Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Top Legal Experts REACT to midweek legal BOMBSHELLS - Legal AF 9/7/22

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

On this edition of LegalAF Midweek, the top-rated legal news podcast by MeidasTouch, Anchors Ben Meiselas (sitting in for Karen Friedman Agnifilo) and Michael Popok discuss and analyze: A South Florida federal judge’s decision to granting Trump’s request for a special master concerning the Mar-a-Lago search warrant documents and stopping the criminal investigation against hi dead in its tracks for now; the Manhattan District Attorney indicting Bannon under NY state criminal law for his role with other co-conspirators in the phony “build the wall” charity; and a New Mexico elected official who was convicted of being a Jan6 Insurrectionist being turned out of office under the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause by a Trump-appointed judge, and so much more. Shop Meidas Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida granted Trump's request for a special master and enjoined the Department of Justice from pursuing its criminal investigation into Trump in connection with the Mar-a-Lago search warrant executed in August 8 against all law, against all president, against all logic, perhaps one of the worst, judicially reasoned decisions I've ever read, although we are in the wake of the Dobbs decision. So it's right up there with just some of the worst logic, very, very, very dangerous. We will break down this decision for you. Steve Bannon indicted.

Again, it's kind of like every day, it seems like Steve Bannon is getting indicted. He was just convicted in a federal court for his contempt of Congress for not responding to January 6th, Sipinas. But now there's news that Steve Bannon has been indicted in connection with New York State law claims for his role and fraudulent conduct. It's alleged into the build a wall, go fund me, charitable, whatever scam.

He was charged by the beds out of SDNY. He got a pardon for that, but those parties don't apply to state law claims he's expected to surrender on Thursday. And we've talked about the disqualification clause in the Constitution in the 14th Amendment Section 3. Well, it's been utilized for the first time since 1869 and the first time it's been used for any insurrectionist since January 6th. It was an individual by the name of Koy Griffin who serves in New Mexico as the Otero County Commissioner.

He was already found guilty of a misdemeanor relating to his conduct in the insurrection out of a federal court in front of a Trump judge. Well, break down all of these top legal stories for you. But let's start at the top Michael Popok with this judge. I lean Canon. I guess we we talked about it. We saw the writing on the wall when Trump filed this motion for a special master.

He called it a motion for judicial oversight and additional relief. Legal observers, you, me, legal observers throughout the law community, say, what the hell is this motion even asking for? This judge doesn't have jurisdiction. Trump doesn't have standing because the documents that issue, which were obtained during the validly executed search warrant on August 8, they belong to the government and any other potential documents that were obtained, they were related to the fruits of a crime. This is just warrants 101.

It's criminal law 101. It's not controversial topics, but the judge issued that ruling. I think it was August 27. Before the government was even served before the DOJ, even was formally served. She goes, you know what? I don't even need to hear from you. I'm inclined to grant a special master. And legal observers were like, what? You haven't heard their argument. They weren't even served yet. Nonetheless, the DOJ responded because federal judges, let's face it, they do have a lot of power.

You can't ignore a federal judge, you know, like that right away. You can appeal it. You can challenge it later, but you can't just ignore federal judges. So the Department of Justice responded, there were those truly bizarre oral arguments that were held around. I think it was September 1st, maybe, yeah, September 1st was the hearing where the judge was saying, well, what would be the harm of a special master? Come on, let's just have a special master and let's just see what happens. And the Department of Justice and Jay Blatt, the top, the top counterintelligence official who's representing the DOJ, basically said, this is our national security. We have to pursue our criminal investigation. You can't interfere with it. You don't have jurisdiction.

These documents don't belong to Trump. This is criminal law 101 and national security law. And you are going to imperil our national security and our ability to investigate. We did our legal a F around up over the weekend where we said, look, it doesn't look good, but we'll have to wait for the written order. You said popok, wait for the written order. And we should, we shouldn't just pre-judge, but the written order was worse than I could have even imagined. And you have a judge that clearly didn't understand the law. She claimed that the basis of her exercising this extraordinary, equitable jurisdiction.

In other words, I don't really have the right to see this case, but in really rare, equitable circumstances, a federal judge can jump in. And when you analyze these factors, there was a fifth circuit case that's richi case from 1972, which has different factors. And one was like, did the government exercise a callous disregard for a, you know, for someone's rights, which that's not the case there. She didn't make that finding. But then on every other element, it was like, will this cause harm to the individual? And she's like, well, because he's a president, a former president, it will cause irreparable

harm to his reputation. And then the other factors were like, does the individual who's seeking to get these documents back or have a special master? Do they have like a, a specific need or like a, a sufficient need for the documents back? And will they be harmed by not having the documents back? That factor, Pope, is like saying, would the drug lord want his drugs back? Yeah, he'd like his drugs back, but it doesn't mean it belongs to him. If you analyze that factor of what would the criminal want, the person being investigated, what they want, the criminal shit, they want the criminal stuff back. And so she analyzed that and said that not only should there be a special master as she

analyzed, you know, the factors, not only should she get jurisdiction, not only should there be a special master, but she enjoined, she issued an injunction stopping the Department of Justice from pursuing a criminal investigation that utilizes the records. Technically, they could still investigate not using the records, but they got, they need the records. Of course, they're going to need to utilize it. So for all purposes, it kind of shuts down a major path of the criminal investigation. I mean, sure, they could technically go in and dite right now in Washington, D.C.

But they want to be diligent. They want to find out the extent in nature as we learn things like these documents included the nuclear secrets of foreign adversaries as Washington Post reported in this judge basically shut that down. No, foreign allies. It's worse. It's our, it's our friend secrets that were supposed to keep secret. Oh, Pock, what's going on here, man? What's going on? Oh, Ben. I've done a lot of research and digging into Judge Cannon because, as you know, I practiced in Florida for 20 years. Here's what I've determined. First, she's created a new exception to criminal practice, federal and constitutional law, and I'll call it the ex-presidents' reputation might be hurt by a criminal investigation into his misconduct. That's not a doctrine. Of course, Trump's quote unquote, reputation is in tatters by his own conduct. That's not a basis to a point,

a special master. And we'll talk about that process in a minute. I learned a quite a few things about Judge Cannon, some of which we've already spoken about, some of which I'll mention here on the podcast that I think is relevant. First of all, she's 12 years at a law school. She barely meets the requirement under the American Bar Association to be qualified to be a judge. As you and I both know, it takes years of experience, especially when you're doing high-wire, high-wire act brain surgery, like a federal judge every day, that's one. Two, she went to, and you'll learn from me that high school is really important in Florida, and where you went to high school is really important. It's part of a network of relationships that develops in Florida, especially in Miami in particular. She went to a very well-known, very good, a Baroqueal school, you know,

that I know well. It was blocks from where I, where I worked called Ransom Everglades. She was a top student. She went to Duke University undergrad. It was sort of a feeder program from her Baroqueal school to Duke. And she, she was known as a quiet and industrious student, nothing objectionable in her background so far. She went and worked on the prosecutor's side of the equation of the V and did nothing earth

shattering, nothing news breaking, but did her job. And then somewhere along the way registered as a Republican. This is where things go a little bit arrive. It became a federalist probably in law school and then gets appointed through Marco Rubio to be a federal judge. She's the youngest and most least senior judge in all the Southern District of Florida. She's so least senior that she doesn't even operate out of one of the two major courthouses. There's three major courthouses in South Florida, West Palm Beach, Fort Loderdale, and Miami. She's not any of those. She's in Fort Pierce, which is the north,

north hinterlands of the southern district of Florida. She's in a courtroom that's pretty sleepy. I've been up there. I've argued things there. If there's four people in that courthouse all day That's a lot. She's not used to cases like this from her practice in law. She certainly not used to it sitting in Fort Pierce She transferred the case for hearing purposes and security purposes to West Palm Beach But she lives up in Fort Pierce with her husband and that's where she's from. She's Colombian descent Father was Cuban mother was mother was Cuban father was not and grew up in Florida. Nothing in her resume shows that she had the intellectual half to handle a case like this. And certainly she's ignored all opportunities to educate herself with the Amicus briefs that we've talked about.

She has made a number of tremendously fundamental mistakes that you've identified in the opening. Firstly, she's going to set up a special master to see if executive privilege for a former president somehow applies to documents that were in his possession that he retained with him after he moved out of the White House when the American people fired him. That's not what a special master is supposed to do. The fundamental question is a legal question as to whether executive privilege applies at all in the hands of a former Otis. Every case I've ever seen, every argument that's reasonable that we've talked about is that the executive privilege is held by the current president, not the former president, even the Supreme Court has ruled that.

So in order to twist her reasoning into shape, she had a point to the sense and concurrences at the Supreme Court held by the rightist of right wing on the US Supreme Court to find that maybe there are occasions where the executive privilege continues with the current, the current president. But why would a special master, what is the instruction that the special master is going to be given? That's supposed to be a mechanical exercise given instructions by the judge on how to review documents, not making fundamental constitutional calls as to whether this document is executive

privilege properly covered under a former president or this document is that's supposed to come from the from the from the sitting judge having been properly briefed on the law. So she's completely punted that. She's argued in her briefing that she thinks executive privilege may, may still obtain to cover these documents. She's pointed, she spent more time in her writing, Ben. I know you read it. She spent more time talking about the harm to Trump, almost a reputable harm to Trump because he's being prosecuted for a crime that he committed. When is a sitting federal judge or any judge in evaluating the rare time they're asked to evaluate a criminal investigation while it's ongoing before an indictment, which is

almost never, when do they ever comment that they're worried about the reputation of the person and how the search warrant was executed or how the material that was recovered pursuant to a search warrant issued by one of her colleagues down I-95 sitting in Miami, Magistrate Reinhart, he already sat through a evidentiary hearing. He's already issued the subpoena the search warrant

It's already been executed. So not only has she Not only has she commented negatively on the investigation as far as I can see, but she stopped the investigation and it's tracked This is unheard of. I can't think of a motion that you and I can file as Practicing lawyers under the criminal code, under the federal rules of criminal procedure. That would stop an investigation in its tracks. We might have something to say about documents at a suppression yearning. We may have something to say about an indictment on a motion to dismiss, but to kill it or

to severely cripple an investigation at its beginning because of the documents that have been recovered, unheard of. So unheard of that even Bill Barr believes that the judge is completely wrong is not relying on proper precedent. It doesn't understand executive privilege. Doesn't understand 41G of the rules of federal criminal procedure about who owns the property who does not own the property. And for her to, you know, she had a clear path. We may not have liked it

then, but she could have just put the special master in place to like look for attorney client and stuff that wasn't covered by the search warrant in terms of scope, be like a rare photo here, a passport there. And we would have said, we don't agree with her, but you know, it's not gonna really delay things, but she went, not one step further. She went a bridge too far. She said, I'm gonna stop the investigation. Don't look at his material anymore.

And nothing that you've already looked at, can you presently use to prosecute him unless and until a special master that we haven't even chosen yet. Lord knows what kind of security clearance that person needs. And now she's waiting for a list from Trump. I can't imagine that list. And the list for the Department of Justice of potential, I don't know, former FBI, former federal, you know, DOJ, former judges, that will be the special master with all encompassing power under her ruling.

Now, here's the question for you, Ben. What are they going to appeal to the Department of Justice and when? It's a good question. I think they have to appeal because the ruling set such bad precedent, and even if it will unnecessarily and unfortunately delay these matters, how could you let this hang out there that this is what frankly criminals can do outside of this context? Well, all criminals now when they get a search warrant, an a validly executed search warrant, they just think to themselves, you know what? I don't even have to provide an affidavit of what the property is. I'm just going to

write a letter to the judge and just say, Hey, judge, they may have got some of stuff that they shouldn't. There's a bunch of privileges and attorney, client privileges. I need you to slow down the investigation. So I think they are going to appeal. Here's what I think they're looking at, though, too. The ruling is so procedurally defective in all angles. It's kind of a riches of what you can appeal. And one example is she granted what appears to be. And I say appears to be because Trump never even made

the showing for a preliminary injunction, which would normally have to have affidavits where Trump, who has, who's claiming that his property was taken, would just have to list, hey, you took this hard drive, you took this car, you took these cards. Here's an inventory of things that belong to me, turn it back versus inverting the whole burden and basically saying that people, people who are being criminally investigated who want a return to property or want a special master don't even have to identify what the property is. I mean, let's be clear. There's never been a single document that Trump has filed where he has said, no, I don't

have top secret sensitive compartmental information. And they they rated my house without probable cause. The warrant was unlawful because I never had these records. That's normally what someone would argue. I'm innocent and they took records. There was no top secret. Yeah, maybe I had, this is what you would have to be top secret though. Any of our documents, he,

true, but here's what you would argue if you were his, where if you wanted to argue that it was even a close call, which he's never made the argument, you would say, Hey, look, you know, this was I was writing a book. And this is a Kim Jong-un letter. And here are things that I took. By the way, all criminals still, but nonetheless, what you would say is this is, there's a big misunderstanding here. Okay. You would at least make the argument, but he's not. His argument is the FBI's photographs made me look messy and that you're causing people to believe that the way they were were laid out on the floor like that. I was actually concealing them

in cabinets and that's the way it was. No one thinks that the FBI took it there and it was found in that locate. No one thinks that the FBI took it there and it was found in that locate. No one thinks that. We all know what they did. We know they took an evidence photo, but Poeback to answer your question directly, they are going to appeal. I think it's a matter of when,

but the question is, is like, did she even grant a preliminary injunction? She did. And if she grant a preliminary injunction, one of the things you have to then usually do in your order is then set another hearing of when there would actually be a hearing to challenge or contest a preliminary and she walked through the steps, the prongs of a preliminary injunction, which your order is missing. You said something very right. You

often do this one in particular. You called it very right. You often do. This one in particular, you called it a letter to the judge because everything, as you've noted, was done without a sworn affidavit declaration or what we call a verified pleading or a verified motion, which is done verified with a person with factual knowledge. There's lawyers have decided that's not going to help them. And it's only going to hurt their client to put them under oath. And they have a judge who does not seem concerned about this. The only other thing I saw reporting about canon today, judge canon today, is that she does seem to put in her other cases and what she has up in Fort Pierce,

is a lot of immigration and drug cases on the federal side. I mean, a lot of judges have that on their dock. And it's not that unusual. That is what goes through. There's far more criminal cases than civil cases, depending upon your jurisdiction. And so those are the kind of cases she gets. And for what I've heard for people to practice in front of her is that she often gives the government a hard time. She doesn't often take them at their word, even though she was a former federal prosecutor

for a short time herself. She often puts them back on their heels. She certainly has done that here. Where does it go from here? If you and I are right about the appeal, and I think you're right, they have to, just for any future prosecution, is it goes to the 11th Circuit? There are 11 members of the 11th Circuit. Six have been appointed by, ultimately by Trump and five by others, not Trump. So it's six to five split. It's going to be a random three that get assigned to the to the case. It could be all three from the Trump side. It could be a mix. We'll have to see the combination of which judges get assigned randomly to hear the appeal is going to matter to the result. We've said that before, their background, their predilections, especially here when it comes to Trump. We think

any jurist worth their salt is going to find that this judge was over her, was over her skis didn't understand the law and will reverse it. And then ultimately, hopefully that will happen to Supreme Court. But what has Trump gotten again? Two things. He's bought himself more time through an announcement, potentially, of running for office. And we'll talk about that at the end. And another fundraising scam. Oh, look at them. I won. I won in court. It sent me money. I needed for my defense because now we know that the RNC reporting, you probably talked about on the brothers podcast, the Republican National Committee has cut him off from funding his attorney's fees. Apparently they were paying most of his attorney's fees and all

of these other cases up until now, but they told him when it comes to Mar-a-Lago, they're not paying the freight anymore. So he needs money. So look for money grab by Trump using hopefully, peric victories like this as his fundraising scam. You know, there was also one other thing about this judge, which was very, very telling. And this is an amicus curaibri for an amicus brief, which is a friend of the court brief, which was submitted by some of top former federal prosecutors, including a former Republican governor. Two, two. Who were they again?

Bill Weld at a Massachusetts and Christine Todd Whitman at a New Jersey. Yeah, it's a good memory, Pope Mark. And they wrote this brief to the judge in the case. An anatomical brief is just called a friend of the court brief, which is a judge doesn't have to follow it, but frequently what they'll do is they'll read it. And typically you see amicus briefs to the Supreme Court on issues of great import, although you could file it in district court cases or in other cases. But this one was 23 pages. But this one was 23 pages and the judge after making her ruling appointing the special master against all law, she stated after she made that ruling that she was going to reject even accepting the Amicus brief.

Now, the big distinction here is by her rejecting accepting it doesn't mean that she's rejecting accepting the arguments because by accepting it All that means is that she would literally just read it which you could read in about 25 to 30 minutes That's how long it took me to read it and you probably would take you less It takes me a little long to read some things especially when I want to drill down on some illegal cons But took me a half an hour so the fact that she would just reject even reading it and basically go and turn a blind eye and say, I'm either too busy, I don't care.

I don't want to know what some of the top people, who by the way are Republicans, want to tell me about the law. It wasn't like she was inundated with hundreds of these. She got one, It was 23 pages. And she rejected. I'm not even going to look at it. I don't even want to be educated on there.

Remember Saturday's podcast, I asked you whether she agreed to accept to reject that amicus brief. And we didn't know because it happened yet. Now we know. And that's, and that's even more telling. Now, I don't know if she was trying to, I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it's getting harder and harder as we see her rulings and her thought process. Maybe because there wasn't a competing amicus submitted on behalf of Trump and she didn't

want the scales to tip, but the scales tipped. She tipped the scales. The moment she ruled that executive privilege is properly evaluated by a special master. That is a fundamental legal question that's already been litigated up to the Supreme Court that she as a sitting judge has to make the ruling about. And if she's wrong, then that's, well, she's already wrong. So that's grounds for appeal. You know, you don't kick it off, punt it off to a special master. Let me know what you find of anything's potentially. How would they know, by the way, that it was executive privilege, doesn't have a stamp on

it? Does he didn't stamp it from the desk of former 45 executive privilege? So they're going to have to see it. And then what? The other side doesn't get the comment to a special master about, hey, what do you think this document is? That's not the way a special master works. Special master.

Popuck, if you think this is, to view this through this prism that that she has this how absurd it is. The special master would be making calls over the executive branch of the government. These Republicans who believe in the unitary executive are basically saying, let's appoint a random independent person who will be making calls about whether these documents belong to the president, the current president and the existing executive branch or not. I mean, it's, it's a task that no special master could even do because so foundational. And this is what the point of the Amicus brief was, is that there isn't, you can't, there can be other amokai out there who disagree

with this. And this is why the judges ruling is so heinous. Johnny really there isn't a another legal perspective here. And so you can't, this is what the Republican said. They're like, we're Republican former federal prosecutors. You can't both sides. They knew where she was going. They knew that she was, you know, a hard, but you can't both sides of this issue. The law is very, very clear. And it sets a very dangerous precedent. Let's keep everybody, we'll keep everybody apprised on the updates here on what will happen next. The people go, what can we do to the judge?

Can she be impeached? Technically, technically, she can't, the federal judges have a lot of power in our system. And so I don't want to get anyone's hopes up. She can get overruled. She's now disgraced. She's disgraced herself. I mean, she's a laughing stock, you know, anyone who goes into the courtroom is going to be like, yeah, that's the horrible judge. And her peers are going to be like, yeah, but not the first one we've talked about on legal AF. We had another middle district of Florida judge who made that ridiculous ruling about COVID and about vaccines.

So I've done the same thing on Twitter. I don't want to I'm managing expectations. Federal judges almost never get in peach. I can think of one, I think two in the entire like hundred years doesn't happen. They get overruled, you know, maybe the chief judge tries to avoid giving her any big cases for a while and things like that. One thing I want to mention for you move on to the next segment, then that I thought was interesting.

At the end of the day, all this may not matter. It buys him time. If he took home with him, the nuclear secrets of one of our allies, which the reporting from the Department of Justice is that he did. And why is that important? Because our allies want us to keep their secrets,

or they won't tell us their secrets in the future. And if we have that like Israel, I'm picking us a country, has some sort of nuclear capability beyond what we thought they had. And it's sitting in Trump's area, or another country we haven't even thought of. He's now put the's area or another country we haven't even thought of. He's now put the national security of this country and the foreign policy of this country at tremendous risk. And I'm sure the phone is burning up. The phone line is burning up to

Biden and to blink in our secretary of state about from some of these countries. Is it my secrets that are sitting over there that have been potentially compromised? We'd like to know because that's a reason that there is secret. So some of this stuff that we complain about, like the executive privilege, each one of these documents is a count of obstruction. You know, they have hundreds of them. Maybe the special master eliminates a small subset. The end of the day, there's going to be a, there should be a lot left over, even if we're not successful, DOJ is not successful on a field, which they ultimately should be. You know, one of this things, this is highlighting as we head into the midterm election, those,

just really what's at stake, you know, people, you know, sure, you have this 25, 30% of maga Republican fascists, which of the voting block who are like, great, give our national secrets away as long as our dear leader, you know, owns the lips. But you know, serious Americans and I see it, you know, I see it in the comment section, I see it, you know, as as the Midas touch network has grown, you know, and I've seen it through speaking with military vets and speaking with people who have been in law enforcement also of just like people who have serious jobs who have to deal with confidential and sensitive things who go, you know what, like, this is beyond the palette, you're making

a mockery of our country, you're putting all of our lives in danger, you know, in these fascist carnival circus routines that Trump is doing, you know, he went to Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania. He'll be going to Ohio. He chose to do it during the Buckeye game. I don't know if you saw Buckeye versus Toledo is when Trump decided that that would be the great time

to do a rally for JD Vance. These people are very, very, very dangerous. Speaking of very, very, very dangerous people, Steve, Bannon, dangerous, corrupt, he was charged by federal prosecutors out of the Southern District of New York in his role of leading this bill to wall fraud, which this go fund me money and other money was, we're going to privately fund the wall. And so they raised like $25 or $30 million, which two of the individuals who were involved actually pled guilty, I believe, in connection with the federal prosecution. Yeah.

And the third, you're right about that. And the third one got a mistrial because one of the jurors reported that he thought it was a witch hunt and it screwed up the liberations. But the Eastern District, the Eastern District of New York, I think, has already indicated that they're going to, um, retry that individual. So there'll probably be three and oh, with a lot of people that are willing, I, I would assume to cooperate against Bannon in the new case. Yeah. So, uh, uh, Trump issued a pardon for Bannon on January 19th of 2021, a day before he left the office installed our top secret sensitive compartment and information and brought it to Mar-a-Lago.

He pardoned this criminal, Steve Bannon filed a motion to dismiss in the Southern District of New York and the federal judge in that case. She wrote in her order, It was a pretty powerful order. She's like, I have to grant this motion to dismiss because he was pardoned in the federal system, but pardon implies guilt. And this is not a dismissal saying that he's innocent, quite the contrary. This shows that he's got a guilty mind and a guilty conscience that he accepted this part of, surely after that. And we reported this on legal AF around that time that, uh, Manhattan, D.A.s office out of New York would open up an investigation for New York state law violations as well. State crimes can't be pardoned by federal level officials.

The president, they can be by state level officials, although that's not happening in New York with the Democratic governor. And who by the way, Hocal was on might as touch five. Yes, she's great. Yeah, great, great. Yeah, I met her at a fun reser. And so we now learned to break news. I mean, you know, the day before we filmed this pod that Bannon would be indicted out of New York. It hasn't been unsealed yet. So we haven't seen with the indictments that he'd be expected to surrender on Thursday. Bannon went to whatever failing social media platform or one of his radical extreme networks

and gave a statement about who knows what, you know, a blabbering. They'll never take him alive. They'll never take him alive. That's what he said. He did that. So before Bannon was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress, he basically said,

I'm gonna go and testify and I'm gonna give him hell. And then when he called, we just sat there and took the fifth. So Popeye, what's going on here with this nightmare? They're cowards. So it says, you laid it out. The New York Manhattan DA's office at the time led by Karen Friedman, like Nifolose boss, where she was the number two, Siv Vance immediately upon the dismissal of the case

against Vannon, prepared start working on their own investigation as to violation of state law claims related to the build the wall, BS charity, and working, we believe in conjunction, when I say, we, I mean, me, not Karen, I don't get information from Karen, on anything that she worked on, but it's believed that the New York, the Manhattan DA worked in conjunction with the federal prosecutors and FBI who handed off their files, if you will, they didn't have to start from scratch in New York. They were able to use the benefit and the fruit of all of the investigation that led to ban and being

indicted federally. So of course, they had it almost with a ribbon tied around it. They did their own follow up investigation and grand jury and all of that, which they've been doing diligently for, you know, since I've been left office. So it's again, it wasn't a rubber stamp like the FBI, the DOJ didn't say to New York. Here you go. Just file the indictment. Let's go. I mean, it's been like two years. They've been doing it on their own time. And now with a new prosecutor, new head prosecutor in the form of Alvin Bragg. And now they brought a sealed indictment, meaning we don't know what it says, neither does the defendant. He's he, they've coordinated and allowed him apparently to surrender for his arrangement his first appearance

They could have went and just picked them up off the unceiling But look they know who they're playing with here And they know that that'll just play into his hand of being a martyr and raising more money So they let him like they did with the case that we talked about involving this the Congressional subpoena they're allowing him to surrender There'll be some sort of circus that will generate around the surrender and then they will unceil about involving the congressional subpoena, they're allowing them to surrender. There'll be some sort of circus that will generate around the surrender

and then they will unseal the indictment. It will likely track very much the original federal indictment, which we'll post against him and his three co-conspirators that working theory is that one, if not all of those co-conspirators, two of which have been convicted, it will be sentenced. Will cooperate be given an opportunity by the feds to cooperate

with the state prosecution in return for cooperation credit for their sentencing. So he'll have one, could be more of his business associates testifying against him at this particular trial. And I assume there's also gonna be other new developed investigatory witness and document information that the feds didn't have. And what else have they been doing for the last two years? So I assume there'll be some new things that you and I will be able to report on

on the weekend edition that'll be in the unsealed indictment. But, ban and I don't care how much whistling in the graveyard he does, and how much he pumps up his chest and said, you'll never take me alive, and the whites of my eyes, and whatever these ridiculous phrases that he uses for his followers. But, he's in serious criminal jeopardy as a result of this indictment. He's skated by by the skin of his nose on the federal side because of only because of the pardon, he would have likely

been indicted. I'm sorry, you would have likely been convicted and sentenced already. And I think the same thing's going to happen in front of a relatively liberal Manhattan jury, which votes Democrat, just so people understand, I don't know, 88 to 90% of the time. If you win the Democratic primary in New York for a position, you've won the position because there's no opposition. Only in rare circumstances does a moderate Republican like a Bloomberg or at the time, it's hard to even say these words of Rudy Giuliani when he was a moderate Republican win office. So he's in for, you know, and that's a serious, we haven't seen the sentencing yet for his

people, his co-conspirators, but that's a serious crime. That could be another two to five years or more on top of whatever judge Nichols is going to sentence him to in October. And then as I saw on Twitter, someone was saying, is there a day where banan is not indicted? And it just seems like he's indicted every single day. And then Popeye going from one fascist insurrectionist to the next to the next, we have to talk about this case because we've been talking about the disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment section three for so long, which provides a pathway for disqualifying individuals who aid in a better participate in insurrections against the government. People may remember the Marjorie Taylor Green case invoked that section three of the 14th Amendment out of Georgia to try to disqualify her

You know the one issue that you and I discussed there and as we discussed generally with this section is that where the disqualification effort proceeds a criminal conviction it may be more difficult to demonstrate and a established finding of being an insurrectionist, even if they were an insurrectionist. Because one of the questions too is whether or not that provision in the 14th Amendment, like is it self-activating? Do you have to file a complaint at federal court? Is it Congress's, are they the ones who do it?

It was interesting though, because in New Mexico, they have their own state law that allowed citizens to challenge people from running for engaging in certain misconduct. So that was bootstrapped with article section three of the 14th Amendment, the disqualification clause, has a relates to this guy, Koi Griffin, who was apparently the leader of something called Cowboys for Trump, which was this made-up group that basically spread lies and about the election and were actively participating in the insurrection. Koi Griffin was actually charged with trespassing at the, at January 6th. He was charged and he went to trial before a Trump appointed judge, district court judge in, in DC, the Trump appointed judge, he picked to do a bench trial versus a jury trial.

You have the right, if you're a criminal defendant to weigh, you have the right to a jury in the constitution, but you could waive that right and you seek a bench trial or a trial before the judge, the judge. And so Koi Griffin, who was the Otero County Commissioner of New Mexico at the time he was an insurrectionist, he said, well, I'm going to go in front of the Trump judge and maybe the Trump judge will find me not guilty because I got a better shake in front of the Trump judge than in jury, but the Trump judge found that he was guilty. He was found guilty of misdemeanor trespassing. And so that was one of the arguments that the

citizens made. It was brought by the group called crew, which is a nonprofit and a number of other law firms out there. And just showed us this really the first successful prosecution under 14th Amendment Section 3, which we've been talking a lot about at. And it makes sense. The judge found, you know, made factual findings. January 6th was an insurrection. You were an insurrectionist, and therefore you forfeit your rights to serve in any public office in the state or in general. And so the judge issued an order saying, you're done. No more public office for insurrectionists.

Pop up. Yeah. Yeah. The two things I'd like to add to that perfect overview of what happened to this, what rightfully happened to this Cowboys for Trump guy is that it's what we said. If you get convicted of a crime that sort of changes the calculus, it makes it much easier to apply the disqualification clause into the 14th Amendment. The ones that you and I had talked about that we wished would happen, like Marjorie Taylor Green and the others of her ilk. The one thing that's missing, even though we know their criminals at heart, is the criminal

conviction. Here we didn't have that problem. And the other thing that I thought was fascinating that the anti-defamation lead came out with yesterday or today is that there are of the oath keepers and they reviewed the oath keepers' names on a leaked list, on a membership list. And the Associated Press is reporting that of the 38,000 names that were listed there, they found more than a hundred that are current members of the military and another 80 that are in some sort of public office. And this is the Oathkeeper group that's part of a criminal conspiracy that's been indicted

by the Department of Justice. And these people were card tearing members of the Oathkeeper, including other people like boy and cowboys for Trump. So the warning shot is out there. If you're on that list and you went to Jan 6, or did things that are committing a crime and you get convicted of a crime, you hold public office, there's now a case out there that says that you should be removed under the 14th Amendment. We welcome that decision by a Trump appointed judge. Midweek, legal AF, Ben, my cellist and Michael Popeye. Everybody check out store. MidasTouch.com right now. Check out store. MidasTouch.com for

the best pro democracy gear. Row, row, row your vote shirts, Rovmber shirts, legal AF shirts. Hey, we even got Texas Paul mugs. We've got convict 45 or convict 45 shirts. We're going to be adding a lot of additional merch to the store as well. Make sure you check out store dot mightestouch.com and make sure you subscribe to the mightest touch YouTube channel. If you're getting this on audio, go over to mightestouch YouTube, subscribe there. And if you're watching this on YouTube right now, go search for legal a f wherever you get your audio podcast. This is how you can really help the legal AF podcast. Subscribe on the audio to legal AF and give us a listen on legal AF audio as well to try to get through some of these concepts again the second time and make sure you leave audio five star review, go to store.mitustouch.com as well. And the

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and we are going to be louder with the truth, and we are going to push back on fascism, push back on radical right extremism, and we saw three examples of that today. Trump, banan, coy Griffin, all different areas of the world of the United States, but with the same agenda of undermining our democracy, something we vitally need to protect.

Popok, another midweek we did together, huh? I know Karen was traveling again. It's college season, but we'll, we'll have her back next week and you and I Wednesday to follow up on all the things we've talked about and things that you and I can't even contemplate that will happen between today and Saturday that we'll bring to our listeners and followers How can't wait to see you for the Saturday legal a f live for the Saturday Legal AF Live. Special thanks to just all of you viewers out there, all of you listeners out there without your support.

None of this is possible, and we keep growing and building this movement together. This has been my cellist from Legal AF Joint. By my good friend Michael Popock, we will see you next time shout out to the Midas Mighty.