and damning testimony and keep him off

the stand in this case, and it is pending before Judge Cannon. It will be determined at one of these crazy hearings of hers in the next two or three weeks. If she has the temerity, with her lack of experience, with ten trial days under her belt, to overturn Beryl Howell, who's a 20-year judge, a litigator before that, who's well-respected, shortlisted for the United States Supreme Court, overturns her judgment and finds as the trial judge that that should be suppressed, then we're off and running to the 11th Circuit because she's dead wrong and she's overstepped her boundaries. That's the one I'm worried about and that's the one that's coming up in this next round of hearings that are stacking up. And I'll leave it on this.

Now the only active case left of the four at the moment is Mar-a-Lago. He already got convicted of the 34 felony counts. New York is over, all is over except for the shouting at sentencing, right? Georgia is currently stayed, subject to a motion to dismiss the Foddy Willis has filed in order to get the appeal of Donald Trump dismissed and

get that case out of the mud. DC election interference as we said earlier in the podcast today is awaiting the decision apparently on the last day before they go on there on the Republican side they go on their junkets paid for by MAGA Federalists and people lobbying them for decisions on the bench. The day they leave for that, that's the day next Thursday, probably we're going to get that decision when it's too late to do anything. The only case left, which means now Donald Trump's lawyers fresh off their loss at the New York court can just train their resources and attention on the friendly judge that they think at Mar-a-Lago.

And they just keep hitting that button because good things happen for them in her courtroom. It's the only judge that they reliably and consistently can get a positive ruling because she has such a jaundiced view of the Department of Justice and is so negative about them and much to the frustration and flummoxing of the of the prosecutors and

I think they're just waiting for her to make whatever crazy ruling it's gonna be about Evan Corcoran's notes and suppression and ultimately the hearing which will probably be part and parcel or over a two-day period the way she likes to do it in her courtroom hearing, which will probably be part and parcel or over a two day period, the way she likes to do it in her courtroom, dragging everybody into Fort Pierce, is she's also going to rule about the suppression of the search warrant, which is the, if the prosecution by her ruling were to lose the evidence that was seized under the search warrant, because they didn't keep the scent allegedly keep the sanctity of each box and the exact order that it was in even though it was scanned and reviewed and inventoried and a magistrate already took a look at it for a short amount of time if she does any part of that we're off to the 11th

circuit and maybe with her replacement it's a case where Donald Trump stole nuclear secrets I don't want to ever forget that Donald Trump stole nuclear secrets. I don't want to ever forget that. He stole our nuclear secrets. He stole war plans. He stole real serious documents and data and his claim in one of his motions is that it now belongs to him and it no longer belongs to the government of the United States because he claims that he

telepathically declassified it. No one knew about it but he telepathically did it and he claims under the Presidential Records Act it's now his personal stuff. So he claims that our nuclear codes are his personal property. Me, me, me. That American war plans are his personal property. Me, me, me. And that's the case that Judge Eileen Cannon is presiding over and doing all of these things and so this show goes kind of full circle if you will where. You know i say there's a lot i can predict. A lot i can think through different scenarios but i just think the saddest and most shocking part about this.

Is on just some objective reality stuff. The saddest and most shocking part about this is on just some objective reality stuff. Nuclear records don't belong to, what are you talking about? How could that even be an argument? You're absolutely immune like a king? What are you talking? What is this, the United States of America? What are you talking about?

I mean, we can do our deep dive statutory analysis like you and i do all the time but i don't want that to shadow. The cover what did some of these basic things is the united states of america don't have kings you don't get to steal our nuclear records, war plans and nuclear codes do not become your personal property where you have your valet hiding the documents, caught on surveillance footage. It looks like an Ace Ventura parody of the guy hiding these things. What are we talking about? That's the part about it to me that what I hope this show can do is bring us together. In terms of whether you're a Democrat,

an independent, a mainstream Republican, if you're a real conservative, independent, liberal, progressive, that we can at least agree on logic and fundamental things that we can at least agree on logic and fundamental things that we shouldn't disagree on and we never disagreed on with before. And that's what's at stake. And that is what's always underpinning, I think, the law and the detail and the deep analysis that we do there's some of this common sense stuff that i don't want ever lose sight of.

What remind everybody about our patreon patreon.com. Slash legal af gonna be posting a new lecture tomorrow and then michael popock you have some big family developments coming up soon, but I hope before you get too busy, although you're probably very busy now, maybe you and I together, but at least I'll pledge to do this. In the next week, I will set at least a Zoom meeting with everybody who joins the Patreon, and you could ask me any legal question at all that we can do on a zoom. And I don't want to be, I know right now, Popak, you're kind of in the, in the home stretch of some major family news. So I'd love for you to join me.

Yeah. Let me make two comments about that one. I'm really excited about your Patreon and I'm a big lover of the Supreme Court analysis stuff, which for a long time kept us afloat on legal AF when you and I founded it four years ago. There were times when we were like, well, thank God the Supreme Court's in session or they're about to issue their orders because we were looking for really great content to bring and we're always curating, I'm thinking about it. So we've been on top of the Supreme Court stuff even before the Trump prosecution stuff. That's always been our jam, as we like to say around here. So I'm looking for, I'm going to tune in. I watch what's on our Patreon. I'm going to tune into

your tutorial about, which is for non-lawyers, just to be clear, we're nerding out, we're geeking out, but it's for non-lawyers and lawyers alike. And we gear it the way we do here, without being patronizing, no pun intended. We try to do it in an informative and entertaining way, so the takeaway from it is that it is a valuable commitment of your time, five minute, 10 minute, 20 minute, whatever it's gonna be, and that you walk away

with new knowledge in an informative and entertaining And that you walk away with new knowledge in an informative and entertaining way that you didn't have before, that is our commitment to you. As to the Zoom thing, totally in. This would be the good last week to try to do that. And then you and I will also do a duet that we're gonna do as well, that we're gonna do quarterly, that we're up for,

that we're due for, that we'll do on a topic that we haven't done together and we haven't done here on Legal AF as exclusive content. Love it, love it, love it. Thank you all the Legal AFers, we appreciate you. So join that Patreon, we'll put a secret link in for some time this week, we'll probably do it. We'll figure out a good time to do it.

This week, probably middle of the week or Tuesday, we'll figure out a good day. You and I know you're doing Legal AF on Wednesday. So we'll figure that out. And one more time, patreon.com such Legal AF, patreon.com slash Legal AF. Thank you everybody for watching. We appreciate you and we'll see you next time.

Have a wonderful day.