Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump LEGAL NIGHTMARE has MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

Join trial attorney Michael Popok, former prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo and attorney Dina Doll for another action packed episode of the top-rated Legal AF podcast On tap? 1. Will Trump actually... be sentenced for his 34 felony crimes on 18September by Judge Merchan in New York or will there be a further delay and how will that impact the election; 2. Abortion and the Supreme Court are both on the ballot in November, as 9 states including 3 battleground and 2 where there are tight Senate races hanging in the balance, have added to their ballots a State constitutional right for a woman. Will this issue help VP Harris secure the presidency and lengthen her coattails to sweep Democrats into the House and Senate with her? 3. What did George Santos just plead guilty to and why is he looking at up to 8 years in prison, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Thanks to our sponsors: HumanN: Find out how you can get a free 30-day supply on bundles of new SuperBeets Heart Chews Advanced and save 15% for a limited time only by going to https://SUPERBEETSRADIO.COM, promo code LEGALAF Naked Wines: Join the Naked Wines community and head to https://NakedWines.com/legalaf for 6 bottles of wine for JUST $39.99 with shipping included Shopify: Sign up for a one-dollar per month trial at https://shopify.com/legalaf One Skin: Get started today at https://OneSkin.co and receive 15% Off using code: LEGALAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:45 It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. Welcome to the week edition of Legal AF. I had to dress up for this one. One, I am pumped and jazzed after watching the Democratic National Convention. Oh my God, we're gonna talk about
Starting point is 00:02:10 Michelle Obama's amazing speech, the one that Clinton gave, the one that Barack Obama gave, and everything else. And then we're gonna turn to the things that sit at the intersection of law and politics. And I had to dress up for that too, because I'm not only joined by Karen Friedman Agnifilo, our regular Midweek anchor, but we've got Dina Dahl with us.
Starting point is 00:02:27 We need all hands on deck here to cover all of these topics. Karen is in transit, so we're going to have her definitely lead on the Manhattan DA story that we're going to have today. We've got three big topics at the intersection of law and politics today. First one, what is going on with the sentencing of Donald Trump? Is it going to happen on the 18th of September? Is the judge gonna rule on whether immunity excluded some evidence in the 34 count felony conviction
Starting point is 00:02:53 of Donald Trump or not? And does that even matter to the ultimate conviction? And what is he gonna do with the request by Donald Trump to delay the sentencing for, oh, I don't know, forever? And why did the Manhattan DA take a position that seemed on the surface to be one of neutrality or being agnostic, but was it? We're going to talk all about it. And I can't think of somebody better to lead on it than the former number two in that office,
Starting point is 00:03:16 Karen Freeman at NIFLO, our midweek anchor. Then we got to talk about the election. We got to, or to paraphrase the great Michelle Obama, we have to do something. And what is the do something at the intersection of law and politics? Abortion is on the ballot in November in key states. There are nine states that have an abortion referendum constitutional amendment to that state's constitution to preserve or to grant a woman reproductive rights, the rights of autonomy over her own body, and to put abortion and abortion
Starting point is 00:03:52 rights on the docket and on the ballot. That's going to be important for Kamala Harris and her campaign, and that's going to be important for certain senators like John Tester in Montana, Mark Kelly in Arizona, to get enough voters to come to the polls. Listen, if Kamala Harris isn't enough with Tim Walz to make you get up and do something, then abortion and reproductive rights and restoring first-class citizenship to women should be enough. We're going to talk about abortion on the ballot and why that matters. Also, a recent Supreme Court is on the ballot. And what we're going to do, are you going to sit by and let a six to three hyper alt-right majority rule your lives for the next 20 years? Or are you going to do something? And to do something there is to get Kamala elected so that it gets back to a five to four perhaps
Starting point is 00:04:45 even in the Democratic majority because we will avoid having decisions like the one that just came out five to four by the Supreme Court in which in the during their summer break they decided that women who were women who are pregnant or just gave birth don't have any rights on college campuses. And Title IX offices can't be restructured to make sure that Title IX against discrimination in education is enforced properly. None of the things that Joe Biden wants to accomplish are going to happen because the Supreme Court has just blocked all of those rules because they don't like one aspect of the new law,
Starting point is 00:05:24 the new Title IX law that was issued by the Biden-Harris administration, which was addressed to gender identity. So they decided to throw the whole thing out. You can't do any restructuring. You can't protect women. You can't give them lactation rooms. You can't protect them during their pregnancy or beyond while we try to figure out what you mean by gender identity. That's the kind of Supreme Court we have now. You can do something by making a change in November. Then we're gonna talk about the Republicans wanting to do something,
Starting point is 00:05:52 which is to disenfranchise people. That sounds familiar. Then they're not even hiding it. The Republican National Committee, RNC, has brought an emergency application to the United States Supreme Court. They're very busy during their summer vacation. The term doesn't start until October, but they're ruling on emergency apps now and they got a new one and this one is to
Starting point is 00:06:12 disenfranchise 40,000 Arizonians. We're gonna talk about abortion on the ballot in Arizona. They want to get rid of 40,000 people because they don't like the way those people swore allegiance to the United States of America and said that they were citizens. Oh boohoo! The Secretary of State of Arizona thought it was fine, but not to the RNC because they're not about counting every vote. They're about making voting hard and suppressing every vote. That's the only way they can win is to take away your vote. You got to do something and that's going to happen in November. And then speaking about doing something, the criminal justice system has done something, particularly the Eastern District of New York and bring on peace the U.S. attorney
Starting point is 00:06:55 there. He's brought George Santos to justice. George Santos has just pled guilty today to almost every count that he was charged with in his indictment, including the superseding indictment, and he's looking down at the barrel of six to eight years in prison. Everything that you thought he did that was criminal, he's admitted to. And we're going to break it all down right here on the midweek edition of Legal AF. Let's bring back Dina and Karen. I'm breathless. I'm excited. I'm pumped. What about you guys? I'll tell you, last night I watched the convention like so many others and Michelle Obama, while
Starting point is 00:07:36 I was watching that speech, I was conscious of the fact that it was the single greatest speech delivered perfectly I've ever seen in my lifetime. And I've seen a lot. It was, I immediately sent a text message in my family group chat to all my kids and my husband. And I said, mandatory, if you're not watching it, this is mandatory.
Starting point is 00:08:02 Everybody has to watch this. And then to be followed up by Barack Obama, it was the perfect balance and the perfect message. I feel so inspired. I feel like I didn't know something was missing and it's back and it's the Obamas and the hope that they give and the just inspiration and leadership. And I just always have loved them. But wow, Michelle Obama's speech truly was the best speech I've ever seen. And who can, I'll turn to Dina next,
Starting point is 00:08:33 and who could deliver a line like, who's gonna tell Donald Trump that one of the black jobs he's going for is the presidency? Who's gonna tell him that? I mean, I just mangled it, but people know what I'm talking about. Dina, what was your takeaway so far in the first couple of nights of the convention?
Starting point is 00:08:51 And under the rubric, before you get going, on walking and chewing gum at the same time, Kamala and Tim weren't even there because they were out in Milwaukee doing a dance where the Republican National Convention was held at the same time as Barack and Michelle, you know, kind of ignited things in Chicago. What was your takeaway about, and take it from this perspective, if you would,
Starting point is 00:09:17 you're a viewer who's on the fence if they're still, if they still exist, you're independent, and you've clicked on to the Republican National Convention Convention and you've clicked on to the DNC. What is the takeaway from watching the DNC? That the DNC are the winners. That's the takeaway. The energy is like undeniable. If you're watching it just alone, you're thinking this is the winning campaign. This is what I want to get behind. I mean, I'm doing that event in Milwaukee simultaneous with a nod to Milwaukee since they missed their convention because of the pandemic.
Starting point is 00:09:50 It showed the sheer power, the sheer energy. They had 35,000 Democrats show up in the two locations at the same time. It's huge. I've watched both nights, you know, and one of the nights alone could have been the entire week. I've been just floored by how much talent we have in our party. I mean, AOC, Senator Warnock, Joe Biden, one of the best speeches of his career,
Starting point is 00:10:21 that emotional ovation he got and and that thanks, and Michelle, I just can go on and on. You know, I spoke to a friend of mine this morning who is a Democrat. She's never seen a convention in her life, and her and her older sons are sitting there just enthralled. I mean, this is bringing people the energy.
Starting point is 00:10:41 This is what we need. We need not only to get out and vote, we need to get volunteers, we need to get momentum. And this is how you get momentum is this convention so far. We could end on last night, it would be fantastic. And we have tonight and we have tomorrow night. I think it's beyond anyone's expectations as well as it's gone.
Starting point is 00:11:04 Well, and let me throw, I agree with everything about that. I'm going to throw something in for chat fodder right now. Here's my two cabinet members in bringing along a team of allies for Kamala Harris. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Michelle Obama discuss. Wouldn't that be amazing to bring them into the, although I do like what's going on with our Secretary of State, but I think everybody, Hillary was the star of her night
Starting point is 00:11:35 and did an amazing job there. And this was the first opportunity people had to celebrate Hillary because in 2020, she had to phone it in from Long Island because we were in COVID times. But now this is the first time people got to see her up on the stage. I thought she did a great job too. And one last thing from my point from the convention itself, this is, pardon me, it's
Starting point is 00:11:56 time to do the show. This is how you judge the leadership and the ability to be a president. You judge the presidential candidate by how they're running their campaign, how their convention has come off, which has been so well oiled and so perfectly calibrated. That's come off. And the opposite of WrestleMania. Well, right. And then so it's how you run your campaign.
Starting point is 00:12:23 It's who you pick for your vice president. And it's how you and how your convention looks. And by all accounts, she's a straight A student. This is five star, eight star stuff that we're watching. And this is- I love her husband too, by the way. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:38 Yes. And listen, everybody that's been chosen- He's adorable. Yeah, speaks authentically in a way that only they can speak about things that really matter to them and about his marriage and about her being the children in his marriage being very, very important to her and being a priority to her and really humanizing Kamala Harris instead of what is being done as a cartoon and lampoon by the other party over there who shall remain nameless.
Starting point is 00:13:05 Now let's take all that political energy, that all do something. And I think our audience, our following, Legal AF and Midas Touch, have been doing something for the last four years. And this is our moment. You are doing something by being part of the 3 million, almost 3 million free subscribers, not only consuming our content, enjoying our content, being here in the live chat, but taking the knowledge and information that you have and going out into the streets and in your
Starting point is 00:13:36 family circles and other places and in your text chains and saying mandatory listening and watching, here's my point and being ready. And that's really important. And now we take it the next step. Voting starts around the country in September. We're almost there in early, mail-in and beyond in November. And these are things that we have to do. We wanna, I'll be frank, I wanna run up the vote totals.
Starting point is 00:14:00 I don't want it to be 10,000 votes in a couple of the battleground states. I want her to win by hundreds of thousands of votes so that every dead person that ever voted in Trump's mind wouldn't be enough to overcome her landslide. Wouldn't it be nice to have a landslide that makes this a definitive, emphatic statement by the American people, by the mightest mighty, about what they want this country to look like moving forward and returning joy to patriotism in America, right? I think we need a landslide.
Starting point is 00:14:29 We need to end the MAGA for once and for all. And they have to lose and lose in a way not that he can argue cheating. And you're right. On the margins, it's easy to do that. When you've got a huge number- It's a crush. It's a crush them. You have to crush them.
Starting point is 00:14:45 Yeah, I think they, yeah. All right, so let's turn to while we have Karen with us. Let's now connect the dots to law from the political energy that we just all consumed and are really, really bouncing off the walls over. And let's turn to the Manhattan DA because there were some developments there related to the sentencing.
Starting point is 00:15:10 Now, let me just frame it quick. Unless there's a change and the judge decides to make a change, he's already ruled and amended his order once. September the 18th, he's gonna be sentencing, unless on September 16th two days later he finds any valor or merit to Donald Trump's argument that certain of the evidence that came into the jury uh would have been um would have been um outcome determinative but should have been barred under
Starting point is 00:15:39 the immunity decision by the United States Supreme Court as it dealt with official conduct. That's the complicated way of saying what aspect of the immunity decision maps the United States Supreme Court gets to talk with official conduct. That's the complicated way of saying what aspect of the immunity decision maps on to the jury's findings in terms of their deliberations and the evidence presented. Judge said, I'm gonna rule on that on the 16th. He already moved that date once. Two days later, if there's still a case around,
Starting point is 00:16:00 wink, wink, I'm gonna do sentencing. So you better send your confidential sentencing memos in, which are generally sealed on the docket. Take it from there, Karen. Filing by the Trump, filing by Manhattan DA, and then we can all spitball. What do we think happens next? Karen Sazamu Yeah, so what happened is Trump asked for a delay, as usual, and that was expected because his whole playbook is delay, delay, delay. So I don't think that surprised anybody that they requested a delay of sentencing.
Starting point is 00:16:33 And they also put in a motion for, in their request for sentencing, they also said for the fourth time, they asked that Judge Marshawn be recused. And then they said, they just, they made up all these reasons claiming why this was new, et cetera. And the judge very swiftly said, I'm not recusing. You've asked me three times
Starting point is 00:16:56 and I've gotten advisory opinion from the judicial ethics people. I looked in my heart and seeing that this is not, I don't need to recuse, I'm gonna be fair and impartial. And the record is gonna show that he was fair and impartial as well. That's gonna be clear, all the rulings on appellate review. So he smacked that down very quickly,
Starting point is 00:17:21 but there's still the immunity assessment that has to be done in the case, right? That he still has to go through the motions of applying this new law, this new judicially created law that the Supreme Court created, this presidential immunity, this absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, something that no other human in the United States of America is afforded, this absolute immunity
Starting point is 00:17:50 from criminal prosecution if it falls within one of your core presidential duties. What I don't understand is how committing a crime can ever be part of your job and part of your core duties. To me, the minute you commit a crime, you have done something that isn't within your core presidential duties, but somehow they have created this brand new, judicially created law.
Starting point is 00:18:15 It's not in the Constitution. It's not created by the Senate and the House of Representatives and then signed into law by the President, the way most statutes and laws are done, this doesn't appear in case law. This is something that they truly made up. They even went beyond what the parties asked for. They went beyond it and they ruled not only is a president immune, absolutely immune, from any prosecution, this is federal prosecution, but
Starting point is 00:18:48 for any criminal prosecution, if they're acting within their core presidential duties, and that is going to impact the Washington DC case, certainly. but how will it impact the Manhattan DA's case since that conduct was entirely personal, right? That conduct involved paying off hush money to a porn star in order to hide that from the American people so that the American people would not know that information before the election. And he had his fixer, Michael Cohen, fix the books
Starting point is 00:19:26 and records and write checks to do this in order to make it look like it's legal fees when it was actually not legal fees. They grossed up the amounts. They lied and for something else. And created like a business fraud essentially and it was personal So why does this new law impact this case and that's because the other thing the United States Supreme Court did was they? created this new standard that evidence evidence can't
Starting point is 00:20:08 created this new standard that evidence, evidence can't, you can't use evidence of things that were within the core presidential, while he was president, you can't use any evidence that would fall within this presidential duties type conduct in prosecuting nonimmune crimes. And so the question is, do any of, does any of the evidence that the Manhattan DA's office introduced fall into that category? We've discussed many times that there are a few things that the judge is going to have to make a determination on.
Starting point is 00:20:41 Some things clearly not, but some things might. Like Hope Hicks, who worked at the White House at the time. Is that going to be evidence that should not have been admitted given this new ruling? And so the judge has to rule on that, and we expect that to come on September 16th. And that's going to be kind of a big deal. So why are we here today? What are we talking about? Well, the question is,
Starting point is 00:21:06 if the sentencing is September 18th, can you have a sentencing September 18th if the judge is going to rule on this immunity question two days before? And the Manhattan DA's office wrote a letter that essentially signaled to the judge that they believe that the sentencing two days after that ruling may not be feasible. And they explained why. Now, rather than coming out and saying that, what they did was they said, we defer to you, judge. You do what you think is right.
Starting point is 00:21:38 We're not gonna take a position about that. And that is in some ways signaling to the court that they're not gonna object and that they see that there might be a valid reason to do that. And that is in some ways signaling to the court that they're not going to object and that they see that there might be a valid reason to do that. And some people were not happy about the Manhattan DA is off taking that position saying, no, they should demand sentencing. Why aren't they demanding sentencing?
Starting point is 00:21:57 And what I say to those people is this just goes to show you that Donald Trump is not correct. In fact, he's absolutely wrong when he accuses the Manhattan DA's office of political persecution. And I worked there for 30 years. I know those people, I know what they do. They don't do that.
Starting point is 00:22:16 They call balls and strikes as they see them. It's not, it is an adversarial process, but they don't push for things they don't believe in or that they think the law doesn't say. It's just not like that. And they don't look at politics. They are not thinking about what this is going to do because he's running for president and was a former president.
Starting point is 00:22:40 They're looking at this coldly, objectively, and what if he was any other defendant, he may have been saying all along, he should be treated like he was any other defendant. We've all been saying that. And this is one way they are saying, they are the most fair, honorable, honest office. And that is my experience there. And that's what this letter showed,
Starting point is 00:23:03 because the letter essentially says to the judge from them, it essentially says, look, you know, judge, this is it's unclear whether he can appeal your ruling on this issue about whether immunity applies to the evidence in this case. And why is that? Because if it was about presidential immunity, if it was about the decisions on the, does this fall within the core presidential distinction or not, that is appealable midstream before sentence.
Starting point is 00:23:38 You can do an interlocutory intermediate appeal. There's only a very small category of things that you can do that with, by the way. Normally, you have to wait until after conviction, after sentencing, and then you can appeal like any other normal defendant. But sometimes you can appeal before that. You can appeal in the middle or during the case.
Starting point is 00:23:56 And this is one of those times where they are saying, we are not sure. We know that they can do it if this was about the presidential immunity decision, but if it's about one of the charges and would the charges be immune? That you can appeal in the intermediate step. Can you do it with the evidence too? They said, we're not really sure. And the Supreme Court, the decision that they handed down on July 1, it's unclear. It's silent as to that.
Starting point is 00:24:31 And so what will the appellate courts do? Is this enough time to go to the appellate courts, the two days between the 16th and the 18th? Is that enough time to brief it? Will they stay it? And so they raised the questions in this letter. And they said, essentially to the court, look, this is a tough, they're essentially saying to the court, this is a tough one.
Starting point is 00:24:52 The law's not clear. We understand if, you know, if you have to do it and we defer to you, judge, you'll make the right decision. And that's what they did. And I give them a lot of credit for it. It's hard to do that, but that's what you have to do as a prosecutor. You prosecute cases without fear or favor. And you call it like you see it.
Starting point is 00:25:10 And let the chips fall where they may. And it frustrates me. It always has frustrated me when the prosecutors at that office, I can't talk about all prosecutors. But in that office, when we used to get accused of playing politics or what are they doing? And are they doing this in order to, it's all political? It's not, it's just not.
Starting point is 00:25:28 That's not how the office works. And this to me is yet another example of that. And we'll see what the judge does, but I think it's 50-50 whether the sentence goes forward on the 18th or not. The judge might say, look, this is gonna get appealed either way. So let's just go forward and do the sentencing.
Starting point is 00:25:49 You know, part of me, it depends on the day of the week or the hour of the day. And I'll let you know if you know where I fall right this minute. I'm thinking he'll probably go ahead with the sentencing anyway on the 18th and just let them appeal. But then there are other times when I look at it and I think, oh, I'm not really sure. He's not, you know, he knows that any sentence is going to get stayed anyway pending appeal because there are some pretty legitimate appellate issues, you know, here, including the one that we just talked about that are not frivolous. So he might say, look, since we know it's going to go up on appeal anyway, and he's not going to go into jail or prison.
Starting point is 00:26:25 Let's put off sentencing and let's appeal it midway. So it depends. It could go either way. It's 50-50 for me right now on whether he gets sentenced on the 18th. Well, Danny, you mind if I go first? I'll go for it. Okay. People like when I debate, Karen. I don't see it as that tough of a call. I think the judge is going to go forward on sentencing. The judge understood how a calendar works. He knew that the 16th was only two days away from the 18th.
Starting point is 00:26:52 He knew that Donald Trump had been threatening to bring some sort of appeal. I think that's the way I read that letter. I thought that your old office did two things very smartly. One, on the appeal issue, Donald Trump always threatens appeals, federal appeals, state appeals. They mischaracterized the nature of the appeal. They said it was an immunity decision that would divest the court of its
Starting point is 00:27:16 jurisdiction, which is true if that's what the issue was for this particular appeal. But they've already admitted and conceded in prior filings that they're not bringing a Donald Trump is immune from prosecution argument, they're bringing the evidence argument that you outlined there, meaning that it's just about whether a couple of pieces of evidence should or should not have come in to the jury or not because they did or did not fall into official conduct or not. And so that's an evidentiary issue, not an immunity divesting the court of jurisdiction issue. And the Manhattan DA smartly called that out in their filing by saying that's
Starting point is 00:27:51 not the right immunity that you're talking about. And so you can try to do your appeal, go ahead. It's almost like inviting them to make a bogus, wrongly framed appeal, have at it. And I think what they're asking the judge to do while appearing to be neutral and agnostic is to say, because they dropped a footnote on this, is that, Judge, you know how the calendar works. You knew the 16th and the 18th were only two days apart. In other words, let the appellate court,
Starting point is 00:28:18 if and when they bring, they threaten lots of things, Judge. They threaten to take all sorts of motions for orders for contempt up to the appeals and gag orders and they multiply bring motions about your recusal. They're not saying this. This is my interpretation. They bring things about your gag order or they don't. Let them do whatever they're going to do. And if the appellate court thinks that the issue has been properly framed and has an element of it that deserves, on the merits, that there's a likelihood of success on the merit, to stay the case, let that stay come from the appellate department, the first department appellate division in Manhattan, or from some federal appellate court if he was able to do it, but
Starting point is 00:28:59 not from you. Let them do it. And you go forward right now on the 18th. And that is what every litigant generally gets. I know you're big Karen on treating this guy like any common two bit criminal, but he is. And I believe that. And any common two bit criminal would get the entirety of the appeals. You can't do piecemeal appeal. The appeal has to be on what happened during the trial
Starting point is 00:29:25 in its entirety, all the things that happened during the trial that they had problems with. From the recusal of the judge, the disqualification issue of the judge, to the evidence that was brought in, to Michael Cohen's testimony, to this, that, and the other thing, whatever you got, you got one shot at appeal all in one place.
Starting point is 00:29:42 And your sentencing, whatever your sentence is, you don't get, for those that just follow us casually, you don't get separate appeals on all these component parts. Oh, an appeal on your sentence. I mean, unless you just want to appeal your sentence. But you can't have multiple items. You have to do an omnibus appeal about everything that you think happened that merits a reversible error or reversing or vacating of the judgment and the sentence. My interpretation was, let him bring whatever appeals he's going to bring. We'll stay neutral, Judge. You know what to do. Let the appellate court do their work. And if they want to stay
Starting point is 00:30:19 after he's properly framed something, because he can't even get right in the letter that he wrote to the court what the nature of the immunity is that he's alleging. So let's see what he does at the appellate level, and then they can always enter a stay. But why should you? Now I'm grafting a lot of my own interpretation of this on it. And that's how I read it.
Starting point is 00:30:41 So I think he goes forward on the 18th, because it's not by accident that he made 16th and 18th. He could have had them a month apart, because there's no amount of time, really, to allow for a complete briefing. It's always going to have to be an emergency application and appeal with expedited briefing granted by the appellate court, because there's just no time.
Starting point is 00:30:57 Otherwise, he'd have to put a gap of six months to a year between the sentence and the decision on immunity. And he's never gonna do that. He's got an obligation under the criminal procedure law of New York to enter a sentence quickly, expeditiously, unless there's, and the grounds that they cited under CPL 330 for why, which is one of the statutes here, as to why they're entitled to a delay,
Starting point is 00:31:25 none of it fits. None of it is applicable. So they're wrong on the law, they're wrong on the procedure, they're wrong on the facts, they're wrong on the immunity doctrine. So why give them any benefit? Go forward on the 18th and let the appellate court sort it out. That's where I'm at, Karen. Yeah, I hear you. I just know the office and I can tell you right now the first draft of this and I don't know this from firsthand knowledge. I know this because I know how they work. The first draft of this said we can set like we agree there should be, you know, this is essentially them signaling to the court that they think that probably should not sentence them on the 18th. That's what this letter said.
Starting point is 00:32:05 Whether the judge- Wouldn't that terminally delay the appeal? If you don't sentence, then you leave open-ended the appeal by Donald Trump. Yep. Yep. Then you can only- Why would you wanna leave open the appeal?
Starting point is 00:32:16 Then you can only appeal the immunity part of it. That's what you could do. That's the only thing you'd be able to do is appeal that midstream. That's the appeal that they would do right away. But that's what they're essentially saying in this letter is basically, Judge, I think you should, because you know, this is why they're doing it this way. If the judge gets it wrong, the conviction gets overturned, and they don't want to retry this. So they are saying, okay, this is such an important decision that this judge is gonna make. The judge is gonna have to decide. Is the Hope Hicks testimony that Josh Steinblast, the DA in his summation said is, you know,
Starting point is 00:32:56 you don't have to listen to Michael Cohen if you don't think he's credible because everything is corroborated. This is so important, this Hope Hicks testimony, and he really, really underscored that. The DA's office is acknowledging that that decision, if the judge rules that this was wrong, that you shouldn't allow that in, but it was harmless error, and so therefore the conviction stands, if that's what Judge Murchon finds that decision is so important that That I think they don't want this to be overturned and so after sentence, that's the only remedy
Starting point is 00:33:36 The case is not over yet. I mean, yes, it's already been a verdict and and you know, the jury's already reached a verdict But I think this is such an important critical thing that they are acknowledging that the judge might need to allow the appellate courts to weigh in. And procedurally, because you think immunity is involved, they can take a separate appeal just on immunity and not on the conviction? Or just, you gotta bring it all, don't you?
Starting point is 00:34:06 Well, the Supreme, no. So the Supreme Court said in their decision that the immunity piece, you can appeal midstream. So for example, we know that the Washington DC case, that will be appealed, you know, unless Tanya Chepkin, you know, dismisses that entire case, or if they supersede it with a new indictment that clearly has nothing to do with it. But that is
Starting point is 00:34:32 appealable, you know, in the middle of the case, you know, when you do an interlocutory appeal, you can only bring the issues that are that fit within that narrow category of an interlocutory appeal. So, but it was silent as to whether the evidence, you know, the evidentiary immunity is also, you can also appeal that interlocking. And I think that I think that I think as a result, the DA's office is hedging a little bit and saying, you know, maybe it is maybe it's not. Anyway, Dina, what do you think about all this? Yeah, just jumping. I mean, immunity is always interlocutory because the idea is, you are not supposed to be prosecuted. And if you go through the whole trial, you've got this
Starting point is 00:35:16 adverse effect to you that can't be undone. But in terms of the idea of like it being harmless error and reversing a conviction, I mean, that can happen all the time on an appeal. So I think, you know, the judge seemed to me like really clear that he thought this was not having to do with his official capacity. The immunity issue essentially was raised a lot earlier because his idea was that this was official and not personal. And so I think that he might be able to really distinctly see that this is more about the evidence. There is going to be a bunch of things around the evidence, whether or not Stormy Daniels' testimony wasn't too broad. I mean, that can get reversed. Also, for the same reason, he could see that that was a harmless error.
Starting point is 00:36:01 So I think if the judge hadn't already looked so much at the immunity issue and made a decision around that, then maybe this would be a little bit of a different conversation. But because he already essentially did that, I think the Supreme Court's direction is not necessarily saying that the evidence issue goes into the immunity issue, but that they're kind of introducing another evidentiary of introducing like another
Starting point is 00:36:25 Evidentiary rule like another rule like hearsay It's yes If you introduce evidence that came that you know came about because of immune things then that is not allowed to be introduced I see those as two separate things Yeah, I Agree with Karen though. It is silent in the July decision I agree with Karen though. It is silent in the July decision. Immunity in general, if you're prosecuted for something you should have been immune from, that has to be done up front and that could be interlocutory. But that open question is a good one that Karen framed, which is what do you do with the evidentiary part of it,
Starting point is 00:36:55 which is the one we all smacked our head over when we saw it. Like, what do you mean the evidence of official conduct can't be used to show unofficial conduct in prosecutes. And that's the gray area that Karen outlined I agree with. I still think he goes forward on the 18th with the sentencing, knowing that he only had two days in between to let the appellate court do whatever they're going to do. And if the appellate court finds it interesting, they know how to issue an injunction and they know how to stay a case and they can do it. And so it takes Marchand out of it.
Starting point is 00:37:23 It takes the Manhattan DA's office out of it because they've already said we're neutral and all of that. It's all fascinating stuff. I love having the two of you here with me bouncing these high spit ball and this all around. We're gonna talk about a lot of other things that are gonna be coming up here. We're gonna talk about abortion and the Supreme Court
Starting point is 00:37:38 being on the ballot in November as we can consider how we do something to help Kamala Harris and Tim Walz get elected. We'll talk about that and what the Supreme Court has done over the summer and what they've been asked to do over the summer during usually a slow period. We'll talk about George Santos finally admitting and confessing that he did all the terrible and bad things that we've always known that he did. And now looking down the barrel of sentencing related to that now that he's pled guilty in the
Starting point is 00:38:05 Eastern District of New York, we are going to cover all of that and more. We're going to have some sponsors in a second, but let me talk about ways you can help the Midas Touch Network, Legal AF, and the contributors here. We're going to, I said early on, and I was wrong, but gladfully so, that we're going to hit 3 million before, 3 million free subscribers of the Midas Touch Network before election day. It's gonna be before Labor Day. Make a liar out of me. Make an honest person out of me. If you haven't already, you may be enjoying all of our content, but maybe you've forgotten to go out and hit the subscribe button. God, I would love to hit three million during Legal AF, one of the versions of Legal AF. Let's do that. That would be great. That would be great. That's one. Two, we do these segments and we post them
Starting point is 00:38:51 after the show called Legal AF After Dark that I sort of host. Take that clip if you already know about the show, send it off to people in your life, ask them to join. We're growing this audience, this network organically by word of mouth without a marketing department. We need your help. Send it off, ask them to join our audience. Maybe they'll see that clip and they'll enjoy the podcast and they'll wanna kind of find out more. But even more importantly than supporting legal AF,
Starting point is 00:39:16 support this trial. A new, right, Karen? A new podcast that's hosted by Karen Friedman, that's below along with her two colleagues, Donya Perry and Kathleen Rice, different perspective, former prosecutors, current friends and legal colleagues. And they do that show right here
Starting point is 00:39:34 on the Midas Touch Network. And then you can- Kathleen, by the way, really quick, Kathleen is at the convention because she's a former member of Congress. So we're gonna do mistrial from the convention tomorrow. It's gonna be a fantastic not to be missed mistrial. And now we're gonna, and then of course,
Starting point is 00:39:50 Dina, Dina Daldo's regular commentary here on the Midas Touch Network on all things legal. She does it on all platforms from TikTok to podcasts. She's our regular go-to. Phil and Guest co sounds bad. I don't like that. No, we need a new name. She regularly joins us. You're okay with it. She regularly joins us here on legal AF. It's always a pleasure to have her sometimes it's all three of us. Sometimes we have
Starting point is 00:40:12 four. It's like Hollywood squares all four of us are the podcast and all that. And the other way you can support the network and us and because we have no outside investors, we're completely independent is to support our advertisers and sponsors. And the way to do that is yes, listen to the ad, important, watch the ad, but also we vetted these items, we like them, we're selling them. And if you can afford it, and it's something that you're interested in, then you can buy something from them using our code, which lets them know that you came from Legal AF. So let's let we spent a lot of time curating our sponsors through
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Starting point is 00:42:14 The dreaded wall of wine. No, it's not a long lost House of Dragons episode. It's that feeling you get and your eyes glazed over when you see rows and rows of random bottles of red and white wine at your local grocery or liquor store. I've stopped wasting my time acting like I know what I'm doing in front of the dreaded wall of wine. That's why I love our next sponsor, Naked Wines.
Starting point is 00:42:39 Naked Wines is a subscription service that directly connects you to the world's finest independent winemakers. So you can get award-winning wine delivered straight to your door. I just made an amazing hearty Italian dinner, yes, Popak cooks, and paired it with a big red, a Matt Parrish Reserve 2021 Napa Valley Cabernet
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Starting point is 00:44:48 We're gonna kick it off with our second segment, which is gonna talk about continuing the thematic for this episode. What can we do? Do something. And one of the things is abortion, women's rights are on the ballot in nine states, key battleground states, including
Starting point is 00:45:06 ones where Senate races are up for grabs, hopefully. We'll talk about how that may have some coattails to bring people in to vote, talk about what the Republicans are doing to try to suppress the vote already and disenfranchise people, and how the Biden-Harris administration are continuing to fight for women's equality, primarily gender identity, gender equality on college campuses and how they're being rebuffed by the Supreme Court. Supreme Court is on the ballot for November the 5th as well. Dina, turn it over to you. Kick it all off.
Starting point is 00:45:37 Okay. So here's what's going on and why we need to know about it. So as you say, nine states have abortion on the ballot. The fact that the Harris-Waltz campaign theme song is freedom, whoever thought of that was genius, because this is about freedom, freedom for women to make medical decisions over their own bodies. And it's happening in key states, as you say.
Starting point is 00:46:01 Now, Arizona is one of the most important states that's on the ballot. The 1864 law banning abortion was resurrected after Dobs. And so it's on the ballot. And yes, it's going to help Mark Kelly. It's certainly also going to help the Harris-Waltz campaign. Now, I grew up in Arizona, not from there, but I grew up there, completely understand. Arizona was a red state, unlike a lot of the southern red states. It has a very independent wild west streak. People do not like being told what to do there. It's maybe they're defining political instinct. So telling women or people married to women
Starting point is 00:46:42 who have daughters or wives, what they should do or not do over their bodies is huge. This is going to be huge on the ballot in Arizona in the fall. It's just a matter of the campaign, just continuing to link that. But the Republicans know this and what are they doing rather than trying themselves to just get out more voters? They are trying to disenfranchise the voters in Arizona. And this is so important. The Supreme Court is, like you said, on the ballot in more ways than one. It's on the
Starting point is 00:47:18 ballot in respect, of course, because the next president may be able to nominate one or more justices, but also because the Republicans, knowing they have a 6-3 majority, are trying to use the Supreme Court right now to help them get elected. We're seeing that in Georgia with the election board and then trying to maybe set up a way for them to stop the certification there, which the end result is kind of going to the Supreme Court. But even more urgently, here in Arizona, they are trying to disenfranchise 40,000 voters. The RNC is suing, saying that they are not properly registered.
Starting point is 00:47:59 And kind of this has been an ongoing issue in Arizona. Arizona had tried to, the Republicans there had tried to pass the law requiring certain citizenship requirements being shown in order to register, and it conflicted with the federal law. And so back in 2013, when the Supreme Court makeup was different, the Supreme Court said, you know, the state law can't conflict with the federal law. The federal law is the supreme law of the land. And so they had kind of a dual voting system for a while where if you didn't have the requirements that the state law required, you could still vote in federal elections. And so this has kind of been ongoing. So the RNC sees an opportunity there. They're asking this Supreme Court to decide by Thursday, so that's tomorrow, decide very quickly whether or not these 40,000 people, as we know, Biden won Arizona
Starting point is 00:48:56 by about 10,000 votes. So this is huge to decide because ballots are about to get printed here. And so there is no time to waste. And we saw this in 2020. We saw a glimmer of this in 2020 because there were mail-in ballots at the time, which was new in a lot of states.
Starting point is 00:49:14 And so anything like that becomes an opportunity for Republicans to try to stop people from voting. And I helped out in North Carolina. There was a lot of suits there trying to prevent people from voting. And I helped out in North Carolina. There was a lot of suits there trying to prevent people from voting because of some new mail-in ballots laws. So they're trying to stop these 40,000 people from casting a vote.
Starting point is 00:49:37 And this is like what you said earlier, Popak, in the segment that we were talking about, how we need to win by a lot. We obviously, the Democrats have fantastic lawyers who are going to be arguing from the Supreme Court, is the Supreme Court going to decide this differently than they did in 2013 when they make up with differently? It's possible and that's really scary.
Starting point is 00:50:01 And that's why this get out the vote effort needs to really be massive. The energy is massive. You have to overcome this really valid, not valid, but this really obvious attempt by the RNC to try to disenfranchise voters. But again, the counterpoint to that is the abortion on the ballot in so many states, including Montana has a very important senator race there, John Tester. That in itself we've seen over and over over these past years since Doves.
Starting point is 00:50:34 When abortion is on the ballot, abortion wins. It brings people to the ballots unlike any other issue. 68% of Americans think abortion should be legal. It's a huge and important issue for the country. And that's how, you know, Republicans know this. And this is why they're trying hard in places like Arizona to take away people's right to vote. Yeah, that's a great synopsis. You got nine states, right? You got California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Vermont, and now Arizona, where that issue of women being restored to first class citizenship in America
Starting point is 00:51:14 is on the ballot. This is what we have to do state by state since until we get control of the United States Supreme Court, a woman's federal constitutional right to choose has been taken away from her. Arizona, the Senate race right now by polling, if you believe the polls, and I do now, if you believe the polls, Kelly's up by 1.6%, which is okay, it's better than being down, but he could use a little, you know, a little turbo charging there, and I think the abortion issue will certainly do that. John Tester is down by six points in Montana and every Senate seat is important for the Supreme Court and to confirm
Starting point is 00:51:52 federal judges. So I want it all. I want the majority and as many more over that as we can get in the Senate. We want that in the House. It's not enough for Kamala to get in with a divided government. In order for things to be accomplished, she's got to get in and sweep in on her long coat tails all these other people and take these other branches of government if we have any shot at reshaping the United States Supreme Court, whether it's with more Supreme Court justices or changing fundamentally the structure of it. In any event, if it's gonna be nine, we gotta have the right nine. And she's gonna get, whoever gets elected, this is back to do something,
Starting point is 00:52:33 whoever gets elected is gonna have one to three, historically will have one to three openings during their presidency. There's very few presidents that had zero. Joe Biden was on one end of the continuum. He had one in Kataji Brown Jackson and Donald Trump had three. And so somewhere between one and three, two is the average and two can change the entire makeup of this particular Supreme Court. So you've got abortion on the ballot. And then as you said in the beginning of the podcast about
Starting point is 00:53:04 what your takeaway was from the DNC, the energy of it. And if you were just like an alien from outer space that just landed with a remote control and turned on the DNC and was like, let me check out this party. Like, what would you see? You saw shiny, happy people talking about patriotism and reclaiming patriotism and being energized again
Starting point is 00:53:23 with hope and freedom. This is what the Democratic National Committee, the Democrats stand for. What did you see when you just watched 20 minutes of the RNC with Donald Trump? Apocalyptic, dystopic American carnage. They have to scare the crap out of you to vote. They have to put Americans and pit them at each other and put them at each other's throats in order to win because they're a very narrow party. I mean that in every way, shape and form.
Starting point is 00:53:52 They're not a broad-based party. They're not one whose platform appeals to the majority of Americans. It's not in keeping with or in lockstep with their values or their morals. And one of the greatest things that pollsters are saying about Kamala Harris is that she's currently polling at the equivalent of the unnamed Democrat, meaning when Democrat versus Trump is just put up in the polls, that Democrat without a name always beat Trump, meaning the platform, the party, the policies of the
Starting point is 00:54:26 Democrats were more popular than Donald Trump. It's when you put a name there that it added the baggage, suffused the baggage like Biden had his issues. And so then Trump will be up by two points. Right now Kamala Harris is the vessel through which there is a collective sigh of relief in the movement. You can hear it. You can almost hear it in the streets. And they are rushing to her as if she were the enemy. This is a criticism. This is a compliment.
Starting point is 00:54:54 She is pulling at Democrat neutral against Donald Trump. And that's all she has to do because Donald Trump is so innately unlikable, untrustworthy. The presidency is supposed to be the role model for America's youth, right? Your children. And how can you hold up a convicted sex abuser, fraudster, bankrupt, 34-count convict, indicted 91 times? How can you hold that up to your children and explain that that person is supposed to be your role model? Or as Michelle Obama said, you know, don't be small. And that's so unprecedented in every way. And of course Barack Obama had one of the roaring laugh lines of the night when he said, what is it with Donald Trump and the size, and he made all sort of a sexual,
Starting point is 00:55:48 the size of his crowds? What is it there, man? What is wrong with you? Oh, you're weird is basically the undercurrent there. So what's on the ballot and calling out what the Republicans are doing to try to suppress the vote is in the name of voter integrity. They always have that Orwellian vocabulary, right? It's, oh, no, we're not
Starting point is 00:56:10 suppressing the vote. We're not making it harder. We're just doing it in the name of integrity. We want every vote counted, but only the right vote. And only after it's gone through the grist mill of our lawsuits and barriers and all of that. There's a battle brewing right now in America that's right below the surface between democratically elected or Democrat secretary of states that are generally in charge of election and then these county precincts which may be in control of by MAGA and in terms of vote counting and certification. And we're gonna watch this play out. Believe me, there's an army of lawyers for both sides.
Starting point is 00:56:49 I'm gonna join the one for the Democrats. There's an army of lawyers on both sides who are gonna be trying to sort out counting and certification. I assure you, this is not gonna be easy for the networks or even the Midas Touch network to announce the winner because there's gonna be all these delays where people try to throw sand in the gear and they won't certify and we'll be missing big black spots on
Starting point is 00:57:09 those maps that John King likes to use. When we haven't gotten the 32nd precinct and district in Georgia, what's going on there? And what's going on there is MAGA is trying to, you know, that's why running up the score here is really, really important. And your vote does count because we need to not just win by 11,758 votes in Georgia or 10,000 in Arizona, whatever it is, we got to win by a lot and not a little and least not in doubt at all. Right? Absolutely. And chaos is like their strategy. Chaos. And they are the party of trying to make voting harder.
Starting point is 00:57:51 You wouldn't be against mail-in ballots if you didn't want to try to make voting harder. And people have asked me, because we've talked about this before, what's the point of them trying to stop the certification in counties because Biden is president. It's not like Trump is in office and it keeps him in office. What's the point of it?
Starting point is 00:58:09 And the point of it is to create chaos, to create distrust in the system, and ultimately to get it in front of the Supreme Court. Because I think that they realize that that is their best chance right now of getting into the White House is getting the six, six three court, you know, to pull a Bush v Gore and get them in there because they did him a solid with that immunity decision. I mean, Chief Justice Roberts, who evidently according to the leak was unwilling to compromise with
Starting point is 00:58:43 the liberal justices, which is shocking because we've seen him, court watchers have seen him as like the reasonable adult in the room, and he was really unreasonable in that situation. So I don't know what he would do. Could he rein in the more extreme party? Does he not want to anymore? So they know that the game plan is
Starting point is 00:59:03 to stop enough of the certifications, to get it up to the Supreme Court, to get some sort of creative argument that the Supreme Court is willing to take and give him. It's that SCOTUS coup that they're looking for. And barring that for there to be enough of a question, enough of a chaos for him to use it. Because mail-in ballots, while completely safe and secure, was new enough in our country that Trump used that newness to sow the doubt and distrust and the January 6 insurrection.
Starting point is 00:59:41 And so this certification stopping will be unprecedented if they do what they want. And they're going to use that opportunity to sow the chaos and let's hope they aren't able to, you know, have another January 6 as a result of it. But this is their strategy, the more chaos, the more it helps them. Yeah, without a doubt. We're going to cover, speaking of chaos, one of the agents of chaos, of course, which George Santos, that fabulous, not fabulous, the fabulous to made up. It's like JD Vance, sort of like JD Vance.
Starting point is 01:00:18 JD Vance making up his background. JD Vance attacking Tim Walls today because he said that tim walls lied that he used ivf for his children Which is itself a lie. He used another technique that's falls into the family of this type of um, This type of family planning but the fact that the balls that they have To go after donald trump claiming that Kamala Harris, who's married to Doug Emhoff, is anti-Semitic because she didn't pick Josh Shapiro. Where is the Jewish person on Donald Trump's cabinet from 2016? Where's the Jewish person sitting next to him as vice president or vice presidential candidate? Now nowhere. They go after Tim
Starting point is 01:01:06 Walls for his 24 years of service starting at 17 in the Army and the National Guard. And they think that JD Vance, because he carried a laptop and a camera as a photojournalist during when he was a Marine, is the equivalent. I mean, you know, or that they can go after somebody for their family planning and how they gave birth to a child. It's the depravity of the hollowed out morals of the Republican Party on full display. That's why there's groups like, you know, the former voters for Nikki Haley now for Kamala Harris, Republicans for Harris. That's the reason, because their party left them long ago. They didn't leave their party, the party left them. And now they're finding a home in the Democratic Party. And after watching what's happened so far on the DNC, which you can
Starting point is 01:01:56 watch live on the Midas Touch Network, they have a happy and healthy home to join. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing. And again, to do something, you do it here on the Midas Touch Network, and you can help support all of its content, all of its content creators, all of its podcasts like Legal AF, one way to support Legal AF, I didn't plug earlier, is Patreon,
Starting point is 01:02:21 patreon.com slash Legal AF, Ben and me. We're doing this teachable moment. Professor Ben Popock teaching sort of, I don't wanna call it law school classes. It's like a Ted Talk meets a law school. Where we teach you about the law at the intersection of law and politics. I have some new content that's up there right now for you.
Starting point is 01:02:41 We also give you early access to hot takes. We also have town halls and Q&As where you can ask Ben and me anything that you like. I may not answer it, but you can ask us anything that you like. It's on Legal AF, Patreon, patreon.com slash Legal AF. And then of course, we've got our tremendous pro-democracy sponsors.
Starting point is 01:02:58 What do we like about them? They don't tell us what to say. They don't tell us what to think. And they let us live in freedom. There's no censorship on this network. We won't abide by it, and we won't take a sponsor who would ask us to do anything. They support our message, that's why they're here,
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Starting point is 01:09:08 This is not a difficult math equation. Right? I do it so I can do this. Which is the part we want to do. You got to eat your meat and potatoes in order to get to the dessert. Let's get to the dessert of George Santos. Why don't you lead on George Santos? Kind of start with what was he charged with? I mean, we sort of all remember, but what do people are due to our audience? What was he
Starting point is 01:09:32 charged with and what's happened now with the plea of guilty today obtained by the Eastern District of New York Southern Eastern District of New York, U.S. Attorney's office here in Brooklyn, just over the bridge from where I'm at right now. Well, he pled guilty to wire fraud and identity theft, but I'm glad you asked me what he was charged with, because I was reading the statement that was released by the U.S. Attorney, and the list was so long that I thought it was funny, and I screenshot it, so I'm just going to read from them. It says, Santos admits he filed fraudulent FEC reports, embezzled funds from campaign donors, charged credit card cards without authorization, stole identities, obtained unemployment benefits through fraud, and lied in
Starting point is 01:10:16 reports to the House of Representatives. All of that. I mean, he was- Is that all? Dina, you're being unfair. You's all. You're being unfair. You're being unfair. We're fair on Legal AF. Is that all he pled guilty to? I know. Just that. I was like, are you kidding? It kept going on and on.
Starting point is 01:10:32 I mean, he was one of the most corrupt elected officials ever. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes, you know, our justice system, we can complain is too slow or, you know, they seem to let some people fall through the cracks, but he was so glaringly bad, it was quick and he did not fall through the cracks. Definitely one of the most ostentatious and blatant frauds on the American people that we had seen in years, if ever in modern history.
Starting point is 01:11:04 Yeah, Santos is, they don't, he's by himself. I mean, they broke the mold when they make, when they made George Santos. So he's busy making cameo appearances trying to, and now he's on OnlyFans, not because I'm his subscriber, only because I've read about it. I can't imagine what that looks like at all. And what it shows you is practicing lawyers,
Starting point is 01:11:29 let me give us a little bit of that flavor here from Dean and I to the audience. The fact that he had to plead guilty to that entire list of things, and his lawyers weren't able to even negotiate out like one, like two felony counts. Like his lawyers and he had no leverage whatsoever. He was dead to rights with the evidence.
Starting point is 01:11:52 He had the, his former treasurer, uh, testifying against him, his former partner testifying against him. The records spoke for themselves in terms of the transfer of money, the fraudulent donations, the use of people, other people's money in the form of donations to his campaign to fund his lavish lifestyle. I mean, all of those V-neck cashmere sweaters in all those use cost a lot of money. His complete redo of his wardrobe from the Brooks Brothers prison collection cost a lot of money. His complete redo of his wardrobe from the Brooks Brothers prison collection cost a lot of money. And so there was no, I could just picture the proffer slash, and plus he drove them crazy. He didn't admit all this a year ago. He dragged it out and made and made and tried to impossible but he tried to
Starting point is 01:12:45 make the Eastern District of New York prosecutor's office look bad instead of cutting an early quiet deal. If he had if he had caught an early quiet deal he probably would have got a couple of counts but because they made they made them spend so much time money and effort to get to this moment you know which should have happened last summer at least in the fall you know a year ago they year ago, they were like, no, we are not offering. So I can see the meeting. Can we just plead to one, like two felonies and you guys recommend a year? No. What else do you have? He has to plead guilty to everything. Here's our plea. Here's our plea deal. This is a, just to remind everybody, this is a plea deal.
Starting point is 01:13:25 The only thing he got, if people are wondering why would he do this and not just take his chance with a jury, because he knows he's going to get convicted with a jury, and here he at least got the, I don't know what the sentencing recommendation is going to be, maybe you caught it at the press release. I thought it was a minimum of two years, but I still think he's looking at six to eight years in terms of prison and leaving it to the judge. I thought it was a minimum of two years, but I still think he's looking at six to eight years in terms of prison and leaving it to the judge. I guess he could have gotten 20 if he were more, if he was convicted of everything. So he's trying to at least cut that downside risk in half,
Starting point is 01:13:56 if you will, hope that the judge goes more towards the two from the six or eight. I think the judge, I want to hear your opinion. I think the judge gives him, says the calculus says 20. Government's recommending at least six, no more, no less than two, but between two and six to eight, I'm giving him seven. What do you think he gets? Yeah, I think he gets something pretty substantial. I mean, this is his first offense, right? Although his offense was so multiple, but you're right. He could get that range between two and I think it was 22. It's so serious when you deal with public corruption. The court system takes that very seriously. I mean, our sentencing in part is based on what that person did. So when he comes in front of the sentence hearing, how remorseful is he? Can he even be remorseful? So that comes into it play a little bit, how, what he's willing to
Starting point is 01:14:54 admit to, so to speak, in terms of like remorsefulness. But also then it's about the public at large. We sentence people as a deterrent for other people to not do it. And because of that, the real seriousness, I mean, for campaign donations to be misused in that way, for people to not trust how their campaign money is going to go, is such a core part of our democracy. That judge has to take, will, I think, take that seriously, because the last thing you want is a whole bunch of George Santos. And to that extent is why I support us always having prosecuted Donald Trump, even though some people thought, oh, then, you know, it makes the country more divisive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You have to deter people like Donald
Starting point is 01:15:39 Trump from committing more crimes. Sometimes it's not just about the person. It's because somebody next time is going to think, oh, he got away with it, then I'm going to do it too. I think that's the strongest argument for prosecuting Donald Trump. And I think it's why this George Santos, even though it's his first offense, and even if he tries to give a nice little speech during the sentencing hearing, I think he's going to get a substantial sentencing like you said, because it's such a serious crime. Always love your analysis, Dina. We're going to be doing, as we announced earlier during hot take, we're going to be doing regular hot takes, duets, we like to call them internally, about the United
Starting point is 01:16:20 States Supreme Court. New term coming up in October. I think Dina and I are going to cut something late in August about and maybe beginning of September after Labor Day, when people are paying attention about what is on the docket literally for the upcoming term with the United States Supreme Court. We'll follow also some of these cases that came through an emergency application that the court's considering over the just this past or so, and kind of tie it all together. We will have a pretty good handle. You know, the Supreme Court takes about 50 or 60 cases,
Starting point is 01:16:52 sometimes more, sometimes less. Some of them you've never heard of. Some of them don't impact your daily life, but then there's always that five, 10, or 15 that really do, and we're gonna focus on those at the intersection of law and politics with the regular updates here on the Minas Touch Network and then of course follow everything Dina does. She only does it here exclusively on the Midas Touch Network and you can find
Starting point is 01:17:13 her on all sorts of social media platforms and for the Midas Touch Network. I was a former practicing lawyer, a practicing lawyer, recovering practicing lawyer. And then the other way to support the network, besides supporting its individuals, its contributors, is we've got, at least for Legal AF, we've got a Patreon, patreon.com slash Legal AF. And then we've also got merchandise that is not, we've got the legal, well, thank you very much, Salty.
Starting point is 01:17:43 This is like a badly cut Japanese horror movie where we're bringing in the links late. And then we've got the merch store, store.mitustouch.com where you can not only get Legal AF merch, and we're gonna be refreshing that, that store, Jordy and I can work together after the election to get that done. But you can also pick up lots of things
Starting point is 01:18:03 related to Kamala Harris and Tim Walls to show your support. They're all kind of cool, neat, first kid on your block type stuff in the store.mitestouch.com. We did the Patreon, we did that. We've got shows that Karen hosts like Mistrial, and then of course send the word out
Starting point is 01:18:21 and help people organically grow this network with no outside investors. We're completely independent in every way, shape, and form that that word is used, including no censorship. Nobody tells us what to say. We barely know what we're gonna say before we say it here on the network, let alone a sponsor telling us what to say. And if the sponsor's here, that's because, that's why we want to support our sponsors, that's because they know our show. We've been on for over four and a half years. They've seen our body of work,
Starting point is 01:18:48 1,500 videos or more related to Legal AF. And they're like, we're in, that's our audience. And so they should be complimented for that in supporting the show. So of course we had some great sponsors here tonight. Dina, we need the last word. Yeah, this is a great week. Let's just end on that.
Starting point is 01:19:08 The DNC, the party, the show of the year, we are also filled with optimism and with hope that, you know, we know the RNC and the MAGAs and the Trump are going to have their shenanigans and they're going to have their hate, but hope and then we vote. But I'm loving the feeling. I think it's just so invigorating getting a chance for us all to experience the DNC this week.
Starting point is 01:19:37 Perfect touch. It really was a party. Thank you for being here and joining us and we'll see everyone. And especially shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal Aid efforts without which we do not have a show or a network and until Saturday's show with Ben Mycelis and me it's Michael Popak and Dina Dahl signing off.

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