Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump about to get HIT WITH MORE CHARGES and Sinks to NEW LOW

Episode Date: July 2, 2023

Anchored by MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok, the top-rated news analysis podcast Legal AF is back for another hard-hitting look at the most consequential developments at the intersection of law and politics. On this weekend’s edition the anchors discuss: 1) the likelihood of Jack Smith as special counsel bringing a new indictment against Trump and other new defendants including Rudy Giuliani , for Mar a Lago crimes along with other Jan6 related crimes; 2) an overview of all the cooperating witnesses including Giuliani against Trump including the lead participants in the fake electors and a half a dozen attorneys in his orbit, along with subpoenaed phones from other attorneys who participated in the conspiracy; 3) Trump’s failed attempt to get away from Judge Merchan for the NY state business fraud crime case and move the case to federal court; and 4) the Supreme Court’s right wing MAGA recent decisions overturning precedent in the areas of the first amendment, religion, gender and religion to implement the federalist society agenda, as the Biden Administration pivots to counteract these rulings. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! ALEX AND ANI: Head to https://Alexandani.com and get 20% at checkout with code MEIDAS. Discover the confidence that comes from a perfectly accessorized piece of jewelry. LOMI: Visit https://Lomi.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF and checkout to save $50! REEL PAPER: Head to https://REELPAPER.com/LEGALAF and sign up for a subscription using code LEGALAF at checkout, and automatically get 30% off your first order and FREE SHIPPING! SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch 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 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Burn the Boats: https://pod.link/1485464343 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://pod.link/1676844320 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Special counsel, Jack Smith may be on the verge of bringing a super-seating indictment against Donald Trump in connection with Trump's theft of government records. According to a new report by the Independent, the super-seating indictment could contain 35 to 40 more criminal counts and some counts could be brought in jurisdictions outside of Florida, meaning, bye bye, judge Eileen Cannon for those specific counts. This, as we learned that the grand jury investigating Trump's document theft that voted to indict him continues to issue subpoenas and investigate more of Donald Trump's crimes relating to his willful retention and transmission of national defense information. And this just in from earlier today, a weekend bombshell, the Washington Post is reporting that Donald Trump had called former Arizona governor Doug

Ducey in late 2020 to overturn the state's presidential election results. Arizona's election results. This is being described as a dry run for Trump's later call to the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffinsberger to find him the votes or else. Footnote, Brad Raffinsberger met with special counsel Jack Smith's team this week as well. This week we learned that Rudy Giuliani Trump's personal attorney entered into a cooperation agreement with Jack Smith, known as a proper agreement where Giuliani, it appears agreed to tell Jack Smith everything about Donald Trump's conduct and crimes because that's

what a proper agreement is. So if you are keeping track of cooperating co-conspirators from the past week who have spoken with special counsel, Jack Smith Smith in the other criminal investigation into Trump's 2020 election interference and the insurrection. Here we go. Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney, Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, Michael Roman, Trump's former head of election day operations who ran Trump's criminal fake electors scheme.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as we could even talk about people like former vice president Mike Pence. Also, three investors in the Trump SPAC, known as digital world acquisition company, including one board member have been indicted for insider trading in the pub told you so insider trading in the public company that is trying to merge with

Trump's social media company or whatever the heck Trump has even calling that thing we at legal a f have been all over this We've been saying since day one of the announcement of digital world acquisition company They were doing everything improperly when it comes to SPACs position company, they were doing everything improperly when it comes to SPACs. We raised the red flag of insider trading, and I think we can expect more moves from the Department of Justice and the SEC as well in the near future. The Manhattan District Attorney was in federal court this week battling Trump's lawyers attempting to get the criminal case, Trump's lawyers, that is, we're attempting to get the criminal case against Trump,

where 34 felony counts for falsification of business records were brought against Donald Trump and state court, Trump's lawyers wanted that removed to federal court and the federal judge in the Southern District of New York who heard oral arguments this week elastered a little bit over two hours and 30 minutes. There he is. Federal judge Alvin hellerstein. Well, hellerstein was not buying what Trump's lawyers were selling and it looks like from oral argument as

we predicted here. That case is going to be proceeding in New York state court only. And the judge is going to issue a remand, but we will see. And finally, the right wing controlled United States Supreme Court issued some horrific rulings in six to three opinions back to back to back this week. Remember, there are six right wing justices who make up the majority of the court and in these rulings, businesses can discriminate against minorities under the first amendment they claim. Diversity can't be a factor at all in college admissions and President Biden's student debt cancellation program was struck down.

We'll break it down for you in a way you can understand. And let's talk about what we can do about it. Vote, vote, vote. I'm Ben Myself is joined by Michael Popak, different background for me today. I decided to maybe just get out of that same room that I'm in or I was forced out of the room. You got to do something, go somewhere else Ben. So enjoying the fourth at a different location, but enjoying the fourth with you, Michael Popak in this fourth weekend

with all of the legal a efforts. Happy fourth weekend, I agree. And we got a lot to talk about. It's going to be the return of the Popak Porter board. Talk about some of the things that you outlined related to cooperation. But let's dive right into that superseding indictment because that makes my, that makes me tingly all over to talk about another 45 or so counts against Donald Trump and the location of all that. Now you want to hit it off in the night. Well, look, anything that makes you tingly, then makes me tingly and then makes all the legal a efforts tingly.

I mean, look, it was big news. It was written in a report by the independent and essentially corroborated in a way by the New York Times because the Times reported that the grand jury that voted to indict Donald Trump is continuing to issue subpoenas, meaning they're still investigating other crimes committed by Donald Trump. Right? So if we think, oh, all that grand jury voted to indict, they're done. They're not. Their work is actually still continuing. Um, and then we learned that Jack Smith may be considering other counts against Donald Trump. And look, we know, for example, that a

lot of criminal conduct was committed at bed, minister. Donald Trump has not yet been charged with any criminal count relating to the transmission of the classified information or in this case as it relates to the Espionage Act National Defense Information but we know he did it we know that's criminal meaning that there is potential jurisdiction in New Jersey that's the site of those crimes and in this report by the independent, they're talking about it could be 35 to 40 more criminal accounts. If certain counts are brought in other jurisdictions, there is a potential, I don't want to get everybody's hopes up though, but there is a potential that another case could be brought in an area

where Judge Eileen Cannon would not be the judge. Her jurisdiction is Florida, Southern District of Florida specifically. So a crime that takes place in New Jersey could go in front of a New Jersey federal judge if a case is brought there. But look, this was really big news. Michael Pope, what do you think about it? Yeah, I think it's, we always were waiting on the other indictments coming out of the other grand juries related to Jan 6th related to the fake elector scandal and scheme and all of that. But this is now really hard and definitive reporting. And the 35 to 40 more counts will really fall into a number of

categories that we can expect. A new set of defendants. And we're going to talk a lot about Rudy Giuliani on this podcast. If you take nothing away from this podcast, it's that Giuliani is in serious legal jeopardy, and despite him having testified or given a proper, we'll talk about that in the overlapping next segment, he's likely to be prosecuted by Jack Smith, not just by Fony Willis in Fulton County. And the other, of course, key to all of these additional counts, the person that was in every room that matters is Mark Meadows. And we'll talk about him in the cooperation section of this segment. So we've got more people that will be indicted as part

of the superseding indictment. And I say, you look for Giuliani there. You may see Boris Epstein, another lawyer turned criminal trader alleged that Jack Smith will go after. And you'll see more crimes. Even more insurious crimes and the ones that have already been charged against Donald Trump, including for conspiracy to do other bad things. As you said, been enticed in the opening, there are, we know there's investigative areas that they've gotten with witness testimony and evidence concerning that didn't show

up in the first indictment, gaps in the surveillance video and why they were missing surveillance video at Mar-a-Lago. The whole Bedminster issue, yes, it was mentioned about the showing of the documents, the Iranian war documents and maps and nuclear codes and things, nuclear records at Bedminster at least twice, but there's a whole Bedminster wing of the indictment that was missing from the original indictment. We expect to see it in the superseding indictment and just to clarify, superseding indictment, you know, it's a fancy word for saying an amended indictment. It's an indictment that replaces the first indictment, has many of the same, could have the entire same set of facts and counts, but is rewritten and revised to add people and

or as defendants and or new counts. There's also been reporting and leaks, of course, coming from Jackson Smith's office, I'm sure, that there are other Trump recordings that were not mentioned in the indictment, in which he's showing off materials from Mar-a-Lago, including to his campaign manager, Susie Wiles. So I expect to see named and unnamed new co-defendants besides just Walt Nauta in the next superseding indictment that's going to come out with Giuliani trying to save himself. But we'll talk about it. I think he's cooked.

I think he gets indicted. And whether he can cut a deal, that's different. But this proffer that he gave, we'll talk about that in the next segment, is not, I don't think it's gonna be enough to save him. Meadows different story because of the number of rooms that Meadows was in, that he may be able to limit the amount of crimes that he's charged with,

but I don't think he's scot-free either. Terms of venue, which you touched on, there's also a debate in the department of justice about where to file the superseding indictment or multiple indictments. They knew they had a good one in four chance again in Eileen, Canon, when they filed in West, and checked the box for West Palm Beach,

because she's one of only four judges that possibly could get it. So they rolled the dice and they got it and they're prepared for her. And they have been prepared for her. But they may not want to do that again. District of New Jersey, which covers all of New Jersey and Bedminster, could be for the Bedminster related claims. Back to DC where there's been at parallel grand jury and grand juries related to moral,

agon and other things is also a natural place for it. So they're gonna be able to figure out if they can get away from Canon, if they need to get away from Canon and do a little bit of, and do a little bit of venue shopping themselves to see where they want to put these things. But this is not going to be something you and I are going to have to talk about like all summer.

It's somewhere in the next three to four to five weeks. And maybe even before Fawney Willis' end July beginning of August, you're going to see we believe we're going to see the superseding indictment. He's got the support because when we go through that list, that's one of the things my whiteboard is going to do. We go through that list of cooperating and involuntary and voluntary witnesses, people who had no choice but to go before the grand jury. Then the cooperating witnesses who are trying to cut their own deal to save their hide.

See, I don't think what special counsel Jack Smith is doing though, at all is kind of venue shopping or judge shopping, right? To me, that's what Donald Trump does when he is actually filing cases and jurisdictions where they don't belong. Like special counsel Jack Smith is proving, I think to a lot of our chagrin that he's kind of doing the exact opposite by filing it in the Southern District of Florida, even knowing that if you file it in the Southern District of Florida and then file it in the West Palm Beach County division because that has a link with Ford Pierce, that's why

it was actually a one and four chance. And just so people know how confusing and complicated that is, you know, I think the reporting was that Jack Smith's team actually had to call up the clerk to find out that that was the case because there is kind of unique procedures, local procedures within the districts themselves that have, you know, how these specific judges are ultimately, are ultimately selected.

And so even Jack Smith had to get that clarity. But to me, if a crimes committed in Bedminster, that's where the case belongs under Supreme Court President. If a crime is committed in Washington, DC, that's where the case belongs. So I think Jack Smiths was just, look, first we're gonna charge the Gravaman, the bulk of the crimes in the Southern District of Florida.

And then we're going to bring them. We have other crimes as well that we could charge Donald Trump with. Let's talk about Rudy Giuliani though. This is big news this week. You talked about it, you teased it. What'd you say at the outset of the show, it gives you the tingly feelings. I think, you know, this must give you some tingly feelings

as well. But all kidding aside, look, Rudy Giuliani cooperating with Special Counsel, Jack Smith, and then kind of bragging about it, right? I mean, Giuliani was reposting and retweeting the news that he sat for this voluntary interview with special counsel, Jack Smith. It was always reported that Giuliani had said things like he has an insurance policy out against Donald Trump. We've been reporting here kind of bad story after bad story about Rudy Giuliani. Good for

justice, bad for Rudy Giuliani. For example, he got sanctioned last week in the Ruby Freeman-Shay Moss defamation case where Giuliani will probably have hundreds of thousands of dollars in sanctions, and that's not even the fact that he's going to lose that case. And probably, oh, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss millions of dollars, and it will be non-dischargeable in bankruptcy given that it's an intentional tort. So, it's not like he could discharge an in bankruptcy. They're going to have a judgment against Giuliani for the rest of Giuliani's life in, in my opinion.

So, he's in very bad shape. He's at his weakest point. He's probably played his final hands and now meeting with special counsel Jack Smith. So, Pope, walk us through through like what's a proper agreement? Yeah, explain that it provides a limited immunity. But if there's stuff that the prosecutors have independent of what they learn at this meeting, they can charge somebody for that, you know, for that. And if someone lies during the proffersession, they

could be charged with that. And if they don't tell the full truth, if they omit even a tiny detail in a proffer session, they could be charged with that. And if they don't tell the full truth, if they omit even a tiny detail in a proffer session, the whole proffer session, then any immunity that attached to it becomes void. So break that down. Well, in your question, you've answered it. But let me explain the different levels of proff. Now you're like, pop up, explain to me exactly, and then I'll explain it to you in the question. So, but let me, but let me break down the different types of proffer.

I think that's also very interesting for our audience because all proffer's and immunity deals are not created equally. And we have things called proffer and immunity deals, which are sort of the same thing, but there's transactional immunity. There's use immunity. We sometimes call use immunity queen for a day immunity, and they're, they're the, they're the same things. Then there's deferred and non-prosicution agreements.

These are all the things that the defense can try to negotiate with the Department of Justice or prosecutors in order to try to limit as best they can, the criminal exposure for their particular client. If they're successful at the, if you're doing this on a continuum, on the far end of the continuum, they're completely successful. They get full immunity for their defendant, for their client. And the client can just testify it will because he already has a deal that he won't be prosecuted for that crime. And once I lay this out, I'm going to tell you where I think various people fit along

this continuum. At the far opposite end of that extreme, if we're talking about Prophers and Immunities, is the Queen for a Day use immunity, which is what Ben, you just described, which is come in, give us a statement under oath. Whatever you tell us, as long as it's the truth and you don't lie to us, because that's a separate crime. But if you don't lie to us and you're fulsome, you're complete, you're honest, you don't hold back,

we believe you're being honest and fulsome and not lying to us, then whatever you tell us, we can't use directly against you to prosecute you for a crime. Although if we independently develop that same evidence, you're not free from criminal exposure. And that's all on the scale so far. And then we'll talk about those different types of prosecution agreements that can be reached after a proffer. For Rudy Giuliani, he's at the minimum queen for a day. Come talk to us. If we like what you told us great,

we're still evaluating you. I'm sure they've told him he's a target. As a target of the investigation, not a witness, which changes that dynamic between prosecutors and defense counsel and come talk to us about it. Yeah, Rudy's made some tweets, but generally he's been sort of quiet about it because they're still trying to work a deal. And the reporting from inside the Department of Justice that you and I have been have seen suggests that despite him coming in for the Queen for a day last week, he's still

on the hit list to be prosecuted. And in other words, it wasn't good enough. So step one is come talk to us. We'll give you a limited immunity. Step two is we'll evaluate whether we're going to prosecute you or not. And if we are, we may defer prosecution, depending on other things. We may agree to not prosecute you. It depends on what we need you for, your level of cooperation and the crimes that are at stake.

Meadows on that continuum. Also we know cut a deal. He's been very absent from any media. We haven't seen him at all. He is definitely cooperating. If he's been given more than queen for a day, meaning more than use immunity, we haven't seen him at all, he is definitely cooperating. If he's been given more than queen for a day, meaning more than use immunity, we don't quite know that yet.

Well, I don't think he's been given full immunity. I think he's still got criminal liability and exposure, but we don't know exactly. But regardless of the inside baseball about immunity deals and proffers and all that, you have from a Trump standpoint, you've got Giuliani, who was, you know, let's just talk about the things he was involved with at the highest level direct connection to Donald Trump, right?

He's involved with fake electors. He's involved with the Willard Hotel and the Command Center on Jan 6th. He's a direct link to John Eastman and all of the clinging to power fake elector work. He connects to Sidney Powell, he connects to Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn in the Willard Hotel. He connects to Boris Epstein. So Giuliani is one of the crown jewels if they can get him to testify truthfully on all of these matters as the leader of the litigation, the failed litigation to try to stop

the peaceful transfer of power. So that's him, Meadows, right, talk about being in all the wrong rooms for him. He's involved with Georgia interference, the fake electors, the department using the Department of Justice and Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman and other people there to try to use the Department of Justice and weaponize them to keep Trump in power. He's involved with fake electors.

I mean, there's not a, he's involved with Jan 6th and the organizing on the ellipse of the speech. Bernie Donald Trump, that he's got his own problems. Burning documents and election fraud and voting fraud being first among them. So you can imagine that the, if I'm getting a tingling feeling, the prosecution is salivating over the prospect of having Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani both testify against him. And then as you said earlier, Ben, there's a bunch of people, and I want to separate this too, who have testified or provided evidence, both voluntary and involuntary, that are all piling up on Donald Trump. Right? You outlined some of them at the

beginning of Michael Roman, for example, who was his head of election day operations and Roman was responsible for the fake electors scheme. Right? So Roman connects with Eastman and Epstein and Giuliani as well, going state-to-state finding Maga Republican sympathizers and state legislatures and saying hey Why don't we put your name on a fake elector certificate and let's submit that to Pence and then guess what we're gonna Have all our Republican buddies in Congress object to the real elector certificates and then we're gonna try to pressure Pense to say I've got two certificates here. I got this one. Wait, wait. I got this one. It says Trump one. I guess I'm going to go with the one that said Trump one. That was their plan.

And he cut the deal. He, it's been reported. We reported two weeks ago that he was going in, but now there's new reporting from two days ago, he cut the profit deal. So he's done. So you got this group of voluntary people against Donald Trump, Giuliani, Meadows, Michael Roman, his number two two GOP officials from Nevada involved with the fake electric scandal to other fake electors. And then you've got this group of involuntary people who rather not but had to. So you got Pat Chippellone, who was the in-house White House Council,

got stripped of his attorney client privilege or Donald Trump did. He had a testify, Evan Corcoran, the lawyer for Donald Trump. Also, Alina Habba had to go in and testify, Christina Bob, the lawyer for Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago had to go in and testify. Christina Bob, the lawyer for Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago had to go in and testify. And then you've got Operation Coconut. You ready for that one, Ben? Oh, I'm ready for Operation. I was born ready for Operation Coconut.

So you got Operation, let me get this on the screen. Got Operation Coconut, which is the phones that have been picked up by the Department of Justice of lawyers at the heart of this, of the heart of all this. Eastman's phone, Johnny Eastman, the absent-minded professor, who's the person who created the fake electors scheme, Jeffrey Clark inside the Department of Justice who was organizing the coup and using the Department of Justice, his right hand, Mr. Clulikowskiowski, Mr. Epstein, I want to talk about Epstein in a minute, and Cleetha Mitchell, all lawyers whose phones have been

picked up in Operation Coconut, that's the Department of Justice's word for it, not mine, although I like it. And so they've been sifting through all of the text messages and emails among all of these lawyers, they've gotten permission to do that from the various courts that have been involved. And that then connects the dots back to people like Michael Roman on the ground on the fake electric scandal and Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani, the lawyers, in the streets bringing these crazy lawsuits

that all failed challenging the election. And so the other person in the takeaway for me on this edition of the legal AF is Rudy Giuliani is in tremendous jeopardy and will likely be indicted despite his profit. That's what I think. Boris Epstein, who is in every room and it still shows up at criminal proceedings and arrangements of Donald Trump, he is connected to almost every major event that we've outlined in the indictment and in the coming indictments through Grand Jury.

Yet, he has not gone in and cooperated as far as we know. We have pretty good sources on all these things that follow these things. And gets mentioned time and time again, every time there is a criminal scheme or allegation that we think is being focused on by a grand jury. Boris Epstein's name pops up.

I think in the superseding indictment, we're gonna see Boris Epstein. And speaking of superseding indictments, I'll just put a little footnote here as well. I'm all about footnotes on this episode. Put a little footnote here as well. I'm all about footnotes on this episode. Put a little footnote here as well. I'm curious to see if there will be any super seating indictments against George Santos and the other, all these mega people are just criminals. George Santos, who's being criminally prosecuted out of the Eastern District of New York, there was a court

hearing that was actually held on Friday that really hasn't been getting a lot of attention. That's why I wanted to talk about it right here. And at the hearing prosecutor said they have more than 80,000 pages of evidence against George Santos during that hearing. The next hearing that George Santos has to appear on is September 7. I want to talk about the breaking news from earlier in the day as well. I love when there's breaking news on the weekend, especially when it's bad news for Donald Trump

and it's 4th of July. You know, that just makes, that gives me the tingle-y popokian feeling as well. And we're learning that the then Arizona governor, Doug Ducey, received similar phone calls to the types of phone calls that Donald Trump then made to Brad Rappensberg threatening him to find votes or else.

This was a bombshell report from Washington Post. I want to talk about that, but I want to wish. Jordy, the co-founder of the Midas Touch Network, a happy birthday. Did you know? Today is Jordy's birthday, big birthday for Jordy. Happy B-Day, Jordy's birthday big birthday for Jordy happy B day Jordy And we're gonna see Jordy right now in a second right here on legal a F and I want to say this though So Alex and ony who's our sponsor? I don't know if you know this Pope I I

worked I did legal work for Alex and ony and You know and have that personal connection to this company so to now see see on our podcast, the fact that Alex and Ani is back and they are advertising on Legal AF, is a really cool thing. You obviously don't know this either. I did work for them too. We all do work for Alex. It's great stuff.

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Legal AF badges, and everybody doing the emojis. We'll be right back with some big, big news after this quick break. Jewelry is having a big moment right now. And with hundreds of products popping up in your feet every day, it could be hard to find a brand you trust. Alex and Ani has been creating meaningful jewelry for over 20 years,

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I was like, are we on live? Is this us? We'll, we'll, we'll, you never know in real life. It's boom, boom. All right, so let's talk about Doug Ducey, then governor of Arizona, seems to have received a similar call that Brad Raffinsburg, Secretary of State of Georgia, find me 11,780 votes or else Brad Raffins. Bad things are going to happen to you, Brad Raffinsburg. I know people who can do bad things to you

and then Donald Trump goes, there was nothing wrong with that call because nobody yelled at me and threw ketchup at my face. It's like, okay, not everybody's a maniac when you listen to the call, Rappetsburger, in Georgia is saying to Donald Trump, okay, what you're telling me to do is wrong and a lawful and you don't understand what happened there.

But Doug Ducey was apparently telling some donors of his and those individuals are speaking to the press as well. And look, what seems to be taking place, you know, you mentioned earlier Susan Wiles, who we now learn, for example, was that employee referenced in the indictment. There were those two incidents where Trump showed classified information to people. There was the one where he was showing classified information to Mark Meadows ghost riders, Liz Harrington, Donald Trump spokesperson, Margot Martin, others where those people identified there.

And that second incident in July or August of 2021, the PAC representative Susan Wiles, we learned that she has, she, at the time, was working for a public communications company or a communications firm that had clients from China, you know, Donald Trump, it's all projection, big clients from China, who the Senate was investigating for trying to like, hack into American people's

phones and things like that. But look, the reason I mentioned that and related to Doug Ducey is these sources are coming from Republicans, right? They're coming from people close to Doug Ducey. They're coming from people who know the dirt on Susan Wiles. It's probably someone from DeSantis's campaign on the Susan Wiles side because Wiles used to work at the DeSantis campaign before she was poached by the Trump campaign. But there is a concerted effort to get this information out now, which also leads me to

believe if we're hearing about this stuff publicly. Imagine what special counsel Jack Smith's team is getting fed to him. That's why I think when the indictment on election interference comes out I've predicted it was going to be hundreds and hundreds of counts But it's going to be like the indictment in the client if you thought the indictment and the classified Information stole stealing national defense in focus was a bombshell. Okay, this election interference is going to be massive and look for the money laundering campaign finance violation and wire fraud charges to stack up in there as well. Popak thoughts on Doug Ducey. And then we got to talk about the

Trump SPAC inside trading scandal. Yeah, that SPAC's never closing, by the way, they're he's never going to get that $1.3 billion. We'll talk about that next. Yeah, that 35 to 45 counts to be clear. That's going to come probably more out of the moral logo document issue and a superseding indictment. There's still bigger, bigger indictments and the hundreds that you just mentioned that'll probably come out of all those conspiracy and it'll interference and grifting and money laundering wire fraud and all that. that you just mentioned that will probably come out of all those conspiracy and interference

and grifting and money laundering, wire fraud and all that. Do see just demonstrates for me that we know about, we know about three states in which Donald Trump made a phone call and there is evidence of it, either a recording or testimony from the participant in the phone call. Georgia, Nevada, Arizona now. So that indicates to me, this is my Popak Cockroach theory. When you see a cockroach in your kitchen, unfortunately, you don't have one cockroach.

You have a lot of cockroaches. You only see them one at a time. There's not just three phone calls by Donald Trump. We've just heard about three phone calls from Donald Trump. Jack Smith and his team have other recordings, other witnesses, other phone calls for Donald Trump. It's being spoon-fed out in leaks because we're seeing witnesses come in and go and that type of thing. But I am reasonably confident that there are more people who have participated in phone conversations with Donald Trump That will support crime charges against him than even you and I are able to talk about on the 4th of July weekend

And there as you said many of them many of them will be Republican because he was trying to get Republican state house leadership. At the governor level, the secretary of state level, the speaker of the house level, in every state of the five or six battleground states that he needed to run the table on and convince. This is just as how ludicrous this was as a play.

I talk about a plan that was doomed to failure. Even he had a, he was so far behind Joe Biden, he had to get five states to flip or more. In order to do that, he had to get it in conspiracy, five sets of state house officials, GOP Republican Party officials to go along with his scheme,

both fake electorate and otherwise, to interfere with the election and throw it back to the states. The chances of that happening, as we know now, and doing it without committing a crime was zero, was zilch. And that's how delusional Donald Trump was at the time. And on the, on the, your, your, your comment, I always love when you do Donald Trump impersonations.

The other side didn't object. It was a perfectly, perfectly folk call. Yeah, except in the case of Georgia, and at least one other place, they hit record. While they were on the phone call because there's recordings of these phone calls. How many times in your life, Ben, have you had a perfectly fine phone call with somebody in your life, but you decided you also needed to hit record while you were doing it? I would venture to say you also needed to hit record while you were doing it. I would venture to say, not none, but these people do because they realize, holy, holy, shmagoli, as we said last week,

Donald Trump is, is it? Holy shmagoli, I got tingly feelings in them. I got tingly feelings. This is where, when you, hockey and language, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's eventually just gonna be gibberish and just you and I laughing hysterically during podcasts.

But the holy shmagoli moment is people are on the other end of these phone calls. And they're like, holy shit, I'm getting, I'm getting extorted by the president of the United States to throw an election to him. That doesn't, that sounds wrong. Let me hit record. And that's been happening time and time.

And then he's, then the other people that are in his life think everything he does, because when you have to pay people to be your friends, okay, they will do things under that guys, like, well, we'll just record all these conversations. Or they think everything he says is funny, everything he says is right. That's why they're giggling and laughing

over the espionage acts of showing classified iranian war documents to not building plans, not magazine clippings. That's why they're laughing because they're paid to laugh. They're all there on his payroll. And because he only has synchofants around him. He has no, the people that could have gotten through to him. I'm not even sure who that is.

That, you know, there, there was nobody. There was nobody there. He didn't, either. He didn't listen to them where he only paid you to, you know, to hear what he wanted to hear from you. And so, but that, that's where we're at. So for me, it, D do see is just yet another. We now have examples of three state houses that he tried to phone. I did did phone that's

going to be testified against them. These are all going to show up in counts of the indictment in general allegations of the indictment for conspiracy. And we're going to see it also. And remember, you know, not you Ben, but our audience, Fanny Willis has expanded her rico Georgia conspiracy because she's right. It wasn't, it wasn't isolated to Georgia because he'd just won Georgia, but he didn't take the other four. He's not, he's not president in his looney tune mind. So this Georgia was one piece of a, of a big puzzle. And that's why she's using that as a jurisdictional hook to go after the phone calls he made in other places. So we're going to hear a lot more about that. More importantly, we're going to

see a lot more of it in indictments that you and I are going to be talking about. Just I'll leave it on this. Above the law had the greatest headline I saw. It's going to be a hot indictment summer for Donald Trump. And it is headline I saw. It's going to be a hot indictment summer for Donald Trump. And it is. And you and I are going to be here for it. And we know our audience is here for it. Hot democracy summer as well. Might as touch gear store. Might as touch.com. If you want to get your hot democracy summer gear. And you know, one of the ways also, you know, that Donald Trump's feeling super desperate in Georgia is when he says that he predicts that he's not going to be charged or in this case, he says that the charges are going to be dropped. Okay, there hasn't

even been charges filed yet to be dropped. That is laugh out loud, funny. He said the same thing four days before he was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney. Go back, look at March 26th. He says the exact same things. Thank you, Grand jury. I love Grand Juries. I've been told the charges were dropped four days later. He was indicted there. And every time, before you leave that, just for people that every time the late George Steinbredder gave a vote of confidence to his manager for the Yankees. Within a week, that manager was fired. And that's that's Donald Trump.

If you hear him say, you would George, unless you would George, George come in here. So if you hear Trump say it, that's whistling in the graveyard. He is getting indicted in Georgia. He is getting indicted again,. He is getting indicted again multiple times in in Jack Smith. And he is likely getting not a superseding indictment because we learn from our colleague Karen Friedman-Ignifalo that New York doesn't really do superseding indictments

as a process in the state court level. They do like a new indictment. So he's getting a new indictment by Alvin Bragg and Manhattan, Manhattan TA as well.A. as well. Yeah, but the language that he used in this post about Fonny Willis was very interesting to me. He goes, I made a perfectly legal phone call as president of the United States about an election that I strongly feel was rigged and stolen. Notice, he says it's a feeling now because he's setting up the defense to say, I didn't know that's just how I felt. It's not like we don't have all his other messages and statements that he makes, but I thought that was an interesting.

How about, but on that point, this is where you and I keep, keep the continuity of his statements straight because if we don't do it, no one else is really doing it the way we're doing it. This, then why did he turn to people in the executive dining room with a White House and said, can you believe I lost to the sky? Yeah.

He said that in real time as he realized he had lost the election. So how does he have a good faith belief, which he's trying to use to undermine criminal intent or mens rea to say, it was always rigged. Come on. Let's talk about the Trump SPAC. Digital world acquisition company is a SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company, sometimes referred to as a blank check company. What a SPAC is supposed to do is it's supposed to raise as money, usually $300 million or so.

And then it's supposed to merge with a private entity and bring that private entity public. It's a go public arrangement. You think about it similar to kind of an IPO situation. But what you're not allowed to do in the situation of a SPAC is have the SPAC can't communicate with the target that it wants to merge into before it goes public because that would have to be a public disclosure that would be made to investors. It wouldn't be a quote-unquote blank check company anymore. And then it would be more like an IPO that would fall under a whole separate set of kind of regulations.

And so I'm oversimplifying it there, but there's been a lot of investigation by the SEC and DOJ into whether there were communications between the SPAC and Donald Trump's crew and the truth social, which is what the whole Trump holding company, Trump media owns. Well, because it wasn't the truth social thing social thing wasn't even created when the SPAC went public like in 2021. So how is a SPAC merging into a non-existent company when it's mandate is to find companies that have like an actual balance sheet that has like actual revenue and projections and EBITDA and that obviously didn't take place. And all of a sudden, you had all this bizarre investing patterns from insider, from people who appeared to be insiders buying the stock before the announcement of digital world acquisition company because that's what goes public, not the Trump media part. The SPAC goes public. And if the SPAC isn't having conversations

with the target, why would people be all of a sudden so pumped and excited about the shares? And usually in a SPAC, the shares start trading at $10, a share, and there's usually not a lot of fluctuation in that at all. So for observers of SPAC like PopoKin myself, when you start seeing unusual trading patterns that happen right before Digital World Acquisition Company, one of many SPACs at that time, like tons of SPACs were going public, all of a sudden had this unusual trading pattern

and then right away there's this announcement of this merger with Trump media, you raise your eyebrows and you go, there's probably something going on right there. Well, three individuals have now been indicted, including one board member of the SPAC Digital World Acquisition Company in an insider trading scam saying that they profited or attempted to profit $22 million through their insider trading. And look, Pope Akinai were saying from the outset that this was a potential pump and dump scheme. And it seems like that's what's going on.

And it seems like nothing Donald Trump can ever do. It has any legality to it whatsoever. I mean, every way this SPAC has been handled has been utterly, utterly corrupt and unlawful and not the way SPACs are supposed to be dealt with. This is precisely what's given SPACs a bad name, conduct like this. Popo, you're somewhat of an expert in this as well.

I mean, you're, you know, somewhat of an expert in this as well. I mean, you've, you've previous background working in the financial sector. I've worked with SPACs before as well in my legal career, so I know how these things go down. I want to get your take on this indictment, but first let's take a quick break. And now let's think of quick break to talk about our next partner, Lomi. Now, I've never been able to compost before. It was always too complicated, too much work, and frankly, I don't think I even knew exactly if I was doing it right.

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That is those are some great sponsors. Thank you for sponsoring our pro democracy content support our sponsors. It's one of the ways we help grow this channel and you're going to love the stuff. We love the stuff here and I would not be promoting stuff that we don't love. Michael Pope, pop breakdown. What's going on with the Trump SPAC insider trading indictments? Yeah, and as you said, I have worked in financial services. I actually worked for a company that was one of the leading sponsors

of SPACs and took them to market not these Just leave it at that. So I have a pretty good handle on background on it and You did a good job given the outline of it. You've got what's called the SPAC vehicle or the blank check company, which is a public company. Well, it raises money in that forum from people at $10 a unit. You can put in basically as much as you like.

And then you don't tell, you're not allowed to tell the investors what you're going to invest in. You can give them some generalities. This is the industries we're interested in. We think gaming is interesting. We think eco-friendly things are interesting, but you can't be more specific than that, but otherwise you're just doing an end run around the laws and securities laws related to public companies and going public the old-fashioned way through an initial public offering, and IPO, as you mentioned before. So this is a different thing, a different animal,

which is sort of falling out of favor because the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission are now hammering and coming down on these because so many kind of phony spacks have been developed. Here, you and I always suspected, and we told our audience that something was up because it looked like the people who were investing in the spack knew that the acquisition target was Trump's media company and they're not supposed to know that. And then not only that, we now have learned because of a twin, two things that have happened

simultaneously in the Southern District of New York this past week, is that three insiders, well, one insider who was on the board of this acquisition company that was going to acquire the Trump media company, who was also the chief investment officer for a company that no one's ever heard of down in Florida called Rocket Capital. The owners of Rocket Capital, right, were given tips. That's what they're called, insider trading tips to buy the units, the stock in the SPAC before the announcement of the big deal with Donald Trump. What exactly, they were being told too,

it was called the Trump SPAC. Right, right, right. So that was the tip. That was the SPAC if they didn't know. So in, exactly. So in securities law world, this is called Tipper Tippy liability. The Tipper is the person inside who has the knowledge.

That person then gives it to a tippy and all of them are criminally and civilly liable for what they just did. Just to show you what happened, they earned meaning, well, earned sounds like they did it in good faith. They received ill-gotten gains of $23, almost $23 million because the stock price went from the unit price, went from $10 to $100. And they invested knowing that it was going to be a big bombshell and you're not allowed to ride up that insider information because the public markets have to, people have to

have confidence in the public market and that you're they're not being played By somebody with insider knowledge when they're investing their money, right? Because that harms the month the public's perception that it's a fair playing field There's a lot of reasons the securities market is not a fair playing field But this is definitely one of them that the SEC and criminal law, therefore the Southern District of New York in this case, and Damien Williams, the new US attorney there. He's been there for over a year. So I'll stop saying new. When after these, these three gentlemen, I happen to know the lawyer for two of the guys. So you got Bruce Giralnik,

who's the board member, he's the tipber, and then you've got two brothers, Michael Schforzman and Gerald Schforzman. Michael Schforzman, I'm trying to pronounce it properly, is the owner of Rocket Capital, where the board member also worked. That was the link. And I happen to have a lawyer that's representing the Schforzmans down in Florida. All these guys live in and around Palm Beach County and Broward County, Florida, where Donald Trump regularly lives. Now, the impact of this is not just that these three guys got indicted for federal securities law violations criminal and that the SEC filed a parallel action against them to both get their money and to keep them

out of any type of investment world ever again banning them and barring them. And so those two things get filed. They cooperate the SEC along with the Justice Department. In this case, the field office in New York, Southern District, they cooperate. One brings civil, a civil enforcement action. The other brings a criminal indictment and they go together. Usually, the criminal, almost always, the criminal indictment goes first and kind of leads

it, but the SEC follows behind and makes sure that these guys not only go to jail and get their money discouraged, but that the SEC finds them, bans them, and the rest. That's why these things are done in parallel. What it means for Trump, let's tie it to Trump before we end this segment, is this is not great news for Trump. He has been banking on a billion dollars, a billion with a B coming to him from the 300 million dollars at the SPAC originally raised

and other money based on the rising share price and other investors in order to get a billion dollar windfall payday because of the SPAC merger. But as would everybody would have expected the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been all over this merger. And right now, they are running the Trump people, are running out of time with the SPAC people. They have only until September

of this year, just two months away. If they can't get this deal off the ground and they can't get it approved, the SPAC is going to have to return all of the money that was collected and not acquire Trump world. This isn't helping Donald Trump's efforts with his people to argue this is a legitimate deal while board members of the SPAC are inside of trading. My prediction, this is not happening. Trump's not going to get his billion dollar payday because the SEC in the Department of Justice is not going to allow this merger.

And yes, Donald Trump will get up and say, Joe Biden against the Department of Justice against one of his political adversaries. Stop me from earning a billion dollars. You know what, I don't care. This has been a fishy smelling, you know, disgusting deal from the day it was announced that this was going to happen. You and I have been tracking it all along inside of trading as par for the course with what's happening here and he's not going to get his billion dollars. What do you think, son? I don't think he's going to get his billion dollars. They're going to ask for one more extension

on the date of which a shareholder vote would have to take place. Obviously, a shareholder vote can take place while they're under DOJ and SEC investigation. I've already seen paperwork being filed by digital world acquisition company this back to try to extend that date, which they've already extended several times from September of 2023 to September of 2024. It's worth noting as well that a few months back we covered it in a hot take that I did on the Midas Touch Network. The SPAC itself also said that it had identified material defects in its accounting procedures such that the SEC should not rely

on its quarterly and annual reports. They said that on their own absent, the SCC and DOJ criminal investigations. That's the words of the Trump's back material defects in their accounting procedures or words to that effect that were filed. And so all of their filings are a complete mess. You have this insider trading indictment right now. You have, look from this indictment as well, the fact that you have insiders calling it the Trump SPAC before the announcement of the SPAC itself goes to show you how you call it at the Trump SPAC. If there was not unlawful pre-merger or pre-IPO communications in the

first place. And as you mentioned, people may be saying, where's that billion dollars even coming from? To your point, there was $300 million or so that was put in, that's held in a trust account as part of the IPO of the SPAC. And then what the Trump media SPAC did was, they did what's called a pipe, which is a private investment in public entity, and basically gave these private shareholders these ridiculously favorable, and in my view, exploitive terms relative to the retail investor, it was screwing over the retail investor ultimately.

Shares are now at $12 at one point. It was like close to like $200 a share. Pump, dump, and what else can you say? That's just a typical Trump entity right there. Want to talk as well though about another, what appears to be big Trump loss right there. I want to talk as well though about another what appears to be big Trump loss in court. This is in the Manhattan district attorney's criminal case 34 felony counts against the Trump organization filed back on March 30 against Donald Trump for falsification of business records making hush money payments to a adult porn actress, stormy Daniels, then calling it legal fees or legal reimbursements. So Donald Trump wants to get this case away from the state court judge, Judge Juan Mershon,

who by the way, every person who practices in New York says like judge Juan Mershon is like the most normal Law and order nonpartisan political judge, but for Donald Trump any judge who oversees his case You have to threaten and intimidate as long as their name is not judge I lean Ken, but who knows one or two bad rulings from my lean Ken and if that ever happens I'm sure Trump will be saying the same things there So one of the things Donald Trump tried to do is disqualify Judge Juan Moshan saying, Moshan was biased.

He donated $10 or $15 bucks to the Biden campaign or that Juan Moshan's daughter is works at a consulting firm and they do work for Democrats. And therefore, that impacts the judge. Ridiculous stuff. Juan Moshan, I believe, is not going to be disqualified related to that at all. Mostly legal observers, mostly all legal observers agree with me there.

The other thing Donald Trump did was file a removal motion trying to say, this case does not belong in state court. It belongs in federal court because it involves federal issues. I was the president of the United States. Discretes horrific for me to even say that about him, but he disgraced the office in 2017 and that's when the Unlawful checks were being signed from Trump to Michael Cohen. Trump even though he called Michael Cohen his personal attorney and said he's my personal attorney says that that somehow makes it a act of the president and the course and scope of

presidential duties. Thus, it should be in federal court. A hearing was held two and a half hours. District Attorney's office was there. Trump's lawyers was there. Notable Todd Blanche, who's the same lawyer. That's this is Donald Trump's guy. Tom Blanche, right? Tom Blanche, all the other lawyers left Trump's legal team.

And Trump's like, I got Todd Blanche, who's going to be representing me in the in the Jack Smith case, regarding the theft of classified documents wolf or retention of national information. But Todd Blanche got his ass kicked for a lack of better words at this federal court hearing before judge Alvin, Alvin, Alvin, Alvin, Alvin, Alvin, hellerstein, the case got removed from, when, when Donald Trump filed the removal papers that got assigned to this guy, Judge Alvin, Halverstein, a, a, Clinton appointee, the case goes from state court to federal court. The first thing Alvin Hellerstein says is judge Juan Merson in the state court proceeding, keep going. Set a trial date.

I don't want Trump to delay anything. All right, let's hold the hearing about whether the case now stays with me or it gets remanded back to state court. Judge Juan Mershon, remand just means gets sent back. I'm oversimplifying it, but we get sent back to state court. So that was the oral argument, the arguments by the Manhattan DA were, what are we talking about here? This is a state court case, these are state court counts.

It's Donald Trump's personal attorney. This is nothing to do with the role of the office of the presidency. This is ridiculous. And then Donald Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanche, was like, well, we've got evidence that shows that this was all in furtherance of Trump's role in the presidency. And we have a secret witness. And the Manhattan District Attorney was like, what are you talking about?

What, what, what, this is an oral argument over just a motion for remand. There's no, we agreed there was not going to be witnesses. So Todd Blanche tried to pull this stunt, called in Donald Trump's chief legal officer from the Trump organization right now and had this guy testify and this guy knew like nothing like you would think they would at least prepare him Popeye, but this guy was not prepared at all had no clue what was even going on. His name is Alan Garton, the chief legal officer of the Trump organization.

And they would ask him questions like, so have you seen the retainer agreement between Donald Trump and Michael Cohen? Yeah, I've you seen the retainer agreement between Donald Trump and Michael Cohen? Yeah, I've never seen that before. Okay. So why are you even here? Like, if you don't know any of the facts here, and not only that, but I want to get your take on this pop-up because I, I want to get your overall view of the Supreme Court ruling.

That's why I cannibalized this topic a little bit. So I, I just want to get your opinion on this last part of it because I think I basically ate the whole cookie when it comes to this topic by bringing in the chief legal officer and making a fool of himself Todd Blanch. Do you think there's also an issue now that? Is there a waiver of attorney-client privilege in this case as well? Because now that now you put you made the chief legal officer a witness so if I'm Alvin Bragg I'm gonna say well now I'm calling the chief legal officer on a bunch of other issues in this case and you you can't assert attorney client privilege you've now waived what do you

think yeah you didn't eat all the cookie I'm gonna I'm gonna throw another cookie back in there I mean imagine people pop up though who are listening to this for the first time in their told this legal a f is some high level, articulate stuff that you haven't seen. And we've gone tingly, bingali and holy shmagoli and we eaten cookies. We're going to do a we're going to have salty or producer put, clip that all together in one, in one outtake, take out. So look, that's, let's cut to the chase. Judge Hellerstein, who I like to call Yoda with a 10 gallon at,

is going to rule against Donald Trump and his illustrious trial team of Todd Blanch and others, Susan Necklace, Joe Takapina, nowhere to be found because he basically signaled that at the end of the two and a half hour hearing that he found the argument that they were making in Judge Hellerstein's statement, far-fetched. And the far-fetched, the reason they brought that witness in, is because they led off with the following argument to the judge, that Michael Cohen, who paid the money, who paid off the Stormy Daniels, who's at the heart of the case against Donald Trump, and then got repaid having used his own money, got repaid by Donald Trump under a non-existent retainer, so no engagement letter between lawyer and client.

Money that was paid to him and then a bonus put on top of that to put money back in his personal coffers, and then it was not properly and fraudulently reflected on the books and records of the company. That's the 34 counts. That's the crime. They said that because Judge Hellerstein kicked off the hearing with, I think there's three issues here. The first issue is, was Trump a federal officer to allow him to use this unique removal statute at all?

Was he doing the things that are alleged in the in the indictment, which heller's thing took time to read aloud and put on the record as facts, at least as alleged, were they being done by Trump in the exercise of his presidential powers under color of law, and finally does Donald Trump have a federal defense to any of the state crimes that are being alleged. And by the time that hearing was over, Hallerstein ended it with, okay, he might have been president, but I am not buying that the things that he did to give Michael Cohen money to repay him for having paid off Stormy Daniels is under color of his office as president of the United States. That's where Todd Blanche said we're about to call a witness, right? And Mark Calangelo for the Manhattan DA's office

said, what witnesses? You got a witness? We didn't, you didn't tell us that, but they're great. They had Susan Hofinger, one of Karen Friedman, Agnipollos, former friends and colleagues from the office, jump up into the cross examination.

And they called, as you said, Alan Garten, a Garten, Garten, Garten, Garten, Garten, sorry, you and I are both tongue tied today a little bit. Here's the chief legal officer of the general counsel for the Trump organization to try to establish that Michael Cohen served a presidential function because he handled the private personal affairs of Donald Trump, allowing Donald Trump to not be bothered with those in order to be the president. And that's where hellerstein said, that's pretty far fetched my man.

I'm not even saying that my man part. I'm not buying that. You're saying me this private, private affair paid with private money, with a private attorney that wasn't even engaged formally in an engagement letter. And that was paid money by Donald Trump privately and put on his business records is a presidential act. And so that went over terribly. And then Alan, he was, doesn't sound like he was prepared

to testify either Alan Garten because Susan Hoffatier said, was there an engagement letter between Michael Cohen and Donald Trump to do these things related to Stormy Daniels? He said, no, is that unusual? Yes. Was he paid? And then the judge figured it out and said it on the record.

He said, he wasn't even, the money that he was paid was not for some personal loyering duties. It was the repayment cycle, the money laundering of the payment to stormy Daniels. That's like the material cross-examsta for the criminal trial. Right. Here, we put it up on the board. There's no evidence that Cohen did any work for the money. This is the judge beyond the hush payment. There's no link to any official act of the president, Judge Hellerstein said, I find that there is no colorable federal defense raised and defense. They just convicted Trump. They just convicted Trump. The money laundering was a presidential act. I don't think so. So I know Michael Cohen who's a friend of the pod and has a zone pockets here on the network did a nice hot take about all about all about all about all of that. So, he'll just need to say give me two weeks to

write my order, but you can you know where I'm going, but my comments at the end not call it not acting under the color of the federal office, no federal defense at all and not and are and interestingly Todd Blanchcock completely flatfooted. Another guy is not ready for prime time here. He didn't have an answer based on the transcript that I've seen. He didn't have an answer for the federal defense issue, because I had heard them argue earlier that, well, there's embedded within the state law criminal counts. There's a federal election law component. And that's how they get to felony.

So maybe there's a federal election law defense. They did not argue that in the courtroom. And so they were caught completely flat footed. So here's the result. In the next two weeks, early July, the judge is going to deny the petition for removal. The case, as it always has been without interruption, is going to stay with Judge Mershon on its way to a March 2024 trial against Donald Trump.

Well, in advance of anything else, we know that Jack Smith is asked for December of 2023 for his trial at Mar-a-Lago. Of course, the superseding indictment is going to, by its very nature, if it relates to Mar-a-Lago going to delay that, unfortunately. But it's not going to get in the way of March. That's on the calendar. That's now a blackout date, and everybody else is going to have to kind of work around that. But that's what happened there. Yeah. Staying exactly where it needs to stay as we move on to our other segment. So just think about it. Trump's lawyers turned a jurisdictional motion, frivolous to begin with.

And now further incriminated the client by having the chief legal officer testify in ways that the Manhattan district attorney may not otherwise have ever gotten that testimony because in a normal sense the chief legal officer Would serve you know attorney client privilege. They would not even maybe even get to call the chief legal officer as a witness And now they've got testimony from the chief legal officer as a witness and now they've got testimony from the chief legal officer that substantively helps them in the criminal case to get the conviction that they need against Donald Trump. And I like your waiver argument. Your waiver argument is very good. Attorneys, although, well, no, actually, I'm going to, I'm going to, in a minute, I was just thinking through it. The client holds the attorney client privilege. Only the client can waive, not a lawyer,

but the client called through Todd Boyd. Exactly. The lawyer. And therefore, I think of a very good argument that Alan Garton has just made him, welcome Mr. Garton, you just made yourself a lead witness without the protection of attorney client privilege in the Metat and DA's case.

Good work. And I just use the testimony from the federal case in the New York case and take judicial notice of it and just say, here's what you said, this is incriminating stuff right here. I mean, it happened in another forum, you could just use that in the case and just read it to the jury

because it's some damaging stuff. All right, I wanna talk about the Supreme Court rulings right now. It's important when we talk about the Supreme Court, everybody understands the composition of the court. There are nine Supreme Court rulings right now. It's important when we talk about the Supreme Court, everybody understands the composition of the court. There are nine Supreme Court justices. There's the photograph right there. Six that are radical right Republicans and there are three that were appointed by Democrats, two appointed by Obama, one appointed by President Biden. So the decisions that

we're going to be talking about are all six to three decisions. So it's not like Biden had the ability to do anything here. It's not like the Democratic appointed justices who actually follow the law could do anything other than write very powerful descents in these opinions. But what we've seen is precedent that has been created for 50 years being overturned.

In fact, precedent in some cases that was affirmed as recently as 2016 being overturned seven years later, six years later, that's not what's supposed to take place. Law school 101, they teach you about scary devices and precedent matter. I'm sure you've seen those clips when the Supreme Court justices before they are confirmed, when they are nominated

and they go through the appointment process, they're asked the questions, will you follow precedent? Of course, that's super precedent. That's precedent on top of precedent. And then these right wing Supreme Court just is coming in and overturn it. So let's talk about a few cases with some horrific results. I want to get your full analysis of it, Popeye.

But I want to give a little bit of the framework here. So the first case we're going to talk about is students versus fair admissions versus Harvard and North Carolina and the Supreme Court ruled that universities and colleges can't consider diversity as any factor at all when it comes to the college admissions process. I frame it that way instead of saying that they overruled affirmative action because I think affirmative action is a loaded term and I don't think a lot of people know what it's actually even referring to. Because when I ask people, what do you think affirmative action is? Well, that means you have to have a certain

amount of minority students or when schools are considering minority applicants, they get a certain amount of points. No, that's always been deemed to be unlawful. Did you know that? The quota, Popeyes, you know that, the Pope, the quota system has never been allowed. In a case called Regions versus California Vibhaki in 1978 case, the Supreme Court ruled quota systems are unlawful, but diversity can be a factor in 2003 in a case called grutter versus Ballinger these Supreme Court is decision written by right wing justice

Sanjay O'Connor late Sanjay O'Connor at that time. I'm said you can't have a point-basis them so you can say a minority applicant gets five points from minority status SATs are worth 15 points This is worth 20 points that is per se unlawful in 2016 in case Supreme Court Fisherverse University of Texas said the same thing basically. You can't have quotas You can't have a point system, but if diversity is one of many factors that is okay And then you had this recent case students versus fair admissions versus Harvard We're in a six three decision. They overturned their 2016 precedent and they said diversity cannot be a factor. The Supreme Court said that factoring in diversity by itself is equivalent to segregation.

That's how dangerous to me the ruling is because that's a crazy concept to me promoting diversity as one of many factors is the same thing as being racist. That's what the holding is. And then there are some people who say, well, but doesn't this Supreme Court decision say applicants can still write essays about their experience being from a minority group. Well, if it is ultimately determined that the school is trying to promote diversity in its admissions, its per se on lawful and the school will be sued millions of dollars. So you think a school is going to do that or you think the school is going to make himself

susceptible to that liability? Popoks going to break down the case, but I want to frame it in those terms because we hear a lot of loaded language. But to me, the idea that should you be able just to factor a diverse campus as one of many factors seems like a laudable goal. All of American corporations agreed that most of them, that is the big ones like Apple and others, they filed Amicus briefs saying, we need this for our economy Supreme Court. The American Medical Association said, you are going to cause people to die

if medical universities and colleges can't factor in diversity because we need diverse candidates to be in the communities that they're from and serve those communities. And the military said, you're going to hurt the military. Ultimately, the Supreme Court said, well, military, we're not talking about you. You can hire, you can admit diverse candidates when it comes to sending them to war. We're not talking about you. We're just talking about everybody else, the economy, the medical students, all other college students, that's fine.

So that's one decision that they reached. I want to get your full take on all of these Popeye. The next one, this 303 creative LLC versus Eleonis's 6-3 decision as well. The case that I just talked about students for a spare admission versus Harvard was a 6-3 decision. This 303 creative LLC was written by Gorsuch. Basically said that this business that was open to the public that purported to be a web designing business can basically post-sign saying,

we're not going to serve gay couples and allowing businesses to discriminate under their first amendment rights. Colorado had a law and anti-discrimination law saying no, you can't post signs discriminating against people, especially protected classes of people. And here the Supreme Court said, no, business that's open to the public, they have a First Amendment right to say that they are not going to accept that business. I think it's a very dangerous precedent, but beyond that, the facts of those case,

the person, the so-called plaintiff Lori Smith, never even created her web design business, like she never designed a website for anybody. And then the people who she said she was offended by who asked for her services, this so-called gay couple, she got an email from someone named Stewart. And the email from Stewart miraculously happened a day after the initial lawsuit was filed back in 2016. And Stewart said, Oh, I'm a, I'm a, in a gay marriage.

And I need you to make a website for me. And this so offended Lori Smith, but the media track down the Stuart person and Stuart said, I never wrote that email. I have no clue what this is. I'm straight. I've been married for 15 years. So like a fake email, a fake business in the Supreme Court heard that case and ruled that this business can discriminate against gay couples. And it has horrific precedent of what that means because businesses are gonna now do that to other protected classes.

So horrific there. And then the Supreme Court struck down Biden's student debt relief program in the Biden versus Nebraska case. They miraculously, and I say that sarcastically, found standing when it comes to one of the Republican states that sued, the Missouri sued on behalf of a corporation in Missouri, like it's again, like what? The corporation didn't even sue, but the state of Missouri created this corporation that was involved in the collection of student loans called like MOEH, Al Mahela or something like that.

And Mahela did in sue, Missouri suit and said, well, because we think Mahela could be damaged and we created this corporation years and years ago, we feel that we're injured, the Supreme Court's like cool. We'll accept that as the standing argument. And then even though to me, the statute couldn't be clearer on what it actually says, and let me just read it for you right here just so you know what it says.

The Secretary invoked the higher education, relief opportunities for Student SACC of 2003, the Heroes Act, which authorizes the Secretary to quote, "'wave or modify any provision applicable to federal student financial assistant programs as may be necessary to ensure that recipients of student financial assistance are nowhere soft financially in relation to the financial assistance because of a national

emergency or disaster seems pretty clear what the language says here and the Supreme Court says that well that's not a waiver it's not a modification it's something much grandiose much more grandiose than that. And Congress, back when it passed the Heroes Act in 2003, didn't talk about the COVID-19 pandemic. And so because Congress specifically didn't address the major issue of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they should have addressed it if they wanted to do it, we think that this was a improper delegation of powers. The separation of powers is violated here, and the executive branch is doing an overreach

so they're striking it down. Now, President Biden's response to that is that he's going to now invoke another section of the Higher Education Act to get student loan debt relief. But, you know, look, you have MAGA Republicans getting their PPP loans for giving banks getting bailed out all the time, and you had a very kind of surgical debt relief here that was intended to help workers. I want to make one more point, then I'll turn it over to you,

Popoq, for your kind of full analysis on this. You know, I saw the press asking President Biden, like this is why legal AF and the Midas Touch Network is so important. I saw someone in the press asking President Biden like that this is why legal AF and the minus touch network is so important. I saw someone in the press asked Biden, Hey, do you feel that you let down the American people by creating a false sense of hope? What a stupid freaking question that is what an idiotic dumb freaking question that is to even ask.

And President Biden's like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm doing all I can to fight for the American people within our legal system. The fact that you have this rogue Supreme Court, that Donald Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices, and you're saying that I create false hope because the United States Supreme Court is striking down things and they're acting like

this fascistic right wing out of control court. And I'm creating false hope. I'm doing everything in my power to be helpful here. And that's why it's important that we truly all talk about what the realities of these situations are. And I think we talk about it. We remove the buzzwords and just talk about freaking facts here. Michael Popeye. Yeah, listen, we dove in in a series of hot takes where we spend a lot of time going into the intricacies of each of these, each one of those runs, maybe 10 or 15 minutes long.

Well, let me see if I can just kind of pull all this together for us. Because look, we're not here to blow smoke or sunshine on the podcast or on the network. And even when things go badly for us at a Supreme Court where we knew this was going to happen based on the fact that they've had the numbers, we try to give you both the facts so you know what happened. And then use that in your, the next election cycle and for legislation at the state level. Everybody's going to have to scramble now from higher education to the Biden administration to try to come up with alternative workarounds. What is increasingly, as you said, a fascist right wing out of step with the average American out of step with with our public views on all of these issues.

And why is that? Why is in 2023, we have a supremely right-wing MAGA 6-3 majority who is shoving these federalist society wish lists down everybody's throat when the public doesn't want that. It's because they've been chomping at the bit to get the numbers, what it was just Antonyne Scalia, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, when they were in the minority, they were hoping, wishing, and praying for the day, when they would get three more like-minded people, and they would be in the majority, and they had their list. They just pulled it out of the desk drawer. Clarence Thomas has been trying to dismantle using race as a factor in the selection of

a diverse class at universities and colleges since he was the recipient, the beneficiary of just such a process when he went to Yale Law School. He talks about it in his memoirs. He hated being the recipient so much and he should have given his chair to somebody else instead of accepting it and then working to shut the door on everybody else's ability to get a hand up in society, a helping hand up in society to put them on a track so that maybe one day they could be a Supreme Court Justice. Katanji Brown-Jackson speaks in glowing terms about race being used as a factor in her because she's not sure she would have gotten out of her school in Florida, even though

she was a top student, and made it to one of the Ivy League schools, and on track to become a Supreme Court justice without it, Sonya Sotomayor, the same thing. But this all we're seeing is the wish list of the Federalist Society, and of Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, finally, they got the numbers, and Roberts is going along with it, writing some of these

dastardly opinions. But, we're also here to say that there's hope in that, not that we're going to be able to reverse this Supreme Court in the next two or three years, but at the state level and at the, it's so important to make sure Joe Biden gets elected again so that when there is another opening or if there is another opening, it goes in the right direction. You think six to three is bad, wait till you see seven to two or eight to one. And if we think that that's the only thing that Donald Trump has been crowing about lately when he's not as we said earlier in the segment, whistling in the graveyard about, I don't

think I'm going to be indicted in Georgia when he is. Is he's taking full credit for all of these results starting with the abortion decision in Dobbs last May, which by the way, the reason these really hot contested decisions come out this final week of the term, term starts in October for the Supreme Court is because then they go, all of these justices go off, mainly the Maga right-wingers and jet off with private donor money supported by right-wing colleges and universities and law schools to go on their summer vacations in Europe primarily and out of America. And so they do a final dump. Dobbs last May was supposed to be a dump in June, except it got leaked early. And that's why we ended up talking about it in May.

They normally wait till the final day, final hour to issue what is the most divisive decisions that they're going to make and they've done it here. So we've now lost, and there's going to have to be a work around the ability to consider race at the public university and college level to create a diverse class, one that I benefited from, you benefited from, and others in our audience did, of having people that weren't exactly like us next to us, learning with us and from us back and forth in that dialogue. That's now gone. They'll have to use other ways to help disadvantaged, disenfranchised people because the reality is

you can't get to the next level in our society of being Supreme Court justices and other top jobs without going to some, some of these limited schools and having the relationships and being members of clubs and all of that. You don't get that, you don't get into that private secret club unless you go to some of the top universities. And so now we're going to have to do the workaround. And now we not only see Donald Trump pop it up, taking credit for each of these things, but people in his inner circle,

like Stephen Miller with his own BS law firm, pop it up and saying he's going to sue universities in law schools, here we have it on the screen. If they even try to use any kind of race in their decision making process, because Harvard came out and said, well, you know, why do people, they're going to write essays.

And if people want to talk about their personal experience, and that mentions the fact that they happen to be black, brown, or somehow disadvantaged, we're going to read that. And that's going to, that's how we're going to consider these things. And Steve, I'm going to say, oh, no, no, no, I'm going to, I'm going to file lawsuits. And Donald Trump said, if you elect me again, God forbid, I'm going to appoint people to the Department of Justice. That's going to make sure that we root out racial discrimination against white people is what he's saying in my Department of Justice. So if you ever wanted to know what Donald Trump would do, if he ever got back into power,

he lets you know because he takes credit for all these decisions. That's Harvard, North Carolina. And the website case where there's absolutely, there was no standing, which is the number one thing that a party needs to have in order for a court of limited jurisdiction, like the Supreme Court to even operate, to issue a ruling. You have to have a live case and controversy with somebody or something that has appropriate standing. Okay, great.

This person didn't really have a website company. She was thinking about having a website company. She's never made a wedding website. She was thinking about making a wedding website. I'm thinking about a lot of things. I'm thinking I like to play center field for the New York Yankees, but that's not happening either. But that doesn't give me standing to go argue

about something in the playing conditions at Yankee Stadium. So her all of her thought process, and then as you said, Ben, there's reporting investigative reporting that shows she wasn't even contacted by anybody who was gay trying to get married and using her

for their gay marriage website, right? Because the person she said contacted her and it's in the record is not gay, but happily married for 15 years and never contacted her. So this is just a made up thing now. And now we've got a Supreme Court completely untethered to reality or law whose rogue and lawless just issuing edicts from, we don't even need cases anymore. Who needs cases in precedent? What is it that we'd like to do?

We're just going to say it and do it where the Supreme Court and tough, tough you know what. So now for the first time ever, the Supreme Court has used the first amendment to allow racism and discrimination and bigotry and has now embedded it into our US Constitution. You're allowed to be a bigot if you're some sort of artist or some sort of creative person, even when you're selling it to the public and accept public money, you can put a sign in your window or on your website that says, Gaze need not apply or asked me to do their work, blacks, Jews, if that's my reasonable belief that Jews shouldn't marry, blacks shouldn't marry, whites and blacks shouldn't marry. You think

of the amazing combinations here. And it's all okay. It's all okay by Gorsuch and the right wing, six to three, as long as it's done in the name of the First Amendment, to which everybody else in the court on the Democratic point inside, the Democratic wing of the court said, what the F are you talking about? You are now gonna use the First Amendment

to allow an embed in our constitution, the ability for people to be bigots and get paid to do that. That's one thing if you're in a private club. Some people forget there are still private clubs where we can't do a thing about it. They don't want to let Jews into a golf course or women or blacks or browns anywhere there, except when they're, you know, as landscapers and housekeepers, that's okay in a private club, as long as there's no connection to federal funds or state legislation or that kind of thing.

So there still are private clubs where I can't get in, and Ben, you can't either. And that is okay because it's private, private. But a public company, I get to say as a law firm, I don't believe that I think gay lifestyle and and gay people are the bottom nation under the law, which is what this plaintiff said. And I'm allowed to do it and say, I'm not going to take gay clients. That's outrageous. And that is what this Supreme Court has just ruled. And then, you know, they never, they never hit a major

a totemic issue that they haven't wanted to destroy. So for good measure, they also said that all types of religion has to be accommodated in Groff versus Detroit, the postal worker case, because he doesn't want to work on Sundays, even though the postal service is based on people having to work weird shifts at weird times and not being able to necessarily practice their religion. Supreme Court said, you must accommodate that. You must give everybody off for every holiday, whatever they want to do regardless of the impact on the organization. Because, you know, we don't see the difference between church and state under this, under this Supreme Court. So where are we at the end of a year starting with dobs in May of last year and ending with these cases? Whether it's guns, right, and New York Rifle Association and the Second Amendment, abortion, race, gender, equality, this Supreme Court knows no bounds and there's nothing

to stop it from destroying these fundamental constitutional principles upon which we have we have lived our lives for the last 50 years, including ones based on super precedent precedent that's been reinforced, reinforced multiple times, throw that all aside. Give me the federal whatever the Federalist society agenda is. That is what's going to end up at this Supreme Court. Biden has things that he can do. Biden is going to have to reconsider the expansion of the Supreme Court, if he ever gets the numbers again in Congress, in order to expand the Supreme Court to more than nine to balance out this rogue, not normal,

paraphrase Joe Biden Supreme Court. These are things that will have to consider as the rest of us in business and in higher education are gonna have to figure out ways to accomplish what we want to accomplish in terms of inclusivity and diversity without running a foul of this particular Supreme Court. You know, and people may be wondering,

well, this case had no standing. So how does that go in front of the Supreme Court or who is this group, students for fair admissions? Like, why are they taking all of these cases? Well, the whole thing is a concerted operation at every level. There are astroturf groups like student for Ferrod missions is run by a federalist society guy named Edward Blum. If you go

and you look at the student loan case, you've got Republican attorney generals that are filing, but in some of the other cases even, you had these federalist society groups trying to kind of find individuals who they can use as their kind of puppet plaintiffs to bring these cases. And it's very strategic what they do is they'll file, they'll try to target specific jurisdictions, but they'll file the cases across the country, then they'll try to find with different theories and different plaintiffs, and then they'll try to find a sympathetic judge, or even if they lose, like in the case that you just mentioned,

where they lost in the lower courts in 303 creative LLC, like they lost in the district court, because the right wing did, because it was absurd. They lost in the district court because they're the right wing did because it was absurd. They lost in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeal because it was absurd, but they didn't care. Like their plan wasn't that. The thing was get it to the Supreme Court right away. And let's lose quick. Let's lose quick so we can get it to the Supreme Court. And then ultimately you have the Federalist Society, justices controlling this Supreme Court, who have been plotting this Society, justices controlling this Supreme Court, who have been plotting this now for several generations

to overturn the progress that's made. And I'll just leave you with this thought if you want us just understand how radical and extreme some of these decisions are. If you go back to the student versus fair admissions case that I was talking about, the precedent which allowed diversity to be a factor from 1978, the justice who allowed it was none other than justice Lewis Powell. Lewis Powell was one of the board of commissioners in Virginia who at one point in

his career opposed desegregation. Okay, so the fact that Lewis Powell, when he became a justice, who fought against desegregation in schools, when he became a justice, had the maturity to say, well, diversity is important. We should be deferential to universities.

And now you have the Supreme Court in 2023, saying, Lewis Powell, from 1978, just goes to show you just how radical and extreme this Supreme Court is. But as Michael Popak said, that is why it is so important that we vote, vote, vote. And what we have to do is we have to create structures. We have to create generational change. And it starts with education.

It starts with action. And that's what we try to encourage here at Legal AF and the Midest Touch Network. And so there are lots of great legal developments in our country. There is a lot of progress being made, but we have to identify the forces that are trying to turn America into this right wing dystopia that is ultimately harmful for 99% of the American people.

And we have to just let everybody know. And that's why this legal AF community is so vital is so Important and why we are so honored to be in this effort with you and none of this is possible without you again I see all those jacksmith legal AF Political beat down emojis. I see the might as touch badges political beat down emojis. I see the Midas touch badges on the YouTube. So make sure you get your membership by other people membership gift memberships as to receive memberships as gifts. I want to try to see everybody in the chat room with the membership. That's how we can help grow the Midas touch network and start making more and more programs that you will love. Check us out at patreon.com slash might as touch.

Also check out store.mightestouch.com for the best legal AF gear. A special shout out to all our sponsors, real paper, Lomi and Alex and Ani support our sponsors since they support our pro democracy content here. And I want to give a thank you to everybody, Michael Popak, so great spending the weekends with you. I want to wish you and everybody in the legal AF community, a happy fourth of July long extended weekend. I want to wish my younger brother, Jordy, a happy, happy birthday and Popak, give you the final word.

happy birthday and pop-up give you the final word. Yeah, I think I'm so thrilled. You know, I measure my contribution with you and your brothers. You know, we do it based on, you know, federal holidays. And I remember where we were Memorial Day last year, Fourth of July last year, and this year. And it just reinforces, especially when the timing of the Supreme Court decisions, the importance of us getting together as a community on the Midas Touch Network and on legal AF every week and every day in the hot takes that we do you, me and Karen, do on a regular basis.

It's a poignant reminder when we're about to talk about Independence Day and the meaning of it's not just barbecues and flags. It's a core principle of our constitutional republic and how we were created as a people. And it's something that this Supreme Court has of course lost sight of, but don't lose hope. I think that's the purpose of the reference to the federal holiday at the 4th of July. Today, and I've lived through a series, I'm 57, I've lived through a series of Supreme Courts, and they change over time. And as we can see, they change precedent over time. But we got to keep fighting to make sure that that Supreme Court stays as much

in check as possible, and if they're not, we're going to do something about it. And that starts at the ballot box, and that's a reminder of what we accomplish when we separated from what was then our home country of England, right? Well, thank you everybody for watching. Happy Fourth of July. Special shout out to all the legal a and shout out to the Midas Mighty.