Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Files DELUSIONAL MOTION in New Federal Criminal Case

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Donald Trump has now filed his motion objecting to Jack Smith’s request for a protective order based on Trump’s threats to prosecutors after his arraignment. Find out why this type of speech isn���t protected by the First Amendment and how he doesn’t have a right to intimidate witnesses. Legal AF Host Karen Friedman Agnifilo reports. Go to https://neurohacker.com/LEGAL for up to 50% off Qualia Senolytic and as a listener of The LEGALAF use code LEGAL at checkout for an extra 15% off your first purchase! 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 MAGA Uncovered: https://pod.link/1690214260 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump and Jack Smith had a back and forth battle of words this past weekend. Just after being arraigned on the Jan 6th indictment and then being released from custody, Judge Tanya Chetkin imposed certain restrictions on Trump, like she would any other defendant, right? And he was not to commit any new crimes, among other things. What does Trump almost immediately do? He posts on a social media something, a threat basically that was, if you come after me, I'm coming after you. Smith could have marched straight into court

and asked that his release conditions be violated. They were already pretty lenient as it is. I mean, his property manager in the Mar-a-Lago case, he had a $100,000 bond set and can't leave the Southern District of Florida, the confines of that. And he's just a lowly property case, he had a $100,000 bond set and can't leave the southern district of Florida, the confines of that. And he's just a lowly property manager, right? Like he didn't come up with this plan by himself.

This is all Trump being the mastermind. But Trump's conditions, you know, because for whatever reason, he isn't treated like anybody else. He has almost no conditions, no bail, no passport taken from him, no restrictions on travel. And here's a guy with a zone 757 that can go wherever he wants, right? But one of the things, one of the standard conditions is no new crimes, right? No, don't intimidate witnesses, don't commit crimes, things like that. It shouldn't be hard to do.

And even the judge looked at Trump and said to him and spoke directly to him and said, do you understand Mr. Trump? And he said, yes. But of course, what does he do? He can't control himself. He says, if you come after me, I'm coming after you and taking in context with another post that you had where he called all his prosecutors, and there are many, and Joe Biden, the fraud squad. Anyway, Smith could have walked straight into court and asked that his release conditions be violated and that sanctions be imposed, which could have been anything from incarceration,

house arrest, monetary bill, bail, travel restrictions, you name it. But instead, Jack Smith decided to take a more measured approach and he swiftly, though, went in and asked Judge Chutkin for a protective order pursuant to federal rule of criminal procedure section 16D1. Kind of like the one he has in his New York case, which is basically a protective order means Donald Trump

in order to receive discovery early. So all of the documents and case file and everything that Jack Smith has, he's not entitled to this until right before trial, but Jack Smith who's trying to get this thing going quickly wants to turn it over to him with a good, you know, even said with like a digest and, you know, kind of pointing to these are the important areas and a, you know, table of contents, etc. to make it as easy as possible for him. But he said, in order to do that, I want a protective order, which means there will be limits

on what you can do with this information, right? And what Jack Smith said, the reason I need this is because look at this post that Donald Trump just posted about, if you come after me, I'm coming after you, he will intimidate witnesses. He could use information that he learns from these discovery materials about who has testified what they said. And, you know, him, he has shown he has a track record that he will go and intimidate witnesses. I'll talk about it publicly. And, you know, that will negatively affect the trial. And it will impact Jack Smith's ability to ensure a fair trial that is not in any way prejudiced by public statements. So Smith requested this protective order, which

is reasonable, and also said if Trump has any comments, and this was this was immediately done on on Friday, and said if Trump has any comments, he should have them by Monday, and he'll be available to meet and confer any time over the weekend, phone calls, emails, whatever it is. But rather than making proposed edits on the protective order, his lawyers instead wrote a motion and asking for more time, saying, we can't possibly respond in this short amount of time. But Smith immediately fired back and said, well, you had time to ask for more time.

You could have used that time to make proposed red line edits on the proposed protective order. And since his lawyer, John Loro did what they called the full Ginsburg on Sunday. He appeared on all five Sunday news programs. And I guess that's a reference, I read somewhere,

this is a reference to the Monica Lewinsky lawyer, Mr. Ginsburg, who did this during the Clinton scandal, went on all the shows. That wouldn't be a good look to the court saying, oh, I don't have time to answer your order judge because I'm on TV. So the judge basically swiftly, again, all over the weekend, denied this request and ordered him to respond by Monday, which he did. So this response, in opposition to the government's motion for a protective order, accused Jack Smith of being overly broad and not narrowly teller to address only material that presents a particular, a particular safety or security concern. In other words, he's saying,'s saying don't make all the material

protected or, you know, limited, instead just certain things that might be quote unquote sensitive. And he says that this request, John Loro, his lawyer said that Trump's lawyer said that this request, the government's request to restrict all the documents, regardless of their sensitivities, contrary to established law and Trump's first amendment rights. To resolve this, he requests the court adopt a more narrow, proposed red line that he attaches, and as an exhibit, to the order to shield what he calls only genuinely sensitive materials from public view.

He says this more measured approach is consistent with other protective orders, and it would also, the government could also protect the highly sensitive categories of material, expedite the flow of discovery, et cetera. So in other words, what's happening here? What he's saying is, you know what? I don't want all my documents under a protective order because you know what that'll do.

That will limit his Trump's ability to try this case in the court of public opinion. Why? He has no desire to try this case in court ever because if you do go to court and witnesses are put under oath and cross-examining and cross-examined and prosecutors are put to their burden to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt. He doesn't want that because you know what, when that happens, he is going to get convicted. The evidence is overwhelming against him. He doesn't want that. Instead, he wants to lie and intimidate and bully and try this case in the court of public opinion. And that is not okay. Judges don't allow this in any other case. They would never allow this.

Why? Because that can impact potential jurors and impact the trial. It impacts the integrity of the trial and witnesses, right? Witnesses shouldn't be intimidated, but allowed to be bullied. And look, given Trump's track record, this is not a, you know, kind of,

it might happen, right? Trump does this. He already has proven. He can't stop threatening, bullying, and intimidating anyone, witnesses, prosecutors, anyone in a case. In fact, he did it the day after he was arraigned and promised he wouldn't. So why is Trump being treated differently than other defendants?

Legal scholars would argue because he's running for president, so he has an even heightened free speech rate and protect prospective voters. They have right to want to know about these charges against him and he has a right to defend himself because after all he's innocent until proven guilty. And I don't disagree with that in theory. And Trump makes it a point to constantly point out that this is his opponent's justice department that's doing it to him, which is really not true. The justice department actually,

Biden's justice department said, we don't think, given the fact that Biden is running for office, that the Department of Justice should do this, because of the reasons Trump is pointing out. And so what did they do? They pointed an independent special prosecutor. Trump doesn't like that, but that's what happened in order to get away from this idea of an opponent doing an investigation and a prosecution of him.

So that's just one of the disingenuant claims that his team is making. But the other thing that's really, really just disingenuant to me is, you know, his lawyer is claiming that Trump has a free speech right that all of this infringes on his free speech rights, right? He's running for office, and therefore there is a heightened, a heightened kind of sensitivity to the fact that he has the right to free speech. And that has to be very, very narrowly tailored. But you know, what they can flate and what they mislead people on, and what I think everybody

needs to educate themselves on is that the freeze, the right to free speech, the first amendment, it's not absolute, not all words are protected all the time. If that were the case, you know, then there wouldn't be any limitations on speech. But there are so many examples that have been, people have talked about all over the news on the last coming days on restrictions on free speech. What they say is how you can yell fire in a crowded theater to create havoc and a stampede.

When there is no fire, that's not protected. Or every time you want to hire a hitman, not that people do that regularly, but any case where somebody went to hire a hitman and they say they don't do the murder themselves, they don't pull the trigger, they don't buy the gun, they do nothing but say words to the hitman. And that person will be prosecuted for murder

in the first degree, higher than the person who actually pulls the trigger. And those were just words. And you know, there are other examples are every conspiracy case where two people agree to commit a crime together, right? You can't just turn around and say, oh, free speech, we agreed to commit a crime together. Or every fraud case, every time you defraud somebody, it's always with words. But again, that is not, you don't

have a free speech right to do that. And, you know, we could give example after example after example of this. And, you know, I actually was contacted by one of our listeners over the weekend, Leonardo from Canada, who I thought made a really good point, which he said that, you know, it's even worse, right? You can't yell fire in a crowded theater. Everybody knows that example, right? That's not protected speech. But even worse would be if a fire chief went in, knew there wasn't a fire, yelled fire in a crowded theater,

people would think, oh wow, he's a fire chief. He's in uniform. He must be telling me the truth, and they will rely on that. And again, you know, that makes it even worse. He's in uniform. He must be telling me the truth and they will rely on that. And again, that makes it even worse. And Donald Trump is the fire chief here, right? He's the guy running for president

and he's the one who, when he says these things, it's not just like anyone else saying it. And people listen to him and believe him even though he lies, bullies, defames, another thing that's not protected, you know, a lot to defame people. You know, you can lie, that's okay, but you can't lie in order to defraud someone. You can't lie and commit a crime. Lying is protected speech, but you might be held liable for defaming the person or guilty of a crime. Have you heard of sent-a-scent cells,

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But he also goes into, you know, in his, in his, in his motion, he also posts, this is, I don't get it at all. He posted a photo of Joe Biden that had a cup of coffee saying, you know, Joe, a cup of Joe never tasted better, but this was a thinly veiled reference to the indictment. I don't see that at all, but that was in his motion. He also makes the claim that we've heard him say

over and over again, well, the DOJ waited two and a half years to bring this case. So the fact that it's bumping into the election is not Trump's fault. It's, you know, it's the DOJ's fault. And he shouldn't get, you know, he shouldn fault and they shouldn't benefit from hamstringing Trump. But this protective order request, Jack Smith is trying to censor my political speech. These are all things we've heard before and it sounds familiar and really what he's going

to do. He also asks for more time to respond to this because why he wants to delay. But the bottom line is that the right, that to and fringe on someone's constitutional right, it does have to be narrowly tailored because it's a right. But this protective order does seek to limit the disclosure materials in a way that is narrowly tailored given who Trump is and what his track record is and how he constantly constantly is trying to try this case in a court of public opinion and thereby potentially infecting a jury pool and their ability to be fair and only listen to the evidence as opposed to things that they've heard or read and same thing with witnesses. Now there's a proposed red line, okay, so really what he what what the Trump does through his lawyer is he goes through the protective order and he makes red lines or changes to what he wants in the protective order.

So the first one comes as paragraph three of the protective order where it says, the defendant and defense counsel shall not disclose materials or their contents directly or indirectly to any person or other persons assisting other than two people assisting the defense and other persons to whom the court may authorize disclosure, you know, authorized persons. The defendant wants to change that to from

does not to disclose materials to not to disclose sensitive materials. He also wants to add in their not just to his defense team or people assisting, you know, the people who work for his lawyers, not just to his defense team or people assisting, the people who work for his lawyers, but he also wants to add volunteers, okay? There are volunteers to his, to his cause, I guess, that he wants to have access to this sensitive materials. Now, I don't know who these volunteers are,

but that's what he wants to put in this order. He also says in his order, in his proposed order that he wants to define sensitive materials, as, again, the government's asking that everything be protected, he only wants to do sensitive materials. And he proposes a definition that includes things with personal identifying information, which Jack Smith had also had in there.

Anything like grand jury subpoena material that Jack Smith also had in there, material obtained through sealed warrants. Again, Jack Smith had that in there. Sealed orders obtained by government filter team, which is like They go through whenever there's like a like if you if you were to go through Rudy Giuliani or Johnny Eastman's Cell phones as a prosecutor you put a filter team in place meeting someone who has nothing to do with your case And what they do is they look for attorney client matters because Rudy Giuliani and Johnny Eastman presumably

just to name two lawyers, have other clients other than Donald Trump. Those any communications on their devices would be protected under the attorney client privilege. What the filter team does is they just filter that out. The prosecuting team never gets to see that material. That was in there. And what he crosses out though, what he crosses out, Trump, is what the prosecutor wanted in there, which was recordings, transcripts, interview reports,

and related exhibits of witness interviews. And they crossed that out and replaced it with information regarding the government's confidential sources or which may or which may jeopardize witness safety. So basically what he's asking for is I want to know who your witnesses are and I want to be able to talk about them publicly and I want to be able to put pressure through my henchmen and others and frankly bully them and put what their statements are out there and contradict them out in the public realm.

So he also crosses out materials obtained from other government entities. So basically, that's the next kind of, the next kind of section. Oh, he also wants the government to conspicuously mark all such sensitive material, whatever. Another section, you know, Jack Smith says, the parties may include designated sensitive materials in any public filing, and Trump adds without leave of court if all sensitive information

is redacted, the parties may further file unredacted copies. He just wants to be able to put sensitive material out there. And similarly, it goes on and on about sensitive materials more that they can introduce unredacted copies of things. He just wants to be able to put everything out there, again, to try this case in a court of public opinion. So this is where we are. We have this proposed order from Jack Smith. And then we have the response from Trump, which is kind of ridiculous,

and it is also disingenuine. And instead of, you know, he basically, you know, says, looks treat information regarding the government's confidential sources or which may jeopardize witness safety, you know, looks not treat that as sensitive, you know, I mean, let's treat that as sensitive, but not witness transcripts or recordings or interview reports, you know, all that kind that as sensitive, but not witness transcripts or recordings or interview reports, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's not automatically sensitive.

So that makes no sense, right? Why would it be that, you know, that, yes, okay, you might have a government source and that person might be sensitive, but their information and their statements aren't. Again, that just makes no sense and that could jeopardize people's safety. Also, you know, look, these, you know, by limiting the protection, you know, to materials that implicate confidential sources or would jeopardize a witness security,

what he's doing there, he's basically forcing the special counsel, you know, to have to identify who those people are, what materials go with it, and by doing that, in some senses, you're outing them, right? And putting them in danger. So the other thing is all of this would potentially slow things down and delay the litigation because you have to go through all this, which of course is what he wants to do is a protective order here is one more vehicle for him

to delay his trial, because he doesn't really want a trial. And so he just wants to be able to make extra judicial statements where he could prejudice a jury pool and intimidate witnesses, because that's what he does. And I just think that, you know, you're gonna see a very strong reaction from Judge Chuckkin. I think she's going to, you know, she's not gonna like what Trump did.

She's not gonna like that he, you know, right away immediately after she told him not to do this that he did, and that he is violating her release terms. And so I think she's going to have a strong response. I think she's going to potentially do a protective order the way the government is requesting. She might put some limits on it, but I don't think she's going to put the limits that Trump's lawyers have requested and allow Trump to try this in the case in the trial in the court of public opinion, which is what he wants to do. So the saga continues, all of this was over the weekend, and so everybody's working hard over the weekend. And hopefully we'll hear from the court soon. And when we do, we'll be back with more hot takes me and my co-hosts Ben Myceles and Michael Popock.

I'm Karen Friedman-Egnifalo from Legal AF. Join us every Wednesday and Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern. And thank you so much for being so supportive and for being great followers and for being so participatory. I loved that I get emails, I get communications, people give ideas and thoughts and having such engaged and engaged audience has really been great for all of us and super helpful and uh, keep up the good fight. Hey, Midas Mighty. Love this report. Continue the conversation by following us on Instagram.

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