Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Jack Smith BLOWS UP Trump Defense in FILING

Episode Date: September 28, 2024

In a startling new filing the Special Counsel in Trump’s DC Election Interference criminal case just confirmed Trump’s worst nightmare: he has given the court previously undisclosed Grand Jury witness testimony, documents obtained by search warrant and subpoenas, and has a large group of cooperating witnesses against Trump. Michael Popok explains how the main concern of the DOJ in its new filing is to protect its witnesses from Trump witness tampering and intimidation as it argues to have key names and documents blacked out and kept from the public view at this time. Miracle Made: 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! Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Stream Paramount Plus from 699 a month. Looking for a collaborator for your career? A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. This is Michael Popock, Legal AF. We got a startling new filing by Jack Smith, special prosecutor, special counsel in a DC election interference case that will

keep Donald Trump and his lawyers up at night literally. It has to do with the 180 pages of a brief, the supporting witness statements, evidence, documents, names of witnesses that will be filed along with it, along with an appendix. Sometimes it's not the 180 pages that Donald Trump should be worried about all this time. It may be the thousands and hundreds of exhibits that are going to be filed in an appendix, a compendium of evidence, if you will, that's going to be filed along with the 180 pages. And now Jack Smith has told the court in his new filing,

we have it right here, the government's motion for leave to file unredacted motion under seal and to file redacted motion on the public docket. I will translate that into English right here on this hot take. And it spells disaster and trouble for Donald Trump. In a prior hot take, I let you know that based on an order by the judge that just came out, Judge Chutkin, it indicated to me that the size of the appendix, the accompanying exhibits to support the 180 pages

and trial testimony and grand jury testimony and witness testimony and exhibits is going to be hundreds if not thousands of pages long. And Donald Trump was focused on the wrong thing. He was all complaining about the 180 pages. 180 page brief, judge, it's a monstrosity. It's too big, don't allow it. You can decide immunity without any evidence,

without any information, without any fact analysis, even though the Supreme Court told you to do exactly that. But what he should have worried about is the appendix. It's so big that Judge Chutkin gave the Trump side 10 extra days to go look at it. She wants him to comment about the blackout recommendations about the brief in just four or five days, but she gave him 10 days, look at the appendix,

it's that big. Why are we talking about redaction? Why are we talking about blackout and editing of public documents? Let me explain it to you. We've got a public justice system, meaning the public has the right to know. The press, the freedom of the press has a right to know about documents that are filed in a case. And the accused should want that as well.

But at the same time, you've got to balance a number of different competing principles, all having to be done by the trial judge, in this case, Judge Judkin. One of them is to protect the defendant, to have, you know, he's presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, to make sure he can get a fair shake in front of a jury. A jury can be selected in the future, that a jury will be fair and impartial and won't hear this evidence and have its mind blown

and to be prejudiced against Donald Trump. That's one consideration. The other one is on the prosecution side. Prosecution has witnesses and they're worried about their identity being put on the public docket. They're worried about witness intimidation. They're worried about what it means for their ongoing prosecution.

This prosecution is not over. This prosecution is still developing evidence all the way through trial. It's still developing evidence from Donald Trump's stupid, criminally liable statements he makes out loud at press conferences and at rallies. Prosecution and the investigation is ongoing and they're worried that if they let out of the bag all the people that are cooperating with the federal prosecutors, they won't get them to cooperate any longer. They won't get others to cooperate with them, and those people will be subjected to death threats and doxings at the hands of Donald Trump and intimidation

by Donald Trump, and they don't want to do that. Okay, that's the other competing consideration. And this all has to be worked out by the judge. So when they file their paper, their 180 pages of their appendix, they filed along with it this new motion under seal and to file redacted motion for public document. Meaning, judge, we're going to give you a proposal on how to black out and how to balance all of these competing interests on the defense side and on the prosecution side and on the people side. Because the people have a seat at the table in our public justice system. And the judge says, well, it's very interesting. Let me look at your motion. She then having seen this,

then issued her new order setting the milestones of October 1st, the day of the debate, for Donald Trump to give his proposals to black out whatever he wants to black out in the brief, the 180 pages, and then another nine days till the 10th of October to make his proposal on how to black out or not black out the append pages, and then another nine days till the 10th of October to make his proposal on how to black out or not black out the appendix, this huge compendium of evidence.

But here's the thing that I want you to take away from this hot take is how much trouble Donald Trump is in. Let me read to you from the actual motion itself about it. So they're concerned, here's page two over to page three, by the government, with these guideposts in mind, with the simultaneous goals of providing the court with a detailed factual proffer, protecting sensitive materials, and the witnesses whose accounts support the proffer, they're going to be putting in evidence of witness testimony, grand jury testimony,

testimony we've never heard about, testimony from the Jan 6 committee, the Jan 6 committee never heard about. And I can give you a few names at the end of this hot take as to who I think that is. And allowing the appropriate degree of public access. That's the balance I was talking about. The government has over to page three, proposed redacted versions of this motion

and sealed appendix for filing on the public docket. In the proposed redacted motion, the government has redacted the names of individuals aside from those who have already appeared in the superseding indictment, such as Vice President Pence. So already they're trying to protect the identity of witnesses cooperating with the government so that the prying eyes and intimidation factors

of Donald Trump don't go after them. In the motions text, the government has not redacted quotations or summaries from sensitive materials, but in the footnotes has redacted citations that reveal the non-public sources of such information. And here's what keeps Donald Trump up at night.

Grand jury transcripts will be in the appendix. Interview reports will be in the appendix. Interview reports will be in the appendix. Material obtained through search warrants will be in the appendix, like his Twitter feed that they got through a search warrant and a subpoena process from Twitter itself. In the proposed redacted appendix, that's that compendium of thousands of pages of exhibits

and witness statements, the government has redacted non-public sensitive materials in their entirety. And the government has also proposed limited redactions to some publicly available materials, such as the defendant's tweets, Trump's tweets, when such material identifies or targets an individual who because of their status as a potential witness

or involvement in the underlying events may be susceptible to threats or harassment or otherwise suffer a chilling effect on their trial testimony. That's the other balancing act here, protecting these witnesses from Donald Trump and his intimidation factors and the ongoing investigation issue. This should keep Donald Trump up at night. They then go into the legal background and they pick up again with going over, there's a case called Hubbard, which is a federal case named after a person named Hubbard,

which goes through how you balance these competing interests to put as much into the public domain as you can without having these other issues being implicated, like witnesses being tampered with, with jurors having their minds blown so they can't be fair and impartial and the like. So on page six, the motion says about the Hubbard factors, as this court previously concluded in evaluating a factor of the test, the government has identified a significant risk to his interests. Witness

intimidation could not only affect the willingness of any of the targeted individuals to participate in the law enforcement process, but also could chill the testimony of other potential witnesses in this case. Yeah, I can think of a few. Dan Scavino, the lawyers, the other aides for Donald Trump who would rather not have their names be known that they're testifying against Donald Trump or have testified. Mark Meadows, the lawyers that worked for Donald Trump in the White House Counsel's Office, the lawyers who testified and others who testified

without legal protection before the grand jury and all of that. So they're worried about witnesses. My takeaway is this is a lot about witness protection, this particular motion. Traditional bedsheets, they can harbor more bacteria than a toilet seat. It can lead to acne, allergies, and stuffy noses,

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as they're going through the ceiling, that documents need to be sealed as well and redacted as well. Now, what does that process mean? Just to be clear, the defense gets a copy of the transcript. The defense gets a copy of all the appendix without any blackout, without any redaction or editing.

So does the lawyers on either side, so does the staff, so does the judge. It's only the public we're talking about here. What goes out into the public domain? Donald Trump has been known to unseal everything. When Mar-a-Lago came out, and the Mar-a-Lago indictment and search warrant came out, Donald Trump was busy wanting to rip the black tape off all of that documents

and let it all out during the ongoing investigation. And that he fought with the magistrate judge and with Judge Cannon about, because he wanted it all out during the ongoing investigation. And that he fought with the magistrate judge and with Judge Cannon about, because he wanted it all out as campaign fodder for him to campaign on. And he also wanted to intimidate witnesses. Oh, let's let all the witnesses out. And Cannon almost did it, by the way.

It was another one of those almost reversible errors by her, which could lead to her removal from the case. She was actually seriously considering putting government witnesses in harm's way and revealing them in a public docket. So we talked about this last year in the canon world. Now we're talking about it with Judge Chutkin. And she's of course, methodical, sober.

She knows what she's doing. She knows she's got her hands firmly on the controls. And that's why we start with this brief that was just filed. But the takeaway from the brief is, look out Donald, you were over here worrying about the 180 pages, worry about the appendix and the thousands of pages and the new witness statements and the grand jury statements and the and your own tweets and your

own direct messages off your tweets and Mark Meadows text messages and Dan Scavino, the guy that used to write your mean tweets for you and what he testified and what he told Jack Smith that is cooperation. See, a lot of people are publicly including Dan Scavino on his own on his own social what he testified and what he told Jack Smith in his cooperation. See, a lot of people are publicly, including Dan Scavino on his own social media, a lot of people publicly are saying, we're for Donald Trump, MAGA all the way,

vote for Donald Trump and end the war. Yeah, secretly, privately, when it's under locked doors with the special counsel looking at facing their own prosecution, they're giving it up, They're spilling the beans. And that's what we're gonna start seeing. Now, Donald Trump, let's draw a line under that.

Donald Trump has a couple of options here. He hates this procedure that Judge Chuck can establish back on September 5th with all these briefs being filed and all this evidence being aired to the American people before the election. Doesn't want that. Has been telling her, you did it wrong, judge.

Don't do that. Just dismiss the indictment on your own. Don't look at anything. Even though the Supreme Court told you to do a fact analysis, ignore that. Don't let the government, don't let those people file any papers, especially before the election.

The judge says, I have to let them file papers because I have to do my own analysis. That's what I've been compelled to do. 180 pages sounds about right. Now there's never a limit on an appendix. I have filed thousands of pages in an appendix to support a brief. And I've had the other side jump up and down and go,

oh, they only had 45 pages and they filed a thousand pages of an appendix. And the judge is like, well, that was the brief limit. There is no limit in the federal practice generally for your ancillary filings in support of your brief. It's a little bit of a loophole to be honest, to be fair. It's a little bit of a loophole. So he drove a truck through the loophole, thank God, and he's going to dump all this evidence, but it's going to take a minute because all this briefing is going to go through until October 10th.

I'm not sure we're going to get even to see the first brief in any format well before the election. Maybe we will. So what happens next? So you got, as I was about to say, Trump doesn't like any of this process, doesn't want any briefing, doesn't want any appendix, doesn't want anything filed. He could try to take an appeal right now, I guess. We've been kicking it around and battening around like a shuttlecock and badminton. Internally, it might as touch with Ben, myself, and me. And we said, and Ben's theory, and I'm positing it here, I'm noodling it, I'm marinating it, is that he's not gonna file any redactions, Donald Trump. He's not gonna file any proposed

how to handle the appendix. He's just gonna go try to take an immediate appeal and tell the DC Court of Appeals or maybe the Supreme Court, if he can try to get there directly, which I think is hard, but he could try and say in his briefing, the whole process is wrong. Judge Chutkin, even though she has broad discretion to run her own courtroom, she got it wrong. She shouldn't allow briefs.

She shouldn't allow an appendix. She shouldn't allow a mini trial. She shouldn't allow an airing of evidence. We shouldn't see. Nobody should see. Cover your mouth, your eyes and your ears. Nobody should see any of the evidence before the trial. Even though that seems to be what the Supreme Court,

you know, help Supreme Court, help. Is that what you wanted? Stop the briefing, stop the madness. It's gonna be a filing like that. We could really see that. And now that I say it out loud, I'm starting to sigh with bed a little bit on this one. We'll see what happens next.

But I wanted to report really quickly on the Midas Touch Network right here about this new filing and what it means. See all the circles on there, how important it is to me. What it means for Donald Trump and the checklist, the witnesses, the grand jury transcripts, the sensitive information, the witnesses they're worried about protecting.

That's my takeaway from this particular filing. We cover it all. Find out what 40 million people already know every month that Legal AF is the home of law and politics, commentary and analysis like no other. And we decided in the collaboration with our brothers at the Midas Touch Network to launch a new Legal AF channel called Legal AF MTN from Midas Touch Network.

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