Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Lawyer Too Dumb to Understand What Appeal Is About

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

Michael Popok of Legal AF destroys each and every of Alina Habba’s and Trump’s meritless grounds for appeal of the $500 million dollar CIVIL FRAUD judgment and BANNING of Trump from business and borrowing, that they brag about and explains how they will each suffer a cruel fate at the appellate court, as Trump struggles to raise $500 million to post all his bonds for appeal. Thanks LiquidIV! Get 20% off when you go to LiquidIV.com and use code LEGALAF at checkout! 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

What are your grounds on appeal here? What are my grounds on appeal is a better question. Where do you begin? I mean, we could start with all the things we talked about, Rob, over the past six months on these cases, and this case in particular. This is Michael Popak, Legal AF. Well, Alina Haba, let's start with telling the public that you have any merit-based grounds for appeal.

I'm here to tell the audience, based on my experience in New York as a practicing lawyer, taking cases all the way up through the highest levels of appeal, there is very little chance, I would put it at less than 5%, for Donald Trump to overturn any aspect of Judge Angoron's judgment against him

in the disgorgement civil fraud case brought by the New York Attorney General under Executive Law 63-12, which is probably the most robust set of laws any attorney general has in the United States, to go after persistent fraud and stamp it out. The reason is obvious, as Judge N. Goron noted. It's because New York is the financial capital of the world, and therefore almost like a sovereign nation that the rest of the world looks to. to go after financial fraud and unlevel playing fields in financial markets between a borrower and a lender or any other aspect where a counterparty may be harmed by fraud. As we've said in prior hot takes, but I'm going to say it here now succinctly in this hot take, there is very little, as I said, less than 5% chance of reversal. We have two levels of appeal that would apply to Donald Trump. He'd have to post a bond for both. One of them is at the first, the intermediary level of appeal, which we call the Appellate Division First Department, covers New York or Manhattan, and then the Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York. Because Judge N'Goran's decision is airtight and waterproof. And I'm

going to walk through the defenses that I know that Alina Haba thinks she has, but will fail and be dispatched quickly by any appellate court that rules on it. And I don't even think Alina Haba is going to be the one, based on her past experience, getting her backside handed to her by an appellate court just recently at the federal level, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, dealing with whether presidential immunity applied to the in another position to have to argue a case. It's likely to be Chris Keiss, this lawyer out of Florida who has zero experience substantively with New York law, New York procedure. That was evident and obvious to me as a New York practitioner just watching Chris. He practices in Florida. The difference between the two of us, I mean, there are many differences, but one of them is I practiced regularly in Florida for over 20 years and regularly in New York for over 30. Chris was a stranger. He was a carpetbagger. This was a drive-by lawsuit where he got hired at the last minute by Donald Trump. He had to learn New York law as if he was going to take the bar, the bar exam.

And it showed the way he attacked Judge N Judge Angoron improperly, inappropriately, unprofessionally, and attacked his law clerk. Let's talk about the defenses that Alina Haba is alluding to, but she will lose. And most, if not all of these, were addressed by Judge Angoron in his own judgment in 92 pages. First of all, bias that the prosecutor, I'm sorry, the New York Attorney General, who's here in a civil capacity, was biased against Donald Trump, and therefore, everything tainted the result. That is completely without merit, has already been addressed by a federal court in New York, in the Northern District of New York, at the early inception of the case and by Judge Nguyen, a number of times.

It's been raised at the appellate level in prior filings by Donald Trump, and it will not work. There is no merit to the argument that the reason that Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, brought the case is because she hates Donald Trump. In fact, 11 weeks of trial, 40 witnesses in 43 days belies any argument that there was bias here. duty to uphold the law and administer justice in an ethical way, subject to the canons of judicial ethics that apply to all judges, including the ones in New York. So let's put bias aside. That will lose quickly. It isn't worth the ink they're going to spill on any part of their appeal on it. No jury trial. That's a common refrain by Donald Trump. And the reason there was no jury trial

is Executive Law 63-12, which is this robust set of powers for the Attorney General to stamp out persistent fraud does not require, nor does due process under New York case law, that a person who is the subject of a 63-12 proceeding like Donald Trump gets a jury trial. It is not a common law claim. It is a statutory creation of the New York State Legislature, who did it back in the 50s and 60s,

strengthened it in the 70s and 80s, and even most recently in the 2000s. And it does not require that the party have a jury trial. Plus, there's a waiver of jury trial because Alina Haba, his lawyer at the inception of the case, before Chris Keist made a disappearance, waived any argument that he should get a jury trial because she never asked for one. It would have likely been denied, but then she could have taken it up on appeal. But she didn't preserve the record for appeal because she didn't object to the lack of a jury trial. So that we call in the law waiver. She's waived it. Take that off the list. The next one is that 63-12 as a fraud count requires what's in a classic common law fraud element, which is reliance by and some sort of victim of the fraud on the material

statements. The problem with that, and Chris Keiss has been saying that since he got involved with the case a year ago, is that it's just wrong under prevailing precedent in New York, established by the Court of Appeals. 63-12 does not require a victim. And he's been told that, Donald Trump's been told that by the trial judge at least a dozen times over the last year and a half. All that's required is that there's a pattern in practice or a stratagem to commit fraud by the party. So all you need is a fraudster, not a victim. And if that's the case, that is enough under New York law to violate 63-12, that in addition to a series of crimes that are the basis of the civil case. There are underlying crimes that are related to fraud in financial statements by Donald Trump, fraud in bank statements, fraud in books and records maintained by Donald Trump, and fraud

in insurance practices, and the conspiracies criminal around those that are at the basis of the actual complaint against him. And so when you have those two things together, 63-12, under a long line of cases, including one that has Donald Trump's name on it from about 15 years ago when his fraudulent Trump University got shut down, so he should know better, says that 63-12 is exactly what it says. Don't reinvent yourself for the new year. Just rehydrate yourself with Liquid IV. With three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink, plus eight vitamins and nutrients for everyday wellness, Liquid IV hydrates two times faster than water alone.

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That's 20% off your first order when you shop better hydration today using promo code Legal AF at liquidiv.com. The other related argument that will fail on appeal that they're raising is that the remedies that the judge has or the powers the judge has at his discretion under 63-12 doesn't allow for disgorgement, which is the ripping away and clawing back of ill-gotten money, money that people should not have obtained like Donald Trump, calculating that and ripping that away from him. That power doesn't exist under 63-12. That's a lie. There is plenty of case law in New York that says the exact opposite, and has been well established up to the Court of Appeals. They've also argued that the dissolution

of the companies that was originally ordered by Judge Angoron is also not part of the powers that he has under that statute. And that's a lie. That's wrong. Because it's been well established that dissolution is a remedy. But this judgment that just came out a few days ago, the judge modified his original findings and took away the dissolution requirement. He's letting an independent monitor, former federal judge Barbara Jones, who's been a former federal judge for, I mean, she was a federal judge for 20 years and a former federal judge Barbara Jones, who's been a former federal judge for, I mean, she was a federal judge for 20 years and a former federal judge for maybe 10 or 15. And she is the monitor and she will extend her tenure another three years to monitor more of the Trump organization

shenanigans there. That power to dissolve will rest with her in consultation with a newly created independent director of compliance, which is what it sounds like. A person who's responsible to make sure that the books and records sync at the company and that there are compliance controls embedded within the company to avoid fraud. That's what they're going to decide. So the judge took that appeal issue off the board by amending his order and removing dissolution as a requirement here. Then there is the witnesses, that the judge did something wrong related to the witnesses. Let me first tell everybody that follows us on Legal AF that the discretion of a judge related to witnesses when he is the fact finder, the trier of fact, which he is when there's no jury, is very, very strong.

It's very, it's the discretion that a trial judge is given is supremely broad and very, almost never reversed on appeal. So if your argument is about witnesses that should have taken the stand or didn't take the stand or questions that were asked that shouldn't have been asked or the credibility of witnesses, that is going to die. That's DOA, dead on arrival, because judges in New York and in most other places are given tremendous broad, broad birth, you know, wide birth to make decisions related to witnesses. So any attack on Michael Cohen and how much reliance the judge put on Michael Cohen or how much the judge discredited Donald Trump or Don Jr. or Eric or

Ivanka is all within his discretion. And if that's the basis of their appeal, of course, they will lose. Let me just do one more fine point on the witnesses. The judge gave Donald Trump everything he wanted to avoid an appeal issue. Donald Trump wanted experts that had no relevance to the issues that the judge was deciding. The judge says, put them on. Put them on. I'll credit or discredit them after I hear their testimony. But he let them go. Donald Trump could have testified until the cows came home. He alone decided when the case returned to the defense not to testify. Eric Trump decided not to testify. Don Jr. testified once. All of these witnesses could have testified ad nauseum. Ivanka Trump didn't want to testify at all. She was compelled to testify. But everybody, I mean, there were 40 witnesses. So any argument to the appellate court that there weren't enough witnesses, there were too many witnesses, the witnesses were evaluated improperly by the judge, dies. Forget that. The next argument they raise on appeal is they relied on their accountants and auditors. It's not the fault of the lay people. It's not Donald Trump's

fault. He's not an accountant. That dies. Mazers, which was the only accountant and auditor that Trump and the Trump organization ever knew, testified, and it's very public, that they fired Donald Trump because of the fraud that was being committed on them, that they couldn't rely on the financial statements because they realized that Allen Weisselberg, Donald Trump's longtime CFO, chief financial officer, who did not have a certified public accountant, CPA degree, basically a bookkeeper, had been lying to them for years about the value of assets. And they stopped certifying the financial statements for Donald Trump as a result.

When your auditor fires you because you're lying to them, you probably can't use reliance on their expertise as a defense. So wipe that off the board. That's a waste of time in the appeal that they shouldn't even bother with. And so once you take away any arguments about bias or the powers under 63-12 or the reliance on accountants or the evaluation of witness testimony or the judge's own bias, which has never been demonstrated. The last issue I think they'll raise on appeal, because I've seen it in their filings, is that the judge misapplied prior rulings by the First Department Appellate Division. In other words, his bosses at the appellate court, in granting partially a motion for summary judgment that dismissed Ivanka Trump, also found that there was a statute of limitations

or a time period under which certain of the claims needed to be brought or they were time barred. This is under the law. There's a statute of limitations for everything, crimes and civil, what we call torts or breach of contract or negligence. You name it. There's a time period in which you have to bring it. It could be very short. Shortest I've ever seen is a year. It could be very long. Longest I've ever seen is a year. It could be very long. Longest I've ever seen is 10 years. And everything falls along that continuum between one and 10 years. But you know for a cause of action when you have to bring things. For 63-12, I believe it's five-year statute of limitations or six years.

And some of the transactions and some of the claims fell outside the statute of limitations. of the claims fell outside the statute of limitations. And the appellate court told Judge Angoron in their ruling, take your scalpel and figure out from the entire body of evidence which fall on which side of the statute of limitations line. And if they fall on the time-barred stale side, cut them out. Only apply the law and your findings to the claims that are not stale, that are not time-barred. But that's exactly what the judge did in 92 pages. He went transaction by transaction the seven major pieces of property that were misvalued, manufactured valued, as the judge likes to say, by Donald Trump. He cooked the books. 40 Wall Street, Mar-a-Lago, Seven Springs, a project with Vornado Group, and the like, and golf courses around the country. And the judge

went methodically through each one and said which ones were inside the statute of limitations, which ones were outside the statute of limitations. He also went through like all 40 witnesses and said which of their testimony he found most compelling, and which didn't have credibility for him, including Donald Trump. And so, again, 92 pages by a trial judge who's the trier of fact with no jury, after an 11-week trial and 40 witnesses and thousands of exhibits and hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, says this is not getting reversed. Because the only areas that you would

attack would be the areas where the judge is given tremendous discretion and trial judges are not overturned as a result. Sure, they're going to file the appeal. I take Alina Haba at her word that they're going to file the appeal, but they're not going to win the appeal. In fact, I think it's going to go pretty quickly. And they're going to have to post a major bond in the hundreds of millions of dollars in order to stop the judgment from being enforced against them. Because if they don't stop the judgment from being enforced against their assets, Letitia James's office can take that judgment and go garnish wages, can go to bank accounts, can go to assets, can go to boats, planes, and trains, and automobiles, all the rest of it, and go seize it and have it sold at auction.

And you know they'll start doing that. So Donald Trump has to post that bond. Now, Lena Haber brags, don't worry. It's $500 million of bond between this and E. Jean Carroll, but we've got plenty. All right, we'll see how much he has. Because last count, he only had 450 million in cash. And it looks like he's got to post bonds up to 500 million. So he's gonna have to borrow from something or someone or himself or something to come up with the money. So we'll continue to follow this ridiculous argument that they have an appeal. So what will happen? They'll file in the next, I don't know, they've got about 20 more days to file.

They'll have to post this major bond. If they file the appeal, but they don't post the bond, New York Attorney General can go after them and go seize their assets. If they post the bond, which we still expect, then the appellate court will set a briefing schedule. In New York, it could be anywhere between four to six months at the minimum before you get a full briefing and an oral argument up at the court. So we're probably talking late 2024-ish, maybe 2025. So after the election, before the appellate court even gets around to making a decision about this. In the meantime,

that judgment stands against Donald Trump. The verdict stands, the judgment stands against him, subject to the bond that he's going to post. We'll continue to follow all this. One place, Legal AF on the Midas Touch Network. Watch us on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. on, you guessed it, Legal AF. The title's exactly what you think. And then on Hot Takes, just like this one,

at the intersection of law, politics, and justice. Until my next Hot Take, until my next Legal AF, this is Michael Popak reporting. Love this video? Make sure you stay up to date on the latest breaking news and all things Midas by signing up to the Midas Touch newsletter at MidasTouch.com slash newsletter.