Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Legal DUMPSTER FIRE Accelerates as he Gets MORE DESPERATE

Episode Date: November 26, 2023

Trial attorneys Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back with a new episode of the weekend edition of the LegalAF podcast. On this episode, they discuss developments in the DC and NY Gag Order appeals by Trump and and how Trump has acted out while awaiting decisions on whether he will be re-gagged; Trump’s attempt to delay the DC Election Interference case by asking for irrelevant information as the Court considers his motions to dismiss the indictment; the Colorado Supreme Court being asked to determine if an “Insurrectionist President” can be disqualified from the presidential ballot; the 8th Circuit gutting the Voting Rights Act by declaring that no group has standing to bring a case for racial discrimination in voting, and so much more from the intersection of law, politics and justice. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! AeroPress: Head to https://Aeropress.com/legalaf to save 20% at checkout! Aura Frames: Visit https://AuraFrames.com/LEGALAF and get AURA $40 off their best-selling Carver Mat frame with the code LEGALAF Highland Titles: Go to https://HighlandTitles.com and use the discount code LEGALAF to receive a generous 50% savings. SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop NEW LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch 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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We've been talking about gag orders on black Friday because there've been filings in the various court houses. We've been talking about gag orders earlier this week when it came to the oral argument in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. That was a great oral argument to listen to. Hope everybody had the opportunity to watch that here on the Midas Touch Network.

You had the Assistant to watch that here on the Midas Touch Network. You had the assistant solicitor general from the New York Attorney General's office, file an incredible brief with the appellate division, letting them know about all of the threats, actualized threats against Judge Angoran and his principal Law Clerk. Donald Trump continues meanwhile to file brief after brief in Washington DC's federal trial for his attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. That case is set for trial in March of 2024. Trump is trying to do everything he can to derail that. An appeal was filed in the disqualification case in Colorado. Want to hear your take on that Michael Popeye. And then we go to the eighth circuit court of appeals,

which made a horrific ruling regarding the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was a two to one ruling that went against all Supreme Court precedent, but then again, with this current Supreme Court, do they even care about precedent? And does this right wing, mega federalist society judges across the country care about precedent? Unfortunately, I think not, but it is important that we understand what is happening here. so we can confront it intelligibly, and we can build something generationally to make sure that we protect our democracy now and forever.

I'm Ben Myceles joined by Michael Popak and abbreviated intro there because I really wanna get right into it. And at some point in the show today, Popak, I wanna also discuss, perhaps we do it at the end, all of the cases from the Manhattan district attorney case, which not a lot of people are talking about, still criminal case against Donald Trump for his stormy Daniel Hush money payments. That's scheduled for March of 2024, the Washington,

DC federal criminal case for Trump's attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, that scheduled for March 4th of 2024, the E. Jean Carroll's other civil defamation case set for January of 2024, the Mar-a-Lago document case set for, although we think it'll be moved, May of 2024, and then you've got a bunch of, you've got a semi-catch. Yeah, Rudy Giuliani's defamation case in December. A lot going on, the wheels have just as turned

in the right direction. Popock, how are you doing? How was your Thanksgiving? My Thanksgiving was really fantastic. Not every holiday season, so I have a fantastic holiday season for many good reasons. I've been blessed and part of my blessing is to be a part of the Midas Touch Network and be your colleague and friend and thank you for asking about that. I really like the rundown you put together for tonight. I think it's a, I usually do. It's a cross-section, I think,

as we're about to turn the page on 2023 into a really important for justice, 2024. I just think it's a very good audit of where justice is as it continues to bring people who did really bad things in 2020, in 2021, to justice. We said it would take a while. We asked people to be patient with us, knowing the justice system, the way that you and I know it, and the court system. And now we're watching it. We're talking about trials.

We're talking about potential convictions. We're talking about people who have already pled guilty and taken plea deals in the inner sanctum of Donald Trump and all of that I just think this is and then we got to talk about the Supreme Court and its role in our society and And how they are addressing things that it matter to the disadvantage the disenfranchised and just regular thinking human beings Like the voting rights act. So really hats off to your lineup for today. When we talk about the Washington DC federal criminal case against Donald Trump for his attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election,

don't forget that the key witnesses, the star witnesses, if you will, against Donald Trump, are going to be Republicans who worked for Donald Trump. Okay. As much as Donald Trump wants to say, this is a liberal, deep state blah, blah, blah. The people who will be testifying for people like Mark Meadows, somebody who founded the Freedom Caucus. You don't get more right wing and Republican, if that even

has any meaning anymore, then Mark Meadows. Mark Meadows will be taking the stand. He's entered into an immunity deal that we've talked about here already on Legal AF, and we've reported before. And he's going to say, I committed crimes at the request of Donald Trump who committed crimes. I want you to think about how powerful that's going to be. Then you're going to have the former vice president Mike Pence testify against Donald Trump. Trump's VP is going to take the stand. How do we know this?

Because these people have gone before the grand jury already. And he's going to say, yes, I believe what Donald Trump was doing was criminal. That's why I didn't go along with it. And then you're going to have Republican lead, senior Republican officials in various states take the stand. And by the way, I tend to think that Bill Barr is going to be a witness as well. Not a lot of people have talked about that. But I think Bill Barr, Trump's AG, well, not a lot of people have talked about that. But I think Bill Barr, Trump's AG is a witness against Donald Trump. So it's going to look a lot like the January 6th committee in that the bulk of evidence is going to come from Republicans who worked for Donald Trump. Now, I'm not saying that at the outset of this episode, just to be repetitive of other hot takes that ties in to the gag order.

Donald Trump knows what I just said. His lawyers have told him that. So what is Donald Trump doing to try to stop that from happening? And this is how you know he did it because if the facts, well, one, we saw it happen. But this is how you know somebody in general did it. If they're not arguing the. If they're not arguing the facts and they're not arguing the law and they're attacking witnesses, they're attacking the judge, they're attacking the judge's law clerk, that's one of your big red flags

that that person doesn't knows that if they don't derail this through threats and intimidation, that they're going to jail for a very, very long time. And Glenn Kirschner was on the show with Michael Cohen, and I agree with Glenn Kirschner in the sense that I think that when Trump is convicted, I'm gonna say, when he is convicted. Because I think he absolutely will be convicted. I think Judge Chutkin remains him into custody.

I think he does go to prison and a deal's worked out with Secret Service where Donald Trump actually serves and then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge.

And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. And then he's going to be a judge. by Judge Chutkin, who were some of the people at Donald Trump was threatening? Pants, meadows, Donald Trump's the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley. These are all people who worked with or for Donald Trump. I don't want that to be lost, but that I want to frame why we're even talking about gag order, the importance of it because Trump is threatening

them to try to intimidate them and prevent them from testifying or hope that his minions go after these individuals and something happens. And Trump knows that when he posts, that's what his people do. He's well aware of that. So with that as background, Judge Chuck can enter to a gag order, which of course we know, oral argument though was held with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in Popeye. You tell us about this three judge panel,

your observations from the appeal. Right now, the gag order has been temporarily lifted on an administrative basis, but what do we expect to happen next? Any surprises during this oral argument? Before we leave Ben on the screen for a minute, this is gonna be, look at us, black and white. We just tell it in black and white.

There you go. No smoke or sunshine every week. Ah, you and I listened to the two-hour oral argument on whether judge Chuck Enns decision based on the facts that she reached as the trial effect and a trial judge like Chuck in has given tremendous discretion and tremendous amount of leeway to develop the facts. She found in a series of filings and evidence that she took at an evidentiary hearing

and oral argument that Donald Trump has made inappropriate, violent rhetoric attacks on different constituents of the criminal justice system of which he is an involuntary participant in voluntary because he is a defendant facing four felony convictions, serious ones looking at 30 years, 20 years of peace for each of the conspiracies. And with that in mind, the First Amendment rights of somebody like that, and then every court that we're going to talk about today, at least in New York and the DC one, is struggling with the First Amendment rights limited of a criminal defendant and his lawyers within the court system, because they're not unlimited unfettered.

The lawyer for Donald Trump, this appellate lawyer, John Sauer, who when he's not representing Donald Trump, he's a right-wing federalist society member who testifies before Congress in favor of MAGA and the weaponization of the federal government by the Biden administration, that John Sauer, that John Sauer, his arguments was stitched together with references to things in constitutional law and First Amendment law that don't even apply. None of his case law applied to a criminal defendant

or criminal lawyers in a criminal process. He likes to refer to concepts developed about the media, prior restraint, a doctrine that applies to members of the media and publishing companies, who cannot be stopped, usually, generally, from publishing information, even if it was obtained through a violation of the law under a concept we call prior restraint, has no place and no role in the analysis of whether Donald Trump can be gagged for using violent rhetoric to intimidate prosecutors, their families, their staff, and witnesses. None.

He likes to talk about, in addition to prior restraint, clear and present danger, which is a great title for a lot of, you know, a lot of movies and books, but has no place in the analysis of whether a first amendment right of a criminal defendant to attack other participants by name in the system. It's almost like he has constitutional Tourette's. He just spits out concept and phrases from some con law book that he read. you know, he makes himself out to be a constitutional scholar, but not based on what I saw in the two hours of oral argument, 80 minutes of which was him dancing on hot coals, trying to answer, but not successfully, questions posed by the three judge panel. The three judge panel, judge Millett, judge Pallard and judge Garcia, is not a great draw from Donald Trump.

I'll just say that. It's two Obama appointees and a Biden appointee, but it doesn't matter who appointed them. There are arguments on the Trump side, just don't make any sense. And Judge Millett, who I think is gonna ultimately be the judge to write the decision. And I think we're gonna get that decision very quickly

after a last flurry of filings on Thanksgiving day by the Department of Justice. And by Mr. Sauer in a one-page letter the next day, briefing is now done. Unless Donald Trump does something else despicable and the Department of Justice has to call them out while we wait for the decision by the panel, which is what we call sub-Judus or with the panel, not yet decided. We'll get that decision, I think early next week. I think Judge Millett writes it. What she focused on, and she was the most hard-hitting of the questioners, the examiners

for John Sauer, for Donald Trump, she said, what's missing from your argument, Mr. Sauer, is a balancing test. You're telling me that you basically, your client is above the law and has a First Amendment right to do and say whatever he pleases. But that's not what the law says. The law says we have to balance his First Amendment rights, whatever they are, and we determine them here, against the fair and proper administration of justice under the sixth amendment. And you don't seem to acknowledge that there's even a scale to be used by a court in balancing

it. And she also said, and this is where I think we're going to see a little bit of a pairing back. I want to get your view, of course, Ben on this of Judge Chuckkins order when they regag him. And I believe they will regag Donald Trump. I think it'll be a little bit more paired back on some of the language than what is present in Judge Chuck and because I heard Judge Millett say, we need to be surgical like with a scalpel to make sure that we balance properly

these two competing interests. We acknowledge that he is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination. However, he's also a criminal defendant in a serious set of felony charges against him in a pending lawsuit. And so they have to be balanced. And John Sarah is like, basically, there's no balance. And you and I hit the nail on the head last week or the week before when we said,

and I know I said it in a hot tick, they're going to get him quickly wrapped around his own axle, his jurors' prudential axle. When they asked John Sauer, I didn't know who the lawyer was going to be at the time, when they asked him, let me understand this. Do you agree with me? Your guy is not above the law.

They actually asked that question. He says, no, my first amendment, is your guy above the law? No. Okay. We agree on that. Secondly, do you believe that there is an ability for a judge to gag to stop conduct short of a crime? Because there's already a criminal statutes on the books that address witness tampering and some other things. Is your position? I want to get the limits

of your position. Is your position that the only thing that a federal judge can do position. Is your position that the only thing that a federal judge can do is only gagged that things that are already crimes on the books? Well, and he couldn't answer it. And she says, you need to answer it. You're here asking me for relief. You need to be able to give me the limits of your argument. And then what he wouldn't do is she gave it to him. She provided the limits, which is I do not believe they're going to rule that the only conduct that can be addressed by a gag water by a federal judge is only that which reaches the level of a crime. Because why would you need to have the gag order then and the ability of a judge to control

the decorum and the administration of justice? So the writing for me is on the wall. Sure, they gave it to Cecil van Van Devender, who's the lawyer for the Department of Justice, and they wanted to test his position about the limited gag order and can it be even more limited and should it be even more limited? But I think they're working from the presumption

that I could see from the bench and the questions that a gag order is appropriate in certain circumstances, even balancing the first amendment rights of somebody and where do you draw the line? And now they're going to figure out whether the judge, Chuck, in drew that imaginary line properly or not, I think they're going to carve it just a little bit back. And then there's two choices and I want to get your view on this. They either do it themselves and blue pencil it. They pull out a pen and they say, well, she was right here, but then shut gun, we're going

to take this language of targeting people. We don't like targeting. We're going to erase it and we're going to call it something else. Are they going to blue pencil it or are they going to send it back to judge Chuckkin for further evidentiary hearings to come up with another gag order? I want to hear your view. Do you think they gag, regag in some fashion? Do you think they go chuck all chucking?

Or do you think they surgically dial it back themselves or send it back to her for some repair? I think they're going to remand it back to her to conform with the ultimate order and they're going to provide the language which will look very, very similar to the existing gag order, but it will more precisely use the language from the Gentile case, which is a 1991 Supreme Court case.

Then she will immediately utilize, I think, that language would be my prediction. And then, I mean, Donald Trump could then appeal that, but the precedent would already be set, so it would be a frivolous appeal. And then I think the Department of Justice, when they're opposing his appeal, if he tries to appeal the adoption and incorporation of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals language that they'll put in their order, it would be viewed as frivolous and kind of rejected out of hand right away. I could, they're not going to say that there should not be a gag order and that Donald Trump can say whatever it is he wants to say, short of committing another crime. That's, I think, you and I both agree that is not something they're going to allow no gag order to exist.

So they'll either allow the existing gag order or they'll very modify it in a very simple way. During the oral argument, there was a lot of talk about a case if you were listening to it, and you're not kind of a mess in all of the Supreme Court precedent on these issues. You may have heard them saying, Gentile, Gentile over and over again. You may be saying, it's a nice word, but why are they saying Gentile? Because there was a Supreme Court case in 1991 called Gentile versus the State Bar of Nevada, which tested the rules of professional responsibility in the state of Nevada, which limited the types of statements a criminal defense lawyer and their client could make in a criminal proceeding.

And there, although the State Bar of Nevada's rules were ultimately found to run a foul to the constitutional test, the Supreme Court in 1991 found that the test for when a gag order can be imposed, and when sanctions can be issued and what type of restraints can exist in a criminal case is whether there would be a substantial likelihood of material prejudice in a case, whether there was a substantial likelihood of material prejudice that would be caused by the conduct or speech of a criminal lawyer or a criminal defendant in a specific case. And so what the Department of Justice was arguing at the oral argument is, look, Judge Chutkin's standard clearly meets the substantial likelihood of material prejudice test because she, Judge Chutkin, went even narrower than that. She could have said

substantial likely it in material prejudice, but what Judge Chuckin said was significant and immediate risk to become targets. And so the language Chuckin used was slightly different. I think narrower and included within the broader substantial likelihood test, but that's where it really got into the weeds over language, Popeye. And that's where I think that here, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is just going to make clear, Gentile is the standard, and this type of conduct would run afoul to Gentile and no Donald Trump can't just say whatever he wants in a criminal proceeding. There's different level of restraints than outside of a situation when someone's charged with felony crimes. So let me ask you about that. Let me frame the submission

that was made on Thanksgiving Day. Justice Never Sleep, certainly the Department of Justice Never Sleeps, the one-page response and get your view of what do you think the impact will be on the appellate panel as they're about to make their decision. And this segues a little bit later in our show tonight to what's going on with the gag order. As you said, gaggle, gaggle, or whatever your comment was

at the beginning of the podcast. Gaggle, gaggle, gaggle,gle gaggle gaggle. For the two gag orders, what in New York, what in DC? Who have now the worlds have collided understandably so? Because if you do bad things in one jurisdiction, it may come back to bite you in the backside and the other jurisdiction. Or as I said at a hot tick, if you have murder a man in Idaho, it may come back to Haunt you when you're up for trial for murder in Ohio. And so you have a submission earlier in the week by the New York Attorney General, Latisha James' office to the New York court of appeals,

or at least the intermediary court, the first department over Manhattan issues, in which they submitted the affidavit of Captain Holland, Captain Holland being the person responsible for the Department of Public Safety Judicial Threat Assessment Bureau, that got that exists to protect judges and staff from being assassinated, attacked, and stalked, and things like that in New York.

And I assume every court has a version of that. Captain Holland put it in half of David, a declaration in which he outlined all of the credible threats that have increased against the principal law clerk for judge Angora who's been mercilessly and improperly attacked by the lawyers for Donald Trump and Donald Trump himself. I mean hundreds a day Ben. So many attacks, anti-Semitic misogynist threats of bodily harm, threats of assassination, body shaming, you name it. 5080 a day, email, they cracked or they hacked into her computer, into her cell phone, voicemail messages, and everything else.

So much so that it comprises, as of earlier in the week, 275 single space pages, single space pages of transcripts for all of these merciless attacks on her. On the judge side, they said, we're not going to tell you how the judge was attacked because we don't reveal that. But let's just say the judge had a number of credible attacks on him that I won't reveal in this particular affidavit. The Department of Justice saw that, couldn't ignore it. It went to issues that came up not only during the oral argument, but also in the briefing between the parties, because Donald Trump couldn't help himself from bragging that they got one justice, and we'll talk about it more in the next segment.

One justice on an administrative interim basis to agree to a temporary stay order of the Gaggen, New York, while the full of pellet court made a decision, same thing that the DC pellet court did, exactly. Same thing that Chuck and did in staying her own order. It's not amazing to do that. And it doesn't mean you're going to win on the merits. But of course, a justice of the appellate divisions

stayed our, the gag order in New York. Well, you just opened the door to the gag order in New York issue. And so when this new bombshell affidavit got filed, the Department of Justice said, well, here's some supplemental authority you might want to chew on while you're deciding the issue, panel, three judge panel in District of Columbia. Here's what just got filed about judge threats, you know, to assassinate judges and law clerks

in New York by the same guy in the same attorneys. Take a look. What did you, and then if there was a stupid response by, and you can talk about it, of course, by John same guy, the same attorneys. Take a look. What did, and then if there was a stupid response by, and you can talk about it, of course, by John Sauer, a one page, you ripped, I mean, you must have been in between Thanksgiving, one page, that's it, submission, as he wanted to try to get the last word, and panel has it, obviously. What do you think the impact is of this,

Captain Holland affidavit on the panel in the District of Columbia. Look, it's powerful. I don't think it really makes a difference for where the panel was going anyway. I think that they recognize the totality of circumstances here that when Trump does X, Y does X, Y happens, and they recognize that through the oral argument that there was real conduct that would follow when Donald Trump made these posts. Look, I think adding a mountain of evidence of additional death threats certainly bolsters the view and perspective that there needs to be a gag order in some form imposed. But, you know, ultimately, I don't think it's going to change where the panel was going anyway.

I want to talk about that. I also want to talk about what I just said, though, the totality of circumstances here, because what Donald Trump relies on is the vagueness and ambiguity and how he makes the threat. And that's why people have said, including Michael Cohen, and we've said here, that Donald Trump speaks like a mafia boss. He doesn't say, I want you to do this to this person. He just says it would be unfortunate if something happened to this person. And then it is clear to his followers what he is asking them to do and then they do it

And then he goes out in his various speeches and for example mox nancy polo sees husband Who's the victim of attempted murder of somebody who was convicted for the crime and then mox that and laughs at it and jokes about it thereby encouraging other Cells basically there's other way to describe it, to engage in that behavior. Let's talk about that and more. Let's talk about what's going on. We'll flesh it out in a little more detail

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Welcome back to legal AF Michael Popak, Ben, myself, but before going back into speaking on the gag order in the New York Attorney General Civil Broadcast, and how the filing before the appellate division was used in the Washington, DC appeal in the federal case of the gag order there, it's just worth noting for a second, Popok, you've practiced for over close to 30 years, and you practiced in that courthouse, in New York where judge in Goran sits, you've done a lot, a lot of civil cases, in that specific courthouse.

And the very fact that litigants go in there every single day and have very serious disagreements with each other. These are parties that detest each other, suing each other, family rivalries, people who, you know, corporate companies that hate other people, you got employees suing companies for serious misconduct, you got all of suing companies for serious misconduct, you've got all of this stuff going on in this civil division that's in New York.

And you don't hear about this unprofessional and just disgusting behavior. And you've got people who are always fed up, on, you know, usually with the way a judge rules, or if en-gore on rules for the other side, happens every single day, hundreds of times a day, thousands to tens of thousands of times a year in that courthouse, but our whole system is based on this good faith in the process, in the system, in the judiciary.

success in the system, in the judiciary. And what Donald Trump has done his entire life is anything that relies on good faith, right? Whether it's contracts, whether it's our social contract that is our constitution, whether it is the unspoken rules that allow our courts to have the legitimacy. That's where lots of people looked at our system and was like, how are you? You just go along with good faith and Trump and this MAGA movement came along

and they were like, nope, we're ripping it apart. We don't care what it says. We don't care what the contract says. We don't care what the constitution is. We're going to attack you and you and you. We're going after all of you and That's just something that our system actually struggles to contain and so while there was just this Administrative stay of the gag order that's now subject to this appeal in an article 78 proceeding in New York

Which is where that affirmation by the public safety officer and the solicitor general filing, talking about all the threats to judge in Goran and judge in Goran's clerk. All of that was filed. But like even the appeals court now, the appellate division has to really kind of struggle with the fact that, well, we have the First amendment, which says Donald Trump can post a photo, and he's just posting a photo of the law clerk. And so without getting the 275-page single-spaced affirmation and learning about the totality of circumstances,

of how Donald Trump operates, you can see a judge or a justice sitting in an appellate level saying, but what's the issue here until they get the voluminous filing of this is causing copious threats every single day. And that's what Trump and this magma movement is doing to our judicial system. And that is where, you know, the judge, when he first made the order, lifting the gag order on an administrative basis, doesn't have that record. He just like, I just see a photo. What's the issue of Trump posting a photo? The issue is the modus operandi here of what's happening. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I like that a lot. The social contract is really, really important to me. I operate in a certain way and so do you because we were raised with morals and values and I entered a sacred oath as an attorney to uphold as an officer of the court, the ethics and to make sure that there's the fair administration of justice from my end. There's a reason I don't wear my pajamas or a smoking jacket into court and ask the person in the black robe to move over because I've decided to sit on the bench today. I guess I could do that.

It would be a one shot deal. And then I'd be asked to go meet the bail-up with my toothbrush. But I would never think to do this. I've hit the math while you were doing some of your run down there. I think I've appeared in front of over 125 judges and arbitrators in my career.

I've never seen what's happened with Donald Trump in my entire career except once. One, and I won't name the person or the matter, but in an arbitration, my opponent decided at the beginning of the trial to use his beginning minutes of his opening statement to completely bash the arbitrator, calling him incompetent and prejudiced and not fair and balanced and not impartial and never having ruled in favor

of a person like his client before in his entire, this guy was in his 70s, he was almost a seven retired lawyer at that point. And I sat back because I knew this lawyer and I sat back thinking, this is either genius or insanity. And I'm not sure what I'm watching yet. I was like, I'm almost out of like muffled a smile because I knew this was going to backfire. And it did. He didn't win at all. And there's a reason you don't do these things. I am, I have not agreed with every judge I've been in front of, I've been frustrated in front of some judges. It's been reported in the every judge I've been in front of. I've been frustrated in front of some judges.

It's been reported in the media that I've been frustrated with some judges during trials where I sort of put my head in my hands and the media caught it, but I would never cross the line to be abusive to the judge, the staff, a clerk, a court reporter, a sheriff, a deputy sheriff, an investigator, an FBI agent,

or anybody like that. If I can't win my case in terms of my advocacy and being respectful and being a part of the social contract, then I don't wanna win my case. And I don't wanna be a part of that profession. Soon these lawyers that are doing these things in the civil case, I think that's your point you're making too. This isn't even about Donald Trump going to jail.

This is about Donald Trump stroking a check and his lawyers are acting this way and these lawyers may not be acting this way for much longer. As I said, one of my hot takes, first of all, they're the third string for Donald Trump, which is pretty low. Varsity already got fired, lost their bar licenses or are indicted or now convicted, like guilty, junior varsity, same thing. I don't even know what this is the scrub team. All they're doing is risking their bar license for what purpose to make the extra buck, you know, so they can go to that MME fighting thing with Donald,

they just love being in the company of Donald. It's so weird. I've never seen it before. This conflation between the lawyer and his client, I get that Chris Keiss has no other clients. I mean, he just went out and left a law firm to represent Donald Trump. I'm sure he hasn't been out pound in the pavement to get new clients lately. And,

and Todd Blanche, the same thing. He left his law firm to represent Donald Trump. I don't think I haven't seen him represent one other person since then. So I get it. And, and Alina Hobb had some little tiny firm and you did a great hot take about she and her husband own millions of dollars in tax lines because they don't pay their taxes. I mean, that's a perfect lawyer for Donald Trump. In the courtroom itself, they are losing. And you and I and Karen have done hot take after hot take in legal AF episode, after legal AF episode, for the seven weeks the trial has been going on in the civil fraud case. Here's a news flash for those that are crossing over to watch us as part of

our audience. Donald Trump is losing his civil fraud case badly, not just because of the witnesses that the attorney general put on in her case, but because of the witnesses, Donald Trump is put on in his own case. The evidence is strongly against Donald Trump to prove that his company wasn't just a fraudulent house of cards for all of this time in which he was able to over bar borrow money he wasn't entitled to get low approvals he wasn't entitled to get insurance he wasn't entitled to get permits and and and deals approved that he wasn't entitled to during that period when he was a mere billionaire and not a triple billionaire.

And that's what this whole case is about. They are going to lose. And when they get one little victory, like, oh, just as David Friedman, he said, no gag order for two weeks, then they go out and completely try to, you know, cause credible bodily harm to the to the law clerk and to the judge in the interim, hoping that no one else will notice. John Sauer says and is filing the District of Columbia, an irrelevant set of facts about what's going on in New York, an irrelevant set of facts, a judge being subject to an assassination attempt because of comments made by Donald Trump when he

wasn't gagged. That's that is the height of relevancy. And so the thing that we're watching, we can segue into the New York Attorney General thing. I'll set it up and turn it back to you. So you've got the gag order in New York is even more limited than the one that Tony and Chuck and Judge Chuck had issued for Donald Trump. In the DC one, it's don't use violent rhetoric against these participants in the criminal justice system and don't target them. In Chutkin and Goron, in the New York Civil Front case, it's even more limited.

It's very specific. Stop attacking my staff and my law clerk. That's it. They can't even pull that off. That shows you how dastardly and despicable they are as lawyers. They can't even stop attacking the port defenseless Locklark, who's a member of the New York bar. I'd like to remind them and could be a future judge that they'll have to all appear in

front of one day. They're bashing her mercilessly, causing potentially bodily and grievous harm to her and the judge as well during this period because they're losing in the courtroom. And this one judge, judge Friedman, I'll leave it on this turn of back to you. Judge Friedman is the same judge that temporarily, administratively, interimly stayed the trial before the trial even began on a request by Donald Trump. But by the time the full panel of the appellate division of which he joined for other people, they totally vacated his order and ruled

against him and let the trial go forward. So just because they got David Friedman in a one hour hearing without the benefit of Captain Holland's affidavit about all of the all of the bad things that have gone wrong and the increased threat assessment that has happened to these members of the bad things that have gone wrong and they increased threat assessment that has happened to these members of the judiciary and their staff, it was not in front of them, they didn't have any evidence in front of them. They had whatever the gag order was

and whatever the lawyers on their feca come up with on an emergency hearing that was called the last minute down at the Appellate Division courthouse. That's all they had with full briefing. I would be shocked if this Appellate Division courthouse. That's all they had with full briefing. I would be shocked if this Appellate Division wants to send the message to this Donald Trump or future Donald Trumps that you are free to abuse, our judges and law clerks, and we won't do a darn thing about it.

What do you think will happen, Ben, if that's the message that's set about the court system in New York, you will have a full revolt of all of the trial judges. Right. It's not just judge and goreun, you have all of the trial judges in New York watching this. And they're thinking to themselves, if you allow lawyers to go against what the judge is saying in the court, you are going

to destroy, as I said before, that social contract that exists. But more narrowly, the rules that govern just the basic decorum and functioning of a courtroom. And you're going to make all of our judges, trial judges, targets of death threats. All the message you're going to send is all lit against, can cite your opinion, judge, and can say, look at what Judge Friedman said. Judge Friedman says, attacks are okay on trial judges. Go for it.

And that will be cited, go for it. And that will be cited as precedent for that. That's why one of the things that I thought was very powerful that Judge Ingoron actually did in opposing this temporary lifting of the gag order is that Ingoron actually got involved in the opposition. And you had people on behalf of Ingoron going through the threats that In Goron actually got involved in the opposition. And you had people on behalf of In Goron going through the threats that In Goron faces, that has law clerk faces every single day.

Because that wrecked the public safety officer talking about the death threats to your point before Popeyes, the 275 pages, single space that listed all of the threats that have taken place since October 3rd basically caused by Donald Trump and Trump's lawyers behavior and says, okay, a pellet division, here's the record. If you're gonna say this is okay, you're gonna single-handedly destroy the ability of trial judges to conduct business in the state of New York. David Friedman was appointed to the Appellate Division back in 1999 by a Republican New

York governor, George Pataki. Again, what he did was administrative, but like, and it's not like a full lifting of the gag order. But as I've said before, in some of the hot takes, you could see a scenario where an appellate judge and appeals judge gets a gets this record before them and goes, well, what's wrong? It's just a photo. It's just this.

It's just that. But that's why here in Goron, the court staff, the public safety officers made sure to give this full record of all of the death threats that have happened. So we'll keep you posted on what happens there. But I want to be before going on to the next topic, Pope, I want to go back to like again, why is Donald Trump engaged in this behavior? And to your point, I mean, setting aside the fact that he's a maniac and he is a, you know, he engages in this, this behavior. And that's just this stochastic terrorism that he and his movement do every single day, they're losing. Donald Trump's former controller

testified earlier in the week, Jeff McConney testified. McConney broke down, started crying during the examination. May have hinted at the fact that there's another criminal case that's being investigated out of the Southern District of New York when he was listing the various proceedings that he's involved in While he's breaking down and while he's crying no one had realized that there's some Southern District of New York federal criminal investigation Apparently going on there was no follow-up so no one really knows anything more than that I asked Cohen on beat down Cohen didn't know what McConney was talking about there. But one of the things McConney said during the cross examination was that he was given

these numbers. The numbers were inaccurate during the cross exam. It showed that all of the approvals that Donald Trump was the one responsible for giving all of the approvals on all of these financials. And McConney's testimonies devastating for the Trump organization. This is a document case. The documents show that Donald Trump engaged in the fraud that he's being accused of.

It doesn't mean that Mar-a-Lago is not a valuable property or 40 Wall Street or the triplex or bedmins. It doesn't mean they're not valuable properties. It just means the way Trump manipulated the properties on paper were fraudulent. It's undisputed. You know, sure, Mar-a-Lago, as a residential property, you want to say it's valued at

$250 million. Certainly, not $1.5 billion. You want to say it's $250 million? Sure, if it's a residential property, it's not. Why? Donald Trump wanted to pay less property taxes. So he encumbered the property with historical easements and a deed, which says that it was forever going to be used as a commercial property, as a club.

It's not a residential property. So the Trump organization devalued the property at $27 million, not judge and go on. The triple X, not 30,000 square feet is 10,000 square feet. It's still impressive. You got a triple X in New York, who's triple X is in New York that are 10,000 square feet? You don't have you don't have yours anymore. Do you? I know. But he lies about, he lies about everything is just, you know, on paper

a lie. And that's why they're attacking the clerk. That's why they're going after that. But what's extra frustrating Trump though right now is that he thinks these tactics, because they've always worked in the past. That's right. He's bullied people his whole life into submission. And by the way, when he's put that golden spoon money

that he was born with and you use it to bully people, you can see he's bullying some of the most powerful people right now in the, you know, whether it's special counsel Jack Smith, the judges. Imagine when he uses that to bully the contractors or to just bully someone else in a deal. That's how he ran over people, his entire life with these tactics.

And this is the first time that our democracy is facing this stress test, and our democracy is saying no. And so he's pushing against that, and we just haven't seen anything like this before, Popeyes, you know. Yeah, and a couple of comments just to drill down on. On McConee, you're so right about this being a document case at the end of the day.

And it will be Donald Trump's own words, and the handwriting is not on the wall, as I said on a hot take. It's on the documents. It's in blue ink. And it belongs to Jeff McCannie, also known as the spreadsheet czar who he's the one that wrote all over the financial statements before they were at before they were sent out to the lenders with commentary and comments and questions for Donald Trump to answer. For instance, hey, boss, should we put on your financial statement deals that aren't yet closed, but are only in the pipeline like forecasted deals? That'll be like you and me driving by house saying, let's put that house.

I like that house. Let's put that house on my balance sheet. I like that house. I don't own it, but put it on my balance sheet. I like that house. I don't own it, but put it on my balance sheet I like it and so and then of course Donald Trump at the top it says for DJ T review Which totally blows the doors off of Donald Trump's arguments like I don't I wasn't really involved see they this is the tension Their argument has always been on the Trump side. It wasn't me if If it was anybody, it was mazers, the outside auditors. And here you have Jeff McConney having to testify to admit that his handwriting is all over

the documents, that that document ultimately went to Donald Trump himself or Eric Trump when Donald Trump was in the White House. And when he was giving his direct examination responses to Trump's lawyers in a friendly way, which is when he broke down and cried, by the way. He broke down during the direct examination, led by the Trump lawyers, not by the cross-examining Attorney General. We'll leave that for a minute. He said, oh, here's the process. Staying in a financial condition, I drafted it.

I gave it to Al Weisselberg, my the long time non-chief, non-certified public accountant, chief financial officer for the Trump organization who's gone to jail. And then we then gave it to measures, the outside auditors, and then they looked at it and verified it, and they hit print. And then he had to admit under cross-examination, didn't you leave out a step, sir? Didn't you leave out the step where it goes to Donald J. Trump or Eric Trump for approval of the numbers in there that are inflated by $300 million. Did you leave that out?

Isn't that your handwriting? Yes. Didn't that go to Donald J. Trump? Yes. Didn't that go to Eric Trump after that? Yes. That is, we keep saying a lot of things are bombshell and devastating. This is really bad for them.

That is the first witness who has said that Donald J. Trump was involved with the financial statements that are fraudulent. And again, you're right. We keep reminding people, we're not saying that guy wasn't a billionaire. The problem is he needed to be a 2.5 billionaire for the Deutsche Bank set of loans, and he needs to have 500 million dollars worth of free cash liquid cash and he didn't so he made the numbers up. It's like I said and I said to somebody recently I can have a piece of property and I can have it insured but if I burn down the property to get the insurance that's the fraud. We're not saying he didn't have any assets. I love all the all the Trumpers like he's a very successful by the way he wasn't that any assets. I love all the, all the Trumpers. Like, he's a very successful, by the way,

he wasn't that successful. A billion is a lot of money, but not a lot of money in the world of finance or real estate. Okay? And so he, it wasn't enough for him. He didn't want to be able to just borrow X amount. He wanted to borrow three times X amount. And the only way to do that was to lie.

And that is the entire part of the case. He's going to lose, not because Judge Engoron was democratically voted in or the law clerk went to a Chuck Schumer fundraiser or because they don't like the color of the tie or they're going to lose because they committed fraud over a number of years and the documents and witnesses supported and we're not here even on the criminal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. This just has to be preponderance of the evidence,

meaning the scale just has the tip when you line up the evidence for it against, it just has the tip ever so slightly towards the New York Attorney General's case. It's overwhelming evidence right now, but it just has to tip ever so slightly and then you lose your businesses and your money and your buildings and the names on buildings and everything else.

You can go cry about it. All you want on the courthouse steps or in your rallies or raising your fundraising money, but it's not going to change the reality. And then when he loses by Judge Angora, and he's going to lose from Judge Angora on sometime in December, early January, I said, maybe when they're picking the jury in the E.G. Carroll case will be right around the time the order comes out, then they'll have to take an appeal to the court of the New York palliative vision first department again with

another judge panel, another five judge panel there, and then they're going to lose there. And then they're going to go to the court of appeals of New York. And that is the last stop, not the US Supreme Court, the court of appeals for New York. And all along the way, he's going to lose. He's just trying to help he loses after the election, not before the election. PopoKU worked at a large Wall Street company that actually earns billions of dollars in revenue that actually has a lot of employees and executives. Could you imagine any scenario ever just based on your past experience where the head of the organization, where the CEO, the COO, the co-CEOs would ever basically say, we don't look

at our financials. We just relied on the professionals and it was their fault. We don't even look at those things. We're too busy pouring concrete. You're the perfect person to ask that question based on your experience being in number two. Could you even fathom that as something that is happening? Let me tell you how it worked.

The chief financial officer for my boss who was the Donald Trump of that organization, but with real money and assets behind him. His office was intentionally 12 feet away from the chief financial officer's office. He was in that office, along with the general counsel, people like me on a regular basis to find out

how much money they had, what did the, what did the unordered financial look like, how much lending power did we have? You know, how many times he made a phone call to the outside auditors? Never. The outside auditors came in regularly. I met with them on a regular basis on the litigation side of the house. But when they came in, that's not, you don't run your business based on audited, the

order, the order the auditor. The auditor, first of all, is only sampling your financial statement. They're not looking at every transaction. That's why it's called an audit and not a I don't know what you don't call the pay. Hey, Mr. Auditor over at you know, big five auditing firm. Hey, I want to go for a hundred million dollar loan. Do I have the money? That's not who you make the phone call to. You walk down the hall of your chief financial officer who knows all the banks and all the lending and knows what the stock is up or the stock is down, the asset values and says,

yeah, you can go for that or we can arrange it with this kind of borrowing or this, or it will float a bond or we'll go to the market in this way. There was never a conversation between my thoughts and the outside auditors, except when the outside auditors needed to interview him in order to make sure that the audited financials were on the up and up, that's it. Or how about the Trump organizations, chief financial officer does not know,

this is what he said under oath, what generally accepting accounting principles are, yet alone getting in the weeds of it But just does it know generally what gap even is as the CFO who's not a CPA like You couldn't hire that first of all my my company would not and could not hire Somebody in a control these are control positions We talk about them a lot and And that means what it sounds like. You are, there are controls within an organization to make sure that systemic fraud or fraud is not going on inside.

Okay. Controls in the accounting department, controls in finance, controls employment rules and regulations. And there are control officers that are responsible. There's the head of compliance usually for an organization. You know what's missing at the Trump organization? A head of compliance. I don't know who it is because there isn't one. But most organizations in New York or in Delaware and other places have a head of compliance

making sure that laws and regulations in the various industries that you operate in are being complied with. You have the internal audit, which is responsible for catching fraud in the company before it goes up to the external auditor. I've never heard of an internal auditor at Trump Organization because he doesn't want one, he doesn't have one. You have the controller who reports the chief financial officer who is usually a certified public accountant

and comes out of a big five accounting firm or whatever the numbers up to these days because they need to interface with their counterparty, their counterpart at the outside auditor like Mazers and they gotta talk in a language that makes sense. Mazers obviously realize that nobody over the Trump organization intentionally, intentionally by Trump was qualified to be in a control officer position.

How they certified those audits year after year until after 12 years, they said, we can't do it any longer and everything we wrote in our certification is wrong. How they even would take that engagement knowing, if I, let me put it this way, if I were a major accounting firm, auditing firm, and I was being asked to audit for purposes of lending, banking relationships and the like, an organization that had these people hand picked by Donald Trump to be in control officer positions, I would tell them in the first audit, if I took the engagement, or even prior to that in taking the engagement, we cannot take the engagement until you improve

your control officer positions. By placing in those positions, these kind of people with these kind of credentials and you're missing a compliance officer, you're missing an internal audit person, and until you have that structure, we won't even do your audit. If they have the balls to do that,

that would be what I would do. If they take the audit and realize these people are not qualified, then in the notes, they should say otherwise the work is not qualified for his position, and neither is Jeff McConney. But this is what I'm saying when people say Donald Trump is this great business person. He's not. He handpicked people, many of which had his last name and put them in positions they were neither qualified to occupy nor had any desire to implement any of the appropriate control officer positions. And why do you have a week set of controls in a company?

You're going to know the answer to this, Ben. You know where this is going. Why do you fashion a company that has weak control officers and weak or no controls? It's because your company is based on... fraud. Fraud. And running a fraud company, you wanna make sure everybody is asleep at the switch.

Yeah, you know, and then he has a shell game of the actual assets where you're taking from Peter to pay Paul and taking from Paul to pay whoever and you run that over and over and over again. And then if you're able to pay back Paul after taking it from Peter, you go, but Peter wasn't damaged. He got paid back and you hope that the value of the real estate continues to go up. And meanwhile, you've gotten an unfair advantage from everybody else

out there who's playing by a set of rules, who's playing by the social contract called the law where we in the United States say nobody should be above the law. I thought it was such a perfect way, um, popot to get your unique expertise in this area because all of these people who want a mag explain, well, this is actually a very successful, this is how it's run. It is always the case, no, it isn't. It is not, stop it.

We're not saying that Mar-a-Lago's not valuable, we're not saying that, okay, you have a 10,000 square foot triplex, I mean, why a mag a person who is struggling to get by and with Donald Trump, put an $8 trillion and debt into our, why you are so proud of Donald Trump inheriting a lot of money from his daddy. And he's a, okay, well, you live vicariously, whatever it is, we're not saying that that's not big. It's big. Okay, 10,000 square foot triple X, good, good work. I don't know what I'm gonna say to you. That's impressive I guess if you live a materialistic life, which I is ridiculous, but if that impresses you fantastic, but

The bottom line it ain't 30,000 square feet. Mar-a-Lago ain't a residential property and he does that with each and every one of his properties But Popeye, thank you for clarifying that when we come back I want to talk about this eighth circuit, a quarter of appeals opinion, gutting the Voting Rights Act and what we think is going to happen there, especially after the recent Supreme Court decisions where it seemed to directly contradict that, but that won't get in the way of a right wing mega appeals panel. Also, I want to talk briefly about some of the reply uh, reply papers

that Donald Trump's been filing in the Washington DC case that more. Let's take a quick break. Time for a word from our show sponsor, Highland Titles. Highland Titles sell a unique gift with a legal twist in the Land Registration Act of 1979. Lawmakers in Scotland legally defined a souvenir plot of land. This is a plot of land so small, most often one square foot, that its value was solely commemorative or sentimental. So you can buy a square foot of Scotland for just 30 bucks. Why do people do that? Well, Scottish landowners were traditionally given the courtesy title of Laird. The English translation is Lord, and the female equivalent title is Lady. Buying a plot of land from HighlandTitles.com will enable you to legitimately style yourself

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normally do and then have different headers with the different arguments that you would make. If you're claiming, you know, vindictive or selective prosecution, if you're claiming presidential immunity, if you're claiming statutory and constitutional immunity in Britain. Those would be arguments. Donald Trump's strategy, though, is to try for Kate, make multiple motions, and then try to appeal them all,

and hopefully get in front of a DC Circuit Court of Appeals panel that will stay the case from going forward in March. That's the whole game because these motions are so incredibly frivolous and the replies are even more frivolous. I mean, I was reading this one that Donald Trump filed a reply on the vindictive and selective prosecution motion where Donald Trump is arguing that the plot to vindictively, selectively go after him. He goes began in 2020 under Bill Barr. So he like, it brings Bill Barr into it as though Bill Barr's responsible and the his own justice departments responsible, good

dating back to December of 2020. But what Donald Trump's doing when you actually look at the vindictive and selective prosecution motion after spending a lot of these pages whining, what Donald Trump tries to do is say, but I should be entitled to discovery so I can then prove my vindictive selective prosecution and then discovery will take time. And that's his way of trying to delay this thing and by saying, I'm entitled to all this discovery now. When you look at what the discovery, he's claiming that he's entitled to in order to try to prove up a vindictive or selective prosecution motion. He's like, produced to me all of our national security documents regarding the intel on Russia's interference in our elections

and Iran's interference and China's interference with our elections. And as I did a hot take on, it seems like it's kind of quintessential graymail whereby a criminal defendant basically says, I want these documents, I want to make them part of the public case, even if it jeopardizes our national security, unless you dismiss claims against me. And like Judge Chutkin's going to see it for what it is, unlike Judge Cannon in the Southern District of Florida, this is going nowhere. But Trump's attempt at filing all of these different motions to dismiss and he filed the multiple replies.

Judge Chutkin gave him a brief opportunity for a few extra days extension. So he filed all of these replies to the motion to dismiss. What I think Judge Chuck is going to do, and I want to hear your take on some of Donald Trump's reply briefs. I could be wrong on this, but I think she's going to try to consolidate her opinion into either one or two orders, which she's already been, I think, working on because she knows how baseless it is. And whereas Donald Trump tried to divide,

I think she'll try to have an omnibus order, addressing them as one. So if Donald Trump files an appeal, it's one appealable order versus kind of multiple, which is what Trump was trying to do. You saw special counsel Jack Smith in his opposition. I think very intelligently tried to do an omnibus with some of Donald Trump's motions to dismiss, but those aren't going anywhere. They're beyond frivolous. And again, Donald Trump's not arguing. I didn't do it. Right? His arguments are

arguing, I didn't do it. Right? His arguments are former president can do anything they want to do. You're selectively going after me. I want you to remove allegations from the indictment that reference my connections with January 6th insurrectionists. And there's nothing that a former president should be restricted from doing or saying or anything. And it's, I have a first amendment right to engage in this behavior, not the behavior that I engage in. What are you talking about? The behavior was fine.

He never argues that the same way in New York. You think, I don't think he'll take the stand again in New York. You don't hear him on his testimony in New York when he took the stand going, look, I'm super diligent here. I go through the financials, we have meetings once a day, I meet with the CFO, I confirm their accuracy. The New York attorney general's off because if you go to, let's turn on to the spreadsheet, page, 365, take a look at over here.

I make sure that we have these controls, and this is why it's accurate, right? Donald Trump in DC is not arguing what I did. He's not arguing. I didn't do it. He's just saying, I should do whatever I want to do, and you're specifically targeting me. Well, you did it. You're being prosecuted because you engaged in the crimes.

What'd you make of his filings, Popeye? Yeah, I think a couple of... Yeah, I think that's a good overview. They're gonna... Let me start with how you started it. He's gonna lose all these motions to the semis in front of Judge Chukkin. We thought so on the first brief, the opening brief, and certainly now on what they're trying to amascarate as some sort of reply that is no better than their opening brief on these issues. She's already ruled in one order that references to Jan 6th should stay in the case appropriately

in the indictment for many, many good reasons. That was one of his motions. So he's already O and one. I thought the argument that he's raised in his most recent filing that there is nothing in the indictment that is anything other than a criminalizing of First Amendment speech with no conduct attached to it is just a ball-faced lie. They argued in their most recent brief that the indictment should be dismissed because all it's doing is criminalizing First Amendment speech speech and there's not one example of conduct. Well, I did a hot take. That's up,

I think, right now where I outline all the paragraphs of the indictment. I think it's important and I read from them, read from them, including in paragraph 10 and all the subparts there, in which it's alleged that Donald Trump working with the five or six unindicted co-conspirators, hand and glove, did a bunch of things conduct and in doing so, violated conspiracy statutes on a criminal basis. The fact that you use your voice to facilitate the conduct doesn't mean you have a first amendment right to do that. I mean, people don't rob a bank together using mental telepathy or hand signals.

They rob a bank together because they've had conversations about it and then they implement it and they give instructions along the way. Okay, that is the crime. The crime is not him being able to say, I think I won the election. In fact, in paragraph three of the indictment, Jack Smith says, point blank, we are not here to criminalize his first amendment right to object to the results and to say that he won when he lost.

It's when he takes it the next step and uses that to create election interference by way of conduct. It's the pressuring of the election and elected officials to get them to do as bidding, to find votes for him, to go down fraud trails when he knew or shouldn't know that there wasn't any, to delay the peaceful transfer of power, to pressure Mike Pence with words, but that's conduct, to use fake electors. That's conduct. And so for them to say, we don't see the conduct in the indictment is ridiculous.

And no federal court or appellate court, even up to the Supreme Court, worth its salt, is going to agree with that analysis. I thought the most revealing, transparent argument that they're raising in requests for this new discovery is right on the it's obvious I did a hot take on this one so did you it's obvious that they're manipulating of course Mike Lee speaker of the house the only way he got elected is because he told the Maga right wing that he would definitely release the Jan 6 footage 44,000 hours it's important

that the American people see it independently so they can cherry pick and they can, oh sorry, Mike Johnson, I said, Mike Lee for the speaker of the house. So they can cherry pick what they want. You know, there's little interstitial moments when the people weren't doing bad things or somebody was opening the door for them. Why don't they show all the bloody attacks with the sticks and the weapons and the flag poles and the batons and the police shields that led to five people dying overall during this carnage. They don't want to show that. But that was a that was the one one-two punch. The next was after he released it, then Donald Trump said,

I want to know about every undercover agent that may have been within five miles of that may have been within five miles of Gen 6, right? So CIA, the FBI, and the police department was gonna reveal all their undercover agents because there was this working theory conspiracy theory that was promoted by people like Marjorie Taylor Greene that there were working officers of the FBI and other agencies that was really running the show as an insider job.

It was a false flag, Gen 6th, and she pointed and put it on, and she put it on her social media. And then a senator repeated it. So look at that. That guy's holding a badge. No. First of all, he was an air conditioning repairman that was holding a vape pen that was the sun glinted off of.

That wasn't a badge. And the FBI field office director already testified in front of one of their kangaroo court mega hearings in the house in the summer that while there were former informants for the FBI, for violent crime and drugs, that happened to be among the couple of thousand that attacked the Capitol,

or that they were there on their own. They weren't there as they were there because they had the first amendment right at least to the point where they attacked the Capitol to be down there. So, but, you know, there's 57 categories of information Donald Trump wants. Here's something I learned because it never came up at all because Donald Trump never said this ever to anyone during the attempt to cling to power. That he's now the protector of the sanctity of the election system from foreign interference by Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, and China. Okay, when did he ever make a phone call that was recorded or reported? Where he told the person, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of foreign interference.

There was no foreign interference in 2016 because the Mueller report is BS and I certainly wasn't benefited from foreign interference in 2016, but 2020, oh, there was tremendous amount of foreign interference. And I'm just trying to get to the bottom of it. I have the right to do that. The problem with that is there's not one contemporaneous piece of evidence that supports that now new theory that he's allowed to argue that he was just trying to defend democracy from Chinese and Cuban and Venezuelan interference.

I mean, it's like a page out of the Sydney Powell crazy playbook that they're running again. And this judge, Ben, has already said, I don't really like when you use unsubstantiated attacks like the Biden administration and Joe Biden is behind the prosecution of Donald Trump, citing it some sort of BS New York Times article that's not true. And she said, that's unsubstantiated. You keep saying that. And rather than substantiated, they say they push back and say the Department of Justice should prove it's not true. That's not how that works. You can't prove something that's not true that way.

Prove it's not true. Give us every bit of evidence that shows that Donald Trump is not being prosecuted by his leading opponent who's controlling the entire operation. Look, to anybody that's out there that's really open-minded and listening, the Merrick Garland didn't even want to initially prosecute and investigate Donald Trump. Until the evidence was so overwhelming that he decided to and he announced he was running for office, that he decided

to appoint a special counsel. Joe Biden had absolutely no role or control or input in the decision by Marik Garland. Sure. Was Joe Biden frustrated that Marik Garland wasn't moving quick enough along with the rest of America? Yes. Was he able to coerce Marik Garland doing it? No. Because if he was going to coerce him, by the way, he would have coerced him a lot earlier than when Merrick Garland got around to appointing Jack Smith, leaving him only 10 months on the clock to get an indictment out the door in time to have it be impactful before the election. If that's the grand conspiracy of Joe Biden, and by the way, I thought in that world that

I just mentioned, Joe Biden is And by the way, I thought in that world that I just mentioned, Joe Biden is incompetent and senile. If Joe Biden is incompetent and senile, then how does he have, you know, how is he suddenly the master strategist to use the Department of Justice to go after Donald Trump? Which is it, man? Pick a side. Well, that's their thing with everything. It's contradictory. It makes no sense at all. Donald Trump is the greatest business person ever, and all of the valuations were right. But it is also the fault of the accountants who screwed it up, and they were the ones who got, I thought it was right.

What are you talking about? And they go, President Biden doesn't know what he's doing, but he is a mastermind who has allowed all of this to happen. Even state courts, he somehow figured out a way to do that. It's like, all right, when you realize it's just all a bunch of BS, but what Trump and the Maga movement relies on is fear. And that ultimately, whether it's the voters, whether it's politicians, whether it's companies, you know, companies and editors, they're like, well, if we say that about him, he's going to put out a mean post,

and then we're going to get the death threats. And so why don't we just avoid that? Like, let's just let's just do another story on how President Biden is wearing new sneakers and how somehow that shows that he's old. And let's go after him because Biden's not gonna go after us. So let's do the negative Biden story and let's not do the Trump story about calling people vermin and echoing Adolf Hitler.

We're just the headache if we have to do it. Also judges too. You know, and I gave you my opinion on the last legal AF that I thought that the judge in Colorado made a ruling of yes, Donald Trump engaged in insurrection, but no, he's not an officer even though we've talked about the 14-demandment section three and the fact that Donald Trump, you did a great how to take on this popok. In prior briefing, claimed he is an officer when he was trying to remove a case to federal court.

So Trump saying that he's an officer yet, the judge in Colorado said not an officer, so therefore former presidents or people seeking the presidency, they can engage in insurrection and try to overthrow the government and they won't be disqualified. But if you're a senator and you're a member of Congress or an elector, then you can be disqualified. It makes absolutely no sense. But the petitioners in that case filed an incredible

appeal brief. And, you know, look, I don't know what the Colorado Supreme Court's ultimately gonna do, but I can tell you that I thought this briefing was one of the most kind of powerful, well-written takes on the 14th Amendment section three. And it was just so very clearly written, Pope, I know you did a hot take on it. You want to tell us what went down in that briefing. Yeah, yeah, I did. I was really impressed by the writing. And you know, who was also really impressed by the writing the somebody who's on the Mount Rushmore of the Federalist Society judges judge Lutting who came out.

I did a hot take on this who said it was the most most eloquent efficient piece of writing right on the money with the proper analysis of the 14th Amendment third section and mapping it on a Donald Trump's conduct he's ever seen. Because he's been very critical that lawyers and judges, including Judge Wallace and Colorado, sort of were struggling with concepts they shouldn't be struggling with. Firstly, the 14th Amendment Section 3, which was passed during the Reconstruction period in America as to be a loyalty test to bring people who left the Union who left positions like senators and Congress people and went over to the Confederacy like Jefferson Davis who became the President of the

Confederacy who had once sworn an oath to support or defend preserve protect whatever you want to call it to all support the Constitution, if they're going to come back, as I said in a hot tick, it's like there was a bouncer now at the door and you weren't getting back into the club unless you either took a note of office or if you already had done these bad things where you had violated through insurrection or rebellion, you're oath to defend the Constitution, then you're going to have to have your disqualification or your disability removed by Congress. This is all self-actuating, and that was driving Luddid crazy that, and the fact that people were arguing that the rebellion and insurrection had to be against the government of the United States.

It's not what it says. It's the Constitution is what you're rebelling or insurrecting about. Meaning, Donald Trump is not being tagged for being an insurrectionist or rebellious president because of what he did on Jan 6 in the attack on the Capitol. It's that he refused the peaceful transfer of power as provided for in the Constitution through his actions in his pressure campaign against Mike Pence, the use of the fake electors, and all the other things. That is the rub. That is the rebellion or insurrectionist activity.

And who knows better than that than Michael Ludic, who's now a historical figure because he was the former judge consulted by Mike Pence about to give him the steel rod up his backside to make sure that he didn't do Trump's bidding and didn't recognize the Trump fake collectors instead of the Biden real electors. So he wouldn't be sitting here talking about some sort of Donald Trump with Biden fighting to get back into the seat that he was elected to through a court process.

That could have happened. But that's because Michael Ludic also then. And for those that always just like some old timey guy, old timey guy, most of the justices on the Supreme Court including one on the and and another courts including unfortunately we're going to talk when we get to the voting rights act in the eighth circuit the judge who wrote the opinion as a former Ludic clerk many of them on the Supreme Court are Ludic clerks or trace their heritage or lineage back to him on the Federalist Society. So for him to say that the crew, the group that's brought the appeal to the Colorado Supreme

Court on one issue, there's only one issue left for the Colorado Supreme Court, right? And it's seven members. One, is it does an insurrectionist president, because that's what they now are able to call Donald Trump, based on the decision at the trial court level. Does an insurrectionist president get to be on the ballot again, because the 14th amendment third section doesn't apply to an insurrectionist president? Yes, or no? And just to give a little bit of info here, there are seven members of the Colorado Supreme Court. Six and a half of them were put on there by Democrat governors. The only one that's the half is the chief justice

vote right was first nominated for a lower position by a Republican, but when it came time for the Supreme Court, it was a Democrat. So you got seven Democrats on the Colorado Supreme Court based on this briefing, and they're really proper analysis. I'll just say one, I'll give one example of where Judge Wallace got so many things right in how she handled it at the trial level, but this one she got wrong. For her to make her decision that the 14th Amendment third section did not apply to a president, she said we went back to an earlier draft in the 1860s of the 14th Amendment third section and said in the earlier draft, there was a reference to the president by name that it applied. And in the subsequent draft that was passed,

the name of the president, the title of president and vice president were removed. And therefore she then concluded that that's an example that it shouldn't apply to the president, wrong. The earlier draft had a narrow catch-all provision of all federal officers who also support the Constitution. That version was very narrow because they were listing it like a statue, like they were getting very specific in the draft.

The president, the vice president, the electors of this or that, and it had a very narrow catch-all. When they passed the 14th Amendment, they eliminated the laundry list of positions of federal office by name, but they brought in the catch-all provision to include any federal officer who takes an oath concerning the Constitution. You can call it support. You can call it protect, preserve, or defend, but it's your relationship with the Constitution has to be such that you swore an oath to support it.

And so that captured the presidency as a position. How do I know that? Because there is legislative history and debate where one of the senators asked another senator as part of the legislative process, would this allow Jefferson Davis or the president to, who is an insurrectionist to be, I think there's a mistake here. And, and the response by another senator was, look at the catch all language that would apply to an insurrectionist president.

And the response to him was, I think I'm mistaken, you're right. Thank you very much for that clarification. Judge Wallace skips all of that. And that's the problem with her legislative analysis, which is, I'll give her some credit. It's hard to do legislative analysis, especially when you're going back to the 1800s, but it has to be done.

And the brief does it properly for the petitioners. And we'll watch to see the new brief that comes in. The full Supreme Court's going to rule on this at the Colorado level. And if Donald Trump doesn't like it, it'll go over to the US Supreme Court. It may make a pit stop with corsage who is the judge over Colorado federal things

where it might take a direct route directly to the US Supreme Court. This all has to happen before November, better, way before November November in order for it to impact the ballots. What did you think it'll move fairly quickly after we get a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court. It's possible Gorsuch stays it and basically says that

using the Purcell principle concept that they made up basically delay things until after an election that they made up basically delay things until after an election that they don't want to hear it or they can hear it on an emergency basis and they may hear it on an emergency basis. I think they should hear it. I think it needs to be resolved. But we know with the Supreme Court instead of resolving things, they're seeing more into breaking things.

And I think that's a segue into our topic on the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and how the Supreme Court and right wing courts and the Court of Appeals have warped to gut it. One thing I wanna talk about, this as we talk about this horrific decision by the eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and its implications, just talk quickly about the Voting Rights

Act of 1965, it was passed during the Civil Rights Movement, it was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. And it sought to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the south. It's been amended, I think, four or five times expanding its protections. It was a bipartisan legislation when our government worked and we didn't have mega Republicans just trying to blow everything up. I mean, just think about it right now. We got a situation where MAGA Republicans barely can pass

a continuing resolution and want to attempt it to put America into default. And every time it's like the most basic task of, hey, can you pass like legislation just to fund the government like the floor, the bare minimum task? Just think about this right here. In the House of Representative, the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was approved by a vote of 328 to 74. There were 217 Democrats and 54 Republicans who joined. In the Senate, it passed 79 to 18 with Democrats, 49 Democrats and Republicans 30 Democrats.

Just want you to think about that. Let me just revise the House of Representatives. It was 217 Democrats for 54 against 111, sorry about that, 111 Republicans joined Democrats. So more than 54. It's that's bipartisan of a piece of legislation that you can get. So you think about that was able to be accomplished in 1965.

And one of the most kind of potent tools of the Civil Rights Act was something called pre-clearance, where when state legislatures would engage in these racist, gerrymandering, our Congress, our federal government recognize that you have to deal with that, and there has to be mechanisms to stop that. So they actually created two mechanisms, double protection, if you will,

against state legislatures, specifically those in the South, doing racist, gerrymandered maps to disenfranchise minorities, specifically black voters. And the main potent tool that was in the Civil and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was something called pre-clearance in Section 5, where a three judge, federal court panel or the department of justice would have to approve the state legislatures map to ensure that the maps were not racist, gerrymandering. And then once they were approved, they could take effect. But then that was gutted.

And how was it gutted there? Remember, this stuff doesn't just happen overnight. So in 2013, there was a case known as the Shelby County decision. And in the Shelby decision of 2013, they ruled that the pre-clearance formula in section four was itself racist. And it's part of that argument to that. It was racist against white people is what they were saying by trying to stop racism. That's an oversimplified view of it, but that's basically what they ruled.

So they said, the formula is gone. So if you eliminate the formula for pre-clearance, you then can have pre-clearance. So it was a way for the Supreme Court, a right wing Supreme Court in 2013, to get rid of pre-clearance. So it was a way for the Supreme Court, a right wing Supreme Court in 2013, to get rid of pre-clearance by not getting rid of pre-clearance, but by getting rid of the formula.

So then the only tool as we had an updated census and now all of these states are now, you know, with the new census are now gerrymandering their maps based on the new census, which was done during COVID. The only tool is a private cause of action, a private citizen or a civil rights group suing. The problem with that, though, and we've seen it over and over again,

is that that takes a lot of time. The burden is on a private citizen or organization to now challenge the state legislatures racist map which our Congress back in 1965 recognize. Here's what the legislatures are going to do. If you leave the Alabama state legislature, they're going to carve up that state and disenfranchise black voters by giving them no congressional district or maybe one where the African-American population merits two or potentially even three congressional districts. Our Congress knew in 1965 this would happen.

And then when there would be a private lawsuit that now have been filed by these civil rights groups, what happens? They take a long time and as they get close to an election, the Supreme Court has invented this doctrine called the Purcell Principle. It is make these things up basically. And under the Purcell Principle, the Supreme Court goes, you know what, we're too close to an election. We've got to let the map by the legislature stay in place.

Even if they eventually say, wow, this is a blatantly racist map. So what happens in the elections is then you have elections with the racist, unconstitutional, Jerry Manderd map, because the Supreme Court says, let that happen. And then you have people who are elected. That was the tipping point of the midterm elections. The only reason why Magger Republicans took the House was because of the gerrymandered districts that have since been held to become, since been unconstitutional.

And then even when the private organizations succeed in their lawsuit, like we saw an Alabama what happens, then the state legislature doesn't even acknowledge what the Supreme Court does. So then a district court has to appoint a cartographer to go make the map and that takes time. And if you get close to the election, then there's the Supreme Court said, well, we must probably have to keep it in place. That's what the Maga Republicans rely on because preclearance was killed based on the formula being determined to be unconstitutional in 2013.

So now you have this, remember I said there was double protection, number one pre-clearance, and then even if the pre-clearance didn't work, then you'd have a private cause of action where civil rights groups can bring lawsuits. So now after pre-clearance has been eliminated, what is the right wing courts challenging, the private cause of action and saying actually there is no private cause of action.

And this was what the eighth circuit court of appeals just ruled. This is a ruling. There was three right wing judges on this panel. There was one Trump, two George W. Bush, one of the George W. Bush judges was in the dissent. And this is what the ruling held. It was on Monday, the eighth circuit court of appeals, whose ruling is applied to Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota said the following. For much of the last half century, courts have assumed that section two is privately enforceable. A deeper look has

revealed that this assumption rests on flimsy butting is what they said. And then the judge in descent, Judge Smith, who's a George W. Bush appointee, who was a two-to-one decision, says, until the Supreme Court rules are Congress and men's the statute, I would follow the existing precedent that permits citizens to seek a judicial remedy. So POPOC, you see how they, again, I wanted to give the history of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. So people know how far we've regressed because in 1965, the House and the Senate came together, they understood it.

And now you have a situation where the House can't even pass a spending bill under these Magger Republicans. And the right wing is doing everything to undermine the rights that were held to be like so obvious. So they gut pre-clearance, then they try to gut the private cause of action. So if you gut both of those things, in essence, what the right wing courts are saying, is that actually you see the Civil Rights Act

signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, the Voting Rights Act, signed into law by Lyndon Johnson during the Civil Rights Movement. You see, it was just a pronouncement. It was just a lofty ambition. There's no ways to actually enforce this thing. It was just, it was just a aspirational declaration. And it's like, you know, and that's why everything. And I wanted to, again, give the history because it's all gaslighting. It's all about raw power for these mega Republicans.

And they'll come up with the sociopathic kind of frameworks, small government, originalist, textualist, conserved. But at the end of the day, it's all BS. It's power. They want to gut anything that actually reflects an equal playing field. And we see it here. Well, you got, I, by the way, people should apply for credit because that was a masterful presentation, another voting rights act and the Civil Rights Act and everything that

Lyndon Johnson and those from that era work so hard to put in place that have been piece by piece disassembled before our very eyes. But we have two things going on here. We've got an open rebellion of Maga right wing and primarily courts and appellate courts in the south who are rebelling even against this right wing supreme court and their own pronouncements So we got that going on and When you have open rebellion among the federal courts who aren't respecting their bosses in the supreme court. That's a big problem

It's a big problem under our system of government, under our three-party, our three-branch system, and the role of the Supreme Court in being the ultimate law giver of the land. So, I want to talk about that, too. What we're seeing and the why we're seeing it now. Some people might be thinking, why are there so many map cases that are being up in front of these palette panels and ultimately the Supreme Court? I don't remember a period where there were so many of these map cases where the maps are disenfranchising black and brown people,

at least that's the argument in violation of the Voting Rights Act. And you and I at the beginning of the year, last, you know, the beginning of 2023, said, positive this question, is the Voting Rights Act, and particularly section two, on life support or not, you know, because it had been so chipped away

by prior Supreme Court precedent that we really questioned whether, as you said, it was anything more than aspirational at this point. Good news was over the summer. We had the ruling in the Alan versus Milligan case that seemed to breed new life, led by John Roberts and even by Brett Kavanaugh into the section two, the ability of a civil rights group or somebody that's a voter to sue under section two have standing to go to court to sue under section two and argue that a voting map

is racist in violation of section two. In an Alabama, the Supreme Court in a five to four decision, in that case said section two is fine. You, they also implicitly acknowledge that civil rights groups, the NAACP and other, other civil rights organizations can bring the case and their name to challenge because of the type of case that it is. It doesn't have to be just the Department of Justice or the federal government, which depends on who happens

to be the president, because the thing that we haven't talked about here is if the eighth circuit is right and they're not, and I believe the Supreme Court will rule that they're not, that despite 50 years of precedent, and the US Supreme Court just this past summer, acknowledging that civil rights groups can bring the case on behalf on the issue and not have to wait around for the Department of Justice to do it or the federal government. If they are right and Trump or somebody likes him gets back into power, they will dismantle the civil rights division

of the Department of Justice and there will be no cases brought. The Department of Justice and the Feds will be blind to violations of the Civil Rights Act because of whose in power in the White House. That's what happens. Even when a Trump is in office, the NAACP, the Southern Poverty group crew can bring lawsuits to challenge and then take their chances at the federal court, at Supreme Court level, but

not under the new thinking, the new teaching of the eighth circuit. Eighth circuit, yes, it's a three-judge panel, but it is binding law now for the states that you just identified has just said, thumb their nose at the US Supreme Court, which I think is going to get them in trouble. We'll talk about that in a minute. And has said, NAACP can't bring a case under the section two. What about the dozens and dozens and dozens of cases that say they can? Including the Supreme Court in the Alabama decision this summer. No, ignore those.

They can't do that. We never get to the merits because they don't have the standing to bring the case. What that is a signal. You hear that. That means we want the executive branch, whoever is sitting in the president seat to have the ultimate power through his department of justice to decide which, meaning none, violations of section two he'll go after and or she'll go after and not any any old group that just comes along and wants to wants to argue that the section two has been violated. This is the open rebellion I'm talking about.

We've seen it over and over again. We've seen Mississippi, Thumbits knows that the Supreme Court and said, Oh, you're told us we had to have a map with an extra black district. Well, if you were not doing that and then the Supreme Court has to say, uh, check your paycheck. You're part of us. Where your boss, you do this. We're not going to allow open rebellion. Even this Supreme Court, even Clarence Thomas in Alito said that's probably a bad thing when federal courts don't follow Supreme Court precedent. And they just did it again on the 8th Circuit because the Alabama decision, if it stands for anything, it's that a civil rights group has standing to bring a case under Section 2, exactly contrary to what the 8 eighth circuit just came up with. Now stress is an interesting cat as the person who wrote the decision in the eighth circuit.

He came in a Minnesota. He's practicing in his religion. He's very related. He's the first openly, but I forgot, I think he's Jewish, whatever his religion is. He's practicing Orthodox Jew and he's a trooper. And he wrote the decision and he got one other person, uh, grew under to go along with them. And the only person who didn't is, yes, a Bush appointee, but also the only African American that's sitting or at least on that panel. And so Smith said, yeah, I don't think that's the right thing to do here. Now, the question is,

does the organization that lost the NAACP, do they go for a full on-bunk ruling by the eighth circuit, meaning all the judges of the eighth circuit, or do they just take this obviously wrong decision and take it up to the Supreme Court? Now, the interesting little twist here is the eighth circuit, with all the states that you identified, is the Supreme Court justice that's responsible for the eighth circuit is Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh just joined with Roberts and the three liberal members of the Supreme Court on the Alabama case. So this is the raw, I mean, Kavanaugh should instantly let this case that's on appeal go straight through to the US Supreme Court. And then it's going to be up.

We know that Clarence Thomas has been itching to get rid of the Voting Rights Act in section two of all people. He's itching to get rid of it. He's already said and Kavanaugh said in his concur in the summer, in the Alabama case, that he doesn't think that the section 2 to allow like, you know, map supervision by Supreme Court should go on forever. It's time should take care of racism. Apparently, that's what happens in the Supreme Court world. Time solves and heals racism, although that's not what we're watching in the streets and

in society and in any place else. But in the Supreme Court world, that's just got to let the clock just has to go around more. And then all racism, and we won't need any of these protections. And to answer my, my, my posit at the beginning, the reason we're seeing so many map cases right now is what you, is what you taught our audience about pre-clearance.

Pre-clearance has now been removed in all of these states. These are the first maps of the first censuses that have happened since preclearance has been removed. So no more three federal judges babysitting Mississippi and Alabama and the rest of them. This is their first shot without training wheels, without constitutional oversight by a federal judge panel to do it right and they do it wrong.

Because their natural instincts is to screw the black and brown and disenfranchised person in their state. There's a reason that the state maps don't match the demographics of the state. 27%, 30% black. Why are the districts representing 12% black? Because the whites that are still in power, almost like apartheid, don't want to give power

to the people in the state that deserve it and have earned it on the most fundamental right that you have under the Constitution. That even our founding fathers recognize is the right to vote and not be disenfranchised. And that's the thing that the Southern states are like, nope, we're going to just, oh, we don't know where pre-clearance. Okay, give me a map that's all white. That is what I want. And then you get judges in these districts that say, yep, looks good to me. And if it's not good, let a president in the Department of Justice deal with it, hopefully Republican and not Democrat. I think the Supreme Court, when this finally

gets there, is going to declare once and for all as if it wasn't already precedent that civil rights groups and others not name the Department of Justice or the United States of America, have the right to bring cases under the section two of the Voting Rights Act to call out disenfranchisement and racism in voting among these states. Because if you, like you said, if you eliminate both, if you get rid of pre-clearance and you don't allow people to sue under section two and you'll wait around

for the federal government and it's in the wrong hands, you will never see it and people will be disenfranchised forever more. And our Congress understood that in 1965, think about that, don't we want to progress as a society, expand voting rights, help people more. We've come to a place where the opposite is happening and it's not a both sides issue folks and that's why I just want to give you the data, the history of it. I guess all of those Republicans who joined Democrats in 1965, I guess all of them were rhinos and deep state operatives. No, it's just the change in the landscape right now in terms of what this MAGA movement has done is I'll let

you all decide for yourself, but I think it's ever present. And so I want to thank everybody for watching this episode. We hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We will keep you up to date on all of the breaking news, all of the legal cases. We will make sure that you're kept on up to date and all of the developments. Make sure this is a great way that you can help us out here on legal AF and this is free It's free if you can go right now subscribe to the legal AF audio podcast Wherever podcasts are available just search legal AF Hit subscribe Make sure you're subscribed for free on your audio podcast and leave a five star review It may take you 30 seconds to do it. You've been watching this episode for over an hour and 40 minutes. So if you could just do that

for 30 seconds, it helps the show massively. So thank you for doing that. Check out store.mitustouch.com for all the best pro democracy merch. Check that out. There it is. 100% union made 100% made in the USA. Don't worry about the AF. It's not a curse word. It stands for analysis friends. Legal analysis friends. That's the AF for those wondering. Hit subscribe. We're on our way to two million subscribers. Popok, I'm thankful for you. I'm thankful for this unapologetically pro-democracy community that all of you watching and listening created. Thank you. It's such an honor for myself, Michael Popok, Karen Friedman Agnifalo, and our whole

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