Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump CAUGHT OFF GUARD Amid Merrick Garland STRATEGY SHIFT

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

On this special Bonus Edition of Legal AF by Meidas Touch, co-anchor and national trial attorney Michael Popok breaks down all of the recent changed strategy and tactics Merrick Garland and his DOJ has employed to counterpunch Trump and anticipate and counteract his every move. Who says you can’t teach and old Attorney General new tricks? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Michael Popock from Legal AF, some analysis concerning Merrick Garland and his changed positions in a good way to use new strategies and tactics against the shapeshifting that is Donald Trump. And for those that criticize Merrick Garland, listen closely for this analysis because over the course of the last year and in the last six months in particular, we've seen a notable change in tactics, press knuckle, hardball tactics by Merrick Garland to fight back, including the appointment of a special counsel. Let's start with that first. Merrick Garland did not want to give up being the lead prosecutor against Donald Trump.

I know he took a lot of flack for people who said, without any support whatsoever, that showed a lack of brass or gravitas or balls by Merrick Garland in not prosecuting himself and bringing it a special counsel. I think the exact opposite is true. I think that in order for him to accomplish Merrick Garland, his twin goals of de-politicizing, at least having a veneer of de-politization of the prosecution, as soon as Donald Trump announced that he was running for office, even if it was a ruse to give him cover and protection against all these criminal prosecutions.

Marik Garland had no choice, given that Joe Biden has also announced that he was going to likely run for office as well. If Joe Biden had announced that he was going to be a one-term president, I think the calculus would have changed because his direct boss, Marik Garland, who ultimately reports the executive branch and its head, the president of the United States, wouldn't be competing for office against a person who is a target of criminal investigation. All that changed as soon as Donald Trump testified. Other examples of Merrick Garland depoliticizing the prosecutions of people who have political leanings or attachments to

Donald Trump. You can see it also in his decision to allow John Durham, the special prosecutor, special counsel appointed by his predecessor, Bill Barr to continue to prosecute the Russia interference type prosecutions against two or three defendants. Marik Arland had the right as the Attorney General to intervene and fire Durham, or at least tell him that he was – that he's decision to prosecute was going to be overridden and do a report to the Congressional Judiciary Committee, but Marigarland made a decision not to take Durham out of the running and let those things run their course to avoid attacks on the

Department of Justice. Remember, Marigarland is trying to rehabilitate the Department of Justice and its credibility, having been torn down and attacked for years by Donald Trump and those around him. Another example of depolitization besides the appointment of the special counsel John Smith, Jack Smith, allowing Durham to continue to run out his prosecutions is the decision not to appoint a special counsel to take over the investigation and possible prosecution of Hunter Biden. That case is still being investigated by of whether Hunter Biden committed tax fraud or not.

Bill, uh, uh, uh, uh, Marik Garland could have interceded stepped in and taken out that U.S. attorney and stuck in a special counsel. But either he said he was not going to do that. He was going to let the line, the prosecutor, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, continue his investigation of prosecution again an effort to take politics out of prosecutions. Notice also another change in tactics and strategy. Merrick Garland in his press conference two weeks ago, appointing Jack Smith, focused ever so subtly on one of the two charges, recall that there's three potential

charges against Donald Trump related to Mar-a-Lago, one being the SB and H-Act, one being obstruction with a government investigation. If you listen closely to Merrick Garland in his press conference, he mentioned obstruction three times and mentioned the espionage act not once. So, that, I believe, if you're using your decoder ring to try to figure out what Merrick Arlen is focused on, it's on obstruction. What else has Merrick Arlen done to fire back and counter punch Donald Trump?

He's allowed his number two, Lisa Monaco, to give the permission to release the photos of the search warrant execution, all those photos that came flying out of the department of justice showing all the records on the floor, all the classified folders on the floor for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant execution. That was released because yes, Donald Trump filed a motion with Judge Cannon to get her to exercise equitable jurisdiction and attacked the execution of the search warrant. But, Merrick Arland could have sat in his hands and said, no, we're going to, we're going to take the higher ground. We're not going to play in that sandbox or get down in that mud with Donald Trump. But he didn't do that. He allowed Lisa Monaco to take the higher ground. We're not going to play in that sandbox or get down in that mud with Donald Trump.

But he didn't do that. He allowed Lisa Monaco to give the order to release the photographs to both educate people and embarrass Donald Trump who picked the wrong fight with the wrong department of justice in federal court. Let's also look at the continued taking politics out of prosecution efforts by Merrick Garland, the pick of Jack Smith. Why Jack Smith? First of all, for four years, almost the entire time that Donald Trump was president, Jack

Smith wasn't even in the United States. He was applying his trade as a war prosecutor at the Hague in the Netherlands for almost the entire prosecution of the entire presidency. So again, he's probably the only prosecutor who's got his skillset and his success record that doesn't have any ties at all to Donald Trump and wasn't even in the country for the presidency. So it brings fresh eyes to the prosecutions. He also is a registered independent Jack Smith is putting aside Whatever his wife is or isn't Which really matters not a wit

About what what your spouse does for a living or what her political meetings are Jack Smith is a registered independent and there's no voting record that can be pointed to, or a donation or charitable record that shows anything else. And of course, he comes to the job with substantial war crimes, and also when he was in the United States, and he worked for the various different offices where he was a prosecutor, he's gone after corrupt elected officials and prosecuted them successfully. Finally, let's talk about something that's been moving around the internet that Jack

Smith is injured and that's somehow going to delay the prosecutions. It is true, and we talked about it on one of our first podcasts about Jack Smith that he broke his leg, having nothing to do with the Donald Trump or the prosecution, which has way laid him and kept him in the Hague with a broken leg. But he has been working non-stop around the clock as the prosecutor. We've already reported on legal AF and on Midas Touch, all of the filings that he's approved, all of the court arguments at the appellate level that he's approved. And let's be honest, in this world of technology and work from home, it's just as easy for even a senior prosecutor special counsel to operate virtually, to have Zoom calls and meetings on secured lines, to have conference calls to review all of the digitally filed documents. Every, we don't longer use paper in the courthouse,

like when Jack Smith and I started our careers. There is all electronic files. You can instantaneously review anything on the court docket and any draft and everything else. And so there's, that's just wild hair speculation by trolls and by the Republicans and somehow this is going to inhibit the prosecution of Donald Trump. It will not.

And then this newly muscular department of justice led by Marik Garland, what else have they done? They have methodically stripped away every attorney client privilege, every executive privilege of every key witness that they could find. They did not allow the initial assertion of executive privilege by any of the White House personnel like Mark Meadows or Bannon or any of the other individuals from the chief of staffs all the way through the lawyers, getting the way of getting evidence and testimony.

And when they hit a roadblock, somebody putting up attorney client privilege, somebody putting up executive privilege, Donald Trump trying to intervene to assert any of those things, whether at the Jan 6th Committee or more importantly, at the grand juriesuries that the Department of Justice is running. And now Jack Smith is running in Washington.

Every time they hit that initial barrier, they knocked it down, like a bowling pin, went into the courthouse, went into, you know, the chief judge, Owl, who's handling in her courtroom all of these issues, and one by one, stripping bear each of these witnesses, giving them no ability to avoid testifying to the Department of Justice and ultimately the grand jury. When they needed to give somebody transactional immunity, like Ali Adams. They gave, they gave him transactional immunity in order to avoid his ability to put up the Fifth Amendment as a barrier to his testifying to the grand jury. So everything that you want, an elite fighting force at the Department of Justice to do, they have done, they've done it rapidly, they've done it successfully, and now they

have built their case, they're continuing to build their case, which has to be a credit to Merrick Garland. So let's look at from the very beginning, he has changed his tactics, you can't teach an old dog, an old prosecutor, new tricks, because you're watching it with Merrick Garland as he counterpunches all the tactics and strategies that Donald Trump has tried to use in a very elegant, efficient, and tactical way. And so you start with taking away politics from prosecution in every way, shape, and form, bringing in the prosecutor, the special counsel, who has no ties to Donald Trump wasn't even in the

country. But Donald Trump was President of the United States, making sure that he's a registered independent. There's nothing about his voting or donation record that changes that fact, that he has a successful track record as a career prosecutor in Jack Smith. That's why he picked Jack Smith. That wasn't like a piece of paper out of a hat. That was a specific choice, calculated choice that was made by Merrick Arland. When there's openings that Donald Trump where he leads with his chin in a courthouse or a courtroom or proceeding, There's the Department of Justice authorized by Merrick Arland to counter punch and punch him in the face. So if he's going to

Donald Trump, if he's going to attack a search warrant, then Merrick Arland is going to give the permission to release all of the photographs and put them out in the public period. So when you combine that with their methodical stripping away of all of the attorney-client privilege and all of the executive privilege, what you're left with and extrable is the conclusion that Merrick Garland is going to get his man. And that man is Donald Trump. We continue to follow all of this and continue to provide our analysis of legal and political issues on legal AF midweek on Wednesdays

with Michael Popok and Karen Friedman-Ick Nifolo. And on the weekend, I'm joined by co-anchor Ben Mysalis. It's Michael Popok for legal AF signing off. co-anchor Ben Mysalis. This is Michael Pope, back for Legal AF, signing off.