Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump in FEAR with FINAL DAYS before Verdict

Episode Date: May 26, 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) the Trump criminal trial as it moves to closing arguments and jury deliberation next week; (2) the release of new damning evidence against Trump in the Mar a Lago case, as the Special Counsel moves for a new gag order to stop Trump from claiming he was the target of an FBI assassination attempt; (3) the Supreme Court allowing the “bleaching” of black voters through racial gerrymandering, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Thanks to our sponsors: Henson Shaving: Visit https://HensonShaving.com/LEGALAF to pick the razor for you and use code LEGALAF for 2 years worth of free blades! Fum: Head to https://TryFum.com/legalaf and get a FREE GIFT with the JOURNEY PACK today when you use code LEGALAF Beam: Get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to https://shopbeam.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF at checkout! 3 Day Blinds: For their buy 1 get 1 50% off deal, head to https://3DayBlinds.com/LEGALAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af 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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only at Starbucks. We are heading into closing arguments, Michael Popak, in the Donald Trump criminal trial in Manhattan for falsification of business records. This trial has moved expeditiously. We probably could have had summation last week, but for Donald Trump requesting off or purportedly Barron's graduation, there are a few other delays here and there, but this trial has been moving, I think, at a pace that many didn't believe that we would be potentially getting a verdict

in this upcoming week. And look, I want to talk about the prosecutions case I want to talk about whatever it is that the defense was doing when they called the MAGA lawyer Robert Costello and they called the defense lawyer Todd Blanche's paralegal I don't know it was a tale of kind of competent, sharp, effective lawyering by the prosecution, staying on script and telling a cohesive story that they outlined in their opening statements. And then contrasting that with, I don't even know what the defense was, was

even trying to make as their defense. I want to get your take on it, but it certainly wasn't cohesive or coherent to me. I then want to talk about the release of previously confidential documents that have now been made public in the federal Mar-a-Lago document case before Judge Eileen Cannon, which she's completely derailed the trial date in that case. One of the things Donald Trump's been doing also with Judge Cannon is he will file these frivolous motions to dismiss, but he will

attach a confidential discovery to the public filings that he wants to release in public to kind of spread half truths and propaganda and mislead. Because he views if he puts it on the public docket, he could take confidential records and make them public and Judge Eileen Cannon will order that they be released. So this new batch of documents relating to the search warrant executed on Mar-a-Lago for Donald Trump's frivolous motion to dismiss on due process grounds was very damaging to Donald Trump. I mean you have photographs of Waltine now to Donald Trump's assistant or valet, like actually moving the documents.

You see him moving the documents right before the search, right before the subpoena return date, when the FBI and Department of Justice show up in early June, on June 3rd of 2022. And you see him moving that. Then we've also learned that through the release of these documents that there

were additional classified, highly sensitive records that were still in Donald Trump's like bedroom and closet areas following when the search warrant was executed in Mar-a-Lago in August of 2022 that had to be turned over in late 2022 and 2023. So you're like, why would Donald Trump want to make this public? But one of the things that Trump and MAGA were pushing was the standard use of force policy by the FBI and Department of Justice that exists in every single search warrant. It's just a statement of the policy by the FBI and Department of Justice regarding the

use of lethal force and when it cannot be used in connection with the search warrant, Donald Trump and MAGA started saying, look, this proves that President Biden was trying to kill Donald Trump and Merrick Garland ordered the assassination. Such dangerous, dangerous lies. I want to talk about that with you, Michael Popak. And speaking about just dangerous, dangerous behavior, I mean, Justice Alito is, are we gonna learn every single day he's got some new home and some new flag? Apparently he's like living the lifestyle

of the rich and famous as well and these lavish mansions. And he is flying these appeal, this appeal to heaven flag, which is a right-wing extremist flag that was seen at the insurrection. Such a bizarre flag to put up. He previously had the inverted American flag at his Washington, DC residence. Are we going to find out that there are more homes and more flags?

And meanwhile, now this goes to his inherent bias and just his lack of moral authority, lack of character, to be putting it nicely for him to be issuing these rulings in Popock on Thursday. He issued another ruling with, he led the, he wrote for the court a six to three decision where the right wing extremist on the Supreme Court upheld the gerrymandering in South Carolina where the South Carolina legislature just moved basically 30,000 black voters from Charleston to other voting districts so that they cannot vote in the first congressional district but diffuse their votes in other congressional districts. And Justice Alito, despite the fact,

Popak, that there was a whole trial that was held in South Carolina before a three-judge federal court panel that heard all of the evidence about how racist the gerrymandering was, Justice Alito said, you should have just believed the legislature. The legislature said they did it for political reasons, not racist reasons. That's why they moved the 30,000 black voters to not vote in the first congressional district. You should have just listened to them. That's the guy flying the inverted American flag and the, you know, and the other extremist flag.

So we'll talk about that and more on this episode of Legal AF. And, you know, this is one of these episodes, Popak, of Legal AF that is historic. I think where we are today, as we're recording this live, think about where we could be next Saturday. Think about it. The corporate media is so not preparing people for the fact that it is likely, and again, we can't get in the heads of the jury, but that based on all of the evidence that's been there, that Donald Trump can be convicted. He can be found guilty. I think that's the likely outcome. So we'll talk about that and more. But Popak, how are you doing, sir? I'm doing great. I was just thinking about what you just said about historic moments.

Could you imagine if you and I didn't found Legal F four years ago? And things like Supreme Court justice flying upside down flags of the opposition against democracy weren't spoken about and examined and magnified the way we do it. If we didn't have this program to talk about the Trump on trials, things that people said would never happen, that he'd never be indicted, that he'd never be in a courtroom, that he'd never be prosecuted, that he'd never be potentially convicted. What if we didn't have this network, this show, talk about these things and to not manage expectations, set expectations about how our justice system works civilly and criminally to address violations of our Constitution and the attempts to overthrow democracy. Think of the three stories that you and I just strung together for today. It could have been, we

could have done multiple variations of three. But these are indicative of why we do this show, to talk about the likely conviction of a former president for his own bad criminal conduct, a Supreme Court that is not only ethically challenged, but has lost its integrity in its role as one of the three co-equal branches of our government. And then talk about what is happening. We have to shine a light on an out-of-control federal judge that has lost completely control of an important case to the American people to be adjudicated, not to be procedured to death, not to be motioned to death, not to be continued to death, not to be, let's not make a decision so I don't have to worry about an appeal to death. The American people on every side of the aisle and no aisle deserved a trial of Donald Trump

before the election to decide whether it was thumbs up or thumbs down and they were voting for a criminal or not. I'm okay if people want to vote for a criminal. It is their right, even a convicted criminal, but it is also our right to know whether he is and not have Judge Cannon be a pawn of Donald Trump, which is all she has become, and to deny the American people the right to know whether he is exonerated or guilty of espionage. Look at these pictures.

I mean, there's enough evidence in Mar-a-Lago to convict 10 people, let alone Donald Trump. But again, we have to talk about this. Yes, we take, I've had the pleasure of literally bumping into four different fans and people in our audience in the last 36 hours in different locations. And each one of them almost said the identical thing, which is it, without what we do, they would be completely driven around the bend that we give them hope because we tell them what is going on to contrast against mainstream media and other places where it's opaque and they don't know what the heck is going on and they don't know who to believe and they've come to believe us.

I take that responsibility. You do. Karen does. We take it so with it's such a heavy burden that we gladly accept to do this. So I'm glad I'm here with you again. You know, the corporate media coverage on the Manhattan criminal trial against Trump has been nothing short of an absolute failure, an absolute disaster, often led by people who are not lawyers who do not even know what this case is about, pushing narratives that are just inconsistent with what's actually going on in the courtroom.

And we pride ourselves on the fact that we have multiple sources in the courtroom. There are people affiliated with the Midas Touch Network, like Harry Litman, who are there every single day. We rely on also other journalists and reporters who are there in the courtroom and we try to paint the most accurate picture of what is going on in this case and what the facts are that actually matters with the law in this falsification of business records case,

that as that name implies, it involves records. It involves falsifying them. And I think it's worthwhile as we talk about where we are in this criminal trial, as we head into summation, is to tell you all about what Donald Trump said yesterday on his social media platform. This is Trump saying what he believes his defense is. He goes, the bookkeeping error that I am being incorrectly and unconstitutionally prosecuted for is the fact that a bookkeeper innocently and correctly called a legal expense paid to a

lawyer a legal expense. In even simpler words, I called a legal expense a legal expense. What the hell else would you call it? A Biden inspired election interference hoax. exclamation point, exclamation point. Now, Popak, here's the thing. During the opening statement of Donald Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanche, Todd Blanche didn't say, look, here's what went down. There was the situation with Stormy Daniels that we admit took place.

There was the situation with Stormy Daniels that we admit took place. Donald Trump was very embarrassed about it, but how it was going to interact with his family. So he relied on professionals. He did a standard NDA that he would normally do. He's not a proud moment in his life. And he relied on lawyers. He relied on professionals and he relied on lawyers, he relied on professionals, and he relied on a bookkeeper. And ultimately, there was a mistake that was made

by this bookkeeper who just input the entry in wrong. And it should have said reimbursement, but the bookkeeper made this error, and the bookkeeper said, "'Legal expense, there was no intent here. "'It was a big mistake. This has much to do about nothing. We apologize for any inconvenience.

There may be negligence here, but this is not criminal. That's not what was argued in opening. In opening, it was that the $420,000 payment to Michael Cohen could not be a reimbursement because Trump is cheap and he's stingy, so he would never pay $420,000 on a $130,000 payment to Michael Cohen. No, the $420,000 was legitimate legal expenses for services that were rendered by Michael Cohen. That's what the defense was saying that their case was going to be about. And then Popak, they proceeded never to talk about that again. And they started saying that's the cross-examination of Stormy, that she's a liar, the cross-examination of Cohen, that he went rogue,

and that these calls didn't happen. But ultimately, the checks were signed by Donald Trump to pay Cohen ultimately $420,000. And when you say, where does that money come from? How do you get that? Well, Trump never called a bookkeeper. The closest that was called to a bookkeeper was the former controller of the Trump organization, Jeff McConney.

And when you look through his notes and the notes of the former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, and you add all of the numbers up together, when add that payment to from that Red Finch consulting company that was trying to manipulate polls for Donald Trump that Cohen claimed to pay $50,000. Although he testified, it ended up being more like $20,000, but he told Trump it was $50,000. But that's how you got the—by the way, he talked about that in his books as well. It's not new news. That's how you get the $50,000. And then you take the $130,000 payment,

you grossed it up by multiplying it by two, you do 180 multiplied by two, you add in a bonus there and you get the $420,000 to the number. And we see how that number came about. You can follow the checks. Michael Popak, as you're aware, Donald Trump in his election disclosure forms with the Government Ethics Committee states in his 2018 report that these were reimbursements to Michael Cohen.

In various lawsuits that Trump filed against Stormy Daniels. He acknowledged that these payments were reimbursements to Michael Cohen because Donald Trump was trying to enforce an arbitration agreement against Stormy Daniels. So he wanted to be a party to the non-disclosure agreement and he wanted to be Denison, the alias for him there. And he said this was a reimbursal. He admitted it's a reimbursement to Cohen. A court has already found that it was a reimbursement to Cohen.

Trump posted on his social media, it was a reimbursement to Cohen. So finally, Popak, you get, after the prosecution rests, and you get Michael Cohen on the stand for 21 hours on the stand for 21 hours on the stand and by all accounts for everyone in the courtroom who I've spoken to, who I have so much respect for, people like Harry Litman who's previously clerked for two Supreme Court justices, who was a leader at the Department of Justice, he says Michael

Cohen was unflappable. And then so the prosecution rests, the defense calls a paralegal of Todd Blanch. What a weird person to call. If I'm the jury, I'm like, the paralegal of Todd Blanch? Like, okay, are you going to call anybody else? And then they call Robert Costello, who was the worst possible witness right there. And I'll pause there to turn it over to you before talking more about Robert Costello, or if you want to talk about Robert Costello. But Robert Costello tied this case up with a nice,

pretty ribbon and a bow for the prosecution. You would never get in Robert Costello emails where he acts like a mafioso intermediary trying to shut down Cohen unless he took the stand like he did. It was the most perfect person if you're the prosecutor to allow in. And so Popock, I know the media was focused on these moments here or there that had no real relevance or significance to the case. That's not to say there could be a rogue juror who could hang this. Anything is possible. But if you look at all of the evidence I laid out, Trump never said, oh, it's the bookkeeper error defense. He never went there. So, what do you think? What do you make of all of this as we head into next week,

where I think a verdict is going to be handed down? Let me take it from the jury charge. The jury charge, it's going to the jury before they start deliberating to take the facts that they learned that were induced in evidence by the various witnesses, 20 witnesses for the prosecution, two witnesses for the defense, one being a paralegal who collated a bunch of Verizon telephone bills to establish that there were phone calls between Michael Cohen and Bob Costello who was again, another lawyer testifying against a client at one point was either Michael's lawyer or somebody that he consulted with thinking he was his lawyer, when at the same time, Bob Costello was really representing the true client in interest, which was Donald Trump.

We only found that out during the very artful masterful cross-examination by Susan Hoffinger of Bob Costello, who's a MAGA lawyer, who's a pawn in a puppet, who got dragged down voluntarily to MAGA Congress a week or two before his testimony in order to suggest that in all his 40 years of practice, and he was a federal prosecutor a million years ago, just like Rudy Giuliani was, that he has never seen a more, this is the new term that they've come up with over on the right, lawfare, right? Not warfare, lawfare, the legal system being used and weaponized against Donald Trump,

talking about gaslighting. So, oh, Michael Cohen was a client of mine, and he's a liar, and Donald, and Alvin, and it was just a series of questions asked by Elise Stefanik in which the only response was yes, that's true. Yes, that's true. That's yes, that's true. All these talking points from America. That Bob Costello, the one that Rudy Giuliani used to be a colleague of in the US Attorney's office, but they ended up getting sideways over a million

dollar bill and Costello had to sue Giuliani. The Giuliani, the Costello that went into the grand jury as the only witness after Alvin Bregg led him in to talk to the grand jury prior to the indictment of Donald Trump. And the grand jury was like, yeah, okay, no, we have the evidence for indictment. That Bob Costello, the Bob Costello that against the wishes of his own lawyers as reporting has brought out, Donald Trump wanted on the stand to give the final word, basically his own summation through Bob Costello, except I guess they forgot about all the terrible emails that Bob Costello had written to his law partners about Michael Cohen, in which he said, who's this fucking asshole? Sorry,

Legal AFers. Does he know who he's playing with? The most powerful man in the world, right? His true client revealed Donald Trump. Now I see why it was a white knuckle moment for Todd Blanchard, who's doing terribly in this case, as is Susan Necklis, because they didn't want to put Bob Costello on. For what purpose? We were kibitzing at your wedding about whether Bob Costello was going to be called. And I said to our group, no way. First of all, he's not a prescipient witness with knowledge of anything relevant to the case. You can't call one witness to comment on the credibility of another witness, which is all he was apparently

being tried to do. I was surprised that Rashawn actually let him take the stand on that particular issue of whether Michael Cohen is telling the truth or not. But that's what they did. But it was a high wire act and for the defense, it had failed. And that was the last witness that went on in front of this jury before they're now going, that was it. Now they went dark, they got sent home early because the judge did a good thing. He decided that because of the weird Memorial Day calendar, we would just sort of end trial for the jury Tuesday and pick up again the following Tuesday or so with jury charge, they're gonna get charged,

take about an hour, and we'll talk about that in a minute, and deliberations, I'm sorry, what we call summations or closing arguments, jury charge and then deliberation. So we're going to have something, verdict, hung jury or whatever, and I think verdict in favor of prosecution by the end of next week. In terms of the charge conference, it went all for the prosecution, as it had to under the law in New York, particularly the defense tried to argue two things. They tried to argue a

defense for which they put on no evidence. And they're just gonna like have a free-floating defense go to the jury, which is not how that works. You have to have a defense that ties to something that was developed in evidence. And Emil Bové for Trump knows better. And he tried to argue again reliance on counsel, presence of counsel. everything Donald Trump had counsel involved, whether it was counsel working for the National Enquirer or Michael Cohen. And the judge says, there's no evidence of that. I've already rejected that. You raised it late. And nothing got developed after the fact in the trial that would allow you to have that defense. So no. Then they tried to argue, well, there

has to be two crimes. We keep talking about this at length because it's important in New York. In order to get to felony level, it has to be the bookkeeping fraud, which is the books and records fraud, as Donald Trump likes to minimize it. Well, it was just a bookkeeping error. We only heard from an accounts payable supervisor, and we heard from the controller, and neither one of them can we chalk it off to bookkeeping error. It was more like direction from Alan Weisenberg and Donald Trump and Michael Cohen. But in any event, there's a little tricky thing here. You have facts have to match your defenses.

So they tried to argue the lawyers for Donald Trump that the second crime after the books and records fraud crime has to be specific and the jury has to have unanimity about that, what the crime is, the second crime. We've always said from the indictment forward, this is interesting. What is the second crime? Is it the election interference because we kept calling the case the election interference trial or is it tax fraud because they took a business deduction for legal expenses when it wasn't really? Because you don't get to deduct payoffs to the person you had sex with. That's not a thing in the IRS code. You can go look it up. So what was it? And we were always like, Karen reminded us it doesn't have to

be anything in particular. And certainly it doesn't have to be an indicted charge, and they don't have to prove the second crime, so to speak, or even what the second crime is, just that it was in furtherance of a second crime. And they have done that for the prosecution. So they wanted, the defense wanted the judge to instruct the jury that you have to, as a group, as all 12 of you, have to be consistent and unanimous about which crime it is. So if seven thought it was election fraud and five thought it was tax fraud, no go, no felony. And the judge says, that's not the law. So, little girl, get a problem with your argument. That's not the law in the state of New York. So seven can find one crime and five can find another or can break down another permutations, and that's okay. And therefore, you have a books and records fraud in furtherance of a second crime to be determined by the jury, not an undited second crime of their choice based on the evidence

that's been presented and based on what happens in summation. So that's a win and a wind at the back of the prosecution going into this defense. And I agree with you, although I did have an interesting back and forth with Karen during the midweek, I thought their opening statement, 20-minute literally opening statement by Blanche was terrible. I thought that it didn't explain at all to the jury the narrative, the thematic of what they thought the evidence was going to prove. She said, well, I think it's fine. You don't even have to do an opening, which is true. You don't want to tie your hands if you're on the defense because you got to see what the evidence is actually presented. But you knew what

the evidence was going to be based on the dump on you of all the evidence. You heard the opening, the prosecution went first, at least in the opening. I think they were remiss in doing the 20-minute thing. You're right. At nowhere did Blanche ever say, for instance, that because they can't concede the things that Donald Trump won't let them concede, that he's a bad guy that slept around outside of his marriage and then try to pay it off because he was worried about losing the election. That's what they should have said. And then you could walk the line.

Now I'm talking like a defense lawyer. Then you could walk the line with the jury, where the jury of New Yorkers who are really sophisticated and have really thick skins would go over their coffee and hard roll, they go, yeah, that sort of makes sense. Okay, that's not a crime. But that's not what they were left with when you have a client who's got his hand up your backside

and makes your mouth move, which is what Donald Trump's doing with the lawyers a blanch and necklace. I mean, I'm not defending them. They're allowing it to happen. They sacrificed their professional independence and compromised it for him. That's between them, their maker, and the Bar Association at the appropriate time. But in terms of the presentation of the evidence, who presented to the jury throughout the case and through opening, and I'm sure during the summations, a coherent, logical, internally consistent legal theory and thematic that matches the facts, the prosecution. Could there be somebody on there? They keep pointing to the two lawyers. Oh, the two lawyers.

Okay, let's talk about two lawyers for a minute. They're not trial lawyers. One's a corporate lawyer and the other one works for hedge funds. So yes, they went to law school, but these are people that particularly chose not to go to court. And I'm not sure, they're not the jury for a person. So yes, sometimes the jury looks to lawyers as like when they're in the box or in the. So yes, sometimes the jury looks to lawyers as like in the in when they're in the box or in the deliberation room as, you know, added guides and everything. But even they should be able to pop through this this this noise of the of the Trump defense, all they're going to say in their summation and they go first this time, and then the

prosecution goes last, which will be on Tuesday, we'll be riveted by that. All they're going to have to say is there is no Trump Tower conspiracy, even though you heard from two-thirds of it. You can't believe David Pecker, I don't know how they can possibly say that. You can't believe Michael, you can't believe a word Michael Cohen says. He doesn't know whether he's coming or going. And you didn't hear any evidence that suggests that Donald Trump himself did anything wrong, and he's the actual criminal defendant here. You know, it's some version of that. And then the

jury's gonna be like, well, and then the prosecution going last will say, let's walk through the evidence. Click. Let's talk about David Pecker, what you learned from David Pecker. Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. Let's go Stormy Daniels, let's go the three insiders at the Trump organization, accounts payable lady, executive assistant lady, let's get the publisher out here, you heard from the publisher about Donald Trump, let's Michael Cohen, I mean they're just going to click, click, click, click, click, check, check, check, check, check, text, text, text, text, deck, let's play the audio of the secret recordings of Donald Trump. You know, this is going to go like two hours, two and a half hours, something like that. And then that's it. Then they rest. And the

jury gets the case, right? And gets charged and then get the case. And I think then if they're still doing this dark thing on Wednesdays, which I don't know why, I'm not sure they don't, I'm not sure. I think the jury's going to be deliberating on Wednesday. Yeah, that was only because the judge had things to do, but he's only presiding over a jury deliberation. So they'll go Wednesday and they'll get the case Tuesday afternoon, charge, maybe Wednesday's first time of deliberation. And so I don't know, Wednesday night, Thursday morning, I see this as a six to eight hour event, one way or the other. I know there's 34 counts, but they really break down as whether he did it or he didn't

do it. If they believe Donald Trump did it, both crimes, he goes down for all 34. I've heard some speculation that well, Eric signed some of the checks, but I don't think anybody thinks that Eric Trump did that. He woke up one day and thought it was a nice idea to pay back Michael Cohen. So I think they either buy it hook, line and sinker what the prosecution's selling, or they don't. And he's either exonerated or he is convicted. The only question is, and apparently they're not, and this is the last thing I'll say on this point, Ben, they're not getting an alternative charge to find for the misdemeanor as the lesser included offense

versus the felony. We had speculated earlier that they may, if they really wanted to help out Donald Trump in the defense, they would at least let the jury find a misdemeanor, which would be like no jail time. And he could just do all of his ranting and raving about, I took the misdemeanor because, but they're not even doing that. So this jury is light on, light off, binary felonies or nothing. And that's what they're left with. And I don't know. I mean,

I make predictions. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're wrong. I'm usually right. So are you. I think he gets convicted. What do you think? I think he gets, look, I don't think he's going to get acquitted. I could say that with a great degree of confidence. I think he will either be convicted or I just don't know if there's one rogue juror or two rogue jurors out there. From all that I'm hearing in the courtroom, lots of people do not think that there is anyone who at least is showing signs of being like a holdout or showing the type of demeanor you would expect. I understand all the jurors,

but not really even like in cliques, they're taking it very seriously. They're distancing themselves like two feet apart when they walk in. They're not socializing, not typical things we see with jurors, because they're very, very focused from what I hear. It's why, Popak, I'll give my prediction

of when I think there's going to be a verdict and when I think it's gonna happen. It's slightly different than yours, but let's wait for after this break and I'll give you my prediction. Let's take a quick break. Here's something we all know, cheap razors are annoying. They cut you, they irritate you,

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to get a free gift with your order today. So we are back live on LegalAF. Michael Popok, your prediction, you thought it would be around six to eight hours of deliberation. I think if this was not a case involving Donald Trump as the criminal defendant based on the evidence that's out there, I'm with you.

I would even say perhaps shorter than six to eight hours. I think given the historical moment, I think based on everything I've heard from people in the courtroom, just on how serious and deliberative and poker face these jurors seem, I don't think that they will reach a verdict regardless until Friday. I could even see them wanting to go over the weekend and even, uh, finish their deliberations Monday morning.

I'll tell you why I'm wrong. I'll tell you why I'm wrong. Because I forgot something. Karen told me something on Wednesday with our audience that I was wrong. The way it works mechanically, it's going to take much longer because they're going to ask for replays of the way New York works. They don't get the transcripts. They got to have a court reporter read back witness testimony. They only get exhibits when they ask for them or they can have the whole dump put in the room. There's just a creaky, slow presentation process issue

in New York State Criminal Court that doesn't exist in federal. So you're right, that's gonna add on like a couple of days onto my original prediction. I forgot how slow Materials get delivered back to the jury when they ask questions That right there is how you win a debate ladies and gentlemen of our legal am jury He's got it. I just got a dazzle you with my Taps out. It's probably

Karen made a very good point on midweek. I just forgot it. Right. Um, well there, there you have it. So I, I can see it going until I think Friday will have a verdict by the end of Friday. I would not get too concerned until Monday afternoon. I would start feeling like, is there a holdout of Monday afternoon. By Tuesday, I would start getting

worried that that it's hung on Tuesday. That's how I would view it. I want to talk about... One last thing. We'll be able to report along the way. We do get a little communication from the jury and we'll be able to report on it. They ask questions and notes and it goes to the jury, to the judge. Judge decides with the lawyers whether they're going to answer the question and how they're going to answer the question. So we'll, so you have to read some tea leaves with some notes. They ask for certain pieces of evidence and playback of certain evidence. So it won't be completely dark. It won't be a black box. You and I and Karen and others, we'll be able to talk about and try to help make predictions based on where it is,

as opposed to, in other words, it's not like picking the pope, where they go away for five days and you wait for the smoke to come out the top. Or as Karen put it, the two buzzers, we have a verdict. We'll know some things that we'll be able to speculate on with reasonable We'll know some things that we'll be able to speculate on with reasonable confidence along the way. And if the jury does have a problem or one or two holdouts, we'll get the judge giving them what we refer to as an Allen charge to require them to continue to deliberate until they're exhausted. And I think if you hear that, we have a verdict, I would be shocked. I'm running down. I would be shocked if it was acquittal.

And so if you hear, I would put good money on that that would be a guilty verdict if the jury is able to actually reach a verdict and not be out. I'm gonna do something for us because I can get down to the courthouse in 15 minutes by subway. Soon as we were close,

if we get, because what happens is the jury, let me just talk about it because we've done, you and I have waited on verdicts, where you get the phone call. And then there has to be the complete reassembly of the defense team, the prosecution team, the jury has to come back. It takes a minute. It's not going to be like instantaneous. Like they don't shoot it out by tweet or by X or whatever social media from the deliberation room. So by time that whole Kabuki theater gets reassembled, I'll have time to be able to try to catch Karen to run down to the courthouse

and see what the heck is going on. And then we can do some interviewing with some people on the street, depending upon the result. Let me give us the framework now of what's going on though. As we head South before Judge Eileen Cannon. Y'all may have heard the Trump and kind of MAGA propaganda that they're saying, oh, based on this use of force statement that was in certain documents that were unsealed,

Trump's been posting over and over again that Biden ordered FBI agents to assassinate him. So false and such a dangerous statement to make. It puts also the lives of the FBI agents at risk. If they're basically being called murderers, it puts Merrick Garland's life at risk. It puts President Biden's life at risk. I mean, a real horrific lie. And so what is Trump and one of these magas even kind of talking about? Well, there's a standard use of deadly force protocol that exists in connection

with every search warrant execute, whether it's at Mar-a-Lago or elsewhere, that just lays out the conditions where use of different types of force, including lethal force, can be utilized. And that's part of a packet that's often turned over as part of discovery in criminal cases, as part of discovery that usually remains confidential. Now, Donald Trump filed before Judge Eileen Cannon, his preferred Judge de Jure, a motion to dismiss based on violations of due process and making claims that based on the way the search warrant was executed, that he was unfairly targeted, completely frivolous. It's not even the right forum and venue to make these types of challenges.

If you wanted to make challenges of an unlawful search and seizure, you would go in front of the magistrate. And by the way, these proceedings, these issues were already litigated before where the 11th circuit overturned Judge Eileen Cannon when Trump was trying to sue the Department of Justice and the United States claiming that the court should exercise equitable jurisdiction back in 2022 during the first round of Judge Cannon cases. But what Trump does is he files these frivolous motions. He attaches to them confidential discovery he wants released in the public. And then he tries to get Judge Eileen Cannon to make the disclosures of these things in the public. And then Jack

Smith has to try to stop her. Jack Smith's successful on some things where she thinks she's gonna be reversed. Other times she discloses things publicly. And from the recent batch of disclosures that were made by Judge Cannon. We got these photographs of Walti Nauta from the Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage that shows him holding these boxes as he was moving classified documents. I mean, folks, what are in those boxes are nuclear codes and nuclear secrets, not codes, nuclear secrets, war plans, highly

sensitive classified information at the highest levels and this Waltine Nauta, Trump's valet who gets him diet cokes, is moving the most highly sensitive documents two days before the FBI and DOJ show up in response to the subpoena that was issued in May. Then there was supposed to be voluntary cooperation by Trump, but instead of voluntary cooperation, that's Trump's guy, Waltine, now moving the boxes to hide him. So ultimately, when the Department of Justice got those photos and they saw what was going on, they knew they didn't want to execute a search warrant. So ultimately when the Department of Justice got those photos and they saw what was going on, they knew they didn't want to execute a search warrant.

They wanted voluntary cooperation, but Trump continued to obstruct over and over again. So a search warrant finally had to be executed at Mar-a-Lago. And with that search warrant comes a lot of the standard forms and standard kind of filings that exist. We also know from some of the documents that were released that there were numerous other documents, at least six other documents, classified documents that were discovered after the search warrant was executed at Mar-a-Lago, when the search warrant was executed in August of 2022. And then in like December, Trump's lawyers contacted the department of justice and said, Hey, we have these other documents.

Also we discovered like in his bedroom and in his closet. So that would be damaging information that's being made public. But Trump didn't care about that because those are just facts. Trump doesn't think corporate media is going to report on the facts. Trump cared about he wanted this use of force policy out there, which is the standard use of force policy so he could spread on Fox and the New York Post and elsewhere this horrific lie that he was targeted for assassination.

Now, when the FBI executed the search warrant in August of 2022, they made sure that Trump wasn't even there. They coordinated with Secret Service to make sure it would be done in an orderly fashion. They actually read the documents. Trump got more rights and benefits than anybody else in the execution of a search warrant.

But Trump wanted to show the standard use of force policy documents and say, look, they were trying to kill me. Biden's a threat to democracy, not me. He's trying to kill me and then rely on corporate media pushing that out or just not telling the truth and propaganda media pushing that out. So that's what Donald Trump did. Now, the development from last night on Friday is, and Popak, I know you did a hot take on this as well, is that special counsel Jack Smith sought an expansion of the conditions of release, if you will, a gag order on Donald Trump to stop him from issuing false statements that are endangering the agents who executed the search by posting all of these false statements.

Jack Smith's office is asking a federal judge to place a gag order on Trump that would limit his ability to comment about law enforcement that searched his Mar-a-Lago resort. And from Trump to make false statements saying that he's being targeted for assassination because it is placing the law enforcement officers life at risk. I think two things are important here from PO-PAC and I want to get your take on what special counsel Jack Smith filed last night. I think one, this is just an important document that needs to be filed. It's the first time I think we've really seen a more robust gag order before

Judge Eileen Cannon even being requested. But I think that Judge Eileen Cannon, you and I will talk about this. I think that the likely outcome is for Judge Eileen Cannon to reject this, at which point, Special Counsel Jack Smith can then, I think, go to the 11th Circuit and then bring in all of the other misconduct by Judge Cannon. And I think it actually accomplishes both goals for Jack Smith, that he needs this gag order,

but I think he knows that Judge Cannon is not going to provide any gag orders on Donald Trump. I think she'll reject it, order a hearing, and then I think we go into the 11th Circuit finally, and I think this is a way that Trump may have overplayed his hand. Let's talk about that and more, but let's take our last quick break.

Oh, before we take the break, y'all subscribe to Patreon, Patreon.com slash Legal AF, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash Legal AF. If you ever wanted a lecture from Professor Popak or myself, it's expanding rapidly. We're getting thousands of students join one of our classes, patreon.com slash legal AF. I know I want to take a professor pop out class.

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Like A plus reads right there. Everybody support our pro democracy sponsors. They support our show. Jordy works very carefully with me, Popok, Karen, all of our hosts to try to curate some of the best products and services out there. He rejects a lot of incoming and he's very proud of the sponsors as are we that make it to the final round and become sponsors of our show. So the discount codes are in the description below.

That's one of the way we fund the show. So the discount codes are in the description below. That's one of the way we fund the show. The other way is through these, those emojis and but more importantly, the patreon.com legal AF as well to join an actual law class or a not actually accredited, but a non-accredited law school class. I should give that disclaimer of Professor Michael Popak. But nonetheless, it's exactly what it would be like to be in a Professor Popak or my law class. All right. Where we last left off special counsel, Jack Smith last night on Friday, filed for this expanded conditions of release, which is essentially a gag order on

Trump for making false statements about agents trying to kill him. I think that this is brilliant. One, it's necessary. But two, I think when Judge Cannon makes the wrong move here, or even if she doesn't move in a timely manner, and she's known for lots of delays, then Jack Smith has an opening right now to the 11th Circuit. Finally. What do you make of all of this, Michael Bopak? Yeah, Mar-a-Lago was sort of quiet for a long, long time. And we were like, what's going on down there? And then she postponed the trial indefinitely. We're like, okay, not much reporting going on. We'd forgotten a little bit. There were still motions to dismiss that were still out there. Walt Nauta was still pushing to have things dismissed. There were still hearings going

on and there were still Donald Trump being Donald Trump. The unsealing part was really interesting because we had always suspected that, and you and I reported on it, that when Evan Corcoran, the lawyer for Donald Trump at the time of the search warrant and the subpoena, when he got his or Donald Trump's attorney client privilege stripped away from him, because the judge, Judge Beryl Howell, boy, there's a judge I miss, who presided as the chief judge

over the original grand jury and the subpoena process, search warrant process, or at least the subpoena process related to Donald Trump and Mar-a-Lago, we were like, wow, she, because it was all confidential and secret and sealed. Wow, she stripped Evan Cork, Evan Corkin has a turnover 50 pages of single space notes about his mental impressions of his client. There's an audio tape that he recorded of his own thought process about his client and Mar-a-Lago. What are you kidding me?

What could possibly, could the judge have heard in the evidentiary hearing that would have let her to do that? Well, now we know. Because it just got unsealed as part of this whole process that you described. And here's my favorite part from the unsealing. This is from Judge Beryl Howell that we did not know about, but we suspected.

About what you described as the box movement and the fact that Donald Trump, that genius, that mental genius from the University of Pennsylvania, forgot he had cameras everywhere and video recordings. And this is what the judge concluded after hearing the evidence. The government urged that this scramble to Mar-a-Lago in the wake of the June 24th phone call reflects the former president's realization that the removal of the boxes from the storage room you're watching it here was captured on camera and his attempts to ensure that any subsequent movement of the boxes back to the storage room could occur off camera, Howell wrote, Judge Howell,

this theory draws support from the curious absence of any video footage showing the return of the remaining boxes to the storage room, which necessarily occurred at some point between June 3, 2022, when the room had approximately X amount of boxes and the execution of the search warrant on August 8, 2022, when the agents counted 73 boxes. In other words, they had to go back, but there's no video of it. So then the government had already alleged that that's when Nauda rearranged his travel schedule to come back in a panic to get together with Carlos. This is where the conspiracy happened.

Carlos de Oliveira, in an attempt to delete the surveillance footage using Yusele Taveras, who was an IT worker, but became lead witness for the prosecution and avoided being indicted as a result and all of that. So that all came out just like in the last day or so and we're like, oh, now we see why Evan Corcoran and the judge concluded that it was more likely than not that Donald Trump committed a crime related to this. Back to your other point about the assassination attempt. Okay, and I want to reiterate and reinforce a couple things that you said. Let me first explain what August is like in Florida, having lived there for 20 years. Unless you have to be there, and I was practicing law down there, you try not to be in places like Palm Beach County in August,

because it's like being on the sun. And so Donald Trump is notoriously never at Mar-a-Lago in August, and the feds knew that because he's got Secret Service protection, and he decamps for West, I'm sorry, Bedminster in New Jersey come around February or March when it starts to heat up in Florida. He's never at Mar-a-Lago. They knew that, he knew that. And we already had reporting at the time that Evan Corcoran and Christina Bob and Jennifer Little were representing Donald Trump at the time, that they made contact with the Department of Justice and they asked to actually be at Mar-a-Lago since their client

wasn't there on purpose, it wasn't by accident. He purposely wasn't there when they executed the search warrant. The Department of Justice didn't want him there. If they wanted to assassinate him, they would have went to Bedminster. But they didn't because that's not a thing where the Department of Justice and the FBI assassinates people that they're executing search warrants on. In fact, in the history of the Republic, that's never happened, ever. Okay? And Waco doesn't count with David Koresh. So back to Trump, he's gone, they coordinate Evan Corcoran and the lawyers want to be in the room. They are told no, this is when we first learned of the video.

They say there's video cameras. Can we watch on video? You and I heard at the time, we're like, there's video cameras? That's interesting. And the FBI was like, no, you know, click, you're not watching a video either. And that's was like, no, you know, click, you're not watching a video either. And that's how this whole sort of ball of wax first started rolling and against Donald Trump. And now back to your original, your last point, which is what to make of this filing. Now, if it were filed with Barrel Howell, it was presiding over the search warrant in this period, this would be a no brainer

or any other judge. This, they would expand the gag order to include, don't accuse the FBI of assassination attempts against Donald Trump. With Cannon, I can already hear her. I can already hear her pontificating. This is interesting. This is fascinating.

Let me have a hearing and hear more about it. Like she just held a hearing last week on Wednesday or this past week about whether the special counsel was properly appointed through an appointment process or whether he's invalid. That's already been decided over and over again by even this United States Supreme Court. But yet I think it's fascinating.

Let's have a hearing about it. So she's gonna have this hearing about something that should be a no-brainer. It should probably be done on the papers without the need for a hearing. And then she's gonna step in the bucket. Although, as we've said, she's hypersensitive to being reversed.

And so maybe like she did with Ben, like she did with the the issue about her revealing witnesses, grand jury witnesses, without redacting them, even though it took her six weeks to figure it out, maybe she'll think, hmm, I should just expand the gag order because I don't want anything. I don't want to give the prosecutor a ticket to the 11th Circuit. Now apparently during that hearing that I just talked about that was in two parts, the reporting from the room because it's up in Fort Pierce with very few people in attendance, is that the judge admonished one of the prosecutors who was getting very upset because the

judge was mischaracterizing his arguments and he was like, that's not what I said your honor and she said just I'm going to counsel you to come Down. I mean the prosecutors are getting upset Understandably so because of how she's at be how the judge is acting and handling this case and mishandling this case. And it's just ironic to me that the one time that they show a little ire, and their hair stands up on the back of their neck a little bit,

she's the first one to shoot them down, yet watch the Trump lawyers in every proceeding, appellate, Supreme Court, trial court, be totally disrespectful to the criminal justice system. So I think I'm 50-50 here. Cannon could grow a brain in time and realize that this is a trap. Trap, right?

There she is. And say, aha, they wanna get the 11th Circuit, I'm not gonna let them. I'm just gonna have a stupid hearing and I'm gonna just expand it and tweak it just a little bit And then he doesn't have it or you know, like you said, maybe she does step forward and step in it And then yeah, he's gonna he has to file it. He did Jack Smith. He has to take an appeal if she screws it up And the 11th circuit will slap her back

The question is does he add in all the other things that she has done for the last year and a half, or almost two years, to mishandle and misadminister this case to try to get her reassigned? And that is, you know, your guess is as good as mine. Here's how I think it plays out, and I'm getting very granular with this prediction. Judge Cannon's been known to try to delay things

and schedule hearings far in advance. So I think she tries to delay it. I think special counsel Jack Smith then requests that this be dealt with in an expedited way, right? This is urgent. This is a request because the lives of FBI agents and DOJ officials are being threatened by Donald Trump's behavior.

So I think that she doesn't address it. I think then special counsel Jack Smith can have an avenue right there based on her delay to potentially go to the 11th circuit or to get a writ or to finally take some action. That's what I think is going to happen. It's not done at least right now under the pretext of an emergency application, but I think that when she canons it and takes a long time, I think that this is not something that can be pushed months in advance and I suspect that's what she will end up

doing, but we will see. Popak, I wanna talk though about this decision end of last week, six to three decision by the United States Supreme Court. Look, it's fairly easy to condemn and criticize Justice Alito and Clarence Thomas, and specifically Justice Alito, I mean Clarence Thomas, this week, Justice Alito, although Clarence Thomas and his concurring opinion,

um, uh, to this ruling talking about, uh, how critical he was of Brown v. Board of Education, um, which struck down the separate but equal policy. Yeah. I would put worse than hanging the flags of, inverted flag and then the right-wing extremist appeal to heaven flag. But look, Justice Alito seems to identify, not seems, let's just say he identifies with insurrectionists, the turning the United States of America into a theocracy. I'm not using hyperbole. This is what Justice Alito wants to turn the United States of America into a theocracy. I'm not using hyperbole. This is what Justice Alito wants to turn the United States of America into.

He's been clear about it. He gives speeches abroad where he talks about these concepts. He wants to eliminate the separation of church and state, but utilizes the First Amendment to basically say, everybody has a free speech right to discriminate against each other and laws that stop discrimination would be discriminatory

against religions and so that's who Justice Alito is but we've got this decision right here in Alexander v South Carolina 6-3 decision where the Supreme Court says it was the right-wing Supreme Court, the six right-wing justices, the three liberal, but I don't like this terminology anymore, the three justices who were appointed by democratic administrations, democratic presidents who want to uphold the law or in the dissent and the majority of the court upheld the South Carolina legislature's racist gerrymandering that removed 30,000 voters from the first congressional district, 30,000 black voters from the first congressional district, and moved them into other districts so that the first congressional district controlled

by MAGA Republican Nancy Mase stays a safe MAGA Republican seat by shifting where black voters are able to vote and that they can vote in the first congressional district. Now, the state legislature said that they are permitted to engage in political gerrymandering. They're not allowed to, the Voting Rights Act prevents it from being racist gerrymandering. But they said, look, this was just being political. And it just so happens that when we politically gerrymandered 30,000 black voters were taken out of this specific district and disenfranchised from voting in the first congressional district now There was a full trial the way we talk about, you know

The Trump criminal trial there was a full like civil trial before a three judge panel because these voting rights act challenge cases go before three judge federal panels and in a go before three judge federal panels. And in a unanimous three to nothing decision, the three judge panel said, they heard all of this evidence about how the legislature, the staffers were looking at the race of people and they were focused on like racist criteria. And they said, look, the evidence is overwhelming

that what was intended here was racist gerrymandering. And you're just saying that it was political gerrymandering as a pretext for what you really were designed to do, which was overwhelmingly be racist and disenfranchised black voters. So anyway, this went up to the United States Supreme Court and Justice Alito, he reached the conclusion and said, well, actually, the district court that heard a whole trial, you're wrong. You need to just believe at face value what the legislature said.

And if they said it was political, that should really much, that should end the inquiry. This is what is exactly in the ruling. You did not credit that there could be good faith intentions and you attributed bad faith to the legislature and you should have attributed good faith to the legislature and just believe them when they said it was political in nature and not racist in nature.

So now the South Carolina district is subject to this racist gerrymandering for good now until the next census. But Popak, I'll throw it over to you. More significantly, what Justice Alito did here was give a roadmap to other state legislatures on how to do racist gerrymandering, violate the Voting Rights Act, to other state legislatures on how to do racist gerrymandering, violate the Voting Rights Act, but now just follow Alito's guidance and say, look, this is our good faith view, it's political.

And so, yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the flags, but the flags are symbolic of who these people are and this right-wing, theocratic, racist regime that we are. Oh, and then in the concurring opinion, you got Clarence Thomas who says, and what we can't do is act the way the 9-0 Supreme Court did. He criticized Brown v. Board of Education, which overruled separate but equal and ushered in the civil rights movement. And Justice Thomas, who's a black justice, said that the Supreme Court

exercise too much extraordinary powers and Brown v. Board and should not and it was a judicial overreach in Brown v. Board of Education. That's what Clarence Thomas is saying. That's the ruling. I just report on it. Michael Popock. Patreon.com slash legal AF. Good night everybody. Let me see what I can pick up with. The the bleaching of African-American voters continues in the South and it's condoned by the MAGA Supreme Court. You kept saying 30,000 people were transferred. It's worse than that, the numbers. 62% of black voters that were in the first district were transferred

to Clyburn's sixth district, making it even blacker, her district even whiter. And then we don't have another African American majority district in South Carolina. And we don't have a map, a congressional map that matches the census in terms of power. And we have disenfranchisement. And once again, the Voting Rights Act lies and tatters at the feet of this particular Supreme Court. And if you don't think voting matters, elections matter, six to three, and a concurrence, as you said, by Clarence Thomas that hates affirmative action, although he was the product of it. He hates anything that relates to the Voting Rights Act and helping black people. You know, there was a legacy that he was supposed to fulfill in replacing,

at least indirectly, the great Thurgood Marshall and he's just failed at every term. And then you've got the week that we find out that Alito is a closeted insurrectionist who literally flies the flag of the anti-democracy movement to try to have Trump steal the election in two of his houses, one being sort of near me in Long Beach Island, New Jersey. He's a former, people forget where he came from. He wasn't hatched out of an egg or landed from another planet, although at times, I think he has. He was a New Jersey Supreme Court justice before he was picked to be on the United States Supreme Court. and just waiting and lying and wait

with Clarence Thomas until he got enough numbers in order to do what he's doing here, which is to insert judicial templates and decision-making rules that are not anywhere in the Constitution, which is what they love to do when they do judicial activism, when you hear them not talking about the record, these right wing, not talking about the facts below, run, run for the hills, because all you're going to see now is just an unmoored Supreme Court that's just going to do legislation from the bench about what they would like to see happen, having nothing to do legislation from the bench about what they would like to see happen, having nothing to do with the record below. As you said, when you have a three-judge panel

in South Carolina, the deepest part of the South, okay, who come up with after hearing, and the way these cases work on districting or redistricting off of census is that you hire experts and they do empirical studies. And they give variations on a theme of maps that could be generated by a partisan but not racist state legislature. And they go through, it's almost like Stratomatic, where they just run the permutations over and over again by a computer. And they basically say it's a statistical

impossibility for them to have come up with this map and transferred 62% of the black people out of this district if it wasn't for racial gerrymandering and the bleaching of African American voters, which means you are disenfranchising them, which is exactly the thing the Voting Rights Act and many of the constitutional amendments that came out of the Reconstruction era were meant to avoid. But this Supreme Court has completely chipped away at the Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats back in the 60s. It's one of the great society things that Lyndon Johnson accomplished in his one term. Much like Joe Biden is accomplishing so much in his one term and will go down equally

with Lyndon Johnson as being a great president, especially when it comes to domestic policy. Same thing for Joe. Then did it shock anybody that this bookend imagery that we have of Alito writing this, allowing, as you said, giving license and permission for future racial gerrymandering, and you just call it partisan. And you can just say, well, is that our fault that all the Republicans

happen to be white in our state? That's not why we're doing it. We don't we don't care about white supremacy. We care about we're in we're, you know, we're in control in the House, so in the Republic, so we want all Republicans. Is that really what you're doing? Not when the empirical data says it's impossible for you to have come up with that map, except for trying to disenfranchise and dilute

the power of the vote of black voters in your state, and therefore disenfranchise them. Now, I had a little bit of hope because last week they did find a map to be so offensive. Even this Supreme Court was like, yeah, that's too far for us. No, that map's not happening. But the Supreme Court map has literally, as you said, provided a map or a template for future primarily red, MAGA, southern, and other states to do the exact same thing. Hey, that's a great idea. Let's take 62% of the black people and put them into an all-black district and eliminate another black district from our state. And that's great. And then you have the mismatch.

Then you got Clarence Thomas, who has the balls, the brass ones to say in his concurrence, you know what I don't like? I don't even like that we're talking about this. This seems to be a political thing. This isn't something that we should even be getting involved with. This is something for legislators to do. This is, we shouldn't, this political questions, come on. It's only political questions when they,

and they find it unsavory that they're getting involved in it when it doesn't go in their direction. And so these maps have been used already in South Carolina in 2023. They will be in 2024 anyway because they took so long, the Supreme Court, and dragged their feet. The UNI are even reporting on this in the 20 whatever of May, the end of May. At the end of the term, as we're waiting on all the abortion decision, the immunity decision, the we're waiting on all the abortion decision, the immunity decision, the Jan six crime decision, the gun decision, are all going to come floating. You and I and Karen, we're going to be exhausted over the next week as all of these opinions come out.

Like in the shotgun approaches, they all then high tail it out to their paid junkets, primarily the Republicans overseas and otherwise, paid by MAGA Republican donors. That's the season we're about to enter now that the term is over. And this is now just one of the ones that we're reporting on. There's a half a dozen more that you and I are going to have to do hot takes on and jump on as they get developed. And so this appearance of propriety that the justice system is fair and doesn't have its big fat thumb on the scales of justice, you know, again, with Alito with his flying the flags of insurrection at both of his homes, you know, and trying to blame the wife. You can't blame the wife

for the second one. You know, I don't know, the dog ran it up the flagpole. I mean, I don't really understand this. I know that town. He passes that flag every day. That flag went up because he wanted it to go up, that pine tree flag. And that is him declaring to the world. Imagine if you and I rode by as we were going to the Supreme Court. We're driving down past, you know, taking the turnpike down to New Jersey. I see that house. Okay. The Google Maps or Earth tells me that's Alito's house turnpike down to New Jersey. I see that house. Okay. The Google Maps or Earth tells me that's Alito's house. I go down to his house in Virginia. I see that. And I'm going to argue in front of them. I mean, I want an advocate at the next term to call out Alito if he's sitting there in a case and say, I have to ask something of one of the justices. Am I getting a fair shake

here? Can you give me a fair shake, given your political bias that's been expressed on your flagpoles? Can you? Now, I know everyone's like, oh, the decorum of the Supreme Court, hollowed grounds. I want somebody to do that because he needs to be called out.

The Senate Democrats are doing it, right? They're moving forward investigation of Alito. They want to start with a meeting with Justice Roberts about the ethics of this or the lack of ethics of this. That'll lead because they have subpoena power. Durbin and Whitehouse are gonna end up issuing subpoenas. They want to find out what happened here, how it happened. They're gonna call Roberts over to talk about it because they're in charge of funding so they have the right to do that. And then we're going to see, I know there's a censure motion that's been raised by Representative Cohen that's floating around, and then hopefully somebody will draft an articles of impeachment. Even though it'll die in the House,

I think it's important to the American people that it actually be debated on the floor about whether Sam Alito can get away with this or not. This brazen, just flying the flag of insurrection while he's presiding over. And the other thing Durbin and Whitehouse are asking for, Ben, is that he recused himself right now, even though the opinion is probably written, about the two Jan 6 cases that have yet to, opinions have yet to been issued. One, the immunity on Donald Trump still hasn't been issued yet, even though we're almost here like a week away from the end of where they go away on vacation. And secondly, the decision on whether the obstruction of an official proceeding, which didn't have Donald Trump in the name of the case, but it applies to him, is going to apply to

Jan 6th insurrectionists, or there needs to be a hearing about whether it gets stripped away from Donald Trump's DC election interference case. He should accuse himself. As should Clarence Thomas. They won't. And that's where we are. You know, one of the things that you see consistently with these MAGA Republicans, the MAGA Republican justices, the politicians, they don't even own their own issues. They like to say, well, you know, it's just a flag that has a unique history.

And, you know, it has a naval connotation back during the Revolutionary War. And I'm an outdoorsman, so I kind of like pie cones. And so I'm really, you know, just like stop with the gas lighting. And it's why it's so important, though, when the country is not knowledgeable on how courts work and what's up and what the evidence is. These magas are able to execute their predatory conduct. But when you call it out, and it's look, it's an everyday popak sometimes an every hour task with them because they overwhelm you with their lies and their deceit and their gaslighting. You got to call it out each and every step of the way.

And why I'm so confident right now though, in the direction of our country, despite all of this kind of crap out there, is because of this Legal AF community, because the Midas Mighty community. And the same way that Fox started in 1970s and generationally built basically a weapon of mass disinformation, we need to do the opposite and build a way to mass educate and to provide as much

information and data and get back to truth and get back to fact. And so there is a daily effort that we have Where we got to call out and do rapid response and get the stories out every day but there's a generational task that all you legal a efforts are involved in with us and it's really incumbent upon you and the community and to share this knowledge with people and and the community and to share this knowledge with people and to take what we teach and then teach others and show others and let people know and show them the portions of this

so they can see it for themselves and they can go through the facts and the cases and the evidence and we could have real intelligent fact based evidence based conversations. So if you wanna to continue that conversation in Professor Popak's law class, unaccredited, but it would be exactly what a Popak law class would be like, go to patreon.com slash legal AF.

I hear people really love geeking out with Popak. If you ever wanted to be in a law class of like my law class that I teach when I'm at USC or a law class of Michael Pope, I go to P a T R E O N.com slash legal AF. And it helps support the growth of this show and helps support the growth of this independent media network. patreon.com slash legal AF Popeye anything you want to say before we just one thing one thing we you and I and legal AF of might have such had a nice profile in the New York Times during the week but our listeners and followers are right they were wrong in the way they categorized might have touched they were doing an article on how the Trump trial and Rashaan is being covered by the various news networks and they and but they decided to do it with left and right and with right they had like Breitbart and Washington Times and then they got to left and they led with Midas Touch and

us and they ran a video that I had done a month or so ago at the start of the trial. Love the coverage, which is great that the New York Times recognized us. I had a feeling that video was used because I mentioned the New York Times a number of times in that particular video. But our audience is right. We're not left in that way. We're pro-democracy, as you like to say, but it didn't fit into the box the way the reporter had framed it. I get it. Sometimes they want to fit us into a box, but you and I, Karen, Legal AF, and Leigh Midas, we don't fit into a box. The box that we fit into, if you're trying to fit us into one, is that we're pro-democracy. So don't tell me that we are the left-wing Breitbart or the left-wing Newsmax.

Just say that we call it like it is down the middle. Yes, we're Democrats. I'll fly the flag of being a Democrat, but that's not our approach. And yet we have to get boxed in order for the news media to report on us. So I appreciated the article, but I think we're pro-democracy. We're not left. Oh, I agree with that 100%. Patreon.com slash Legal AF.

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