Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Judge Has OMINOUS WORDS For Trump as he EXITS COURT

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

You know your motion to delay the Trump criminal trial is DOA, when the judge ignores you and says “see you on 4/15 for trial, everyone!” Michael Popok explains how Judge Merchan shot down Trump��s attempt to “free ride” the criminal system today and put his lawyers in their place all at the same time. Head to https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/collections/sale?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=legalaf right now to get 15% off your entire order! Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This NBA season, make every three-pointer alley-oop and buzzer beater even more exciting with FanDuel. Download the app today to see why we're North America's number one sportsbook. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling.com, call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. This is Michael Popak, Legal AF Hot Take. Donald Trump's chances are somewhere between slim and none to get his trial now set for the 15th of April to start in New York in the business record fraud cover-up Stormy Daniels election

interference case. That case is starting on the 15th of April and even though his lawyers after a harsh day, he's putting it mildly, where they were excoriated by Judge Mershon, there's no other way to put it, then as a last gasp where everything was going wrong for them in the hearing to try to delay the start of the trial alleging without any evidence and without any facts or without any law that there had been prosecutor misconduct and even judge misconduct, which Judge Marchand didn't take kindly to, especially since when he was asked to deliver the goods, Todd Blanche, the lawyer for Donald Trump, just said, we don't have anything. And on the way out of this hearing, Todd Blanche said to the judge, well, we're gonna be filing a motion, your honor,

a motion related to delaying the trial because we're concerned about a jury prejudice of all this bad publicity, bad publicity of his client's own making, by the way. I mean, you can't claim that things need to calm down, the waters need to calm before a jury can get selected because there's just too much publicity out there about a case when you're the one generating the publicity

in a 24 seven nonstop way on social media and otherwise either by you or your minions. But it didn't stop Todd Blanch because he's got his client in the room with his hand up his backside in Donald Trump, to say to the judge, Judge, we want to file a motion, a motion to delay the trial again because of jury prejudice. So that there's a gap between these issues that are going on right now, especially in New York with the judgment and the 465 million and the civil fraud finding and the case with E. Jean Carroll

and the $100 million judgment there. I mean, you could just keep going with Donald Trump. If you're gonna wait around for the carousel wheel to stop spinning based on his civil and criminal problems, I mean, you'll never try a case, obviously. And the judge said, okay, you can file your motion. See everybody on the 15th of April. Nothing says your motion is going to be dead on arrival, Mr. Blanche, on behalf of Donald

Trump. Your motion to extend the time again, after I just told you that I am not extending the time, I just set the trial date like right now for the 15th of April. I'm giving you an additional month because I really should have started this trial today. I mean, the thing we should be doing on Legal AF frankly is talking about a trial and jury selection

on the 25th of March. I'm giving it to the 15th of April. That's your day. Well, judge, we might have another motion. Well, I'm sure you do, you know? There's an old joke about a grandmother and a grandfather and testicles, which I won't repeat on this network,

but that's neither here nor there. I'm not delaying the trial. File your motion. Like, you know, the judge is a gentleman. The judge is polite. You want to file a motion. He's not going to tell you out of turn. If he could have said, I'm going to deny that motion.

Should you bring it, bring your motion. Let's have a full proper record for the appellate court in the future. What's your grounds again, Mr. Blanchwell? All of this buzzing in the air, you know, how do we pick a fair jury with all this information? All the information, I mean, it'd be one thing if your client would stop talking

and stop trying to attack judges and prosecutors, jurors and grand jurors, future grand jurors, witnesses, their families and the like. Maybe if he'd stop doing that, he would no longer have a problem picking a jury. So you can't benefit from your own wrongful conduct. I mean, that's a fundamental principle of the law. You can't come to the court with unclean hands

and then argue you should benefit from the mess that you have made. And that's what Blanche, Todd Blanche is effectively arguing. But there's nothing says your motion is dead on arrival. Like when you raise the specter of the motion and the judge listens and then says, okay, see everybody on the 15th of April. The original trial date I just set, Mr. Blanche, 30 minutes ago. You know, it's not that Donald Trump and his lawyers

operate in an alternate universe, although sometimes I've had my doubts. It's that they are just going to continue to not listen, not respect rules or procedures, not respect case law, not listen to judges, not listen to grand jurors or prosecutors, not listen to appellate procedure or courts, not have any case law, not have any facts until they're effectively reached the end of the road. That road has gotten considerably shorter when it comes to the New York State Supreme Court, which is the trial level court here in New York, because there's going to be a trial on the 15th of April.

There's not a darn thing you can do about it. Sure. He could try to file a motion with the appth of April. There's not a darn thing he can do about it. Sure. He could try to file a motion with the appellate division, which just bailed him out, Donald Trump, by lowering the amount of bond he needs to post or cash by about 60%, six zero, in his New York civil fraud judgment matter. He only, in quotes, has to post $175 million bond and get his appeal off the ground by July in order to get a stay of the execution of his judgment. But I don't see the appellate court granting any kind of delay here.

Judge Mershon is pretty much unassailable. He runs a tight ship. He's issued some ironclad orders. None of them are outside the broad discretion and latitude given to a trial judge in preparing a case for trial, especially in the criminal setting. Jerry hasn't even been picked yet. And on top of that, this immunity argument that Donald Trump was immune because all the actions that are part of the indictment happened before he was elected president, I think are just laughably, even the appellate division

on an emergency basis is not gonna grant him a stay of his trial. Do you know Fast-Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the US with more than 10,000 different kinds of plants and over 2 million happy customers in the US? They have everything you could possibly want, like fruit trees, palm trees, evergreens, house plants, and so much more. Whatever you're interested in, they have it for you. Find the perfect fit for your climate and space. Fast-growing trees makes it easy to order

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Terms and conditions may apply. But now he's got a target date, right? It's not that I don't expect Donald Trump's lawyers to file an emergency application for appeal. They've done it every time. I'd be a fool if I were here to argue on this hot take. It's not going to happen. It's going to happen. I'm just also projecting out on this chessboard a two or three moves that it's going to get checkmated by the appellate court pretty quickly because the immunity defense doesn't apply fundamentally when you're not at any time during the indictment of the President of the United States. I mean, there's one aspect of it that's certain of the bookkeeping happened

involving Michael Cohen and the Stormy Daniels pay off of 130,000 while he was already in the White House. But the heart of the indictment is about everything he did prior to the election in October of 2016, before he was elected president. And this was a coverup of epic proportion as the indictment lays out, because Donald Trump was trying to clamp down on sex stories, sex scandals, breaking out while he was campaigning against Hillary Clinton because he had already had one

October surprise in the sense that the Hot Mic Access Hollywood interview, what was an interview, Hot Mic moment in the trailer with Billy Bush, which was recorded secretly, clandestinely several years before, but got released in October of 2016, had already hit the airwaves. And everybody heard Donald Trump, and he's never denied that it's him or it's his voice,

or that it's been manipulated in any way. So it's authentic that he was saying that as a celebrity, he can get away with sexually assaulting women. He didn't need more sex scandals. Had nothing to do with him trying to save his marriage with Melania. The prenuptial agreement that she renegotiates every year or so keeps that marriage alive. Then if he had no interest in that, that's not him. He's not like, I'm a family man. I didn't want Meloni to learn. It had nothing to do with that. It had to do as the indictment alleges and as the prosecutors will put on at the trial. It starts in April, had everything to do with not wanting to have yet another sex scandal blow back on him, sort of like the way it happened with Bill Clinton when he was on the campaign trail

during his run for office and sort of these relationships or sexual, whatever, escapades of Clinton kept popping up. It popped up so many times that his campaign had a name for it, which I won't repeat here. But Trump had a bigger problem off the Access Hollywood tape, which will not be played for this jury, as the judges rule, Judge Marshawn, but the contents of it will be provided. And the fact that it happened will be provided to the jury so they can properly put all of this into context.

So look, are they gonna get a delay in the trial from the Judge Marshawn? No, at best Judge Marshawn was giving ice in winter to Todd Blanch, he wasn't buying anything that Todd Blanch was selling. It was a very rough day in court and rightly so for Todd Blanch of Donald Trump because it's all cockamamie arguments that have no basis and no good faith that they're not being

filed for that reason. They're being argued and filed in order to just delay for delay sake. We have a name for that. It's called improper deletory conduct and it can be sanctioned. The judge didn't yet sanction the lawyers for Donald Trump. I mean, he is presiding over a criminal trial and it's a little bit harder, but he's also not going to let Donald Trump have a free ride on arguments that make absolutely no sense and are meritless and insulting to the court, to the prosecutors. So that's what today was. That was the judge

getting an appropriate pound of flesh from Todd Blanch because he made him have to deal with a hearing that should never have happened about arguments that had no merit about purported prosecutorial misconduct related to a small batch of documents that the state prosecutors didn't even have their hands on. It was the federal prosecutors that had those documents and none of which helped Donald Trump in the least in his case. But here really what I wanted to focus on is you know you're in trouble when you tell the judge you're gonna be filing a motion for delay and the judge says okay so we're gonna have that trial on the 15th of April. I love Judge Marchand for many reasons, among which today's commentary on the way

out of the courtroom. We'll continue to follow all of it. So this is a perfect place, Midas, Dutch and Legal AF. We've got former prosecutor for the Manhattan DA's office in the very office that's prosecuting the case against Donald Trump. She was the number two lawyer before she left and then joined us among other places.

Karen, Freeman, Igniflo, Ben, Mycelis and me, we get together, we call it Legal AF. We do it Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time right here exclusively on the MidasTouch network and then on hot takes like this one at that same intersection of law and politics. And if you like what we're doing on Legal AF, you can also become a Patreon of Legal AF and find us there. And there's exclusive content that's available, sort of like in a hot take meets a Ted talk meets a type of law school, I guess is the best way to put it, where we're drilling down on legal concepts and we're only doing it there on exclusive content for our Patreon supporters.

So until my next hot take, until my next Legal AF, this is Michael Popak reporting.