Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Justice Served: Arbery Murderers convicted, Charlottesville judgment, Trump Lawyers Sanctioned, & More!

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

You come for the law and stay for the truth. The top-rated weekly US law and politics news analysis podcast -- LegalAF -- produced by Meidas Touch and anchored by MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok, is back for another hard-hitting, thought-provoking, but entertaining look in “real time” at this week’s developments.  On this episode, Ben and Popok analyze: 1. The Georgia jury verdict against the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery on felony and malice murder charges against all 3 defendants. 2. The prosecution and arrest of the FORMER prosecutor of the defendants in the Arbery murder trial for felony violation of her oath of office and obstruction based on her failure to arrest and prosecute. 3. The Virginia jury verdict against the white supremacists in Charlottesville who led the “Unite the Right” rally that led to the murder of a peaceful counter-protester and injury to scores of others. 4. The current DOJ’s settlement with the families of Stoneman Douglas High School (Parkland, Florida) for the FBI’s failure to prevent the mass shooting that murdered 17 people that occurred on Trump’s watch. 5. The efforts by convicted and sentenced Jan6 insurrectionists to appeal their convictions and overturn their sentences. 6. The monetary sanctioning of attorneys who filed a meritless case against Facebook, Dominion Voting Systems, and 4 states in Colorado federal court to overturn the election. 7. The imaginary lawsuit prepared by the Pillow Guy seeking to overturn last year’s election that has no plaintiff, no attorneys and no chance of success. 8. New moves by Bannon concerning the public disclosure of documents in his federal prosecution for criminal contempt of Congress. And so much more! Support the Show! Calibrate -- Your weight doesn’t reflect your willpower. Get back in control with Calibrate. Get $50 off the one year metabolic reset when you use promo code LEGALAF at https://JoinCalibrate.com Aura Frames -- Aura digital photo frames offer the highest resolution display on the market. The auto‑dimming screen wakes each morning and goes to sleep at night. Your photos will always be the ideal brightness. There’s never been a better time to buy. Take advantage of Aura’s best deals of the year, with Black Friday/Cyber Monday pricing now through November 30. Visit https://auraframes.com now to get gifting. Use code LEGALAF to take $30 off Aura’s best selling digital picture frames Fiverr -- Receive 10% off your first order by using our code LEGALAF at https://Fiverr.com. Cubii -- Making Wellness Approachable for All Ages, Abilities, and Lifestyles. Click to Learn More! Stay Home & Get Fit While You Sit. Go to https://www.cubii.com/legalaf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Midas Touch Legal AF. If it's Saturday, it is Legal AF Live. If it's Sunday, it is Legal AF. Rain or shine, holiday, no holiday. Ben Myceles, Michael Popock here for you. I don't know if you saw Popock, but the mightest touch of brothers, those three brothers, they did like a Thanksgiving special. Me and you, we just keep it consistent, no matter what, every weekend just delivering the law. The law doesn't stop Popock.

We're like a locomotive. We just keep moving from station to station and neither rain nor sleep nor dark of night are going to stop the delivery of our legal political news. It's a funny thing, Popak, because in my career now, I divide my time fairly equally between the deal-making side of my law practice and the litigation side of my practice, but increasingly doing more of the deal making on the deal making side. Thanksgiving begins like on Monday before the Thursday. And as I've gotten more and more into that world, I found it so surprising because on the litigation side, litigation doesn't stop until

literally the holiday. And even on some holidays, you're getting those federal orders that are coming in on the electronic filing system. You know, litigation doesn't stop at all. And one of the annoying things about being a litigator and all the litigators who are listening know this, I always hate when I have an opposing counsel who just tries to intentionally make your holidays annoying by like filing some motion that requires a response.

Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. And you know, it's mutually assured destruction. Popeye, maybe talk our listeners through though though holiday collegiality in the law practice, because I think it's important that when you practice law at the highest level against really good litigators on both sides, one of the things you notice is the process just goes so much smoother sometimes. It's like two good boxers who go into a ring. You're not just swinging wildly, like, you know, two people who'd be fighting in a bar who are drunk for the first time.

But what's always frustrating is you don't always get to pick your opponents. And sometimes you just get this lawyer on the other side that's trying to either make a name for themselves, or it's just very difficult, who makes every little thing annoying. And then you make their life annoying. And it's make their life annoying. And it's just mutually assured destruction. So Popeyes, maybe give some of the background on just holiday collegiality and honor of the fact that we're post Thanksgiving. Yeah. Look, I think in my 30 year plus career, it's changed over time. I think when we're litigating, when you and I are litigating against, you know, sort of our equals in terms of stature,

in terms of pedigree, if you will, you know, sort of like the elite firms that you're talking about, there still exists a certain amount of collegiality. I'm not going to file at midnight on Christmas Eve. He's not going to file or she's not going to file on the eve of a Jewish holiday that's important to me. And if they do it by accident, like I've had people say, Hey, let's have a, let's have a very important status conference phone call on Yom Kippur, which is the highest Jewish holiday. And I'll say, hmm, that's like not a good day for me. And they'll be like, Oh, sorry, we didn't mean to do that. And thanks for telling us. I've had other lawyers. And usually it's the ones that, you know, don't have great records or practices.

And they try to get every little advantage because they think sharp elbowed practice is the way to success. You and I have never wanted case by being an asshole in an email exchange or on the telephone outside the presence of a judge. Cases are one and litigated in courtrooms with a person in a black robe. And so I'll get a young lawyer or an inexperienced lawyer or an unprofessional lawyer on the other side.

And I'll try to school them, but politely, sort of like what we do in legal AF, polite schooling. And I'll say, listen, I don't know how many cases you've tried, but I've never won one of my 40 trials on a phone call. I've only done it in a courtroom. So why don't we put aside all of this nonsense and be collegial where we can be? There's positions that you and I are going to take in a case on discovery, on deposition, on scheduling. But if I can give an extend courtesy, which I'm supposed to do as a professional, I will do it as long as it doesn't disadvantage my client.

Sometimes it midnight filing to get an injunction to stop something from happening has to happen. And it has nothing to do with I'm trying to gain an advantage or I'm trying to, you know, kind of royal the other side, I just have to do it because it's important to my client. Other than that, you and I do our best work in a courtroom when you're not a transactional lawyer and you're doing what I do and not trying to gain the upper hand by being, you know, sort of an asshole. And Popak Well said, I thought that was an important moment to talk about that side of the law as we move past Thanksgiving and we head into the holidays, especially for all

of other lawyers listening to this or young lawyers who are listening to this to learn about really what is important in the practice, which is ultimately succeeding in the courtroom at the end of the day. And there still should be a level of collegiality in at least the mode of come of that existing in our profession. We're gonna be talking on this episode

about protective orders on this podcast. We're gonna talk about protective orders in the context of the ongoing criminal prosecution of Steve Bannon, a little bit later in the podcast, but we're also gonna talk about protective orders now in the context of the investor lawsuit against the Trump family in connection with the kind of marketing scam that Trump was embroiled in with this American communications network. This was this multi-platform marketing gimmick where people would pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars because they believe they would be sales people like Trump and the Trump and the Trump family. Allegedly, although we saw it, and if you ever saw those magazines on the airport, on the airplanes, I remember you'd see them with Trump advertising these

ridiculous things like be a billionaire like me by selling, you know, whatever these items are. Trump sticks. Remember Trump sticks. Trump sticks. But Trump tried to get this investor lawsuit in this multi marketing, multi platform marketing scam into arbitration about a year ago that failed. So it's been proceeding through federal courts.

And now recently, there was a motion by the attorneys for the victims of the scam to look at footage from the apprentice. The judge has allowed the lawyers to look at. And why I say we're gonna be talking about protective orders though, is that one of the strange things is that while these courts and federal courts and state courts are open to the public, there's what's called confidentiality orders or protective orders in litigation,

which sometimes protects what the public can see and sometimes even what the public can see, and sometimes even what the clients can see. Sometimes there are provisions that say, first, only the lawyers can look at highly proprietary information, and that's what's called attorneys eyes only. There are some orders where it judges only the attorneys can see it in very rare circumstances. Often that's the case where you have like the secret ingredient to Coca-Cola and that they're worried that if one of the litigants looks at the recipe, they could use it for anti-competitive purposes, but that's on the more rare side. But the confidentiality generally protects business secrets, health records, although I think and you probably have seen this Pope-up in your practice as well,

protective orders to me have been abused more and more and more and have been trying to make all public litigation private and different judges have different views on it. But that's the face to say there was a battle over what documents could be released in this specific case. And ultimately, the lawyers for the victims are going to be able to look through and comb through some of this apprentice footage. So Pope, I'll tell us what's going on here with this apprentice footage. And why

is this important to the investor loss? Yeah, it's an interesting case. But let me, let me preface it by giving a little bit of my own personal observations about Trump and New York. I have to tell you the people that live in New York and watch Trump's entire career are sort of gobb smack that he got as popular as he did as being some sort of business guru and was able to slap his name on the celebrity apprentice to keep his, his name and his brand alive. All those years because in New York, people that really knew him and followed him thought his, he and

his family were sort of a joke. They had already gone bankrupt three times. He's the only person I know of that could find a way not to make money in the casino industry and go bankrupt and have a federal, you know, federal bankruptcy judge put him on an allowance, a monthly allowance. Um, you know, he was sort of a middling, uh, developer, not one of the top five or even top 30 developers in New York at all. He was, he was a very good promoter of the brand. He was very good at slapping the Trump name on buildings that he did not himself, um, develop and neither did the children. And it was a small real estate firm where everybody had the Trump last name.

It wasn't a big company. So, you know, but he was a, you know, listen, we know he's a charlatan. He was able to convince people in middle America and other places that he was some great business person. And he used that celebrity to market things with his children, because they're also sued in this lawsuit, this 2018 class action case, where the investors of ACN, which sells cell phones and phone service and voice over internet cards and all of that. And if you put $499 in, you're supposed to get, you're supposed to reap back tens of thousands of dollars in return,

which was a total joke. And as the plaintiffs lawyers have alleged, a pyramid scheme where nobody got a return. There's one person who's a plaintiff in particular. She put in $5,000, she got back 38 bucks in total return on her investment. So this is the case you and I talked about about six months ago, where the first thing that the Trump family tried to do was to drag the case out of the courthouse,

out of public litigation into arbitration. Not arguing, not that they had an arbitration agreement that they were trying to enforce, but trying to join behind the fraudster, which is the American communications network, the alleged fraudster, who had an arbitration provision with each of the investors and Trump jumping up and down and saying, Hey, me too, they have an arbitration agreement. I'm very close to aligned with the party that defrauded all of these investors.

So I want the benefit of the arbitration agreement. Also, it was a we you and I commented on it three or four podcasts ago. It was a weird thing to try to align yourself with the company that is alleged to have committed the fraud in order to get the benefit of the arbitration agreement. Well, the judge in the case is the same judge here. Lorna Schofield at the Southern District, New York federal court said no no, second circuit said no. And it didn't go up to the Supreme Court or it wasn't reverse. So the case is back in front of Judge Gofield, who just has a little bit of a shout out to her, a 2012 Obama appointee. And the only and the first Filipino American or Filipino, person of Filipino descent on the federal bench at

the highest level, an article three judge. So she's been, and she was a partner in a very speaking of elite firms that you and I have litigated again. She was a partner in a very elite firm and handled very sophisticated litigation before she was nominated and put on the bench. So MGM was the producer of the celebrity apprentice. They have all this outtakes and other footage that never got on the television.

And what the plaintiffs lawyers in a very creative approach are saying is perhaps your honor in those outtakes, in those moments when there was a hot mic, when Trump and his children were waiting for the cameras to roll for the scene that ended up in the episode, maybe they commented about the American communications network and indicating, and perhaps indicated that they didn't think it was a legit organization. Either, although they got paid, it looks like Trump got paid at least $8 million or $9 million

between 2005 and 2015 from being a person, a spokesperson, well, with the children for this entity. The interesting threat here today is that the same lawyer that's representing the plaintiffs in that case is the same lawyer that's representing E. Jean Carroll is the same lawyer that's representing the plaintiffs in the Charlottesville case. So just as you'll hear us talk about these sort of weirdo wacko lawyers that are representing Trump and all of these attempts to turn over the election or overturn the election, there are lawyers on the right side of the angels that are taking cases against Trump in different jurisdictions and are finding great success.

So we're going to see the lawyers have now gotten over the objection of Trump, of now gotten, or about to get the MGM outtakes. And maybe there's something in there where Trump whispers to his child, like, oh, this is such a bullshit company. I can't believe we're doing this and they're paying us for it. And that will be really helpful to the case if they find it. I think so, Popeyes. And I mentioned the protective orders as well because our listeners are probably, and viewers are saying, well, do we get to see the

outtakes? Not yet. If this ultimately goes to trial, and the evidence is determined to be reasonably calculated and relevant and admissible, then you'd probably see it in the context of a trial, but at least for now, that's not something that would be released publicly as there's a protective order in place there and those records from MGM would be confidential records whether we like to or not. Now, here's a potential I guess mission that we could put might as mighty to think about or other lawyers out there. Any third party though can intervene, a member of the public can intervene in a case.

You listening can actually intervene in a federal case and I'm not suggesting you do this here though, you know, and basically say as a member of the public, as someone who is reporting on this or who wants to know about this, this information. I don't think that this is a private information. I'm a member of the public disseminate this publicly. Now you may get laughed out of court or you may be warmly embraced by the court, but media does that all the time. They'll intervene in cases and say, de-designate certain documents so that the public has a right to know.

Moving on, on Popoq to the settlement reached with the Parkland shooting family, Parkland shooting family, the victims, families reached a $127.5 million settlement with the United States government over the FBI's inaction. And look, there's not a single dollar amount that you can place on the value of any human life, but a settlement of this proportion in a case involving inaction by a law enforcement agency is not only just rare, but really one of the first of its kind, generally what the law says on these issues, state and federal, is that where a law enforcement agency undertakes a duty to protect and where there is a foreseeable harm to the victim after undertaking this duty to protect,

where the agency then places the victim in a more dangerous situation and essentially causes the harm in rare circumstances law enforcement agencies can be held responsible. I'm oversimplifying the law there, but that's generally what these two doctrines basically say for where inaction becomes viewed as affirmative types of action where the law enforcement can be held responsible. But generally the horn book law, the basic law says, you can call up the police and say, hey, I need help. And if they don't do anything, you can't sue them for it. Whether we like that or not,

that's generally what the law is in action is not something that law enforcement can be held responsible for. So what happened here, Pope? Yeah, this is a fascinating case. And it just shows you what happens when elections do have consequences. We say that and it's not a trait phrase. We mean it to mean a lot of things. And what we mean it to mean here is on the heels of the $88 million settlement of the

mother, a manual, AME church and the victims of Dylan Roof, who was an active shooter in that church just a month ago. And now $127 million settlement with the Survive, you know, there were 17 people that were killed at the Stomenduglass High School in Parkland in Florida, in South Florida. This is the Department of Justice. This is Merrick Garland, this is the Biden administration stepping forward to reestablish integrity and faith in the justice system that has been so, so soiled by Trump and by bar and by sessions before him. In my lifetime, I can recall on a half of a hand,

situations where the US government took responsibility for things that they had what we, you and I have talked about in the past, sovereign immunity protection from. Normally what you were commenting on earlier, the exercise of police power by a government, whether it be a state, local, or federal, is usually protected by sovereign immunity in a lot of instances. In general, there are exceptions to it. And so bad, bad things happen to people,

sometimes at the hands of the government, whether it's in the military friendly fire during military operations or exercises and the families are left, of course, devastated and bereaved, to every other aspect of what's called the police power. And generally, the government will say, unless there's a waiver of sovereign immunity where the government itself, in this case, the Congress or otherwise, waived sovereign immunity, you're sort of stuck if you're a victim.

Here, the Department of Justice, even though it probably in the US, probably would not have lost a lawsuit brought by the families at Parkland, as terrible of a tragedy as it was. They stepped forward and said, no, we're gonna do the right thing. We did it a month ago with the church in South Carolina. We're gonna do it here. And what was the misstep or what was the omission that happened with the FBI?

Five weeks before the shooting, they were given credible information to the Miami field office of the FBI that Nicholas Cruz, the shooter, was planning a mass murder at his high school. Sounds like something they should have picked up, investigated, arrested, and detained. And that was enough for, again, Merrick Garland to step forward and make the recommendation that there should be a settlement at this level. Now, not everybody's settled.

There's one family, frankly, that did not sue, and it decided that they're not going to sue, and that there's one person who was seriously injured who was suing separately. But this takes care of really almost the entirety of the victims of what happened at Stomen Douglas. And again, I think it's an example, Ben, I want to hear your opinion about reestablishing the guardrails of democracy, of civilization, of the proper exercise and execution of our

justice system in the hands of adults who are civilized like the Biden administration. I agree. And look, you could delve a little deeper here to Popak and so there was a motion to dismiss that was filed by the DOJ when Trump was in office. The judge on this case is someone by the name of William P. Dimetrileos, United States District. To meet Trilayos I've been in front of him. States District to meet to meet Trilayos. I've been in front of them. And a Clinton appointee, right? Um, and issued a 44 page order. Uh, on August 31st of 2020, denying the United States government's motion to dismiss. And basically, the basis of the denial was that the FBI had created a public access line, a PAL, and the PAL was where

these types of threats were to go to, and where the complaints about threats or were warnings were supposed to go to. And the threat line, it was directed to PAL and PAL kind of sat on it. They didn't do anything. And but for the existence of PAL, that information would have other went directly to the Miami field office directly, which then could have taken action. So the motion to dismiss order was based on the undertaking here was that when the FBI created this public assistance line,

they basically invited the calls for people to give warnings and to give tips, and then by not acting on the tips, they created the problem. Now, what I think would have happened here, Popak, if this went one in front of a different judge, I think a different judge could have seen this the other way. I mean, they drew a judge who wrote a very detailed 44 page order. But if this was in some of the judges that we've talked about, you know, for example, within the fifth circuit, some of the district judges in Texas, I mean, this would have been dismissed not in a 44 page ruling, probably a one page ruling, basically saying either one, you can't even sue the government in this type of case. And two,

there's absolutely no duty. I could have seen a one page order just could go in that way. I also think that on appeal, this order would likely get overturned. And I just, and I think even in front of the Supreme Court, this order would likely be overturned. But you're right, it's the DOJ, restoring a modicum of civility, of dignity, and they made the decision on their own and said, look, we could probably win this case.

We could win this case, but I would expense. We could win this case and further traumatize the families when we know we were wrong. Maybe we were not technically legally wrong based on the way our law has developed. But let's do the right thing here. Well, here's a theme that you established at the start of this podcast. You can do certain things, but should you? I mean, there's tons of things you and I could do to drive somebody crazy on the other side, but I'm not going to do it. And the government here, now in the hands of adults and civilized people, like you said,

said, yeah, we can win it. But should we? There is a morality that is baked into our legal system that was lost for the four years of the Trump administration. One comment about judge Demetriale, so I've been in front of. And I think this helped the case, not only a Clinton appointment, a pointee, but served for almost 10 years on the Broward County Circuit Court in Fort Lauderdale. And is of the people and is of the community and takes that job seriously. He's got a nickname. His nickname is fast, Billy, because he does things really quickly. He puts the government and the defense on their toes.

You know, he moves cases along very, very quickly. It's a rocket docket that exists there. But he's also a human being that, that lived in that community. And I'm sure that impacted his decision-making in the right way. But you're right. That was one example of the Department of Justice under Biden and under Garland, not adopting the positions of the predecessor department of justice where it really matters. This podcast is brought to you by Calibrate. Want to tell you about a time where we've all gone through these weight loss fads or these

different gimmicks and they don't work. And I think about that now as we just finished Thanksgiving. And I'm sure we all had some great meals, but we're all thinking about what that is. But Calibrate is not a diet. It's not a quick fix product. It's a year long commitment that gives you the tools to fight your biology. And we know that traditional diets don't work because you can't fight biology sometimes with willpower. And this is why Calibrate is different. It is a comprehensive doctor guided metabolic reset

that promotes sustainable results through lifestyle changes. And it works because Calibrate combines a doctor prescribed FDA-approved medication paired with lifestyle changes to improve metabolic health. It's comprehensive, fully integrated program combining classes and one-on-one video coaching, in-app tracking, and a community of members like you makes this work. Plus, medical care, including a video doctor visit. Calibrate's earliest members pop-up lost an average of 14% of their body weight, exceeding the 10% average weight loss result seen in clinical trials. And over 20 years of research, research shows that a combination of GLP1 medication and coaching can improve metabolic health and drive long-term sustained weight loss.

And they provide a comprehensive wellness plan that is personalized to your needs. Your weight doesn't reflect your willpower. Get back in control with Calibrate. Get $50 off the one year metabolic reset when you use promo code legal AF at join calibrate.com. That's $50 off when you use the code legal AF at join calibrate.com. That's J-O-I-N-C-A-L-I-B-R-A-T-E. Go to join calibrate.com and use that promo code legal AF. Go to joincalibrate.com and use that promo code, legal AF. This is an incredible product.

Then it combines all those aspects, which I think is where we need to be going with this, which has combining technology with this kind of great product. So, Popeye, I want you to also talk about some repercussions, though, on we talked about what can you do, what should you do? Now let's talk about what you should definitely not do, which are these lawyers, I don't know what they were thinking. They probably weren't thinking anything,

but these lawyers who think that the Trump, you know, crew is going to protect them. They're all one by one getting serious sanctions for their bogus lawsuits that they filed at the behest of Trump and Giuliani and all these people, they're paying real sanctions now and losing their licenses. And I'm glad that they're having these repercussions. But tell us about the recent update in Colorado. I think what you're observing is a group of lawyers

who decided that their own fame and fortune and to raise their own profile. They would sort of do anything and they would sacrifice their professional license and their ethics in order to get notoriety to help them in publicity to help them in their careers because no one ever heard of, who decided to jump on the Trump and Wagon, you know, probably promoted by other lawyers like Lin Wood and Sydney Powell and all that. And they filed a case in Colorado against Dominion voting machines, voting systems, Facebook, and the states of Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, in Colorado. Okay, our legal AF alumni,

soon to be graduates, know enough to start scratching their head about does a Colorado federal judge have jurisdiction over the states of Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and the governors of those states about the election. And if you're scratching your head and wrinkling your nose, you're on the right path because the federal magistrate judge, and we'll talk a little bit about magistrates versus Article III judges, trial judges at the top, and when decisions get made by the magistrate judges,

and their effect, the federal magistraterate judges and their, their effect, the federal magistrate judge here took a look at this case two or three months ago on a motion to dismiss that was filed by Facebook by Dominion and by the, and by the others and said not only are these cases without merit, but the fact that they were filed by Colorado bar members, who were members of the federal bar, should give everyone pause. And I want to send a message as a magistrate judge that if you're going to sign pleadings and you're going to allege facts and you're going to defame parties like dominion voting systems by paraphrasing tweets from the president about a ledge fraud in the voting system.

There's going to be repercussions and serious repercussions, and you're going to have to pay money related to that under the courts inherent authority and power to sanction under rule 11 of the federal rules of civil procedure. So the magistrate judge here, magistrate judge Reed, Nuribert had already found that they had violated rule 11 by bringing a merit list set of pleadings. And in the actual sanction order that just got issued earlier in the week, in which he ordered the two plaintiffs lawyers to pay $187,000 in legal fees for all of the parties that they sued, the quote that stuck with me, Ben, from the order is the following. The judge said the lawsuit that was filed was used to manipulate gullible members of the public and foment public unrest and was an abuse

of the legal system and an interference with the machinery of governance. And it wasn't going to be abided by him in that courtroom. And so he threw the book, I'm sure there'll be a bar referral to the state bar of Colorado if there hasn't been already related to these two individuals because they went beyond the pale of what of bringing cases for the good faith extension of law or based on existing law, which is the fundamental first step of any lawsuit that's filed. You and I don't sign a lawsuit at all under rule 11 or under the state law analogy, unless having done our research and our good faith investigation, we believe the claims have merit under the current body of law or a good faith extension of the law. And that gatekeeping that professional lawyers like you and I do as officers

of the court, which is what you and I are. We're an officer of the court just as the judges, just as the bailiff is, just as the prosecutor is in a criminal case. And you have to take that seriously. You can't just wipe your backside with a pleading, sign your name to it and file it in court, especially in federal court and not suffer the repercussions. So we've saw it with Linwood and Sydney Powell getting sanctioned. We see it here in Colorado. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. These things a good thing these things are happening. And if judges don't draw the line in the sand now and do this, it's just going to invite more meritless cases to impact the gullible in the public and foment public unrest.

Talking about wiping your behind with legal documents and just putting it out there. What in the hell did Michael and Dell, did he even file this document? He just posted a document that appeared to be addressed to the Supreme Court where it basically said, insert your name here versus insert their name there and then he posted it.

What in the world is going on. All right. Well, first of all, that was a very good transition. We like recalibrated. That was very good. I liked it. So, Lindell has been the pillow guy has been threatening or bragging since the election that he was going to get a lawsuit that was going to overturn the election. And with all the hundreds and hundreds of other lawsuits that were filed and all the battleground states failed and failed miserably, like 70 and O. And the Supreme Court even looked at these cases and said, no, we're not, no, we're not overturning the election at this late date. We're not overturning the election at this late date. Pillow guy chooses an even later date. We're now November, or almost a year after the election,

back to where a year after the election, which has another problem. It's called timeliness of filing your suit. And he said, I'm going to file or have a suit filed on behalf of one state against the US government and the Biden administration. And that case, let's make this a teachable moment and we'll have some value of this pillow guy Supreme Court case that's not happening. There is original jurisdiction that the US Supreme Court has over a limited type of case.

Normally, the Supreme Court of the United States hears appeals. That means a trial judge at some other, at the lower level tried the case where an appellate court below the Supreme Court issued a ruling and then as the ultimate appellate court of the land, the Supreme Court jumps in. There are small exceptions where the US Supreme Court has original jurisdiction

to hear a case as if it were sitting as a trial court. And that is if a state is suing another state, if New Jersey sues New York, they can go right to the Supreme Court to have the case tried instead of to the lower level federal court. And if a state sues the US government. So Lindell, who couldn't get any state, even the ones controlled by Republicans to file this lawsuit, overturning the election

and claiming fraud and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and all those other places, just had some lawyer and Reuters, the new service did a good job of researching the metadata within the brief that was posted, the complaint that was posted on Mike Lindell's website. And they figured out which lawyer it is. It's a lawyer that sits in Washington who's been ghost writing a lot of these things for Trumpers. And they already outed him and they're reporting. And I'll posted him and they're reporting. And I'll post that on my Twitter feed.

But in this bill of complaint, which alleges that there was, male balloting is right with fraud with like no examples. That electronic voting is really bad with almost no examples. He could never get one of the five states or any Republican controlled state to join in into the pleading. And he blames of all people, the chairperson of the Republican National Committee, which is Ronan McDaniels, which is Mitt Romney's niece. He blames her that she phoned all these governors and these attorney generals

and all these states. And put a cabash on the filing of the suits. So I'm going to post it on my website. And instead of having a press conference about it, he had a 96 hour, I'm not making this up, pillow and slipper a thon. It was a sales event where he barely talked about the suit at all. All he did was try to push his product. But the interesting thing is here, you and I spent a lot of time talking about, you know, DeSantis and the attorney general in Florida and Georgia and what's happening with redistricting. They couldn't even get DeSantis's attorney general to sign on to this thing. That's how poor it is. And so it would be rejected, like, dead on arrival. The US Supreme Court has already declared for the Biden election, they are not overturning

this election. It is too late. There's no, there's no facts that support it and they're not going to overturn the will of the people. So why Michael in Dell, other than a cell pillows and slippers, keeps pushing this, this to royal up the gullible masses of Trump supporters is beyond me. I'll tell you the answer though, Popeye. The answer is because as we've talked about on prior legal AFs, well, here's one reason. He's actually fucking crazy. Okay, that's number one.

But number two is if there were to be a logical explanation within this morass of craziness. It's that he's being sued for defamation by everyone. And so by continuing down this path and trying to get some governmental authority to sign on to his crazy theories, he could basically have some government entity co-sign it. So in his defamation cases, he can basically say, look, I've got the governor of X basically

who's agreeing with me. And I've got this person who's agreed with me. And so this is kind of part of, it's kind of the never-ending scheme that they've got going on. And they don't really think, they don't even think one step ahead. Like all they basically think, and this is don't even think one step ahead, like all they basically

think, and this is kind of Trump's all plan too, is like there is no end game in a lot of his crazy lawsuits. The end game basically is just every day, just create enough craziness and chaos and turmoil and just delay, delay, delay, delay, delay. And hopefully, through all that chaos, people just forget about it and they move on. And then just blame, you know, blame the deep state or blame whatever, that's the plan. Yeah, we agree with you.

We talked about it before. When bad things are happening, make them happen slower. And that's what they're trying to do. But I found it interesting that despite all of the Trump accolite lawyers out there, a lot of them getting sanctioned and some of them losing their law licenses. So I think that group, that little cozy club is shrinking.

They couldn't find one lawyer, even the lawyer that ghost wrote it, who sits in Washington that Reuters outed, he didn't even put his name on it. It has, you know, insert state name. And then it has them where you and I would put when we're proud because we're filing a case and you know, names, you mean our names? We would put our names in a signature block at the end. There's no signature block. So even the lawyer that wrote it was

like, hmm, I don't want my name on that either. And then they couldn't find one attorney general. And look, I could think of a handful of them that are in the clutches of the Republican machine and the right wing in a GQP machine in certain states, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, that would put their name on it and maybe get their state to do it. Even they didn't do it. So I get your point, but he, but having not been able to get one of anybody to join him, why he posted it on his website as this is it, it's because he promised it. I'm going to overturn the election by Thanksgiving. And when that didn't happen, just like JFK Jr. is not showing up at Deely Plaza or wherever

the people were waiting for him. It's still waiting for him out there. Did you see that? Yeah, it's totally, I mean, this, this isn't a call, but there's one thing we're going to talk about later when we get to the Arbery trial. I don't know if you saw the polling. Almost 70% of Republicans think that the three defendants in the Arbery trial should have been let go and not found guilty of murder against Armand Arbery.

I'm, of course, 98% of Democrats think that the verdict was just, but 70%. It's the same percent that to this day think Obama is a secret Muslim. But here's the thing, Pope, and this should tie it all together, though, because I don't know for a fact what I'm about to say, but I could pretty much with great assurance say that on that Amid Arbery jury, because you don't directly ask their political affiliation or if they voted for Trump or, however, I can almost guarantee you that you had at least one or two members of that jury, who, who, mostly all white jury, who voted for Donald Trump.

And what this means and what the data you're telling us means, Popeye, that 70% think that the killers of Admod Arbery were not guilty, tells you that they're not getting their information from reliable sources, but the fact that a unanimous jury found the three murderers guilty on all count shows that when they sit there and they're presented with the accurate information and they're given actual facts versus the lies that the actual facts can prevail. And that's also why a lot of the GQ peers to go back to your other point, Popok, are not

going through not signing on to this lendel document. It's not that they don't want a spread conspiracy. Oh, the death sentences and the GQ peers, they're going to go out there and spread conspiracies, but they learned from this experience. We can't do this in a court of law. There are limits in a court of law. We actually have to speak truthfully. Let's not do this in courts.

Let's do this on the streets. Let's do this at rallies. Let's do this online. Let's do this on Twitter and Facebook. And let's just so brainwash people because that's the only way we can get them. When we have to tell the Vax, we'll lose all of the time. But which is why we need to protect our legal system.

It's why we do legal AF every weekend because we need to fight for the system because what'll happen is if the GQ peers can elect the disinfo spreaders to then take over the courts, then you get an entirely different outcomes than what we previously. And you know, and it's even you're, you're totally right. And here's why it's even more infectious and why it's mad at me on the democratic side

or the progressive side of the aisle because it's, it's disheartening over time. It becomes disheartening even to our own followers and listeners and democratic supporters. I see the posts and I can tell, it's almost like I'm reading a book now, but I don't know if you read this book by Malcolm Gladwell that's out now called the Bomber Mafia about World War II and Bomber technology and its impact

and the morality of bombing on warfare. And one of the comments he made, one of the observations he made was about Tokyo Rose, who was hired, it was a woman who was a sympathizer with the Japanese who spoke perfect English, who constantly broadcasted over loudspeakers and over radios to the GIs who are in the war, the, the war theater to make, to make them lose their will to fight. They heat, she would just say crazy stuff to make them lose their will to fight.

And my fear is that there's a Tokyo rose going on with the Republican party and its impact to the Democrats and why you and your brothers in a way are podcast is so important because we're the opposite of Tokyo Rose. Don't lose faith. The democracy is not going into the trash bin. Okay, we're going to be able to reestablish the guardrails, but also don't cannibalize each other. Don't back bite about the Democrats and what Biden is doing. The numbers on Biden are low, not just because the Republicans

seem to be down on him, but the Democrats are down on him. And we need a unity of party in order to continue to have Biden and the Department of Justice, you know, do what it's doing now to fix all of the four years of damage. But don't let the Republicans get you down and Tokyo rose you. You know, continue to fight and listen to the facts as presented on your podcast with your brothers and what you and I do each week here about legal AF. We have to arm everybody with facts. Yeah, and I won't belabor the point anymore,

but I think giving, and I was having a conversation with someone, and I was just like, you know what? Like, when you actually think about what Biden's accomplished in a short period of time with infrastructure, where the economy is, where the decrease in joblessness, you know, the GDP growth being, you know being now even recalibrated to record setting levels. This is stuff that is fairly unprecedented. Yes, there is inflation and Gen Socki said, yes, if you bought a 20 pound turkey, you paid a dollar extra for that 20 pound turkey,

which they're trying to address. But let's also think about the totality of all the other economic indicators that exist out there and what's going on? You know what, you get on one last note on that. And that was, I had conversations around a table like that too. The biggest problem Biden has, and then I'll get off the political soap box, is that whereas Reagan was the great communicator to be frank Biden's communication skills and the people around him that are other than Jen Socky who we all love. He doesn't have great communicators around him.

Kamala is not for all of her things that I love about her as the vice president. She's not a great communicator. Biden talks a lot, but he's not a great communicator or message deliverer, either, which means there is an open lane for mightest touch to help communicate the message. It's not that. What his accomplishments are Reagan had half those accomplishments and is considered a great communicator and uniter of people Biden needs to get better people on the White House to write speeches for him to focus his message, the press, the press department after Socky needs to be terribly improved. And

the world around Kamala has to be changed out in order to have this message delivered pro. Hope, maybe a guest on the mightest touch, brother's podcast. We'll see. We need to flesh this out a little more. This podcast is brought to you by Fiverr. Might as touch, we use Fiverr. The way we use Fiverr is oftentimes we'll need freelancers who go out there who could work for you on kind of a case by case basis. to make something out of nothing and the thought of turning this idea into a reality really can feel overwhelming. But with Fiverr, turning that idea into something is easier than ever.

Millions of freelancers across the globe help clients turn ideas into successful realities every day. And it's not just voice over artists or people who help with it. Do the music. It's experts in data, design, marketing, technology, website building, animation, and so much more are ready to help you simply search for the service you need and set the timeline and price you want. And fiber provides you with a list of freelancers who meet that criteria. You could then browse their portfolios. You could read their reviews, know exactly what you will pay before ordering anything. And it's a simple to use platform. It has

great customer service. I know from personal experience and it has qualified freelancers in every field. So every successful something was once nothing head to fiver.com and that's f-i-v-e-r-r.com and turn that nothing into something today. Receive 10% off your first order by using my code, power code, not just my code, sorry, pop up, it's our code, legal AF at fiver.com, F-I-V-E-R-R dot com. Again, that's fiver.com. Use the code legal AF. I promise you it's something that you will use over and over again. What's the latest update, Popak, with the Steve Bannon criminal prosecution? So Steve Bannon wants documents to be made public. What was his lawyer arguing in court? Yeah, just to remind everybody. So December 7th, everybody's going to be back in front

of Judge Carl Nichols, the federal judge, pardon me, in the federal district circuit, the federal circuit in Washington for a hearing, which is going to set the trial, I believe. And also if there's going to be motion practice, like a motion to dismiss the indictment, that kind of thing, they're going to set the timeline for that. And he's going to move this case along very quickly, just recall from last week, bad ends lawyer said, can we roll this all off till January? Judge, you got a lot to do. You're sentencing, Jan six insurrectionists. We don't want to step in front of that line. And the judge said, no, I can do two things at once. I'll see you

in, I'll see you on December 7th. And then we'll set everything related to the trial. What is usually not that objectionable, and I wanna hear your opinion on this, is that at least in the federal court level, there's generally a standing order related to discovery. Parties don't even have to enter into certain agreements about how the discovery process, and even a criminal case has a discovery process

where the prosecutor turns over information that it's developed in its interviews to the defense and the defense if it has exculpatory or other information that it will help the defense turns it over to the prosecutor. And if there's witness statements that are developed by usually by the prosecution, they get turned over and this is all usually referred to as Brady material and And that sort of gets

exchanged. But mainly it's coming from prosecutor to defense because of the burden of proof and the standard of proof that we have in a criminal case. And usually unobjectionably, there's a sort of a cloak around and a little bit of a confidentiality bubble that's placed around the exchange of documents so that things don't leak out unless there's an intervention by the media or otherwise. On hypersensitive and sensitive materials that may be the subject of the criminal prosecution one way or the other, nine times out of 10, 10 times out of 11, the defense and the prosecution has no objection to the standing order being put in place related to confidentiality.

Except when you're Steve Bannon, you have a podcast and you're trying to litigate your defense in the court of public opinion of the right-wing radicals that listen to your podcast, and then you want chaos to ensue, and you want all the documents to be released and nothing to be privileged or cloaked in privilege. And then you file a motion, which they did right before Thanksgiving, telling opposing the imposition of the standing order on discovery. And then Judge Nichols is going to have to make the ultimate decision. I have a comment about Judge Nichols that I want to share with you, but I want to hear

your view on confidentiality and criminal cases. Let me break down confidentiality in this case, though, first because the government previously said this case should go to trial immediately. And Bannon said, no, no, that's delayed. The government said, why delay it? We're talking about 20 documents here. We're talking about, you know, the initial letters from the congressional committee to Steve B the, it shouldn't involve the broader phishing expedition into all these other Jan 6 documents. I mean, it's literally the cases. Bannon was subpoenaed to be before the January 6th committee.

He didn't show up for the Jan 6th committee. And so he needs to be held in contempt. And there's criminal consequences for it. So to me, that's so simple. Why do you need a protective order? I mean, it's one of the rare examples that I actually agree with Bannon's lawyer here, but not for the reason that I agree with ultimately his underlying defense. But, you know, if I'm the prosecution, I go back and I go, you know what, you're right, let's make him public. But then let's also go to trial immediately.

What I think Bannon is going to try to do though is Bannon wants to make this case about more than just the subpoena. What Bannon wants to make this case about is he's going to say, I need to delve deeper into the congressional intent here. What's really behind it, I need to understand he's going to lie about this stuff. We need to determine what the FBI knew in advance. We need to know. And so he's going to try to make this this whole wacky conspiracy thing. of these kind of theories that I'm not supposed to do with it. Nancy Pelosi and all of these things. And then, you know, the government's going to basically say, look, judge these things have nothing to do with the case. But if you do order that certain national security documents be released, we can't agree

that those documents are inherently public. There may need to be documents that would otherwise be certain deliberations and other processes, which would be by their nature, subject to a protective order. So that's kind of the view here, but here the government should say sure, make these 20 documents public, you know, who cares. And then my overall view about protective orders generally is that I view that courts are open public forums. You know, I think that unless the information involves like tax information, things about somebody's health conditions, private medical information, things that are truly proprietary in nature, actual business secrets. But like to me, standard emails that

get exchanged, those would normally be confidential. Those are the deliberations of businesses. I mean, to me, if you're in a case and there's a lawsuit going on, to me, that's fair game, that's public. I mean, a lot of those things are referenced in the allegations of the lawsuits and I hate especially imagine you're on the defense side though. The plaintiff makes all these allegations against you publicly. You have emails to rebut it that you want to put into the public record and then there's a protective order saying no, you have to keep those documents confidential and the world can't know about those documents, which is that that's ridiculous to me. Yeah. I have a slightly different view.

I mean, mainly from a, you know, a vast experience on my side, on the defense side. I mean, in commercial cases, on the civil side, you know, I see a good argument why either in productive orders or something we haven't talked about, which is when you have the opportunity, when you file your pleadings or your motions to redact, to use a black pen or the electronic version of a black pen to block out information that is, you, A, you don't want it to fall into the hands of your competition. Some sort of method or means or technology or way of doing business or your inter if you're not a public company, your internal finances as a company.

Frankly, I don't want that all out there if I'm a defense lawyer. I probably don't want it out there if I'm a plaintiff's lawyer either. So I've been known, let's say in Delaware, where redaction is taken really seriously, you know, you'll you'll you get the opportunity, for instance, to redact a lot of the public filing of the lawsuit. Now, it's subject to the judge looking at your redaction and finding that it's reasonable. And if it's not, then making it public maybe a week later.

But there is a period with it, it's almost like a cooling off period that some courts and some business courts use to allow for the initial redaction while the party sort of, you know, get into gear and start interacting with each other a little bit more because some cases come out of the blue. Some cases result from failed negotiations over a period of time. And so nobody's surprised when it's filed, but some cases get filed sort of out of the blue. This gives the opportunity for the parties to say, hmm, let's have a settlement negotiation or at least let's negotiate over what is confidential and what is not confidential.

So I have a slightly different view than you. On the criminal side, listen, I don't know what Nichols is going to rule here, but I totally agree with you that the ban and strategy is to widen the battlefield outside of his contempt and his failure to appear and his failure to testify and provide documents and try to and try to litigate through this as part of his defense to argue that he doesn't have mens rea or criminal intent because either the investigation by the Gen 6 select committee is without merit and they've gone beyond the scope of what they're allowed to do. And he's going to try to argue that from a kind of a jurisdictional attack on the Gen 6 committee.

And then go further and argue that, you know, the whole going after him is in bad faith. And then argue the executive privilege that he's exercising or the cloak of it that he's trying to hide behind is legitimate, gives him good faith to avoid criminal prosecution and to do all that. I thought it was interesting that his dictated press release was that he wanted to avoid the confidentiality order because the public should make an independent judgment on the Department of Justice's fairness. That goes right to your point, Ben. This is what they're going to try to do. They're going to try to try this through his podcast.

And then they also reference, well, the normal process is unfettered access to documents. I'm not sure that's the normal process. That's a process that podcasts people and right wing nut jobs would like the litigation process to be. But look, the good news is, I've done a little more investigation on Judge Nichols.

I tried to do it by reading opinions of his that touched on the Trump organization and the Trump decisions in the past. And listen, from what I'm hearing from people in the know, is that he is a really despite the fact that Trump nominated him. He is a balls and strikes right down the middle. He's not a right wing crazy. So even though we were all sort of like disappointed that the wheel turned and by lottery, this Trump appointee was picked as the judge for batten, it may not be as bad as we thought. This person is really interested in getting it right. Even if he's more conservative than we would have liked, we may be surprised by his decisions. And so even if he's more conservative than we would have liked,

we may be surprised by his decisions. And so far, he's been running a show that we can't take fault with in the courthouse. You know, and I go back to a pop-up, if someone is legitimately conservative in what it's all true meaning was, we may have disagreements over certain tax policies and certain views over climate and we may have these serious disagreements, but what is scary for the legal system is if the Michaelindell GQP craziness

creeps in to the legal system. And so far, the legal system in terms of the federal judiciary has been able to, uh, general matter, uh, prevent that encroachment of the GQP craziness, but elections have consequences. I believe if Trump were to ever be reelected or someone like a Trump would be reelected, uh, it'd be over. It'd be over. We wouldn't even have legal AF would be very different. It would be like judge Michael Indell is ruling. I mean, it would be, it would be that crazy because even someone like a McConnell and a McCarthy as crazy as they are as crazy crazy as a McCarthyist, you may get Speaker of the House Matt Gates.

You may get Speaker of the House Donald Trump. You may get Speaker of the House Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean, that's where that's where that could go. You may get Speaker of the House. Exactly. So, PoPock, I know that, you know, you've been using Aura Frames. This podcast is brought to you by Aura Frames. I love my Aura Frames.

It's probably the best gift. One of the best gifts you can have for this holiday season. I use mine, but tell us about your experience with Orr Frames. And I'm using it. I mean, this is like one of those hair club for men. And I'm a customer too. I'm using it right now. I'm on a little bit of a holiday, as you know,

in South Florida, visiting friends and family for the holiday, and which is why my backdrop looks like another hotel room for Michael Popuck, because it is. And I took a series of photos of friends and family at Thanksgiving and just on the streets in Miami that I found really interesting. And while I was here just using the app, rather than sending it first to social media and sharing it with, you know, your select group on social media, I sent it directly using the app to the frame instantaneously that picture, that video, that live, that live feature went, went right to my frame back home in New York. And so I kind of said it and forget it. I loaded 22 new photos.

And now they'll just be part of the rotation as I watch those frames, which I like. I tried an earlier version of, I won't mention the manufacturer like 10 years ago. This was all the rage. These kind of digital frames. This one is really, really good. It's the technology that they use. It's the ergonomics of it. And it's really the simplicity. It's like Apple

simple in terms of, you know, being able to use it with the app and the integration with the frame, which I like, I really like a lot. And look, as we said before, it's beautifully designed. It's easy to set up. Even Popok was able to do it. And it's one of Oprah's favorite things 2021 for three years running. And an aura frame is the perfect holiday gift. You can even personalize it by preloading photos for a surprise that will have them crying tears of joy. And there's never been a better time to take advantage of or as best deals of the year. It's black Friday or it was yesterday, it's cyber Monday coming up on Monday, Ben through November 30th. So visit or a frames.com AURAFRAMES.com. Now to get gifting, that's AURAframes.com. And is there a listeners code that people could use

a legal a f bed. Listeners use code legal a f to take $30 off or as best selling digital picture frames. That's legal a f again, go to or a frames.com a you are a frames.com take advantage of or as best deals of the year with those Black Friday Cyber Monday pricing now through November 30th plus that listeners legal code, listeners user code, a legal AF and take $30 off or as best selling. Speaking of 30, there is a 30% off sale right now for legal AF merchandise, Mugs and T shirts at the Midas Touch store. People love their legal AF gear. People love the ho, ho, hold the house,

Midas Touch sweatshirts. The Midas touch merch is flying off the shelves, Popeye. And so, order him now, I'm not sure we're going to have inventory. Um, if, if, uh, for the holidays because they're basically all being sold out, but we still got inventory now. So if you go to mightestouch.com, you check out the merch, go buy your legal AF merch, go buy your other might as touch merch, um Tons of discounts. We got discounts on ours. We got discounts on the Midas Touch merch,

but love seeing people wearing it. And I did popoque the other day when I was at another basketball game. I don't know why I keep going to basketball games. I did see somebody else wearing a Midas Touch shirt. And I'm too embarrassed to go over to them and be like, hey, that's, you know, but I did see one person wearing a Midas head shirt. And that was pretty awesome.

Popo, what's also pretty awesome is some new January 6th Committee subpoenas being issued for additional Trump allies, including Roger Stone and Alex Jones and others. I mean, Alex Jones isn't exactly having the best two weeks, but when you're a scumbag like that, you shouldn't be having any good weeks for the rest of your life. But what's going on here with these subpoenas? What should we be looking forward to?

And are we moving towards progress here, Popeyes? Yes, yes. There's three things in Jan 6. This is our Jan 6 segment. We need a jingle. Three things in Jan 6. We're going to talk about here. We're going to talk about the new syphean

is by the Jan 6 select committee in the house. We're going to talk about Jan 6, prosecutions and sentencing and attempts to appeal things that have already been sentenced. And we're going to talk about the Jan 6 and the National Archives and the appeal that's going on at the Federal Circuit. On the Jan 6th committee and the new subpoenas, as you said, we've got Roger Stone and Alex Jones on the heels of the subpoenas from last week. And just to keep track, right, we got to keep a little bit of a scorecard here because everybody's all upset. Oh, Bannon didn't testify. Meadows is holding out and who knows about the other one and then

they've interviewed 200 witnesses, 200 witnesses and not just low, low level people. They've gotten proud boys and oath keepers and insurrectionists and others. And there, and there, even if they never get Flynn, they never get meadows, they never get stone or ban and to testify, they have more than enough. And parts of it are already leaked out to the press to establish the control and command and leadership structure, starting with the Trump organization, the Trump campaign, the flins, the banners of the world, Kaylee, the press secretaries, Meadows, the chief of staff, all in a war room in a hotel on the 4th and 5th of January, coordinating with the proud boys and the oath keepers, whether they were using burner phones and talking to Eric Trump or they weren't,

they have enough. They could issue the report like tomorrow if they needed to, but they are, they are in an exercise of diligence and exercising constitutional powers, appropriately holding people's feet to the fire and making sure they're doing everything they can to get the last ounce of testimony out of the people that were at the very, very apex of the command and control structure on behalf of Trump. But no one should be shocked when the report comes out. I think they've said they want to get it out by January or February before it was January before the midterms.

That report is going to be escaping indictment of Trump, all the people in the Trump circle, and their involvement with, and the cause of the insurrection being the command and control and leadership at the very top of the Trump organization, and the Trump campaign. That's what it's going to say. So these are all, I find it really interesting if they ever get one of them the turn, but Roger Stone's never going to turn on on Trump. You know, um, that is probably not going to either. And they're all watching out of one eye, one side eye, what happens with ban and if ban it really goes to jail.

I mean, right now the ban and indictment and the future meadows one is not scaring the crap out of these true believers who are clinging to Trump as tight as they can for now, but it is having an impact on that next level just below them. Flynn is going to go to jail. Ban it'll go to jail. This is my prediction. Meadows may even go to jail without ever testifying, but they have enough with the rest. So have we're back to the Tokyo Rose moment, have faith

Democrats, the, the, the Jan 6th committee and its bipartisan group are going to issue a report that's going to tie all of this together with or without the ones that we'd like to see their heads on a pike. Popeye, what's going on with the National Archives? We've talked about in the past podcast, the district judge. What was her name again? What was your nickname for? Hang them high, Chucky. Tanya Chucky.

Order that the Gen 6 committee was entitled to these documents from the National Archives. This was appealed to the DC Circuit. The turning over the documents was temporarily stopped. It was stayed pending, you know, a briefing on the issue. But now the DC Circuit's questioning whether they or even the district court even had jurisdiction to hear it and whether this is just a decision that the National Archives on its own is empowered to make and that it shouldn't even have judicial review. Is that possible?

I mean, one, I'm happy about that because that means the Jan 6th committee can get these records. But is that possible that the district courts don't even have review over a federal agency or a group like the national archives? Let me explain why. And I'm going to distinguish it from what's going on in Texas with SBA because I want to reconcile a thought that some of our listeners and followers might be having because we said that it is unconstitutional and we believe it will ultimately be found to be unconstitutional that a state like Texas could prevent federal constitutional review Texas could could prevent federal constitutional review of its statutes. In this case, the bounty law in abortion. And that will ultimately be found unconstitutional because you can't prevent a federal court

from declaring a state law federally constitutional or not. This is different. Congress in creating a statute, in this case, the Presidential Records Act, which dictates which is 44 United States Code 2201 to 2209, which is Post-Nixon, which is how Congress dealt with what they thought would be a future Nixon who would try to hide and destroy presidential records. They created an elaborate statutory scheme that puts the national archivist. I heard your brother once say, why do we even know who the post-master general is? Why are we talking about this guy? Whoever thought about the national archivist who sits in the national archive, but he, this person

has an important role under the Presidential Records Act because that person makes the ultimate decision in consultation with the incumbent president Biden and with the former president, in this case Trump, about what records do or don't come out of the natural archive and get used in a lawsuit. And there is within the statute written by Congress, a provision that says that the decision by the the archivist is final and shall not be reviewed except in certain exceptions, which probably don't apply here by an appellate court. So the question you're asking Ben is, can Congress within its own statute deny a federal court the ability to review the administrative decision by somebody

like an archivist? The answer is yes. What the Congress couldn't do in the separation of powers, fact of Texas, is to say that and the federal court cannot declare this to be unconstitutional. That takes away the job of the federal court and the separation of powers and the checks and balance system that you can't do. But if I'm a congressional legislative body and I want to create a statute that will not be reviewed by any federal court, not on constitutionality grounds on other grounds, which because Trump's not arguing that there's a constitutionality problem. He's arguing that he's got executive privilege and he holds it, notwithstanding the presidential power, the presidential records act. So the three judge panel,

again, two Obama appointees and one, sorry, two Obama appointees and one Biden appointee have said, which they're supposed to, before we even get to the merits of this case, parties, both parties, there is a provision in the act that talks about what jurisdiction we may not have as a court. And courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. They don't exercise jurisdiction and take cases unless they find they have subject matter jurisdiction over the case. So the court is saying, first thing we want you to brief, both sides, by the November 30th argument, which is oral argument, which is Tuesday, is why are we even in court?

Isn't the archive this decision final? And he, that panel wants to hear from both because if they ultimately decide no jurisdiction, the appeal is over. And then he's going to have to, Trump's going to have to take an appeal to the Supreme Court to argue that the appellate courts and jurisdictional interpretations are wrong, which is, which is actually puts him back on his heels in any appeal. So that's not a bad thing if the court finds like a jurisdiction, but that this is what's called a suespaunté. Drop in a little Latin here on the podcast, a suespaunté order of the court, meaning no one raised this issue so far in their briefing, neither side, the judge on its own suespaunté as asking

the parties to respond to the issue and brief it first so they can decide jurisdiction. And so if there is no jurisdiction, that would be a good thing for the January 6th committee because they would get all of these records. So if jurisdiction is the first threshold, then second threshold, we go to all those issues we talked about on the last eagle, that jugs Chalkin basically ruled the executive privilege claim is a ridiculous claim. We remember the ruling where she said Trump is no longer the

president and presidents are not kings. And in our system, the new presidential administration is able to make that declaration or not make that declaration over the executive privilege in here by an administration did not make that executive privilege claim. And Trump's argument, Popaka is just one of the wildest like strangest arguments to his slippery slope argument that if the national archivist can turn this over, just imagine how this will be abused in future administrations where the National Archivist will just turn over these documents to future congressional committees. And to

that, I say, good. You're a public official, unless it's an international security document, which can be turned over anyway. You know, these are documents when you are an executive and when you are the president of the United States, these are documents when you are an executive and when you are the president of the United States, these are documents that become public. They go to the National Archivist so that future historians and the public can look at it and analyze your administration to make sure you are in Crix. And by the way, these are also documents that would otherwise be subject to public records requests anyway. And just because you make the claim of executive privilege, if Biden were to say executive privilege or another Trump administration were to say executive privilege, that doesn't mean it just holds.

That means the executive privilege claim could be litigated whether or not there is executive privilege or not executive privilege claim could be litigated whether or not there is executive privilege or or not executive privilege to they took a congress took a lot of time after the Nixon era a lot of soul searching about what happened in the Nixon White House and how we would never happen again and establishing new guardrails and they took a lot of time in the seventies to develop the presidential records act and and Records Act and get what they thought was the balance right between the incumbent president and the outgoing president and the exercise of the privilege and the role of the archivist who they put in charge of this process as the head administrator, if you will, and took the court system out of it because they were worried about, you know,

individual judges using their own, you know, brawmater. When they didn't want that, they had set up a delicate statutory scheme and they wanted it abided by. And I know that the Trumpers would like to take a time machine back in time and do a lot of things that are not natural, but one of them would be to, you know, remove the presidential records act from existence, but it's on the books and it's what controls. And it's what all of the judges, you know, the even this Supreme Court six to three right wing is not going to be able to ignore the presidential records act. One of the things that concerns me though, Pope,hazai, talk it out with you though, is imagine the other scenario though,

where documents clearly are not subject to executive privilege, but it is abused by a new administration who makes the claim and directs the National Archivist not to turn over certain records. Someone then files a lawsuit based on turn over certain records, someone then files a lawsuit basing turnover those records. And then there's an outcome that basically says, you know what, there's no jurisdiction here at all. The National Archivists can make that own independent decision because our system in many ways is based on the fact that you wouldn't have, for example, the general

services administrator, the head of the GSA, not signing the basic document that she was supposed to sign. I remember might have touched made a video about her. I'm drawn at Murphy. I forget her name. I shouldn't even know her name. It was like something Murphy was her name. Allison Murphy, Ali Murphy, I forget.

But I do worry, though, Popok, that if there is a ruling that a court does not have jurisdiction, couldn't it also be abused where you're now empowering in the ministerial function, a national archivist to do the exact opposite of what they're supposed to do? Yeah. And not archive. That worries me, knowing the president that Trump has set with the GSA. Yeah, I think the first thing you got to do when you're the new president is you got to like replace the archivist with your own person because, but if Trump gets in and he puts his own archivist in there, if he gets in again, or worse gets in, I'm not sure there's worse, but there could be.

Yeah, the playing politics with positions that the founding fathers and even past Congress has never envisioned, playing politics with Congresses never envisioned playing politics with the GSA head playing politics with the postal, the postal general, a postmaster general playing politics with the surgeon general playing politics with the CDC and the NIH, politicizing viruses and pandemics. I mean, this, there's going to be soul searching. It's hard to do it in real time. Your brothers do it great. We do it great. We're in real time. But the historical view, the long view of history, which comes five years and 10 years and 15 years after academic study and introspection. And then the resulting change in the law, that's going to take time.

I know people are like, God, I happen now. Things aren't going to happen now. There are law that's going to be created now that we've got the learning curve of what a Trump can do that a proper Congress, if it has the time, it's why the midterms are so important, to fix it will. But you have to take, you got to take the plane up 10,000 feet and 30,000 feet and look back down in order to make some of these decisions. Presidential records act didn't happen like the day after Watergate and the resignation. It happened over a period of time by a Congress who were states people that wanted to do the right thing for the country,

which is something in short supply today. Opaque, now tell us about these January 6th insurrectionists who pled guilty, who are trying to now take back their plea, they're trying to withdraw their plea. And there also seems to be this kind of cottage industry of far-right GQ peer attorneys who kind of swoop in and try to then overly politicize the issues and make this about, they inject their wild conspiracies in there. And I'll tell you a lot of the January 6th insurrectionists, though, have gotten pretty wise

counsel, not all of them, but the shamans lawyer who was very outspoken against Trump and but came in there and got a fairly good result for the client serving very little jail time. And a lot of them had had had counsel who defended them, you know, again, pretty well and got good results. But now you have all of these, you know, GQ peers. One of the names that comes up over and over again is this guy, John Pierce. And he runs a firm Pierce, Bangbridge, and I'm not sure if that firm still exists or what the status of that firm is. But it also founded the Constitutional Law Union, what I like to call the Khan Unlaw Union. And yeah, so and John Pierce for those who also remember, So John Pierce represented Kyle Rittenhouse initially before Kyle Rittenhouse

actually hired these two able attorneys, you know, who did it, that we could say what you want about the case. Rittenhouse is attorneys, defense attorneys did very good job. And even after the case, said all the right things about the legal system and what their roles were, they were very outspoken against like Fox News and Tucker Carlson trying to inject themselves into the case. Paul Don Jr. and idiot. And even Kyle Rittenhouse has basically said things about these other attorneys who tried to, you know, who tried to swoop in and do all, you know, and do all.

By the way, peers, before you leave, Pierce is to swoop in and do all, you know, and do all the way peers. Before you leave, Pierce is the one that put up the $2 million bond from his law firm for written house. And he and Lynn Wood, there's a name we can't get rid of. It's like a bad penny. He and Lynn Wood were the original lawyers for written house. Pierce put up the two million. So the question is there.

Back, we'll talk just a second of written house, who gets the two million dollar bond back now that the case is over and written house is fighting with with Pierce because he says that Pierce and Lin Woods stole money from him and and did and did did other things that they shouldn't have done and that the written house family and the new lawyers should get the two million dollars and Pierce is saying, I put up the two million dollars, what are you talking about? So it this aftermath of written house and the fight over the $2 million, but you're right. Once again, as I said before, there's lawyers that frequently sue Trump and are doing really, really well.

Then there's lawyers that are always popping up and are popping up again like John Pierce. So we have these lawyers, you know, not just Pierce, a bunch of other lawyers, but I see this time and time again, where you have these insurrectionists, they go in front of the court, they pretend to take accountability for their actions and what they did. And then as soon as they leave the courthouse, they basically go and either they take to social media, they have a new lawyer who basically says they were co-washed. I forget what that lady was though, the influencer,

insurrectionist lady who was the real estate person. The real estate broker. The real estate broker, they go on Newsmax and all the TV shows and talk against the judge, which is why I've always said, Popok, that these slap on the wrist sentences are not enough. These individuals need to be tried. There shouldn't be plea deals with them. The book should be thrown at them and they should get serious, serious sentences. Because even when they get the slap on the wrist, they're just emboldened to go out and just continue the conduct. So why do we see insurrectionists who have pled guilty withdrawing their plea? Yeah, because judges, at least two of them, like Randolph Moss, a Bush appointee and

Dabney Friedrich, who we talked about her last week, a Trump appointee, are starting to question whether the obstruction charge, which is the big hammer and all of the indictments brought against 200 out of the 700 Insurrectionist, which is a felony, which carries the greatest possible sentence being brought by the the Department of Justice, whether it is constitutionally being applied or properly being applied against people that broke into the capital and were insurrectionists. And, you know, Dabney Friedrich is this close to dismissing the obstruction charge. And Randolph Moss said the same thing in August

about the obstruction charge. Both of them are questioning to the Department of Justice, specifically, well, why don't you bring the harassment misdemeanor, harassing a federal official who's trying to do their job? Why isn't that the proper count for what happened on John six? Why isn't obstruction of justice? Isn't that really properly only when you obstruct the process in a courthouse in a court room? And they're

having this debate. So now that's the dog whistle. Now the lawyers like John Pierce are saying, aha, if you've pled guilty to something like obstruction, which the Jacob, uh, chance Lee, the guy with the furry hat and two or three other ones, including this MMA fighter or Scott Fairlam, who's the current one who's trying to walk away from his plea deal and his sentencing by arguing that I pled guilty to a crime that is either unconstitutionally being applied to me or improperly being applied to me, to which our listeners and followers may understandably saying, well, so what? There was an allocation you stood in front of court, you accepted responsibility, you pled guilty to a charge and you were sentenced. And all that is true. And generally, if you do all of those things, you are not going to be

able to later appeal just because you get new creative lawyers who want to say, aha, ineffective assistance of counsel. Your last lawyer was terrible, or he had you plead to something without you having full information and making informed decisions about your case, information and making informed decisions about your case and whatever else they're going to argue. But there is under the federal appellate system and rules and ability, even after sentencing for a party to claim that the thing that they played guilty to was unconstitutionally applied to them. And even the Supreme Court in a case in 2017 came out a case called class CLASS versus United States came out and said the constitutionality of a statute can still be challenged on a direct appeal, even after somebody has pled guilty and after they've been sentenced.

So that's a loophole that the that the lawyers like John Pierce are going to try to drive a truck through and try to convince their defendants, don't be guilty to that obstruction charge. Look what these other federal judges are doing. They're saying that that charge is probably invalid has applied to you. Let's go back and try to unwind this whole scramble, Degg, and appeal the sentence and let's not plead guilty. But here's the downside. These are all people that plead, meaning they didn't go through a trial. So what are they gonna do now?

They're gonna unwind their plea deal. They're going to, let's say they win. They convince the federal's appellate court and then the Supreme Court that the obstruction charge is invalidly applied to them. Okay, there's still other charges in there. Now you got a prosecutor's pissed off. You got a judge, it's returns to them. Okay. There's still other charges in there. Now you got a prosecutor's pissed off. You got a judge is returns to the same judge. You got a judge who's pissed off at you.

And there's either not going to be a plea deal offer to you. There's going to be a plea deal with lots of more years attached to it. And then the judge or you're going to go to trial. And then Lord knows what you're going to have happen in a Washington DC jury pool with these crazies when there's a trial. So I don't know. We're back to what is the end game here again? If it's just these are terrible things delayed, delayed, delay, maybe you'll new president will get in office and absolve you of your crime by way of commutation of your sentence

or by way of giving you some sort of immunity or giving you a pardon, that seems to be the play. Last long enough, so that Trump gets back into office when JFK Jr. shows up at Deely Plaza, he will pardon your sins. I guess that's it, is that it, Ben? These are people who are not well, but certainly do not deserve a pass because there are lots of people who are not well, who don't become insurrectionists and try to overthrow our democracy.

But a lot of the lawyers, like the Shaman's lawyer, basically said that, you know, when he said it in very kind of crass terms, but that his client is someone who was unwell, who was manipulated by Trump. And I think we see time and time again this continuing ongoing manipulation and grift off the backs of these people and and kind of a grift on grift on grift. Like they all kind of this whole right wing echo chamber is like a grift chamber of like a symbiotic grift relationship where they all try to basically fuck over each other in their own little bubble. But at the end of the day, Popoq, what I see with the verdict, and we'll talk about it soon, the guilty verdict for the killers, the murderers of Ahmed Arbery is that we can with facts, with truth, with professional prosecutors who do a good job. And I think you see a very big difference

in the level of skill in the prosecutors and defense attorneys too, as you look at the trial of the killing of Ahmed Arbery and then the trial of written house also and how the facts were presented. But we can with in a incorrect forums, dispel this info, cut through it and trust me, the lawyers who represented the killers throughout every dog whistle imaginable. Every racial trope imaginable. And it didn't work. And it didn't work. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But first, I want to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by QB.

Think about how many hours we spend sitting at our desks are on the couch watching TV. What if you could turn those otherwise inactive times into opportunities to burn calories and get fit? That's exactly what I'm doing thanks to my new QB. That's CUBII and it's a compact elliptical unit that fits easily under my desk so that I can be pedaling my feet and getting a workout while I'm sitting at my computer. In fact, I am using a QB right now while I'm recording

this commercial. QB is whisper quiet, super easy on your joints, and a recent clinical study confirmed helps burn 84% more energy than sitting alone. We all say I'd work out more if I only had more time, right? Well, QB makes it easy to burn calories and stay active anytime and virtually anywhere. In fact, I set my QB up in front of the couch to burn some calories while I'm watching TV. QB is also a perfect solution for anyone who might be housebound or otherwise needs something to improve circulation and keep active. If you have a parent or a loved one who has limited mobility and needs a way to stay healthy, QB would be the perfect gift for this holiday season.

QB would be the perfect gift for this holiday season. I love my QB and I know you will too. Take advantage of QB's 30-day risk-free in-home trial. Turn your least active times into your most productive opportunities to stay healthy with QB. Visit QB. com slash legal AF to find the QB elliptical model. That's right for you. That's QB dot com slash legal AF. That's C U B I I dot com slash legal AF. Popoq legal, a f popock verdicts this week, verdicts in Charlottesville, verdicts in Georgia, in the killing of Armin Arbery. Talk to me about the Charlottesville verdict. Yeah, good week. And this is the same law firm that handled Charlottesville. The plaintiff's case was handled by the same law firm that did E. Jean Carroll.

And also the ACN case we talked about earlier. So you know these are these are all good bed fellows that are helping on the on the right side of justice. So we talked about it last week. We've got the the unite the right, you know, I hate these rally slogans that formed with 700 people that descended on Charlottesville after in February of 2017, the Charlottesville Council Commission, whatever it was, ruled to remove the Robert E. Lee statute, the Robert E. Lee Confederate statute, from a public square, and then all this united, not the right at Unite.

Well, I guess it is part of the right. United the overtakers and the proud boys, the neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan to all descend on This is the one where after a woman was run over by a car and other people were terribly injured by the oath keepers and the other marchers. This is where Trump said, well, there's good people on both sides, like there's good people in the Holocaust between the Nazis and the Jews on both sides of that equation when there wasn't.

And so this is a civil lawsuit because the criminal prosecution, the criminal process has already worked its way and convicted those people that committed crimes on that side of the aisle, the right side of the aisle. And now it's left is whether the civil case seeking damages in money brought by the victims, the protesters who were damaged emotionally and physically, the family of the woman who was run over by a car, whether they're going to recover in a court of law. And we talked at the past podcast about how nuts this hearing was, this trial was primarily because many of these white supremacists, neo-Nazis, skinheads, and the like decided to represent themselves. They declined the opportunity to have a public defender aside of them,

because they wanted to make a mockery of the justice system, and they wanted to be able, as we said before, to use the N word in the courtroom, into the jury and tell Holocaust jokes, but all sorts of eye-popping things that they did. Of course, the jury was completely turned off by all of this against them. And eventually, there were really two sets of claims that were brought by the plaintiffs, lawyers and the plaintiffs. One set was under Virginia state law on conspiracy and torsious and torts related to emotional distress and that type of thing, seeking both actual damages and punitive damages for this bad conduct to punish them for what they had done. But then there was

inside there a novel use, and really the first time in a long, long time I've seen in a civil case, the use of the KKK act of 1871, a federal statute that was created during the restoration process, or era, in American, in American history after the Civil War to stop freed, primarily freed slaves from being executed by the KKK when they tried to exercise their 14th Amendment rights and the other rights that were granted to them after they were emancipated. But it's still on the books and you can use it in context other than, you know, 1800s in slavery and the KKK. And that's what the plaintiffs lawyers tried to do. And there are other penalties that are associated in junctions that you can get as part of the KKK active 1871. So as part of our legal AF lesson here on jury trials. And we talked about deadlock juries and and hung juries and mistrials. We were talking about written house and what happened there.

Here the jury reached a verdict on the state of Virginia verdict on the state of Virginia laws related to conspiracy and awarded $26 million to the plaintiffs and against these assholes. And now, of course, the plaintiffs have to try to collect this money and go pick up trucks and shotguns and whatever these people own, which will now be forfeited to pay for their judgment. But what the jury was not able to reach a conclusion on and deadlocked, were on the two counts for three counts under the KK, K act of 1871, which presents a novel, a novel resolution. The verdict is the verdict on the Virginia state claims and the judgment is the judgment.

But on the counts where the jury did not acquit or didn't find liability either way and just threw up their hands, even after being instructed by the judge in a version of something we call the Alan charge where you tell the jury, go back and deliberate more, go back and deliberate more, try to get it right. You know, I know it's deliberate more. Try to get it right. I know it's hard, but try to get it right. The jury still said that we can't figure it out under the KKK Act of 1871. The plaintiffs lawyers are going to be able to try a whole new case

with a whole new jury and now with the benefit of the learning curve of learning what they did right in the courtroom and the presentation of the case and what they could improve on. It's almost like they got a mock jury on the KKK Act claims. And they've already declared on the courthouse steps that they're happy with the victory, but they're going to go back and try another case in the next year with a new jury on the KKK Act active 1871. Now, here's one thing that I want our listeners to understand. You can only be hit with damages once. So if there are damages that compensate you for

your injury, whether it's emotional, economic or otherwise, or you're awarded punitive damages, economic or otherwise, or you're awarded punitive damages, at least on the economic part of it. You can only recover once, even if you have 10 claims, your economics are made whole once. So they're not going to be able to recover again under the KKK act. They're economic damages, unless there are different economic or emotional damages that are covered by the KKK act that are not covered by Virginia law. And so they'll be an offset or a credit for the economic damages, even if they win the second trial. However, it does give a new jury the ability under punitive damages to nail them again. And that's the higher number of damages. Once they find

some credible actual damages, this new jury could hit them again on another round of punitive damages, which would increase the $26 million judgment even higher. But let's be frank, these guys don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. They're not going to collect $26 million of it from them. They're going to get whatever they can. The purpose of this case was not necessarily to collect money. It was to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough and that people like this are going to be both prosecuted and they're going to be put through the civil process and have judgments and have their lives ruined economically as a result of their actions. That's the thing. You know, you have the Alex Jones of the worlds and these individuals who go

into the courtroom in Charlottesville and make a mockery out of the process. But I'll tell you what, these plaintiffs and their lawyers are going to be garnishing your wages, putting leans on property where allowed by law. They're going to be, told when they're tow truck away. Yeah, so get ready for that. And you know they're going to be, you know, toe in their toe truck away. Yeah. So get ready for get ready for that. And you know, what's going to happen when, when that's process starts happening, all of these individuals who made a mockery of it, they're going to go, Oh, shit, do we need a real lawyer now? Do we need a focus on it? One, they may not get a real lawyer

and two, they'll try to, can we overturn it as a too late to appeal? And it will be at that point too late to have done anything. And so, you know, I think that, as you said, Popo, no one's going to recover fractions of this $26 million, but at the end of the day, anywhere these individuals, these horrible racist, disgusting individuals go, they're going to be, they're going to have this hanging over them for the rest of their lives. And finally, Popok take us from Virginia further south in Georgia, where the killers of Ahmed Arbery were found to be just that.

Killers, murderers found guilty on all counts, other than that headline, popok, any further observations. Yeah. A number of them. I think that this gives, should get all of our followers and listeners some degree of confidence in relief that the justice system, when, when jurors, no matter their color, no matter their background, are presented a proper case where a judge doesn't have his hand on the scale, where there's video evidence, where the testimony of the witnesses

help the jury to deliberate properly that even there, with a proper prosecutor, the jury is going to ultimately do the right thing and that we should have confidence in our jury system when the playing field is leveled. But this case has a lot of interesting nuances. You start with the fact that the prior prosecutor is now is now sitting in jail or she bonded herself out because the Republican governor of Georgia and the Republican attorney general went after her because she failed to prosecute the case at all. These three guys, Travis McMichael, his father, Greg McMichael, and Roddy Bryant, their neighbor, were not even arrested for 78 or 79 days because this prosecutor who was friends

with Roddy Bryant because he was an investigator that worked in the prosecutor's office because all three of these guys had law enforcement background. You know, which made them Yahoo's and vigilantes because they thought they worked in law enforcement. They could do anything. But because she favored Roddy, she turned a blind eye to all of the facts in the video. And it wasn't until Um, Um, Amit Arbery's mother brought a civil case back to the power of civil cases that the governor and the attorney general took a look at what happened because she brought a civil case against the prosecutor, right?

This woman Jackie Johnson, sounds like an Elmore Leonard novel. So Jackie Johnson decides that she's not going to bring any case against the three people that murdered Ahmed Arbery. So the mother brings the civil case, the governor, the attorney general, Republicans look into it and they get an indictment against Jackie Johnson. Just a couple of days after the verdict, she has to turn herself in. There's a mug shot online. She's wearing like a clutch of pearls as she's being,

she's being processed and bonded out. And she's being prosecuted for two things. One that she has violated her oath of office because she has not properly exercised her role as a prosecutor by showing favoritism. That's a felony if that's proven. And it sounds like it should be. Then she's also guilty of,

or been indicted for obstruction of a public office, which is a version of public obstruction of justice, which is a minimum of 12 months in prison as well, because she bent over backwards to help her buddy, Roddy, uh, uh, uh, Roddy Bryant, who worked at her office to avoid this. The other fascinating thing about the jury, and the jury verdict, where you had 12 jurors, 11 white, 11 white men and women, one person of color, one black person, in a county in a community that's 27% black. Okay, but that's the jury that was selected.

And the counts that you and I talked about, which were so properly charged by the new prosecutors, and so different than the written house case, were malice murder, a unique state of Georgia crime that doesn't exist in Wisconsin, felony murder, which is if you're committing a felony, in this case, false imprisonment of armad arboree, by surrounding him with three gentlemen, three people, sorry, and a pickup truck, and blocking his exit and cornering him, and to use the language of Greg McMichael, trapping him like a rat. That was the testimony. That was the sworn testimony to the police when he

was when he was arrested. That when you do that and somebody dies as part of that felony, it's a felony murder. And the other interesting thing is only one person pulled the shot, pulled the trigger, right? Travis McMichael pulled the trigger on the shot down to 12 gauge shotgun twice and killed Amad Arbery murdered him. But the other two are convicted equally for felony murder and malice murder under the state of Georgia's penal code. And the prosecutor I thought had, although it was a little bit lighthearted, it got the point across to this jury.

I mean, you got to think after three weeks in trial, she knew her jury. She said, it's like a football team during the Super Bowl. Everybody gets the Super Bowl ring. The quarterback gets the Super Bowl ring. The water boy gets the Super Bowl ring. The towel, the towel attendant gets the Super Bowl ring. Everybody gets it and everybody here gets the murder conviction because they were all involved with the ultimate death.

Now, what did the judge do right? The judge kept out certain evidence that would have prejudiced the jury, potentially against Amid Arbery. There's a couple of things. There's video of Amid Arbery inside of some homes that were being constructed late at night. There's no doubt that was him on the video. But who cares? That's not a death sentence. The fact that somebody is curious about a house under construction and wants the wander around in there. That's not that doesn't lead to the death sentence or death penalty in any state. The fact now, so stuck with that and stuck with some other rulings by the judge. What did the what did the defense do in a really disgusting fashion and their closing argument, which I assume backfired. fashion and their closing argument, which I assume backfired, is they used every racial trope that they could think of about almost like runaway slaves and the language and cartoons that were used, terrible racist cartoons that were used during the 17th, hundreds and

the 1800s. I thought I was watching like Django. She actually said the Laura Hogue, Laura Hogg, whatever her name is, as the defense lawyer for one of the defendants actually said that Armman Arbery was armed. He was armed with his fists. I don't think he wasn't armed. And he wasn't just a jogger running through a street with clean and neat shorts and shoes. He had long, dirty toenails. By the way, they only know he had long dirty toenails if that's even the case because of his autopsy because he was murdered. And he had dirty shorts and dirty socks.

So what were the defendants to think when he's running through their all white neighborhood? She didn't say that last part, but that's what she was trying to say. And that gave them the justification to do a citizen's arrest. Another interesting aspect of the case didn't get much press, is that at the time of that incident, the state of Georgia had on its books a citizen's arrest statute,

which empowered civilians to act like they were Yahoo cops and arrest people if they suspected a crime. You know what happened since the Amid Arbery prosecution and what even the Republican legislature and governor have done about that law, Ben? What happened? Took it off the books. Even in Georgia, even with the Republican state house, they think that law went too far and they did not want more Am Arbery's being murdered by people trying to execute what they thought was a proper citizen's arrest. But the defense trying to blame Ahmed, they actually said at one point in their closing argument, none of this would happen.

It's all Ahmed Arbery's fault. All he had to do when he was trapped by three white people with a shotgun and the doors of a pickup truck blocking his exit. All he had to do was just sit there and wait and the cops would have came and would have sorted this all out. I am not making that up. That is their closing argument, blaming the victim because with fear in his eyes and in his heart, facing three strangers, white guys yelling and screaming at him. One of them testified that he screamed at Ahmed Arbery. If you take another step and move, I'm going to blow your effing head off, that he was supposed to just sit down like a good, you know what? On a sidewalk and wait for the police to arrive. And if he hadn't done that, then there wouldn't be a murder

at all. Thank God that jury had a brain in its head, a good judge on the bench, a skillful prosecutor, in least the Duna Kowski, who did a masterful job in the cross examination of Travis McMichael, who took the stand in his own defense. And the result is justice. Just this served and justice learned on this edition of the Midas Touch podcast legal AF if it's Saturday it is legal AF if it's Sunday it is also legal AF except Saturday is legal AF live where you get to join popok and myself in the YouTube. Make sure if you're listening to this podcast, too, you can subscribe to the YouTube channel. It's the MidasTouch YouTube channel where we do these live broadcasts from on Saturday and they replay after. And so lots of people do both. They

watch the live and they listen to it the next day. There's a lot of information to unpack. These are our plus long lessons today, Virging on two hour long lessons on on law. You know, and we've done so many of these, Pope, I mean, you said earlier jokingly, but you're right that we've basically have gone through together with our legal a furs out there. You know, a little bit more than a semester of law school out there and we'll keep bringing you through law school, our law school. We should maybe print even like legal a f like certificates, but I the lawyer and me though doesn't want to see some risk in doing legal a f law certificates, but I the lawyer or me though doesn't want to see some risk in doing legal AF law certificates, but we could figure out a creative and fun way to go about doing that because I think that'd be fun for all the people who listen out there to acknowledge that Dave listened to

X amount of hours and I've learned a lot about the law, though, that won't make you licensed to to practice law in any state, but probably make you a better lawyer than Mike Lindell Popak. Enjoy the rest of your trip. Enjoy the rest of your travels and always a pleasure hosting this with you each weekend. You and I started this. It's hard to believe 35 weeks ago. And I know you and I are both, we both pinch, pinch ourselves

and each other now that we've seen each other. We pinch ourselves and each other about what has been accomplished, not just by you and I, because as I joke, but only half ingest, this would just be like you and I on FaceTime Saturday mornings or Saturday nights, if we didn't have a audience of enthusiastic people, and we wouldn't have gotten this far. This would have been a five episode pilot, like, okay, it didn't work. Let's try something else to activate the Democrats out there and talk about the law. But this thing caught fire. Yes, because you and I enjoy doing it. And I think that rubs off on our listeners and followers and we're doing a service. But it's because of them.

If it wasn't for everyone on our YouTube channel with us tonight and on Facebook later, and when we tweet it through Periscope later in the day, and then download it tomorrow morning or at midnight Eastern time tonight on all the podcasts. And then the biofeedback, you talked about an echo chamber of craziness. We have the opposite. We have an echo chamber and a biofeedback of really enthusiastic people that hang on our every word. And we take that responsibility really,

really seriously. And I love seeing you every day But if it wasn't for them you and I would do this every other week No, that about it and special thanks to our sponsors Fiver go to Fiver F IV E R R Dot com use the code legal a f or a frames go to a you are a Frames dot com use the code legal a f for discounts there for calibrate go to Join calibrate.com J O I and C L I B R A T E dot com and then use that promo code legal a f and and then use that promo code, legal AF. And for QB, go to CUBII.com slash legal AF.

Of course, go to the mitestouch.com site and get the discounts off your mitest touch merch. We appreciate you so much. Go share this legal knowledge now with your family, with your friends, with your colleagues, with the world. We will see you next week, same time, Share this legal knowledge now with your family, with your friends, with your colleagues, with the world. We will see you next week, same time, same place, Ben Popak, signing off, special shout-out

to the Midas Mighty. you