Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Popok GIVES URGENT Legal Update Ahead of Trump Taking Office

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Legal AF's Popok provides an urgent live briefing to our audience on late-breaking events concerning Trump's criminal cases and answers questions too! Tonight, Popok will address: (1) Trump's trial court and appeal court efforts to block Friday's criminal court sentencing for his crimes including a new emergency Order denying the block, and discusses if the Supreme Court will intervene to bail him out again; and (2) Trump's coordinated efforts to try to block the imminent release to the American Public of Special Counsel Jack Smith's magnum opus 2 volume 500+ page report outlining Trump's criminality, and Judge Cannon's effort to bail him out, again, with a new emergency order, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Three Day Blinds: For their buy 1 get 1 50% off deal, head to https://3DayBlinds.com/LEGALAF Rocket Money: Let Rocket Money reach your financial goals faster by going to https://rocketmoney.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 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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Thank you for joining PO-POK Live regular programming Tuesday nights, 8pm Eastern time in the Midas Touch Network. As I've said, I'm going to answer questions. I'm going to give answers. I'm going to take no prisoners. It's time for PO-POK Live. Thank you for being here. We've got an amazing audience. I already took a look on the way in, sort of at the gate. We had, you know, we're pushing close to a thousand people to get started. So I'm hoping this is becoming a regular part of your life, especially on a news day like this. I gotta tell you, I am exhausted because of how many hot takes I had to do for the network and

for Legal AF, the YouTube channel, on these fast-breaking stories involving Donald Trump. And I'm not even done. I'm gonna catch you all up today. For those that weren't able to see the hot takes, I'm gonna do it in one neat package about 45 minutes in length with your help and I'm going to answer questions I got a fair number I say about a hundred questions that were in my blue sky at MS Pope Park That's where I'm doing my work now blue sky In the comment section and then here in the in the live chat Which I started to participate in a lot of it is sitting around what is going on with?

Eileen Cannon who's obviously trying out for a role on the United States Supreme Court. And I got four things on my mind today, and most of these are right at the minute, right up to the minute here. New York sentencing, what is going on with Friday's sentencing of Donald Trump? There was an emergency hearing, there was filings, Donald Trump had two different courts try to evaluate whether he's going to be able to stop his sentencing on the 34 felony count conviction this Friday, January 10th, yes or no, he got a new order from an emergency duty judge in the first department, the Appellate Division First Department.

I like to call it the Manhattan Appeals Court on Madison Avenue. I am a member. I do know this judge. Judge or justice, I'll tell you what happened in the New York sentencing. Short answer, as of right now, Donald Trump is 0-2 and he's going to be sentenced on Friday. We'll talk more about that next. Then special counsel report.

I would say two-thirds of the comments in my blue sky of questions that they wanted answered had to do with Eileen Cannon. Who, what, where, why, where does she get the balls? Why isn't Judge Chutkin involved in all of this? Does she have the power or jurisdiction to do it? And what are you talking about, Popak? Eileen Cannon just entered an emergency stay order to stop the public release of the two-volume special counsel report, which I predict is going to be close to a thousand pages or more, including appendices and attachments, which he's required by law to prepare and to provide to his boss, the Attorney General of the United States, who's obligated by law to release it to the American people if it's in the public interest. What could be more in the public interest than the wrap up of this investigation and

the findings of the special counsel? I don't know. I spent a considerable amount of time having to wade through Robert Herr's report about poor Joe Biden having a couple of boxes in his garage of leftover vice president records. Why don't I get to see Mar-a-Lago? Why don't I get to see Espionage Act? Why don't I get to see DC election interference analysis by the departing special counsel? I should. Will we? Is Cannon's order regular? Is it irregular? Will it be vacated or overturned? And what's the 11th circuit? Her bosses, the appellate court who sit in Atlanta, what are they gonna do about it?

I'm gonna break that down for you. I didn't realize, moving to Rudy Giuliani for a minute, I didn't realize there were stages of insanity. I knew there were stages of grief. I did not realize there were stages of insanity. Whatever that last stage in is, that's where Rudy Giuliani is right now. Or as his lawyer, his own lawyer said, he just received the

economic equivalent of the death penalty in a contempt hearing before Judge Lyman, a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump, about him playing fast and loose with his discovery or information exchange obligations to turn over information to Ruby Freeman and Shane Moss, those mother-daughter election workers from Fulton County, Georgia, horribly doxed and defamed and tormented by Rudy Giuliani. And that's not the only contempt hearing that he's going to be in this week or an order. Friday, while his buddy Donald Trump is hopefully getting sentenced, Rudy Giuliani is going to appear before another judge in DC on another contempt hearing arising out of the same case. Interested? Stay here. You're going to hear more. And

then I never thought I'd put this sentence together, at least not about Donald Trump. Greenland, Panama, and Canada. What do they have in common? Well, apparently they are, Donald Trump is salivating over all of them and believes that he can take them over by force because it's in America's military and economic best interest to do so, except they're all allies or a protectorate of an ally. We'll throw Denmark in there. And he really can't do that. So is he trolling as one of my producers said to me

on the way in, is this a legitimate foreign policy? How is he conducting foreign policy when he's not even the president yet? And what is Don Jr. doing walking around in Greenland with a make Greenland great again hat? I didn't realize Greenland wasn't great. I thought it was pretty great without Donald Trump and Don Jr. there. And while they're doing all that, who's running interference?

Captain Crazy, Ambassador Chaos, Elon Musk. I'm going to catch you up on all that as well. Welcome to PO-POK Live. Sometimes I pause waiting for my co-anchor. Then I realize, no, no, this is the show where I'm unleashed. I don't have a co-anchor. And here we go. All right, so let me dive right in.

Again, I thank you for being here. It's a new show. It's already, I mean, let's be frank, we're doing well because of you guys. There's no other way to put it. And I had an idea to do this show with the with the suits the brothers They said yeah, let's do that. Let's try pop pop live and through the new year and thank you for being here Let's let me talk about New York sentencing. I practiced in New York as people know I practiced in the courtrooms And I'm gonna be talking about right now in the New York sentencing

There were a lot of updates I had to do today because this was such a fast-moving story. Really starts on Friday or so when Justice Murchon of the New York Supreme Court, just to be confusing, that's our trial-level court in New York, not the highest court. We call the highest court, just to be confusing, in New York the Court of Appeals. So anybody that's on the Supreme Court in New York is a trial judge. So the trial judge did what we thought he was going to do. He denied the second motion that Donald Trump

had filed to try to kick his, not his indictment, his convictions. Throw him in the trash. Who cares with 12 fair-minded jurors had to say 12-0 in New York and a convicted of 34 counts? Throw him in the trash. Who cares with 12 fair-minded jurors had to say 12-0 in New York and a convicted of 34 counts? Throw him in the trash. I won the presidency again. That's my prize.

Don't I get that? No. And so Judge Murchon denied the second motion to dismiss. It was on what we call justice grounds, claiming that the judge should toss the convictions in the trash under principles of justice. But then he didn't meet any of the factors that are appropriate for that analysis.

We call that motion a Clayton motion. Judge analyzed it, agreed with the people of the state of New York, in this case, the Manhattan district attorney's office, and denied the motion. And then in the same order, one fell swoop, he addressed sentencing. And good news, bad news, he agreed with me. Not, I mean, not literally. He didn't go, and Popak was right. He agreed with my, what I was hoping, my hopes and dreams, that the sentencing would happen before the inauguration.

I said, there's plenty of time. What are we waiting for? Let's go. I thought we were going to get these orders during Christmas. And he said, yes, January the 10th, I'm going to do it. I'm like, great. I was on the edge of my seat. And then he popped my balloon and everybody else's because he tipped his hand and said,

he was inclined to not impose a jail sentence on Donald Trump. He was gonna impose what we call, it's a unique thing in New York called a unconditional discharge. And it's about as bad as it sounds. It's a no conditions, like not even pick up garbage on the side of the road, like nothing. Like no jail time, no probation, no community service,

no deferred prison sentence, nothing. And he said he's willing to have his mind changed. I was like, yeah, okay. California has a version of this, not New York. It's called a tentative ruling. Where I've walked into California courtrooms to argue one of my cases. And the judge says, all right, here's the tentative ruling. You can pick it up up here. And then change my mind.

And he has the whole ruling, or she has the whole ruling written out. And it may be against you. You're like, oh, god. And then you've got to oral argue your way, hopefully, to a better place. York doesn't usually do that. The only reason I think the judge tipped his hand

is because he anticipated that Donald Trump would run off to appellate courts and get really excited about the sentence. And he wanted him to know, listen, you're not going to get jail time. I did my own hot take where I encouraged the Manhattan DA not to take that and to do a cross appeal and ask for jail time, although I'm not

sure they have the balls or the brass to do that at this point. In any event, that's what kicked this whole thing off. We anticipated that Donald Trump would make an appeal off of Friday, or some sort of appeal. And now we got it. In the morning, all sorts of things started firing out on Monday and Tuesday. First thing he did is he filed a motion with Justice Mershon and said, you have no jurisdiction. Your jurisdiction has been completely divested because of the immunity decision, which was odd for me to hear because that's a reversal from Donald Trump's lawyer's prior position, which is immunity did not apply to any

part of the Stormy Daniels hush money cover-up conspiracy, which happened before he was president. The only thing that happened after he's president was the payback of the money, right? The payoff was before the presidency, the payback was after. But that's not really a conspiracy, like how he Venmo'd Michael Cohen. I mean, that's not, you know, I'm being facetious, but that's not the crime, right? And so I thought, all right, well, that's not going to be any big deal. And they conceded that. And they said in their papers originally that the only issue they had was over some discrete pieces of evidence that had been presented to the jury like Hope Hicks, the press secretary,

and Madeline Westerhout, who ran his agenda when he was president, his personal assistant kind of thing, and some testimony by Michael Cohen and some tweets by Donald Trump, like very discrete pieces of evidence that they were arguing violated the Supreme Court's immunity decision because it was about his official conduct. A, it's not about his official conduct.

It's about his coverup of a sex act that he didn't want the American people or his wife to know about. So you got that going on. So that was their position. And we did hot takes on that. I was like, well, somebody better wake up grandpa, wake up Donald Trump and tell him that his lawyers are not taking the position that he's immune. Now they're taking the position that immunity, this presidential elect immunity, which is apparently according to them going on right

now, which is not a thing, And presidential transition immunity and president immunity, all they just kept using the I word like a four letter word. And they told the judge, you have no jurisdiction. You've been divested. Immunity, immunity has to go to the appellate court. And also the timing is wrong. The whole immunity decision by the Supreme Court, which we all hate for good reason,

The whole immunity decision by the Supreme Court, which we all hate for good reason, says that while a person was president, if they committed wrongful conduct, a court, when there's a prosecution, has to analyze at the beginning of the case whether any of this conduct falls into three buckets. Core constitutional presidential conduct, which is absolutely privileged, like how he uses the pardon power because that's in the Constitution,

or is it official conduct, like it's on his job description for president, stretched to its outer boundaries, but that's a rebuttable presumption that can be rebutted by the prosecutors because that can verge rebutted by the prosecutors because that can verge into criminal conduct. So it doesn't get automatic immunity, but it's a presumption of immunity. And then the third bucket is just good old fashioned, private bad criminal conduct, right?

Doing bad, raping somebody in the White House. Let's just use that as an example, right? That doesn't fall into the first two buckets. But that's only the analysis that you use as Judge Murchon reminded everybody in his ruling when the person was president. This person was not president when the core facts of the conspiracy were committed. In fact, that was the reason he did the conspiracy, to try to become president and beat Hillary Clinton. He wasn't president when he was indicted. He wasn't president when he was, the trial took place. He wasn't president when he was convicted, and he's not president when he's going to be sentenced on Friday. So why are we talking about immunity? So the judge denied

their stay request to the trial judge, which that's Monday. Fast forward today, in the morning, they filed two pieces of paper, both with the appellate court. This is what I refer to for the purposes of PO-POC Live as the Manhattan Appellate Court. It's the state court's second intermediary. It's like right below the Court of Appeals, it sits over Manhattan and deals with all things that come out of like the Manhattan Supreme Court. So they run in. And I said in a prior hot take, they're going to run in on an emergency basis. And whoever happens to be the emergency duty justice that day, one person is the person they're going hit. They're gonna have to argue in front of, not the entire panel. So they filed what's called an Article 78,

which is a highfalutin way of saying they sued the judge and Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA, for going outside their jurisdiction or outside their duties. It's a unique thing in New York called an Article 78 proceeding. And you literally are suing them. And at the same time, which is sort of like an appeal, same time they filed an appeal. So I got two appellate-like procedures going on parallel,

and they ran in, knocked on the door in Manhattan on Madison Avenue and to find what judge was sitting there with an emergency application to stay Friday's sentencing. And they found a judge who was assigned on that day. And so they get this particular judge, Ellen Gessmer, who has been on the bench for a while. And when she's not doing emergency applications, we'll do a little legal AF law school breakout here for a minute, she sits as a justice with the other five people when they hear full-blown on the merits appeals. But everyone rotates in that justice group and they each have like a day they have to hear emergency applications on their own. So they ran in there. It was Todd Blanch, literally Todd Blanch,

and Stephen Wu on behalf of the Manhattan DA. And they had an hour long hearing in her chambers. And then some of the press was there. We have some of the reporting related to it. She denied the motion for stay. She did not find that the immunity argument prevailed. She didn't find that there was president-elect immunity. She didn't think he'd be interfered with. One of their arguments was, and this will wrap into our other topics today,

Donald Trump's just too busy and can't be interfered with. He's just too busy in his presidential election transition duties. Really? It seems like he has plenty of time on his hands to bash Greenland, Denmark, Canada, and Panama and take them on and threaten war. He has plenty of times of attacking Judge Murchon in a late night posting in which he called him conflicted, an animal, and a criminal. Alvin Bragg, the same thing, talking about lawfare. He's got enough time to like host people at Mar-a-Lago and play golf and have dinner dances at Mar-a-Lago. So why can't he sit for a virtual Zoom sentencing

on Friday? And the other reason we want the sentencing on Friday, and he should too, is because it concludes the criminal case without the sentencing that last shooter dropped. He can't really take a full appeal. So if he really wanted to appeal, which he doesn't, he would get sentenced. Now what Donald Trump is afraid of and why he's now O and 2 trying to get judges to stop the sentencing is he doesn't want Justice Mershon to do a full sentencing hearing on Friday

where he recites all of the criminal conduct of Donald Trump that's been proven in front of a jury. He doesn't want to be wrapped on the knuckles about all the times that he's violated orders of the court and were found in contempt. He doesn't want to hear about his criminal conduct and how he's treated the court and all those outlandish things. Donald Trump just wants to take a victory lap and party, party, party at Mar-a-Lago between now and the 20th of January. And as I've said in prior hot takes, there's a cold rain, hard rain falling on Donald Trump in the last couple of weeks. E. Jean Carroll, he loses the appeal related to the 5 million

on the way to the $83 million loss for having sexually abused her and defamed her. Now he's losing here on the sentencing. We'll talk about the blocking of the Jack Smith reports in a minute, but it hasn't been a good couple of weeks for Donald Trump. And he doesn't want to go through a sentencing, even though he knows that the sentence will be no jail time.

And so that's why they're fighting so hard. Now, now that Justice Gessmer has not only ruled against Donald Trump and said, no, I'm not staying Friday, not only that, she set a briefing schedule for the full hearing in front of the panel. We call it the merits panel. They get down to the merits of any of his arguments. She's not doing it on an emergency application. But she said, listen to these dates. She wants the brief, she wants the motion heard in full before the full panel on the 21st of January. See I like that. It means Justice

Gessmer has both a clock and a watch and a sense of humor because she knows Donald Trump's a little bit tied up on the 20th of January being inaugurated but on the 21st his lawyers should be free. I don't know what lawyers those are going to be. I guess it'll continue to be Todd Blanch, and John Sauer, and Emil Bové, although they're all in line for promotions to the Department of Justice and Solicitor General's Office. At some point, Donald Trump's going to have to get off the taxpayer's dime

and go hire new lawyers. But I guess for now, they can still do it until they get confirmed. So 21st is the hearing. And then she set a briefing schedule that gives Donald Trump another brief and the Manhattan DA another brief, but that'll be the full panel. But that's after he's already been sentenced. So they've already ruled by

not ruling. And so that's that. Now what else could Donald Trump do? Just to keep this thing moving. He could try to lob a motion for stay on an emergency basis to the court of appeals, which are the bosses of the first department, could try that. It's a very, you know, that's a needle that's very hard to thread because of the grounds that you need to skip a step,

especially now that he's lost here. But he could try it. He's, listen, rules don't matter to this guy. He makes it up as it goes along. So he could try to lob something in. You might see me reporting on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, or might as touch about another attempt at the court of appeals level.

Could he try to send in another emergency application to the full panel before the 10th? No, I mean, we're already here Tuesday night. He's sentenced 10 AM Friday morning. So he's running out of time here. Now let's just throw it on the table because I know it's coming up in the chats. What about the United States Supreme Court? Okay. Could he be drafting right now and filing later tonight after our live show and or filing tomorrow an emergency writ with or application with the United States Supreme Court to have

them enforce their immunity decision and bail him out from sentencing on Friday. He could. He could. First stop on that train, I believe, is going to be Sonia Sotomayor because she is the duty judge, the emergency judge on the Supreme Court for everything in New York. She denies that. Does she turn it over to the full panel? Full nine? Maybe. Maybe. Is there four votes to take that emergency application and five to

grant it? I don't know about that. And everybody knows I have a jaundiced view, rightly so, of the United States Supreme Court and Roberts and the rest and the MAGA right. They have bailed them out, obviously, in more ways than I care to just continue to discuss, in historic ways, overturning our balance of power, our checks and balance system, our three co-equal branches of government, all destroyed by the immunity decision. We don't have three co-equal branches any longer. We've got a Leviathan giant presidency that floats over the other two branches. That's Roberts. That will be written in his obituary and in law school coursework in

the future. But they haven't bailed him out every time when it comes to immunity. Like they could have bailed him out on the E. Jean Carroll Sybil case when before that case went to trial and they refused, right? They could have bailed them out on like the gag order that Justice Mershon put in place and they have refused that a number of times. I'm not sure there's that much appetite for the United States Supreme Court

to touch the third rail again when it comes to immunity and start mucking around in their immunity decision again and try to apply it to a non-president during the crime, non-president during the trial and indictment, non-president during the conviction and non-president during the sentencing. I don't think that's what they think their immunity decision was made for. But the question I was asked here that I'm answering is, could he try to go there?

So yeah, so don't be shocked if I do a report on it. It's just that I think it's pretty much unlikely that that's going to happen. Let me now flip gears, switch gears as they say, and let me go to the special council report. Cause I think that's definitely on everybody's. Let me just take a quick look at our chat. That's the nice thing about doing this live.

I told my producers, we gotta always do this live. I just wanna take questions. I just want it, see me scrolling. There you are, there's everybody. Okay, there we are You know you can tell it's live. Look at my notes. Look what I'm working off of I'm without a net here everybody Alright, so let's it's live TV. Let's do it special counsels report I did a hot take. Oh, I did a couple of them in the last couple of weeks

Demanding that Merrick Garland without haste publish what I thought was going to be over a 500 page or more special counsel final report that he's required by law to prepare and provide to the attorney general and that the attorney general should under law find that the public interest outweighs any other consideration and publish them. It can redact and black out a line here or two. But you know I got the Robert Herve 400 pages of BS about Joe Biden you know at the exactly wrong time during his candidacy which I'm sure helped tank Joe Biden you know and we might even have this Trump problem right now had that not come out but that's for another day in another PO-PAC Live. So I got that, you know, I had

to hear about Weiss's special reports and prosecutions and all against Hunter Biden. Isn't it remarkable that the only person that was facing jail of all the things that happened of all the special counsel is Hunter Biden? So crazy. But let's go back to special counsel reports. So I was campaigning for that, beating the drum related to that. Now, I did recall that even though it's not a statutory requirement, that under DOJ guidelines, they have gotten into a habit. I think it's a bad habit to turn over the draft report

in confidence, confidentiality, privacy, to the target. So Robert did turn over the report to Joe Biden's private counsel. And we just learned that Jack Smith did the same thing. I said, Jack Smith was done with that report around Christmas. And I was right. I thought it was already up with Merrick Garland and I was right. It's just this extra step that they took and apparently Todd Blanch and a couple of others got into a room,

a closed private room in DC without any electronic devices or copying, you know, ability to copy other than writing things out by hand and were given access to this report. It's two volumes. I think it's gonna be like a thousand pages more, and they saw it from January 3rd to January 6th. We just learned that the last day or so. Doesn't surprise me, but I don't know why we have to be so gentlemanly and so kind. That's one of our problems as a party, but we did that. And of course, Donald Trump outmaneuvered, at least at this moment, Jack Smith. How?

Because from having reviewed it, they took enough notes that they could draft a 15 page letter. But they choreographed this whole thing and they used either willingly as a pawn or as a pawn who got duped, a federal judge down in Florida, we all know by the name

of Eileen Cannon. And what was the orchestrated Kabuki theater here? They were going to, Donald Trump is no longer a party to any of the Mar-a-Lago cases. Remember that Donald Trump got dismissed by Jack Smith two or three weeks ago after the election. Both from the appeal that's up at the 11th circuit on Mar-a-Lago, we'll talk about that in a moment, and from the indictment, and from the whole Eileen Cannon case. Two of the co-conspirators, Walt Nauta, the valet butler guy,

and Carlos de Alviera, the maintenance worker, are still in the case at the 11th Circuit, but Donald Trump's not. And he's not in the Chucking case either, because that got dismissed as well. But here's the choreography. They wrote a letter to Merrick Garland, Donald Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanch and Emile Boving, 14 pages. And they outlined all the reasons, all wrong, by the way, about why the special report, special counsel's report should not be published. And I'll give it to you in a nutshell. And you'll see why Cannon gets

brought in here as a co-conspirator herself unwittingly or not. Their argument that prevailed with Judge Cannon is that the special counsel as a position, as an office, was illegally and unconstitutionally appointed by the attorney general in violation of the Constitution because there was no Senate confirmation and that he was funded inappropriately under other apportionment and other provisions of the Constitution because Congress didn't properly authorize the $20 million or so that Jack Smith spent. Both of those things are wrong and completely in violation of over 200 years of precedent when it comes to special counsel, special prosecutors, independent counsel,

whatever you're going to call it. He's properly funded under a congressional authorization that dates back to 1980, sorry 1996, and every court that's ever looked at it, including the United States Supreme Court, has said that the Attorney General has the power to appoint himself or herself inferior officers and attorneys under the office, which includes special counsel. But that's not what Eileen Cannon found, and she dismissed the indictment down in Mar-a-Lago against Donald Trump. So their argument is he's illegitimate, the special counsel, his indictment was illegitimate, his work was illegitimate and rogue, and therefore, follow this logic, the special counsel reports, closeout memos, are illegitimate and invalid and should never see the light of day. That's primarily their argument. It's a lot of immunity and presumption of innocence. They don't

mention the statutes that deal with this particular area where it's already this the Congress has already balanced this issue out already. It's just their own made up law. And so they draft 15 pages, but now they got to figure out how to get this thing published. How do they get their 15 pages out into the public? And they probably thought, well, Donald Trump could post it on social media. Oh, I got an idea. We send it to Merrick Garland. And at the same time, we give it to Walt Nauta and Carlos de Alvarez lawyers. And we tell them, we instruct them because

we're in control to attach it as an exhibit to an emergency motion they're going to file. We're going to make them file, we probably wrote it for them, with Judge Cannon and at the 11th Circuit asking for an emergency stay that she should block the publication by Merrick Garland to the public of these reports because as you found Judge, he's invalid, unconstitutional, illegal, illegally funded and the like. You get it, Judge, you're the only one who gets it. And so to answer a question from some of my Blue Sky questions, why do they go to Canada and not Chuckin? Why isn't Chuckin in charge of her end of the report? Because they got a federal judge to issue a block. Now I have another argument, and so that was

attached. I want to just complete the thought. That was attached. So now I have a copy, you have a copy. Everybody got to see in MAGA world Donald Trump's position. What the ruling by Cannon was, then I'll tell you after the break, why I think that ruling is invalid itself. And she doesn't have jurisdiction to enter this order. I'll leave that for after the break. But right before the break, let me tell you

that she entered what she's calling a temporary stay, just enough time for the 11th Circuit, her bosses, to make their ruling on the emergency application made there, because it's up at the 11th Circuit about whether she was right or wrong, thumbs up or thumbs down, about the dismissal of the case because Jack Smith is invalid or a figment of our imagination.

He doesn't exist. So she said, I'm going to grant the stay, and it will last for three days after the 11th circuit finally rules on the motion, because really this is a stay that should have came out of the 11th circuit. They've so far at the time of this live recording, they haven't ruled yet. So she has right now it is blocked. She blocked any publication or distribution or leaking or mentioning of the contents of

it to anybody outside the Department of Justice. Okay? So now we've got a federal judge. I'll go over whether I think that's appealable itself and whether she's justified and has jurisdiction over this issue or not. You know where I'm going with that. And then the 11th Circuit of course has to rule. I'm going to cover that, what the 11th Circuit is likely to do hopefully before the 20th of January, how Donald Trump can screw all this up if he pardons Walt Nauta and Carlos Steele Vieira, which I'm sure he's going to do hopefully before the 20th of January, how Donald Trump can screw all this up if he pardons Walt Nauta and Carlos Steele Vieira, which I'm sure he's going to do on January 20th, but we still have time left on the clock.

Rudy Giuliani has not only been found in contempt and is about to lose his Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago adjacent condo, but he is gonna be, well, that's definitely happening, but he's on his way now off that loss on a federal judge to Washington, where he has to appear in person in front of Judge Barrell Howell to explain why he's not in contempt for continuing to defame the same two plaintiffs who hold 150 million dollar judgment, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss. Why is he still bashing them on his podcast?

That's not just an idle question. That's a question and a query by the judge, Judge Beryl Howell. What's gonna happen there? He doesn't have any money or he's hiding all of his money. So what could she do? I'll give you a hint. It's a one syllable answer, jail.

I'm gonna talk about that. And then we're gonna go around the globe. It's almost like global AF has already started. Greenland, Denmark, Panama and Canada, they're all on the hit list for Donald Trump. Is he trolling? Is this serious foreign policy? How is he conducting foreign policy at all? He's not even the president.

And what's Elon Musk doing? And is Donald Trump okay with it? Is he is he is he okay with destroying diplomacy with our allies all around the world? I'll cover that and a lot more when popok live returns after this commercial sponsor I may be very open with you on this podcast, but off the air I really do value my privacy. And it's 2025. Are your blinds still from 2005? There is a better way to buy blind shade shutters and drapery, and it's called 3-Day Blinds. They are the leading manufacturer of high quality custom

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Kniffle and of course Saturdays with Ben Mycelis. Let's get back to Cannon. I have a working theory, I'm gonna posit, this is my thought experiment, that Eileen Cannon did not have the jurisdiction to enter that particular order. Let me explain why. And I practiced down there, and I'm a member of the Southern District of Florida. My working theory is she was divested a jurisdiction

to enter an order concerning blocking a report, even if she thinks she's doing it on behalf of Walt Nauta and Carlos de Olvera and not because of Donald Trump, because the case is up on appeal. Trump has been dismissed from the case. She no longer has jurisdiction over anybody named Donald Trump. She no longer, in my view, has jurisdiction over anything related to Carlos de Olvera and Walt Nara because she dismissed the indictment finding that the special counsel was invalid, unconstitutional, illegal. Okay, well then stand by stand

stand and stand your ground lady and it went up on appeal. The jurisdiction now resides and rests with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal. Trial judges don't continue to make decisions about cases that they've dismissed and are up on appeal. Appellate courts make those decisions because they've dismissed the case. So how did she have the, what's the word I'm looking for, brass ones, jurisprudential grounds to grant a block order to block from the American people the special counsel's man statutorily mandated reports. She doesn't. And so if I was the special counsel, I'm sure they're considering this,

is to go after Eileen Catton. And this is not, this would not be her first time that she has violated separation of powers, that she's violated court rules or federal doctrine. She did it twice before in the case and got sanctioned and slapped back or not sanctioned but reprimanded and reversed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, including the chief judge, Dare William Pryor. So I think this could happen again. As soon as I can file a response, which I think the the appellate, we're now up to the point where the Jack Smith, or if it's not Jack Smith, it's just to kind of keep this keep the margins clear here. Jack Smith lateraled the case over to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who sits in Miami.

to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, who sits in Miami. And he has entered an appearance. So it's gonna be him, but Jack Smith's gonna be guiding. And so that U.S. attorney's office is gonna have to argue now to the 11th Circuit, I think, should be arguing, that Judge Cannon's order should be completely ignored. If anybody's gonna enter a stay,

it's only a court that has jurisdiction, and that's the 11th Circuit, and you haven't done that. And the only thing that Jack Smith told Judge Cannon is that there was no intention to release the report before Friday. Friday seems to be a red-letter day around all things Donald Trump. He's going to get sentenced, the Jack Smith reports look like they were going to be published to the public by Merrick Garland. And now we're gonna see what the 11th Circuit does.

I'm not even sure they really have jurisdiction over this particular issue, based on a separation of powers. I don't think, yes, federal courts can interpret the law, but what's the law here? I think they're gonna reverse Eileen Cannon anyway, because she's wrong about dismissing the indictment because the special counsel doesn't exist. So I think they're gonna just they're gonna

now they got to start acting. I think what this will encourage and I've been begging for in the last couple of hot takes is to get the 11th Circuit to get their hair on fire and start issuing an order, a decision in this case and address the emergency application as well, hopefully denying it. And before the 20th of January, because that is the witching hour. That's when everything turns into a pumpkin. Because once Donald Trump gives a pardon to Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oviera, game over. No more parties to a case means no more case. You can't be like, well, they're gone now, but this is what we were going to say. That's called an advisory opinion and that's illegal. So we don't do that. Courts are divested of jurisdiction when parties settle or dismissed

or pardoned. And so we're in a race here. We're race against time. We've always been in a race involving Donald Trump, the special counsel, and Merrick Garland. Unfortunately, we've lost a few of those races for no good reason. And so that's what my fear is as we move towards the 20th of January. I'll keep a close eye on it. Report back here. Let's all meet here. Let's all make a pact now. Make a pinky swear pact. We'll meet here, Midas Touch Network and or Legal AF, the YouTube channel for updates about this 11th Circuit story. Because I think one of the things people enjoy about Legal AF and my work, besides not glowing smoke or sunshine, is that we have the follow-up and the follow-through. We don't leave you hanging. You know, that's the problem

with mainstream media. It's like they'll give you a headline, you'll never hear about it again, because it wasn't interesting. The follow-up is not interesting. The follow-through is not. To me, it's really interesting. And to our audience, of course, it is too. That's the law. I'll draw a line under the special counsel's report. And we're gonna move on now to Rudy Giuliani.

If you guys will be patient for a minute because I didn't really hydrate during my commercial break. Hold on one second, please. Now I'm giving you the inside secrets about co-anchoring a podcast. When the other person's talking, you can take a bathroom break or have a coffee. Can't do that when you do this on your own,

this marathon session of Popak Live. All right, let's move on to Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani, let's just go through the checklist here. Disbarred, lost his bar license in two places, New York and Washington. Indicted in a couple of places, including Arizona and Georgia. An unindicted co-conspirator in the DC election interference case that's no longer with Jack Smith. So he's had some problems. He acted out and got reprimanded and eventually a default judgment against him in DC when Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss sued him and him alone, they settled out with some other people,

for defamation because he kept saying over and over again on places like Fox News and his podcast and other places that they were passing a thumb drive back and forth while they were counting votes. The thumb drive had Biden votes in it and they were illegal. They were working with the Venezuelans. I'm not making this up. This is Sidney Powell's pipe dream. The Venezuelan businessman working with Smartmatic and Dominion were flipping votes from Trump to Biden, and these guys were in on it. These two poor women, lowly paid, if they were paid at all, who just did their civic duty being election workers, talk about a thankless job,

in a giant arena in Fulton County, Georgia, counting votes in 2020, right? And what they were passing back and forth as mother-daughter were breath mints. How do I know that? Because the Georgia Bureau of Investigation cleared them, as did the Secretary of State of Georgia. These are all Republicans, by the way.

And the cybersecurity and infrastructure team with the Feds. And the Feds. So they're innocent, but not to Donald Trump and not to Joe Biden. I mean, I'm sorry, where did that come from? Not to Donald Trump and not to Rudy Giuliani. And they kept running this mixtape, this poorly edited hack job, showing the video running in the wrong direction. Oh, they got a black case under their desk and they're taking that case and inside that case are ballots for Biden and they're shoving them

into the machine. No, that locked case, you run the video the other way, the right way, that's where they put the discarded already counted votes so they don't confuse them and they put them underneath. I've been in an election counting room in Florida. I've watched vote counting, okay, on purpose as a lawyer for one of the parties.

I've watched votes being cast, okay, as a poll watcher. So that's, you lock them away so that they're secure, right? You have a chain of custody over ballots, but they just kept running this fake video and they got attacked, Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss. They got docs, they got violent rhetoric against them. Kill yourself, I'll kill you. Terrible racist comments made against them.

They were in tears, they had to leave their home. And so they sued. And Justice, Judge Barrelhowell, who at the time was the chief judge of the DC court, she defaulted Rudy Giuliani because he violated court orders at least 10 times and refused to turn over any documents in the case. Then he'd go out in the courthouse steps and continue to bash Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss in real time.

It was so bad that the lawyers for them had a printer in the courtroom, just like the one against Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll and they would print out that moment's comments by Rudy Giuliani to present to the jury. So she found against him on liability as a default sanction and then the jury found against him after he even he testified for 148 million dollars. A month or so later, another jury found against Donald Trump for punitive damages on defamation for $83 million. So you see where jury's heads are at. And he's been fighting that judgment ever since. And that judgment has now been, is being executed upon in New York over Rudy Giuliani's assets. And the judge there, who's in charge of enforcing the

creditors rights of the mother-daughter team and their 148 million dollars, has been trying to get the assets turned over from Rudy. And he has been playing fast and loose with his assets. Fast, he won't provide any information or documents or discovery. And they can't do their job. Like, for instance, he gives them the car, the 1980 Mercedes, but it gives them the keys, but not the title. He gives them the keys to the front door of the Manhattan apartment that's worth $4 or $5 million, but not the title, so they can sell it.

And then he fights them about Mar-a-Lago, or the condo near Mar-a-Lago, claiming that he is a Florida resident, and he established his residency before the judgment was recorded on the books, and therefore under a unique Florida law called homestead protection, you can't take my house, because that's my house,

and that's what deadbeat debtors do when they go to Florida to beat out their creditors. Except you have to have your homestead established before the judgment is recorded. And that was the big fight. He refused to turn over documents to show that he had properly established his residency. So they were gonna have another hearing on that. In the meantime, the lawyers who are representing Ruby Freeman and Chamos for free, pro bono, they're not taking any of this money. They filed this contempt motion with Lyman and Giuliani testified twice.

Now at the end of it, the judge said, I'm paraphrasing, he's less concerned about the turnover. He thinks the turnover of the property will sort of get sorted out. He wasn't really that hot and bothered at the moment about whether Rudy was hiding Joe DiMaggio jersey somewhere or watches somewhere. But he did not like at all and said it was absurd how a former bar member was playing so fast and loose with his obligations of turnover documents and records necessary for the other side to have their day in court. In fact, he paraphrased Neil Gorsuch when he

was an appellate court judge and said discovery is not a game, where one party can just try to exhaust the other party by continuing to hide, like in a shell game, information. And so as a penalty, he found Rudy Giuliani in contempt of court and he could have thrown him in jail. He could have fined him, but where's he gonna get the money from at the moment? Because, you know, Rudy, I think they've got a handle on most of the money. He said, I'm going to make, this is what was requested by Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss's lawyers, an adverse inference that you're hiding documents that would not help you about whether you

established your residency in Florida at the right moment in time. Plus there's counter evidence that a day before that he was trying to establish residency in Rhode Island, of all things. So the judge says I'm just going to infer against you, negatively, that you were trying to hide documents because they wouldn't help you. And that is, as his lawyer, as Rudy Giuliani's lawyer put it, that is the death penalty. Because there's no way for him to save the condo in Florida if he can't put on that evidence. And he hasn't put on the evidence,

he hasn't provided it to anybody. So I think it's an appropriate sanction on the adverse inference. Which means Rudy's about, I don't know, a month away from having to turn over the deed to the Mar-a-Lago condo. Now, he can take an appeal. All this is appealable to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and again, continue to delay, delay, delay, and stretch out Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss. They will eventually get $10 or $12 or $13 million from Rudy Giuliani running with interest. And then they can go after his podcast and all of that. Now I got to flip switch gears and talk about the second contempt hearing, not to be confusing, but that's not the only one he's got this week. Friday, Judge Barrell Howell,

former chief judge of the DC Circuit Court, wants to see and has ordered Rudy Giuliani to appear wants to see and has ordered Rudy Giuliani to appear because Rudy, to avoid additional defamation damages, agreed in writing under a consent decree ordered by the judge, meaning a court order, that he would not bash to fame, disparage in any way Ruby Freeman or Shea Moss. Or as the kids say today, he would keep their names out of his mouth. Yeah, except he didn't. And that was a court order. And what do we call in the business? When you violate a court order, it's contempt of court.

It's contumacious, it's contemptuous. It's all of those things. And so in the first week or second week in November, when he was running out of steam and gas on this podcast that he does it nobody watches. Believe me, if he saw 17 18,000 people were watching pop-up live, he would, I don't know what he would do. He doesn't have that many in like a decade, watch his podcast, but he was running out of steam. And all of a sudden, he started started I don't know something some circuit breaker blew in his brain and he

started bashing Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss all over again the thumb drive the float flipping I'm like what is I've seen the I've seen the clips what is going on and who was listening Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss and their lawyers so they filed a motion for contempt, telling the judge he signed an agreement that you ordered that he would not bash them any longer. In return, we agreed not to sue him anymore for more damages.

And he violated it. Judge says, yeah, I wanna see you in court on Friday. So now he's gotta go to court on Friday. Let me, off of getting found in contempt by Judge Lyman in New York in the same week. Let me fast forward and we'll talk about it on Tuesday, PopePak Live next Tuesday. He's getting found in contempt by Judge Barrowhound. She's had it.

She's the same judge that sanctioned him with a default judgment on liability that led to the $148 million judgment. You don't think she's got the you-know-what, the jihones to send him to jail? Because that's all that's left. At least he was lucky. Judge Lyman could make an adverse inference on something and take away his condo.

But Beryl Howell, she knows he doesn't comply. He's constantly a recidivist. He doesn't comply with court orders. He flouts them. He's always in, he's a walking contempt machine. And he has no money. So what do you do when somebody has no money, is violates court orders regularly and abuses the system?

You put them in jail. So I'm not gonna be surprised if Rudy Giuliani doesn't spend a few days in the Federal Detention Center in Washington. We'll have to see. If I were him, I'd bring a toothbrush on Saturday. Now they're already laying the groundwork for, oh poor Rudy. In the New York case, they said, oh he's got a lung condition because I love when he has to, you know, he abuses the memory of 9-11 victims. Oh, he was on the piles in 9-11, he's got a lung condition now.

And he's got a bad knee. Like, you know, they're already manufacturing issues of sympathy, but I'll cover it. I'll cover it both on the MyStutch Network and on LegalAffid, we'll come back and talk about it on Tuesday. So for my final act, for the final act tonight, I'm going to do a quick cover of Greenland, Panama, Canada, and Denmark. And I'm sure everybody's

heard about it already. But Donald Trump doubled down on it again at Mar-a-Lago during this rambling, incoherent, God, if anybody, I assure you there are MAGA voters out there that are regretting having voted for him. And who among them voted for him to try to hostily take over Greenland? Was that on anybody's bingo card at all? Right? Is that gonna help the price of eggs taking over Greenland and it's millions and millions and millions of acres and it's 56,000 people that are used to being on the on the Dutch you know social welfare state yeah they're okay with spending a trillion

dollars to take over Greenland now I thought the same people weren't okay with with any money going to Ukraine or to Israel or anything like that. They're okay with this. That's what they voted for. Or a hostile takeover. What about Canada? What is all the trolling with Canada? He should be satisfied that he helped contribute to the toppling of the Trudeau government.

I mean, he did. I mean, Trudeau has his own problems after so many years in office. But this didn't help. The tariff war on paper, you know, and all of that. And then he keeps calling him like this little buddy patting him on the head, you know, 51st state, ha ha ha, or we're going to take you over. I mean, today at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump actually looked the camera in the eye and the press and said, when they asked him, will you once and for all say here to the

American people that you will not consider using military force to try to take over Panama, which has the canal, and Greenland? He said no I can't commit to that. We're looking at all things. They're very important to America militarily and economically. Oh so that's the new, that's the Trump doctrine? You just take over your ally and your neighbor because it's economically feasible or economically advantageous. That's what you do.

You're not a real estate developer, taking over the bodega next door. This is, you're taking over a sovereign country. That's an ally. You know who talks like that? I know people sometimes get tired, not on our audience, but in general, fascists, dictators, people with little mustaches,

that's who talks about taking over their neighbor. And we know how that ends. So Panama, poor Panama, they're actually a jewel in that area. They've done exceedingly well economically over the last 10 years. They got the Panama Canal back, it's in their own country, since 1999 based on Jimmy Carter signing a Panama Canal Treaty in 1977.

Sounded like we didn't see it coming. Donald Trump probably, who doesn't know a darn thing about American history or our government or how it works, or apparently based on Mar-a-Lago, how simple appliances work. Yeah, so maybe he just learned that we signed a peace treaty in 1977, but that's not my fault. He also probably just learned that the Chinese, oh my God, are investing in infrastructure throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean. Well, maybe if you've visited any of these places, like I've been there on holiday to these places, okay? And you should see the brand spanking shiny new infrastructure, bridges, tunnels, and ports and other things built by the Chinese for these countries, who have been begging for years to have America and American interest invested there, but it just never happened.

And so they turned to the Chinese and the Chinese wanted to get a level of sphere of influence in our backyard. So they were more than happy to build the roads, the bridges of the ports. They're all over the place. I went to, on a baby moon, for those that know, my wife had a, my wife had a baby. My wife had a, definitely had a baby.

We had a baby in June, Francesca, and we went on a baby moon to Antigua, a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place. It is filled with Chinese infrastructure and Chinese yachts and Chinese sailboats and lots, and I talked to the locals about it, lots of Chinese money. Donald Trump just woke up, There's Chinese in Panama. Okay, it's a very important canal in Panama. And a lot of it, the ports there, they did make relationships with China. It's not because America could have made a better bid or a better offer, but they didn't. So they're going to take over a sovereign country of Panama as a result. And you see how Panama is firing back and it's President Molina. Then you've got Greenland, right? We talked about Greenland and Denmark. Denmark and the

royal family is already firing back and trolling Donald Trump. They changed their 500 year old royal coat of arms in the last day to emphasize the polar bear, which is the symbol of Greenland, and then another, I think the ram to symbolize the Faroe Islands, which is also part of a protectorate for Denmark. They changed their coat of arms to show Greenland how much they care about them and to give the middle finger to Donald Trump. They got rid of the three crowns, which was on there for 500 years representing Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and they put the giant polar bear. Then the prime minister, Fredriksen of Denmark, basically said over our dead body,

there's only two ways Greenland's going to go. They're either going to stay with us or they're going to declare independence, which they've had a right to do since 2009, I think, and that's up to them and not up to us. And we have our own relate. We control their foreign policy, Denmark does, but Greenland controls everything else. They have their own prime minister, they have their own legislature and all of that

for their 56,000 people there. And so that's not happening. I know Donald Trump covets it and he's like salivating over it. And America has had the idea to go and take over Greenland since the 1950s and because of the melting of the polar ice caps there's now a potential navigable maritime lane like a canal up there it's not a substitute for the Panama Canal right that's what we're

gonna do we're gonna send things through the polar ice cap. That's gonna be good for egg prices. Again, whose idea was this? This was not a plank in his campaign, I assure you. And when MAGA, MAGA MAGA wakes up, they're gonna find that. So, do I think it's trolling? I think it's Donald Trump trying to do maximum impact to affect foreign policy the cheapest way possible through mean tweets and press conferences and Sending Don Jr. To Greenland with make Greenland great again hats. I mean look how much Transactional currency he's getting from mean tweets about the conducting foreign policy through it Which yes to answer a question from the chat, he's not allowed to do under the Logan Act and other acts.

He's not allowed to be a president when he's not a president. But between him and Captain Chaos, ambassador of chaos, Elon Musk, who's busy trying to interfere with our allies and their elections, and always in, why is it always in support of the far right slash fascist parties in those countries?

In Germany, in England. Why is he sticking his big fat nose in those other countries? So he's either rogue, Donald Trump has no control over him, or he's doing it because Donald Trump wants him as a diversionary tactic to do these things, while Donald Trump is focused on getting his one big beautiful reconciliation package through Congress with all of his crazy domestic policies

nobody wants. I think it's a little bit of that. The more we spend time talking about the trolling around Greenland, Copenhagen, I mean, Denmark and Panama and Canada, the last time we're spending looking at Pete Hegseth as being an obscenely unqualified Pentagon nominee or RFK Jr. or Tulsi Gabbard or the rest or the head of the Office of Management and Budget and the rest. So you know he's crazy like a fox and we've known that

forever so we shouldn't be duped. Keep your eye on the prize. We're going to focus for the next four years on the intersection of law and politics, which is going to be a supremely hot corner. That's why we built Legal AF as a podcast in 2020, why we built Legal AF, the YouTube channel in 2024. Not just to get Kamala Harris elected, that would be an interesting byproduct, something I could have supported.

But it was to be a resilient, durable community where we would, on our end of the camera, give searing, unrelenting analysis, truthful analysis to you and an encouragement about this thought experiment we call our democracy. That's why we did it. And so we need your help too, to continue to grow and build our community. So Legal AF, the YouTube channel, find it now. Legal AF MTN, there we go. Thank you, Salty. Hit the blue subscribe button, help now, Legal AF MTN. There we go, thank you, Salty. Hit the blue Subscribe button, help us get to 500,000.

I'm doing five or six videos a day there in addition to my work on the Midas Touch Network. If I haven't announced it before, I'm basically full-time working with Midas Touch and all things related to Legal AF. That was a big change I made after the election and moving into 2025 and I'm happy to do it. And I'm thrilled and honored that you're with me,

that we opened up with such a large audience tonight, that I was able to do the live with you and for you. And I appreciate it. So I'm looking forward to catching you up on all of these topics, all these fast moving stories here, both in Hot Takes and on next Tuesday's PO-POK Live and anything else that comes up or out of Donald Trump's mouth between now and then. So until my next reporting on Legal AF, I'll see the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.

Remember, we're people-powered. We got to do this together. We're in this together. So until my next reporting and my next PO-POK Live, I'm Michael Popak. Thanks for being here.