Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Gets SMACKED AROUND by Law Before DAY 1

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo are back with the midweek edition of the Legal AF podcast. On tap? 1) Judge Merchan comes out swinging against Trump and his fake allegations of jury misconduct in the NY criminal conviction case. But will he sentence Trump before the inauguration? 2) What is the best method to fight back against Trump when you are bullied and threatened? Cave a la ABC/Disney, or fight back like Liz Cheney? 3) a hero doctor takes on Texas by prescribing medication abortion pills into Texas. Will NY’s Shield laws hold? 4) Will Matt Gaetz try to unretire and “out” other members of Congress with alleged sex abuse misconduct histories? 5) will the US Supreme Court rule that the Chinese Government has First Amendment rights that beat our national security interests related to the forced sale of TikTok? and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Thanks to our sponsors: Manukora: Head to https://manukora.com/legalaf to receive $25 off your starter kit today! VIIA: Try VIIA Hemp! https://bit.ly/viialegalaf and use code LEGALAF Lumen: Go to https://Lumen.me/legalaf to get 15% off your Lumen today! Zbiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. Subscribe to the new Legal AF channel: https://youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com 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 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://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coalition-of-the-sane/id1741663279 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's convenient and affordable and can be done from the comfort of your own home. Having someone to talk to is truly a gift, especially during the holidays. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more and save 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com. Oh, it's the midweek edition of Legal AF. It's Karen Friedman at Nifilo. Yes, don't adjust your monitors. Karen Friedman at Nifilo, my longtime friend, colleague, podcast partner, and practicing lawyer is here with me on the midweek edition of Legal AF. We have so much to talk about and things that we can't talk about. But first, let's kick it off with Midas in the news. Yes, yes, Midas is in the news. It's public because the White

House made it public. Ben Mycelis got the ultimate get. He got the get. He did Joe Biden. I think it's going to be like, it's the exclusive. It did Joe Biden. I think it's gonna be like, it's the exclusive, it's Joe Biden like you've never seen him. It's he's unplugged, he's unfiltered, he's lame duck, and he's with Ben Mycelis and the Midas Touch Network. And that's a reflection of the hard work of the brothers to put this network together, this channel together and all of that.

And so we'll talk a little bit about that. And then we'll dive right into the intersection of law and politics. Can't think of anybody better to do it, especially in all things New York and Karen Freeman at NIFLO. Danny, Danny Boy, the district attorney of New York in the Manhattan DA got an amazing ruling,

one that we expected. We talked about it at length in the legal AF before. Denying that immunity about evidence applies to the 34 felony count conviction against Donald Trump and why would it? And the judge took pains in his 41 pages, Judge Brachon, to walk through all the ways, let me count the ways that Donald Trump did not, and his lawyers did not preserve the objection over several witnesses. And then let me also remind Donald Trump what this case is about.

We got another motion that still hasn't been ruled on by the judge. The judge has just reminded everybody of that in a new order. We've got unsealing of some information that got filed in December, early December, but we didn't know about it until yesterday. Was there jur misconduct

that led to Donald Trump's convictions? And if there were, where's the motion by the Trump side to vacate and throw out the conviction as a result? What am I talking about? You'll know soon when we get there. And in the giant sentencing clock, has it moved ever closer to ticking to midnight to sentence Donald Trump before the inauguration and then having the sentence actually start

Sometime after we'll kick it around Karen and me then let's turn to Trump threats Trump threats They're all the rage between now and the remaining 35 or so days before the inauguration first Donald Trump attacked Well recently as this morning. He's like the walking dead. I mean, I know you develop insomnia as you get older, but these 3 a.m., he's literally, he's like the walking dead. He wakes up, starts tweeting, Liz Cheney's a criminal and should be prosecuted because of her work on the Jan 6 committee. Let me remind Donald Trump of something. Almost every witness that testified against him

in the Gen 6 Committee that allowed them to do their work had an R next to their name for Republican. Almost every one of them. I can't even remember a Democrat that testified in that case. There were two Republicans that were on the committee. There's a little something called the speech and debate immunity. Speech and debate immunity for members of the House. So Liz Cheney's not scared of Donald Trump and she is showing how you do it, media, corporate media, how you have a steel rod up your backside to defend democracy.

You don't do what ABC News and Disney did, where they effectively discouraged one year of George Stephanopoulos' salary at $15 million to Donald Trump by handing him. They had a winning hand in a case involving an important case about First Amendment and freedom of speech and the Fourth Estate, and they didn't do it because they're so… Well, we'll kick around why they didn't do it. Now the Des Moines Register is next up.

Donald Trump's suing them under consumer fraud statutes because a pollster, who by the way is already retired, pollster Ann Seltzer said that in her final poll, Kamala was going to win Iowa by three points. How did that work? Well, it was a miss. It was a small miss. It was a 16-point miss because Donald Trump won Iowa by 13 points. But to Donald Trump, just to show you how crazy his retribution is, to Donald Trump, he has to sue the Des Moines Register.

How is he damaged? He won the state. We'll talk about it with Karen Freeman at Nippolo. As we see the impact already of the inter-arum effect of Donald Trump going after the media and politicians. You see the genuflecting, you see the butt kissing, and you get the owner of the Los Angeles Times. It was bad enough that he put the kibosh on his editorial board doing an endorsement of Kamala Harris when it mattered most. Now he's told the editorial board as the owner, take a break from writing about Trump, won't you give him a

break? Are you effing kidding me? That's what you tell a news room? Take a break on Donald Trump? Okay, well, I think I think everybody should take a break from the LA Times and take a page out of Harry Lippman's book that the contributor here on the Midas Touch Network, and then Texas, of course, has drawn first blood. They are going after the shield laws in 23 states, including in New York, and the attorney general, Ken Paxton, who else, is suing a New York doctor.

Remember this name, Dr. Maggie Carpenter, and her organization, Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Act, ACT. They need your help, she's a hero. we're gonna talk about how she and her her Doctor partner and her lawyer partner one of the one of the people that ran that runs act as a lawyer That's a good thing They know how to read law because Ken Paxton doesn't and so they've been sending Medication abortion pills like methambristone and the other one that I can't pronounce

To women to allow them to do what they do with abortion pills, including in states where it is illegal to get an abortion, relying on shield laws. Well, Ken Paxson doesn't like that. He's suing, claiming that she's practicing law without a license in Texas and that she's violating all sorts of other statutes to try to stop women in Texas from having any shred of reproductive dignity or reproductive rights in that state. Matt Gaetz back in the news for all the wrong reasons. Matt Gaetz, I knew something was up when all of a sudden he was posting on social media. I was a bit of a womanizer when I was in my 30s.

I'm like, oh, here we go. Something must be happening. Yes, yes, it's happening. The long awaited House Ethics Committee report that brought down Matt Gates Just the threat of it brought down Matt Gates is going to be released I don't know why I want to hear from Kara why she thinks it's being released now at the last minute Is he a sexual predator or not? Is he a sex trafficker or not? Is he a? Rapist of young of underage girls. Yes or no

I want to know what's in that report as much as anybody because it continues to matter. And this is gonna give Karen special heartburn because she sort of predicted this. Did anybody see the social media post where Matt Gaetz is positing that he could return to the 118th Congress? He can return to 119th Congress

and go after other Congress people with sex crimes and sex harassment, cases that they settled under the table. Oh, here we go. Let's talk about Matt Gaetz. And then we'll touch briefly on, pardon me, the new reporting of the United States Supreme Court before the inauguration, meaning under the Biden administration's watch, is going to take up the case of whether the Biden administration and the full Congress can pass a bill to force the Chinese and the Chinese government, let's call TikTok for what it is. It's ultimately owned, yes, it's owned by ByteDance, but ByteDance is owned by the Chinese government, to force them to divest and sell their American subsidiary or get out of the American market? Can they be forced to do that under national security and other laws or is it unconstitutional? In other words, do the Chinese have First Amendment rights in America? That's interesting. The Supreme Court wants to get to

the bottom of it. They granted an emergency hearing in January. God, we got so much to talk about. Where's Karen? I need her. I need her. Hi, Papa. It's good to see you. First of all, fantastic to see you. We got to catch you. The last time I talked to you, you were you're getting you're recovering from surgery. And then I was like, this can't be the same KFA. And then I read you got a new client. So can we is that a client we can say his name on midweek?

I mean, I do represent Luigi Mangione, and I will be representing him in New York on his case. But in terms of what I'm saying about it, I'm not really talking about it yet. We have a big court appearance coming up. And that's where I'll be speaking in court. But it's great to see you. Yes, I'm still recovering. Timing. You're going to be on crutches in court? Unfortunately, that's just the way it's going to be.

I will be on crutches. And you got to do the world keeps turning. You got to keep going. I wanted to say one thing. I don't want to gloss over by not mentioning how incredible it is that Midas Touch got the Biden interview. I mean, this is the thing that 60 Minutes used to get. Right. Talk about mainstream media, legacy media, whatever you want to call it. Midas Touch is the new thing. This is what is going to be where people go to get real news and

to have the President of the United States endorse that and basically say, this is where the truth comes. This is where the news comes. The legacy media, mainstream media, that's what used to be. That's corporate media, as you pointed out with the LA Times owned by billionaires. That's the has-beens. And I think the thing that came out of this election is people realize this is the new media and that Midas Touch got it and that Ben, our Ben, I was so proud, like as if I, you know, I'm not his mother obviously, but I felt like- If you birthed him. Yeah, exactly.

No, but I felt proud like, because you know, we've been there since, you've been there since the beginning. I think you were there since day one, you know. Employee badge number four. Exactly, right. It's like the three brothers and then Popat came and, and you know, we have to dig up, we did once the very first couple of episodes of Legal AF.

I love it. It's beautiful. I love it. It's amazing. And it's amazing. We have to make sure we post it and people have to watch it. It's amazing in this like campy kind of fun way. But you know, you guys you've been there since pretty much day one. I've been there since like week one, you know, and I think it's amazing. And I just I think people have to realize what this means, not just because of the interview, but what this says about the Midas Touch Network and what this says about news going forward. Okay, so it's unbelievable. And we have big news here. And guess what, we We are gonna just play the promotion right now

so that everybody can see how incredible this is. I got great news. I've been going back and forth while we were starting our recording for the show and I just got permission from the brothers. This is breaking news. Ready? We're Sydney, breaking news Sydney.

I got permission from the brothers to be the first on the Minus Touch Network to run the promo for the interview. Wow. Here we go. Everybody, everybody, I'm going to give you, I'm going to take a beat so you can go get popcorn. And then we're going to run the promo. Here we go. Mr. President, you're going gonna be at the inauguration. Some union leaders and even some kind of rank-and-file workers ended up voting for the other guy. How do you square that? You think you reach a deal in Gaza before the term ends as you prepare to leave the White House?

Any other regrets that you have? Anything you wish you would have done differently? His rhetoric, what he's done, what he's threatened. That's not America. That's not who the hell we are. We're not going away. I'm not going away. Okay, I mean, come on. Look at Ben.

Look at, look at Ben. Adorable. Suit and tie, adorable, with suit and tie. It is. Well, no, the early, I'm not kidding, the early photo when you mentioned the show that he did Suit and tie. Adorable. With suit and tie. Well, no, I'm not kidding. The early photo when you mentioned the show he did four and a half years ago. If you see, we'll find a picture of that one day.

It literally looks like I took my son to work day. Like he looks so young. I was like, and he's not heavy, but he was really skinny in this photo. And I was like, it looks like I took my 12 year old to work. But look where he's the reason CNN is not there. MSNBC is not there. Rachel Maddow is not there. George Stephanopoulos isn't there. Then my cellists. I love it.

Yeah, it's just just what that means what this means for Midas Touch Network, I think it has to be emphasized. And it's really incredible. And I'm just I'm so happy. And I'm it has to be emphasized and it's really incredible and I'm just, I'm so happy and I'm so happy to be a part of this as well. Well let's, and on the back of the other thing, even though Karen, understandably, and we respect, mad respect for Karen as a client to represent, while continuing of course to be a leader on Legal AF. The rest of us can talk about where appropriate,

and we will do it here, Luigi Mangione, because I don't want to have this optic of Karen listening to me talk about her case. But on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, I'm doing some work over there, and I think on True Crimes, we're doing some work over there. So there's other places to get your fix

of what's going on in that case with Karen then here. So we are respectful to our audience, but we have to be respectful. That Karen is at all. Just to be clear, but just to be clear, you will have no inside information from me. No, I love you dearly, but I'm not going to whisper in your ear anything. Everything that you talk about is going to be things that is either on the record or that you've read yourself or you've seen yourself and that, and you're going to analyze it from your perspective. And that's what you will do. And if there comes a time where it's appropriate for me to talk about the case and it's best for my client, I, thankfully I don't need to go somewhere else.

I've got this amazing audience that we've built up over years. And we can always talk about it. I agree to that on one condition, that if you ever decide that it's in your client's best interest to talk, that you do it first on Legal AF. Well, if that's in his best interest, I will. Thank you. That's all I needed.

I got it. Sid, right in town. All right, let's move on. As long as you're making an appearance this week in All right, let's move on as long as we're staying long as long as you're Making an appearance this week in the court. Let's talk about your old let's talk about your old office And a win that they had which that's gonna be by the way, that's gonna be you know, think about it Like it's my office, you know Yes, let's talk about my old office that I worked for, the Manhattan DA's office.

So we just to keep everybody up to speed, I don't like to talk in too much shorthand because we lose people who are just joining in for the first time or don't follow it as closely as we do. There have been not one but two separate motions in the last several months filed by Donald Trump and his team to try to, what we call in the law, vacate, kick out, throw out his convictions. And he didn't get convicted once of 34 counts. He got convicted 34 times by a 12-0 jury in New York, fair and impartial, after weeks

of testimony, weeks of testimony, mountains of evidence against Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels, hush money, cover up, election interference case. We never, I don't really have a good shorthand for that case. It always comes out like that. And so the two motions that have happened since, one since the immunity decision and the other one in July by the Supreme Court and the other one since November 5th is by Donald Trump. And in one, he argued that the immunity decision by the United States Supreme Court, which really talks about at its core,

when you can and cannot prosecute a person who held the office of the presidency for his conduct or her conduct, depending upon whether it was official conduct, court constitutional conduct, or private prosecutable conduct. Not whether a conviction already returned by a jury about a time period when the person wasn't president, immunity applies.

The only issue that is up for grabs, which the judge reminded everybody, is not whether the core criminal conduct that Donald Trump was convicted of is immune from prosecution. Even his lawyers don't argue that. It's whether some discrete pieces of evidence, particularly some emails, a couple of social media posts and the testimony of three people. One of which Karen, you talked at length about at the time during the jury trial, Hope Hicks, Michael Cohen

and Madeleine Westerhoof. Madeleine Westerhoof is like the executive assistant to when Donald Trump finally got into the White House. Hope Hicks was campaign press secretary and then press secretary in the White House, and Michael Cohen was Michael Cohen. And the fundamental issues there had to do with 99% of the crime activities

took place before Donald Trump was president. That was the purpose. That's to avoid the October surprise was the payoff Stormy Daniels. So the pay, the conspiracy to pay off was all before the presidency. So none of the immunity decision applies and even none of the evidence analysis applies.

The payback of the money. Some of that took place while the guy was president. And so the judge did this elaborate 41 page analysis. I'll turn it over to Karen now. That is what we just got a ruling on. Even after we talk about this ruling, there's one more motion still left. A motion on justice grounds,

there's a word for it, I'll let Karen handle it, as a factor analysis that has to be done for that type of motion, the judge is still sitting on that one. Let's presume he gets that done in time against Donald Trump. Then what? So let me turn it over to my illustrious colleague, renowned criminal defense lawyer, Karen Freeman-Ikniflo. Karen Freeman-Ikniflo – Like, you know, this decision that Judge Mershawn issued, because don't forget there's two motions that are outstanding. One still is, right?

This motion to dismiss that was filed recently. This is just the one on presidential immunity that we've been waiting for for a while. We've been waiting to see what's Judge Mershon going to say. Is he going to say that there was inappropriate or evidence that should not have come in at the trial that did come in. And if so, would it be held to be reversible error? And so we've all been kind of waiting with bated breath for this decision and it came down and it was an interesting decision for many

reasons because, Popak, we've both read many, many, many, many court decisions and it's really at the judge's discretion about how long or short or how deep the analysis is, right? Sometimes they just don't even make a, judges can make a decision and just say denied or granted. They don't even have to explain themselves. Sometimes they decide to do a docket entry online in federal court, a lot of judges do that and they'll put one or two lines, right?

It's not even it's just something that they enter into the official record. It's like I said, a docket entry. And then and then you've got these written decisions and not everything is a written decision. And then when a written when a decision is written, not everything is, quote unquote, published. You know, so it's there are different types of decisions that courts like to issue, and it's entirely in their discretion. And judges only publish, meaning they become kind of law that you cite and that people can reference, other lawyers can reference in the future. They only

publish decisions that they think are important enough and that are kind of big enough to become law that is relied upon. And so this was obviously a published decision, but it's also one where the judge is very much, the judge very much made sure is gonna be very long. Okay, this was not a short decision. This is a very long decision. And it's interesting, I think, because because he gave the history of everything, including all the times all the times that that that Trump raised presidential immunity,

including in E. Jean Carroll, which is a civil, as he called it, unrelated case, you know, gave sort of this very long, like if you want to know kind of everything that's been going on with Trump, whether it's E. Jean Carroll, whether it's the Jack Smith cases, this case, it kind of gave this history of all of the cases and did it in the context of things like presidential immunity and all of his claims that he made, because they are sort of related, right? He makes this claim in this case

and then a different claim in this case, and they're all related and they all go to one kind of ultimate decision, just going sideways for a minute. What this tells me, interestingly, is if there is ever a sentence in this case, Judge Rashan is going to absolutely take into consideration his conduct, Trump's conduct, in other cases, because he clearly has no problem citing all of the other cases, including the civil ones. So I found, very crisply and very cogently and

applied the law to the facts and said, look, two federal courts have ruled that, or two times one federal court has ruled, Judge Hellerstein, that Donald Trump's conduct in this Manhattan DA case was entirely personal. And so therefore, it had nothing to do with this presidency and therefore it wasn't quote unquote removed to federal courts. That analysis had to be done in order to determine whether or not it would be removed to federal court and it wasn't. And so that was very much, you know, it was important here as well, because it says very similar analysis, right? Was this personal or was this in the color of your duties as president, was this presidential or personal? And so essentially he basically said, look, it's all personal.

But he also acknowledged that the Supreme Court had this one category of, and again, this is what we've said all along, that this is what it would be. The Supreme Court acknowledged that, okay, so immunity doesn't apply, but the evidence that came in, did any of the evidence, was it inappropriately allowed in?

And he said, look, by the way, most of the, some of the stuff you're citing, you didn't preserve on the record. You didn't make objections. And that's something a defense attorney is supposed to do. Right, you're supposed to, of the stuff you're citing, you didn't preserve on the record, you didn't make objections. And that's something a defense attorney is supposed to do, right? You're supposed to as the stuff comes in, you have to say objection, you say why and you preserve the issue. He didn't make that he didn't preserve the issue for some of the evidence,

which was interesting that that he pointed that out. But he said, but even if I'll do an analysis, and I'll tell you, even if it were, if even if I'll do an analysis and I'll tell you, even if it were, even if you had preserved it, I would rule the same. And what he said was all of the evidence that they didn't preserve, either way, that was harmless. I don't think it was something that falls under this category of presidential immunity. And so therefore the evidence should not have come in in this purely private case. But even if you had preserved it, it does not fall into that category. And so then he went to the things that you and I talked

about and it's just interesting because we've talked about this and we could go back to other Legal AF episodes. And we specifically said there was a few things that we were concerned about. One of them was the Hope Hicks testimony, and another was a couple of the tweets. And the judge pointed out, basically, that, look,

to say that, oh, well, every tweet that I say is because I used the president's account, every single one you know, is, is, because I used the president's account, every single one of them, even personal ones, that just makes it that cloaks it with immunity. No, that's not the case, you have to do an analysis. He said, you know, so the tweets and the hope Hicks, some of the tweets and some of the hope Hicks testimony, we said we were worried about, right? Because, because hope

Hicks, don't forget, this is the one piece of evidence, I'm just going to say it, because I think it's the one thing that will even be an issue on appeal when they appeal this. It's when she testified in court and I was there, it was the only day I attended court and I happened to be there and it was, it was jaw dropping. It felt like a Perry Mason moment because she, you know, she broke down crying and basically admitted that Donald Trump said that he felt like, yeah, I'm glad this didn't come out. I'm glad the Stormy Daniels stuff didn't come out

before the election. He admitted this was about the election. And that was a critical element of the crime here. And she worked for him at the time in the White House. And it was well into the time that he was president. So it was the one thing that I worried about could potentially be ruled as inadmissible. And the issue with that is, on summation, the prosecution, one of the arguments was you can't believe Michael Cohen. And on summation, the prosecution argued, look, this is really,

you don't have to only believe Michael Cohen, everything's corroborated, listen to Hope Hicks because it was so powerful and Hope Hicks, and he made a big deal out of the Hope Hicks testimony. I was worried about that and the judge pointed it out and said, even if that, he ruled that it was entirely okay to admit into evidence, it was permitted, permissible, but even if it wasn't, it was harmless error. And so he had a full-on harmless error analysis. I thought it was,

I thought, you know, I thought it was just a great, a great decision, really well written. And written, I think, for the appellate courts. He knows it's going to be appealed, he knows it's going to go up to the Supreme Court and he wrote it as if it's going to go to the Supreme Court. It's this was like I was saying before and that's why I kind of explained you know the different types of decisions judges could could do. This this one wrote it for a reason. He knows this is going to be deeply analyzed, He knows that this is going up all the way to the Supreme Court. And so he wrote this for them. And it feels very bulletproof

to me. So I'll admit, sometimes I go on a long time. So you're probably leaning back and relaxing. No, no, no, no, no, no, it has to do with the thing you and I talked about. Leave it in this pod. Has to do with the thing that we talked about before we started in our lives. And I got a text related to it, so I got caught up in it for a moment. No, I always listen. Hope Hicks.

Hope Hicks. You have a personal life, Popok? I do. And meanwhile, I'm sitting here and like all this, like you probably see me fidgeting, so I'm trying to move the ice around on my knees. I'm just gonna say, one day I'm waiting to see the coat hanger going

down the cast, you know, whatever you whatever you got going on there to itch it I get it scratch. I have to say, the doctor was amazing. He just you know, four little holes and some stitches and that's it. Yeah, yeah. Really amazing. So we're going to talk about the other aspect of the Manhattan DA's case, which is this weird revelation that on December the 3rd, we just found out about it yesterday, that Donald Trump asked the judge to do two things.

One, don't rule on this motion that we just spent a long time talking about, because you're divested of your jurisdiction, obviously ignored by the judge. And the second was, and we have evidence of jury tampering. We have a juror who says he was tampered with and that should nullify everything and what the judge did about that. And we can talk about why we haven't seen a jury misconduct motion to vacate the convictions filed by Donald Trump despite the fact that it was put in his letter. Then you and I'll pick up with the the inter-rerum effect of what Donald Trump

is doing and how different entities are reacting and the right way that you should react if you're attacked by Donald Trump and threatened with defamation or FBI investigation or a violation of consumer fraud or a lawsuit's filed against you. On one end of the continuum you've got what ABC did and Disney. On the other end you have, you've got what ABC did and Disney. On the other end, you have what Liz Cheney's doing. And then we'll have to see what the Des Moines Register is going to do. We'll talk about Dr. Maggie Carpenter, my hero of the day, and her fight against Texas

in making sure that women around this country have some measure, some shred of reproductive rights, the right to make a decision of their choice about whether to carry a fetus to term, and whether they can use medication abortion in order to accomplish that, where she prescribed the medication from New York to a woman who was in Texas and has now been sued as a result. And her organization, Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, aptly named or acronymed ACT ACT, we'll talk about that as well. Matt gates. Well, we'll just leave it at that. And then we'll talk about tick tock and whether tick tock is going to have to get

rid of its little toy, which has been through misinformation and disinformation, brainwashing Americans for a long, long time in competing unfairly in the marketplace of ideas. for a long, long time in competing unfairly in the marketplace of ideas. And what's Donald Trump's position about all that? I'll give it to you in a summary before we come back from a commercial break, which is, oh, help get me elected. OK. We have a lot of the Karen, rightly so,

is we have a legal term for this, is cavelling about Midas Touch and the brothers, you know, just, and what's going on here with this get of getting Joe Biden, President Biden to be interviewed. There's many ways to support independent commentary and analysis like we do here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF.

You can hit the subscribe button on Midas Touch. You can go over to Legal AF, the new YouTube channel, which we built in advance of the election for this very day, in case it were to arrive, and hit the subscribe button there. You can, as Ben so eloquently put in a Midas Plus sub-stack writing he just did the other day, he said, we're never going to be owned by oligarchs. Don't worry about Midas Plus sub stack Writing he just did the other day. He said we were never gonna be owned by oligarchs Don't worry about Midas touch, but the ways to support us is that we have other shows on the network Karen's got mistrial with a couple of former prosecutors and good friends of hers Donya Perry Kathleen Rice

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Please support our show and tell them that we sent you. This holiday season, enhance your everyday with FIAA. Okay, we're back. Let's, uh, Karen, did you get a chance? I know you've been busy. Did you get a chance to see the unsealed order by Judge Mershon and what apparently got filed in early December, uh, which we're just learning about now, which Donald Trump told the judge, don't you dare rule on the motion related to immunity. And also, by the way, there's juror misconduct.

Did you get a chance to see any of that? Yeah, I just was like, what is this juror misconduct and why are we hearing about it now? And honestly, if there was actual juror misconduct, then it wouldn't have come out this way now. Like it was kind of a weird, I don't know, I couldn't, I didn't really know how to make heads or tails of it because juror misconduct and an allegation or an assertion of juror misconduct is extremely serious.

If there's juror misconduct of any sort, that is the kind of thing that reverses a conviction. Anything like that. A jury is sacrosanct. You have to protect juries at all costs. I have accidentally gotten into, I shouldn't say accidentally, I have gotten into an elevator unintentionally, not realizing that one of my jurors on one of my trials is right there. And you have to, it is so awkward because you are not allowed to even look at them, say hello to them, nothing. And sometimes jurors will say hello to you and you don't want to be rude, but you cannot speak to them. You know, it's so difficult. You know, you have to make sure you don't talk to

your witnesses in the hallways. A juror could be sitting on the bench right there. You have to make sure you don't talk to your colleagues about a case or friends about a case. Again, in a hallway at lunch, people go to lunch and lawyers and they talk about stuff and there's people at the next table. It could be your juror. Jures will do things like read the paper when they're not supposed to or talk to each other when they're not supposed to about the case. There's so many rules about how jury juries have to behave that because if there's no kind of harmless error necessarily, I mean there sort of is, but if there's actual misconduct that is reversed. That's it. There's no like, okay, the verdict's over, Let's call the alternate and bring them in and preserve it. No, you do the trial all over again.

Once you dismiss the jury, it's done. If there's juror misconduct, the case is reversed. So if there were jury misconduct in this case, we would have heard about it. There would have been motion practice about it. There'd even probably be hearings about it. You call the jury and you ask questions. I mean, so I didn't even know what to make of this

because it seemed like maybe there was some proceeding about it that was sealed that we didn't know about, but I don't know, what was your, what did you make of it? I agree with you. I think there was apps, they were, I think this was filed apparently in timing wise before they filed their motion on justice grounds. Cause when you read the motion for, what is it, the Clayton motion? Exactly. When you read the Clayton motion, there's no mention of

juror misconduct. Clayton motion, yeah, dismissal in the interest of justice. They would have mentioned it. They would have said, oh, and by the way, there was juror misconduct. And so the judge was like, if there's juror misconduct, then file a motion for juror misconduct to vacate the conviction. But you're telling me you don't want to do that, which means I can't hold a hearing and I can't get to the bottom of it. But you want me to put the unsworn statement of some juror and subject that person to being attacked on the public docket. I'm not doing that either. So the judge is just like fed up. And then Donald Trump comes back. So he's got no juror misconduct. I don't know where they got this from some knock on the door for door for some random juror. They must have thought better of it after they got to the bottom

of it because I haven't heard of any filings for motion for misconduct vacating the conviction. So I don't think it exists. There's bullshit. And then you have Donald Trump deciding that it's in his best interest to attack the one person on planet Earth that holds his liberty in the palm of his hand. This judge has not yet come up with the sentence. All of these- Yeah, I'll never understand his tactic to do that. That makes no sense. All right.

Because as you said earlier in the segment and for years before that, all of the conduct and behavior leading up to the moment of sentencing goes into the sentencing, including all of the attacks on the court system, on Judge Roshan, on staff, on family, on jury, on jurors, on Alvin Bragg with a baseball bat, everything. And this, so he wakes up in the middle of the morning, whatever time he gets up, and Donald Trump starts saying, the psychotic judge in New York who's partisan and biased and unhinged is going to topple our constitutional democracy in the office of the presidency with an unhinged. I'm like, okay, just f-ing relax. Okay, why don't you read the 41 pages or have somebody read it to you? Because if you read it, you would understand that even your own why don't you read the 41 pages or have somebody read it to you? Because if you read it, you would understand that even your own lawyers don't think immunity applies, except for

some evidence. And the only issue for the judge was, hey, Trump, your lawyers, you know, the ones you just promoted to like the number two and three spot in the Department of Justice, they don't really know how to run a New York trial, a state court trial, this is great for Karen, these federal white shoe lawyers who never really tried cases, they kind of screwed it up. And they didn't they didn't preserve the objections for Westerhude or for Michael Cohen. And the judge was like, you didn't preserve it. You didn't object to it. You never raised supremacy or immunity or anything, or the office of the presidency, you did it barely for aspects of when Mr. Mbove came up to to my sidebar and talked to me about Hope Hicks. But even then, I don't find that her testimony falls into the bucket of

using official conduct to prove unofficial conduct because there was no unofficial conduct. The guy wasn't president. So the whole of the immunity decision for Mershon doesn't map onto this particular procedural thing where a guy gets convicted of a crime or post-conviction and pre-sentencing and he happened to get re-elected. That doesn't really do it. So he's going to rule again, in my prediction, he's going to rule against them again in the next day, two days, five days a week before Christmas, on Christmas day, I don't know, on what we call the Clayton Act, Clayton motion. He's going to find that he's not going to use his equitable powers, that Donald Trump has tremendous unclean hands.

He's not going to rip up the 34-count felony conviction like confetti at a Fifth Avenue parade. He's not doing that. And then the judge is going to have to decide, let's go to sentencing. Because let me just leave it with this, Karen. If he doesn't sentence him and suspend the sentence until after the guy comes out, then what happens?

We're going to wait around for two years of appeal through the United States Supreme Court, and then it's going to come back to him for sentencing. Sentence now and suspend it, then let them take that up on appeal. What do you think? Yeah, I think I mean, I think he absolutely would. If he could, I think it just depends, right? There's a few things that could happen. Number one, if he moves to sentencing, if he gets to if he if he just denies the motion to dismiss. I think you're going to see

Donald Trump run to court. I don't know which court whether he'll run to the Supreme Court whether he'll run to the appellate courts here either way He because because now this immunity decision, I think we're very quickly gonna see that get appealed, right? He's going to appeal that Trump. I quickly going to see that get appealed, right? He's going to appeal that Trump. I think the next thing we're going to see is they're going to make a motion for a stay of these proceedings. And so if that happens, if Judge Machan is essentially ordered to stay or stop the proceedings, if he denies this motion to dismiss and they run to get a stay order, run to get a stay order, then his hands are tied, and he can't sentence him.

So I mean, it seems pretty, if the courts don't stay the proceeding, could he hold a sentencing? Yes. He could do one of two things. If he looks hypothetically, say he holds a sentencing, he could just sentence him to zero, just say the case is done, you're convicted, so that he, literally the case is just done

and he goes as a fully vested convicted felon, right? There's no doubt that he is a convicted felon at that point because then the reason I say that is because in New York, there's this little quirk, you are convicted by a jury, okay? So you can use that is because in New York, there's this little quirk. You are convicted by a jury. OK, so you can use that word. He's convicted. But it's not a conviction on your record.

If you in other words, if you let's say you commit a second crime, the sentencing is different than if you are sent as if you commit just a first arrest offender. It's called a predicate felon. You have a prior felony conviction. That felony conviction, in order to count as a conviction for this predicate felony status, it has to be fully vested.

It has to be not only did you plead guilty or you were convicted by a jury, but you were sentenced. Those two things have to happen. Doesn't matter if it's up on appeal. The appeal doesn't impact whether or not you are an actual convicted felon. So if he gets convicted, if he gets sentenced, no matter what it is, even if it's stayed, that will actually make him a fully vested convicted felon, but he's still convicted of the crimes. But it's a little bit of a law school class nuance,

but I thought people might be interested in that. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's, and the only other thing I was going to say is you might be right. You know, the other thing you could do, but, but, but in addition to saying, okay, you're sentenced to just, you know, the equivalent of time served, you can give him a real sentence. And a real sentence here, if you were to look at the nature and history, you know, all the factors in Clayton are basically the factors that go into sentence, you know, the nature and history of the defendant, the character of the defendant,

the seriousness of the crime, all of those things are things that go into are the things that go into sentencing. And frankly, this judge is going to look at all the cases, every one of them, and not just and not just the conduct alleged in the cases, his conduct during the cases. That is all relevant who he is. He's someone who's been held in contempt 10 times in this case. He was held in contempt in front of Judge Arthur N'Goran

in the civil fraud case. He's somebody who lied. Judge N'Goran said he lied on the record. He found him not credible. You know, he's somebody who violates, I mean, the guy is like a walking violation of court orders. And so the judge can take that into consideration and take all of it into consideration.

Plus you can look at the seriousness of the crime. And I think the judge, I think your prediction of one to two years is about right for this case. And that's what I think he'll get, if he ever does get to sentencing, but as you said, he's not gonna serve it till after he's president.

If his name was Bozo Jones, he'd be going away for a couple years. 100%. For doing what he said. All right we'll continue to follow all that let's pick up with Donald Trump as president-elect. Not officially until Jan 6 but we call him president-elect now. Getting up every day in every way on every bully pulpit he can find going after his enemies list. It's part of it is that it's just a destabilizing pension of his to be the 800-pound gorilla and to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies. We're seeing an international impact.

Canada is in turmoil and could collapse over the tariff war that he tweeted about, having Trudeau having lost his number two finance minister in a noisy exit that's challenging his administration. Germany is about to collapse its government. France is about to collapse and these things are not being made better off by Donald Trump. Here in the states we have Donald Trump feeling randy feeling getting he's very bold. He's getting cocky because he got ABC News and Disney who worries about apparently their licenses and making money with the government and and less about Donald Trump who offered him pay 15 million dollars because because George Stephanopoulos repeated something

that a federal judge in New York had already said, which is Donald Trump is a technical rapist as a judge by the jury in two separate federal cases involving E. Jean Carroll. So why was it wrong for George Stephanopoulos to use that very term when he interviewed Nancy Mace? And everybody's all excited at Mago world now that the settlement, Nancy Mace, the same one who was completely obsessed with the transgender bathroom.

Yes. Oh my god, I just really just put two and two together when you said that. She's the one who tweeted what 300 times in one day because she's obsessed with She just tweeted no balls in the bathroom. I mean, she's disgusting. What is her obsession with this? I don't know. I mean, I have some thoughts but we'll leave it at that. She's also a self-professed rape victim and that's why George Stephanopoulos asked it that way of her about how could she support Donald Trump.

And she said, oh, I got shamed. I got shamed by this is part of a personal story that she campaigned on You know, Joni Henseth Jodi and Jodi Ernst, sorry, I want to make them married. I know Sidley's laughing right now. I want to marry Heg Seth and Ernst She she's a she's a rape victim. She talks about it just because because of the names, not because of, you know. No, no, no, because I always get the names. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify. Merge them in my mind.

Yeah, as my daughter would say, it sounds like you ship them together. I ship them, that's right. So Donald Trump takes on ABC and wins. Now he's all bold, so now it's let's go out for the Des Moines Register. Because Ann Seltzer, a long longtime pollster, got it wrong. I mean, let's be honest, she got it wrong.

It's criminal how much of a 16-point differential she had in the win. But the reality is there's no damage. So Donald Trump didn't file, because he thinks he's actually going to win a consumer fraud case in Iowa. What is the Des Moines register going to do? Are they going to follow the lead of ABC News and Disney and go, yeah, we're out.

We don't really need to pick a fight for Donald Trump. He's here for four years. We're here for 200 years, whatever the time they've been around. And no, we're not going to take him on. Or are they going to do the right thing and stand up for democracy, First Amendment and freedom of the press? And now he's going after Liz Cheney. What did you have to make about all that and Liz Cheney's what did you have to make about all that? And Liz Cheney's response to Donald Trump

and about her job on the Jan six committee and how she's not that worried about being prosecuted or convicted. Yeah, you bring up a lot of good points. First of all, it's just so shameful what's happening. This, it's like complying in advance or that people are talking about. It's like, it's like bowing in advance to, you know, the dictator kind of thing. It's, it's,

it's really terrifying. This ABC settlement, as you said, that they would do something like that and settle that case. That case, I don't think that case would have survived a motion to dismiss. I mean, that case is one where you've got First Amendment on your side, right? You got a federal judge that says it's technically rape, because New York is one of the only places to be raped. It's so backwards, the New York law. The only way it can be rape is if it's male genitals inserted into or has contact with, I should say, male genital to a female genital. That's it. Male genital to any other part of any other of a woman's body, not rape. Same thing, male to male, not rape. Female to male, not rape. It has to be the penis to the vagina.

There has to be, you know, it has to penetrate no matter how slight. That's the legal definition of rape. And although the penetration element of it was met in this case, E. Jean Carroll said she couldn't tell what he penetrated her with. It could have been, you know, could have been that or it could have been a finger,

which I don't know what that says about things, but she didn't know. And so as a result, the jury said, OK, because New York has this, it was not consensual. It was by force. And there was penetration. It had all the elements. She just wasn't sure what was inserted.

By the way, a foreign object also doesn't count. It has to, you have to know that it was a, a male, a penis. So, you know, that's the definition of rape in New York. I think it should be updated. Anyone who's ever been sexually assaulted in, in any other way, you know, if it was a slightly different area, it's still rape, rape is rape. And the term for raping someone by,

let's say oral sex rape, that's called criminal sexual act. You don't say, oh my God, I was criminally sexually acted. You say, I was raped. If anyone's forcibly required, if anyone uses force to orally rape somebody, you say, I was raped. And that is what it is.

And so just because New York law technically has this weird cork to it, and Judge Kaplan, sorry, in aging, Carol clarified that and said, on the record, no, it's rape because New York is backwards in this way. And so just the fact that they would settle, I understand why people settle now that I've been in private practice for a bit.

It's because litigation is expensive. It's extremely expensive. It's time consuming, ton of discovery, and with Donald Trump, there's punishment. He's gonna punish you the whole way. They're trying to clearly make amends with him, as everybody else seems to be doing, except the Midas Touch Network, which I'm very proud of.

But the fact of the matter is, what about deterrence? What does this say to other, this is just gonna, there should be a deterrent factor, right? They should hold their ground because they shouldn't do this again. Kind of like what happened with Fox News and Dominion voting. At the end of the day, they settled,

but they settled for a huge number because otherwise what are you gonna do? Just have it be that let him do this all the time. I mean, there was no there was literally no deterrent factor here. And it's really upsetting that they settled and not just that they settled, but that they agreed to fund the presidential library. You like it's almost like you're endorsing him. It's almost like you're you want to, it's so okay that he sued them over

this $15 million that they're going to, they're going to pay for his legacy. Cause that's what a presidential library is. You know, let's be real. It's his legacy. So anyway, that was really upsetting to me. But you asked about Liz Cheney, you know, I I've been somebody who, and I've gotten flack for this in the comments before, because I'm a supporter of Liz Cheney. I think, you know, I want to stand by her because what she did was heroic. Do I agree with her policy positions? I don't. I never have. But, you know, I think it's hard to stand up to Donald Trump. I think it's hard to stand up to MAGA. I think it's hard to stand up to the bullying.

And I have a lot of respect for her, for what she did as a woman, as a public servant, and as someone who, you know, I feel the same way about Adam Kinzinger. You know, there are people who, it's hard. It's hard to, it's easier for Democrats to do it. It's still hard, you know, you got a target on your back. But it's hard to do that.

And she did it and I think she deserves support for that. And I'm glad she's not worried about it. Hopefully she'll fight. But you bring something, you brought something up that I just wanna also mention. I feel like I'm on a roll today. Sorry, Pop Pock, and I don't mean to be dominating this conversation,

but pardons, the issue of pardons and Biden giving pardons, is that going to be, is he gonna give these preemptive pardons to people like Liz Cheney? That's why I thought about it. There's some people who've come out and said, I don't want to pardon. And I'm like, you don't want to pardon?

Why don't you want to pardon? I mean, everyone should want to pardon. And I'm like, you don't want to pardon? Why don't you want to pardon? I mean, everyone should want to pardon. And then there's a whole debate out there. And there's a lot of people who say they don't want to pardon because they think it's an admission that you did something wrong. I find that interesting. That would have never crossed my mind or dawned on me. To me, it's like an insurance policy.

Why? When you have someone like Donald Trump who's going out there and saying he's going to threaten threaten he's threatening to go after his Enemies, I mean they're saying it out loud right this listen to their words They're not they publish lists cash petel has published a list You know people are people are saying it out loud that this is what they're gonna do. I mean have life insurance I have life insurance. I hope I never need it ever, you know, I mean, obviously I will one day But I have life insurance and and to me it's like, ever. I mean, obviously I will one day, but I have life insurance. And to me, it's like that, right?

It's like having something like that. So I don't know if she wants one or not, but it just brought up that topic. But I think, look, I hope more people can hold strong against this because it is really terrifying what's happening and they're weaponizing, they're threatening to weaponizing the they're threatening to weaponize the courts to weaponize the Department of Justice to weaponize law

enforcement and when when people settle like like ABC did when they have a clear cut case that they could have won again I understand why people settle sometimes I worry what it will do to others. It does it does worry great They got to follow our lead. They got to fight back. They can't take it We've been going on and on internally about like bring it you want to bring a suit against us bring a suit against us We haven't done anything wrong. We are we get proper commentary an opinion. You may not like it, but somebody's gonna have to fight back and And so that's what being independent is all about.

We're gonna talk about, after our next ad break, we're gonna talk about somebody who is a heroine, also a hero, also Maggie Carpenter, Dr. Maggie Carpenter, one of the founders of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Act and her fight for American freedom and for women's rights in fighting back against Texas, who has decided that the shield law in New York doesn't protect them from giving and prescribing through telemedicine and telehealth medication abortion pills like methampristium. And now she's

been attempted to be dragged into court and state court in Texas over it. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about Matt Gaetz because it looks like the report's going to be dragged in a court, in state court in Texas over it. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about Matt Gaetz, because it looks like the report's gonna be coming out before the end of the 118th Congress on Jan 3. And some weird threats by Matt Gaetz not to go away. I thought he went away. I thought we got rid of Matt Gaetz

and we'd only have to see him on the Matt Gaetz show, which I just heard from Michael Cohen that he wants to appear on, but well, that's for another time. But the Matt Gaetz show, but I guess to pump up the ratings of the Matt Gaetz show, Matt Gaetz is threatening not to go away, to return from the dead, come back to the 118th Congress, names the 119th Congress, and as a rule of order, a point of order, expose all the other Congress people that he says are sexual predators or settled, settled sexual harassment or discrimination cases. Oh, that's

interesting. And then we'll talk about tick tock. And is it are we are we tick tocking the countdown to the sale? For sale of the US entity by China, or is the United States Supreme Court going to step in and say, the Chinese have First Amendment rights to but first another word from our sponsors. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored advice to improve your nutrition, workouts, sleep, and even stress

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slash Legal AF and use the code LegalAF at checkout for 15% off. Okay. Sponsors, Okay sponsors, subscription, free subscription. We've got Midas as a as a substack. Midas Plus, you can get commercial free versions of this on Midas Plus. You can get commercial free versions of this podcast on Patreon. And then you can also help support the build of Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Legal AF MTN for Midas Touch Network. Come over there, hit the blue free subscribe button to help us build that channel. Tune into Karen's show, not just on Wednesdays, but on Thursdays on Mistrial

with Donya Perry and Kathleen Rice and all the other things that go into the Midas universe. And make sure you check out that Joe Biden exclusive interview with Ben Mycelis, the Midas Touch Network that I believe is going to be going up tomorrow. Somebody will poke me if I'm wrong. Really proud of that and what it reflects in the four and a half years that the brothers and others helped build this network. Karen, let's turn to Maggie Carpenter. What you learned about that case and shield law and let's break it down for our listeners and followers.

This is another example of a profile and courage, right? They did this on purpose in order to get sued. I'll leave it at that. Yeah, like it's just very interesting because what did Trump say? Oh, leave it up to the states. That's what everybody wants, right? Leave it up to the states.

Okay, so a lot of states have been doing a lot of stuff. Some are banning abortions completely, some are limiting abortions, and some are protecting abortions. And New York is one of the states that after the Dobbs decision decided to protect abortion in New York in many different ways. And one of the ways was to create this shield law so that if essentially, if people come to New York and to seek an abortion, you can't sue the doctors who do it here. Same thing about prescribe, you know, telemedicine and prescribing with the Prestone. And these shield laws, I think, are great

because it allows, it gives access to abortion to women all over the country. And so the number one way people get abortion today is through the medical assisted abortion, right? With these medications, one of them being myphoprestone, this is the abortion pill. And that's one of the ways, it's the main way that most people do these days.

And so if you remember, there was this nationwide ban on Mifeprestone by Judge Kasmeric in Texas that got lifted, thankfully. But that was a MAGA attempt to say, OK, leave it up to the states, not so much. And so what do they do? They go to the one county in Texas that has one judge so that you can, it's called Forum Shopping,

you shop for the judge and you go there and bring this nationwide injunction against this. He granted it and gave some huge sanctimonious Bible study about life and abortion. But thankfully that was overturned. And now with telemedicine and telehealth, I mean, who doesn't participate in some sort of telemedicine, telehealth these days? Everybody does, which is an amazing thing. It's given access to people all over the country, to some of the finest doctors there are, and to medications that they might not have access to. Those of us who live in big cities and where there are that, and to medications that they might not have access to. You know, you go to rural, we all,

those of us who live in big cities and where there's so many hospitals to choose from and the best doctors in the world, we're spoiled, right? We have access to medicine, but people who live in upstate New York, for example, in some towns that have 3000 people and they're not near a big city, they might not have the same kind of access

to certain types of doctors and to telehealth and then to certain medications. I'm sorry, they don't have access to the doctors unless they had telehealth. And so telehealth is this incredible thing that now is being used for abortion pills. And look, we have a perfect storm here. 20 year old woman became pregnant.

She lived in Texas, she couldn't get an abortion there. Telehealth into New York gets the abortion pill, goes to the hospital. And now you have a lawsuit where the Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is filing against this doctor, basically saying, you can't prescribe abortion pills to people in our state. What's interesting to me is the criminal aspect of this. I'd love to hear your civil analysis, but the criminal potential is what's interesting to me because in criminal law, if you commit a crime in one state and you flee to another state, or

if you're charged with a crime in one state, but you are in another state, you can issue an arrest warrant and give it to the whole country. And there's this kind of extradition agreement amongst all states, they've all signed it, where everyone agrees that if a fugitive from one state is found in another state, we will arrest them based on your warrant, bring them to court, and if you want them, we'll hold the body essentially, if you want them, you have to file what's called an extradition warrant, bring them to court. And if you want them will hold the body essentially, if you want them, you have to file what's called an extradition warrant, or they can

waive extradition. And so what's interesting to me is what Governor Hockel of New York said, which is, if somebody issues, let's say hypothetically, Texas issued a arrest warrant with charges, filed charges and an arrest warrant against this doctor for prescribing the abortion and put this arrest warrant in the nationwide database and sent law enforcement and said, go arrest her. Like, so she's driving down the street and she gets pulled over and they run her in the system, you know, with the driver's license, which what they do, a warrant pops up. What cops do is they arrest you, even though it has nothing to do with what they just pulled you over for and they take you in. What Governor Hockel said is she's not going to cooperate with any attempt to extradite somebody based on the shield law and based on the laws of New York. based on on you know the laws of New

York I thought that was interesting I think that's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out as you said this looks like a test case and so you know this is really going to push this leave it up to the states really really push all the issues yeah I think the shield laws are appropriate. I think that they're going to, of course, that Maggie Carpenter, Dr. Maggie Carpenter, an act purposely prescribed into Texas because it's the right thing to do under their Hippocratic oath. And with the benefit of shield law, if they didn't have the shield law in place, they

wouldn't have done it. But the shield law protects them operating out of New York and not allowing another state to cross over and sue them for practicing medicine, or in this case, telemedicine across state lines. I mean, I'm sure they'll get some sort of Texas ruling against it. And then it will end up in federal court

and end up at the United States Supreme Court. We'll be talking about it probably sometime in this term. And then this Supreme Court's gonna have to grapple with that ultimate decision. Are there, you know, 50% of abortions in America are through medication abortions, not in clinics, not with doctors. It's the truth.

And so now they're gonna have to grapple with, what do you do with medication abortions and pills being supplied into states that ban abortion? And they already tackled one Texas judge trying to do a nationwide ban, Judge Kasmerik, on the FDA approval of this back in 2001, in which all the studies show that these drugs are safer, not as safe, safer than common aspirin or Tylenol. So it's got to get to the Supreme Court. That's what Texas wants, of course, because they want to continue to roll back a woman's

right to choose, make her a second class citizen. And I'm just glad that the Maggie Carpenters of the world still exist, heroes. And it's a stark contrast to what corporate media owned by oligarchs and owned by companies that worry about their shareholders more than they worry about the First Amendment business that they're in and what they do. Let's turn to Matt Gaetz in the brief remaining time in TikTok.

Pardon me. So we got the new news, Karen, that finally, for some reason, after Matt Gaetz has decided he's not going, he's going to withdraw or he got fired from running for attorney general. Now we got this like out of the blue, we weren't expecting it was like done and buried. The bipartisan House Ethics Committee has decided to release the Gates report. Now just to bring everybody up to speed.

You know how I know there's no weaponization of the Department of Justice under Joe Biden? Because they didn't go after Matt Gaetz. And they dropped the investigation of Matt Gaetz. Probably for many reasons like they don't want to be bothered, the guy was running for office. They had some questions about one or two of the witnesses, but the ethics committee brought in the testimony of at least three women. Two of them were minors at the time

talking about drug fueled parties and sex that resulted. Some of that out of state. They took in that testimony. Matt Gaetz likes to say, he likes to falsely claim that he was exonerated by the Department of Justice because they dropped the charges. That's not how that works. You rarely, I'll talk about it from the defense side, you rarely ever get a closeout memo from a prosecutor exonerating you. They may close the file, they may disappear, you never

hear from them again, you know, whereas just moments before they were all over you and your client and suddenly it's like, what happened to that? And then it just disappeared because they moved on to something else. You might get a deferred prosecution agreement. You might get a non-prosecution agreement, but you don't get an absolution. And you don't get, yes, they cleared me. It didn't happen. They just didn't pursue the investigation any longer.

They made that prosecutorial decision, that discretion that they have. But that's not the same standard that the Ethics Committee uses about whether one of their, as alleged, one of their members used drugs, used bribery, witnessed tampering, and other things. It's all, let's just remember for a moment, but there is a guy named Joel Greenberg who's spending nine years in a federal prison for doing the exact same things that Matt Gaetz is being accused of with Matt Gaetz. Somebody did it.

So we're getting the report now in advance of the report. What Karen, what did you see what Matt Gaetz did in advance? No, what did he do? Oh, of course he posted. Yeah, with his post. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, tell our audience. What'd you say? No, no, go ahead. Oh, yeah. He said, well, I guess he posted. Oh, when he said he was in his post, yeah. Yeah, so tell our audience. What'd you say?

No, no, go ahead. Oh, yeah, he said, well, I guess he's in his 40s. I don't know. When I was in my 30s. It's too gross for me to say. OK. I partied hard. I womanized.

I love the sane washing around the word womanized. You know? It's so rapey. It's very rapey, thank you. Allegedly rapey. It's very rapey, thank you. Allegedly rapey. This whole like, I was a rapscallion that womenized. I hate it, it's such an old timey phrase for sexual predator behavior against women and misogyny that we need to get rid of that.

That needs to be canceled once and for all. It was back in the day, JFK, I was just like, JFK, you know, betting girls. Like, fuck you. Pardon me. Pardon me. Beep that out. Of course, he comes out with that because now he's happily married, right? So now it's like, I worked hard, I played hard, womanized, drank a lot, but that's not

a crime. I'm like, all right, let's see what's in the report. I've always had a working theory that he knows what's in the report because even though it's a bipartisan commission, it's one of the few bipartisan committees in Congress. I think it's six Republicans and six Democrats. It's led by the chairperson is of the majority party, which is Republican. And like 24 hours after that guy, that Republican came out and said, well, we're going to vote to release the report unless Matt Gates resigns. And he was like on cue. It was like call and response. Matt Gates is like, so I resigned from my position. I'm like, somebody tip this guy off as to what is in that report.

No, no, he knows what's in the report because he was there when it happened. He didn't. He knows what's in the report because he was there when it happened. He did he knows that the conduct is that's why I mean who better to know what happened who It's true. The obvious is I'd miss the obvious which is yes. He did it This is like the old Howard Stern line when OJ was still alive, when OJ used to give out money as a reward if somebody would identify the killer of Nicole Brown Simpson.

And Howard Stern was like, this is gonna be the easiest money I've ever done. It was OJ. Hey, I'm gonna get that money. So that's the same, you're right. He knows he did it. He knows that's our report. He knows what he did. So he knows if it comes out what he did in the report, it's horrendous.

So here's the one that's going to make you happy because you and I debated about whether his resigning created a vacancy under the statute that governs vacancies. I don't know. I'm not a believer. Well, there's no backsees when you do vacancy creation. At least that's how I read the statute that governs vacancies. That means that there's no backsees when you do vacancy creation. At least that's how I read the statute. And they were already doing special elections in his district to replace him. But he floated a trial balloon

in another social media post today that I thought of you immediately. Because it said, somebody told me I should do the following. And then he had like, it was like a recipe. Like he gave all the ingredients. He's like, one, it was like a recipe, like he gave all the ingredients. He's like, one, I returned to the 118th and I unresigned. I'm like, oh, here we go.

Two, I swear in on the 119th, I was elected after all. He put that in parents. Yep. Three, as a point of order, which has to be, any member of Congress can bring up a point of order, which has to be like immediately investigated within 48 hours. I raised the issue of all the slush funds used, and this is what Marjorie Teller Greene has said in the past, all the slush funds used to cover up other sexual misconduct by members of Congress,

not named Matt Gaetz. So like, here we go. Here's the cannibalization. And I should do that all before I start my own Matt Gaetz show. So take it from there, Karen. I mean, look, I'm not going to gloat, but it seemed very obvious to me that he wanted to keep all his options open. The way, just kind of the way he did it was a little bit too, too cute by half, as they say, or whatever that phrase is. And, you know, he's, he's keeping his options open. That's what I always thought, because he knows how bad this is. He doesn't want it to come out.

And so he was hoping by resigning, he could crush it, go off and become attorney general. Well, that didn't work, because he's that bad. He's like nuclear and toxic. So he's like, okay, then I'll go make money and be the next Joe Rogan or whoever he wants to be. And then he sees, okay, but no, the report's going to come out anyway. So he's threatening. It's kind of like a threat. I mean, that's kind of, you know, kind of what he's doing. But I saw, I saw it always as he's keeping his options open so that he you know, it's like a game of villainous chess. It's like a game of villainous chess. Yeah, he is villainous. I'd like him to go away for a very long time.

Speaking of, here's a, I have no segue for this. Let's talk about the United States Supreme Court. I'll posit it this way for you in the remaining time that we have. Do the Chinese, and the Chinese government have First Amendment rights, Karen, that the Supreme Court will recognize to force them to cancel out another Biden policy and law

on the books that compels TikTok and its Chinese government owner to sell the US subsidiary, allow the Tiktok to operate in the United States by selling it to somebody that's not Chinese. And does that violate as the ACLU of all entities, which doesn't surprise me, has argued violate the First Amendment? What do you think, Karen? I don't think it does.

I think it's pretty clear that the First Amendment is not absolute. There are restrictions on the First Amendment. You can't yell fire in a crowded theater. There's all sorts of things. And you can't also jeopardize national security. And if Congress passed a law basically addressing this issue, and that law is going up to the United States Supreme Court,

and we'll see what they say. But the thing about that is, the Supreme Court taking this case, and what they essentially said, the question that they're going to hear when they granted cert, the question is whether protecting Americans from foreign, okay, so there's this,

a statute called, protecting Americans from foreign, okay, so there's this, a statute called Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, okay? It's mouthful. So the question is whether the protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act as applied to the petitioners violates the First Amendment. And that's what they're gonna decide is that statute

that was passed by Congress, whether that violates the First Amendment. And that's what they're gonna decide is that statute that was passed by Congress, whether that violates the First Amendment. I think it absolutely does not, but Donald Trump gave a dog whistle to his court. He basically said, when asked how you feel about TikTok, he went on and on about his son and then the young people like it it and they want the youth. And so I have a warm spot for TikTok.

I mean, saying he has a warm spot for TikTok, it really felt like a Supreme court dog whistle. It really felt like he was basically saying to them, I don't know if it's because now he's in with the billionaire kind of social media people. I don't know what it is, but it felt like he was sending them a message like,

if this could go either way, I have a warm spot for them. Keep that in mind. The young people like them, the young people more, the Republicans always had a hard time is what he said with the young people, but we won, you know, we got 30%, something more than that of the vote of the youth. And so essentially he was basically saying to the Supreme Court, if you like the way things are going and you want to keep it that way, keep TikTok.

Yeah, look, Donald Trump changed his position on TikTok after one of his major donors, who was a big TikTok investor, basically told him to. This is another Donald Trump for sale. He announced a couple of days ago, literally we're for sale. If you have $1 billion, I feel like I was watching an infomercial at like four o'clock in the morning.

Do you have $1 billion to invest in the United States? Then come on in and we'll speed you through all regulatory regulatory approvals, including environmental!lamation mark. He actually wrote that. And then like two days later, right on cue, Softbank was like, we'll do a hundred billion, but I'm thinking with or without the fraud that came with your last investment in America.

Um, and so Donald Trump, you know, he, they're all, all the oligarchs and invest investors, sorry, are whispering in Donald Trump's Trump's ear and convinced him to back off what in 2020 was a pretty firm stance against TikTok. And then suddenly it started to soften after this major donor to Donald Trump started telling him that his own interests were in TikTok, despite the Chinese government ownership. He got Donald Trump inviting the premier of China to come to the inauguration. I don't see him inviting the other allies. First of all, usually at inaugurations it's not the it's not the premiers and the presidents. It's usually the ambassadors and other

slightly lower level people from diplomacy standpoints. But he's, because Donald Trump's figured out that he and his family and his family office are gonna make a lot of money with China and not having a trade war with them is good. And not making them, and I mean the Chinese government because it's really sovereign owned, sell TikTok is probably a good thing. And Donald Trump doesn't care about national security or national intelligence.

Any, I'll posit this, anybody that truly cared about America and its defense, national security of America would not put Tulsi Gabbard in and nominate her to be the head of the National Intelligence Directorate. Just wouldn't. Wouldn't have Pete Hegseth as defense secretary if you really cared about that. Wouldn't have classified documents spilling in his bathroom, spilling all over the place. I'm sorry if I am I supposed to acknowledge that you've changed location?

I'm sorry that I my battery from the mic and plug in and right. I love it was such a plum. Such such a lot happens off camera. And with a one and with one leg. But you know, a lot happens off camera. With one leg. You know, it was not easy to hobble over here. I'll tell you that. I had to plug in my computer at some point when

you were doing part of it. And I almost, okay, just to show you how more and more graceful you are than me, and you're one legged. I almost tripped in my hotel room. Just moving an inch to plug in the computer. I almost tripped into the chair. Okay, well, live TV everybody. So, the Supreme Court's gonna take it up.

The interesting thing though is the timing, Karen, because the Supreme Court's gonna take it up like a week or two before the inauguration. Biden administration solicitor general is gonna be arguing. However, this is gonna be a little gift to the incoming president, where he gets to

declare the tick-tock to help got him elected along with baron Trump or whatever else his argument is. And the podcast bros, not named Midas, Mycelis, you know, is that, is this going to be their gift? They're going to have to struggle with these. I don't think it's a struggle though. But you do have major civil liberties entities and public interest groups like the ACLU who have said that Chinese have First Amendment rights and you can't force them to sell a platform

just because you... But it's to just because you part, just because we've allowed a foreign entity. Donald Trump says we're under invasion by undocumented aliens. We're really under invasion by Iran, China, and Russia, who are using social media and platforms like this as disinformation campaigns to foment discontent, to create frisson, to put us at each other's throats. And Donald Trump colludes in that,

not directly by coordinating his efforts with that, but benefiting from that creation of fomented discontent, putting each other and creating a seething United States. Donald Trump only succeeds when America is seething in a cauldron. A calm, pacific, tepid America does not generate, create a Donald Trump. So he wants us to see things, so he benefits, so he's never going to shut down the Russians and Iranians and Chinese who are trying to brainwash us through social media and Facebook and everything else. He's never going to, because that's not to his interests now we're gonna see what the United States Supreme Court

does along with all of this so we've reached the end Karen I know you're you plugged in so that's good we've reached the end of another great episode of legal AF on the Midas Touch Network you're gonna be seeing Karen this week she can't talk about it but you're're going to be seeing Karen on Thursday. Big arraignment in New York. Yeah. All right. Against the client that their name shall remain nameless right here, but you know it. We've always been practicing lawyers.

Popehawk. We've always talked about that. And you know, sometimes our schedules, you know, we, you see us podcasting from all over the country in different areas because we, life goes on and we continue to practice. So, yeah, Yeah. I really really appreciate you. Love you and what you do and the courage that you bring to it. Yeah. So until our next time, support our sponsors, support the Midas Touch Network, help us continue to grow our pro-democracy freely independent. Boy, now more than ever is that important in

the America that we're now in. So until our next episode on Saturday with Ben Myself, we get to talk about the Joe Biden interview. That's going to be really fun. And other hot takes along the way here on the Legal AF YouTube channel. This is Michael Popok and Karen Friedman at Knifilow signing off. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.