Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Prosecutors STRIKE BACK Hard at Donald Trump in FILING

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

The DOJ strikes back again, in ins second filing against Trump just today to shove back against Trump’s transparent efforts to delay the public learning about his alleged crimes in the DC election interference case. Michael Popok explains how the DOJ calls out Trump’s smokescreen of alleging phony abuses by the DOJ, and explains why this is doomed to fail and quickly with Judge Chutkan. VIIA: Try VIIA Hemp! https://bit.ly/viialegalaf and use code LEGALAF! Join the Legal AF 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 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 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 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

This is Michael Popak, Legal AF. Just when I thought I could pack up my ring light and my microphone and go home, we have our third filing in just one day in the DC election interference criminal case against Donald Trump, this time by Jack Smith. If you're scoring at home, it's two filings by Jack Smith and one filing by Donald Trump. So don't adjust that dial. I'm doing another hot take on a new filing at the intersection of law and politics right here on Legal AF. Let's go through it

What is this one all about and why is there you may be wondering? Popak I sometimes call myself that in the third person Why is there a what appears to be a fourth brief being filed by a party? You've always told us in an issue on an issue About discovery exchange of, a motion to dismiss. There's only three briefs, an opening brief, an opposition brief, a reply brief. What are you talking about? A fourth brief?

Have you gone mad, man? No. There's a fourth brief. You can ask the court for permission to file what's called a SUR reply. A SUR reply. When does that happen? Well, the times I've done it in my life is when that final brief, that's supposed to be the final brief, the reply brief, raises new issues, totally new issues that

weren't in the opening brief. And therefore, they don't get to just punch you and then sit down and go, well, that's it. We have the last word. Ha, ha, ha. Here's what we just called you in that filing. No. You can say to the judge, look, they raised new arguments that they didn't put in their opening brief. They raised new evidence. They raised new case law that we need to respond to. So can we respond and hear? Judge Chuck can say, yes, I'd like to hear a very brief response from the government.

And that's what we have now. And that's why it's called a Sir Reply Brief. Right? Okay. So what is it all about? Tell us, Popak. All right, it's very simple. In the Sir Reply to the Discovery motions, Donald Trump is, now sit down for this one.

Donald Trump is lying to the court about his need for more documents and information from the government, all of which he's already gotten, but he's using it as an excuse in order to try to delay the briefing, the filing of evidence by Jack Smith about the immunity issue against him before the election. Let me make that a little bit simpler. Donald Trump couldn't care less about whether he's

gotten more documents or not. He knows he has all the documents to which he's entitled as a defendant from the prosecution. He knows it. In fact, he's asked for things that he knows or should know that he already has. I want to get my daily presidential press briefings. You have them. I want to have the transcript from X, Y, and Z witness. You have them. I want to have my text messages. You have them. And that just shows you Donald Trump could care less about that. It's all a smoke screen to distract from what he really wants to do, which is to throw over the apple cart, not have the government file their brief, which they've already filed, of over 300 pages and a tractor trailer full of evidence against him before the election. So they keep complaining about, oh, discovery, we didn't get all the docs, we got

all these amazing defenses, most of which have been struck by Judge Chutkin over a year ago. And well, Judge, you can't allow the briefing. That's done. The cow is out of the milk. The cow is out of the barn. The milk is spilt. The horses left the stable. We're done. The filing has happened. It was the appendix all along, and 300 pages, and 30 pages of single-spaced footnotes. That's what's going to be Donald Trump's undoing. Footnotes, see? We all should have paid attention more

in high school and college about the power of the footnote. That's going to be Donald Trump's undoing. So the whole discovery thing was a ruse. And that's what the government is telling the judge here. They're basically saying, I'll summarize it, then I'll read from passages in the new filing. They're basically saying, Judge, you see it, I see it, they even know it. They don't care about discovery. None of their defenses make any sense. None of their defenses raise material issues of additional documents that we have to provide and that we haven't provided already. And they never care about that.

And every time you tell them, Judge, to file a simple piece of paper to address, tell me exactly what documents you need that you haven't gotten and identify them categorically so you can respond to the immunity brief by the government, they never do that. They just use 30 pages of it, 30 out of their 34 pages, to attack Jack Smith, to attack Merrick Garland, to attack Joe Biden, to make some sort of campaign speech masquerading as a filing with this court. Does this election cycle have your stress at a level 10? Is the lingering summer heat impacting your focus? Looking for some levity, but need to embrace life with your hands on the wheel? Enhance your everyday with Vya.

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Here's what they say in the brief. On page one, the court ordered the defendants, this is very simple instruction, to supplement his discovery motions, that's Trump, by identifying in his reply any specific evidence that relates to presidential immunity, the only issue that's up for grabs right now, that Trump believes the government has not provided him. That's it. That's all he had to do. Follow directions. Color in the lines and don't pee in the sandbox.

That's all he had to do. The defendant did not comply. I love how eloquent yet simple and efficient the language of the government is. Instead, instead of doing that, Trump filed a reply designed to disrupt the court's previously ordered schedule. As I've said in prior hot takes, they hated the die was cast on September 5 when Judge Chutkin said, we're doing this my way. Government, you go first.

Give me a massive filing with all your evidence. I'm paraphrasing. Then Trump, you get another brief. Then government, you go again. Trump's hated that. So instead, he filed a reply designed to disrupt the previously ordered schedule on September 5. With respect to the immunity demands over which he did not speak to the government in advance, which he was

supposed to do, the defendant's requests are too vague or irrelevant to be helpful to this court's fact-bound immunity determination, which is required by the Supreme Court, where they seek materials that the government gave them long ago in discovery. And they're basically telling a judge, well, here's your solution, judge. We'll give it to you. Tell him by October the 17th,

when he files his opposition brief, to identify the things that he thinks he didn't get, and we'll catalog them, and we'll tell the court which ones we gave him, or if we're not planning to give to him, why we're not planning to give to them. But we can't, this is so mushy, this is so opaque that we don't know what he's requesting. So here they call out the ruse, they call out the smokescreen, the red herring on page two. Here at the top of page two, the government says, the defendant's conduct, Trump, in this litigation,

prosecution, suggest that he is less concerned with promptly receiving and using additional immunity-based discovery, which the government does not believe exists, and more interested in using the discovery process to delay the court's immunity briefing schedule. There it is. He doesn't want this fully briefed by the end of October.

He doesn't want that to be the October surprise. Too late. If I were the government, I would have been even less kind. I would have dropped a footnote that said, we already filed the brief. We already filed the exhibits. We already filed the 300 pages. He's already participating, Trump,

in trying to figure out how much of it goes on the public docket. It's wave. The arguments wave, move on. Nothing to see here. So I would have done that in a footnote. But I'm not the prosecution at this moment. So they go on on page three, and they

give a list of things that they've already given him that he keeps asking for. For instance, they say on the top of page three, and in the discovery letter that the defendant sent to the government just last week, he seeks multiple categories of information that he's had for more than a year, including, listen to this, reports and transcripts from two interviews of a witness, particular witness, text messages for another specific individual, the presidential

daily diaries, all of which he received in the government's first discovery request last August, a year ago August, as is evident by the source logs. In other words, the government keeps track of everything they provided it. And he says, and the daily diaries? That's Trump's own records. He had that when he walked out. And then of course they remind the court

that it's not just defenses that get you anything that seems interesting. Oh, I really would like to know about this. It has to be relevant and material to the defenses that you raise that seems interesting. Oh, I really would like to know about this. It has to be relevant and material to the defenses that you raise that are proper. And then finally, Donald Trump says, while we're at it, Judge, why don't you make them give us their legal analysis,

secret, private, legal strategy and analysis, we call it work product, internal to the Department of Justice, because wouldn't that be helpful to our defense if we knew the playbook? In other words, in a football game, it would be like the Buffalo Bills demanding that they got the playbook for their opponent before next Sunday. That's the equivalent. Of course, the Department of Justice says, yeah, they're not entitled to the internal legal analysis, and it has no relevancy to the court's fact-bound immunity analysis that they're entitled to.

And then at the end, they just go through basically everything that he's asked for, Judge. That guy over there, he lies. It's sort of like my cousin Vinnie during the closing. That guy's an effing liar. Sit down. Then they ended with, don't give any of this, deny the motion for reconsideration that he's asking for. Don't fall for a judge. They're gilding the lily here. They're preaching to the choir. There's no way the judge is going

to grant any of this. I do like how quickly the Department of Justice moves to file their briefs, filing two briefs in the course of an hour. I appreciate that. And one of the briefs, as I just did a hot tick on, one of the briefs came in less than half a news cycle from when Donald Trump filed. So talk about stepping on his story. Donald Trump can't even get the news cycle to himself. Hey, I'm sure they high-fived. We got it filed. Two o'clock. Woo. The whole government on that. They filed. They filed their opposition already. Yes. Stop. You might want to put the cork back in the champagne bottle. Why? Because Donald Trump is represented by three and a half people total. And the United States of America is represented by the Department of Justice, the Office of the

Special Counsel, hundreds of lawyers, hundreds more of employees and paraprofessionals. They can walk, chew gum and prosecute 10,000 cases all at the same time. Donald Trump's lawyers, man to man, I mean, zone defense doesn't even work at this point. Man to man is out. There's no way they can match man to man. Four got three and a half people against the Department of Justice, but even zone's not working. You can't do, it'd be like a basketball game to continue my slightly tilted sports metaphors.

It'd be like in a basketball court. If it was like five on five or three on three, if it was like 2, 2000 on four on the court, they'd be overwhelmed and outmatched. And you're seeing it in the filings by the Department of Justice. We got so much to talk about at the intersection of law and politics. We're bursting at the seams. It's a cornucopia. It's just a bounty that just keeps on giving. So we had to form a new channel, just to capture and cover it all in conjunction and collaboration

with the Midas Touch Network. Wait for it, it's called Legal AF, MTN, for Midas Touch Network. Yeah, it's like MSNBC, which was Microsoft and NBC. Put them together, what do you get? Legal AF MTN. And we're gonna be curating that channel, I'm gonna be the executive producer

bringing you everything you love at the intersection of law and politics, including the things that I do. And then other commentators that you know and love like Karen Freeman, Ibn Nifilo, and Dina Dahl and others from the contributors from Mistrial. We're bringing them over from the Midas universe. It's like the Marvel universe. Superheroes without a cape coming on, Legal AF MTN. Speaking of the Supreme Court, a new show. I don't know

why I'm shouting. A new show you can only find on Legal AF MTN. It's called unprecedented. Yes, once a week we're going to be looking at the Supreme Court, opening up the hood, taking a look, and giving you our good faith professional judgment and analysis about everything that's going on at the Supreme Court through Legal AF to help you make it make sense. So, free subscribe. I think that's what I'm trying to say. I'm earning your vote. I'm earning your subscription. Free subscribe to Legal AF MTN right now on YouTube. Help us get to 200,000 subscribers. We're only two weeks old before Halloween. Boo! So until my next hot take, my next Legal AF podcast, my next Legal AF MTN exclusive content including the new show Unprecedented, this is Michael Popak and I'm reporting.

In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at Legal AF MTN. That's at Legal AF MTN.