Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump EXPOSED Calling His Former Top White House Lawyers COUP PLOTTERS

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reviews newly released deposition testimony showing that Donald Trump believed his own top White House lawyers were coup plotters against him.  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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Ben Myceles from the MidasTouch Network leading to the January 6th insurrection. Donald Trump was accusing his own top White House lawyers of being coup plotters and engaging in a coup against him. That is the deranged dangerous madness that was taking place in the White House leading up to the January 6th insurrection. We are now learning about this from the release of deposition testimony from the January 6th committee in connection with their release of their full 845 page report last weekend. Specifically, may I direct your attention to the deposition of Pat Sipollone, the former top White House lawyer during the Trump administration. His number two deputy was Patrick

Filman, the other senior White House lawyer is Eric Hirschman, and we see in Pat Sipollone's deposition, as well as Patrick Filman's deposition, references to the fact that Donald Trump was accusing all of his lawyers in engaging in a coup against him. Now, we've heard from Cipalone and Philbin and Hirschman, and we've also heard from former Vice President Pence's top lawyer Greg Jacob and former Vice President Pence's chief of staff, Mark Short, former chief of Staff in the January 6th Committee hearings. However, what you'll see when I read from Pat Sipelone's deposition testimony, as is the case with those other individuals, with respect to the January 6th Committee, Donald Trump had been asserting executive privilege,

and based on the timing of the January 6th Committee's mandate, the January 6th Committee was not able to defeat the assertion of executive privilege. So when asking very specific questions about what Trump specifically said, which you'll see a Sepiloni saying, well, I can't necessarily answer that question. However, do you know who has the answers now? Special counsel Jack Smith, because Judge Barrow Howell, the federal judge in Washington, DC, who oversees the criminal grand jury proceedings currently investigating Donald Trump for numerous crimes, has ruled that Donald Trump's assertion of executive privilege is without merit in the

secret grand jury proceeding. So Pat Cipollone, Patrick Felben, Mark Short, Greg Jacob testified twice before the grand jury once where they asserted the executive privilege, the other one where they actually testified regarding all of the things that they heard Trump specifically say and that Trump said to them. So the DOJ has the information to fill in the gaps here. Well, let's turn to Pat Cipollone's deposition where he's talking about this January 3rd meeting. So three days before the insurrection, remember around this time you have a congress member from Pennsylvania, Scott Perry, who's trying to get Jeff Clark, this low level department

of justice official, who's believing and spreading all of these conspiracies to basically take over the department of justice. This Jeff Clark had never even led, never been a part of a criminal investigation before, never tried a case before, and the plan was to appoint him as the head of the Department of Justice so that the Department of Justice could issue this letter to states

to overturn their results of the election and to declare Trump as the winner, despite the fact that the states had and the electoral votes had went to President Biden. And so this is what's taking place at this meeting. And then you have people like Jeff Rosen, who was the acting attorney general after Bill Barr resigned and Rich Donahoe Donahue, who was the number two deputy at the Department of Justice. And all of the U.S. attorneys,

all saying that they would resign if you appointed this Jeff Clark to overtake the entire Department of Justice. So this is the setting where Donald Trump is now screaming at Pat Cipollone and Philbin and others and accusing them of engaging in a coup against Trump for not letting the Department of Justice to be overtaken by this Jeff Clark so that a letter could go out to the States to overturn the results of a free and free and fair democratic election.

So here's the question that's being asked by the January 6th committee. My question is, what were those reasons to the extent you could tell during the meeting? It was the resignations, what's it, the merits, the lack of merit of the steps that Mr. Clark proposed taking, we're gonna talk about Jeff Clark there, the answer by Cipolloni.

I didn't have an extensive discussion. I know without getting into privilege based on conversations and a conversations that took place after the meeting, he understood it would not have been a good decision for him, referring to Trump there. Question, all right, after the meeting in our informal discussions with Mr. Philbin, the other lawyer, he told us that the president said something along the lines of,

you have to understand there is a coup going on and you are complicit in it. Talking to both you and Mr. Philbin, do you recall the president talking about a coup going on? This is an answer from Pat Zipoloni answer. He said that. My recollection is, he said that toward the end of the meeting. I think he was expressing the fact that I said that he believed that there was fraud in the election, that you know, and he viewed that, I guess guess as you know, he used the word coup and he pointed at us and said, and you are complicit and you are complicit

and he said the same to Eric, referring to Eric Hirschman. I don't know if he really you know, I mean meant that but that is what he said, question. And he said that you were complicit in this coup or that you had somehow facilitated the election being stolen and said, no, no, I think, I think what he meant was, you know, I think he understood what I felt about the claims of election fraud in that meeting.

I think he and we just disagreed about that. But you know, question, I see. Then it goes, Ms. Cheney, I see you're on, go ahead. And then Liz Cheney is now asking questions here. And then Liz Cheney is also asking about the things that Bill Barr was saying and saying, the attorney general, Bill Barr, and then the acting attorney general, Jeff Rosen, and the previous attorney general, and his own and Trump's own campaign lawyers had all told him that there was no basis for any of the allegations that there was sufficient fraud to change

the outcome of the election. And I think you said you agreed with that. And then Cipollone responds, I did agree with that, yes. When Bill Barr told him that, I agreed with that and Cheneyy goes and this meeting happened after that and Cipolloni says yes, and then Cheney goes and so again, I ask you did the president's site any genuine evidence in this meeting of fraud sufficient to steal the election from him and then he goes on to basically say it was just Trump

ranting and raving. And then if you go up further in the deposition, which you could read on your own. In the first 25 pages, they reiterate that Bill Barr called all of Trump's other lawyers, not the Sepaloni, Philbin, Hirschman team, but like the Sydney pals and the Giuliani's and the Jeff Clarks and the Johnny Eastman's

called them a clown show and called them all like the clown car lawyers. There's a few observations that I want to make here, though. I mean, you have in this situation where a former president of the United States is calling his top lawyers at the time, essentially traitors, saying that they were engaged in a coup and they are complicit in a coup against him. And then you have his lawyers to like, sip alone even in his responses,

like just kind of babying Trump. And this is a broader point that I want to make it. They're like, well, you know, yeah, he accused me of being involved in the coup against him. But, you know, what I think he really meant was that I didn't believe that there was fraud that he was saying. So he just accused me of engaging in a coup. You know, to some extent, I do want to say that Sipelone and Hirschmanman and Philbin and you know, and others, I mean,

yes, they testified truthfully. They followed their legal obligations. They testified truthfully before the January 6th community. They didn't obstruct. They followed their legal and ethical duties to testify under penalty of perjury here as they did. But when you see their actions and you see like in general, the people who enabled him, you know, who were, and I know that they were telling Trump that there wasn't

fraud, but it's like, here you have a situation where Trump is saying that you're involved in a coup. He's spreading this incredible vitriol and accusing you of the most horrendous thing. And like your response to that is, yeah, you know, it cues me of a coup, you know, I mean, that is such an unprecedented thing in our history. It is such a shocking thing in our history.

And the fact that it could just be so glossed over is just a thing, yeah,'t accuse me of a coup. I, we know we need to focus on that. What we can never lose sight on for the sake of the health of our democracy is how unhealthy that is. You know, one of the things that I just never understood in general, you know, is one, I mean,

Trump's a, not just, he's a traitor. He's a loser Everything he does. He's just a loser in life his entire life It's just bluster and bravado, but at his core He is a little petulant child no offense to little petulant children And he's a loser in every aspect whatever he touches goes bankrupt But because he's mean, because he rants and acts like a crazy person, that somehow he has this constituency of these Republicans who just go along with what he says because they're worried about him being mean to them.

They're worried about a mean tweaked during the problem. I don't want him to tweet a mean thing about me. Why would he tweet a mean thing? That's gonna be horrible if he tweets mean things. It's like if you can just be, have a modicum of dignity, because you clearly don't have a modicum of courage. But if you could have a modicum of just dignity for a second and just

stand up for yourself and say, what the hell are you doing? Don't you dare call me a coup plotter? Are you out of your mind? How dare you? You know, and speak out in real time, not because the January 6th committee did a heroic and incredible job. But for the January 6th committee did a heroic and incredible job. But for the January 6th committee doing this, people like Sipalone and Philman and Hirschman, they would never have told their story. Maybe 20 years from now, they'd write a book or something or 10 years they'd write a book about it, but they wanted to cover all this stuff up. Thank God for the work of the January 6th committee and everything all of this stuff.

But when I read the transcript like that, I just think and reflect like, how cowardly are these Republican people? And setting aside, just setting aside for a moment, the politics of it all, when you break it down, it's like, how can you expect American people to follow anything that you say when this is how you act when you're confronted with the rantings and ravings of a lunatic loser trader.

Like Donald Trump, it's utterly pathetic. Utterly pathetic anyway. I wanted to share that deposition. I'm going to continue sharing these little gems that I find in these deposition transcripts, but wanted to share that one with you. I'm Ben Myselis from the Midas Touch Network. Hit the subscribe button. We're on our way to 1 million subscribers.

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dot com slash minus touch, but most importantly, help us grow this independent media platform. Until next time, I'm Ben Mycelas.