Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Lawyer ACCIDENTALLY SCREWS Trump’s Supreme Court Case

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Trump’s lawyers are caught TAKING INCONSISTENT POSITIONS again in different criminal and appeal courts about Trump’s alleged “core political” “First Amendment Right” to COMMIT CRIMES. Michael Popok breaks down Trump’s Georgia criminal defense lawyer’s FAILED FIRST AMENDMENT arguments to dismiss the indictment, and how they are the EXACT OPPOSITE of positions Trump’s OTHER LAWYERS are making to the US Supreme Court for the immunity appeal hearing. Special Counsel Jack Smith is likely salivating at this moment! Head to https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/collections/sale?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=legalaf right now to get 15% off your entire order with code LegalAF! Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop NEW LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score, or your outrageous food delivery habits. Crypto is financed for everyone, everywhere, all the time. Kraken. See what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. Kraken's registration details at kraken.com legal CA dash PRU dash disclaimer. Bottom line here is this, but for protected first amendment speech, President Trump would not be charged in RICO or the other counties. Take out the protected speech and you don't have an underlying basis for which to charge him. And since that violates the Constitution as applied to the charges here and his speech here

and his position here, this is right for a constitutional challenge. One step further. If it's not right now, and we get into intent, when does the court determine it? Do you determine that after we have a trial? Do you then think? Do you think they could do the direction early stage? Well, would it?

That's a sufficiency of evidence. Because all inferences, yeah. That's a whole question. I mean, do we go through the whole trial? God forbid there should be a conviction, and then we go back to try and determine as applied? I'm suggesting the reason is right now, and the reason why we don't even get to a trial, is because it's unconstitutional to force and accuse, be it the president of the United States, former president, or anyone else to stand trial on protected speech.

And I think that's what Alvarez and the progeny previous to that and after. This is Michael Popak with the Legal AF Hot Take. I don't think Steve Sadow, the lawyer Donald Trump hired in Georgia, got the memo from his other lawyers in the Supreme Court case because they're making inconsistent positions that are going to get them both in trouble and lose both of their arguments. You just heard the clip from Steve Sadow, lawyer for Donald Trump in Georgia, making argument in front of Judge McAfee in the Georgia election interference case pending in Fulton County, brought by a grand jury prosecuted

by Fulton County DA Fonny Willis. And their fundamental argument is nothing to see here, indictment should be dismissed because it's protected First Amendment speech, Your Honor. Everything that Donald Trump is charged with to hear Mr. Seydal say is First Amendment speech, he's a campaigner in chief, he's doing electioneering and it's core election speech that's protected by the Constitution and it can't be the basis of a criminal case. Even though it misses the point that First Amendment speech or speech

crosses over into criminal conduct, as the Fulton County DA, a prosecutor pointed out in his firing back at the hearing, when it crosses the line into criminal conduct, you no longer have First Amendment protection, right? Every bank robber who communicates with his fellow co-conspirator to rob the bank is communicating in some sort of speech. It's not protected by the First Amendment because there's a crime that is at its core. Speeches always has the possibility of being criminally indicted. It depends on

what you say. It depends on what you do, right? And that is at the heart of the matter. But the fundamental problems, I'm going to play for a minute with the prosecutor how to say in response, which encapsulated it perfectly. And let me just tell you straight before we get to the mismatch, the inconsistent position taking by Donald Trump's lawyers, not that it should come as any surprise,

but let me just first tell you that this first amendment argument has been raised at every level by every lawyer for Donald Trump and been shot down by every federal judge at least and even judges up in New York in the criminal case involving Stormy Daniels going to trial against Donald Trump on the 15th of April. This very First Amendment argument that the First Amendment speech is all that Jack Smith special counsel's indictment against Donald Trump and the district of Columbia is about. It's all about first amendment speech. I have the right to do

everything he said in there. All the phone calls, all the efforts to overthrow democracy, all of the efforts to use fake electors, all the efforts to use lawsuits fraudulently to support the fake electors, to lead to the overthrow of democracy, my comments that were made on Jan 6th that led to insurrection and violence. It's all fine. It's First Amendment protected speech. No. The court of appeals, the DC court of appeals has already evaluated this issue and decided that all the First Amendment arguments fall by the wayside and the indictment should not be dismissed as a result. The Supreme Court in its own way has also evaluated this First Amendment issue and decided that

it doesn't hold water either because it's sort of part and parcel within the immunity argument that Donald Trump has made that's up in front of the Supremes right now for oral argument on the 25th of April. April very busy month for Donald Trump, 15th he starts a criminal trial, 25th his lawyers are arguing that immunity should dismiss his his indictment in the District of Columbia. But the First Amendment argument is always raised by Donald Trump and usually rejected. In fact, the United States Supreme Court said,

we don't want to hear about the First Amendment issues. We only want to hear about this one issue about immunity. So implicitly rejecting the First Amendment argument. Now in the Supreme Court filings, Donald Trump's argument is everything he did, everything he did, as long as he was the occupant of the Oval Office and was the president at the time, is official duties. And therefore official duties always get immunity, absolute immunity, and the indictment should be dismissed.

But now Steve Sada was saying in court in Georgia that it wasn't official duties at all. It was electioneering campaigning by citizen Trump to try to get the election results in his favor. And that's just core election speech. That's just First Amendment speech, Your Honor. Everything in the indictment is First Amendment speech. There's a mismatch. There's a disconnect. There's inconsistent positions being taken.

I am sure. I am sure that Jack Smith has been listening intently to the arguments being made in Georgia. We've said throughout our analysis at Legal AF and how to fit these puzzle pieces together, that the danger is that Donald Trump has a team of lawyers that are not playing well together in the sandbox. They're eating the sand, they're peeing in the sand, they're throwing the sand, but they're not working together coherently. He doesn't have one mega major proper firm sort of handling all of his matters because nobody will represent him that fits that bill. Instead, he put together like a virtual law firm. He stitched it together from anybody that would take his money and represent

him. Yes, everybody gets the right in this country to have representation. I'm not faulting that Everybody gets the right in this country to have representation. I'm not faulting that in our legal system. But this combination of lawyers, Chris Kies and Todd Lynch and Alina Habba and originally Joe Takapina, and then all the lawyers have been indicted or convicted or have lost their bar licenses, Giuliani, Powell, Chesbro, Jenna Ellis, and the like, all of that, this virtual law firm that Donald Trump has created, don't get along often. That's why you see departures,

you know, Evan Corcoran leaves the case, Tim Pallatore leaves the case representing Donald Trump, because they can't represent him any longer. And they don't play well together. They're not consistent. So you got Steve Sadow, almost at the same time that a position is being taken at the United States Supreme Court by Donald Trump that says, everything's my official duties. He's got his lawyer in Georgia who's saying the opposite. Everything is not official duties. It's First Amendment protected speech and you can't reconcile those two things, just not comfortably. And so Jack Smith, the

special prosecutor, I'm sure is listening intently to Mr. Sade how the way that we did during the hearing. And in that clip, the best way to summarize why the first amendment argument, by the way, is a complete loser, dead on arrival loser, was summed up by the Fulton County prosecutor's office itself. In that, I'm gonna play the clip in a minute,

in that, I'm going to play the clip in a minute, in that particular presentation, Mr. Wakeford for the Fulton County DA tells Judge McAfee, it's not just that they were false, the statements. It's not that the defendant is being hauled into the courtroom because the prosecution doesn't like him. He is not allowed to employ his speech

and his expressions and his statements as part of a criminal conspiracy to violate George's RICO statute, to impersonate public officers, to file false documents, to make false statements to the government. That is the integral part of the criminal activity, the criminal RICO, racketeering statute at the heart and the engine of the indictment. That is the difference between speech that is protected because we want in the public exchange of ideas, in the marketplace, in the clearinghouse of ideas, people to speak freely,

even if we find what they say to be distasteful, right? Even if we find it to be obscene, even if we find it to be improper, even if we scrunch our nose and put our fingers in our ears, it's necessary in a totemic way, keep saying these words, First Amendment, election speech, core protected speech, political speech. That's just a tautology. That's just saying it is because it is. It isn't. At the heart of every crime is some sort of speech,

unless the crime is being perpetrated by people who can't speak or communicate like a bunch of mimes got together, a bunch of French mimes got together and like robbed a bank or tried to steal an election and they didn't use any other means of communication that would constitute First Amendment speech. Okay, then we don't have to worry about that. In every other crime, there is speech. That's what we hear on recordings. That's what the FBI in their van is listening to when they have surveillance search warrants and wiretaps.

That's what we hear. That's the recordings that we hear. That's the people talking. When Donald Trump called Brad Raffensperger to try to influence the Secretary of State of Georgia to throw out absentee ballots and to find 11,700 votes for him so that he would win. That's not First Amendment protected speech. That is the speech being used to advance the criminal conspiracy.

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Terms and conditions may apply. The other argument at the top of the hot take, which is this inconsistent position-taking, right? What you're not allowed to do in court, and which Jack Smith, I'm sure, in further briefing to the United States Supreme Court, which is due soon, which is due to be filed soon, will reference it. In other words, you can't get away with it when your lawyers in one court,

in one proceeding, are taking a position that's inconsistent on the same defendant with positions that are being taken before the United States Supreme Court. But again, let me end the hot take the way I started it. This First Amendment argument has been brought up by every combination of Donald Trump's lawyers, federal and state. Chris Kise and Todd Blanch brought it up in the Chutkin case, shot down and rejected by both Judge Chutkin on a motion to dismiss the indictment and by the Court of Appeals for the DC also. And by implication, as I outlined, the United States Supreme Court in the DC also. And by implication, as I outlined, the United States Supreme Court

in the way they frame the appeal on immunity that's up for grabs. Raised as well to try to dismiss the Stormy Daniels, the Stormy Daniels hush money coverup case from back then. Everything Donald Trump said was First Amendment speech rejected by Judge Mershon. So Judge McAfee, although he's taken some healthy criticism here on Legal AF because he's gotten certain things wrong, especially as it related to the motion to disqualify

Fonny Willis, where his inexperience in his lack of judicial, not temperament, but judicial of judicial, not temperament, but judicial sober decision-making that comes from being on the bench a number of years showed, right? It showed through. He's only been on the bench for a year. His first major case is this one. He's never been a judge before. He was only a lawyer for about eight or nine years, which is a relatively short amount of time in my profession. He'd barely be a partner in a law firm, let alone a judge presiding over what could be one of the biggest trials of the century, a criminal trial against a former president for trying to overthrow the will of the people. He's not the choice. If we were picking the judge based on experience and temperament and logic, it wouldn't be Judge McAfee, but he is the judge that we have by random selection.

So, but he has a body of work of other more established, more accomplished judges from which to draw, the judges of the DC Court of Appeals. Yes, federal, but on the same issues. The judges like Judge Chutkin, 17 years on the bench, 15 year trial lawyer lawyer even before that. So there is a body of law, many of which have Trump in the name

that he can use to piece together. He'll need to go outside of Georgia law on this. I mean, I'm not sure, I'm sure Georgia First Amendment law is about as robust as any state, but you really look to the feds, you look to the Supreme Court when you're dealing with things like this, ex-presidents, their actions,

their behaviors, First Amendment application and the like. And if he goes and does his homework, because he's not ready to rule yet, he will, as he has in the past in this case, rejected First Amendment defenses to have the indictment dismissed. I mean, even Seydow had a say, and you heard it in the clip,

do we need to go to all the way to a trial? And then at the end, we have a motion for directed verdict on intent. And the judge says, yeah, that may have to be the way to go. Because of course Seydow's job is to keep Donald Trump from having a trial. Now what this is doing,

this last gasp of motion practice, and this really is the last gasp of motion practice against the indictment, recall that, or I'll tell you straight that McAfee about two weeks ago, just before he denied the motion to disqualify Fonny Willis, got rid of six of the 41 counts in the indictment against everybody, including two against Donald Trump.

But there's still a lot left against Donald Trump, including the core conspiracy count. And that's what Steve Sada, the lawyer, is trying to get rid of. So we'll follow this. But what it is doing is delaying, he'll rule. He rules relatively quickly. Off this hearing, I expect a ruling

within the next two weeks, maybe with the holidays that are coming up, sometime before the end of April. Certainly it may even come in before the there's two target dates in April he may be shooting for. Get it in before the start of the criminal trial for Donald Trump on the 15th of April, that seems to be a logical kind of line in the sand for him, the judge to shoot at. And if not, by the 25th when the Supreme Court of the United States hears the immunity decision, the immunity appeal for Donald Trump. So I think it'll come out about then.

And then he's got to take up Fonny Willis at her call. She's asked for a trial to be set by no later than August. Macafee's not moving on that yet, which concerns me. He's maybe letting the appeal that he certified about Fonny Willis's disqualification, wend its way through a system, but he's not in any rush, apparently, to set this case for trial, which is why the April 15th trial against Donald Trump and the Stormy Daniels business record fraud case is so important to democracy and to people's voter voting decisions, right? The data points that they're gonna use

to decide whether to vote. And then of course, if we can get a positive decision by the United States Supreme Court upholding the District of Columbia's decision against Donald Trump on immunity, then that case, the Chutkin case, the special counsel, DC election interference case will be up and will be tried before the end of the summer

and well before the November 5th election. While Georgia sort of takes a backseat. Look, Fonny Willis has already said in the past it's going to take her six to eight months to try the mega case, MAGA case against Donald Trump and the others, whether it's done in one, two or three trials. So even if it started, it wouldn't finish before the election. Donald Trump loses as expected. Case continues unabated. If Donald Trump somehow pulled out a victory, he might be able to get Judge McAfee or some other appellate court to stay the Georgia case while

he's still in office until he's 90 years old and then finish the case. But we'll follow it all. On the show, we invented to do just that called Legal AF. It's on the Minus Touch Network It's on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time I do it on Wednesdays with Karen Friedman at NIFILO former prosecutor Saturdays with Ben Mycelis co-founder of the Minus Touch Network and then on hot takes like this one about every I don't know hour right here So if you like what we're doing here, who doesn't like what we're doing here

Then you can leave a comment and a thumbs up and say, Michael Popok, I like the work that you're doing. And that'll help keep us on the air, keeps the lights on. So until my next hot take, until my next Legal AF, this is Michael Popok reporting. Love this video? Make sure you stay up to date on the latest breaking news and all things Midas by signing up

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