Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Files EMERGENCY NOTICE in NY Criminal Case

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

In breaking news, Trump, coordinating with MAGA Congress, is trying to stop his inevitable criminal sentencing on his 34-count state court felony conviction for fraud and election interference, by trying for a second time to drag his case away from Judge Juan Merchan and to federal court. Michael Popok explains it all and why this post-conviction pre-sentencing maneuver is doomed to fail. Visit https://HensonShaving.com/LEGALAF to pick the razor for you and use code LEGALAF for 2 years worth of free blades! Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF 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

I'm going back to university for zero dollar delivery fee, up to five percent off orders and five percent uber cash back on rides. Not whatever you think university is for. Get Uber One for students. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings May 3. Eligibility and member terms apply. Bet mode activated. The ScoreBet app here with trusted stats and real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking.

Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes I want knee-jerk reactions. That's not really what I do. Is that because you don't have any knees? The score bet trusted sports content seamless sports betting download today 19 plus Ontario only if you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you Please go to Connix Ontario dot CA If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to ConnixOntario.ca. This is Michael Popock with the breaking news story. Donald Trump is trying to drag his state conviction, 34-count felony conviction,

across to federal court for the second time to avoid being sentenced on the 18th of September by Judge Juan Marchand, a judge that he can't wait to get away from. This is now the second attempt by Donald Trump. The first one failed. The second one will fail and we'll go over why in a moment. But what has happened in the last 24 hours? Two things. One, we now know why MAGA Congress went after Judge Juan Roshan's daughter and has asked her, demanded that she turn over personal and private financial records about her company that operates for democratic causes. It has nothing to do with the judge, just has to do with an adult daughter who happens to have a job.

But now we know why MAGA Congress, at Trump's urging, issued that a couple of days ago. It was cover for this new notice of removal, second notice of removal, that Donald Trump's lawyers have filed before a particular judge in the Southern District of New York Federal Court named Al Hellerstein. This is the second attempt by Donald Trump to drag his case out of state court

and get it away from Judge Juan Rishon and over to federal court. It failed the first time. We reported right here and talked about it on Legal AF that back in May through July of last year, Donald Trump tried the exact same thing. The primary focus in this new notice is the same as the last notice that failed. It's that Donald Trump was a federal officer who under his official color of his office committed the crimes that are alleged and now not even alleged. Now he's convicted of

those crimes and therefore he had the right to have his case tried in federal court, not in state court. It's a little different than a total immunity argument. He's not arguing that he's immune from prosecution because two-thirds or three-quarters of his activities happened while he was a candidate. He wasn't even president. So even he doesn't argue that. His main argument is there were certain pieces of evidence about the continuation of the hush money coverup affair with Stormy Daniels and the payoff through Michael Cohen

of that money that happened after he got elected. In other words, when his election interference actions were successful and he actually became president, there were certain meetings he held and certain statements that were made and certain evidence that was presented at the trial. Donald Trump has an argument, I assume, and he's made the argument to Judge Mishon that those pieces of evidence corrupted the whole outcome and is reversible error. That those pieces of evidence and testimony about what he did or what people did around him when he was president based on the United States Supreme

Court precedent of Trump versus the United States should never have been presented to the jury in New York, the 12 person jury, and his claim is they wouldn't have convicted if they didn't hear from Hope Hicks, the press secretary, or the person that was responsible for scheduling Donald Trump's calendar and lunches. I don't think that's how that case went. We followed it pretty closely here on Legal AF. So the argument now to Judge Hellerstein for the second time is, look, Judge, there's all these bad things that happened at the trial. Judge Mershon won't recuse himself. Judge Mershon has a daughter. Judge Mershon isn't giving us enough time to take an appeal. Judge Mershon has a daughter. Judge Mershon isn't giving us enough time to take an appeal. Judge Mershon is ruling on the immunity decision, but he's ruling on it

on the 16th of September and we were getting sentenced on the 18th. Help, help Judge Hellerstein. Take the case over to federal court. This is not going to work. First of all, they tried almost the exact same notice of removal in asking the court to take jurisdiction away from Judge Mershon as a federal judge and have the case tried in federal court back before the trial even happened and the judge rejected it. I'm going to read to you from where Judge Hellerstein basically said this was a private affair, literally, of Donald Trump with an adult film star and a coverup around it, having nothing to do with his official duties, having nothing to do with his official conduct as president,

and therefore he doesn't have the right to remove the case to federal court. Same thing here. You have to have grounds to bring, if you're indicted and prosecuted in state court, you have to have grounds to bring it you're if you're indicted and and prosecuted in state court you have to have grounds to bring it over to federal court and under the under the federal removal statute you only have grounds that apply here if you were a federal officer and you're operating under the color of your office for the crimes that that allegedly you committed or now forget allegedly

for which you were convicted. And if that happened, then you get to try your case in federal court. But again, back before the trial, Judge Hellerstein already said none of that was true. You may have been a federal officer at certain aspects of the timeline related to Stormy Daniels,

but you did not operate under the color of your office, which is a requirement under the case law interpreting this particular removal statute, and therefore you don't get the benefit of the removal statute. There's another twist and another good reason why Donald Trump should not be allowed to remove the case. That will now come up, and it has to do as to whether current versus former officers have the right to remove their cases at all. Mark Meadows got an adverse ruling on this very issue, exact same removal statute, by another appellate court, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that sits over Georgia and Florida Federal. And he didn't like that outcome. There, Chief Judge William Pryor of the 11th

Circuit made some new law. He said, I don't see why, Meadows, you're no longer the chief of staff for Donald Trump at the time you brought this motion for removal. I don't get to see why you get to use the removal statute. Your conduct as an executive branch officer is not being interfered with. You're just a retired citizen at this point. So he made new law that the federal removal statute for federal officers doesn't apply to people who are no longer federal officers. Meadows doesn't like that. He's taken it up to the United States Supreme Court. Donald Trump is also a former federal officer at best. So I think if the Supreme Court supports Mark Meadows,

it's another reason that Judge Hellerstein, I'm sure in his rejection of the second notice of removal, will cite, he'll cite, you're also former. And I believe that's the better law in this area, and you're not gonna be able to remove it. Judge Hellerstein, I'm sure, will also say you're not able to remove it because you've sort of waived your removal right.

What does that mean? Donald Trump lost to Judge Hellerstein back in July of 2023 on this almost exact same issue. And then we went forward with the trial and the trial's already happened. That milk has already been spilled. That toothpaste is already out of the tube. He's been convicted.

And Donald Trump had the right to an appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals federally about whether Judge Hellerstein was right or wrong about allowing Donald Trump to drag the case to federal court. And Donald Trump and his lawyers, I'll put it up here, we'll put it up on the screen, dismissed their appeal. They dismissed their appeal and the court therefore, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, ordered the motion granted and closed the appeal. I think there's a very good argument that there has been waiver of any argument now that the removal decision by Judge Hellerstein, which they're trying effectively to revisit, to re-argue, I think they've waived

that argument by failing to appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. What they're really trying to do, and it's apparent when you read the motion or the notice, what they're really trying to do is they're trying to argue their appeal. They don't like that Judge Mershon stayed on the case and didn't recuse himself. That's grounds for an appeal to the state court proceeding. They don't like certain of the evidentiary rulings that Judge Mershon made. They don't like certain of the rulings that Judge Mershon made along the way about jury instructions.

They don't like certain of the evidence that came in. They think it was reversible error. Great, you take that after you get the final ruling from and the final sentencing from the judge, you take that to the appellate court. The appellate court first stop in the appellate court in New York, which is the first department appellate division.

You don't like that response? You go to the court of appeals for New York. And that's what you do. But right now they haven't gotten the ruling from Judge Mershon on immunity and whether immunity applies to the case at all. And they haven't gotten the sentencing. So it's not right for appeal. But they don't like that. So they want Judge Hellerstein to basically be a supra appellate court and countermand Judge Mershon before he's even had a chance to rule on immunity and order Judge Mershon not to sentence the case and divest Judge Mershon of jurisdiction. Now, generally, when you file a notice of removal, a little Patreon legal AF here,

when somebody has a legitimate notice of removal, it does divest the state court of jurisdiction. So that's their ploy. They think Judge Hellerstein is going to accept the jurisdiction and tell Judge Marchand to put a pin in his proceedings while he resolves the removal because he did that back in the summer of 2023. And that would give, you know, what is it called? Hope floats? That would give Donald Trump a little hope that he can avoid the 18th of September. There's two things Donald Trump wants to avoid while he runs for office. Here's something we all know. Cheap razors are annoying. They cut you. They irritate you. And

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That's 100 free blades when you head to H-E-N-S-O-N-S-H-A-V-I-N-G.com slash legal AF and use code legal AF. A, he wants to avoid the 18th of September and the sentencing on his crimes. Even if the sentencing is suspended, it of course gives the Kamala Harris campaign a lot of grist for the mill that they're running against a now sentenced 34-count felony conviction candidate. The second thing he wants to avoid is having the Manhattan DA's office send in their sentencing memo outlining all of the terrible conduct by Donald Trump and have that leak out into the public. They don't want that either.

So they're running to their daddy hoping that Judge Hellerstein is gonna help them out. I don't see that happening, all right? Mainly because we already saw this movie and we already got the order back in July 19th of 2023 from this very Judge Hellerstein. And I'm gonna read to you from it why it's not gonna work now.

First, let me tell you the flaws in the argument, and there are many, and I won't bore you with them all, in the new filing by Donald Trump. First of all, his major problem is he has to prove that Donald Trump was a federal officer operating under color of law. He doesn't do any of that. He doesn't even address those major points in his introduction. His introduction is just him crying and complaining about things that are properly handled on an appeal, on an appeal to a state court judge from a state court judge's rulings. Let me read to you from pages a little bit of one, two, and three from their introduction.

The first argument they make, supposedly their strongest argument, that the case against Donald Trump for the Stormy Daniels-Hushmoney cover-up affair is a zombie case that should have been dismissed long ago. Okay, well, it wasn't and he was convicted under it. And if you got an issue with it, you take an appeal in state court. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office violated the presidential immunity doctrine in grand jury proceedings and again, a trial by relying on evidence

of President Trump's official acts during his first term in office. Again, that's not grounds for removal to federal court of your post-conviction, pre-sentencing case. That is an appeal issue, even if you're right, and frankly, you're not. So that's your second strongest argument, because it's the second sentence in your brief, in your notice. Then they talk about the United States Supreme Court decision about immunity. Okay, that's out there. And then that the case is preempted because their indictment turns on an improper use of state law, state election law, to police the 2016 presidential election through

non-unanimous jury findings. That's a very complicated way of saying we didn't like the jury instructions that were given to the jury by Judge Mershon. And you know what? That's okay. If you don't like something that happens to you in a criminal court as a convicted criminal defendant, you take an appeal and you ask the appellate court to review it, not the federal court post-conviction, pre-sentencing in removal. Then they go on to say the supremacy clause was ignored. That's again an appellate issue, not a removal issue for the removal judge.

So I'm already two-thirds into their introduction and there's not an appropriate assessment of the elements of removal under the appropriate statute. In fact, they don't even mention the appropriate statute on the first two or three pages of it. They finally on page three get to the statute. They say, for purposes of federal officer removal, this is paragraph five of section 1442A1, the court must credit

and the district, the DA cannot dispute President Trump's defense theory that the prosecutors relied on official acts, evidence at trial and in grand jury proceedings. That may be true. That may be their theory. That may be their defense. And that may be an appeal at the state court level.

But tell me man, where it says that's appropriate grounds to remove under 1442A1 because if you don't have that, you're done. You're done. And all the rest of this is just window dressing and campaign rhetoric and flotsam and jetsam to try to get Donald Trump elected and avoid the inevitable, his sentencing. And then buried in here, but not too buried, is of course an argument about Judge Mershon and his daughter again. Which again, to end where I started,

brings us back to the MAGA subpoena that was issued to the daughter just two days ago in anticipation of this. If people don't think that the Trump campaign and Donald Trump and his lawyers aren't coordinating with the MAGA Congress, wake up, because they are. And if you see MAGA Congress do something, it's because Donald Trump told them to do it because he thinks it's going to help them in some strategy in his current cases and

his current predicaments. And that's what we got going on here. Now they glide over the fact that they brought a prior removal order before Judge Mershon back in 2023. But let me just read to you from parts of that and now you'll understand why I think this is a dead loser and I'd be shocked if Judge Hellerstein, he may hold a small hearing on this, but that he's going to accept and try to accept jurisdiction on the federal level post conviction and pre-sentencing of Donald Trump. Nor do I believe that the judge, Judge Hellerstein, is going to put a pin in the case, tell Judge Mershon not to take another step in the case, and to avoid the sentencing on the

18th. I just don't see that happening. If Donald Trump doesn't like it, he can try to take another appeal. Their goal here is to try to get over to federal court and try to hop scotch over to the United States Supreme Court. I get it. What Judge Hellerstein said in his order is that all the decisions that were made by Donald Trump were in his personal capacity to hire a personal lawyer for a personal affair, literally, that he was trying to hide from the American people. And that none of that could rise the level of color of his office and the reason he was being prosecuted. That was

only the leftover. Just to be clear for people tuning in late, Donald Trump started in October and November of 2016, a conspiracy, along with Michael Cohen and David Pecker of the National Enquirer. This is all proven at trial in front of the 12 person jury. It's called the Trump Tower Conspiracy. That's what the Manhattan DA called it. That's what the jury obviously believed. And as part of that conspiracy,

they had a catch and kill program where they would identify people who had had sex, voluntary or involuntary with Donald Trump or had been sexually abused by him. They would pay them off. They had a catch-and-kill program where they would identify people who had had sex, voluntary or involuntary, with Donald Trump or had been sexually abused by him. They would pay them off. They would say they'd be running a story of the National Enquirer. They would have them sign a non-disclosure agreement and they would move on. And Michael Cohen ran that.

And Michael Cohen made the payments directly to Stormy Daniels because David Pecker of the National Enquirer wouldn't. And then he went back and created, and this is all in testimony, and Michael Cohen went to jail for part of this, created fake phony invoices for legal services that were not rendered to get him repaid, plus interest, plus a bonus, plus a VIG

for having laid out the money for Donald Trump paying Stormy Dangles $130,000. That's the conspiracy. Now, the invoices came, some of them came after Donald Trump successfully interfered with the election and got elected. And some of the meetings happened in the White House. But these were always private meetings with his private lawyer about private business and written on private personal bank accounts to repay Michael Cohen. It had nothing to do with the presidency. He didn't write it on the White House checkbook. The meetings, sure, I'm sure the

person responsible for setting the agenda for a particular day or the diary in a particular day for Donald Trump wrote in Michael Cohen. That doesn't make it a presidential act. They like to point to, well, she also knew about, you know, the situation room. Okay, I'm sure these people that worked for President Trump knew a lot of things. It doesn't mean that it rendered all of his acts while he was president official conduct. And even when Hellerstein applies the US versus Trump decision from July 2024 of this year, he's still gonna come out the same way. This is not a federal officer under the federal color of law that is being prosecuted related to those federal

acts, period. Let me summarize. This is not gonna work. Mershon is not gonna be stopped from his sentencing. If Donald Trump has a right to appeal, he needs to do it like everybody else through an appellate process in the state court level that he hasn't even started yet. And trying to skip all these steps and get a federal judge to bail him out is ultimately not going to be successful. We'll continue to follow it here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. Tune in on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time and you'll find out what happens

because we follow these things to the bitter end and give you our analysis the best way we can as practicing lawyers in the very courts that we talk about. Watch us recorded on Legal AF on Midas Touch YouTube channel. You can listen to us anywhere you get your audio podcast from. So until my next hot take, till 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

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