Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump CAN’T ESCAPE From Latest Supreme Court RULING

Episode Date: June 29, 2024

The US Supreme Court may have just signaled that DC indictment against Trump for in part CREATING FALSE ELECTOR CERTIFICATES is saved and will include his “criminal interference with an official proceeding” counts at any future trial. Michael Popok does a deep analysis of the new Fischer v US ruling and its decision to keep the crime in place for anyone who is charged with creating “false evidence” to undermine the “integrity” of an official proceeding, such as Trump. For 30% off your order, head to https://GetSoul.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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extended to flights within Canada and the US. Cheers to taking off this summer. More details at aircanada.com. It's Michael Popak, Legal AF. We do have a new decision by the United States Supreme Court that impacts Donald Trump, but not in the way I think Donald Trump may have liked. We finally got one of the two rulings we're waiting on, this one about whether the obstruction of an official proceeding count, which is two of the four counts against Donald Trump in the off-delay DC election interference case in front of Judge Chutkin, whether it would survive this decision we've been waiting on. And we were, of course, waiting on the decision by the United States Supreme Court, whether Donald Trump has immunity while he was in office for trying to interfere with the election. That looks like it's not dropping

until next week. But in this decision that just came out in Fisher versus the United States, which we've been waiting on and waiting on for the last six months, the United States Supreme Court benefited Fisher and about 300 other Jan VI insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol and delayed the Jan VI certification. That was their purpose and that was their intent. But under the new interpretation of this particular statute by Congress, which is is section 18 USC section 1512 C2, and we'll talk about C2 in a minute, those 300, including Joe Fisher, are going to go free or have those particular claims likely drop from their indictments and or be re-sentenced as a result. But it doesn't help Donald Trump because right on page eight of the decision, which I'll read for you, they anticipate,

I believe, that the use of the false evidence, the fake elector certificates by Donald Trump would indeed satisfy criminal intent to violate 1512-2, even under the new ruling that just came out by the United States Supreme Court in Fisher. So not so fast Donald Trump, who might have celebrated a bit prematurely when he heard, yes, they're going to get rid of 1512-2 against all Jan 6th insurrectionists because of the way that they obstructed the official proceeding isn't enough. No, not you. Sit down, sir.

We're not talking to you. Here's what I'm talking about in particular. On page eight of the decision, which we're going to throw up on the board as well, even though they found that unless there is destruction, alteration, or evidence of physical conduct that interfered with the counting, in this case of the certification of the election, the electoral certificates, it would not violate this particular statute which had one of the highest penal crimes on the indictments being used by the Department of Justice. In other words, the most amount of years

in sentencing that would be available was for either seditious conspiracy or for the obstruction count. But listen to what they said carefully that That is a part of my not so fast Trump analysis. Here you go. When the phrase otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, that's from the criminal statute, is read as having been given more precise content by the list of conduct, subsection C2, and that's the one that Trump, two of his four charges have been under, C2, makes it a crime to impair the availability or integrity of records, documents, or objects used in an official proceeding in ways other than specified in C1. Let's put it in plain English. For example, this is over to page 9,

this is the opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts. It is possible to violate C2 by creating false evidence rather than altering, altering, incriminating evidence. You don't have to just alter it. You don't have to just cut and paste it. You don't have to destroy it. You can submit and create false evidence. And they very smartly cite a case by Justice Sotomayor, United States versus Reich back in 2007 when she was on another court. She wasn't even on the United States Supreme Court yet for the proposition that a forged court order being submitted by somebody, the creation of false evidence, satisfied this particular statute. Now, what does that sound a lot like? That sounds a lot like Donald Trump and his minions creating a fake elector certificates and even fake, fake elector

certificates at the last minute led by him and Mike Roman and Ken Chesbrough and the rest, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, and trying to get those fake certificates into the hands of Mike Pence in Congress in order to gum up the works and have Mike Pence recognize those or say, I've got two sets of ballots, one fake, one false evidence, one real. What am I supposed to do with it? Let's throw it over to the House, meaning throw it over to a Donald Trump election because the house and the delegations of the house were more Republican than Democrat at the time. That's what Donald Trump wanted, don't you see?

He wanted it to take it out of the hands of the electorate, out of the hands of you and me voter and put it in the hands of the MAGA red states in Congress to give him that which he did not earn the election against Joe Biden. What kind of night is it? Is it a single? Double.

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Now, Donald Trump wasn't a party, so he didn't drop a footnote to say, well, the counts against Donald Trump are equally invalid under this statute or equally valid under this new reading of the statute, and we're taking care of it now. Appellate courts only make rulings based on cases that are before them. But in anticipating, of course, that Donald Trump will and his lawyers will now try to dismiss the indictment in front of Judge Chutkin, that's the trial judge, arguing well under the new precedent of Fisher versus the United States just issued by a 6-3 majority. By the way, Katanji Brown Jackson went into the majority and Amy Coney Barrett sided with the more liberal wing of the court,

just to show you how confusing this all is. But Donald Trump's lawyers are going to jump up and down and say, aha, Fisher versus US, two of the four counts in the DC election and interference case should go bye-bye, to which there'll be full briefing and the argument I am sure now going to be raised because of this little bit of a life preserver placed in the argument, in the Fisher argument, to the benefit of the Department of Justice says, wait a minute, if you're creating false evidence or otherwise undermining the integrity of a proceeding, you are still guilty of 1512 C2. Therefore, two of the four counts would stay against Donald Trump. And I don't think there's any other way to interpret this. This will be the Department of Justice's argument, the special counsel's argument.

Everything Donald Trump did around the fake election certificates and pressure campaign against elected and election officials was to undermine the integrity of the counting process and then supplemented it with false evidence. There's no other way to read pages eight and nine of the Chief Justice Robert's majority opinion than that. But that also means there'll now be briefing practice and another appeal. So it looks like a life preserver, but it could be an anvil for the case, that could sink the case. Because this combined with the immunity decision that will come out now in July means that there's no way on God's green earth this federal election interference case gets up and running in time

without appeals and stays before the November election. No way in heck because Judge Chutkin will have briefing, even if she does it on an expedited basis, we're going to be in August. By the time we get a ruling late August, then there's going to be the appeal. They'll move to stay the case while there's an appeal. The Supreme Court will dither with that and wring their hands in order to benefit Donald Trump, the majority anyway, and then we're already in November. While Judge Chutkin may or may not even get the case back based on the immunity decision, which could come out sometime in the beginning of July.

So there's good news, hopeful news in this decision in favor of Fisher for the Department of Justice against Trump. Not good news for Donald Trump, because I think this case, while the case gets cited by both sides, I think the winning argument is that the majority is signaling that if you created false evidence and you impaired the integrity of a process,

this case, the counting of the electoral votes, you're still gonna be liable, criminally liable under 1512 C2, right? While on the other hand, that issue will have to be fully briefed at the trial level before it comes back up to the appellate level, which could take three, four, six, nine months. You see the problem?

As we await the other decision. So it looks at first flush to be favorable and beneficial. And that's why I wanted to do this hot take, but I also wanted to give you the reality of what lies beneath. And that's what we're doing here in the Fisher versus the United States decision that just came out six to three.

And what it means also just last concept, consequentially for the other Jan six defendants, 300 of which, including Fisher, who were charged with this crime, all of them are going to get stricken from their convictions. If they already served time, it'll get expunged and stricken from their record. If that was their only count, of course, they had other counts for which they were sentenced. If it's unclear how they were sentenced, it's going to have to be made clear with new proceedings at the trial court level in the District of Columbia. If you were only charged with that particular crime and you haven't yet either pled guilty or had your trial or whatever, you're going free.

You're going free if that was your only count. Now, fortunately, these violent insurrectionists did other bad things and most of them have anywhere between two and ten additional counts other than this one. It may be for lower numbers. And now the trial courts are going to have to reassess 300 different people, either letting them out, vacating their sentences, resentencing them with the new guidance of this mandatory ruling law, a new law about the application of 1512 C2. It also means going forward that the Department of Justice doesn't have this in their arsenal to use against

the next round of insurrectionists to try to interfere with the certification of something or try to storm the Capitol. The only one who can then fix this problem is Congress, which is yet another example and another advantage if you needed more to having blue come in and take over Congress so they can make fixes and statutes like this to respond

to Supreme Court decisions like this one. It's a simple fix in the language. If you want this particular statute to apply to what happened on Jan 6th, but the majority of Congress has to do it because they are the lawgiver and the court is supposed to be the law interpreter. But that's the way this all spread out on this particular hot take. We'll cover it more on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Legal AF. And then I do

hot takes like this about every hour right here on the Midas Touch Network. And you can leave me a comment and also a thumbs up. It does help with algorithm. It's more algorithm than ego, but it does keep me on the air. So until my next hot take, until my next Legal AF, this is Michael Popak reporting. Heary, heary, Legal AF Law Breakdown is now in session. Go beyond the headlines and get a deep dive

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