Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Prosecutor FILES with SCOTUS on TRUMP SENTENCING…

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

To get Trump sentenced on Friday, the Manhattan DA just reminded the Supreme Court in a new filing that Trump had already WAIVED HIS IMMUNITY ARGUMENT in a prior related federal case and that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to interfere with a run-of-the-mill criminal prosecution and the issue of sentencing. Michael Popok closely examines the new filing and predicts what the Court is likely to do in the next 24 hours about Friday’s sentencing. Qualia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! 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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judges to side with him and stop Friday's sentencing in the Stormy Daniels 34-count hush money cover-up conviction. Unsuccessful, he's now lobbed a grenade into the United States Supreme Court. But the problem is Donald Trump's already admitted in prior filings involved with the case that this case is not about immunity and therefore he can't use immunity to stop Friday's sentencing. I'm Michael Popak, Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. Let me explain that that key concession by Donald Trump many months ago in his federal case related to the Stormy Daniels prosecution kills his arguments now. He's already admitted in federal filings that what he did and what the jury proved that

he did to in the conspiracy around the Stormy Daniels hush money cover-up was not covered by presidential immunity, therefore not covered by the presidential immunity doctrine established by the Supreme Court over the summer. That we should have been sort of done already, but I want to read to you from aspects of the Manhattan DA's new brief. This is the last brief that'll be submitted to the United States Supreme Court. They said they're gonna rule later today, tomorrow, or early tomorrow morning. Remember, tomorrow morning at 930, Justice Marchand, unless he stayed or stopped or blocked by the Supreme Court, US Supreme

Court, is going to sentence Donald Trump. Let's talk about all of this. First of all, the arguments raised by Stephen Wu, the lawyer for the Manhattan DA's office, he's their appellate lawyer, he's the one that's won all the hearings so far. Donald Trump didn't like Justice Murchon's decision not to stay his sentencing on immunity grounds because the judge says there's no such thing as presidential elect immunity and the immunity decision about evidence is something you can take up on appeal and therefore I'm not going to stay your sentence. It's the last shoe that has to drop. It's the last thing to finally dispose of your criminal case and then you can take your full-blown appeal. So you should want me to do it denied. Donald Trump didn't like that, ran to the

first level appellate court, the Manhattan appellate court, the first department, and Justice Gessmer denied the emergency application yesterday. In addition, he lobbed in, as I suspected, an attempt at the Court of Appeals level for New York, the highest court in New York, to try to get them to side with him and stop Friday's hearing. And that court said, we're not allowing this emergency injunction fully brief your appeal once you're sentenced, and we'll hear from you. But no, we're not allowing this emergency injunction fully brief your appeal once you're sentenced and we will hear from you. But no, we're not going to stop the case right now. So then Donald Trump at the same time filed this motion for stay, application for a stay of the criminal proceedings, state court criminal proceedings with the Supreme Court, an extraordinary

application that has no basis in factor law. Let me say this again. This application by Donald Trump and his lawyer, John Sauer, is scary because it doesn't seem like John Sauer, who's going to be the Supreme Court's 10th Justice as the Solicitor General for Donald Trump, doesn't know what he's doing. Because this is not going to work, the arguments that they've raised, and therefore, procedurally, he's got a problem. The Manhattan DA points out in their brief, which I'm going to read from in a minute, that the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction to even hear this wholly state court criminal

matter in a federal court because Donald Trump has not exhausted all of his appellate remedies. He hasn't completed his briefing through the Appellate Division First Department, the Manhattan Appellate Court, nor the Court of Appeals. This is a wholly criminal case that the Supreme Court should stay out of. It's only under extraordinary circumstances, not present here, that they should interfere with the normal garden variety prosecution process in state court against somebody who's been convicted of a crime, regardless of whether it's Donald Trump or not. So that's the first argument that they raise.

The second argument they raise that this is an ongoing, it's related, an ongoing state criminal case and under a Supreme Court precedent, they should not now be being some sort of super appellate court before the record is even complete, before the state court appellate courts even had a chance to have briefing and see the record and then make determinations about whether Justice Marchand was right or wrong on evidence decisions during the course of a trial. That's not the role of the Supreme Court. This is not a proper record before the Supreme Court. It hasn't been developed. It's six months or a year away from being a proper record and they know it. The next argument that they raise in their brief to Manhattan DA as to why the Supreme Court should butt out and not get involved with blocking the sentencing, let Donald Trump

be sentenced, is that there's no such thing as president-elect immunity. That is not, nothing about immunity is implicated by the facts of the case. Donald Trump was not the president when he participated in the conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election, obviously. Purpose of the conspiracy was to interfere with the election. So he wasn't president during, I don't know, 99% of the evidence presented to the jury. He wasn't president when he was charged. He wasn't president when he was indicted. He wasn't president when he was tried or convicted, nor when he will be sentenced.

And so they point out, first of all, Donald Trump has already conceded in prior federal filings that this is not an immunity case, that nothing about what he was charged with and convicted of smacks or triggers the immunity doctrine analysis. The only issue is whether certain evidence, certain stray, discreet strands of evidence presented to the jury, mainly through three people, somehow are cloaked with temporary presidential immunity and therefore the whole conviction,

34 count conviction should be thrown out. So a couple of stray comments by Michael Cohen about meeting Donald Trump in the White House to get paid back for the conspiracy. A couple of comments by Madeleine Westerhout, who was Donald Trump's, like, EA, executive assistant, doing some scheduling for him. And a couple of straight comments by Hope Hicks, who was the communications director at the time, or press secretary.

That's against the mountain of evidence that went on for weeks and dozens of witnesses that the jury heard from about this conspiracy, including from two-thirds of the conspirators, one being Michael Cohen and the other being David Picard, who used to be the editor of the National Enquirer and a friend of Donald Trump. What more did the jury need? So let me read to you from the briefing, because of course they do do a great job, and just give you the timeline here. This brief is in.

That's it. The Supreme Court said they're going to rule. They said they indicated they're going to rule before Friday in the sentencing. I expect it later today. I'll come back here and might as well touch and give you an update. Let me tell you where we're at as of right this minute. Here we go. I want to tell you about one of my favorite brands in the entire health and wellness world, Qualia.

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That's Q-U-A-L-I-A-Life.com slash LegalAF for 15% off your purchase. Thank you Qualia for sponsoring this episode. So here's the introduction. Trump is the defendant in a criminal action in the Supreme Court in New York. While he was a private citizen, defendant was charged, tried, and convicted for conduct that he concedes is wholly unofficial and for which there is no presidential immunity, citing Trump vs. US, a case that went before Judge Hellerstein when Donald Trump tried to remove the case. He admitted it and conceded then. He can't change his legal position now. That's called

improperly changed positions. He is stopped from arguing anything to the contrary. And that's in the first line of their brief. Then they talk about the conviction, the entry of the judgment, the fact that the sentencing was only postponed for six months because Donald Trump requested it. And then one sentence, all on page one, one sentence, defendant may appeal every preserved argument in the ordinary course like any other appellant, including his claims regarding the purportedly erroneous admission of official acts, evidence, and trial. That's what you do, not now, in an emergency stay application to the Supreme Court before the record is complete.

As a threshold matter on page two, the Manhattan DA says, this court lacks jurisdiction. The Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction over a state court's management of its ongoing criminal trial when defendant has not exhausted his state law remedies and there has been no final judgment. That's what we're waiting for. The final judgment or decree only happens after the sentence. Then Donald Trump can take his appeal. Everything else is too early, too premature, and denies the court jurisdiction. That's the fundamental argument.

They then address the other arguments that Donald Trump has made. Defendant claims that his recent election as president immediately entitled him to the same immunity from prosecution as the sitting president and thus exempts him from the January 10th sentencing. That is, defendant makes the unprecedented claim that the temporary presidential immunity he will possess in the future fully immunizes him now, weeks before he even takes office. And they just summarize it this way, the Manhattan DA to the court, non-employees of the government do not exercise any official function that would be impaired by

the conclusion of a criminal case against a private citizen for private conduct. That's sticking it to Donald Trump. They then go on to say that for this type of claim on page three, for this type of claim, although ostensibly based on immunity, the only argument Donald Trump has is certain evidence had the imprimatur, the odor of immunity, just certain stray pieces of evidence. But they say for that argument to work and to support this appeal, he's trying to argue he's immune from suit on the underlying charges, but that's not what he's trying to argue in his main case in chief.

They then go on to describe the case, and here's how they describe the charges against Donald Trump, as described in the statement of facts of the indictment and here's how they describe the charges against Donald Trump, as described in the statement of facts of the indictment. And as later established by evidence at trial, defendant and his co-conspirators orchestrated a scheme to interfere with the 2016 presidential election by suppressing negative information that could damage defendant's presidential campaign. They executed the scheme through a variety of means, including by purchasing the rights to and then refusing to publish a story about an extramarital affair between defendant and

Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress. And then they go on. Now here's the part where they take Donald Trump to task for this new change position, which is actually improper and should be easily rejected by the court. Here's what they say on that. On page 19, they say, "'Here, by contrast, defendant has conceded,' that's Trump,

"'that the underlying criminal charges involved "'purely private and unofficial conduct "'that does not reflect in any way "'the color of his presidential official duties.' That was a filing back in the case to try to remove it to federal court that Judge Hellerstein shot down. This criminal proceeding

thus does not implicate the legal question that defendant asked this court to review. Somebody better tap Donald Trump on the shoulder and tell him that his prior lawyers, when they filed what they filed two years ago, they didn't raise this immunity issue, and they can't raise it now. Here's what I think is going to happen. Now that both briefs are in, I think the United States Supreme Court is going to sit on the sidelines. I don't think they're going to intervene. I don't think they're going to stay the case.

I don't think they're even going to stay Friday. They should let Friday come and go, let Donald Trump be sentenced. He's not going to go to jail. We already know that from Justice Mershon. Let him take a full appeal into 2025 in the state court proceeding, and he can raise all of his issues there about what Justice Marchand did or didn't do about evidence during a trial, run-of-the-mill stuff there, and that's his appellate process, and he doesn't get to jump the track and go to federal court again. He's tried that three times in the case. It's

all been rejected. That's what should happen. But with Justice Roberts, with the out-of-control MAGA alt-right wing of the Supreme Court, can they get five votes? I don't know. I think it's going to be a battle right now internally for Amy Coney Barrett to bring Roberts back to his senses and not have this be his legacy, his continued legacy. His legacy is already circling the drain of history, right? Roberts, for everything that's happened on his watch, from a woman's right to choose being constitutionally denied her, to all the issues related to the administrative state and how he's destroyed the ability of agencies to protect health and safety, and now, of course, giving Donald Trump the immunity and therefore destroying the co-equal branches

of government and our checks and balance system. Does he wanna grab the third rail of immunity one more time, Roberts? Or does he wanna say, no, this is not what we meant by the immunity decision about stuff you did when you were not the president, or if you raped somebody in the White House, for instance, that shouldn't be covered by immunity. I think that's where they're gonna go.

I'll be the first one to come back and tell you where they went here on Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF, our YouTube channel. we're doing a lot of great work there. In fact, I'm doing a show called Unprecedented, speaking of unprecedented, with Dina Dahl every week where we look at every event at the Supreme Court, around the Supreme Court, and of course, we'll be covering this as well. So until my next Legal AF contribution, this is Michael Popak reporting. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF Contribution. This is Michael Popak reporting.