Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump GETS DESPERATE over HIS Sentencing..SUES JUDGE

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Trump really does not want to hear Judge Merchan chastise him for his convicted criminal conduct and contempt conduct on Friday during sentencing of his 34 felony count conviction, and so he has sued the Judge and the Manhattan DA to try to stop it. Michael Popok who practices in NY and these courts explains what the new lawsuit is and what may happen next with appellate court and Friday’s sentencing. 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 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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that MGM dot com for terms and conditions must be 19 years of age or older to wager Ontario only please play responsibly if you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Donald Trump really doesn't want Judge Murchon to wrap him on the knuckles and tell him what a bad criminal he's been at his sentencing on Friday. And now the Judge Mershon has rejected a stay request, arguing that the court does not have

jurisdiction because Donald Trump is the president-elect and there's some sort of president-elect immunity. Donald Trump right on cue filed a lawsuit against and sued the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and the judge, Judge Mershon, under a unique aspect of New York law I'm going to explain to you here called Article 78. We got an Article 78 lawsuit, everybody, in lieu of an appeal. I'll tell you what it means, what I think is going to happen between now and Friday here on Midas Touch and Legal AF. I'm Michael Popak, and I practice law in New York. And I sort of know my way around Article 78.

Now, Article 78 is a unique way under our statutes in New York for a litigant to argue that for instance, any kind of agency head or judge has stepped outside their jurisdiction and done something rogue or inappropriate. I don't think it really fits here. The courts in the past have rejected Donald Trump's prior article 78s. He tried a similar tactic to stop the trial from starting in the hush money cover-up case, the 34 felony count case, because of immunity and other things. And the court at that time, the appellate court at that time said, yeah, why don't you do all that at the end?

Start your trial. And they started their trial, then they completed their trial and he got convicted. All about matters that have nothing to do with him being president. I mean, the bulk and the key allegations of the conspiracy proven in front of the jury by the Manhattan DA about Stormy Daniels and the hush money coverup affair was all before he was president.

That was the purpose, he was trying to become president. So he wasn't president during the key conduct at the heart of the conspiracy. He wasn't president when he was indicted. He wasn't president when he was tried in front of a 12-person jury. He wasn't president when he was convicted and he won't be president when he is sentenced. So this is not about immunity from prosecution or immunity, his conduct being immune. This is about a couple of straight pieces of evidence, a couple of pieces of testimony by some aides that worked for Donald Trump. And whether after he was president, that information should have gotten to the jury or not.

It's a very discreet issue. It's a very arcane issue. It doesn't go to the heart of the immunity issue. It goes to the heart of whether certain of this information should have gone to the jury or whether it was a harmless error that it did. So it's not an immunity discussion per se, although it does come out of the immunity decision. Well, Judge Marshawn has already had not one, but two different motions to dismiss in front of him by Donald Trump, and he's rejected both efforts to have the, not the indictment dismissed, we're well past

that. The conviction dismissed and overturned. No judge is going to overturn a 12-0 conviction by a jury, a hardworking jury fair in New York or anywhere else. And so he said no the first time. No on the immunity grounds. You don't have a president-elect immunity. That's not a thing. No on the immunity grounds. You don't have a president-elect immunity. That's not a thing and you already got convicted

We're not talking about you being immune from prosecution. The prosecution is effectively over All the judge all the motion practice is over all the briefs are done Everything is done except for the sentencing and that's gonna be done before your president and they keep complaining on the Trump side Oh very critical 75 days between the election and the inauguration. Donald Trump's got to focus completely on his presidential transition duties. Really? Because he seems to have a lot of time on his hands to try to go after Greenland, go after Canada, go after France, go after England, do mean tweets against judges and jurors and prosecutors. prosecutors seems to have a lot of time on

his hands at Mar-a-Lago for dinner dances. So how much could this really be impairing his presidential election golf game? Okay. So we knew that Donald Trump was going to file this Article 78 lawsuit because he said he was yesterday. He said if the judge denied his most recent stay, and there was a second motion to dismiss that I glossed over, a motion under what we call

the Clayton factors in New York, which says that for manifest injustice, a judge can overturn a jury verdict and throw it away. But none of the factors were laid out by Donald Trump, because none of them apply. Then he filed, when he lost all that, and it was clear that the sentencing was going forward from last Friday To this coming Friday on the 10th of January Donald Trump freaked out and filed another motion to stay notice of stay informing the court that it does not have jurisdiction

Which is sort of a new argument. You don't have jurisdiction. I'm president-elect. There's immunity I'm gonna have more immunity when I get into office of the 20th. You don't have any jurisdiction. Stop, stop, stop acting. Stop, stop, stop subjecting me to Friday. Now why, some people might be wondering, why does he care? Why does Donald Trump care about the sentence when the sentencing process, which, when the judge has already said he's not going to put him to jail? Because he doesn't want to be in front of this judge virtually or in person where the judge is already said he's not gonna put him to jail because he doesn't wanna be in front of this judge virtually or in person, where the judge is gonna recite and recant

all of the bad acts that Donald Trump did, all of the criminal conduct, all of the things that he did to try to undermine the judicial system, all of his contempt findings against him. There's seven or eight different contempt findings that judges made, just reciting it all. The judge has already done a version of this

in his order denying the most recent motion to dismiss where he sort of looked like he was in a sentencing mode talking about you never took responsibility, you did terrible things, you tried to undermine democracy, you tried to undermine the court system. And Trump doesn't want that right now. This is that hard rain falling on Donald Trump before the inauguration. He just wants to like do a victory lap and get to the inauguration, and he doesn't want to be sentenced and be

wrapped on the knuckles and be lashed by a judge in public. That's what he's fighting for. lashed by a judge in public. That's what he's fighting for. That's what we're watching. So they file this 40 page Article 78 lawsuit. Now it goes to the appellate court. First it's the intermediary appellate court in New York. I'm a member of this court. It's the Appellate Division First Judicial Department.

Sits in Manhattan down on Madison Avenue. And there'll be a random group of five justices that'll get together and take a look at this. Now he's filed these before and they've all been unsuccessful. His argument here is no jurisdiction, no jurisdiction, no jurisdiction. The judge has made major mistakes in how he handled his case, on how he let evidence in that he shouldn't have let in, immunity, immunity, immunity, and that's sort of the argument. And so the appellate division is gonna have to make, they can make no ruling at all, okay? Even though there's a request for emergency relief here.

This is what they want in their request to the court. They want a finding that there are any other actions taken against Donald Trump in the criminal prosecution pending an appeal, directing that the jury verdict be vacated against him and such other relief. Now, I assume there's some sort of emergency application that they will or have made in which they're going to ask the court to stop Friday, stop Friday from happening, the day, no sentencing.

I think they're going to reject that. I could be wrong. And we'll see some other briefing because now the Manhattan DA is going to quickly respond to this. By the time I'm done with this hot take, they're going to have responded, I'll come back with another updated hot take. So we may have full briefings, sort of. And then in the next day, somebody's going to have to make a decision or no decision. Sometimes the court makes no decision or makes a decision by not acting. And what happens is it just goes forward on Friday. Now, one of the reasons that we want Friday to go forward is not just because of the special delight we'll take in watching Donald Trump squirm. It's also because it is the conclusion

of the finality of the criminal justice system, the public justice system that we demand as participants in the public justice system. We're the public. We have a seat at the table. We want to know what happened. And he doesn't get his appeal, his real appeal, not this Article 78 lawsuit, until the final disposition. The final judgment is entered, including the sentencing. Then he can take his full appeal. He doesn't like all the evidence rulings that the judge made. He doesn't like the witnesses that got put on. He doesn't like Michael Cohen. Whatever, he can all whine about that

in a full blown appellate brief in front of the same court. But like this end run around with article 78 without full briefing, without the sentence being in place, I think they just do nothing. That's one. I'm sort of inclined if I were on the bench to just let's do nothing. Let Friday happen.

Now he's got a full appeal, Trump. And he's off and running on that. And if he doesn't like the results of that, he can take it up to the highest court in New York. If he doesn't like that, he can try an emergency application to the United States Supreme Court. I mean, you could tell by the way Mershon wrote his last major order, he thinks he may not be ever seeing Donald Trump again. There was a lot of sentencing-like vocabulary and sentence structure used by the judge, you know, sort of already chastising Donald Trump in advance just in case he doesn't get his turn. We'll see. So I think no ruling by the

Article 78 panel at the appellate court. If I'm wrong I'll come back and tell you I was wrong. They could rule, all right well let's just put a temporary stay on Friday, allow for full briefing and we'll get back to you guys in the next week or two. They could do that but look they have eyes too. They're human beings. They know there's a January 20th inauguration and this gets a lot harder once the guy is president. I think they're gonna try to act in this interstitial period, right? This remaining 12 days or so. I think they understand that that is the timeline here and they need to act like they have their hair on fire. We have our hair on fire here on the Minus Touch Network and on Legal AF. So follow me here,

come back to me here, we'll give you the updates. And over on Legal AF, the YouTube channel Legal AF MTN, now's a great time to come over and help us build that pro-democracy channel that I do in collaboration with the Midas Touch Network. PO-POK Live Tuesday nights, 8 p.m. right here on the Midas Touch Network. I take questions, I give answers, I don't take any prisoners. And I'm going to update you on everything that I know by the end of the day right there, PO-POK Live 8 p.m. Eastern Time. So until my next reporting, I'm Michael Popock.

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