Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump GETS EXPOSED with his CORRUPT Judge Cannon

Episode Date: June 23, 2024

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back for the weekend edition of the top-rated Legal AF podcast. On this episode, the anchors discuss and debate: (1) Judge Cannon’s 3 part hearing in the Mar a Lago criminal case against Trump, and whether she will dismiss the indictment and/or suppress major evidence against him; (2) the MAGA Supreme Court walking about Clarence Thomas’ ruling just 2 years ago that would give a gun back to a person convicted of domestic violence; (3) whether the DC Election interference case against Trump can ever be tried given the MAGA Supremes’ delaying tactics in issuing their “immunity” ruling; (4) whether Judge Merchan will lift the gag order against Trump given the increased death threats to all the civil servant participants in the criminal justice system; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Thanks to our sponsors: Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Beam: Get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to https://shopbeam.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF at checkout! Timeline: Go to https://timeline.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF to get 10% OFF your order. Prolon: Head to https://ProlonLife.com/LEGALAF to get 15% off their 5-day nutrition program. 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

This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear on Disney Plus. In season three, Carmy and his crew are aiming for the ultimate restaurant accolade. A Michelin star with Golden Globe and Emmy wins, the show starring Jeremy Allen White, I.O.A. Debris and Mattie Matheson is ready to heat up screens once again. All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27, only on Disney Plus. We learned this week that the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida, who's essentially Judge Cannon's boss, had went to Judge Cannon, along with another federal judge,

when the Trump Mar-a-Lago case was assigned to Judge Cannon to tell Judge Cannon she really shouldn't be taking the case that it would be a bad look for the federal judiciary and specifically the Southern District of Florida and that she needs to recuse herself, but Judge Cannon refused. The very fact that the chief judge of the Southern District of Florida made this request and Judge Cannon rejected it is unprecedented. And the very fact that something like this would even leak to the press is something unprecedented. It shows you just how unhappy and how embarrassed, how humiliated the Southern District of Florida judges are by Judge Eileen Cannon's behavior, and she continued to embarrass them this week. She held a bizarre hearing, and I think this is one of the reasons why it leaked the day

it did. She held a bizarre hearing to listen to Donald Trump's motion to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that the special counsel was unlawfully appointed. And the next week she's gonna be hearing oral argument that the appropriations, the money spent for the special counsel is also illegal and therefore the entire case should be dismissed. This goes against decades of precedent.

There shouldn't even be a motion on this, yet alone a hearing, yet alone a hearing where Judge Cannon invited Amiki, third parties who submitted amicus briefs to just show up and argue as if they are parties when they are not parties to the action. But she acted fairly normal in the hearing and she didn't seem inclined to grant the motion to dismiss. But it's just odd that she was holding this hearing in the first place and kind of wasting everybody's time.

So we'll get into that. And then, uh, last night, special counsel, Jack Smith filed his reply brief regarding the modification of Trump's, uh, terms of release, uh, to put a gag order on Donald Trump, criminal defendant, convicted felon, from further lying that he is actively being the target of assassination attempts by the FBI and the Department of Justice, which is patently false. Jack Smith uses very terse and powerful language in this reply saying, no court at all would allow a criminal defendant to engage in this behavior.

So we are asking for you to do what any other court would do in this situation. Jack Smith also mentioned another incident last week where an FBI agent had his life threatened as a result of Donald Trump's conduct. So a lot to unpack there. Then we'll unpack what went down at the Supreme Court this week, and also what didn't go down. The Supreme Court did not make any rulings

on the issue of Trump's claim that he can order SEAL Team Six to kill his political enemies and receive absolute immunity, nor did the Supreme Court rule on the obstruction of official proceeding challenges or claims that have been challenged, which are two of the charges against Donald Trump and charges that resulted in a lot of convictions against some of the most violent insurrectionists.

The Supreme Court did rule on a case called US versus Rahimi, which is a case involving regulations regarding domestic violence restraining orders and whether domestic abusers are required to give up their weapons or if they can continue to have their weapons. We will go over the ruling in that case. And then we should turn our attention to what was going on in the New York criminal proceedings against Donald Trump in Manhattan. There you have the highest court in New York,

which is called the Court of Appeals, rejects Donald Trump's appeal of the gag order and states that, get out of here. There's no substantial constitutional questions at all for us to even listen to this. It's dismissed, suesponte, without even briefing. This isn't an issue that even deserves our attention, is what New York's highest court said. And then you had the New York, uh, the Manhattan district attorney's office, they filed their opposition to Trump's request to lift the gag order. Trump's saying that he needs to lift the gag order because

of the debate and that the trial is no longer taking place. The Manhattan district attorney's office says we need to maintain, uh, we need to respect the integrity of these proceedings. The political aspects have nothing to do with a criminal case at all. And the briefing schedule that is currently at issue was never even objected to by Donald Trump in the first place. So if Trump is trying to claim that the judge and the district attorneys rigged the briefing schedule by scheduling a briefing on the issue of lifting the gag order so that it's heard after the debate, as the district attorney said,

that's none of our business to begin with, but Donald Trump didn't object to the current briefing schedule, which is the same briefing schedule for all motions. So Michael Popock, a lot to discuss on this week. It's still a pretty busy week, and we didn't get those Supreme Court decisions. We'll talk about just the impact of the fact that they haven't even ruled yet,

but let's get into it, huh? How are you? I'm doing great. I want to take a special shout out, two thank yous. One to the Patreon community. We just did our first quarterly Zoom, you and me, Q&A. We had sort of a last minute announcement. We had over 200 people that participated

and it was very heartwarming and very great touching for us and to see the community, all those happy, shiny faces in one place. And we opened it up to all membership levels just for that. So I really wanted to appreciate, I really appreciate people jumping on that relatively early in the morning. And then the outpouring of support and love and affection

for my wife and me about our upcoming child was, I also wanted to make a special note about that and just feeling the love from this amazing, Midas Touch and legal AF community. And then we got to do all that in sharp contrast to what's going on outside my window, which is a Supreme Court that's holding America hostage, day number 115, since they should have ruled,

since the oral argument on the immunity decision, which is the decision we're all waiting on, yeah, they keep rolling out drips and drabs and they're kind of staging, the Supreme Court is staging how they keep rolling out drips and drabs and they're kind of staging. The Supreme Court is staging how they're sending out their orders. Let's do all the ones that show bipartisanship, that show nine zero and seven two and a couple of six threes while we're all waiting around for the thing that should have happened back in December or January with that trial already in the books

against Donald Trump. Instead, they're still issuing rulings. They're important ones. We're going to talk about the gun control and their attempted mulligan do-over of Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court decision just two years ago in the Bruin decision. They're like, we might have made a mistake on how we've been directing or misdirecting the trial court level, to which Contangi Brown Jackson said, yeah, it's our fault. We need to kind of fix what Clarence Thomas wrought. And so we'll talk about all that. And the Cannon hearing, which you and I will go at length about during this particular podcast, and is not done, two more days next week. I mean,

anytime Cannon with her toolbox goes under the hood of this case is a white-knuckle moment for America. And we'll talk about what we've learned about that last hearing, about whether Jack Smith should be Jack Smith at all, whether there should be a special counsel or prosecutor, whether the whole prosecution should just go up in flames and smoke and be dismissed because, you know, despite 50-year-old precedent of the United States Supreme Court involving a former of the last criminal president named Richard Nixon, this hasn't gotten through the thickheadedness of Judge Cannon. And we see it time and time again in how she grills and presses the Department of Justice about things that has basically settled law and received wisdom in this area of constitutional practice and the appointment of a special

prosecutor, special counsel, independent counsel, whatever you may call it. And then we're going to see what happens when she goes back into this case in the next two weeks. In the meantime, other current judges that she works with, including her bosses, as you pointed out, judges from around the country are all pointing out, you haven't even set the trial yet. How is that possible? And what does that say about your true intent here, which is to benefit Donald Trump?

Just as the United States Supreme Court refusing to issue the decision until what looks to be the last day when they go wheels up on their private jets, paid for by Federalist and MAGA on their junkets overseas, they're not going to issue that immunity decision until it is virtually, it is not virtually, it is impossible for the DC election interference case in whatever shape or form to get off the ground and be tried before the November election. Michael Popock, you practice both in New York and Florida. You've practiced in state court and federal courts in Florida, in the Southern District of Florida as well. So you know the players in this story. You know who the chief judge is, Cecilia Altenaga. And this New York Times bombshell report, something that is very unprecedented, one,

that a story like this even leaks to begin with. Usually this is all done in secret and where you have two federal judges, more senior judges, counseling a junior judge, Judge Kennedy, new judge, and especially a new judge at the time they counseled her as well. That never leaks because it's usually only the judges who could be the source of a story like that,

and they don't usually tell other people. That's why it's so rare that it leaks. But the Times got the scoop that the chief judge, Cecilia Altenaga, who you've mentioned before, and you've said before this story, for those Legal AFers who have been listening for quite some time, you said, look, Ben, Legal AFers, I know that chief judge.

Yes, she was appointed by George W. Bush. This though is a no-nonsense law and order judge who is a great judge. She's a real mainstream conservative, not a MAGA, and she will not be happy with the way Judge Cannon is behaving. And sure enough, we now learned, and Popak, you called it, man,

that Judge Altenaga, Chief Judge Altenaga, along with another more senior to Judge Cannon, federal judge, they all work in the same. And I have an idea about who that is when it turns to me. I'm gonna turn it to you right now. They went to Cannon and said, you can't be on this case. You were appointed by Donald Trump, number one.

Number two, you mishandled the search warrant that was executed at Mar-a-Lago and embarrassed this district when the 11th circuit smacked you down twice in two scathing orders. This is a bad look for everyone. And three, you don't have in Fort Pierce sensitive compartmented information facilities to even hear classified document cases. You're going to force taxpayers to build a facility in Fort Pierce where we have judges who have done trials before, unlike you who has no trial experience, Judge Cannon. We have skiffs in Miami and we'll have law and order judges handle it.

Step aside. Judge Cannon said no. How strange, how rare is this, how unprecedented? Popak, you know these people involved. Tell judges handle it. Step aside, Judge Cannon said, no. How strange, how rare is this, how unprecedented. Popak, you know these people involved. Tell us about it. I do. I appreciate that. I tried to bring, just as you do from your practice, my own color, no pun intended with my colors today, including my glasses, my own color from having practice down there. I know Cecilia Altenaga very, very well because she started on the circuit court, the state level court where a lot of judges at the federal

Southern District of Florida level start, most of them in Miami, some of them in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, but most of them in Miami. She was appointed by Jeb Bush when he was the governor and elevated to the position from the civil court to the circuit court. And I practiced in front of her. She is the first female Cuban American woman to be a federal judge. Takes that with a tremendous amount of pride. Her appointment by George W. Bush tells you everything that you just summarized that you need to know about Cecilia Altenaga.

She is not a ideologue. She is not MAGA. She predates MAGA. She's 61 years old. She went to Yale Law School. She started her career as a, her father came here as a lawyer who couldn't practice from Cuba. And she takes her position very, very seriously.

And I said early on that there would be a phone call between Cecilia Altenaga and Judge Cannon, although she couldn't replace her. She couldn't remove her with some sage advice. I anticipated that knowing Cecilia Altenaga and it looks like that's true. On the case of the second judge, if I had to make a prediction, I'll do it here.

I think it's Judge Middlebrooks. Judge Middlebrooks is the second judge, if I had to make a prediction, I'll do it here. I think it's Judge Middlebrooks. Judge Middlebrooks is the senior judge in that same division. He sits in West Palm Beach. She sits 30 miles north in Fort Pierce. It could be another judge in Fort Lauderdale. There's a few there. There's a bunch in Miami. But if I had to, if I had a gun to my head, I would say Don Middlebrooks, who's also the judge people know, who's been involved with the Hillary Clinton case brought by Donald Trump,

the sanctions for over a million dollars brought against Donald Trump and Alina Jaba. But he is also a no nonce, yes, he was appointed by Clinton, but so what? He was a very well-respected trial lawyer for about 20 years doing what you and I do, commercial litigation, civil rights litigation in that area. I know the firm he was with. I had one of my first cases as a young lawyer when I

was second chairing a federal case in West Palm Beach with Don Middlebrooks. Always found him to be ever since just an astute, sober jurist, which is all that we've ever seen. I think because they rub elbows a little bit. She sits occasionally in West Palm Beach and it could have went to Dawn Middlebrooks, but there was a, I forget the reason that the wheel when it fell, fell on her and not on Dawn Middlebrooks. Now, what you're exactly right. This cadre of more senior seasoned litigators, trial lawyers, who I've said all had litigation experience, it would be really, really appropriate and do great honor to the proud tradition of the Southern District of Florida, unlike what's going on right now, which is making my heart hurt and my brain hurt in watching this judge who is so inexperienced and so,

it's a dangerous combination. It is this lack of knowledge and experience combined with the self-righteousness that she is doing the right thing and only she can make these decisions the way she's making them. She had no trial experience to speak of when she was an associate in a private law firm,

talking about Judge Cannon now. She had no real trial experience when she worked for the Department of Justice because she didn't even work in the trial division. She worked in the appeal division, meaning she sat in some room writing briefs and I doubt she argued them. And if she did, they were on very low level issues. She then took the bench effectively during COVID. She had about 10 total trial days under her belt total before she got assigned this case. And Altenaga said to her, you know, it's a bad look. You got, think of the optics, you got slapped back twice by our bosses at the 11th circuit. Before this case even led to an indictment, when you interfered inappropriately with the investigation, which you shouldn't have, not once, but twice.

It's a bad look, Elaine. Why don't you think about stepping down? Words to that effect. And then as you said, they don't even have the hardened facility that's necessary in Fort Pierce because it's this backwater division up in the upper regions of the Southern District,

about as far away from Miami and Key West as possible, which is the entire district. And so she forced, as you said, taxpayer dollars to be used out of her ego to build a facility that's like, it's like a disposable facility. It'll never be used again. There's never going to be a classified information procedures act, CIPA case involving a former president or anything like it in Fort Pierce, Florida. They might as well just make it the Alien Cannon Memorial Museum,

because when she either leaves the bench and goes and takes a lucrative MAGA private practice position for millions of dollars, or it somehow gets elevated by a shutter to think President Donald Trump, which is what she seems to be trying out for, and then you had the hearing. And I'll just do my part of the hearing, turn it back to you. She has the hearing where for me, there's a lot of things going on between what happened on Thursday, Friday or Friday

and what's gonna happen Monday, Tuesday that scares the living crap out of me. As I said, whenever she goes under the hood of this case, I get really, really upset and crazed. So I'm just trying to hold it together here for legal AF. Next week, she's gonna decide whether suppression of the evidence related to Mar-a-Lago and the execution of the search warrant,

which is the very heart of the case. The case is about the evidence that was seized during the search warrant. If she suppresses it, the case is over. Yes, it's an appellate grounds and it's a way to get to the 11th circuit. I'll leave that to you. But that scares the crap out of me. The fact that she would try to reconsider the well thought out decision by the then chief judge of the DC Circuit Court, Beryl Howell,

who after a secret hearing, yes, they're secret hearings because they involve grand jury proceedings, she determined that Donald Trump and his then main lawyer for Mar-a-Lago, Evan Corcoran, committed a crime or a fraud, stripping Donald Trump of the attorney-client privilege and making him testify, Evan Corcoran, damningly against his client and turn over 50 pages of single-spaced notes and turn over video memo recordings that he made musings about Donald Trump, in which he basically told him that he made musings about Donald Trump in which he basically told him that he should break the law and that Donald Trump, which demonstrates the willful intent that is the corrupt intent that's required to turn this into a crime

without Evan Corcoran's testimony, without the documents at Mar-a-Lago, this case can't be won by the special counsel. And in addition to that, we've got an alien canon that either fell asleep at law school or refuses to acknowledge well-settled super precedent going back to Nixon from 1974 that says whether you call it the special prosecutor appointed by the Department of Justice and acting Attorney General Robert Bork back in 1974 of Leon Jaworski to go after a Nixon and everybody around him which led to the indictments and convictions and jail time for people like the Attorney General under Richard Nixon whether you call it the special prosecutor who was not appointed or confirmed by Congress but was implicitly and tacitly approved by the Supreme Court who forced Richard Nixon over his executive privilege assertion, so unfamiliar, to turn over his recorded tapes to the special prosecutor.

If the special prosecutor was invalid, then how would the Supreme Court order that there be compliance with his subpoena? That's 1974. It's almost to a day. It's July 7th of 1974 or so when that decision came out. So you got that. And then you had the independent council position, which was created by Congress, yes, in the 1980s. And there was an exact checklist of things about the creation of an office called the Independent Council. And that's Ken Starr and a couple of others

that happened during that particular time. And then the Congress, both Republican and Democrat, said, no, we don't like the Independent Council. Let's let the Department of Justice do their own thing. And they didn't reauthorize the Independent counsel. So the Department of Justice went back to what it did during Nixon and created a formalized special counsel. It's just like the special prosecutor, but it's just they gave it another name and they outlined it in their code of federal regulation of exactly how they wanted the person to be appointed, and the oversight that the attorney

general would have over that position, and the checks and balance of the attorney general having to report ultimately to the ranking committee members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committee about the report and the recommendation whether to seek an indictment and continue to prosecute the case, ultimately in the hands of the attorney general. But to Alien Cannon, who took the bait again, led by Emil Beauvais, fresh off his 34-count conviction of his client in New York, she said, it's very interesting. Tell me more about the... Let me grill the Department of Justice lawyer, James Pierce. Let me ask him more

questions. Tell me exactly the level of oversight and supervision by Merrick Garland. Go read the independent, the special counsel provision. That will tell you the level of supervision. And it is appropriate as she's trying to decide whether there's been an improper delegation by the Department of Justice Attorney General for the last 35 years, every federal judge that has faced this issue and had this issue raised for them quickly dispatched it and said, this is Boulder dash. And this is, let's move on to the substance of the case, not alien cannon. So interested that she spent hours, five hours, including having, as you said, the amicus briefers, two of which are pro-Trumpers, get up and do argument. Look, we're in an adversarial process. We rely on the lawyers for the case, the party's lawyers,

Trump's lawyers, and the Department of Justice lawyers. We don't have outsider strangers drive by who just happen to check the board and see that there's a trial going on or a hearing going on and saying, can we come in and make an argument? I'd love to do that. I'd just be, I would just ride the circuit making arguments in cases I have no business

or standing in participating in. This is the world of Aileen Cannon. Now you understand why some combination of Chief Judge Altenaga and maybe Don Middlebrooks told her, get the F out of this case, and she refused. And I wanna hear your opinion about why she refused to get out of the case when she had the opportunity without us knowing about it to recuse herself.

Because she's a MAGA judge and she's taken the gamble that she wants to be a Supreme Court justice. She knows she doesn't have the skills, qualifications, and like lots of MAGA, she can't do it on the merit because she doesn't have the intellectual capacity, but she does have the capacity for corruption and the desire and ability to utilize anything it takes to try to get that power. And that's what we see. I want to talk a little bit more about hearing. I want to talk about what special counsel Jack Smith filed, and I want to turn to what

went down in the Supreme Court. And then we'll talk about what went down in New York's highest court. Let's take our first quick break of the show. These days, a lot of people are learning about all the benefits of fasting, like weight loss, mental and physical performance, and gut health, but worry about the whole not eating part. Well, that's exactly why Prolon was created.

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Michael Popok, some great ad reads right there. Thanks to our sponsors. In the description below, you get those discount codes and we use all of the products that we have as our sponsors here. Jordy spends a great deal of time vetting it. And so we're really grateful for them. That's one of the ways we build our independent media platform and grow the show. Another way is through Patreon, patreon.com slash legal AF. And Michael Popok, as you mentioned in the beginning of the show, we just held our first

partner and associate meeting on Zoom. We had over 200 people who were in that Zoom. We got to meet everybody. We answered pretty much every single question, some tough questions, some fun questions. We had a great time meeting you. I know there's been so many people who wanted to meet Michael Popok directly and they got a chance at the Zoom meeting,

patreon.com slash legal AF. Briefly, Michael Popok, I'll mention that hearing that took place in Judge Cannon's courtroom that you discussed, Donald Trump's motion to dismiss the indictment on the unlawful appointment, unlawful appropriations. You laid out essentially what the challenge is that has been rejected over several decades,

trying to say a special counsel or an independent counsel is actually a superior officer. As a result, they need Senate confirmation. With no Senate confirmation, they are acting in an ultra virus, illegal manner, and anything they touch is unlawful. They are technically supervised. They are inferior officers.

They are supervised by the attorney general. They have to comply with the attorney general guidelines. The supervision's not micro management. But one of the things that Judge Cannon really seemed to want to do and why she was holding this hearing was to try to fuel and funnel some of these right-wing conspiracies about the level of supervision of Merrick Garland to an inferior officer, the special counsel, because the argument would go, if the special counsel has nothing to do with the attorney general, they're functioning as a superior officer and as a result, they're requires an appointment process since there's otherwise

no accountability. To me, this was a backdoor way to try to funnel some of those right-wing conspiracies. Judge Cannon didn't realize what the Department of Justice was just going to say, which is just, your honor, this is what the precedent is. There's no micromanagement. There's no day-to-day supervision or even month-to-month supervision. But Jackson Smith has to comply like all special councils do in all of these proceedings, whether it's a Republican appointed one

or one in a democratic administration, they comply with the DOJ guidelines. And that's all we're gonna tell you. We don't have to tell you anything more than that. And that kind of diffused it. I don't think that Judge Cannon is going to dismiss on the basis of unlawful appointment or unlawful apportionment that didn't seem to be

where the hearing was going, but the fact that she was doing this show hearing and entertaining, really a totally frivolous argument, just shows you there's an undermining of the proceedings just by holding that hearing. One of the other issues that's going to be discussed next week is special counsel Jack Smith's request to modify the conditions of Donald Trump's release, in essence, imposing a gag order preventing Donald Trump from continuing to lie where Donald Trump lies about, not lying in general, but lying that the FBI and DOJ are actively trying to hunt him down and

assassinate him based on the general use of force policy that exists to anybody who is subject to a search warrant. Donald Trump says, look, it says use of lethal force. They're trying to kill me. They're coming after me. They want me dead. It's the same use of force policy that anybody, whether you're president Biden,

whether your house is being searched, that's just the standard use of force policy that exists to every single search warrant. And special counsel Jack Smith putting a filing, and this to me was really a warning shot to Judge Cannon. In this specific motion too, it's Judge Cannon, look, Donald Trump, if somebody gets killed because of his behavior, he'll throw that person under the bus.

He'll throw under the bus the murderer and say, oh, I had nothing to do with it after riling the person up and bragging about how he riles up his violent supporters. But Judge Cannon, neither you nor we have the luxury of behaving in that matter. We have an obligation to protect law enforcement, and that's what we are going to do. Under no situation are we going to be okay with our law enforcement getting killed because you're not going to make the right decision. Every court would impose a limited gag order relating to this specific type of conduct. Trump could go on whine about Biden, whine about the special counsel, whine till his heart delights, go for it.

But you can't threaten law enforcement or try to get law enforcement killed. So that was filed on Friday night. There will be a hearing on that in the afternoon on Monday. And that's one of the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith will use if she rules the wrong way to get her removed. I think the chief judge

of the Southern District of Florida is looking, hoping Judge Cannon makes the wrong way to get her removed. I think the chief judge of the Southern district of Florida is looking, hoping Judge Cannon makes the wrong decision so she can be removed. I think the 11th Circuit is hoping she makes the wrong decision. I think knowing Judge Cannon she'll probably just delay, delay, delay. At which point I think at some point

Jack Smith's gonna say, all right, if you're not gonna rule, we're going to, we're gonna take a writ with the 11th Circuit because just last week, another FBI agent had his life threatened. In the motion that Jack Smith filed, he went in very specific detail about the type of threats that the FBI gets. Oh, if Trump takes over, you're going to be destroyed. If Trump doesn't win, I'm going to hunt you down. Because when you tell Trump's violent supporters that the FBI and DOJ are trying to kill Trump,

which is false, they're going to do violent things on Trump's behalf. Also, if you go look at some of the other hot takes that I do, I show you the types of emails that Donald Trump sends to his supporters. They're filled with violent rhetoric. We need to show force. Join me in this battle. We have to attack them. And he tries to be like, attack them with the force of our energy. But then in bold, it'll be like, we need to attack them. The battle begins right now. They've declared war. Join my war council. It's time we get after them." And he knows what he's doing right there. And he's doing that very, very intentionally. So that's everything, Judge Eileen Cannon, Michael Popak, ready to talk about the United States Supreme Court rulings. A lot to

talk about both in terms of what they ruled on and what they didn't rule on. I guess let's just start with what they did rule on. An eight-to-one decision. United States versus Rahimi, the US Supreme Court allows for there to be federal gun restrictions for domestic violence suspects and was an eight to one decision. So in theory you can go, wow, you know, the Supreme, eight Supreme Court justices agreed on something, but I think there's a little more than meets the eye here because remember the prior week, the Supreme Court had ruled not based on Second Amendment jurisprudence, but based on trying to destroy the ability of agencies to implement common sense regulations that bump stocks do not constitute machine

guns and allowed bump stocks do not constitute machine guns and allowed bump stocks to be freely sold. So that was the decision two weeks ago. So then Popak, as you said, they will issue a decision like that that they know will rile up the American public, rightfully so, and piss everybody off. And then they take a case like this where it's like, it's really even a question that people are saying those who are under domestic violence restraining orders should have access to guns.

And they'll be like, no, no, no, you can't have guns. We agree with that at least. And then they want to like take credit for like the most basic and obvious of things. Surely domestic abuser shouldn't have guns, although the one, the dissent Justice Clarence Thomas said, hey everybody, remember that decision? The New York Rifle Association versus Bruin in 2022, that all of you right-wing justices agreed with me. If we really meant what we said in Bruin

and we're going to apply a historical tradition test, then if we go back in history, women were always abused by their husbands all the time, and there was no issues about domestic abuse in the 1700s. So therefore, how could we even acknowledge that domestic, this is what Justice Clarence Thomas is arguing, right, Pope Buck? It's horrific. How could we even argue that domestic abuse is even a crime for purposes of Second Amendment jurisprudence? Domestic abusers could have

guns if they wanted to back in the 1700s. Surely they could have guns now, and that's what we ruled in Bruin, everybody. That's the precedent right now. And the other eight justices were like, nah, we're not going that far, Justice Thomas. But we'll apply your historical tradition test and brew in however we want in future cases. Just on this one, we're not going to go that far as it relates to domestic abuse. Popeye, what'd you think about that ruling, huh? Wow.

Yeah. This is what the ruling reflects. And the harbinger for the ruling, what I call the canary in the coal mine, is that a week before, obviously knowing that there was these opinions circulating like the Clarence Thomas out on an island of his own where he's left defending Rahimi, who in the main decision written in pen by Chief Justice Roberts, he spent a considerable amount of time and spilt a considerable amount of ink giving how depraved Rahimi was in abusing his girlfriend, physically abusing his girlfriend and going on a shooting spree while he was the subject of a federal injunction against him having a

domestic violence and against him having a weapon. And what I said, and so you've got this mismatch of Clarence Thomas, the lone justice, who's defending the right of a guy who punched and beat up his girlfriend in a parking lot. This is from the decision, who then went on a, who attacked her in her home, despite the injunction, the restraining order, who then went on a shooting spree where everywhere he went, a fast food restaurant, a road rage incident, he pulled out his gun like he was in some sort of weird wild wild west moment and started shooting it off into the air or at people. And so when you see,

and this is like the secret decoder ring for the Supreme Court, when you see a description of the actual facts in a case, as opposed to what the MAGA Supreme Court usually does, which is says, let's not get bogged down with the facts. When you hear, we don't want to get bogged down with the facts, that means they're about to make, in a judicial activist moment

new law, which they're not supposed to do without reference to the record below. When you hear them on the other end recite the facts, that's because they're having trouble with somebody on the court like Clarence Thomas and they want to as they're circulating their drafts, they want to say, really? You're going to defend this guy? The guy who's the drug dealer, gun shooting, gun spree, woman abuser, that's who you're defending? And so when you see that, I was not surprised to see John Roberts speak at length about the actual facts in the case, because they don't really matter to what they're about to decide. It was done for a reason. And the harbinger, as I started to say, of this decision is Amy Coney Barrett in an unrelated

decision two weeks ago that you and I talked about and I did a hot take about, which is the copyright decision about whether a lawyer, a person could get the copyright on Trump is small after his debate with Marco Rubio back in 2016 and could he actually register that with the copyright office? And Clarence Thomas and the others once again said, we go to a history and tradition test. We go back and try to find an exact identical duplicate law that was on the books during the First Amendment period to decide whether we're going to allow this or not. And even Amy Coney Barrett called that out and said, enough with the history and tradition test. It has its limits. First of all, why are we,

to paraphrase Justice Roberts in the most recent decision, why are we trapping the law in amber? Why are we making it where we have to go find an exact, identical, historical twin in order for us to provide the lower courts with a test? We're supposed to give them a test where the Supreme Court, this is Amy Coney Barrett, how are they supposed to do their job? And what are you going to do when you hit the point when there is no history or tradition around a certain regulation. How do we regulate nuclear power plants? What would the founding fathers have done?

Well, they didn't have nuclear power. I mean, that's where you're at. She said, just do a judge made test. So that that's what we're supposed to do. Not history and tradition. So when you see on the special Dakota ring edition of Legal AF, when you hear the words history and tradition by Gorsuch, by Kavanaugh, by Alito, by Thomas,

now what they want to do is remove the regulation and the restriction, and they're going to do it by referencing the vast historical tradition of our country. Even John Roberts and the other seven on the Supreme Court said that Clarence Thomas, as a Second Amendment absolutist, is off chain, is as an outlier. We can't even go that far. And what they did is, and I took them a task on a hot take on this, John Roberts elided over, he conflated in order to act like it wasn't us that was at fault with our Bruin decision two years ago, even though Clarence Thomas wrote it. It was the way the trial courts are interpreting it. Now, Katanji Brown Jackson and her concurrence said, no, it's our fault. We didn't give them the proper

guidance. We said, go and find an historical twin. If you can't find an identical law about gun control in 1791 or the 1800s, despite the fact that contextually, I mean, looking for a law unmoored from the historical context of how women were treated in the 1790s and 1800s, or even now, how black Americans, now Americans, were treated, is unhinged, to put it mildly. A woman, let's just take domestic violence and the Rahimi case, there was no crimes against domestic violence during that old timey period because women were considered owned as chattel by their husbands. They didn't have the right to vote.

Some people noted it in the back. In honor of my upcoming daughter, I found this amazing thing from the suffrage movement. Women bring all voters into the world. Let women vote. We had to have signs and posters like this in this country because the women didn't have the right to vote. So you can't go, well, you could have freely abused your wife back then, so you're allowed to have a gun now. That is where Clarence Thomas has gone. It's not a slippery slope. It's where he's gone. And so Chief Justice Roberts said, well, we need to sort of walk this back a bit. You don't have to look for an exact twin in the law. You just have to find a law that is part of our history and tradition that undergirds

the law. And since there's a history and tradition about taking guns away from bad people who will harm people in public, we'll find that this law about domestic violence should disarm people like Rahimi temporarily. I don't want to oversell Rahimi. It is clear that under Rahimi, that when Rahimi rehabilitates himself and is no longer a threat to society, as a judge by a judge, he's going to get his weapons back under the Second Amendment. As I said recently, the amendments that came from the original Constitution after the framers of the Constitution said, hmm, now that we got the living breathing document of the Constitution said, hmm, now that we got the living breathing document of the Constitution, we better go back and

make some changes and make some additions. First Ten Amendments, the Bill of Rights, they are not ordinal. They are not ranked. It is not like the First Amendment is above the Second Amendment, nor is the Second Amendment above all other amendments, including the First Amendment. They are Ten Amendments. But the way that the Supreme Court in MAGA has supercharged and turbocharged the Second Amendment and made it so robust, it knocks over all the other amendments. They're so focused and fixated on the right to bear arms, now an individual personal right outside the home after the Bruin decision. Now they see what it wrought at the trial level, right? Now they see the trial judges struggling. They're making trial judges historians to have to

go back with their law clerks to go back and do a search as opposed to just giving them a standard test. So that's why it looked like eight to one, but you had about five concurrences that were written, one dissent that was written, and everybody joining in on the majority opinion except for Clarence Thomas and the left wing or the sensible wing of the Supreme Court, Sotomayor, led by Sotomayor, applauding at least the rollback of Clarence Thomas' ridiculous absolutist Second Amendment position that put him in a position, Ben, to defend a violent domestic abuser who went on a crime spree and is a drug dealer. Well, you know how we always say everything with this MAGA Republican party is projection

or confession. It's really the same with the Federalist Society movement. They went around for decades calling the liberal judges activists and that they're coming up with law as it goes when in fact the so-called liberal judges were actually applying the law and applying the precedent and also in a common sense way recognizing the issues that exist in the current modern world that we inhabit today. But what the Federalist Society did is they would create these labels to make it seem like they were smart and that they were intellectuals, but in fact, they're really sociopaths who just try to come up with a framework. So it's heads, I win, tails, you lose, no matter what the outcome is.

Their state's rights until they want and are okay with a federal abortion ban, they are strict textualist or strict constructionist until you read what the Second Amendment actually says and it says, a well-regulated militia. It uses the word regulation and it talks about a militia. A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

So then they go, oh, I guess we can't actually be strict textualists there because if we read the text, it's the only amendment that actually uses the word regulation. And in our old point is that there shouldn't be regulation. So aha Let's come up with another test and call it the history and traditions Test and whose history and traditions the same people who say make America great again

Whatever that means to you we're going to find our own version of history that suits us and We're going to come up with an outcome based on how we read history not even what really happened in history because if you go back to there weren't AR-15s I mean there weren't guns and machine guns or anything close to what guns look like today so if you were really going to do a history and traditions test anything but like muskets right or whatever should be all banned to begin with,

but no, we're gonna do our history and tradition test and we're going to apply that. But that to me was one of the biggest revelations because when I'm in law school, when you're in law school, they teach you doctrines about being a strict textualist and a strict constructionist and states rights and the words conservatism and precedent and super precedent.

But then you learn as you evolve from law student to law practitioner to kind of this observer of the hustle. And you go, wait a minute, y'all just made all of this stuff up in order to justify the outcomes that you wanted. You're not textualists, you're not even true history and tradition, you're not states rights, you're not even conservative unless you want to conserve the monarchy and I think we see

that on full display here. You certainly don't want to conserve our democracy and how do we know what you don't want to conserve our democracy? Because you haven't even ruled on the absolute immunity decision. You haven't ruled on it. You have not ruled on a critical decision. So no matter what, what they rule, they've already granted a form of de facto immunity to Donald Trump from being held accountable for leading an insurrection against our country by not taking the case on an expedited basis when Jack Smith requested it in December.

Then when Donald Trump requested a stay later in February, they convert that into certiorari and then accept it for oral arguments and then delay the thing where here we are June 22nd and there's no ruling. They've already given him a de facto immunity. They've already given him the power that no one has in this country. They've given him the power of Kings because they've blocked a trial arbitrarily, capriciously, recklessly, maliciously. We'll talk about that in more.

Let's take our last quick break of this way before we do it, talk about that and more, let's take our last quick break. Wait, before we do it, patreon.com slash legal AF. Patreon.com slash legal AF. I wanna plug that before the quick ad break, just to remind everybody that we had a Zoom meeting already with partners and associates of our Patreon. We love posting the lectures. I did a full Supreme Court lecture

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Michael, share with us if you can, not just we talked about what the Supreme Court ruled on, not just we talked about what the Supreme Court ruled on, the fact that they have not ruled on the absolute immunity decision, the fact that they have not ruled on the obstruction of official proceeding, that they are waiting so late in the term. Tell us about the import of that. Yeah, I'm gonna do that.

I wanted to make one comment for our legal AFers. This whole originalist textualist thing that you talked about is really, as you said, a sham. Even the United States Supreme Court, its role in our society, its function, and its interpretive function of finding, at least for constitutional law, whether there is a constitutional violation or not,

is not found in the literal text of the US Constitution. It's nowhere. We can spend time, we can throw up the Constitution that talks about the Supreme Court and it's nowhere to be found. Why? Because it's an interpretive result of John Marshall, the Chief Justice in the 1800s, in a case called Marbury versus Madison. If it wasn't for Marbury versus Madison and John Marshall, if you go to the Supreme Court, like I did with my wife a couple months ago, there's a huge stash of two of them,

but one giant one of John Marshall for good reason. There would not be a United States Supreme Court that's all from interpretation, not from the original text. It's irony that of course is always lost on MAGA. In terms of the timing issue, Judge Chutkin, sometimes when I go to a movie and they do all the previews, I forget what movie I'm about to watch and we forget about Judge Chutkin. She has been patiently waiting with a pin in her case for all this time. When I said it's 114 days, 115 days since oral argument, it's even further back, almost three months further back from when

she put a pin in the case while the immunity issue was being fully litigated at the DC Court of Appeals level, three-judge panel. Then, and just to remind everybody, the special counsel tried to short circuit and go right to the United States Supreme Court and demand an immediate appeal issue so that they would make the decision in the first instance back in November and December, not the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. They said, no, no, we want a record. We like when records go fully up on appeal from the lower court. Let's go through, jump through all those hoops. So that takes a minute. And then you and I sat around tapping our foot, waiting for a month to go by, which we thought was sort of long, but in retrospect, we shouldn't have faulted the DC Circuit Court for making their ruling. Of course, there was no immunity for crimes like

this, personal crimes that benefited Donald Trump to try to cling to power. Then every time that Supreme Court had an opportunity led by MAGA to benefit Donald Trump, they did. Let's do oral argument, but let's do it on the very last day of the calendar. Literally the last oral argument we're going to hear. All right, that was end of April. And now, should we issue the order, the decision at the beginning when we start issuing orders and decisions, or should we wait until the last day in July, apparently, or maybe next

week, although I doubt it, right before we go up on our plate. Let's do it then. We'll do it the last day. And why this impacts, of course, Judge Chutkin, is she has already said that whenever I get the case back, and I want to talk about what kind of case she gets back, assuming she can just go right back to trial on the indictment, and I'm not sure that's a foregone conclusion. She has said, I'm gonna add 89 days. I'm gonna add 90 days for prep, because that's where we were when the case was put on ICE

back when the immunity appeal was taken. So plus nine, let's just do plus 90. She gets to, let's say she gets the case middle of July. She calls everybody in. She says, we're going back to trial. This is the direction I've been given by the mandate of the Supreme Court, and this is how I'm going to do it. Assuming it's that easy. Then if you add three months, middle of July, July, August, September, October, talk about an October surprise. The October surprise is going to be, how can she possibly get this case

up and running a month before the people, three weeks before the people vote, not happening. And that is what, as you said, they gave Donald Trump immunity and an immunity and holding America hostage so that they don't, the American electorate doesn't have what they need to make a fair decision about whether they're voting for a former president who's a one-time felon or a two-time felon for two different things, including presidential election interference, which is important to our democracy, but not to this United States Supreme Court. So they're waiting till the very end, and I'm not even sure that at the very end, it's a decision. They could, I know this is going to freak people out, they could ask for re-argument. The Supreme Court could say, you know what, there's an issue that wasn't really

fully briefed. Let's have some mini-re-briefing and a new argument that will hold maybe over the summer. I mean, they've held arguments over the summer before. The special counsel, special prosecutor Leon Jaworski thing happened in July after the term had ended. So they can get all back together again when it's important. So they can get all back together again when it's important. So they could end. And what does that do? Another day, another delay, another disconnect with justice. And so that's what we're watching. And then what they've done is, as we said earlier, is they sort of staged and sequenced how they're dribbling and drabbing and spoon feeding us their decisions. Let's front load all the ones where it looks like we're getting along.

Six to three, seven to two, a couple in there that are, well the six to threes aren't. The seven to twos and the eight to ones and the nine zeros, those are the ones they're front loading with a couple smattered in there. And we'll give them abortion, medicated abortion, and we'll take away domestic violence abusers' gun rights and things that people can get, try to rebuild the integrity and the respect for the Supreme Court until they drop simultaneously, probably, the decision about whether

all the Jan 6th insurrectionists, including Donald Trump, can be tried for and indicted for obstruction of an official proceeding. Donald Trump having a special extra that probably keeps those claims in front of him because of the fake elector certificates and this decision about immunity. And then lastly, even if there's no re-argument, they actually issue a decision, which is the next wave is going to come on July 28th, June 28th. And to answer the question in the chat, who sets the time and how they

run their cases, their dockets, their calendars, and their opinion dropping? The Supreme Court and the majority of the Supreme Court. There's no rule, there's no regulation, there's no Judiciary Act of 1787. nothing controls them. And if they want to do re-argument, they're going to do re-argument if they have the votes. So if they issue their order and they send it back to Judge Chutkin, I'll leave it on this. And the direction to Judge Chutkin is use our decision and figure out which of the immunity, sorry, which of the indictment issues fall into the personal benefit category and which is official conduct category and do that in an evidentiary hearing, add another 30, 50,

60 days onto this and we're well beyond it. And if Donald Trump, if the people of this country want to restore not just a president who commits criminal acts while he's in office, but a criminal president back into office. He's going to dismiss all the federal. He's going to order his new Department of Justice to dismiss all the cases against him. He's going to give immunity to wherever he can, and he'll deal with the state court proceedings as needed. So we have to see what the directions are even back to Judge Chutkin. If she has to hold another hearing, another briefing, it's done, it's over, it's basically over now. If she has to, if she can do something else,

if she on her own can just say, I'm gonna take a razor here and I'm gonna split the indictment in this way, or I'm gonna let the, with the jury instructions, let the jury handle it, it depends on what the opinion is going to say that you and I are frothing at the mouth in order to read and bring to our audience.

And that one, Ben, if we can, if there's gonna be a reading of the sense, and there will be, depending upon what decision will be, we should try to get a live stream on that and you and I and the other contributors get on there and talk about it. Well, let me just show you what the Supreme Court could have done and should have done because the highest court in New York, which is the basically

the state court equivalent of a Supreme Court, New York's a little confusing. Their trial court is called the Supreme Court. Their highest court, which in other states would be called the Supreme Court, New York loves to just be a little tricky with law students and practitioners. They call it the Court of Appeals. So New York's highest court though, when Donald Trump rushed to them with a request about the gag order that was imposed in the Manhattan criminal case, here is what they wrote. They said, there's no substantial constitutional questions at all, and Sue Esponti on their own initiative, they just rejected it. They dismissed the appeal

without even briefing because they're like, what is this? What are you talking about? And that's how the United States Supreme Court should have dealt with Donald Trump's claim that you can order SEAL Team 6 to kill your political opponent. Pull that up one more time. Imagine if the United States Supreme Court, not the highest court in New York, when Donald Trump said, I can have SEAL Team 6 kill my political opponents, wouldn't a rational United States Supreme Court say something like this? Appeal dismissed by the court, sui sponte, upon the grounds that no substantial constitutional question is directly involved.

That's all the United States Supreme Court would have had to do, and then Donald Trump's case would have gone to trial. Months ago, we would have had that trial, and just like in New York, he would have been convicted, because a jury of his peers, when evidence is presented in our judicial system, an adversarial system, a jury would see it and they would go, wow, that's someone who's very, very guilty. But the United States Supreme Court's like, huh, huh,

so maybe, just maybe, a president could order SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent. If it is an official act, but if it is unofficial, perhaps the district court judge needs to make very specific rulings on a one-by-one basis about each specific act. There are some interesting questions. There is no. You want to talk about a history and tradition test, Clarence Thomas? You want to talk about a history and tradition test?

How about the history and tradition of the United States of America was a rejection of the monarchy? There was a doctrine of absolute immunity. It was called kings. It was called monarchs, authoritarians, people who are literally above the law and can do whatever they want. Our system, we the people, created a system where it's we the people. Our system is a rejection of that. It is the most basic historical tradition analysis that you could ever give, that there should not

be absolute immunity. Just me even saying the idea that a president can order SEAL Team 6 or the military to kill political opponents. What are you saying? President Joe Biden could order the Secret Service to go and just kill political enemies and then go absolute immunity? Can't do anything about it. That that is being entertained

as something that can be done because Donald Trump is asking for it. Like, what are you talking about? This is the United States Supreme Court that said that President Biden did not have the discretion to forgive student loan debt the way he wanted to. So you don't have the discretion to forgive student loan debt the way he wanted to.

So you don't have the discretion to forgive student loan debt. You do have the discretion to murder whoever you want to murder under the doctrine of absolute immunity. What in the world are you talking about? And that though is why Michael Popak, I think the show is so important

because we have to make these concepts accessible, understandable. We have to unpackage the way these right-wing Supreme Court justices, the Federalist Society, try to make this inaccessible to the public so that they can overcomplicate these issues. These are not complicated issues. These are, these are fairly basic constitutional questions that are being over complicated in order to try to undermine our constitution and our democracy. And I'll just, I'll conclude with this.

What the Manhattan district attorney's office also said in one of their filings is that look, keep this gag order in place on Donald Trump. He's a threat. He's out there threatening people. He's threatening. He'll continue to threaten jurors. He'll threaten the family members of this staff. Look, the witnesses are no longer testifying.

So Judge Mershon, if you want to remove the gag order as it relates to trial witnesses, since they don't have to testify, I get that, but he can't be threatening jurors. He can't be threatening family members. That's not the United States of America. Like what in the world are we talking about here? So that's what the district attorney's office said.

And one of the things they pointed out too, is they're like, okay, so in Trump's motion, they are whining that the briefing schedule, which has briefing done through even past when the debate's going to be taking place, that that's unfair. And the district attorney's office is like, just stop whining. If you didn't like the briefing schedule, then go to the judge and ask for an expedited briefing schedule. You didn't ask for an expedited briefing schedule, but now you whine about the briefing schedule, so you can complain and say, oh, this is so unfair, but you had the opportunity to make the request to expedite it. You didn't because you want to whine. And that piece of it, when they want to tear down and make a mockery of our judicial system,

that's the part where I'm good with an adversarial system. You've heard me say before, I'm fine with criminal defense lawyers representing the worst of the worst people accused of horrible things. That's part of our system. Even criminal defense lawyers who want to represent Donald Trump. But the moment you try to undermine the very system to create something where people can have SEAL Team Six kill opponents, not good with that. I'll give you the final word on the show.

Yeah. Now, listen, you've got Donald Trump and his lawyers who just use a fire hose to try to pressure test our entire, all the things that gird and are the guard rails around our criminal justice system, just as he tried to do with the system around our election process. We didn't talk about it today. We'll pick it up during the midweek. But you know, Donald Trump just filed a motion to disqualify Judge Angoran, the judge who sat through 12 weeks of trial as the trier of fact and the bench trial to determine that Donald Trump committed fraud along with everybody related to him and his organization for the last 10 years, persistent

fraud as that term is used in New York to try to undermine the $465 million civil fraud judgment that is ultimately up on appeal because some person not related to the case went up and tried to kibitz with the judge after a hearing, a lawyer in New York who's not a party to the case, who's not a participant in the case, who's not a lawyer or party to the case, just a guy who went up to and did a drive-by, whether on purpose to try to get Judge Angoran disqualified or otherwise. And Judge Angoran sat and like listened to him for a few minutes and then went on and wrote his decision about not incorporating anything that he learned from this guy, this sort of crackpot. And they said, aha! Back in May, as reported in May, there was a meeting

between Judge N'Goran and this other person, and that was ex parte, which shows a purposeful lack of understanding what the term ex parte communication means in our legal system. That's when a party or the party's counsel has a conversation outside the presence of the other party or counsel with the judge. The judge has to both stop it from happening and if he can't, he has to disclose it immediately that that happened and then determine whether he can continue the case or otherwise. That's not what happened here. This is a stranger to the case. But all they want to do, just as they try to do with Fonny

Willis in Georgia, is try to disqualify prosecutors, disqualify judges so that Donald Trump won't be held accountable for his own actions. We'll talk about that another day. But here, the Manhattan DA is right on and Mershon is going to have to make a decision. I thought before the debate, but based on what you've just said on the timing of the briefing schedule, which was adopted basically and conceded by Trump's lawyers who don't know what they're doing in the courtroom. The only lawyer in state court, criminal court for Donald Trump that knows what they're doing

is Susan Necklis, and she has receded into the woodwork and doesn't want to really be associated with the case any longer. So she's leaving it to Bovet and Blanche, who are not state prosecutors. Our colleague Karen Freeman-Iknifilo rightly talks about this food chain in our law practice, where state court practitioners and federal practitioners don't see eye to eye. They don't really practice. They're divided by two different court systems. What we're watching is they don't know what they're doing. Just like Alina Habba, who is a dabbler in New York practice. She's really a New Jersey parking lot lawyer, parking garage lawyer,

looking up. They screw it up all the time. Procedurally, they just don't know their way around the procedural law, the criminal procedural law in New York or what you're supposed to do. So, if Marshawn is going to keep that gag order in place up and through the time until there's an appeal because Donald Trump is a criminal, now convicted felon within the criminal justice system for New York and still has to be regulated and administered by the judge and only the judge. And so he's not gonna say, well, it's over now

and you can do whatever you want. You can say whatever you want. No, if anything, the upcoming debate and the impact as Alvin Bragg's office has said, Alvin Bragg's gotten 56 and the number is probably higher now over a hundred, I'm sure, death threats to himself and to people in his office, death threats.

So has the judge, so has the judge's daughter, so has the principal law clerk for Judge Angoron, so has Judge Angoron, so has Fonny Willis, so has Letitia James and everybody in her office because of Donald Trump, not because of people who don't pick, he, as we know, in his call and response, stochastic terrorism, and like you said, he knows what he's doing—is causing this fomenting of discontent and causing

violent rhetoric to be used. We had a guy set himself on fire in the back of the courthouse during the Trump trial. We've had judges and their families attacked. We had Nancy Pelosi's husband—and it should have been Nancy, according to the criminal defendant, hit with a hammer over his head. This happens every day. Donald Trump doesn't care. He doesn't care. He'll do anything to get elected, or as our President Biden has said now, and I think rightly so, something is broken in Donald Trump since he lost legitimately the 2020 election, and we're seeing the ramifications of it now. Well said, Michael Popak. And that's why

it's important that we not just discuss this here with everybody, but we then share as a community this information with others and make this accessible to others, this information, this data, knowledge is power. And that's so, so, so the case when it comes to this, this legal stuff that is being utilized the way it is in a way that is trying to manipulate what I think are fairly basic concepts when we break it down. Michael Popak, the next time we see you, you will be Michael the Papa Popok. So we wish you all the best. We are so excited to see the photos as a

community. And we wish you, we wish Natasha, we wish everybody the best. You've got the easy job, Popak. It's Natasha that- Oh, I know. I know it. And our love, in all seriousness, our love goes out to her, to you, to your entire family. And we so appreciate everything you bring to the Legal AF community,

and we're so looking forward to the joy your baby girl is going to bring you and your wife and your growing family. Legal AFers, thank you so much. Make sure you check out Patreon, patreon.com slash Legal AF. We don't have outside investors, so one of the ways we grow this community is through our Patreon. Listen to the PO-POK lectures, the lectures that I do. Join our quarterly partner and associate meetings

like the one we just had. We have that one recorded that we just did where we answered a lot of questions as well. So if you weren't able to attend the last one, you can watch it on the recording, patreon.com slash legal AF. And of course, we'll keep on giving you updates, breaking news as it develops.

Thanks everybody for watching. Legal AF, I'm Ben Mycelis, joined by Michael Popak. Have a wonderful day.