Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Prosecutors UNMASK Trump’s PUPPET MASTER in DC Case

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

It was Bannon all along! MAGA podcaster and Trump coup adviser Steve Bannon —still in prison for contempt of Congress—has been revealed by the Special Counsel to be more involved in leading the attempt to overthrow democracy leading up to Jan6 than we ever thought. Michael Popok dives into the brand new evidence implicating Bannon based on cooperating previously known cooperating witness testimony and what it means for Trump. Subscribe: @LegalAFMTN Calm: Get an excluslve offer of 40% off a Calm Premium SubscrIption at https://calm.com/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

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Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp online therapy.

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We've got the financial tools to help make it happen. Wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. This is Michael Popak, Legal AF, with one of my Jack Smith deep cuts. Diving into the 165 pages just disclosed to the public of evidence against Donald Trump in the D.C. election interference case, and Steve Bannon, who's not yet out of jail for his contempt of Congress conviction, he's front and center in the new filing, hasn't been indicted yet, but I don't think he should rest easy on that hard cut of his in jail based on the new revelations for the first

time. We hadn't even seen it in the indictment of Steve Bannon, right-wing alt-right MAGA QAnon podcaster that he is in his role in the attempt to overturn the will of the people and cling to power by Donald Trump. Steve Bannon front and center, he's even been given the number one. Throughout the brief there are, because they're trying to anonymize, make anonymous people, they've given them numbers. P1 up to P80 or so, those are people, they're people of interest. CC is co-conspirator, sort of breaks down

into those two categories. You're either a P or you're a CC. And guess who P1 is? That's Steve Bannon. Let's, it wasn't hard to unmask him, if you will. I'm going to tell you why Steve Bannon is potentially in trouble again. Remember, or if you don't know, I'll tell you now, he's still in jail. He's still within the Bureau of Prisons because he's serving a four-month sentence that won't

time out until after the election. That's why we haven't heard from him lately. It's very hard to stand in line for a payphone and do your podcast. That's what's been going on lately. So he was effectively silenced and he served in four months for contempt of Congress, two counts that he was convicted of by a jury

relatively quickly, because he refused to cooperate with the Jan 6 committee. And he doesn't really cooperate at all with Jack Smith and the special counsel, but of course there's lots of different ways to skin a Steve Bannon and you can get documents and information and text through subpoena and get your devices and get your text messages and your messaging and from other cooperating witnesses against you. We always knew that Steve Bannon was part of the war room created by Donald Trump in the Willard Hotel near the ellipse, near the Capitol on Jan 6th. He was there since Jan 5th. He was there with

Mike Flynn. He was there with Rudy Giuliani. And they were trying to coordinate all the efforts, which led to the attack and the siege of the Capitol, led by Donald Trump effectively. We knew that. But let me tell you what we now learned for the first time in this new filing. Lean in, get a big cup of coffee, I'm gonna be a while.

Let's start with page seven. I'm gonna go through all the key places where Bannon has been mentioned for the first time and his true, true involvement and leadership in the coup described in detail by the government for the first time. Page seven, by October 2020, now we're talking about October of 2020, okay? The election hasn't even happened. We are now one month before the election. P1, I'm going to say Bannon for now on, but he's identified as P1 in the election. P1, I'm gonna say Bannon for now on,

but he's identified as P1 in the filing. A private political advisor who had worked for the defendant's 2016 presidential campaign began to assist with the defendant's re-election effort. So he comes on board a month before the election. Three days before election day, Bannon described the defendant's plan

to a private gathering of supporters. Three days before, so now we're November 2nd, 2020, quote, and what Trump's going to do is just declare victory, right? He's going to declare victory. That doesn't mean he's the winner. He's just going to say he's the winner. Three days before the election, Steve Bannon reveals the plan by Donald Trump that he would never accept the outcome of the election. Never. Did it surprise anybody when JD Vance, we figured out why Mike Pence is no longer a vice presidential candidate for Donald Trump because he found a supplicant and an unctuous supplicant at that in JD Vance. I had to like take a

I had to take a shower after I watched him during the debate. He's so oily and greasy, refused to accept the outcome of the next election because he refused to accept the outcome of the last election. Now we know why. Bannon, after explaining that Biden supporters favored voting by mail,

Bannon stated further to this group, quote, "'And so they're going to have a natural disadvantage and Trump's gonna take advantage of it. That's our strategy. He's going to declare himself a winner. Couple of things here, couple of takeaways. This is in quotes. This is not a summary.

This is verbatim, meaning there's a recording, okay? Meaning there's very well taken notes during that meeting. Somebody was wearing a wire or hit record. That's bad sign for Donald Trump. Because this is not Bannon's testimony. This is somebody else. What he's referring to here is since during COVID, and really always, the Democrats lean into every way to vote,

mail-in voting, early voting. Democrats vote early, not often, that's the old joke. Democrats vote early, Democrats vote by absentee, they vote by mail and they take advantage of all the ways to express and vote and be enfranchised. Republicans don't, mainly because they've got the leader of their party and their cult who tells them, you can't rely on absentee balloting,

you can mail in balloting, it's all a fraud, you gotta stand in line and vote, it's all you can do. I mean, that says a lot. So Bannon's saying they have a natural disadvantage because they don't show up on election day in large numbers, they show up in early voting. So the election day numbers will be big for Donald Trump and we can declare victory. That's not how an election works.

Every vote counts and every vote needs to be counted. Okay, let's continue with P1. Then on page nine, very early on of this brief, just to show you the importance, the centrality of Bannon, on bottom of nine it says, as the defendant, defendant is always Trump, placed alternating phone calls to another person of interest, another co-conspirator. We know the co-conspirator is Giuliani. So he's calling Giuliani and another person throughout November 13, we're now a week beyond the election, Bannon informed, I think Boris Epstein is CC6, is co-conspirator 6. So now you got

Bannon talking to Boris Epstein, who's Donald Trump's consulier, he kind of replaced Michael Cohen. You always see him. He's the guy in the, he's always sweating in a three piece suit. You know, that bald guy that's Boris Epstein who I'm, I'm, I'm surprised has not been indicted. So you got Bannon and Boris Epstein talking on November the 13th and another private campaign advisor of the change writing close, hold, don't tell anyone Trump just fired Justin Clark and put Rudy Giuliani in charge and you are to report to Rudy Giuliani. So when Boris Epstein asked if, let's see, if

another person are gone too, Bannon replied, they will now all report to Rudy Giuliani and that Bannon had made a recommendation, quote, directly that if Giuliani was not in charge, this thing is over, Trump is in to the end. The next day, consistent with Bannon's description, Trump announced his staff change by tweet writing, I look forward to Giuliani spearheading the legal effort to defend our right to free and fair elections.

Giuliani, Joe DiGenova, another lawyer of his wife, Victoria Tencing, and CC3 is off to figure that out. And Jenna Ellis, our truly great team CC3 is off to figure that out. And Jenna Ellis, our truly great team added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives. Again, the involvement of Steve Bannon in the selection of lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani

or as Eric Hirschman, former deputy White House counsel used to refer to Rudy Giuliani, captain of team crazy. That's Bannon's involvement there, which again I was not aware of until I just read this. There's a lot happening these days in our personal, professional, and political lives. It can feel especially stressful or hopeless when things are outside of our control. But calm can help you restore your sense of balance and peace amidst outside chaos. Have you had difficulty focusing lately?

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at comm.com slash legal AF. Go to calm.com slash LegalAF. Go to calm.com slash LegalAF for 40% off, unlimited access to com's entire library. That's com.com slash LegalAF. Let's go to page 64 of the filing for more Bannon, more new Bannon. Bannon, you might as well just pick out your bunk now because you're getting indicted off of this. I think many of these people that are listed as P or CC that haven't yet

been indicted are going to get indicted. Let's go back to Bannon, page 64. Now we. On January 2nd, let me get my people right. Giuliani, Powell, and Boris Epstein appeared on Bannon's podcast. When Bannon asked whether the Jan 6 certification would be a climactic battle, Powell responded that, quote, a lot of that depends on the courage and the spine of the individuals involved.

That's Sidney Powell. The defendant spoke to Giuliani shortly after his appearance on the podcast. That Trump spoke to Giuliani after Giuliani appeared on Bannon's podcast. That afternoon, Boris Epstein worked to arrange a meeting among the defendant, Powell, and Pence in order to enlist Pence to misuse his role as president of the Senate at the certification proceeding. When Boris Epstein texted Bannon about the meeting, Bannon, who had just finished a call

with the defendant, Trump reiterated that Trump wanted Pence briefed by Powell immediately. Remember Donald Trump used to say Sidney Powell was a lunatic? And there's reporting that, and there's actually reporting in this new brief and evidence that Donald Trump used to laugh at Sidney Powell because her ideas were so crackpot, so unhinged. He used to cover the phone apparently, like, oh my god, she's such a nut. But he wanted this not unhinged person to brief the vice president of the United States and how do we know? Because he told Mike Pence. All right? So we've got that. And then we've got on page 72, more Pence. That's what we want. I actually want less Pence, but at least for the purposes of this hot take, I want more

Pence. So in 72, more involvement about Pence and the pressure campaign. Trump continued his pressure campaign on Pence that evening. And that's the evening of, just for following along, January 5th. After a New York Times article that night detailed the afternoon's private conversations in which Pence had rejected Trump's demand to act unlawfully, Trump directed Mike Roman to issue a statement rebutting it and approve the statement at 9.28 p.m. Mike Roman, an unindicted co-conspirator, a person of interest, he was the head of Trump's

election day operations. He was also the mule that brought in the fake elector certificates and tried to deliver them to Mike Pence. Minutes later, the defendant Trump called Pence and told him, you got to be tough tomorrow, Jan 6th. After concluding the call with Pence, defendant sequentially spoke to Bannon followed by Powell. Then around 10 p.m. that night Trump issued the public statement which read quote the vice president and I are in total agreement that the vice president has the power to act. That was a lie to the American people. Pence has been consistent and will testify against Donald Trump at trial because he's already he's already given his testimony

to Jack Smith so we know that he's going to do this. That he told Donald Trump the opposite, that he was not in agreement, that he was going to uphold his constitutional duty, that he saw no way around it. In fact, by this point, Mike Pence had already been in consultation with former Judge Michael Ludig, J. Michael Ludig, who's going to be interviewed by me on the Midas Touch podcast sometime over the weekend. He's been with me before. J. Michael Ludwig, who's on the Mount Rushmore of Federalists and Conservative constitutional scholars and judges, told Mike Pence point blank, you cannot, you cannot do anything but in a ministerial administrative way, certify the election with the certificates that are before you. You can't do anything else.

certified the election with the certificates that are before you, you can't do anything else. So now we've got his involvement there. And then finally on page 160 of 165 page brief, we've got the following more information about Steve Bannon that we didn't know before today. Here we go. The immunity that the Supreme Court recognized, this is from the brief, thus does not imply that acts by other government officials can qualify as presidential acts. In other words, other

people don't get presidential immunity. More to the point, and then he continues with, the government does not intend to introduce evidence that implies that someone or his deputies refuted the defendant's fraud claims directly to him. Instead, the government intends to introduce his statement and Giuliani's campaign response to it, as well as Bannon's recognition and repetition of the statement. So again, you see that Bannon is at the heart in a way that we never saw before, and he should not rest easy. He's got another month or so in jail, because based on what I'm seeing here, that could be the first shoe to drop against Bannon. We were always amazed two years ago, even my dog is upset, we were always amazed two years ago when there was a list of unindicted co-conspirators.

They're listed again here in the new brief and in the new superseding indictment, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, originally Jeff Clark, acting attorney general under Donald Trump. He's been removed only because the Supreme Court by name said that Jeff Clark's interactions with Donald Trump. He's been removed only because the Supreme Court by name said that Jeff Clark's interactions with Donald Trump were immune. But also Ken Chesbrough and Boris Epstein, we always said, how did they avoid indictment? How did Mark Meadows avoid indictment? He's been indicted in Georgia and in Arizona already. And what about the rest? What about Mike Roman, the election day coordinator? What about Boris Epstein? I'm

going to do another hot take about Boris Epstein trying to promote a riot out in front of the Detroit counting, which was a scene out of succession the most recent season, except it happened before. Talk about life imitating art. How did they avoid indictment? I'm not sure they have. Statute of limitations does not run at all. I think if especially if anything there's any further delays in the Trump trial, you're going to see people like Manning get indicted. For exclusive content, come over to Legal AF, MTN and free subscribe. Help us build that pro-democracy channel in collaboration

with the Midas Touch Network. Get us the 200,000 subscribers before Halloween. I mean, we're already more than halfway there, up to 140,000 subscribers already with your help. Find out what 40 million people a month already know that Legal AF is the home of law and politics, commentary, and analysis like no other. It's going to be me, lots of other contributors and commentators including from the Midas universe coming over, superheroes without capes, Karen Freeman, Nick Niflo, Dina Dahl, Anthony Davis, Kathleen Rice, Mistrial, all sorts of things and new commentators and a surprise set of commentators. I'm not ready to announce yet, but we're getting close and a new show exclusively on the Legal AF MTN for Midas Touch Network called Unprecedented,

of course, talking about the United States Supreme Court on a weekly basis. As soon as the new term opens, we've got our first episode going up today. So until my next hot take, my next Legal AF podcast, Wednesdays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. Eastern time on the Midas Touch YouTube channel. This is Michael Popock 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 LegalAFMTN. That's at LegalAFMTN.