Legal AF by MeidasTouch - MAGA Quickly IMPLODES After Biden OUTMANEUVER

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Michael Popok closely examines MAGA Congress’ latest failed attempt to impeach President Biden, the White House’s reliance on the Office of Legal Counsel to properly assert presidential executive privilege to protect the Attorney General from being found in contempt for his proper refusal to turn over the audio recordings of Biden‘s interview with the Special Counsel about his handling of classified documents after he stopped being vice president. And of course, the MAGA food fight on the House floor led by Marjorie Taylor Greene personally attacking a democratic representative before the vote on contempt. For up to 25 free meals, head to https://MarleySpoon.com/offer/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Michael Popak, Legal AF. It's time for me to weigh in on the attempt by MAGA Congress, led by the two Jims, Jim Comer and Jim Jordan, to try to find Merrick Garland, our attorney general, in contempt because he refuses to turn over the audio tapes of the interview of President Biden that he gave voluntarily to the special counsel Robert Herr back in October of 2023, as that special counsel was wrapping up his investigation of the handling of classified documents by Joe Biden when he was not president of the United States, when he was vice president, before he was president. That's important because I'm gonna go over

what is the purported rationale, a total ruse by the MAGA Republicans about why they need the audio recording. Now, I'm gonna also cover in this one how the committee hearings before the vote, which was right along party lines by both the Oversight Committee led by Comer and the Judiciary Committee led by Jordan,

how it devolved into a food fight led by the MAGA Republicans and Marjorie Taylor Greene as she attacked the physical appearance of a Democratic female House member, Representative Crockett from Texas, and then riding in on her horse to defend it appropriately was AOC. We'll talk about that as well,

that disgusting food fight and attacks on the personal appearance of a representative house, a fellow member of the house. But let's get to the bottom of what's going on here and the assertion by Joe Biden to avoid his attorney general, Merrick Garland, for being found in contempt by asserting executive privilege,

presidential executive privilege to prevent the production of the audio. Now let me back up for a minute so people don't get lost here in this forest. Let me talk about the trees. What happened here? There was an interview. It lasted for about three or four hours

over a couple of days. It happened to be right around the time of Hamas's attack on Israel on October the 7th. And I think the president had a couple of things on his mind at that time, but he still sat down for that interview. The full and complete transcript, and I work as a trial lawyer,

and I work with transcripts every day, deposition transcript, trial transcripts, hearing transcripts, and the like. And I'll tell you about the value of them. That full transcript, hundreds and hundreds of pages with an accurate transcription by a court reporter of exactly the questions and exactly the answers have already been released to the public

and to these committees. You and I can get them online. If you want to sit and read three or 400 pages of Joe Biden answering questions about his handling or mishandling of documents before he became president, you can read it. It's in a deposition transcript. It's also then summarized in an over 300 page report,

also public by the special counsel, Robert Herr. I didn't like all aspects of that report. In fact, I had Judge Ludegard with me at around that time and he didn't like it either. He thought that they weren't going to prosecute, which they concluded they were not going to recommend the prosecution of Joe Biden or prosecute Joe Biden. It didn't have to be 300 pages of hand-wringing about the reasons they weren't going to prosecute him, including taking potshots at Joe Biden's

memory and his ability to recall events from six, eight, 10, 12 years ago about who packed his boxes, who bought his filing cabinets, and enough of the rest of the minutia that frankly is beneath Joe Biden and Robert Her for having asked it. Putting that aside for a minute and the comments about his age and he'll be 85 by the time the case went to trial

and no jury would convict him, whatever those assertions were, all the core fundamental information has been completely disclosed. It's not being blocked by the president. He didn't assert executive privilege over the transcript at all. But that's not good enough for MAGA because they want to, like they did the Jan 6 footage of all of the security cameras in 50,000 or 100 hundred thousand hours of security cameras. They wanted to be able to do what Tucker Carlson did,

slice and dice and edit and take out a context and use it for campaign purposes for their cult leader, Donald Trump. That's why they want the video or the audio recording. Actually, this was an audio recording. They want to embarrass Joe Biden. And all you got to do is like run things backwards, do some deep fakes, you know, get some somebody playing Biden,

but with the audio coming through his mouth in an ad, you can just see what they would do. And they can't do it, of course, with just the written transcript. Now I use transcripts every day in my practice. Okay, courts use transcripts every day in their practice. A judge doesn't require that when I file a motion for summary judgment or a motion for sanctions and I attach as evidential and evidentiary support a transcript of a deposition, sworn statements under oath, or a trial excerpt, the judge doesn't say, well, that's not good enough for me. Can you send me the video? Is there an audio, Mr. Popock? No. We live in the world of dry pieces of paper, you know, with ink on them that we rely on for briefing in courts about the most consequential

issues that face a person, criminal and civil, right? Constitutional and otherwise. It's all done on briefs, it's all done with transcripts, it's not done with audio. So why do you need the audio? Well, that's what the Office of White House Counsel, the Office of Legal Counsel, the OLC, which is the law firm, internal, if you will, for the President of the United States. And their writings and their recommendations and their guidelines and their policies are very, very important. In fact, even the Supreme Court, even this Supreme Court, will cite to OLC, Office of Legal Counsel, memos and analysis in making their own decisions. Okay? Holds a lot of weight. I'm not saying it's a 10th justice at the Supreme Court, but those opinions hold a lot of

weight. And the Office of Legal Counsel analyzed the issue and recommended to Joe Biden, which was adopted by Merrick Garland, that he should assert executive privilege, presidential executive privilege, properly asserted while he is the President of the United States, about matters when he was not the President of the United States, so that they're not disclosed to the committee.

Merrick Garland went further and said, and I'm summarizing here, that there would be a deleterious effect on future investigations by the release of this material. The office of White House counsel went further and said, we can't see any legitimate non-political reason why you would need this. Now, MAGA fired back,

let me just read the exact words here. The Department of Justice said, while our cooperation with Congress has been extraordinary, we also have a responsibility to safeguard the confidentiality of law enforcement files where disclosure would jeopardize future investigations. The attorney general must draw a line that safeguards the department for improper political influence and protects our principles, our law enforcement work, and the people who carry out that work independently. our principles, our law enforcement work, and the people who carry out that work independently.

As Garland wrote in his letter to the president, Biden, on May 15th, the committee's needs, both these committees, oversight and judiciary, the two gyms, are plainly insufficient to outweigh the deleterious effect that production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future.

I therefore, this is Merrick Garland to the president, respectfully request that you assert executive privilege over the subpoenaed recordings. I also request that you make a protective assertion of executive privilege with respect to any other materials responsive to the subpoenas that have not already been produced. Sincerely, Merrick Garland,

Attorney General of the United States and Joe Biden and his White House team took that recommendation from the Office of Legal Counsel the way they should, the OLC, and his own Merrick Garland, attorney general, and asserted executive privilege over to prevent, to prevent as a barrier, the audio recordings of Joe Biden's interview. Again, so when you're debating these things with your friends and family on note cards or written in your palm,

the transcript is fully available and public. You wanna slice and dice that all you want, but what they want is the audio because they wanna do some sort of deep fake ad campaign for Donald Trump using the voice of Joe Biden at a moment when maybe he could remember something, you know, maybe about his son who passed, Bo Biden, and being taken too soon from this earth under brain cancer circumstances or something about the

war that was going on or some rumination by Joe Biden at a particular moment, and they want to embarrass him. There's no role in this. The reason I said, remember this is about Joe Biden when he was the former vice president after he left office, is that how could this possibly be grounds for impeachment? Jim Jordan and James Comer said, we need this information. It's legitimate and it's related to our fact finding about whether we should draw up articles of impeachment. Oh my God, I've been hearing about articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, anybody else in his administration, almost since the guy took office as paybacks and retaliation

for their fearless leader being indicted four times with 91 original felony counts. That's all this is. They don't pass any legislation that helps the average American with their pocketbook or issues around their kitchen table. They're just busy trying to go after Hunter Biden, using revenge porn, showing his junk, stealing his laptop, participating in the stealing of Joe Biden's daughter's diary and trafficking of it,

or now, you know, trying for the last year, unsuccessfully to impeach Joe Biden. I love cooking and it's just a great way to unwind after a long busy day. But going food shopping isn't always easy or in the cards and getting all the ingredients is super time consuming. And so I love meal kits. But the problem with meal kits is that they usually just have a recipe and you do their recipe and what do their recipe

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Legal AF for up to 25 free meals and make sure you use the promo code LegalAF so they know we sent you. Thanks so much. You can only, let me just do a quick tutorial, not for my audience, but for the Republicans. You can only impeach for high crimes and misdemeanors that were committed while the person had the office. In this case, the office, and I would say the office of the president. I think that you can't go back in time and start doing an impeachment proceeding about eight at 10 years ago when Joe Biden was vice president and worse after he left the vice

presidency and was working at an institute at the University of Delaware or Pennsylvania. And it certainly doesn't, it isn't high crimes and misdemeanors for the president about stuff he did eight years ago after he left office after serving this country for 46 years. So that's all a ruse. That's a canard. That is BS, okay? And it's been called out now by Merrick Garland and by Joe Biden by asserting executive privilege.

But this whole debate, you know, some of the papers just reported it as, well, it went to committee and in the two committees for the Judiciary Committee, they very dryly like a C-SPAN presentation. It was 18 to 15 to vote out of committee, the resolution to hold Merrick Garland in contempt, despite the fact that there's been an assertion

of executive privilege and no judge would ever find him in contempt of Congress because there's now an executive privilege assertion that's been asserted, and he's been instructed not to provide it. That's not happening. We know the law in the DC election interference cases and in DC courts, and then they'll go on to say,

well, and the Comer presided over an oversight committee. It came out of committee 24 to 20, but that just wallpapers over the food fight led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who attacked a representative from Texas, a Democratic representative of Texas, Representative Crockett, about her appearance and talked about her eyelashes as apropos of nothing.

Let's play that clip. I'd like to know if any of the Democrats on this committee are employing Judge Mershon's daughter Please tell me what that has to do with mayor Garland. Is she a porn star? Oh Goldman. That's right. He's advising Okay Do you do you know what we're here for? You know we're here about AG. I don't think you know what you're here for. Well you don't want to talk about it.

I think your fake eyelashes are messing up. Hold on, hold on. Order Mr. Chairman. That's beneath even you. That's beneath even you. Order. I do have a point of order, and I would like to move to take down Ms. Greene's words.

That is absolutely unacceptable. How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person. Are your feelings hurt? Move her words down. Oh, oh, girl, baby, girl. Oh, really? Don't even play with me.

Baby, girl, I don't think so. We are gonna move, and we going to take your words down. I second that motion. So, so who will have the details? Ms. Green agrees to strike her words. I believe she needs to apologize. No, no, no. Hold on. Then after Mr. Perry's going to be recognized, then Ms. Green.

I'm not apologizing. Well, then, you're not striking your words. I am not apologizing. Now let's go. Come on, guys. Why don't you debate me? I am not apologizing. Come on guys. Why don't you debate me? Mr. Chairman, the minority. You're not, you don't have enough intelligence.

Chair recognizes Mr. Perry. Okay, move to strike the ladies' words. I would like to order. That's two requests to strike. That's two requests to strike. Oh, they cannot take the words. There's another motion to strike the ladies' words. I would like to strike the ladies' words as well. Order. I would like to strike the ladies' words again. That's two requests to strike. That's two requests to strike. Oh, they cannot take the words. If there's another motion to strike her words again, please get your members under control.

Here's the correct, the correct apology. Ms. Green, do you ask unanimous, do you agree to unanimous consent to strike your words? I repeat again for the second time. Yes, I'll strike my words, but I'm not apologizing. Without objection, without objection. Not apologizing. Mr. Chair, point of order. Who's? It's me. Ms. Crockett. I'm just curious, just to better understand your

ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct? A what now? Chairman, I make a motion to strike those words. I don't think that's a part of it. I'm trying to find clarification on what quality. Chairman, motion to strike those words. I had no idea what you just said. We're not gonna do this.

Look, you guys earlier literally just- You just voted to do it. God did it first, so you don't have to- You just voted to do it. I'm trying to get clarification. Calm down. No, no, no, because this is what y'all do. So I'm trying to get clarification. I can't hear you with your yelling.

Calm down. No, don't tell me to calm down because y'all talk noise and then you pay attention. So there you have it. And then the fight broke out as you heard part of it there. The fight broke out because, you know, there's a congressional record of everything that's said. And if things need to be removed from the record that are embarrassing or distasteful, you know, everybody has to agree to that.

Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene was willing to remove her words from the record so that, you know, five, 10, 15, 100 years from now, nobody would know that she said that unless you were following the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF and YouTube, because it'll still exist there, but not in the official congressional record. She was willing to retract her words of attacking the appearance of one of her fellow members of the House, but she wasn't willing to apologize for it. And AOC rightly said, that's not good enough.

That was disgusting. You're not supposed to do that. We have rules of decorum in the House. But I know back 150 years ago, 130 years ago, one House member took out a cane and beat another House member, almost to death on the floor of Congress, but I thought

we were beyond those days. I didn't think you'd go after people. Why don't you go after people for their ethnicity or their religion or their sexuality or lack of sexuality or gender or whatever it's going to be? Is that where we're going now? You've got to draw the line somewhere. And even Comer, it was like, can you feel like, what now? What's happening now?

Oh my God. Wake up, Comer. Your party is on fire and not in a good way. We'll continue to follow what goes on next, but let me give you my prediction. Executive privilege, properly asserted by the President of the United States on recommendations and advice of the Office of Legal Counsel and now adopted by the and recommended by his attorney general. That will give complete cover because it's a proper assertion, even if it's an improper assertion. The President is asserted and there is reasonable reliance by the attorney general on that assertion of executive privilege to remove any willfulness in his violation of a subpoena of Congress, then in effect is ineffective.

If they try to get the Department of Justice, so here's the good news, Congress can't on its own go sue Merrick Garland in a court of law. At best, they can make a recommendation to the Department of Justice that they bring a contempt of Congress action against Merrick Garland, headed by the Department of Justice, headed by Merrick Garland. That is not going to happen. Not when the department, following the advice of the Office of Legal Counsel and the president, assertion of executive privilege, said he doesn't have to produce the audio of Biden's testimony. So it ends there.

It won't leave the house. It won't get out of the starting blocks. It won't be filed, right, at all. So we won't have to worry about a court. But even if the Department of Justice decided to do it, and they won't, or open up a special counsel, but they won't, no judge in the DC court system, either at the trial level or the appeal level, would ever find Merrick Garland in contempt. So why are we talking about it? Because the MAGA

Congress are trying to use it as a campaign strategy to get themselves and Donald Trump re-elected. I don't think it's effective. I think it'll backfire. I don't think this is what the average or even any American wants to hear about so close to an election. They want to hear about things that matter to them, how the economy is doing well for them, how the infrastructure and other major investments have paid off for them or will pay off for them in the future, how education reform will pay off for them in the future, how clean water and clean air and energy reform will pay off for them in the future, how they don't have bridges and tunnels collapsing around them any longer, how their road system isn't collapsing around them any longer, how inflation is trending

down, how the ability to have money in retirement is trending up, how Social Security has been saved and healthcare has been reaffirmed as a right in America. That's what people care about at the end of the day when they're voting. That's what I believe. And I'll continue to believe that right here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. We do that show on Wednesdays and Saturdays

at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. We pull together and curate the top stories of the intersection of law and politics, just like this one. Boy, right in the middle, smack dab in the middle of law and politics. And now you know why we call it in the middle, smack dab in the middle of law and politics. And now you know why we call it Legal AF. And if you don't join us 8 p.m. Eastern time on this YouTube channel.

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