Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Jack Smith HAUNTS Deranged Trump as Trump’s VILE Deposition is Released & More

Episode Date: January 15, 2023

Anchored by MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok, the top-rated news analysis podcast LegalAF is back for another hard-hitting look at the most consequential developments at the intersection of law and politics. On this week’s edition, they tackle: A New York federal judge’s denial of Trump’s motion to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s civil rape case, scheduled for trial in April, and his decision to release a portion of Trump’s deposition testimony to the public; Special Counsel Jack Smith’s latest focus on Trump’s misuse of campaign funds, attempts to buy off witnesses, and fake fundraising; developments in the Biden classified document issue and the appointment of new Special Counsel Robert Hur; the Michigan Attorney General decision to reopen her criminal investigation into the 16 fake electors from her State who signed for Trump; the Fulton County (Atlanta) Georgia DA’s special grand jury report and recommendations about criminal indictments and what she does with it next; and a New York State court judge criminally sentencing the Trump Organization’s two main subsidiaries for 17 counts of tax evasion and other fraud, and so much more. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: AG1 by Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/legalaf Masterworks: https://masterworks.art/legalaf Shop Meidas Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump's motion to dismiss E. Jean Carroll's civil rape and defamation lawsuit is denied by a New York federal judge. At least some of the claims are now set to go to trial for April and the federal judge in that case just released portions of Donald Trump's deposition in that matter where he was grilled by E. Jink, our lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. Wow. Some vile and incriminating stuff in those deposition transcripts. We will read to you portions from those depositions transcripts.

You are going to be shocked. Special counsel Jack Smith has issued a new wave of subpoenas to former Trump campaign officials that are focused a lot on campaign finance violations and other financial fraud that Trump may or had engaged in in connection with the insurrection, his election interference and his attempt to overthrow democracy and how does Donald Trump respond? Well, he calls special counsel Jack Smith a savage and a terrorist and a tax special Jack counsel Jack Smith's friends and family and white. We're going to talk about if that constitutes new independent claims of obstruction. A special counsel is appointed by

Merrick Garland to investigate documents found in President Biden's office at the University of Pennsylvania and in Biden's garage. Let's compare how Biden has responded by immediately cooperating. And let's compare it to Trump's concealment, destruction, obstruction, and threats directed

at the special counsel and the special counsel's wife and friends and family. I mean, remember folks, Donald Trump is not being investigated criminally for having classified records. It's what he did with them. It's the obstruction and the concealment. Those were the crimes in the search warrant. We'll break it down, don't you worry. And the Michigan Attorney General Dana Nestle announced

this week that the fake electors in her state should be criminally prosecuted, and she's reopened her criminal investigation into them now that the midterm elections are over. We're talking about some of the top Republicans who are now all mega Republicans in her state. And finally, let's go from talking about attorney general in Michigan to the district attorneys. Let's talk about the Fulton County district attorney, Fawni Willis, who has completed her investigation before the special grand jury,

which has prepared a report submitted it to judge Mick Bernie, it's currently confidential, but it's about potential criminal indictments in Fulton County. So stay tuned. We'll see if that report gets released. And let's also talk about the Trump organization sentencing in a Manhattan court after being found guilty on 17 felony counts after a prosecution by the Manhattan district attorney's office. This is legal AF.

I've been my cell is joined by Michael Popak, talking about the most consequential legal news of the week, Michael Popak. Can you get more consequential than some of the stories we're talking about tonight? They are the prototype of what you and I wanted to talk about every week, and that was an amazing rundown.

And we cultivate it, we curate it. There's things, of course, that we're not gonna cover tonight that you and I cover with others on our trending takes, our hot takes, but these are the ones we think that's worth rolling up our shirt sleeves with our viewers and followers and getting down to the nitty gritty in the molecular level. And I can't wait to do it with you.

Let's get down to the nitty gritty, the molecular level. Let's break down the atoms and find the protons, the neutrons, and the criminal trump trons. Let's go right into this motion to dismiss that was filed by Donald Trump, which was denied by Judge Lewis Kaplan, a federal court judge in the Southern District of New York, E. Jean Carroll filed a new lawsuit against Donald Trump after Trump engaged in new defamatory statements. She sued him back in 2019 for statements he made while he was in office.

That's working its way through the court of appeals in the federal system right now. But Trump made the same types of statements back on October 12, 2022, defaming her. And one other thing happened in New York, they passed what's called the Adult Survivors Act, the ASA, which revived the statute of limitations for victims of sexual assault and rape and other sexual misconduct. And that law took effect on November 24, 2022.

So E. Jean Carroll, who essentially had her claims expire right around 1998 because the sexual assault that she alleges took place in a Bergdorf Goodman was somewhere around 95 or 96 where she alleged she was raped by Donald Trump. So she couldn't file an actual civil rape case against Donald Trump after 1998. But now there's a one year look back period. So starting on November 24, 2022, victims of sexual assault in New York's a one year look back period so starting on November 24th 2022 victims of sexual assault in New York can have one year if their statute of limitation has expired in the past to bring their civil rape claims and their sexual assault civil claims and that

is exactly what E. Jean Carroll did nine hours after the statute took effect and Donald Trump filed his motion to dismiss the claim on two grounds. First he argued that the Adult Survivors Act was unconstitutional under the New York State Constitution. So Trump basically said, I am going to stand for all of the other sexual assaulters and rapists in the state of New York. This is unconstitutional for you to revive this statute of limitation. All of our due process rights have been violated, not just mine, but in general.

The law is unconstitutional. And then Donald Trump said that the defamation, the new defamation claim that was filed against them by E. Jean Carroll was improper and defective because she didn't allege special damages or economic damages. But Pope, as I'm sure you'll break down, Donald Trump confused what libel per se is and defective because she didn't allege special damages or economic damages, but Popeye, as I'm sure you'll break down, Donald Trump confused what libel per se is versus slander per se, and the judge called him out for not knowing the law

where this was libel per se where that was not a requirement. So the judge said that was utterly without merit. Popeye, let's first get into what the judge ruled, break that down, and then let's get into the deposition transcripts. But what do you think about the judge ruled, break that down, and then let's get into the deposition transcripts. What do you think about the judge's ruling denying the motion to dismiss? Well, this judge, Lewis Kaplan, has been very, very consistent in how he's approached this case from the beginning, and he's given Trump's lawyers, Alina Habba and her partner, Maddio,

really no quarter. Every time they try something in his courtroom over the last two years since Robbie Kaplan, friend of the show, been on the show with Karen and I for an interview, talking about things related to her suits against Donald Trump. Every time Alina Habba tries one of their tricks, a motion to dismiss an attack on the judge,

tried missing deadlines. It gets met with total and complete rejection by Louis Kaplan, who's been having none of it. They've even tried to delay the trial. It's going to be at best, at worst, two trials in April against Donald Trump related to E.G. and Carol, one for defamation and one for civil rape, but probably one trial combined together with the jury.

And I do want to talk about something related to the defamation case and the element of the defamation case that was heard by the DC Court of Appeals and why I think it's coming back to Judge Kaplan's courtroom and the jury that will be selected in the case. We'll get to that in a minute. So the latest attempt at delay, delay, delay, where now we're only three or four months from trial is a motion to dismiss filed by Alina Habba. And they basically argued as they had suggested they would about a month ago and in a letter, a letter request to the judge, which is standard practice in the Southern District of New York.

And the judge basically said, I don't think I'm going to be dismissing this case, but let me see your papers. And they said it was unconstitutional mainly because there was a violation of the constitution and due process because this adult survivors act, the ASA, opened up as you referred to it, been a one-year window to file a suit. Now, the reason the one-year window, and this goes into the analysis for Judge Kaplan, the reason the one-year window was opened by Governor Hocal and the State Legislature, is because at the same time that they passed the Adult Survivors Act, they also side-by-side a companion piece of

legislation, which hasn't gotten a lot of press, is that they increased the statute of limitations for all future suits to 20 years, giving someone an adult or somebody that was a child at the time, 20 years to file their suit and have it be timely and not barred by the statute of limitations. But they consciously made the decision not to make that piece of legislation retroactive, meaning it wouldn't apply to somebody like E. Jean Carroll. So to emiliarate and mitigate the prejudice that would come to an adult survivor like E. Jean Carroll, they opened a one year window.

So it's the combination of the 20 year future statual limitations and the one year window that goes into the analysis that Judge Kaplan came up with as to why this is not a due process violation. Trump also tried to argue because this is his misogynist attack on people that he crafts as part of being a legal argument when it's nothing of the sort. He said, well, it's also, you know, these people are really old.

By the way, he's really old. If this is some sort of ageism defense, you know, Donald Trump's not a spring chicken. He's 78 years old. So he's climbing, oh, well, she's 78 or 79 years old. He's saying not so many words. And so it's unfair to me because the passage of time and witness memories and she's old is what she's basically saying. I just like, look, look.

I'm not going to step in for the legislature in New York who balanced all of these inequities and all of the prejudice to both, yes, accused people like Trump and to the victim and came up with this compromise. 20 years going forward, one year window looking back, it closes next, it closes in November of 2023. If you haven't gotten it together by then as an adult, you're at a luck, but he was, if he wasn't the, I think he was the first case filed by Robbie Kaplan's law firm against Donald Trump

it met the test and I also find it completely, I already is not the right word, I find it disgusting, that Donald Trump who's ready to rip up the Constitution when he was president and after after being president and it's just another piece of paper to him suddenly makes constitutional arguments about why his constitutional rights are being violated. Now, the motion to dismiss was denied. In fact, Judge Kaplan found that most of the issues that were being raised were ludicrous. He put it a little more kindly. And now we're going to move forward.

And in the same breath, you're going to turn down, tell our listeners and followers about in the same breath, this same judge, after giving Alina Haaba the right to file a paper, arguing against the disclosure of the 36 pages of deposition transcript that Donald Trump gave, none of which is fifth amendment asserted. It's just his testimony. Why he also decided to finally release that to the public and let people like you and I take a look at it. So the legal standard, just to break it down for our listeners and viewers out there about

whether a revival statute is unconstitutional as set forth by the New York Court of Appeals, which is the highest court in New York hears the test, whether the Revival Statute is a reasonable measure to address the injustice. And you look to the legislature and you look to the governor for that. And here Judge Kaplan said clearly, this Revival Statute, this one year Revival Statute for victims of sexual assault

is a reasonable measure to address the injustice. And then the second issue, though, regarding the defamation claim, Donald Trump tried to get that one dismissed by claiming that E. Jean Carroll didn't assert special damages. E. Jean Carroll would have had to assert special damages, just another way of saying economic damages, economic loss, if it was a slander per se case, which is oral defamation, libel is written defamation. And the judge had to explain that very embarrassingly to Alina Abba and that under New York law, which federal court borrows the tort law, the state law on the defamation

claim, because that's what it arises out of. E. Jean Carroll pleaded it the way she's supposed to. It was not defective. So on that, on both of those grounds, Donald Trump's motion to dismiss was denied. Donald Trump got double bad news that day in that same case because on the same day his portions of his deposition transcript were released.

And these are some reprehensible and shocking things that Donald Trump had said. And Donald Trump argued that these deposition portions should not be released. And by the way, portions, so we do not have the full deposition. Nobody has the full deposition. But from the pages that are released, this is some horrifying stuff. Now, why these portions? Well, in a status report that the parties filed, where they had certain discovery disputes to enlighten the judge on what the discovery disputes were,

E. Jean Carroll's lawyer attached as an exhibit, but filed them under seal, or temporarily confidential, the portions of the deposition transcripts which would otherwise rebut what Donald Trump was claiming. Can I clarify one thing Ben before you move on? It was actually the motion practice about whether to consolidate the cases and that and each and E. Jean Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan made the argument that many most of these issues were almost all of them fundamental issues in the defamation case, factually covered the rape case.

Therefore, let's go forward with both cases in April and she attached. Now before you get to all the great stuff about terrible stuff that Donald Trump said, let me be clear, E. Jean Carroll's testimony and deposition had already, through the Trump lawyers, been released to the public. All of the embarrassing things that she had to be asked and testify to were already out there, while Trump continued to argue that his should be remained sealed. I will clarify to your clarification and get ultra technical geeky here, it was exhibit

B to the proposed case management plan where the transcripts were filed, but then in connection with the overall consolidation, but it was part of the proposed case management plan. And so the order unceiling that took place on January 13th by Judge Lewis Kaplan, it basically states the defendant in this case Trump, is asking the court to keep the documents sealed under the party's protective order and parties to litigation, often enter a protective order, to keep certain classification of documents sealed that are trade secrets or things that shouldn't be public.

But just because you have a protective order, any party can always challenge the protective order and say, the party that is claiming certain documents to be classified, they are improperly making that classification. And Michael Popak and I have actually litigated cases where that's become an issue where we've had to go to federal judges and magistrate judges and say, that's an improper classification status. So here, Trump was basically saying, these portions of my deposition should remain confidential and E. Jean Carroll's lawyers saying, why? These aren't trade secrets.

Well, now that we've seen them, we know why. You'll get to the good stuff in a minute. And the court says, look, Donald Trump's trying to keep these confidential is totally without merit. And one of the Trump's Trump says and he argued, I never would have sat for a deposition if I, I was promised confidentiality. And then the judge goes, no, you weren't. If you just read the protective order, it says, you're not promised confidentiality.

And you are in a court, buddy. You're in a federal court, which is a public forum. So that argument's not gonna fly at all here. So the deposition transcript is released and there's just some shocking stuff in here. One of the statements, let me just read from you. This is on page 139 of the deposition. Across exam from Roberta Kaplan, E. Jean Carroll's lawyer,

asking the question, Trump responding. So, sir, I just want to confirm, is it your testimony that E. Jean Carroll said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you? Answer. Well, based on her interview with Anderson Cooper, I believe that's what took place. And we can define that.

You'll have to show that. I'm sure you're gonna show that. But she was interviewed by Anderson Cooper, and I think she said that rape was sexy, which it's not by the way, but I think she said rape was sexy. And she actually said things that were very strange. And then she was a different person right after when they said, we'll take a break. We're going to take a break right now. He didn't like what she was saying. He was very upset with that. And then she came back and she was a much different person, so to speak. And so Donald Trump, like that didn't happen.

He's like lying that she said that rape was sexy and that she liked being raped. I mean, some despicable things right there. And then you have Donald Trump, he's asked, have you ever kissed a woman without her consent? His response is, I don't think so. This is on, and then he goes on to say, question, have you ever touched a woman on her breast or her buttocks or any other sexual part without her consent and Trump's response as well? I will tell you know, but there may be some people like your client who like to lie. And then Roberta Kaplan did something I think strategically brilliant in the depot.

She started to ask him questions about all of the things that he defined as a hoax. It was a great legal strategy, Popeye, and I want to get your take. So she goes, so to be clear, what you are alleging is that E. Jean Carroll is a hoax. What she's saying is a hoax, correct? Correct. All right. Well, let me ask you a question about other things that you've said are hoaxes.

And then she goes to climate change right global warming to mail global warming and she goes to mail in ballots and she goes to the election and she goes through all of these things that he says are hoax and like he sounds like a madman What you know it and she's like parodying what he is saying in some of these posts Because he's like he's like she's like so what else is a hoax and he's like rush a what he is saying in some of these posts because he's like, she's like, she's like, so what else is a hoax? And he's like, Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, you know, like, and he's like saying it like that.

And she's like, okay, so other than Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, are there any other hoax? Is that right? And by the way, Ben, before you move on, there's going to be a video of that that she's going to be able to play to the jury. We're reading it, you know, we're doing our, our play acting here of reading it out loud. But she has, Robbie Kaplan has a video of this deposition. I am sure that's going to get played in front of a jury.

Yeah. Because she, literally the question is sitting here today, can you recall what else other than the 2020 election that you've referred to as a hoax? And then Trump goes, this is what he says, like this is not him posting on social media. He goes, the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, it's been proven to be a hoax. Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine hoax, the Mueller situation for two and a half years hoax, and no collusion. It was all a hoax, the lying to the FISA court hoax, the lying to Congress many times hoax

by all these people, the scum that we have in our country, lying to Congress hoax, the spying on my campaign hoax, they spied on my campaign, and now they admit it, that was another hoax. And I could get a whole list of them and then she goes on mail. Talk about it. Talk about taking the ballot, taking the bait, holy cow. And so it's a brilliant move to say, look, when things are true and he wants to smear it,

it's a hoax. So here he is, is just, this is what he's calling a hoax here. It was a brilliant, the way this was scripted from those wondering the legal strategies here. It was absolutely brilliant. And then Trump was basically, good, sorry.

There was one point where Trump was asked about global warming and Trump kind of realized that he fell into it because he's so dumb though. And he's like, why are you asking me? He goes, he goes, I mean, why are you asking me other than you're a political person? Why are you asking this question? What does this have to do with the case?

Popo, what's your take in all of this? Yeah, well, let me back into it with, I don't know if you caught this, I will probably do something on it later. Amy Berman Jackson, who's a judge that we really are fond of, in sentencing a recent Jan 6th guy who was a little bit nutty and crazy, crazier than the rest, and she found he did not violate the obstruction statute, and she had a great line in there, but I don't know if you caught it in his opinion.

In referencing the defendant, she said, let's just say he has a unique stew inside of his mind. Donald Trump has a unique stew inside of his mind and I think Robbie Kaplan did a masterful job at demonstrating not to the people in the room that day, although I'm sure at lunch at the lunch break or whatever, they were high-fiving it over what they were able to.

You know, when they write these things out, you and I practicing attorneys, when we do our outlines for depositions, we often have these sections, what I call a modules, that I know I'm going to try for. And sometimes they work and you get the person to, you know, to basically melt down and blow up in front of you. Sometimes they don't. And I'm sure when she carefully

crafted this, Robbie, she was hoping to elicit just this kind of crazy stew of a response. And then she got it. So, but it's more important for the jury. For when they roll tape, let's set the stage. We're in a darkened courtroom. Lights are lowered. Video monitors are up on the railing in front of each of the jurors in this room. We're living an electronic presentation world. Roll tape, roll video, and on a big screen also, they usually put it up a big screen as well. She's allowed to cut she'll cut, you know,

she's allowed to cut it and edit it the way she wants. I mean, the other side can go up and put up their clips and their counterclips, but she gets to really edit this the way she wants. And he'll come off looking either, you know, completely just crazy, but more importantly dishonest, not credible, not trustworthy about his testimony, which

is where Robbie Kaplan needs the jury to be when they look at Donald Trump. If they're not already there when they walk into the room, because the jury selection for this process is going to be amazing, because who doesn't know Donald Trump unless you fell asleep for 100 years and you just woke up. So the jury selection process is going to be very, very interesting for all of this. But the comments in the deposition transcript in this 35 pages that we got to see, understanding there's hundreds more that will eventually come out. The very sexy to be rape thing was just F and bizarre. The fact that he would even misconstrue a Q and A with Anderson Cooper that way. But then he attacked, and I know you mentioned this somewhere

else, then he attacked during the deposition because he can't help himself. Robbie Kaplan, the lawyer, because he knows that Roberta Kaplan and her firm have brought half a dozen lawsuits, including three that are going on right now, a civil fraud case down in Miami, down in Florida against Donald Trump and his kids. We talked about it way back when we first started the show, AOM. She's got that going. She's got everything about this one going.

So Roberta is his arch nemesis and he couldn't help himself, but to lash out at her and say, I'm not only going after your client when this is all over, whatever that means, but I'm going after you and your law firm too. And Robbie's great because you and I have been in difficult depositions with difficult people, some of them celebrities. And you just have to and Robbie did it.

You just have to let your heartbeat drop to even a slower rate. Don't take the bait yourself and just move on with your questions. But she was in fine form in doing the deposition. Now, usually, here's the two questions that are open. EGING CARAL had the right to be in the room for the deposition.

We can't tell, I don't think, whether she was and let's us in the cover page for the depot that was released, maybe Ben, we can take a look. Because that would have been an interesting dynamic to have E. Jean Carroll in the room against sitting across from Donald Trump. The other thing is Robbie Kaplan was so secure and confident in her skills that she didn't care that Lena Habba and her and her partner were tag teaming and double teaming on the objections. You're only supposed to have one lawyer who's actually defending the deposition, do it. But when Alina Habba fell asleep at the switch,

Medeo jumped in, and at one point they were like double teaming Robbie, and rather than stop the depot, like I would do sometimes, is they listen. You get one person to object. I'm not getting double team. She was like, I don't really care. None of this matters. I'm just focused on the person at hand

and tearing him down to size. So I can see why they did not want this released to the public and future jurors because it makes Donald Trump look as bad as he really is. And I don't understand at all the legal justification for arguing that this line of questions, which goes to the heart of the case, is somehow confidential and privileged, or needs to be protected by Donald Trump, especially when they released all of the deposition transcript testimony of E. Jean Carroll, where she had to admit

in questioning by Alina Haba that I thought was very heavy handed and not appropriate, and I hope the jury may find it the same way, where she had to admit things like, you know, she hasn't had a sexual relationship since 1995 when she was 50 because of the incident. She hasn't had a boyfriend or a relationship since then. Now she had to admit that in response to questions. And yet Donald Trump, because he didn't like the way he came off in the section of the transcript, you know, held this out of the public for so long, but it's out now four months before a jury trial and with perspective jurors reading the papers every day and watching shows like

what you and I are doing and breaking it down. But it's again, this is what you and I predicted with Godzilla versus Bambi with with Alina Habba versus Roberta Kaplan and all of her mastery. And there's more deposition portions likely to be released because more were attached to recent filings and pop-ok to your point for those who want to fully gigate. I think it's page 133 here where and this is like two pages actually. It starts on page 132. But Donald Trump's like, and I'll sue you too because this is how how many cases do you have and I know that statements were made and I'm gonna keep posting this Keep in Trump busy because this is the way you defeat him keep him busy with litigation so I'm gonna be suing you also but I'm gonna be suing her very strongly as soon as this ends

I'll be suing you also and then her responses are you done I'll be suing you also and then her responses. Are you done? And then you go see the classic retort by a lawyer in charge. Are you done? And then he goes, yeah. And she's like, all right, moving on, but a great deposition there.

Popo, I want to switch gears and talk about- Wait, wait, I got one thing. Because I promised something and I want to just wrap it up in one second. Because there's an issue that's still out there from this week with the DC Court of Appeals, and I'm going to do a quick. There is an issue about whether the original defamation claim, slander claim against Donald

Trump for when he was president, not the new one after he was president. There's no issue. There's no immunity, presidential immunity, federal employee immunity for Donald Trump after he was president. But the original defamation claim, the thing that kicked the case off was at a press conference. He said, basically, she's not my type and I didn't do it. And that is one count of defamation in the case. It went up on appeal on that issue, whether as we've talked about in the past, Donald

Trump enjoys what we call Westfall immunity, immunity from suit because he was a federal employee and then the scope and court of his duties. Federal employee, yes, he's employee number one for the federal government is the president. The question of whether he was within the scope of his duties when he said she's not my type, X-era, went all the way up to the second circuit court of appeals, the highest court in New York covers New York in another state. And then they punted and said, yeah, he's a federal employee, but as the scope, we're going to kick it over to the highest court in the District of Columbia, the DC court of appeals, which is like the Supreme Court for the territory, to answer the question as to whether he was in the scope.

During last week's oral argument, they basically said, why are we here? That's a factual issue. We're in a pellet court. We don't do facts. Facts come up to us from a lower level. They're going to kick that back then to Lewis Kaplan. Talk about state, federal, federal, territory, state, and Lewis Kaplan. Talk about state federal federal territory state. And Lewis Kaplan, I think, is going to put it in front of a jury to help him with the legal issue. He may not have them answer

the question about scope, but he'll have the jury provide the fact finding about the issue when he rules on basically what's referred to as count one in the E. Jean Carroll case. We will stay tuned for that, but that's coming up in April, folks. So before you know it, that trial is going to be there. Trump's going to have to testify, you know, publicly. And we've seen some of the testimony he's all read. He given the question is the over and under, though, Popeyes, will special counsel Jack Smith indict or will Trump be indicted from any of these other matters before that April, E. Jean, E. Jean Carol, file date. Special Council Jack Smith has issued a new wave of subpoenas.

This is focused a lot on financial crimes. It has a lot of the material that he's previously sought though, focusing on the fake electors, focusing on Donald Trump's threats and intimidation of state and local election officials. But a lot of new questioning about these political action organizations, that Trump ran, that all have these very, very, very grifty names like the Make America Great Again PAC, Save America PAC, Save America Joint Fundraising Committee. the make America great again pack save America pack save America joint fund raising committee trump makes America great again committee And of course the election defense fund which didn't even exist

There was no such thing just took on money for a fake fund called the election defense fund But one of the areas that prosecutors are great at if they've got the financial documents because they could just show the jury, the financial fraud, and it's on the document. Yes or no, those numbers are false. But the team that Jack Smith's assembling and we've talked about a lot of these lawyers on past legal aves and some of the trending takes that we've done on the Midas Touch Network though. It's a dream team made up of the top mafia prosecutors, the top corruption prosecutors, the top money laundering and financial prosecutors. So he's assembling that team.

I think he's assembling a team for a reason. And Trump's responding by calling Jack Smith a savage and a terrorist, Popak. What do you make of this new wave of subpoenas? I think financial crime is a sweet spot, as you said, for prosecutors, because it's labor-intensive to prove in a courtroom, because you bring in a lot of people with a lot of financial records, and sometimes it leads to eye-glocing over glassy eyed look by the jury. But the end, they can kind of pull it together. The new subpoenas really kind of fall into three or four buckets as

you as you touched on. Cassidy Hutchinson testified that she changed lawyers because she was getting bad advice or advice she thought was being influenced by Donald Trump himself where the lawyer assigned to her by Mark Meadows right out of the White House, who's a lawyer and private practice we've talked about in the past, was basically telling her it was in her best interest to create a memory hole to forget things. Stefan Pasantino. Stefan Pasantino. Stefan Pasantino. It's quite.

This is like a Don Delillo novel. I mean, the names that come out of these Trump-related entities. So, you know, that guy basically told her it'd be a good idea for you to forget. And if you forget, it will be remembered. If you forget, Donald Trump will remember you and get you a job. She didn't like that, even though she's a very young, you know, professional woman.

We give her a lot of credit for her courage. She thought, hmm, that doesn't sound right. And then she asked Pozantino, well, who's paying your freight? Who's paying the bill? And she'll be the engagement letter. And he wouldn't do either one. And so she fired him and went and got her own lawyer using, I guess, her own funds. And that lawyer, Jody Hunt, eventually cut a deal for her to come into the Jansick's committee and give testimony, you know, to the grand jury. That has triggered Jack Smith and the prosecutors into look at how legal bills were being paid

and what engagement letters with law firms were being signed for the witnesses that came before the Gen 6 Committee and or to the Grand jury, was Trump paying, was Trump pulling the strings, was the lawyer violating their ethical obligations and oath of office that we all take when we become lawyers to represent our clients zealously, faithfully, and without compromise.

Was any of that compromise? It was that, does that rise to level of also witness tampering and obstruction? So they're getting into that. Now, they're also getting into, and of all the PACs, the one that I think Donald Trump, he's got a problem with all of them. But the one that's really problematic is the one you touched on at the end, which is the election defense fund, because a Republican official is admitted during the Jan 6th Committee under oath that they never use that money for any kind of quote-unquote election defense.

That basically, as you said, it was just a website that was used to grift and collect money from from gullible donors who wanted to quote unquote help Trump, but really just helped them pay his bills. They were, it wasn't going to any of these lawsuits or to or to the election to nire stuff. And the other interesting area that has been little reported, is that some of the subpoenas are going to what the insiders next to Trump and Trump really believed, pardon me, about dominion voting machines and smartmatic, the two companies that they attacked mercilessly and in a defamatory

way to claim that they were corrupted companies whose software was being manipulated by Joe Biden or the Venezuelans or whatever it was to flip Trump votes into Biden votes, you know, basically destroying these companies and all the goodwill that they had built up because they were in the business of selling secure cyber secure software and machinery to us cyber-secure software and machinery to us, local governments and governments to use for their elections. And the question is, did everybody really believe that or was the insider traffic of emails and communications sort of like, well, nobody really believes this, but it's making for good press. And it's one of our ways to attack and promote the big lie. So he's even getting down, as we talked about at the top, molecular level, what did people

really believe? Because that always goes to criminal intent. Because if you're thinking one thing, but you're saying publicly another, that's men's raya. That's criminal intent. That's criminal mind. And that's what Jack Smith and all this new band of prosecutors that he's added on are going after.

It's very interesting. We're trying to read from subpoenas that have been issued. We're trying to figure out a few things. And we're doing, I think we're doing a good job with it. Which grand juries are issuing these subpoenas? Which grand juries, we think there's four or five of them. And what are they looking at? And can we tell that from the subpoenas that are being issued?

And where do we think the level, where do we think the prosecution goes next? And we're doing it, you know, from, not just reading T-Leaves, reading these court filings, and the reports by, by places like Mishik and Wisconsin, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and the people that are being interviewed about, yeah, we got a subpoena, we produced documents and this is what they were looking for.

That's how we're getting our media feeds that you and I can do legal commentary. The people close to Trump are clearly telling him that he's going to be indicted. Donald Trump believes he's going to be indicted. And he is very fearful of Jack Smith and how do we know that? Well, it's all projection. And he's been lashing out at Jack Smith. He went on the Mark Levin radio show on Thursday

and called Jack Smith a terrorist. Actually, he used the language. He said that Jack Smith is a terrorist. And he also called him my prosecutor, just to show what a malignant narcissist Donald Trump is. He's the people's prosecutor because you committed a lot of crimes and tried to overthrow our democracy. Earlier today, this is one of the things that Donald Trump posted.

He goes, how come the Biden prosecutor is a nice guy, very friendly with the Democrats and rhinos alike, close to Christopher Ray and pretty much liked and known by everybody while my prosecutor is a radical left Trump hating lunatic whose wife and family get a perfect 10 for spewing Trump hate and whose friends are the most evil, angry and disgusting Marxist and communist in and around government. They are grilling innocent people in grand juries

for hours, all to quote get Trump. These are sick thugs. One of the points there that we don't know, we know there's been a lot of grand jury activity, a very high level Trump officials, but nobody, not even the times and the post yet who has reported like, I think we're going to find out next week and in the coming weeks that some of the closest people to Trump have gone before that grand jury. I agree with you. And I've been there and done in a very quiet way.

The prosecutor, we're going to talk about this illegal app because I don't want to shy away from addressing difficult facts. I want to talk about what's going on with Biden and Merrick Garland as well. Are we moving on? We are not yet. All right. We're not moving on yet. But the prosecutor at issue is Robert Herr, who

is a former United States attorney of Maryland under the Trump administration. Inpatient today, Pope, you're a little in good. No, no, I just because I wanted to get, if we were moving on, I didn't want to step, I didn't want to bigfoot the next segment. I want to talk about something in this one. We're going to move on in just a moment. And then the other, you know, the other post that Donald Trump made was, and this was

two days ago, the one I just read was earlier today, the other one Donald Trump made was, and this was two days ago, the one I just read was earlier today, the other one Donald Trump made was, the special prosecutor assigned to the quote, get Trump case. Jack Smith is a Trump-hating thug whose wife is a serial and open Trump-hater whose friends and other family members are even worse. And as a prosecutor in Europe, according to Rick Rennell, put a high government official in prison because he was a Trump positive person. Smith is known as an unfair savage and his best friends with the craziest Trump haters, including Lisa Monaco, who runs in justice. The box of scam is a hoax. The person who Donald Trump is bragging about or boasting about who Donald Trump believes is Trump positive is a Kosovo war criminal

named Salim Mustafa who raped and pillaged and tortured and killed many many people during the war. He was prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith in his role and the Kosovo specialist chambers in Hague. Salim Mustafa, someone who harvested the organs of people who he tortured and killed. And Donald Trump is saying that the reason that special counsel Jack Smith prosecuted Mustafa is because Mustafa was Trump positive. Now, I don't doubt that Mustafa is Trump positive because of the authoritarians who harvest organs and who rate, pillage, and torture would likely have a natural affinity in someone

like a Donald Trump. But I could assure you that is not the reason that special counsel, Jack Smith, is prosecuting one of the most despicable human beings to ever live in this world. Popuck, I was going to move on though, but do you want to comment on that? Yeah, I want to clarify that a little bit. It wasn't just Mustafa. It was also the prosecution of President Thassie of Kosovo. And the reason the Donald Trump so pissed off that

Thassie got prosecuted by Jack Smith is because right at the moment that the the Hague returned a 10-count indictment against Thassie. He was also being invited at that time in 2020 to the Trump White House because they were trying to broker a Serbia, Kosovo peace agreement. And the guy that was going to represent Kosovo with that was discussions was its president that Jack Smith had just entited. So Trump has never gotten over the fact that Jack Smith, which we didn't know at the time, Jack was picked, but Jack Smith kind of turned over the apple cart of Donald Trump trying to get,

he's always trying to get that Nobel Peace Prize of trying to get the Nobel Peace Prize because he's always trying to get it. So he didn't get it this time because the guy that was supposed to be the counter party for the negotiations gets indicted for war crimes as the leader of Kosovo and the guy that you talked about, that's also stealing organs and eating them

or whatever he was doing. Well, we've got a lot to discuss in Popeye. I gotta get your take on what's going on with the new special counsel who's now investigating classified records for Biden. There are big differences that we've got to dig into and I know the mainstream large media networks wanna both sides, the issues,

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Get priority access today. See important disclosures at masterworks.com slash CD. See important reggae disclosures at masterworks.com. Slash, CD, check it out there. All right, Popock, I wanna get you or take on everything that's going on with the appointment of the special counsel, Robert Herr, someone who was in the Trump administration, someone who Trump appointed as the United States attorney in Maryland.

You know, a lot of people are saying Popock, it takes America, Garland, you know, just a few people are saying, Pope, I could take some Eric Garland, you know, just a few days to appoint the special counsel here, but it's taken him, you know, years to appoint the special counsel. I don't understand that, but I think it's a little bit different. Can you explain the differences and what's going on? That assumes that we wanted, Eric Garland, to appoint a special prosecutor, a special counsel for Trump, or that there was a delay in developing the case, or has been a delay in developing the case since Jan 7, a year ago, through till today, or two years ago,

through till today. And there hasn't been the only reason, let's stay on Trump for a minute, the only reason that we have a special prosecutor for Trump, it's not that it was a pointed quote unquote late. It's that there wasn't going to be one at all, and Merrick Garland in his office was going to do the prosecution right up until the point that Donald Trump, well, I think two things.

Donald Trump announced he was gonna run for office, meaning somebody was running against America, Orleans boss, giving him a unique conflict of interest, which triggered the special council statute and the guy and the requirements of that statute. Until then, it was the Merrick Garland show completely. And all of the prosecution and investigation that had happened up until that point in November, where he appointed Jack Smith, seems like a long time ago, but it was only in November. All of that got picked up. The ball got picked up right at that moment, like a relay race. The baton instantly got picked up by Jack Smith, who has continued to propel around the track,

even at probably a quicker clip than even Merrick Garland, if we watch all of his activities. But that's, that's that. It's not that, well, he waited a long time for one and he immediately did the other one. He's using the same statute to decide whether by the case by case basis, he needs to turn over the reins to somebody else. He didn't at the start of Trump. He did later on because of Trump's actions and the other factor, which I think he knew

that the, you know, the house got lost for the Republicans, there was going to be a new committee overseeing him. So to kind of depoliticize it a bit and get a little bit of a buffer. He put in this independent council, the special council, Jackson Smith. Okay. That's, that's, that's one, that's one horse. That's a, that's, if you're, it's not orange, it's the apples, oranges, it's oranges, the bowling balls. That's that issue. On the issue of Joe Biden, and we, we tell the truth on this show, at least our legal commentary does. And our, and our opinions are what we honestly believe.

Because Popeyes, it was, you know, I'm throwing it back to you, but it was sloppy. It's sloppy. And you're Biden. You're Biden. It's sloppy. Why are you stopping? It's the drip. It's the drip.

It's the drip. This forced Merrick Garland's hand, because of the, what I talked about on a hot take, the drip, drip, drip drip and we're still getting that we got another one to another five pages, another two pages, another this, another that found it's the slow drip of these disclosures self reported. Yes, right to the Department of Justice or to the National Archives. We might have gotten it late information from the public. We'll talk about that in a minute because there's limits that that the now Joe Biden, the subject of an investigation

in his office, what they can say through their press secretary or the private lawyers. We'll leave that for a second. But he reported it promptly in November. In fact, it's, it's well reported that Merrick Garland at the time he appointed Jack Smith knew about at least the first batch that had been found at the Penn Biden Center dating back to the Obama administration in a locked cabinet. He knew that already and hadn't yet made the decision. In fact, from November 2nd, when Marik Garland was first informed until the 10th of November, he was still considering whether his office could do the investigation. We all agree that an investigation had to be opened.

For those that somehow suggest or intimate, that we didn't have to open an investigation because we like Biden, that's not the case. There are classified and even top secret documents that have been self-reported self reported itself revealed that were in the places They shouldn't be meaning they weren't back in the national archive. How they got there or as I refer to it It's not a hand in a cookie jar problem like Trump. It's a cookie jar problem They we found cookie jars, but but they weren't I don't think the investigation is going to reveal that they were done Intentionally and that when they were first, you know, as you said earlier, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

It's not the crime, the technical crime of having a few things in the boxes that shouldn't be there. As I said in an earlier podcast, I'm sure every president is inadvertently in some box, has something in there that they've had a later return. It's the way Trump went about it that is different and shows the difference between a crime and not a crime related to Biden. But Biden bought this problem because of the way

the disclosures have been made. And look, if you have, if you're sitting there in your Department of Justice, let's remind everybody, Department of Justice is under the executive branch, not under the judicial branch. It's his Department of Justice. They the executive branch, not under the judicial branch. It's his department of justice. They're prosecuting since the sense before the summer, since May, they're going after Donald Trump for classified documents. You would think those around Joe Biden would have said, we better make sure we're not living in a glass house.

Have we adequately really checked everywhere? Joe has lived or worked since he left office. Have we checked that to make sure we don't have a problem? Because if we do, let's fix it before we sit back and let our Department of Justice do its thing. And they didn't. Now look, I get it. They got a country to run.

They got an economy to run. They got a war to help assist with in Ukraine. They got a foreign policy to run. It wasn't the first page of their to-do list, but they should have gotten around to run. They got an economy run, they got a water to help assist with in Ukraine. They got a foreign policy to run. It wasn't the first page of their to-do list, but they should have gotten around to it. And now they're sort of boxed in because people are questioning whether they were really transparent, the Biden administration, about the revelations. But frankly, they're handsartied because parallel almost within six days, the Department of Justice informed them that they've opened up their own investigation, which ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel.

But there was an investigation that was opened as early as the 10th of November, limiting the ability of Joe Biden to quote unquote defend himself through his press secretary or in his press conferences about it because you don't want the DOJ to get pissed off at you that you revealed something that they didn't know. This is rule number one when you have a criminal investigation against you on whatever topic and this is from practicing lawyers. Rule number one, don't surprise the government. They don't like being surprised. So they don't want to hear for the first time in a press statement by the president or

by his press secretary about something they don't want to hear for the first time in a press statement by the president or by his press secretary about something they don't already know. So that limits the ability and he's getting a lot of flack from, you know, even from progressive, you know, platforms like ours about earlier, faster, more transparent. He is limited now because there isn't open criminal investigation. One that I believe would he'll come out clean on the other end. The crime of the crime of sloppiness is not a crime. It's not a crime. But Marik Garland did the right thing, had no choice under the statute, special counsel statute, and I'm okay with the pick of her. If you really look at Robert, Robert hers background. Yes, I'm sure he's ideologically a Republican, not MAGA, but a Republican. But he has, and he's been in the Trump White House. He was,

he was basically the number two under Rod Rosenstein when Rod ran the office after Bar left and was there for some of the tumultuous times also, and then got appointed to the Maryland, uh, highest office. But his record is, he's been, he's pretty, I don't know, he's not neutral. But he's, I'm not worried about him because the facts are the facts. They're either going to be developed appropriately or not. Do I think Joe Biden is going to get convicted of a crime of having taken, intentionally taken and retained and not self reported. No. Do I think the investigation is properly opened and a proper special counsel open for it? Yes. Because if that is, that would be completely not appropriate, not to open one. You have to open one. There's no, there's no set of facts

where Merrick Garland can say, I trust my boss. Forget it. I assume he's a good guy. It was next to the Corvette. I'm okay with that. And look, there's no set of facts that allows that. Look, the classification status regarding the criminal investigation of Donald Trump is not an element of any of the crimes that are being investigated.

What Donald Trump is being criminally investigated for is concealment, destruction, mutilation of the records, espionage, as well as obstruction of justice. When Donald Trump left the White House in January of 2021, and a few months later, the archives recognized that he just straight up stole the records and they asked for it back. He continued to lie and lie and lie. He didn't say, oops, I made a mistake, I accidentally shipped him to Mar-a-Laga or he didn't say, you know what, I thought as the

as a former president that I'm entitled to have this in my office. I apologize, let me turn this back or let me conduct a search just so I make sure I don't have other records. No, Donald Trump had intent. He had the menswear. He had the mental state work. He said, this is mine. FU America, I don't care. I'm going to give it to the Saudis.

I'm going to give it to the Chinese. I'm going to give it to whoever. I'm going to give it to whoever I want to give it to because I could do whatever I want. I held the office. These are mine. And then Trump proceeded to lie and lie and lie at each step to the National Archives where the archives were like, okay, we got to let the DOJ know about this. And then Donald Trump cherry picked the records and then like in January of 2022 turned over

some boxes that hears everything. And they're like, whoa, this is some sensitive compartmental information that should only be viewed in a skiff and a sensitive compartmental information facility. Like, what do you have these records? Do you have any more? No, I don't have any more. Well, we still see that there are documents missing. Can you please check?

I've got everything. And then he had his lawyers lie and sign affidavits lying up until June, June 3rd. Yeah, Christina Bob and his other lawyer Corcoran, they're submitting false statements, false letters, false affidavits to the Department of Justice saying, here, okay, okay, here's a Red Weld, here's a folder, here's the remaining classified records, you have everything. Again, another lie. So after all of the lies, then the Department of Justice took action. And in the search warrant, it doesn't say sloppiness. It doesn't say possession of classified records. It doesn't say any of that. It says concealment, mutilation, destruction, espionage act and obstruction.

That's what the crime is, not sloppiness, but I'm not going to be like, hey, President Biden, that was perfect for having those records at the office. No, because, and nor am I gonna say, we need to, we need to destroy the FBI now. And we need to, and Robert, her, Robert, her and his wife and his family and all of his friends, their savages. No, what is a Biden to that? The office, the potas. Why don't we go after her?

We're not going after Robert her, the special counsel Biden's not doing that. Biden's saying, look, I'm going to cooperate. You compare and contrast the statements, the conduct, the actions here, and guess what? One is criminal, viciously, despotically, disgustingly, vile criminal, and the other is, and the other is within a sphere of normal kind of political, you know, okay, you know, sloppiness, which in the past, in the past would probably even be more of a scandal than it is today because it's like, all right, what are you doing, sloppiness? But you've got Trump who's just like,

if you, I don't care, I'm an authoritarian. And then you got the Republican saying, we need to not just abolish the FBI. We're not just the DOJ. We're gonna create the committee on the weaponization. We want all of the access to the current criminal account. We want to defund all of those entities. And you know what? All of those laws, this is what the Republicans are saying. I'm not making this up. You know those laws on espionage, take them off the books. Those are archaic laws. We can't

we can't prosecute for espionage anymore. That's that is the difference in a nutshell there though. And I think a major, major, major difference. But I'm not going to shy away on this platform to, to, to, to, to say, it's sloppy and say, how about the, how about you, you were, you were kind in that recitation. How about the testimony that came out in Jan 6th and through the National Archive that Trump was trying to horse trade documents that he had that belong back in the National Archive that Trump was trying to horse trade documents that he had

that belong back in the National Archive for the Hillary Clinton files. He was trying to trade, like he was in some sort of make a deal bizarre with with the National Archives. I'll give you what I'm required to give you under the law. You give me what the files that I'm really interested in like about Hillary Clinton and the Russia hoax. Like he's making a trade like a bid and an ask. That's the difference. The difference is, you know, all Shucks, I found a box next to my Corvette.

Okay, like you said, Soppidus is not a crime. Was it perfect? Like, Nailed it. No, it wasn't. And I would have liked the Biden administration to have done a better job and the people around him to have done that search before and done the self-report maybe a little bit early. The timing also forced Merrick Garland-Sans. But I think if you read the statute on the appointment of the special counsel, he really

had no choice at all. And now people are giving him a lot of crap because the Joe Biden, because he's not apologizing. Now, look, he may, but as I said at the beginning of my sort of rant, there's things that he is limited to doing because he is now the target of a criminal investigation about the retention of these documents. What did he know and when did he know it?

It's gonna come out. It's all gonna be developed by Robert Herr over the next three to five months, whatever it's gonna be. I'm confident, unless we don't know Joe Biden after 50 years in office, that this was unintentional. But it does, and this is something that Karen talked about. Let's just talk about it.

And I wanna get your opinion. Woke it, have. why wouldn't it have a impact on the decision-making that Jack Smith is going to have to make about it? Now I think it should rise and fall in its own merits and they're completely different, 100% different. But don't you think Ben and Karen is of the position of the mind that it will have an impact on the decision making for Jack Smith on Mar-a-Lago.

I don't think it'll impact him at all. I think special counsel Jack Smith is his own person. He's hired because he could separate the two concepts. And if there's a crime, there's a crime in each of the scenarios that exist. And the crime with Trump, again, has nothing to do with sloppiness. From a public perception standpoint, would it bolster the ability of mega extremists to now basically conflate the issues? From a PR propaganda's perspective, it absolutely has an impact from a law and the legality and based on the grand jury testimony and likely facts that we don't yet know

How Donald Trump was utilizing those records because we know when the Saudis show up and start putting hundreds of millions of dollars and Billions of dollars into family members accounts. You think the Donald Trump whose deposition we read talk Raja Raja R rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, you think that guy is not at a dinner or a lunch with MBS or some other Saudi official and saying to them, you wanna know the real thing? You wanna know what's really going on? I'll let you, you don't think that's going down? Well, if you don't think that's going down,

I've got a $1,000 Trump dollar bill and NFTs to sell you because I guarantee you that's what Donald Trump is doing. And I think Jack Smith's gonna do his own thing. You know, and I think there's a lot of facts there that we don't yet know. Again, for me, my target date of indictments when I think Donald Trump will ultimately be indicted

by special counsel Jack Smith, I still think it's April, May. I still think the indicators we've talked about on the show suggest that, but we will see. I think it might be later. I think there's already whispers. I saw something recently where now they're talking about summer indictments, which means they're whispering

into the press's ear that it's not going to be as fast as they thought. It's going to be even after your April target date or beyond it into the summer. Well, you know, let's talk then about attorney general. I think he's going to be indicted though. Let's talk about though attorney generals. You know, let's talk about DAs and let's talk about their action because they're getting aggressive now too, you know, and why the elections are over, right? And so they have the ability to reopen investigations. That's precisely what Michigan attorney general Dane and Nessel has done. She announced this week that the fake electors in her state, 16 fake electors in Michigan, just like those 16 fake electors in Georgia that the district attorney, Fawney Willis from Fulton County is looking into. But district attorney oversees the county, AG, Dana Nestle, the whole state, but she's

opening up a criminal investigation into the fake electors in her state. And these are some top Republican people, the co-chair of the GOP party there, people who submitted their names on false certificates for Donald Trump, even though Biden won the state by like 255,000 votes. And she said, I'm going after those people, those were crimes, and I ain't taking crap from anybody, you know. And look, you have some very, very, very strong leadership right now in Michigan. Michigan is one of those states that's kind of doing the reverse Florida, right?

Florida's gone from kind of purple to red. And Michigan's going from purple to kind of blue. And I think that leadership from the governor to the AG, to the secretary of state, all of them in Michigan have been, in a leadership has been incredible. Popok, what do you make of what's going on in Michigan? Yeah, listen, I like the fact that Nessel got reelected. I think you're right about the state becoming solidly more blue.

The win was tremendous by Biden. It wasn't quite as high as you said. It was 154,000, but it was a three-point win for Biden. It wasn't close. But the Republicans are always targeting Michigan. And I give a lot of credit to her because she said, look, I turned the case over a year ago to the Western District of Michigan, which is a Department of Justice subsets, subterritory for the U.S. Attorney's Office. And what's going on?

They're not cooperating with her. They're not coordinating with her. They're not communicating with her. So she doesn't really know what's going on with her referral. Now she says that independent of that, there are state crimes that may have been, in her view, have been committed with clear evidence, particularly forgery of a public document or forgery of a public record in the election law section of her penal code of her criminal code. You have 16 fake electors who testified and swore under oath when they signed this ridiculous certificate that they were in the state capital when they certified the election for Donald Trump.

when they certified the election for Donald Trump. A number of problems with that. They were not in the state capital as the Jan 6th Committee testimony revealed. They were up the street at the GOP headquarters. They later tried to walk to the capital, but they were denied entry into the capital. While they were meeting, the real electors were meeting inside of the capital,

voting for Joe Biden. And to remind everybody, we talked about this before, there's been a very good change in the law. You know, to your point about the GOP, the MAGA extremist in the house, passing not laws, because they're not going to get past the Senate or Joe Biden's veto, but passing bills, lots of bills. Let's get rid of the IRS. Let's get rid of, let's defund the FBI. Let's get rid of Merrick Garland, whatever we're going to do. All these bills are going to be floating around so they can run on them and their red meat

districts and try to get reelected. But they have also, you know, they've also passed laws, or at least the 118th, 117th Congress passed a law on the way out, which now requires every slate of electors and that certificate to be signed by the governor of that state, or if the state constitution says Secretary of State, that's fine. Also, but it has to be signed by the governor, witness stated, and all of that. That would eliminate this problem, because the governor of stated and all of that. That would eliminate this problem because the governor of Michigan was not sitting in the GOP headquarters

with these other 16 Yahoo's forging up fake certificates. Also the testimony that Nestle referred to came out where they, some of the 16 that signed the fake certificates, they said they didn't even know what they were signing. They said there was a bunch of paperwork, they thought it was ceremonial, they weren't sure why they were there.

That's a problem. And then there's also this two document issue that came out in the Jan 6th that Nestles are aware of, which is the head of the Republican Party for Michigan said there was one certificate that basically said, if the lawsuits are successful that Donald Trump has raised about the big lie, then these will be the new electors.

Okay, but that's not the certificate they signed. The certificate they signed just said, we are the chosen electors and we vote for Donald Trump, all 16 of us. So you have a problem there. That's a men's ray of criminal intent, criminal mind. If they saw the first one and they elected not to sign that one because they wanted to send, you know, a more official looking one over to Congress and to the national and to the national archives, then that's your forage public record issue, which data nestle is now. So she says she's reopening the investigation. She had opened it, referred it to the feds. She doesn't know what's going on. They're not cooperating with her.

And she can do parallel prosecution anyway, secure in her new four-year term as prosecutor, while we watch what happens with the federal Jack Smith led investigations into fake electors in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Colorado. Now let's go to district attorneys after hitting AG. First, let's start with the Fulton County District Attorney, Funny Willis. She's completed her investigation for now before the special grand jury, which was in panel. The Georgia Superior Court judge from Fulton County, Judge McBernie was presiding over that special grand jury. That special grand jury does not have the power to criminally indict. They do have the power to prepare a report, the report to recommend criminal indictments, which could be followed or not followed. But at this stage, Foney Willis

can criminally indict and do whatever she wants to do right now. So she doesn't have to wait for anything. One of the things the special grand jury requested, though, was to make their report public. I believe Judge McBernie seemed inclined to make it public, but the laws regarding making grand jury reports public, but the laws regarding making grand jury reports public versus making special grand jury public is a bit nuanced in Georgia law. So in his order, he's given the Fulton County DA's office and other potential interveners until I think it was January 24th to brief the issue about whether or not to make it public. But it's a big deal, Popeyes, right, that this investigation is now done. And we can see one of the groups she's investigating are the 16 fake electors in Georgia, among others,

but indictments there can be happening pretty soon, don't you think? Yeah, absolutely. Let me just go through the process, though, about what happens next. You got the report, McBernie, who used to be the chief judge, stepped down, but he's still supervising this thing.

If now, based on the report, Fawni Willis can put a side publication of the report, which I believe is going to happen off the 24th here. He's just giving the time for the media and other people involved to oppose. The media to who wants it released and other people who may want it opposed. She then takes this report and convenes a regular grand jury, but she doesn't have to start all over again

and bring in all of these live witnesses. This is a short-circuited process. Short-circuit in the sense she's been running the grand jury since May all the way through January for those that were worried things don't move quickly. They seem to move exceedingly quickly in Fulton County. She's got this thing all wrapped up and the special grand jury has already been dissolved by McBurney with a stroke of his pen. But she now has the report and that reports not just like a 10-page term paper

that we know from high school. This thing I'm sure is a compendium that would rival the one the Jan 6th Committee has let out. I'm sure it's probably even could have been larger given all the witness testimony attached to it. She then takes that report and presents it if she elects to a regular grand jury reading aloud the testimony, putting in evidence all of the items like the documentary items, the evidence, and that jury, not in evidence, all of the items, like the documentary items, the evidence, and that jury, not this jury, that jury decides whether they're going to indict. As Karen Friedman, NGFLO, often likes to joke on our podcast, there's a famous line that

a good prosecutor could get the grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. So it's pretty likely that that this report, which I'm sure has in its crosshairs as recommendations for indictment, people like Mark Meadows, Johnny Sman, maybe Lindsey Graham, and maybe the big Kahuna Donald J Trump. And if that happens, she's not tied to any problems with special councils. She doesn't have to worry about the politics of inditing a former president. She's got her handbook. She's got her owner's manual from the special grand jury, and she runs those plays in front of in front of a regular grand jury. And she gets an indictment. And it doesn't get quashed by a higher authority, or the attorney general for the state of Georgia,

I mean, I guess they could, but I don't think that's how that works. And then that's the way it is. And then lastly, some people are worried, well, the governor of Georgia is Republican. So even if some of these Republicans get indicted and even convicted, couldn't the governor of the state

Bend over backwards and pardon them because we often talk about the pardon process and the good news in Georgia is they had corrupt governors in the past So in the 1960s they took away the right of the governor on his own hand to give pardon's and it has to go through a parole and pardon committee Right because they don Because they didn't trust their governors. That's so good. And what the historical context there, both by coming with the history. And I want to switch gears and go from Georgia. Let's go a little bit north to New York and let's go to Manhattan. Let's talk about the sentencing of the Trump organization there.

But from one DA in Fulton County, Fony Willis to another, Alvin Bragg. I want to say this about Alvin Bragg because Karen Friedman, Agnifalo did an interview. We got an exclusive interview with Alvin Bragg. I'll give you my own view. I think that whatever happened with Alvin Bragg and the prosecutors who had been investigating Donald Trump under Sive Vance and who had been before a grand jury and Bragg

terminated that grand jury and basically stopped what those investigators were doing and they resigned and resigned in very public fashion. I'm talking about Carrie Dunn and Mark Pomerance, two top prosecutors in New York, they submitted a letter of resignation. And I've been very frustrated with Alvin Bragg on a lot of levels. And I think saying frustrated probably puts it lightly, I've been very angry and upset and really not sure what he was doing.

But I do want to say this, of all of the people who we've talked about on Legal AF and throughout the history of time, Alvin Bragg's office is the only one who's secured a criminal conviction against the Trump entity to date, right? That's an undisputed fact that I can't deny that the Trump organization was convicted. The sentencing of, you know, the fine was the maximum fine of $1.6 million is low and embarrassingly low, but Alvin Bragg got them, that was the maximum that the law allowed him to get. And Alvin Bragg said that he would want more than that. If he could, you know, he would, if the law allowed him to get $100 million,

he would have got $100 million and perhaps people would have been, oh, Bragg, you know, the criminal penalty for this was $100 million and look what Bragg did. And I think there may be a different perspective if the law allowed brag to do it, but the law just didn't allow brag to do it. But just think about that. If the New York State legislature said that for these crimes, it's $100 million, people would have been like, oh, that's a big win. I also want to say this, what if Alvin bragg criminally indicts Donald Trump in the next

two months or three months or six months? What if that happens? What if Bragg becomes the first district attorney to do that? I mean, we know he's criminally investigating Donald Trump. We know that he's brought in someone named Matthew Kalangelo, who's a top prosecutor who worked with the attorney general's office in New York and who was the number three position in all of the department of justice who's civilly prosecuted Donald Trump before and succeeded who took down the Trump charities and who helped New York attorney general attisha james prepare her massive fraud civil lawsuit against Donald Trump seeking at least $250 million. The reason that I don't want to condemn or prejudge Alvin Bragg is because through my own perspective as a lawyer where things don't happen quickly

in my cases that I have and things take place over significant time, I know that you can't necessarily judge somebody by what happens in a year or two years or even three years because I'll say this, everybody who rightfully is outraged at Alvin Bragg right now, the moment that Bragg criminally indicted if he does, I think will all of a sudden be saying, okay, Alvin Bragg is a hero, Alvin Bragg's great, great job Alvin Bragg, you know, you did it, you know, congratulations and I think they'll, but all of this stems from the fact that Trump is such a despicable, flagrant criminal.

He has so tortured this country and has put people through such distress and despair and there doesn't seem to be anyone doing anything about it. And so I understand where the I understand where it's coming from. The only perspective that I can provide is one that I share the anger, but I can only share with you this alternative perspective, not alternative. I think it's complimentary. I could be both incredibly angry at Alvin Bragg, say what the heck happened with pomeranians and carried done, but also at the same time recognize that brags the only district attorney in the entire country who's successfully criminally prosecuted a Trump entity to date, that he's continuing to

do the investigations. And he's able to take action now that he's built this foundation, frankly, a stronger foundation than we've seen anywhere else in the country right now. I mean, just think about it. There's democratically appointed district attorneys in places across the country and cities across the country that have jurisdiction against Donald Trump who aren't doing anything. They're not getting criticized the same way, Alvin Braggis, but perhaps they should be getting criticized equally because they're doing literally nothing. And they have jurisdiction because Trump businesses are within their purview, but they're not doing anything. Alvin Bragg, at least, is doing something.

And my own kind of final view on him is to be determined. But right now, I'm angry. I share you. But I want to give you at least that perspective because I think there's a high likelihood Based on the information that he's developed based on the successful criminal prosecution the information he's obtained I wouldn't be surprised if in March or April you replay this video in January With the criminal indictment and I could point to it and say look in January with the criminal indictment, and I could point to it and say, look,

this is, look, I at least gave you that indication that I thought something like that was happening. And remember, there was cooperation between the AG's office and the Manhattan District attorney's office in this criminal prosecution. Let me turn to that. Let me turn to that one. And so there's a lot of sharing there as well with what the AG is doing now.

So break it down, Pope. Yeah. Well, I'm going to share your view. And I want to, we've been covering Alvin Bragg since day one, literally his day one memo, which took a lot of heat from having nothing to do with Donald Trump in New York where I practice. And you know, we know people from that office, Karen Friedman, Nifalo is one.

We know other people that were in that office that are friends at the show. We've had them on the show. And so we have a pretty good, you know, insider view of what's happening there. And we have been collectively, you, me and Karen, have been nuanced and critical when it was appropriate and saying the jury was out when it was appropriate and being complimentary when it was appropriate.

About Alvin and about every other prosecutor that's handled things. We probably know more about Alvin because it's much more public. So a couple of things that I want to follow up on that you just said. I talked earlier tonight about there was a companion piece to the Adult Survivors Act that gets a little play, which is they opened a one-year window at the same time that they opened a new 20-year prospective statute limitations. Things fit together like puzzle pieces, especially in a state like New York. And if the legislature has on the books very low penalties for criminal penalties related to a corporation and a fine,

which is what, which is the brick wall that Alvin Bragg and his office ran into, because it's on the books, and you can only prosecute up to the level, the limits of that. At the same time, in a symmetrical way, there are very strenuous, more so than probably any, I'll go out on the limb, probably any other state in America. The attorney general for the state of New York in a civil setting has the most aggressive amount of power and authority and remedies at her disposal for ongoing fraud than any attorney general in the other 49 states. And the legislature knows that it has a supremely turbocharged and powerful attorney general on the civil side to go after companies because mainly, mostly, the vast majority, governments, states go after companies that are bad people, bad actors, civilly, not criminally. If it rises the level of criminal, like it did for Trump's organizations, then you go for the criminal too.

But you always go for the civil because in most contexts, the civil gets you what you want in terms of shutting down the company, shutting down the officers and directors from future serving in that role and getting lots of money, shutting down the officers and directors from future serving in that role and getting lots of money, maybe all the money and giving the company the death penalty. Those are things you can't get on the criminal side, people would like it to be. So you have to understand the civil and criminal pieces

that fit together, I think perfectly, in the state of New York, who is, if not the capital of business in the world, one of the capitals of business in the world, and trade. So they have on the books this. So we can't just look at it like Alvin only got 1.6 million, what a low number. Has nothing to do with him.

Has to do with the statutory scheme set up criminally, knowing that on the other side, and we're seeing it, we're seeing it right now because not only did Alvin Bragg's office work hand in glove with attorneys from each office being deputized in the other with Tish James' New York Attorney General's office doing a joint investigation, one prosecuting one civil remedies on one side. So we look now, what is she doing against Trump himself, the Trump children in the trial that's going also very, very soon in judge, in judge Engoron's courtroom on civil fraud.

She's getting the $250 million plus into squourgement. She may get the death penalty to the companies. She may get the kids and Trump never being able to be officers of a corporation in the state of New York or a public company again. That's happening over there. So it's not that I'm giving credit to Alvin Bragg for what Tis James is doing, but I'm saying they had worked cohesively up to the limits of their power and their authority. Now we had, yes, we had Alvin Braggon. We may, I can't really reveal because I don't know yet, we may have other people in the future that will tell the other side of the story related to the decision to prosecute

or not prosecute at the point where Alvin Bragg took over the office. People who are potentially very critical of him to give you a different perspective. decision to prosecute or not prosecute at the point where Alvin Bragg took over the office. People who are potentially very critical of him to give you a different perspective. We may have those people. What we're trying to do on this show is 95% of the time do legal commentary based on our expertise and our knowledge as working attorneys and with the political legal component combined. That's what we do, where we can reach out

and bring a guest, and we've brought a half a dozen guests on from Robbie Kaplan, now through Alvin Bragg at different points on the show. We do it in a respectful way to get their side of the story out, understanding that we'll be critical along the way in the show as we tell our stories, as we critique the events, okay, we don't pull punches there,

and then we may to kind of balance it, bring in the other side, be patient, we may be able to bring here to the other side. Here's the thing, Popoq, when we talk about the other side, what we are talking still is about both sides of democracy. Right. And we're talking about, we're talking about, it's all within democracy. What we will never do here is we're never going to other side, where I think there is healthy debates

that used to always exist and that Maga has utterly destroyed is that we both, we all agreed, hey, we should be supporting NATO. Well, now you have Republicans who believe, no, no, no, we should be supporting Putin and Kim Jong-un and authoritarian, and we should be the ones who champion Bolsonaro in Brazil.

And we should do, you know, champion, you know, authoritarians, you know, leaders in Europe to help a movement of fascism. Like that's a, that's a big distinction of where America has gone, that you have a major political party that does that. What the media does when they both sides the issues and say, oh, there's Republicans in Democrat. No, they got to call the fascist, the fascist. You got to call them out for what they're doing.

But where we want to be respectful here is where there are people who are talking about the goals and objectives of our democracy to not be or not utilize the platform to inject our cross-exam and make ourselves the stars of the interview. And so often when you see guests who come on here, when I think we do different, as long as they're pro-democracy, then what you'll see on a lot of other networks is you'll see the interviewer speak for three minutes and then they'll have the person answering the question, speak for 30 seconds in a sound,

but I don't even know what they think. So here, you could watch the interview of one side of democracy and as part of the same side though that's the democracy side. You'll hear other views and then you could come along and say you know what? I disagree with that. I like that. But at least you're getting data and information within which to make your decision. But it's a great point. Let me make let me make one other on that same note. The thing that he gets the most flack about,

and I agree with you that we have to give him credit for 17 and O in felony convictions against the two major Trump companies and to obtain the highest sentencing possible. We can quibble about how much time he gave to the lead cooperating witness, but I don't think there's anybody should doubt that without a reasonably cooperative, Alan Weiselberg, they do not come home with 17 convictions.

And as Karen put it, now that the floodgates have opened and the signal has gone out to all of the prosecutors, hey, you can bring down Donald Trump. You can convince a jury that there is a criminal act that's been committed and walk out with a conviction, which is very empowering to other, don't think other prosecutors don't look at those types of things. They really do. As to the, you know, what he gets the most flack about, which is why didn't he pick up or sivants left off and accept the recommendations of Don and Pomeranhas, the special prosecutors that were in place

when he took the office and prosecute Donald Trump. Why didn't he do that? And yes, we all, but we have to acknowledge as thinking conscientious adults that there is two sides of the story. I could easily, I'm not going to take the time here. I could easily explain to you the reason the new prosecutor now having the presentation made to him by the two that he inherited, whose only jobs were to decide whether Donald Trump

committed a crime or not, made his own decision not to go forward at that moment based on that, and then the other two left sort of an off and have written a book. I get it, but I also get the other side, which is why didn't he, it was on a silver platter with a ribbon around it. We wanted him to do it and the timing and all of it.

I get both sides, both sides of democracy, both sides of a legitimate debate that you could have about whether a prosecutor has properly and timely exercised his obligations and duties as a prosecutor. That is a debate we want to have, and that's the reason we're bringing on not just Alvin, but other people, and maybe Alvin in the future. But other people that supplement and complement what we're trying to accomplish on this show. Appreciate that perspective, Popak, and I hope you all appreciate the perspective and the thoughtfulness and the research that we bring to these episodes.

We spend a lot of time of course preparing them because we're so grateful for the Midas Mighty community out there. Each and every one of you are the reason that this community exists. The reason we can spread these unapologetically pro-democracy messages. And I think just speak the way the media has

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Popock great spending this weekend with you. I want to give a special thanks to everybody watching it. Hit the subscribe button. It's important to subscribe. And also, while you're at it, make sure you subscribe wherever a legal AF is available. That means if you watch this on YouTube, subscribe on the audio wherever you get your podcast,

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a pleasure bringing it to all of you with Michael Popok. We will see you at the midweek with Popok and Karen Friedman at Nifalo, and then we'll see you next weekend here on legal AF Michael Popok. Nice glasses. Until next time, shout out to the Midas Miding. you