Legal AF by MeidasTouch - GOP Special Counsel MAKES MOCKERY of Final Report

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

President Biden gets a solid “gentlemen’s C” for his handing of classified documents after leaving the vice presidency and will not be charged with any crimes by the Special Counsel Robert Hur. Michael Popok of Legal AF critiques the 350 page report, its misguided efforts to insert itself into the campaign by attacking both Biden and Trump, and instead proposes that a a new position of “classified compliance officer” be created to fix these issues once and for all. Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Popak, legal AF. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The report card that just came out in the form of special counsel, Robert Hurr's report about Joe Biden's handling or mishandling of classified documents after he left the vice presidency up until the point he became the president is not glowing. I wouldn't give it an A. I'd give it a gentleman's C at best, although the C is for no crimes, no crimes here. Even though in one part of the report, he says that there is evidence to

suggest that Joe Biden willfully retain documents about his notes, his diaries, if you will, his notebooks that contain top secret information, because he wanted to write a couple of memoirs, a couple of autobiographies and particularly retain the material in order to do that, and may have retained additional material in order to write his version of history about what happened when he opposed the Obama administration official position about Afghanistan 15 years ago. But that doesn't mean he committed a crime. In fact, as the special counsel even had to admit

that Joe Biden was with good intention following the lead of former presidents like Ronald Reagan, who had copious diaries and notes that he took with him after he left office. It was at the heart of the Iran Contra scandal. And that sort of has been the guidepost or the North Star for people that have left office ever since. Well, Reagan could do it. Why can't I do it? Every president has kept some sort of diary and

considered it to be his personal property. The problem with Joe Biden's is that a lot of his note-taking, and he was a diarist, he was a note taker. These are all good things. He was organized, he was cataloged. He had a notebook for every major event in his vice presidential life, but he also knows how to handle classified documents. And it looks like many people around Joe Biden

were asleep at the switch, many of his staff, many in the military, naval officers around him, office assistants, executive secretaries, secretaries of part of the national security team around him, sort of let Joe Biden down. I mean, I don't expect the vice president of the United States to get it exactly right about every scrap of paper that comes into his his orbit, but I expect the people around him to Coach him direct him help him pack up and catalog and return Documents that are classified and if Joe Biden wanted to take a certain notebook or a certain notepad or a certain note card with him That may or may not have contained top secret classified information, then somebody should have spoken truth to power and sat him down and said,

I think this is something that has to be returned Mr. Vice President to the National Archive or to the appropriate agency for intelligence or something like that. So it looks like there was a there was a wholesale breakdown. breakdown of the 350-page report. That's one of my takeaways. The other takeaway is that, for some reason, Robert Hehr has decided to insert himself into the politics of the day and the campaign of Donald Trump versus Joe Biden. There's no other way to explain why Robert Hehr would include two, I don't want to call them sections. It's really a total of three paragraphs out of 350 pages. So I don't want to make too big a deal out of it, although all in the media sort of latched on to one of the parts I'm going

to tell you about now. And the way he injected himself, the way that prior like FBI directors like James Comey did the same thing at the exact wrong moment and tanked the election for Hillary Clinton when he released for no reason and held a press conference about her emails and servers in which, yes, he cleared her, but with daming faint praise. We have another damning faint praise here in the form of Robert Hearer's report. He does two things. First, for some reason, he feels he has to distinguish Joe Biden from Donald Trump

in terms of the retention of national security information, classified information, top secret information. I think that should have been left to Jack Smith. There is another special counsel that's been working almost tirelessly over the last year and a half, over almost two years. And he's got his case. He had dited Donald Trump. It's sitting at Mar-a-Lago with a judge in federal court, and ultimately the United

States Supreme Court will rule on it. Why Mr. Her felt it was necessary to contrast Joe Biden's blameless lack of criminal behavior with that of Donald Trump at that particular moment, I think he was just trying to balance what he had done earlier in the report where he called Joe Biden a elderly person with a bad memory. I mean, look, we all get that there are tremendous differences

or as Mr. Her refers to them, aggravating factors that distinguish Joe Biden's innocent taking of note cards, notebooks, and the like with him and using them and having them stored at various locations in a way that appeared that he didn't even know he had some of these things and other things he didn't know he had and he wanted to use for his diaries. I get that. And contrasting that with Donald Trump, who lied to the National Archive, who lied to his lawyers, who lied to a federal judge, who lied to his own lawyers back at Mar-a-Lago, who lied to ultimately a federal magistrate, who required a numerous request by the National Archive. He directed his lawyers to lie to them about the documents that he had retained.

He hid boxes, 30 boxes of documents from his own lawyer and ultimately from the Department of Justice. And if it wasn't for people on the inside at Mar-a-Lago that were giving information to the Department of Justice, we never would have known that there were hundreds more classified documents that Donald Trump was keeping and relying on for his own memoirs, speaking of memoirs, because we learned about it in a recording about the ghost writing of Mark Meadows own memoirs in which the issue of Donald Trump's retention of classified documents about Iran and nuclear secrets was revealed. Now, I don't know why her decided that on

the one hand in the first page and then later on in the 350 pages, he had to make the statement. Well, I don't think a jury would convict a former president or president in Joe Biden, even if we could prosecute him Because they would feel sorry for him because it comes off as an affable elderly man with a poor memory I don't know if that was like shot at Joe Biden because he didn't believe that he had a poor memory That's my one theory or He just in the interviews about things that happened five, 10, 15, 20 years ago for a person that's been in the public eye since he was 29,

who's forgotten more about classified top secret information than any of us will ever know. You know, I don't know quite where her was coming from and why he put it so front and center. If it wasn't supposed to be the focus of his 350 pages of his report, then why in his summary did he have to mention it? And then pick it up later in the report. But I guess he felt slightly guilty about attacking Joe Biden and calling him effectively senile, which he's not,

of course, because then he balanced it off by saying, well, he's not Donald Trump. Because what's in the indictment for Donald Trump are aggravating factors far beyond what we've determined with existed with Mr. Biden. He should have just stayed out of politics. That's the reason that a special prosecutor, special counsel was appointed. And we were all shocked to see any kind of reference to Joe Biden and or Donald Trump in it. Now what my takeaway from the Her report is actually a pretty positive about Joe Biden. It taught me something I didn't know. I suspected it, but Joe Biden for his entire kind of position in government here

as the vice president was a copious record keeper, note taker, diarist notebook upon notebook dedicated to the matters of the day and the matters at hand. He brought a notebook with him to every meeting. He took notes after every meeting. He wrote memos and had memos written for him and saved them. He was almost like a scrapbooker in a positive way about our nation's history. Now look, most if not all of what he did should

have been returned to the National Archive. And yes, one of the takeaways from this report is that we need a better procedure and system going forward. And the next president, whether it's Joe Biden or whomever should, should make a change in how government officials handle classified documents and information, including the vice president and the president, who should not be above those laws. I agree with that. There's better check-in and check-out systems at your local elementary school library than what apparently was employed here. We need to have people surrounding an institutional memory of professionals surrounding the incoming occupants of the Oval Office who are dedicated to being archivists, dedicated to being the

people that can preserve these security documents, make sure they're reviewed in appropriate places, that they're stored under lock and key, that they're returned to their appropriate place when they're not being used and that they don't walk out the door with the end of that president's term. We just need proper policies and procedures in the business world. We call it controls. Did you know that your temperature at night can have one of the greatest impacts on your sleep quality? If you wake up too hot or too cold, I highly recommend you check out Miracle Maid's bedsheets.

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Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made. Go to trymiracle.com slash legalaf and use the code legalaf to claim your free three piece towel set and save over 40%. Again, that's trymiracle.com slash legalaf to treat yourself. Thank you Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode. We need a control system. There needs to be a compliance officer. The way there is in business,

who makes sure that the company is complying with the laws, regulations, and statutes, and administrative agencies or industry agencies that are responsible for regulating it. Same thing here. We need a chief classified document compliance officer who has the power to sit and speak truth to power and tell whoever's that occupant, you can't do it this way. You got to do it this way and follow these procedures and these protocols. We don't need a head of protocol who's telling us, you know, how many salad forks need to be at a state dinner. We need a head of protocol and compliance that knows how to enforce these rules. That's a takeaway for me as well. The other takeaway for me and why

I said it's like a C for Joe Biden is it is obvious to me that he did want to keep a certain amount of the documents that he had generated himself in his own pen for his own purpose, for his two memoirs that he was writing with a coast writer. And so he could, as he said, in one of his own entries, that he could either help write the history or the story of things that were important to him from a policy standpoint like Afghanistan, and or he could use it in the important to him from a policy standpoint like Afghanistan and or he could use it in the future to make money for his retirement. I mean, he actually wrote that. That's why I think we're going to see like the restart now of some of these impeachment

proceedings about whether Joe Biden took certain things in order to make money. There's a little bit of a little bit of that craven grab for the dollar that's baked in there as well. Look, Democrats Craven grab for the dollar that's baked in there as well. Look, Democrats and in my party are angels. You know, sometimes their halo falls off and gets a little dirty and dusty. And I think that's what we're seeing here. But sloppy record keeping and failure of a group of people around Joe Biden to make sure he did it right.

And Joe Biden wanting to be accurate when he wrote his memoirs and talking to his ghost writer, his co-writer, if you will, is a far cry from what Donald Trump is charged with. And I outline for you all the ways that he tried to obstruct justice, which is at the heart of his indictment in Mar-a-Lago, and tried to mislead the National Archive, the Department of Justice, the FBI, his own lawyers, the National Security Apparatus, and the like. That's not Joe Biden, having a bunch of boxes at various locations in his life that he touched, some of which even Mr. Her, how to admit,

look like he had forgotten that he'd even taken them. They were stored with other personal material in his garage next to his coveted Corvette and the like. Now, somewhere in his personal residence, in drawers, in a TV armoire, but very organized, by the way, unlike Donald Trump, these things were catalog organized. There were labels on them and stickies on them and the like.

But there's no sense trying to get around her sugarcoat. There were moments when in a lapse of judgment, Joe Biden read aloud from top secret material that was maybe 10 or 12 years old or whatever it was to his coastwriter for his books when he shouldn't have. I mean, let's just call it what it is. We're a better country by having Joe Biden go through the acid bath and the acid test of this particular special prosecutor. But at the end he came out clean except the headline, of course, is that the special prosecutor either throwing shade on Joe Biden for how he gave

some of his responses or believing that the world had to hear that the current sitting occupant of the Oval Office has a memory problem. I think that's something that should have been, first of all, I don't believe it's true and second of all, it's something that should not have been baked into this 350 page report, especially in the actual substantive analysis of the report, her says the opposite.

He says that Joe Biden almost every instance in his interaction with the special counsel's office gave convincing, unwavering testimony that he believed he had the right to take his own diaries because Ronald Reagan had done it and other people had done it. And yet he tries to make him out like Joe Biden is about to enter his dotted, right? He's a doddering old man who's got some memory problems. He should have just stayed out of that. I'm surprised that Robert Herr,

except, you know, we know where his political leanings are. I'm surprised that Robert Herr, after the many, many drafts, I'm sure that went through 20 or 25 drafts before it was finally approved and signed off on, allowed that pot shot at Joe Biden to remain in there. But again, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to, you know, in any way, take away or distract from the underlying premise of this document. I liked the Joe Biden that has piles of organized note cards and notebooks.

We always know he walks around with note cards now that, you know, with, you know, words on them. He's been doing that since he was in his 40s. Has nothing to do with his age. That's how he's organized. I keep notes. I mean, I keep a little book to keep track of things in my life,

even though I have a pretty sharp memory. So I like that, that Joe Biden that I read about. But the reason it's 350 pages is they had to go into the four different locations that Joe Biden self reported and self identified that he had found he had found his own documents at the Penn Biden Center at his beach house in Delaware at his regular house in Delaware at another storage unit and in Delaware, at another storage unit, at another office. And then they broke it down by the types of classified documents. And they really fell into a couple of categories. It was stuff about Afghanistan because Joe

Biden wanted to write his chapter in history about that and how he almost quit the presidency to object to the surge that was being promoted by generals and that Barack Obama, his boss, eventually adopted in Afghanistan. It was he felt that strongly against that and he wanted to take that material and write it. And then other things that he was gonna use for other aspects of his memoir.

So they kind of went through each of it and Joe Biden admitted it. And the way we know he admitted it is there's another sort of cloud over the report or over Joe Biden. And it's not his fault, but the person he chose as a ghost writer apparently recorded their conversations. And when this investigation started, he sort of hit delete and moved all the audio files into a trash bin. Now the FBI was able to recover all of them.

And after doing a full investigation, which we didn't know was going on, they concluded in the same report that the ghost writer would not be charged with obstruction because he didn't commit those acts with the willful corrupt intent to obstruct justice at all. And so they passed on that.

And they were able to recover it. And in the recovery of the comments and the statements, you hear Joe Biden basically acknowledging that he knew these were classified documents. He knew they were top secret documents and yet he shared them in one way or the other with the ghostwriter in order to prepare that report. Now, fortunately for national security, these things were 10, 12 and 15 years old. But again, I'm not giving Joe Biden to pass on this nor the people around him in the administration about how they let him operate. That's what a compliance officer

is for and the one that I proposed here on this particular hot take. So again, to summarize, Robert Her is not going to bring charges against Joe Biden for any criminal act. Although he found that Joe Biden willfully retain documents, particularly about Afghanistan and some other national security matters because he was writing a couple of books and he did it on purpose because he wanted to keep those personal memoirs

personal note-taking in diaries in order to write his book, right? He had special access to them. They also found in the same breath that that retention was not criminal because it wasn't done corruptly. Just because it was willful doesn't mean it was criminal. He intentionally did it, but not with the intent to commit crimes or to compromise national security or the like. And that's the main reason that he is not being charged with crimes, which we would be surprised if he was, especially given his level of cooperation. And then I also think that Robert Hirsch had left out any kind of comparison to Donald Trump, let Jack Smith make the comparison to the judges

that are involved in the case. He didn't need a fist bump from Robert Hirsch in the form of, well, it's certainly not Donald Trump with all his extenuating and aggravating factors. We don't need that. And we don't need the comments about, you know, the two days of interviews that Joe Biden gave, trying to remember things from 15, trying to remember things from 15 years ago, and maybe at moments having having trouble doing it, it doesn't make him, you know, it doesn't undermine his mental capacity or acuity. And that's the problem with the report. We'll continue to dive into that report, 350 pages or so, bring you what we find in it and finding consistencies where they aren't and let you know about them. But again, we're not blowing smoke or sunshine.

It's a solid C for Joe Biden. The C also stands for not being convicted of being indicted for any crimes. We'll continue to follow it all on legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network, two million strong every Wednesday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern time, only on Midas Touch YouTube and then on audio podcast platforms. So if your choice, give me a thumbs up if you like this kind of analysis coming to you only one place, the Midas Touch

Network. Until my next hot take, until my next legal AF. This is Michael Popak reporting Hey Midas mighty love this report continue the conversation by following us on Instagram at Midas touch to keep up with the most important news of the day What are you waiting for? Follow us now?