Legal AF by MeidasTouch - SICKO GOP Prosecutor Uses CORRUPT HEARSAY to Help Trump

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Special Counsel Hur’s use of a memory test to put President Biden on the spot regarding events about individual documents that he handled 10-15 years ago is a grossly unfair interview technique and should not have been included in his final report. Michael Popok of Legal AF who has conducted similar investigations in private practice explains why Hur’s questioning of the President was out of bounds. Go to https://CozyEarth.com/legalaf and enter our promo code LEGALAF at checkout for up to thirty-five percent off! Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Call 1866 5-1-2600 or visit connexontario.ca. Please play responsible. Michael Popak, Legal AF, the more I hear about the process by which Robert Her, the special counsel, ultimately concluded that Joe Biden has some sort of memory problem

and used it as the basis to attack his mental acuity in the report itself, now leading MAGA to suggest that Merrick Garland, who's a cabinet member, should invoke the 25th Amendment to have Joe Biden remove the more my blood boils. It's just what I suspected. Robert Heard knows better. He was a Department of Justice representative.

He was a U.S. attorney for Maryland. He's in private practice at a legitimate firm. He conducted the interview of Joe Biden himself after a nine-month investigation. And I'm sorry if Robert Herr believes that he was the most important person in the room for the interview that was conducted with Joe Biden. This was some sort of memory test for events that happened in 2007, 2008, 2015, when Joe Biden's son died, 2017, and he was going to give Joe Biden either a passing or failing grade depending upon how many documents, how many boxes, how many storage cabinets, how

many storage files he could remember. I mean, I had thought that's what happened, but now I see the reason why the private counsel for Joe Biden were so, are so upset about reading in the report, the results of that interview when they thought it went about fine. There's a reason that one group in the room thought it went fine. And the other group led by Robert Her didn didn't cause Robert Herd reversed engineered a result. He wanted to find that Joe Biden's age was an issue.

And so he looked for any excuse through that deficit lens to evaluate responses to questions. Now look, if Robert Herd was asking about things from six months ago, three months ago, a year or two ago, all right, he might have an argument about the failing memory of Joe Biden or his lack of recall or his, uh, his mental capacity or whatever it was in his 315 pages report, a report that should have been five pages long under the Department of Justice guidelines and should have once once they concluded as prosecutors that they were not going to prosecute. A declination memo declining to prosecute should be about five pages. And the fact that Robert Hurd knew that his 345 pages was going to go to Merrick Garland and Merrick Garland had already announced, even though that was a mistake, which I took

up, I take up on another hot take, he was gonna, he was gonna just pass through and publish anything that Robert Her wrote. Robert Her knowing that took advantage of that. And he has no one to blame for the blowback that he says he's experiencing now than himself. But now, as I said at the beginning of the hot take, the more I learn about the investigative techniques,

the questions asked and the responses, now there is no support or merit within the report for the comments and observations made by Robert R. And he has no one to blame about himself because he conducted the interview of Joe Biden. Let me talk to you about it from the perspective of somebody that spent a career, the last more than 30 years conducting interviews,

conducting hundreds of depositions, handling two dozen trials in the courtroom. So and handling large corporate investigations, internal investigations like the one conducted by Robert Hart. And let me give it to you from my perspective. Okay. I've conducted investigations where the events I'm talking about happened three and five years ago. And even then there is a concept in the law often cited by judges that memories fade, not mental incapacity, memories of a normal and average

person fade. Now add onto that a couple of things that Robert R seems to not being given his, his well-meaning affable, uh, elderly, uh, person analysis, enough credit for one, Joe Biden went through a tremendous trauma in 2015, one that he's only now beginning to talk about in the loss of his son, Bo Biden, who was the shining light of his life. Who he wanted to be president himself. He wanted to go Biden to be president and lost the brain cancer. So anybody that's had loss like that, and I lost a parent to cancer, can imagine that around the period of time when the person is

suffering until they're gone and thereafter, it might have impacted certain aspects of your, the way your brain is arranged. And you might have difficulties because of the brain's coping mechanism. You might have difficulties doing of the brain's coping mechanism. You might have difficulties doing perfect recall about that event or things that happened around that same time. And many of the questions that Robert Herst were around the same time as Beau Biden's death.

And the fact that Robert Herst wasn't satisfied that Beau Biden couldn't, that Joe Biden couldn't immediately remember the date that Beau Biden died He should be ashamed of himself. I happen to remember with recall when my dad died. Okay. But sometimes in my mind, I have to remember, Oh, was I at my job with my, you know, big global insider job in New York?

Or was I still with my law firm? Cause it was sort of on the cusp between those two things. So you have to think about that. So that's one questions in and around the time when Beau Biden died, I think not off limits, but like asking him to remember at the granular detail, every little date as if his mind is a calendar that can be sorted like a computer is unreasonable.

And how are you no better? Similarly, to ask him questions about documents from five, 15, 10 years ago and get into the minutiae of the person who's either, who's been in the public service as a, as a Senator, our vice president and president of the United States for his, basically his entire adult life. And to start asking him about the minutia about who bought the filing cabinet. I'm not making this up. Who bought the filing cabinet in your house in 2015?

Who bought the filing cabinet or boxes in the Penn Biden Center? Who got the Pendeflex? Who sorted these things? I got news for him. Don't buy to head people for that. I don't need to be rude, okay? I've got people for certain things. I'm a partner him. Don't buy to head people for that. I don't mean to be rude. Okay. I've got people for certain things. I'm a partner in a law firm. Okay. But I don't do everything in the case. I've got associates. I've got law clerks. I got paralegals. I got

legal assistants. I've got office administrators. I've got other partners and they all play a role. Right. It's a team sport. Being the president is a team sport even though you're the quarterback. And so to start asking him about the minutiae of his home office or his office at another place is really beyond the pale. Especially when you start going back 5, 10, 15 years ago. I sat on another hot take. I defy, I want to get Robert her in front of me. Okay? And I want to ask Robert her under oath. Right. Also during a time, I'm going to wait till Robert her has a crisis in his life, professional

or otherwise. And then the next day I want to sit him down in a chair and ask him questions, because that would be the equivalent of him asking the leader of the free world, a series of questions about events that happened five and 15 years ago the day after Hamas attacked Israel. I'm sorry, Mr. Her, that your witness happens to be the leader of the free world and might have had other things on his mind, and had to make important decisions that didn't include what happened to this particular file and filing cabinet 15 years ago. What happened to this particular file and filing cabinet 15 years ago? How'd you sleep last night?

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For up to 35% off, that's cozyearth.com slash legalaf promo code legalaf. Cozyearth.com slash legalaf. So I wanna get Robert hard after something, I'm not wishing it on him, but I'll just wait cause you know, life happens. Something that happens that's traumatic. And then I'm gonna call him in and sit him down in my fantasy, you know, thought experiment, sit him in and sit him down in my, in my fantasy, uh,

you know, thought experiment, sit him in a seat and say, okay, now I'm going to ask you some questions about a case that you handled 15 years ago when you were in private practice or when you were in the department of justice. And I'm going to ask you about, um, certain pages within there. And I want you to tell me with perfect recall what you remember from those incidents. Who was your assistant? Who was your secretary from 2015? Who brought you coffee?

Who bought the folders? Who bought the filing cabinet in your office? And who was responsible when you moved from private practice into the Department of Justice? And I want perfect recall, or I'm gonna fail you on your memory test and put that in my report. Go. That recall or I'm gonna fail you on your memory test and put that in my report. Go. That's what I'm talking about. It's just a complete lack of not empathy, of understanding

of the human condition and the way the mind works and how far back, especially when there's been layers and layers of layers of more important information on Joe Biden's mind since he took over the presidency, got us out of COVID, restarted the economy with a $3 trillion stimulus package, invested in infrastructure around the country, trip, chip manufacturing, and has conducted effectively foreign policy through the lens of two proxy wars.

And all Robert Hurst had to do for the last nine months with his team is figure out how, you know, 12 boxes of documents that may have contained classified material in it, got out of Joe Biden's possession or, you know, and why he kept it. Come on, come on, be fair, be fair, be balanced, be sober, be judicious.

And we're back to Merrick Garland's original mistake. I don't know why he picked, first of all, he didn't need to pick a special counsel. I do this on another hot take. He could have conducted this entire investigation and killed it where it lived by the Department of Justice and came to the same declination memo declining prosecution. If he's going to go special counsel, which he didn't need to do, he just wanted to look like he was being even handed because he appointed one for Trump on bigger issues. Then why Robert Her,

why, why reach across the aisle to pick somebody from the other side? Pick somebody trusted that you know, you know, you can trust since you're going to give him a tremendous amount of responsibility or her. I could think of a number of people, Barbara Jones, I could spend a whole hot take on the amount of people he could have chosen. So you made that mistake. And then you made the mistake of announcing in advance that you were going to release whatever report was generated by Robert Herr without review or editing, which is not required by the special counsel law. So now you're stuck with it. So now I'm back to Robert Her criticism. I already did a hot take criticizing Merrick Garland. Now I'm doing the

flip side, right? This is two sides of the coin. And so having been in Robert Hurr's chair, let me tell you how difficult it is to ask questions of somebody about events that happened five and 15 years ago and expect perfect recall. In fact, that's not even what I'm trying to do when I'm doing the investigation. I'm not keeping a scorecard of him. He spelled Afghanistan wrong.

Hmm, that's a problem. His memory seems to be failing about events in 2008. Oh, he can't remember exactly when he was vice president because he's been in public service since he was 29. His exact resume of his, you know, his LinkedIn of when and, you know, the edges of each beginning and ending of events in his life is not perfect recall. You know, let that be for the history books. You don't you have better questions to ask of the president of the United States and former vice president of the United States

than when he bought a filing cabinet, who bought it and how much was it, you know, and how many folders. My takeaway when I strip away all of Robert Hurst's mistakes is I like the guy that's portrayed in there for Joe Biden. I like a president and a vice president who kept copious notes, who was a diarist, who kept volumes and volumes and volumes of meticulous commentary about that moment

in that historical moment in time for future reference and posterity. I like that. We can debate whether Joe Biden should have taken the diaries with him. Ronald Reagan didn't, didn't get prosecuted. You know, that was kind of standing practice leaving the White House. But I like the fact that he generated them

in comparison to what? Donald Trump, would they stop giving the presidential daily briefing to, because he was too bored and too stupid to understand the results? So they stopped doing it. Who took no notes during it. Who seemed to not have any interest at all in domestic or foreign policy while he was president. That's better. Or do you want the guy, you know, you know, who do you want to be your study partner? That guy who never goes to class or you want the guy who's taking

copious study notes and outlines. Isn't that the person you call up in the middle of the night when you're not ready for the exam? Hey, Joe Biden, you got your study outline? He does. He did. And so what he did with it and how sloppy the people around him were

in helping him move out. What does Robert Herthink? That Joe Biden packed his own boxes. Joe Biden rented a U-Haul and did his own move on his own to save money? Okay. He bought the packing service for those of us that have moved.

He bought the packing service. That's what his aides were for. That's what the naval officers are for that work for the vice president to make sure that things go out the door in the right way, that some go left to the National Archive and some go right with Joe Biden's personal effects. That's why there was a conclusion there'd be no prosecution because there's no crime that was committed. The only crime that's been committed is by Robert Herr and his gratuitous drive-by attacks on Joe Biden,

because he failed the Robert Herr 15 year memory test. I'm fired up. Now that I read the report in detail, now that I've seen the reporting about interviews leading into that report, I'm fired up. You should be too. We don't blow smoke or sunshine here, but we're gonna tell the truth in our own analysis

using it through the lens of our professional experience. And we do it every Wednesday and Saturday on Legal AF, the leading podcast at the intersection of law, politics, and justice. So until my next Legal AF, until my next hot take, then I might be hotter. This is Michael Popak reporting. Hey, Midas Mighty. Love this report? Continue the conversation by following us on Instagram, at MidasTouch, to keep up with the most important news of the day.

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