Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF RESPONDS to Massive BREAKING NEWS

Episode Date: January 12, 2025

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back for a new update at the intersection of law and politics on the top 10 ranked Legal AF Podcast. On tonight's show, Ben and Popok cover: 1) what the line up of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to not bail out Trump and his sentencing means for future cases involving Trump; 2) why the NY sentencing hearing of Trump was so bizarre; 3) will the public ever get the mar a lago special counsel report; 4) will Rudy ever go to jail for contempt of court; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support our sponsors: Oracle: See if your company qualifies at https://Oracle.com/LEGALAF Lumen: Head to https://Lumen.me/legalaf and use code: LEGALAF to get 15% off your lumen today! One Skin: Get started today at https://OneSkin.co and receive 15% Off using code: LEGALAF Zbiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. Subscribe to the new Legal AF channel: https://youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connexontario.ca. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for total fund savings adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. As I say, stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure. Maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Donald Trump had some major losses this week in court. He lost before the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision where Donald Trump was trying

to block his criminal sentencing in the Manhattan criminal case where he was convicted on 34 felony counts. The sentencing did indeed go forward, meaning Donald Trump is an adjudicated felon. I want to talk about that Trump's other losses as he appealed to the Supreme Court to try to block this sentencing. But when we talk about the United States Supreme Court ruling, we should talk about this five to four dynamic. You know, Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett ruled against Donald Trump.

Are we seeing a new alignment of certain right-wing justices who will be joining with the liberal justices and forming a new majority for some cases where Donald Trump will try to engage in constitutional excesses. We will break that down. We'll talk about the Supreme Court oral argument in the TikTok case. Not good for TikTok at all. To me the question is will it be a nine-to-zero ruling? Will there be some other kind of formulations of joining opinions that somehow soften the blow but it does not look good for TikTok if you were listening to that oral argument and that's an understatement.

Let's also talk about the DOJ reports on Donald Trump's criminal conduct from the Mar-a-Lago case to the Washington DC federal criminal case. The report is expected to be released soon. Donald Trump tried to block that with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He failed there. We'll talk about that. Also, let's talk about Rudy Giuliani being held in contempt once again, this time by another federal judge. You know her, you love her from listening to Legal AF,

Judge Beryl Howell out of Washington DC And if you're saying deja vu didn't you tell me that Rudy was like found in contempt last week Yeah, this is kind of the Rudy roller coaster instead of going up and down It's just going in one direction contempt contempt contempt contempt. We'll talk about all of this and more. This is legal AF I'm Ben Mycelis joined by Michael Popak start with just saying that my heart goes out to everybody affected by these horrific fires in California.

I'm still evacuated, although I'm hopeful that I'll be able to return. But I certainly know that there are many who will not be as lucky as I am here. Many have lost everything in their lives and my heart goes out to all of them. I certainly know that there are many who will not be as lucky as I am here. Many have lost everything in their lives and my heart goes out to all of them. It's been a very tough week for us here, uh, in LA and California. Um, and I'm not just thinking about California though, too. Anybody who's going through tough times, whether it's a natural disaster or otherwise, our hearts are with you in these days Yeah, I join you we did a similar shout out or support for the New Orleans massacre the fires

You got my love and support there for you and your family extended family. Everybody knows somebody that's been impacted horribly by the fires in California it reshapes our relationship with our planet, with our weather, with our neighbors. The only time I've ever felt like this exact feeling is when my friends in Florida suffered through Hurricane Andrew, which changed life as we knew it in Florida for that time. And I see I have a very similar set of feelings

about what you and others are going through there. So we've got, just before we could jump in here, as you led off, we just broke a 249 year unbroken streak of having felons as president. And we'll talk more about that. Well, I guess we'll just start all over again and we'll see what we can do for the next record. And while we look at the lashing out and acting out by Donald Trump at his sentencing hearing, we'll talk about that next, contrast it with an extraordinary set of achievements by the outgoing president, Joe Biden, that's not getting as much

attention as it should. I mean, this is a forget lazy or slow Joe. The amount of things that they have been able to accomplish just in the last 10 days, 330 million more acres of natural wildlife refuge are under protection to protect it from Donald Trump's drill baby drill. 1400 people granted clemency, more to come, and expanded temporary protected status. That's going to be hard for Donald Trump to overcome, affecting 1 million people here from Ukraine, El Salvador, Venezuela, Sudan, and the rest, all with a stroke of a pen. We've got the TikTok ban, which you and I are going to talk about, sanctions against Russia and its oil company as they continue to try to help Ukraine in its war there, sanctions against China. We'll talk about TikTok again. And you also have an announcement in the last 24 hours by Secretary of State Blinken that they are close to being on

the verge of a complete hostage release between Hamas and Israel, all in the waning days of the Biden administration. Extraordinary. Which, by the way, you have this contrast between President Biden, head down, speak soft, get things done. Don't brag about your accomplishments. Do it for the American people and focus on, you know, again, just keeping your word. On the other hand, you have Donald Trump trump. Brags about everything takes credit for things that are undeserved loud obnoxious when it comes down to it is someone who doesn't keep his word who doesn't execute on things you know when ultimately if there is a gaza deal you know what donald trump setting up for us to take credit for they. They did that because of me. This happened because of me. That happened because of me. And I recall them saying on day one after the election, there was supposed to be peace in Ukraine. That's what he said. He said that he would have already

had that done already. He said he'd go to Putin and say, and I'd go to Zelensky and go, make a deal, make a deal. You make a deal. You like each other. You like each other now. Deal. Well, that didn't happen. You want me to give him the benefit of the doubt, which I shouldn't, and say he meant 24 hours after the inauguration? Well, where's that meeting? When is that happening? Doesn't seem like that's going to happen. All I ever is the opposite. So, and also, you know, all this rhetoric of Donald Trump talking about invading Greenland and Panama and annexing Canada and Mexico and all of these things. I've called it a WMD, a weapon of mass distraction, a WMD, a weapon of mass distraction. You know, we have to take that stuff seriously, but I always go back to okay. Well, how is this gonna lower prices?

How is it gonna make housing more affordable? How is this gonna lower interest rates? How is this gonna lower mortgage rates? How does any of that have anything to do with anything you said during the campaign and it hasn't so we need to take certain things Very seriously, but what we can do is what happened in Trump administration one and what happened a lot during the campaign There were all these shiny objects. We get distracted. We're looking here, there, and the other places we have to be focused and we have to control our narrative, which is the truth and saying, how is this impacting the American people and stop falling for all of the shiny objects though? We should take it seriously with that said,

let me just get into what's going on in courts. So Supreme court five to four decision against Donald Trump. When Trump tried to block his sentencing, the sentencing ended up taking place on Friday. Recall Donald Trump tried to block sentencing at the trial court level before Justice Mershon denied at the appellate division level denied at the New York highest court level which they call the Court of Appeals there they call their Supreme Court the Court of Appeals in New York which just makes things confusing and

their lower courts called the Supreme Court go figure anyway New York's top court they reject Donald Trump Trump goes to the Supreme Court five to four decision you have Justice Amy Coney Barrett and you have Justice John Roberts joining with Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, Justice Kagan, and Justice Sotomayor. Those last three justices that I mentioned were appointed by Democratic administrations. Justice John Roberts was appointed by George W. Bush. Coney Barrett was appointed by Donald Trump when Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. We saw in Amy Coney Barrett, she actually joined with some of the justices who were very critical of the

14th amendment section three cases. Well, remember back in March of 2024, when the Supreme court unanimously ruled that Colorado could not disqualify Donald Trump from the ballot, but then they divided on what the 14th Amendment Section 3 meant. The Supreme Court's majority went a step further. And they said that actually it's not self-executing. Congress needs to pass a law if you want to do a disqualification. Coney Barrett joined again with Katanji Brown Jackson,

with Justice Kagan and Justice Sotomayor. And they said, whoa, why are you shutting the door to other ways of dealing with the 14th Amendment, Section 3, you're going way too far here. We agree that Colorado couldn't do the disqualification, although states can disqualify state officials, states can't disqualify federal officials, all the Supreme Court justices said,

but why are you going out of your way to help Donald Trump in ways that aren't even part of the briefing? So you saw that coalition form there with Coney Barrett being kind of peeled off there One point I want to make is just as Amy Coney Barrett She was a professor at Notre Dame Law School. Her whole thing was getting rid of Roe v. Wade That was her life's work If you read her readings you knew that she was ultimately going to do everything in her power to get rid of Robie Wade. We can hate that. We can despise that. We can be as critical as that as we want to be. And we are here on the

Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. But as it relates to other issues, Michael Popock, she was not really in that Federalist Society kind of clique. That's not her crew. She seems to be very uncomfortable after Donald Trump kind of paraded her around when he selected her and brought her to the White House and kind of that real creepy display and kind of, you know, you know, the way he just strutted her out was very strange. And I think she's always been resentful of that. And I think she doesn't really like Donald Trump. If I'm being totally blunt, reading between the lines and seeing some of the times she's spoken at places

So can she be joining now at some of the other justices and is justice John Roberts remember last week? This is why you got to watch all the legal AFs We remember we talked to you about that report that justice John Roberts wrote that annual report Where he talked about the threats to the judiciary and he seemed to basically be sub tweeting or sub posting or basically talking about Donald Trump. This information, threats of violence and intimidation not enforcing the Supreme Court's will and the Supreme Court's order, is he standing up right now and saying look we gave you a lot, we gave you absolute immunity, we ruled on your favor 14th amendment section three.

We've given you a lot of what we've wanted as the federalist society in terms of, you know, getting rid of the Chevron doctrine, essentially getting rid of the lemon test separation of church and state really neutering the ability of agencies to do work, but don't go a step further. We we've done that. If you start going there, we will rule against you. Was he sending a message? So Pope, I want you to talk about the sentencing because I'm not talking about

you. You'll cover that aspect. But I think before you talk about what actually went down in the sentencing, after Trump lost. In the Supreme court, which opened up the sentencing to take place. I think that dynamic is an interesting one that we're going to see over and over. So I think it's worth talking about. Yeah. And on unprecedented, the show that Dina Dahl and I are doing on the Legal AF channel, we're

going to get our unprecedented week long or week look at the Supreme Court up, I think today. One of the things that I outline is, and we started from last year, is the rise of Amy Coney Barrett, centrist right center. We said, keep an eye on Amy Coney Barrett throughout the rest of this term and beyond. As she comes into her own shore, she sided with the majority in the immunity decision and a number of other decisions that we don't like, especially as it relates to church and state,

especially as it relates to reproductive rights. She was not a reliable vote for women or for secularism or the separation of church and state. But now that we've gotten some of those out of the way, she is, it appears to be willing on a number of occasions to not only side with the Democratic wing of the Supreme Court, but also to chastise and take on Alito and Thomas and even Gorsuch now who's becoming a reliable third vote over on the alt-right extreme of the Supreme Court. I'm talking about corsage there. So Amy Kim Coney Barrett

criticized the number of a number of things that Clarence Thomas's you has been using, you know, like gun control She didn't like the way he's using historical precedent to kind of bind the court To 1800 thinking and attacked him for that. So we saw the beginnings of this. And we also thought that relationships get formed on the Supreme Court and that perhaps because the only other three women on the court

are on the Democratic wing, that maybe there'd just be some natural affinities that would develop over time, being the four women on there. And whatever the combination of reasons are, up over time, being the four women on there. And whatever the combination of reasons are, we are now seeing what I think is the rise of the Amy Coney Barrett Court. And every time we have a centrist or even the last 50 years, it's a Republican, because

look, it's been Republican controlled for over 75 years. The unbroken string of Republican presidents for a long time, and then a couple of others and Democrats, we had a long block of just Republican presidents picking the Supreme Court for most of my young adulthood. On the Amy Coney Barrett side, or the centrist side, let's start with Sandra Day O'Connor, right? But she's center. Then we get Kennedy. It became sort of the Kennedy court for a long time because his fifth vote mattered.

He was in the majority more than any other Supreme Court justice for the bulk of his tenure there. But he was to the right, sorry, to the right of Sandra Day O'Connor. And now if Amy Coney Barrett becomes the one who votes in the majority with most of the decisions, making her the swing vote, she's to the right of Kennedy. So we're watching the center right going further right of course, but if I'm a Supreme Court advocate, I got to aim for Amy Coney Barrett. I said last week when it came to TikTok and sentencing that it's gonna be Amy Coney Barrett on sentencing trying to bring Roberts over not to touch the immunity

decision another time. He's already circling the drain of history for the first time he touched it and bring them over to the Democratic wing. I thought Kavanaugh maybe but he's becoming a foregone conclusion to side with Gorsuch more than he sides with the majority on opinions like this. So I think you're right about Amy Coney Barrett and we'll see it also in the TikTok when we give our review and analysis of the oral argument about the TikTok man because she was very vocal and very active there. I'm not saying though, I don't want the impression to be

that I'm a huge supporter of Amy Coney Barrett or you know she's covering herself in glory with a lot of these decisions she's not. And the intellectual heavyweight among the court for me of newly appointed justices is Kataji Brown Jackson. But the problem is Kataji Brown Jackson is on the Democratic wing that only has three people. And you got to count to five in order to have anything happen on the Supreme Court. So in the sentencing, the way that all backed up there is, look, this should have been, Dina Dahl was right when I talked to her yesterday, this should have been, Dean Adal was right when I talked to her yesterday, this should have been 9-0 against Donald Trump. This is a garden variety prosecution where immunity as an issue in the Stormy Daniels

hush money conspiracy case for which Donald Trump is now a felon, the immunity issue was not front and center. He had already waived the argument in prior briefing that his actions at the heart of the conspiracy were immune. They were only left with a secondary position within the immunity decision from the Supreme Court that certain evidence about official conduct, if it is official conduct, while somebody is president, can't be used to prove the rest. And the question is, did any of that come in through the filter of Judge Mershon, Justice Mershon during the trial? And if it did, did it matter? Or was it harmless error, not reversible error? A very discrete,

arcane evidentiary issue, academic issue. And let's get to sentencing, get the judicial decree that declares him to be a felon, let him take his appeal in the state court system, where it belongs, exhaust that appeal. And if anything is left over on immunity, then run it over to the Supreme Court. That should have been the decision of everybody on the Supreme Court.

It did go to Sotomayor first, as I had thought, because she sits over everything in New York as the assigned justice for the New York region. She referred it over to the rest of the panel because she didn't want to be caught, you know, with a shadow docket problem of her making the ruling. She could have made the ruling on her own, like rejected. And then we'd be talking about it in a different way. So she's three, she referred it over, took a risk. It looks like it was a risk. And then they started, you know, after briefing, full briefing by the Manhattan District Attorney's brief,

and then John Sauer, the soon to be Solicitor General for Donald Trump, but currently his private appellate lawyer, private criminal appellate lawyer, he argued. And I read that brief, you read that brief, and everything, nothing in there was legitimate or had any intellectual honesty about the state of the law, even after the immunity decision or anything. President-elect immunity, Supreme Court, five of them did not buy that he currently has immunity from anything. That this immunity issue needed to be resolved right now before the

completion of the case through sentencing and appeal in the state court. No, they're not buying that. And that's where the mastery of Justice Marchand comes into play. We're going to talk about a couple of places where there's genius at work. At the 11th Circuit about the DOJ's position, about the release of the special counsel's report and something they did there that was masterful, which we'll flush out here. But Justice Murchon, in retrospect, he made his sentencing decisions Supreme Court proof,

because the first thing they latched onto was the thing that we were most upset about, that he wasn't gonna sentence Donald Trump to prison. And they said, right, in their decision by the five of the Supreme Court, they said, and you're not even going to prison. So you don't really have a huge prejudice or impairing or impeding your presidency because you're not going to prison. Go finish your appeals.

If you got any issues after your appeals in New York, come back to us on a better record, but not this. And that got the five votes, the three on the Democratic wing. Roberts, who's like, I assume he's like, I don't need to touch the immunity decision and be accused of helping Donald Trump one more time in this area on this issue of evidence. And that was it. And then we would, that was Thursday night, late, we were reporting on it in various ways. Friday morning up and running, Justice Mershon with what? I'll get your comment out of you, listen to the audio too, which was a lot of, meh, like it was a very anticlimactic ceremony around this virtual sentencing of Donald Trump to no jail time. The other thing that Justice Mershon did in addition to pointing out he was inclined to order this

unconditional discharges, he said that he would make the appearance accessible to Donald Trump by Zoom or by, you know, virtual means, which also justice Mershon knew what Trump would argue is you're preventing the transition from taking place. I now have to fly to New York and this is a precious day. Obviously we know that it's BS. Donald Trump would probably be golfing or listening to the beach boys at Mar-a-Lago and not doing the things that he claims and

promised he was going to do, but he would make that argument nonetheless. So Justice Murchon said, look, it's going to be a relatively short hearing. I'm inclined to grant an unconditional discharge, but there was a broader principle that Justice Murchon was trying to save, which is the jury verdict, the rule of law in the sense that there was this verdict and justice Mershon, I think recognizes too, that he would have had the ability here to chip away at this absolute immunity doctrine and show that specifically what happened in this case, what happened in the New York hush

money, you know, for, you know, business records case, fraudulent business records falls outside the outer limits of any absolute immunity. So this case, if Donald Trump takes it on appeal and goes back up to the Supreme court, you know, I think what we'll end up seeing, and you could rewind this episode, you know, 24 months from now or so, when this all kind of relates, you know, to each other is the same way with civil presidential immunity.

You have the Nixon versus Fitzgerald case, which said, yeah, Nixon, you could engage in these, in this conduct while in office, wrongful termination to retaliate against a whistleblower, even though it's bad. That's the type of conduct that executives that, that article two empowers you to do, even if it's really bad. But in Jones versus Clinton, you know, a case involving, you know, sexual conduct or, you know, whatever private life stuff that does not get to give you any type of civil immunity. to give you any type of civil immunity. And then we had the case before the DC circuit in the civil context of Blasingham, which talked about campaigning and campaign activity being outside the realm of official

presidential conduct. So in the civil context, if I was teaching that law class, I would say this has immunity. This doesn't have immunity. This falls slightly outside the outer limits. I think in criminal, we're going to see a similar type of thing. This gets immunity, this doesn't get immunity as this works its way up through the court of appeals.

Let's talk about what went down in sentencing and more. Let's take our first quick break of the show. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere. From self-driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it's coming fast. But AI needs a lot of speed and computing power. So how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI.

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After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show. Invest in your skin and your health. Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you, everybody. I want to remind you all as well to subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel. It's growing rapidly. I want to see if we can get that channel one million subscribers. What do you think hits first, Legal AF at one million or the Midas Touch YouTube channel hitting 4 million? Or do you think they go right around?

I like this challenge. I want to compliment everybody. You and I when we put together the idea for legal AF before the election to have it be a durable, resilient, searing, you know, analysis and channel after the election and for all the good reasons that we've talked about I did not envision maybe you did you're a visionary more visionary than me that we would hit We're gonna hit 400,000 this weekend in our fourth month Half a million by our half birthday is our goal

And we just went over 50 million views of the content over on legal AF the YouTube channel million views of the content over on Legal AF, the YouTube channel yesterday. Really, really want to thank all of our Legal AFers and Midas Mighty who have come over there and supported us as well. Well, there's gonna be a lot of legal cases probably starting on day one where there's gonna be needing a lot of coverage and that's gonna be the main destination. Although you'll get it on the Midas Touch channel as well. And of course here on Legal AF, just a reminder as well, patreon.com slash Legal AF.

Professor Popak's been posting some stuff lately there. So check it out and Popak's gonna be on there a lot. He's getting, as will I. And we're excited and we're grateful. We don't have outside investors. So it's one of the ways that we grow. Heck, we're beating competitors like Fox, who have billion dollars in revenue and billionaire investors and oligarchs.

And guess what? We don't have all of that, but we've got you, we've got this community, we've got Patreon, we've got some pro democracy sponsors, we're scrappy, we build, we grow together with the legal effort. They don't have us, right? We don't have them.

We don't have them. We don't have them. We don't have them. We don't have them. We don't have them. We don't have them. We don't have them. We've got you, we've got this community, we've got Patreon, we've got some pro-democracy sponsors, we're scrappy, we build, we grow together with the Legal Aid efforts. They don't have us, right, like you just said. We don't have them, but they don't have us either, audience or contributors. Exactly, let's talk about what went down

in the sentencing itself. We talked before the break how Justice Mershon really safeguarded the ability for sentencing to take place. He talked about how there would be an unconditional discharge, meaning Donald Trump would be proclaimed and adjudicated felon. It would be official because upon the sentencing, there's now a final judgment. I mean, look, he was convicted of felonies. So for you to say that he was a convicted felon before is not totally off base, because he was convicted of felonies by a unanimous jury. But now it becomes a final judgment by the jury

the moment sentencing takes place. And then Donald Trump's full appeal options now, you know, take place if he wants to contest any aspect of it. One of his arguments, by the way, that will be interesting to read on appeal, Michael Popak, now take place if he wants to contest any aspect of it. One of his arguments, by the way, that will be interesting to read on appeal, Michael Popok, is he attacks Midas Touch, he attacks our host like Michael Cohen.

He attacked you in one of his briefs saying that our podcasts were in our shows were unfair and we prejudiced the jury against him. Then the footnotes, like five through eight, were all talking about our shows. I think it was page 15 and 16 of one of his emergency briefs. It was really weird when I was getting messages from family, friends, and Midas Midas saying, you know, he's blaming you for being convicted of felonies. I'm, you know, I'm not sure how I will describe that one to my baby girl,

my four month old when she's older, but we'll deal with that in a few years. But Michael Popak, one of the things that Justice Mershan said is, well, this was an extraordinary case in the sense of the attention to it, the fact that it was the first time a former president was involved. He said, there was nothing extraordinary about what went down in court. It was a normal case.

And Mershan said there were 30 other cases taking place in the courthouse at the exact same time. They all went through jury selection, voir dire. Witnesses were called, opening statements were made. Witnesses called, closing arguments, motions, jury verdict, conclusion, and you were found guilty. There was nothing, you know, while Donald Trump, Murchon didn't say this, you know, yes, you all caps, witch hunt unfair, this was the process that everybody gets. There was nothing

different about the process. A jury heard all of the evidence and unanimously found you guilty of 34 felony counts. And it's also worth noting too, Popak, and you can see the incongruity of how disinformation can permeate versus what happens in an evidentiary system like in our court system. Because look, Donald Trump made gains in the election in New York. I mean, you know, he still lost by not an insignificant amount, but he had, you know, what was it? 35, 40% of the vote, you know, maybe plus in New York. So that would have meant if you just took a cross-section of 12 jurors,

like three or four of them may have voted for him ultimately, you know, if you look at just a random sample, you know, three or four of them may have voted for him ultimately. You know, if you look at just a random sample, you know, three or four, maybe five jurors would have voted for him. But when given the accurate information and understanding their solemn duty, remove from the disinformation silos of Fox and right wing propaganda. When they just get the facts, they were able to come to the right conclusion, not just there, but in the E.G. and Carol case and in all these cases against Donald Trump.

Final point I'll make, then I'll pass it to you, is Justice Mershon said, the issue is the office of the presidency and not you as a person. Because I'm forced and compelled to respect the office, I can't give you the sentence that I want to give you because of the office, not the person inhabiting the office. It would be different if the office didn't, if you weren't in that office, but because the office exists, I can't give you a sentence to prison time and because I respect the office, regardless of my feelings towards you, he didn't say it in those exact words, but essentially I want the office to do well because we Americans

need that office to do well. And that's how we ended it saying, Godspeed. That was basically it. Trump spoke for a little bit. He whined. Wait, wait, wait. You're gonna let me say anything? Let me jump in here.

Okay. So the, look, the sentencing was not as ordinary and garden variety as you just laid out the Mershon's recitation of things. The sentencing, let's be frank, was not. If this was a garden variety sentence, the judge would have spent a considerable amount of time excoriating the person, just as he had done in writing in his prior rulings, where he said, you haven't shown remorse, you haven't accepted responsibility. It was an extraordinary criminal act that led to the interference in an election. He didn't do any of that. He didn't do the judge part of sentencing. He was very tight-lipped. He said the bare minimum of what he needed to say in order to have all the magic language that you need to say in a sentencing occur to complete it, but really no more. It was word economy on

display for a reason that I'll I think our audience in the chat will be able to surmise and I'll give you my opinion. But he's he colored well within the lines, Justice Mershon, including as you said, tipping his hat at the end and going, well, you know, the American people have saw fit to elect you twice. Godspeed with that. And well, you know, the American people have saw fit to elect you twice. Godspeed with that. And then, you know, and then sort of good day. But that's not enough. I don't want people to come away because we did both on Legal AF Channel and on Midas Dutch, we did post the full

27 minutes of recording. I don't want people to come away with, oh, that's how a sentencing happens in New York. I practice in New York. That's not how a sentencing happens in New York. And the judge was very, very tight-lipped, more so than usual, probably because of all the other issues we've talked about. So it's one thing to say it is garden variety, but it wasn't. And you don't normally have a convicted felon zoom in on a 60-inch screen from Mar-a-Lago or Florida

at his vacation home to be sentenced to something that he could have gotten up to four years. I was promoting a year and a half to two years after he served his first sentence, which was the sentence of presidency, but then he would serve more time in jail. So that's one. The laboring or of wagging the finger at Donald Trump was left to Josh Stein glass for the Manhattan DA's office. He really served the role as president,

I mean, as judge sentencing the former president. And so he did a fair amount of it. But even he was sort of not as bold as he would have been in another sentencing hearing. And then they let Donald Trump talk for a rambling five minutes. If anybody caught a Midas Touch or any other hot take, any part of his recent Mar-a-Lago rambling press conference,

you know, the one where he couldn't remember how a kitchen appliance works or appliance works. This was just another, it was about wildfires and Gavin Newsom and then he got around to the case and started going didn't Oh, I don't blame Alvin Bragg, because Alvin Bragg was just doing the bidding of the Biden administration. I mean, all sorts of crazy shit. The day before, or the night before he was busy. Trump's posting on

social media again, you know, I'll go through this little charade. I'll do this little game they want me to play. You know, this law fair going after me. They tried to, he said it during the sentencing, so they tried to make me lose the election with this prosecution, but it didn't work. Ha ha, you know, a lot of that.

And then, so he was done. And to which,urchon just said, thank you sir. Just sort of moved on and ignored it. Blanche said very little. Todd Blanche, who's gonna be the number two in the Department of Justice in about a month, he said very little. So it was weirdly antiseptic. That's where the anti-climax comes from. So I thought, then I said this on a hot take, I thought this would be the opportunity that Mershon would take not to get back at Trump, that's not the role of a judge, but just to do his normal job and just lay out the facts and the reasoning. He did explain why it's an unconditional

discharge for those that are tuning in late to our democracy or to our network or channel, you know, he's not going to jail. The judge is keeping on the books this indelible stain, felon, felon in chief, first time in 249 years of our democracy, is going to be the president of the United States. So he is a judge to felon, it will be in his obituary, it'll be in the history books, at least in the blue states, he's a felon, a felon who served no jail time,

doesn't have to pick up trash on the highway, doesn't have to do any of that stuff, but the fel he's a felon. A felon who served no jail time. Doesn't have to pick up trash on the highway, doesn't have to do any of that stuff, but the felon is the felon. Now he can go off, now that we're done with sentencing. Now the case is complete. Now there's a judicial decree, a judgment, a final judgment of, which ends with the sentencing. The delay for the last six months,

this should have happened six months ago, is because Donald Trump kept filing motions that continue to continue to get him over the election, pass the election to the inauguration and all of that. But finally he ran out of time and even the Supreme Court didn't want to bail him out. His next role will be in 2025 as you as you laid out briefly. Will take an appeal to the a fully blown appeal to the First Department Appellate division. These other things that he filed that you and I reported on, the article 78 complaint against Mershon and against Alvin Bragg where they sued him directly

and then an appeal. A lot of this falls, they're gonna have to regroup now. First of all, Donald Trump is gonna lose all of his lawyers because he's put all of his lawyers from Alina Haba to Blanche to Emil Beauvais to Sauer, he's put them all in the administration in one way or the other. So now he's got to go hire another set of lawyers who are gonna have to prosecute these appeals. So a lot of these things he did earlier are gonna

fall away because they're mute, they're moot now, so now he's gonna move to an appellate division, the Manhattan Appellate Court, for like the full-blown appeal, substantive merits appeal, about whatever he wants to argue that Marshawn did wrong. Oh, his daughter is a Democratic operative, and he donated $25 to Democrats, and he's biased, all this other stuff. He can do all that, the evidence issues,

with the two levels of courts of appeal in New York. If he doesn't like the result there, he can file a immunity request, a writ of certiorari request with the United States Supreme Court through Sotomayor and try to get it there. Now, they didn't bail him out the last time on immunity when it came to E. Jean Carroll because he lost his immunity decision to the Second Circuit that, no, you can't try me for sexual abuse and defamation because I was president during parts of it. And the Second Circuit said, no, you weren't, not during the parts that matter and you waived it anyway. And the Supreme Court, by the last year, has said, no, we're not touching that one. And they're not

bailing them out on immunity there. So I'm not so sure they're that. There may be four votes, but I don't think there's five votes to rush back in year after year, moment after moment, to help Donald Trump out on immunity throughout his entire tenure of the next presidency. One last point. Listen to this language, Ben. I don't know if you missed it or you, I'm just telling it to you for the first time

for our audience Donald Trump Complimented the United States Supreme Court when they ruled against him five to four on the sentencing issue It didn't stop the sentencing even though MAGA is beating the crap out of Amy Coney Barrett apparently In their social media post, but he complimented them. He said it was a balance It was a good decision. And I don't blame them for that. Why? Because he needs the United States Supreme Court throughout the next four years, because he's going to be doing some outlandish abuse of power things. And he doesn't

want, you see all the courts he abuses? He constantly abuses trial court judges, and he's not abusing the Supreme Court because he knows he needs them and he doesn't want to be chastising them. In fact, why else does he want to pick up the phone on the Tuesday when he makes his filing on an emergency basis to have a conversation with Sam Alito, which now the Democrats are up in arms about and want him to recuse, which he's not going to do, to talk about a reference for a job applicant. Does anybody really believe that that's the topic of the conversation and it wasn't about Trump's return to power and things pending before the court related

to Donald Trump? Come on. But this is the new world order that Donald Trump has fashioned between the presidency and the United States Supreme Court, and we're going to have to constantly keep track of it right here on legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. Michael Popak, what if sometime down the future, you were a, uh, Supreme court justice and I was in a powerful position and you were going to be ruling over a case involving me. Okay. And we were great friends. And then we called

each other. And you said, you said to me, Hey, how are you? And I said, I'm doing great. How are you doing? Doing really good. Hey, I really would like you to take a look at this applicant who worked for me. Thank you. Super bright. Good guy. Oh, interesting. I'll definitely take a look at it. How are you doing otherwise?

Good? Good. Okay. I'll take a look. Thank you. See ya. Even if that was the conversation, we just conveyed a lot of information without even having to say lots of things. What we conveyed is we got each other's,

you know, we're talking to each other. I'm good. You're good. Specifically even get on the phone and say to each other, Hey, here's what we're going to do. We're going to collude and we're going to I'm going gonna I got you back in all these cases. Don't worry, because you don't need to you know, when I handled collusion cases, you know, and I think about some of the big antitrust and collusion cases I dealt, you know, you would never find you rarely would you find a text message or a phone call or an email saying we're gonna collude and fix the prices you didn't have to all you had to know was that they hung out together at a trade association or at some event and then

you would link the Nexus with an event that would happen that was favorable to the other person and that would be enough evidence, implied collusive behavior. And when you look at the language about collusion in a legal sense, it's always described as expressed or implied. In most cases always involve implied because people don't talk like, hey, I don't know what, I mean, sometimes Trump does.

I mean, you heard Trump on some of those audio recordings before, but as it relates to, you know, when he was showing people certain types of documents and, and, and things like that. Um, Pope. Um, one, one comment, one comment. I want to illustrate that totally wordless. When George W. Bush came in to sit on the, in the pews for Jimmy Carter's funeral. He had to pass Donald Trump and he had to go over Barack Obama to sit in his seat. We have the clip. He completely ignored Donald Trump on purpose.

He got to Barack Obama and tapped him playfully on the stomach, and then sat right down next to him. So much was communicated in that, even without words, about where people stood in people's minds and in their hierarchies in just that half a second tap on the belly between George Bush and Obama. So of course the phone call with Alito, which of course we don't have a readout of, is completely ex parte inappropriate

because of what you just said about the ability to communicate without, if somebody just read it, if we were like wiretapping this, like we're following mobsters, they'd be like, well yeah, how's the provolone today? Yeah, the wine is great, but the provolone's not as sharp as usual.

It's all coded. But we know just the very act of having a warm chit chat while there's a pending emergency motion is wrong. When I just I'll just one last thing. I I'm a pro, you know, I still practice. So I'll go to a I'll go to a bar event where there's a room full of judges, including judges, and this is particularly true in Miami, which has a very small town environment. The judges, state court judges run for election. You raise money for them. I know this is going to sound unsavory to some people. You will literally hold a fundraiser for a judge on a Friday. You will hand his treasurer a pile of checks and on Monday you'll see them in court. Okay? But put that aside for a minute. If I see a judge that I have a case

in front of, I don't even get into the chit chat. And they don't want me to either because if somebody, even if it's just like, Hey judge, how you doing? Good, how's the cheese? How's the cheese puffs? Because another person in the public or that's related to my opponent could see that and now they're off and running with an ex parte communication about a pending matter. There was Michael Popok over a glass of wine with judge Phil in the blank.

And I don't want that. And judges, what we saw with Alito is that this court, Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas, operates like they're Trump and they're above it all and they're infallible and whatever they do is right. And they're doing some extraordinarily unethical things in plain sight. Popak, when we get back, we're going to have to do a power 25 minutes because we spend a lot of time on these topics. We still have to cover the DOJ report, TikTok and Giuliani.

You think we can nail it in about 25 minutes? I think we can. A reminder, everybody go check out the Legal AF YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe there and also patreon.com slash legal AF. We'll be right back after our last quick break of the show. Did you know 80% of resolutions fail by February? But you can beat the odds with lumen and improve your health. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach.

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We're going to do a power 25 minutes, go through two topics. Michael Popak gave me a little crap for cannibalizing one of the topics. So I throw it back to you, Michael Popak here, the DOJ report being released. Donald Trump got a favorable ruling from judge Eileen Cannon. No surprise there. She's corrupt. She rules in favor of him for everything, whether or not she even should have had jurisdiction to block the release of the reports.

Remember there's a volume one of volume two of this DOJ report, volume one, January 6th case, volume two, Mar-a-Lago document case, different treatment by the DOJ in terms of how each is being released. There was then this appeal to the 11th circuit, the 11th circuit rule. Michael Popok, power through it, big guy. But you have to have your mic on

if you wanna power through it. Shit, I'm so excited, I forgot to put on my mic. Five minutes or less, here we go. You have to have your mic on if you want to power through it. Shit, I'm so excited. I forgot to put on my mic. Five minutes or less. Here we go. We've got Smartly. Special counsel Jack Smith divides his world into two reports, volume one and volume two. Volume one, DC election interference has nothing to do with Mar-a-Lago.

It has nothing to do with Judge Cannon. It has nothing to do with the 11th Circuit. Volume two, Mar-a-Lago. Interesting. We now know two things about those reports. One, they were both reviewed in the second week in January by Donald Trump's lawyers, Todd Blanch and others, in a closed sealed, hermetically sealed room in Washington, D.C., so they could do comments. Of course, none of them were adopted. All it gave Donald Trump was the opportunity to write a 15-page letter which got attached to a filing by his co-conspirators in Mar-a-Lago and made public before the reports were made public. But that's just how the Democrats, when they run the Department of

Justice, like to do things. What we didn't know, and Donald Trump's lawyers didn't know, is that when the special counsel sent the reports as statutorily required under the special counsel law to his boss, the attorney general Merrick Garland, he put a love note with one of them. The love note said, I recommend you don't release the Mar-a-Lago while there's a pending case there. The pending case is,

Judge Cannon dismissed the indictment finding for the first time in 249 years that a special counsel is not properly appointed by as an inferior officer by the Attorney General has to go through a Senate confirmation hearing and a whole refunding program wrong up on appeal with the 11th circuit but she dismissed her case no jurisdiction as far as I'm concerned to do anything else in the case it goes up to the 11th circuit where it's been sitting for several months fully briefed with just the two co-conspirators Nauda and de Olvera the maintenance worker and the butler of Donald Trump who are still

you know who are still technically in the case. That's where it sits. So that the recommendation which the Attorney general adopted is don't release volume two while those two are potentially still going to be prosecuted. Donald Trump having been dismissed from the case because he won elections, no other way to put it. And so he's definitely out of the case. So Donald Trump was sort of like the kid pressing his nose up against the glass of the candy store. like he wasn't in the case, but he wanted to manipulate all of the strategy. So he was having Nauta and Alviera

for whose lawyers he was paying for, file all sorts of emergency applications with the 11th circuit, stop the release of the reports. And with Judge Cannon, of course, they're gonna go to Judge Cannon, who's gonna do anything that Donald Trump says. And so she, two pieces of paper filed, two rulings. Cannon says, yeah, I think it's a good idea.

Let's block everything, including the report that has nothing to do with my case. And we'll keep it as a block until three days after the 11th Circuit gets around to addressing the emergency stay that was issued to them. Now she didn't have to do that. If the 11th Circuit wants to stay something, they can stay something. The DOJ files their own opposition to that through the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami and says to the 11th Circuit, release the reports and we're making it easy on you. There's no issue here with the Mar-a-Lago case. We're not releasing the Mar-a-Lago report.

We're only releasing the DC election interference report, which is Judge Chutkin anyway, has nothing to do with these two. It may have something to do with Trump, but he's not in this case. So they argued that the 11th Circuit agreed and said there's no reason to block the release of the report. I would interpret it as both reports but at least the report about DC election

interference, they didn't address the three days which was weird mainly because the Department of Justice frankly didn't ask them to. And so they said to kind of clear up this procedural hiccup, they told in their order, Jack Smith's team or the Department of Justice, and if you wanna get out from under the 72 hour thing, file an appeal and we'll take a look at it. Now there's this gap from Friday to now, we're already on Saturday and I looked before recording

or before our live, there's no movement yet by the 11th Circuit. If they don't make a ruling, even though Jack Smith has filed the appeal that was requested of him to appeal the three-day, 72-hour hold on the report, Sunday's gonna come and go, and that report's gonna get released Sunday night. You and I will jump on some emergency legal AF

or Monday morning to the American public. It's ready to go. I mean, that's the implication I got from Jack Smith reporting in his filings that it's with Merrick Garland. He's ready to release it. He was ready to release it, I think, on Friday. So it's ready. It's going to be 500, 800, a thousand pages. And the smart thing I'll leave on this, Ben, the smart masterstroke.

And you and I could spend, and we will probably when we catch our breath, like we could spend an entire show critiquing Merrick Garland. And how that didn't really work out the way we wanted to. However, occasionally, he's brilliant, or at least Jack Smith is. They're using, they have decided, you can tell, that Mara L-Lago was going to be the, the report was going to be the sacrificial lamb. In order, it was like, like you're playing football, it was like the fake, in order to throw the long ball into the end zone, which is

the DC election interference case, to get that out to the public. That's the one, when they're ranking it, if they, like Sophie's Choice, they could only choose one, they wanted the DC election interference case report to come out to the American people because it goes to the heart of our democracy and Donald Trump's interference with the peaceful transfer of power. Mar-a-Lago is interesting. Lord knows I've learned more from you about SIPA than I ever want to learn. I almost named my daughter SIPA. It was so interesting. However, it didn't have a lot of moving parts. It was about a post president hiding docs, which we all saw. We all know it happened. We know about that. We saw

the photos. Like we know about that case. DC election interference. There is stuff in that report. I presume we have not seen, have not heard of, and they wanted that. So they are sacrificing. We'll never, I mean, let me manage expectations expectations we will never see Mar-a-Lago I disagree with you. I disagree with you. There's no way you mean through a FOIA? No I mean I think that they'll be classified portions but I think it'll I think they'll be portions. Who's gonna release it? Well it's being handed over to the ranking members in congressional committees so it's not getting deep six. It's being turned over to the

head of the, I believe the intelligence committee and the house of representatives, the chair, a Republican, the ranking member, a Democrat until such time as the case against Dale Rivera and Walty Nauta gets dismissed. The moment the case gets, the reason why that report is not being released is not the SIPA issues. That can be, it's one of them, but that can be dealt with via heavy redactions. The reason it's not getting released and the best argument not to release it is there's still a pending criminal case against Trump's co-defendants that are on appeal and it would prejudice their rights because technically they still have a presumption of innocence, even though we

all know Trump's going to pardon them or they're never going to serve a day in jail. So what it actually forces Donald Trump to think about is, am I going to have my DOJ dismiss the case against Walty Nauta and Day Olivera, at which point that could actually trigger the release of the report that gets in the hands of a Democrat in the House of Representative, the ranking member. So it's not totally deleted and removed from servers. This thing will exist. And so then the fight becomes the release of it. And what we know is that the report at least gets out. So the brilliant move in my opinion-

Wait, wait, wait, I'm going to debate you. My understanding, and you and I could debate it here and on Hot Takes, is that Garland is not sending the Mar-a-Lago report to Congress. Oh, I believe- It's not what he's sending it to the- Unless I read the 11th Circuit paper wrong, you know, my view was, is that what Garland said was that it's not an emergency because we're not releasing it to the public, it's going to go into the hands of the 11th, it's going to go

into the hands of just the ranking members and therefore all of Donald Trump's concern about the imminent publication. Yeah. He has nothing to worry about. And that's how he- I agree with you if you're right. But my understanding, and I read it too, the 11th Circuit brief is he's not even turning it over,

which means if I'm right, and we'll figure it out. If I'm right, then it goes to the next attorney general to make the decision, and it's tanked. If you're right and it's already going to be released to the Congress with a love note that says, don't really. See, that's the problem. How do you, and that was the leak argument that and I attacked that

the lawyers for Olivera and now that we're raising I was like it's not even going to Congress. There's not going to be a leak but we'll get to the bottom. That's why people do it. You hit TikTok. I'll take a look right now. You hit the TikTok kids. What happened there? TikTok is likely going to be dead. Here's what we know about Tik Tok and I'll pass it over to you. Yeah, okay, good. Whether the right-wing justices, the left-wing justices, however you want to describe them,

they all seem to recognize that they all feel that Tik Tok is a national security threat. You had everybody from Justice Kavanaugh on the right to Justice Katanji Brown Jackson on the left, attacking TikTok from different sides. TikTok basically argued first amendment. We have the right to, you know, have people, you know, watch our content.

And then the response to that is, yeah, there's an overwrite, whether you view this as a strict scrutiny thing or whether an intermediate scrutiny, it doesn't really matter which scrutiny you look at it. Congress, the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, and what do they ever do bipartisan, right? They made findings that TikTok, one, uses its algorithm

to cause harm in the United States, but two, they use their software and their app to conduct surveillance on the United States. So it's a national security situation. Congress was right to pass this bill that was signed into law. There shouldn't be any issue here at all. I think the one little caveat that they were musing over is well, is it possible that even though we ban it, you can basically say that still Trump can't enforce it.

Like Trump can not penalize the app companies like like Apple for violating the law potentially. Is that a way around it? And I still don't think they get there. But I think there was some right wing justices who were wondering, can we, can we do anything here to kind of make Trump look like a savior? Even though by the way, it was Trump who started this whole process. Trump was the one who originally wanted to ban Tik TOK. The original lawsuit was bite dance versus was bike dance versus Trump, the

parent company of Tik TOK, PO-POK taken away. So the, I took a look at the briefing while we were waiting. He's going to release it. We're back to the report. But he says, this is the filing by the Department of Justice. But to avoid any risk of prejudice to Nauda and D'Oliveira, the attorney has determined that the recommendation of the special counsel that he will not publicly

release volume two as long as those criminal proceedings remain. he will not publicly release volume two, as long as those criminal proceedings remain. For the time being, volume two will be made available for in-camera review only by the chairman and ranking members of the house and Senate upon their request and agreement not to release any information from volume two publicly. So your position is that after this is over,

since it's already with the ranking members, that they'll be able to get it out, is that after this is over, since it's already with the ranking members, that they'll be able to get it out. Is that it? So I think that we were both somewhat right in the sense that what it doesn't say is that what we don't know is that the in-camera review, this private review, will they ultimately get access to the report and physically hold it? They will get to read it and know about it and talk about it, what's in it. Will they get physical custody over the report? And so you and I were both kind of right.

It doesn't seem like they're gonna get physical custody to hold it, but they will have access to it. And so it will be siloed at a place where they can always access it so that it won't be deleted. That's You're right. All right. That's good. Well, that's about that's what we love the show. I learned so much from the show Tik-tok, yeah, I agree with you I think there's nobody that could listen to the oral argument and think that tik-tok is gonna win this the problem is the lawyers For tik-tok and they brought in the content creators from tik-t too, because they want to make this a first amendment argument. 170 million first amendment rights for Americans

who love using the platform. Okay. And I think that Supreme Court, by and large, the majority of them understand that there's first amendment implications by this. But what the bite dance lawyer could not look the justices in the eye and declare is that TikTok through ByteDance is not ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. And by doing that, once he couldn't say that because it's not true, then all of the even the right-wingers, and we you and I anticipated this because a week, two weeks ago, no a week ago, when Roberts issued his annual report, he had a whole section in it. And he knows what he was

doing. And he knows he was issuing it before the TikTok oral argument, in which he said one of the threats to democracy is foreign power interference through misinformation and disinformation campaigns in our society. And I'm like, oh, here we go. So Roberts, Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Alito, all jumped all over the bite dance slash TikTok guy lawyer. And they asked way more questions of him and a very hot bench.

And fundamentally they were like, Kavanaugh I think led the way with, why would we ever want a foreign enemy power to be able to, at a flip of a switch, collect data and information and data mining about Americans? And then he took it one step further. He said, Americans that may be teenagers and young adults now, but a generation from now are inside of our FBI and CIA. That's a very smart argument, by the way. You know, it's not just all the things that TikTok

is being used for today. It's you're giving your information and the Chinese government now knows about you and now you're a spook. Now you're working for the company. Now you're in the CIA. You're in the intelligence community and that's a problem. And so they focused and drilled down on that. And of course the TikTok guy, he can't respond to that because you know,

the Chinese government wasn't there arguing, right? Like where's the lawyer for the Chinese government? Okay, we're not good. That's his problem. So they wanted, they could only make this about the First Amendment. And Kagan or Soto, I think it was Kagan, Kagan was like, look, we got it. We got the First Amendment. There's a reason we don it. We got the first amendment. There's a reason we don't want foreign powers controlling news media. And the guys said, well, Politico is owned by Germans.

Yeah, but not the German government. And the German billionaire doesn't count. We got our own billionaires to worry about. So there's no way you could come away from the oral argument believing that TikTok is going to not survive, not be forced to sell. Even Amy Coney Barrett and Alito joined together in a twin argument in questioning.

Amy Coney Barrett's like, what are you fighting so hard for? Why don't you just sell? Just sell and you've solved your problem. You don't go dark. And Alito was like, yeah. And if you don't sell by the 19th and you've solved your problem. You don't go dark. And Alito was like, yeah, and if you don't sell by the 19th and you go dark,

could you turn the lights back on a few days later after there is a sale? And that's okay too. And the lawyer had to say, yeah. And so they were like, oh, so you can, the 19th is not a hard, you know, it's not a death penalty date. It's a date when we could revive you later on,

if you know, put you on ice for a week or two. They got into the discussion, which is always scary, about the executive branch, i.e. Trump not enforcing the law, which is another thing that John Roberts says he was worried about in his annual report, which is the executive branch ignoring and flouting the ruling of the Supreme Court and not enforcing it, that's a problem. You don't have desegregation in schools unless you have the will of JFK and RFK to send in federal troops to desegregate

and enforce the law when the states were rebelling. So they asked that question, almost like, I don't know, it was Gorsuch, it was something like, well, what happens if they ask a pro-praliger, the current Solicitor General for the Biden administration, they said, well, what if the President doesn't enforce this? You know, in other words, there's the forced sale requires the sale to a non-Chinese buyer, or lights go off, like fines by the FCC,

all sorts of fines if you put it in the app store. If you have it on your phone currently, you're not gonna be a criminal, but you won't be able to download it, they won't be able to update it, you know, with all the algorithmic stuff on there. So he said, so what if Trump doesn't, he's already filed a brief,

although it was mentioned very, very in passing, what if the president doesn't enforce it, so what if Trump doesn't, he's already filed a brief, although it was mentioned very, very in passing. What if the president doesn't enforce it, then what? And she had to admit that this has to be executed by the executive branch. Otherwise, what are you gonna do? So that's the, that's what you and I have to keep an eye on closely, is Donald Trump has already sent in a brief

that said, let me broker this, and I'll handle it when I get in, just issue a stay. I have a question for you. Do you think they issue a stay to see what happens once Trump gets in or they do their job before the 19th and issue their ruling? They'll do their job. Whether it's before the, then whether it's before the 19th.

I mean, that's when the 19th, I mean, that's when the ban takes place. I'm thinking if it'll be on the 19th, on the 18th, no. I mean- But you think they do it. I think they do it. Look, to your point, they didn't even address Donald Trump's amicus brief. It was like, all right, shut up.

All right, what is this? Like, you know, it was another example though, where, you know, Trump was trying to, I'm a deal maker? Like they, you know, it was another example, though, where, you know, Trump was trying to, I'm a dealmaker, Supreme Court, you know, I'll do some deal here, right? The same way you're brokering peace in Ukraine and Russia, you freaking liar. And Supreme Court didn't even like talk about it. Like, it was just some piece of paper that a 5150 pro se person sends their, you know, sends their way, you know, that they get all the time. And they're like, all right,

I'm not even looking at this. Popak, final topic, Giuliani, break it down quick. He doesn't deserve a lot of time on this network, but it is funny when he gets held in contempt over and over again. I mean, he's been making these posts like during, during the contempt hearing before Beryl Howell calling her bloodthirsty, like he, you know,

massages this blood thirsty women with fangs is coming after me. And I told you how blood thirsty she is. She hates mine. You know, and it's like a Trump post. But when Julianne, but it's not Trump, by the way, it should not be acceptable when when Trump does it. But give us about 90 seconds. Yeah, I'll give you, give me 95. Here we go. He was found a contempt on Monday by Judge Lyman.

And he's gonna lose his Mar-a-Lago adjacent condo as a result of Ruby Freeman and Seamus. Fast forward to Friday, he's forced to go on because he breached his consent decree, which is a type of judicial order by Judge Barrel-Hallel in DC, in the underlying case brought by Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss for defamation and punitive damages because he horribly defamed them and caused them emotional distress because he said they were fraudsters and committing voter fraud when they were doing nothing of the kind.

And so the jury whacked him for 148 million dollars. They've been chasing after his assets ever since with a nice law firm in New York that's doing it all for free to maximize the recovery by those two. He's gonna lose the condo there. This issue was about whether he breached his consent decree, his order, that he would not continue to bash them and defame them or they were going to continue to sue him and go for more damages. So he said, uh-uh, you know, he said enough, enough, uh, white flag, I'll sign the order. So he signed the order. And then whenever he runs out of something to say on his podcast, and I've seen the podcast now

twice, I think I was the third or fourth viewer of it. He bashed Shea Moss and Ruby Freeman again with the exact same way. They're passing a thumb drive like it was heroin, flipping votes, same effing thing as in the trial. Breach, contempt, that's a contempt of court. They drag him in, he doesn't want to go because he's sick and he's got to go to the inauguration and whatever. She says you're no no medical excuse you can travel you're in my courtroom. He comes into the courtroom he doesn't

like it so he starts tweeting social media posting the night before and in the courtroom about how she is a bloodthirsty judge who is out for the Jan six defendants he's got to tie that in there and she's making me wait all day, you know. This is not the strategy. Don't try this at home, by the way. We try to give good, good, good tips about how to run your life if you're in the court system. Don't do this. So she, he's tweeting in the room about her, and she finally issued her order, found him in contempt for violating six different ways her order. And then I'm like, I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm like, okay, here we go,

jail. Because fines aren't gonna work, he's got no money. There's no adverse inference, there's no other proceedings, jail, jail. Say the word with me, judge, jail. And she almost got there. She said, I'm gonna have you fill out another order. I'm like, oh, we got it. This is like a Russian nesting doll. There's an order inside of an order. Yeah, you can do another order. And you're going to concede that Ruby Freeman and shame us didn't do anything wrong. That you've been that that they've been cleared, and some other factual things he has to agree

to and you'll sign it. And if you violate that, I'm like, okay, now it's jail jail I may send you to jail what is going on this week with this lack of sentencing sentencing so that's where it was left I was waiting all day for like the five I was waiting to do a hot take on it waiting all day for the final thing and that was it so I have to keep following up I think he's gonna sign this thing I think he's gonna violate this thing. I think he's going to violate this thing. And I think he's going to be back in front of Beryl Howell and maybe get jailed then. Let me just leave it at this. It's hard in a civil contempt arena on the first strike,

the first violation, to get automatically thrown in jail. I understand that. But she's progressively disciplining him, hoping that he'll violate, like another tripwire. He will F this up. I understand that, but she's progressively disciplining him, hoping that he'll, like another tripwire, he will F this up. I think she has no doubt about that and the lawyers don't either. And so if he screws it up again and he violates this order, I think we could be looking at jail time for Giuliani in 2025. Yeah. I think the most important things for Ruby Freeman and Shane Moss, though, in addition to, you know, potentially Giuliani going to jail is that they get their money was a hundred and fifty million dollars so verdict. The way they're trying to collect upon that with Giuliani's apartments and all of these things i think that what barrel how wants to be careful of is tripping up. tripping up, get these ladies the money that they deserve and drain Rudy of every single penny and every asset that he has because that's going to ultimately sting Rudy probably

even more and not just Rudy but future generations of Rudy based on his, where that money would otherwise go to his estate. We covered a lot of topics today everybody. I want to thank you all for your wishes. I'm grateful for everybody's support. And my heart aches for all of the people out there who are still suffering as a result of these fires, those who are still in the zone of danger. Horrible, horrible stuff.

And we stand with you, we're with you. And I wish I wish there was more than I could do than just be on the show, you know, and do this. But I think that there still is some importance of getting out factual, accurate information when the right wing is flooding the zone with disinformation. Thank you, everybody, so much. Michael Popak. Always a great time spending this weekend with you with The Legal AF. As a reminder, check out The Legal AF YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe there. It's a great YouTube channel. Popok has many daily hot takes there, and sometimes we can cover them all on the Midas Touch channel.

So that's the place where you can go to get all that legal updates all the time also patreon.com legal AF P a t r e o n com slash legal AF We don't have outside investor. So it's a great way that you can help also Thank you to our pro democracy sponsors. The discount codes are in the description below So you just take a look at that description? You'll see all the discount codes they go they, they help us out a lot, those sponsors. They help make the show a possibility and it's great stuff. So thank you everybody.

We'll see you next time on Legal Aid. Shout out to the Midas Mighty. Shout out Legal Aid. Have a good one.