Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump LEGAL QUAGMIRES now HAUNT his Return

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo are back with the midweek edition of the Legal AF podcast. On tap? 1). Trump henchman continue to be prosecuted for his crimes by states attorney general; 2) Trump’s civil rights cases against him continue despite his being re-elected; 3). Trump picks someone who will gut the DoJ civil rights division to head the division; 4) the NYAG and Manhattan DA tell their courts and Trump they are not going to toss their judgments and verdicts just because Trump won the election, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Thanks to our sponsors: Aura Frame: Visit https://AuraFrames.com and get $45 OFF their BEST-SELLING Carver Mat frames with promo code: LEGALAF Wildgrain: Wildgrain is offering our listeners $30 off their first box - PLUS free Croissants in every box - when you go to https://Wildgrain.com/LEGALAF to start your subscription. OneSkin: Get started today at https://OneSkin.co and receive 15% Off using code: LEGALAF Zbiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. Subscribe to the new Legal AF channel: https://youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com 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 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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The Midas Touch Network and here on Legal AF. It's just dragged herself out of bed across the room for that microphone so we could talk about what we're going to talk about. What are we going to talk about? We're going to start with that the attorney generals are working overtime prosecuting Donald Trump's inner circle, inner sanctum, including in Wisconsin, Ken Chesbrough has been indicted again. He's cooperating with some attorney generals. He's prosecuted by some that he's cooperating with. He got convicted already of a felony, he pled guilty to, he's back in the news. All these aides like Ken Chesbrough and Jim Trupas and Mike Roman, they all think they've got the superpower

that Donald Trump alone has, which is I got elected again. But that's not a thing when you're not the person who got elected president. So we're going to talk about all that. Then we're going to talk about some late breaking news as we went on the air, which is Christopher Wray. You're not going to have Chris Wray to kick around any longer. He's leaving two and a half years early from his FBI position, which is not surprising. I mean, everybody's getting out of Dodge. Nobody wants to hang around for a public execution by Donald Trump. And so Chris Ray, the person in 2017 that Donald Trump said at a press conference was impeccably qualified and was the bastion of integrity.

Now, because Donald Trump doesn't like what happened to him during the criminal prosecutions, he wants Chris Ray gone. And he wants to slide Cash Patel in. Cash Patel famously or infamously has said, first thing he's gonna do do is he's going to mothball the Hoover building where the FBI headquarters is. He's going to make it a museum to the deep state and he's going to send all the FBI agents out to be cops working a beat because he doesn't understand what intelligence is and he doesn't understand what the investigative

quality of the FBI does or what they do every day to keep us safe. We're going to talk about Chris Ray there. Then we've got, there's other cases against Donald Trump. I know everybody's in the dumps about the criminal cases, but there are civil cases, including in federal court. There's a broad under the things like the KKK Act being handled and presided over. There's about eight of them by Judge Mehta, Amit Mehta in DC. They involve the Metro Police, the Capitol Police, representatives of Congress who have all sued Donald Trump for their injuries related to the attempted overthrow of democracy and the insurrection on Jan 6. Those cases continue. Will they continue

into the presidency? Is there anything on the books in terms of constitutional law or analysis that says that civil cases can't continue? What about all the cases that Donald Trump is continuing to handle on appeal like Eugene Carroll and and the inevitable appeal of whatever Judge Bushan gets around to doing in New York? How can he maintain appeals on one hand and then argue he can't be bothered or he's immune from civil suit while he's in office on the other? We'll talk about all that. Then we got a new DOJ watchdog who's basically the inspector general who's taken a look at what Donald Trump's Department of Justice did while he was in office. And is anybody shocked that they were spying on Congress and getting improper search warrants

and other things there? That is when Trump was in office the first time. Can you imagine what's going to happen if Cash Patel ends up being the head of the FBI? Then we'll catch everybody up on some news from this week about both the Attorney General for New York, Letitia James, and the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, firing back at Donald Trump and his request to throw out the $500 million civil fraud judgment and throw out the convictions and don't sentence me in New York, even though all

those things happened before I was president because I'm president now. Oh, boy. Let's bring on Karen. Karen, I broke the knee story here on Legal AF. I'm going to turn it over to you. Tell everybody how you're feeling, what's going on in your life as we move into the holiday season for most people. And then we'll sort of start digging into these stories. Yeah. I know. It's great to see you, Popak. I've been describing myself a little bit like I have a man cold. I'm surprised at how incredibly knocked out I am about this and what a baby I feel like, but this is rough. It's really rough. Major knee surgery and recovering from

it. It's my first real surgery, so I have a lot of respect for people who do things like this. And it's slow, but it is what it is. Luckily, a lot of what we do is research and reading, and you can do that while you ice and put your leg up. And, you know, every day I'm getting a little bit better. And so it is what it is, but it's great to be here. Yeah, that's really great. Look, we got so much going on in our private lives and our personal lives.

People don't know this, you know, me and I both practice law for a living. In addition to what we do here, we're not just pundits and talking heads, you know, we evaluate cases, we are we have law firms, we have partners, we have clients. And I know people are like, you're always on the air and Karen and you and the might is touch and that, yeah. But we keep our skills sharp in the defense of democracy and for justice. And I'm so appreciative of all the things that you do and you sort of your blueprint for the future as we move forward.

And let's get into it. Let's talk about, let's go. Let me frame Ken Chesborough, interesting cat. He's a guy that played guilty in Georgia, maybe early, maybe he should have waited around to see what was going to happen in Georgia. Nobody twisted his arm. Well, maybe the Fonny Willis, Fulton County DA twisted it a little bit, but he played guilty. He's a lawyer, he's a big boy, he's wearing his big boy pants. He pled guilty to a felony. And then we reported a couple of weeks ago, he didn't like that because maybe the case is going away

and maybe Foddy Willis is going away and everything's up on appeal and Donald Trump won the election and can I have my guilty plea back now? No. So that's up there. But that hasn't stopped attorneys general, it was, struggle to's up there, but that hasn't stopped attorney attorneys general who was Struggled to get that right attorneys general from around the country

Especially in battleground states led by Democrats like Wisconsin Michigan and Arizona to continue to go after Not Donald Trump per se but everybody in his inner circle and there's nothing not a darn thing Donald Trump can do about it because unless there's a Democratic governor in that state that's going to give a pardon, there's nothing pardonable. And so, Ken Jesper is weird because we know that he cooperated with the Michigan attorney general about the fake elector scheme that he was one of the architects of, along with Jim Trupis and John Eastman and Mike Roman who worked for Donald Trump. And we know he's cooperating in Michigan. We know he's cooperating in Arizona. We know he's cooperating in Wisconsin, mainly because he told the judge in Georgia, Judge McAfee,

that he needed a permission slip to go to these various states on a whistle-stop tour. And he needed permission of the judge to let him leave Georgia. And so we knew that had happened a long time ago, six, eight months ago. And I think some places he was successful in avoiding prosecution, like in Michigan he hasn't been prosecuted. In Arizona, it looks like he's the major cooperating witness against Rudy Giuliani and Mike Roman and John Eastman. It looks like that he flipped. And I thought, well, maybe he'll flip everywhere and he'll give some good candid testimony and the problem is he hasn't been candid with himself he hasn't been candid with the prosecutors or the investigators and

they keep catching him in lies like his original position was I just wrote some memos I'm just a lawyer I'm just a lawyer I was just positing was look at tabletop exercise about democracy in America. I didn't actually mean use the fake electors to pressure Mike Pence and try to overthrow democracy. I only said if there's a lawsuit and any judge buys any of our crackpot theories, maybe you could use a fake elector or alternate elector certificate. And that was it. And then the more emails that came out through the Gen 6 Committee and or through Jack Smith, the more we realized that was a lie. That he was up to his neck in it, that it morphed from being what he'd first described into him being in the thick of it in a conspiracy and about the fake electors to the point where there's now this alternative review

now, there's this famous text message between Ken Chesbrough and Mike Roman, who's now been indicted in Wisconsin on 10 counts, along with Ken Chesbrough, of forged fake elector certificates. There's this famous email where Ken Chesbrough says, the electors think that these are only going to be used if there's a lawsuit and they're not going to be used in Washington. And Mike Roman writes back, fuck the fake electors. Okay. And now the fake electors are cooperating with the Wisconsin attorney general. And why don't you bring everybody up to speed. What's going on there? Yeah. I also wanted to react to a couple of things you just said. First of all, the whole thing about Georgia in particular, that was 18 defendants who were criminally charged.

And Georgia has this strange speedy trial act that is unique to Georgia that if a defendant asks for a speedy trial, they have to get ready and do it within, I think it was like 25 days or something ridiculous. Like that was like this very short time period and they have to go to trial. And Ken Chesbrough was really kind of, I think, decided to

put, he kind of made a calculation through his lawyer clearly that Fonny Willis wasn't ready and that she couldn't get ready to try him so quickly. And so they demand, he and a couple others demanded a speedy trial and she called their bluff. And that's why they ended up pleading guilty. And you know, that was a very risky thing to do at the time. And then they ended up pleading guilty. They got a plea deal. You know, they, they didn't, they, they decided to get a reduced sentence to not risk going to trial and, and, and going and getting convicted of more serious charges.

What they didn't bank on was what would happen, which what you said, which is time would make this case basically go into the ether because it's very much, it's very much on hold because of the whole relationship that Fonny Willis had with the lead prosecutor. So, it's very interesting how much he miscalculated that. And and I think, you know, he's probably probably concerned about that. And the other thing, you know, that I just wanted to also react to is what you said, it's clear he's cooperating with these jurisdictions. So it was interesting to me that Wisconsin in particular superseded their, their charges. Wisconsin in particular superseded their charges. Originally he was only charged with one count, now he's charged with 11.

They added 10 more counts based on the fake electors to him and the other two, Troopus and Roman. And it was interesting to me because he's cooperating, why would they have done that? Now, maybe it's a situation where, you know, when you cooperate, you do ultimately have to plead guilty to your charges or admit them typically. And so this could just be, okay, we're going to do the indictment, and maybe he helped them in the cooperation to create that indictment, and that's going to be

the speaking indictment that he has to plead guilty to. And, you know, this particular indictment was interesting because it was conspiracy and then some other charges, but then it had an affidavit of probable cause attached to it, which was a very detailed affidavit that laid out the facts, as you said. And it laid out this whole scheme that they must have gotten from somewhere. So I assume they got it from Ken Chesbrough,

because it really spells out a roadmap exactly how they did it and what they did. And at first, they kind of dipped their toes in the water and was like, OK, we'll do it just in case. And there's precedent for this. It happened in Hawaii during the Kennedy Nixon case. And then, as you said, it escalates to, well, fuck it. They get very bold.

And it just kind of escalates. And because they're very much, we just need to get this. We need to get doubt. We need to get a case, you know, one of the cases to say, to, you know, litigation to kind of help us or maybe the state legislatures to be on our side. You know, they have to, they were just looking for opportunities to kind of drive a truck through it.

And so I think we might see a situation where he ultimately cooperates and pleads guilty. I mean, maybe in Wisconsin, it's typical, you know, different places do it differently, and different cases are different. Maybe Wisconsin is the kind of place where he cooperates, and then they see how it goes. And then he ultimately resolves the case and they see how he did, if it was truthful, etc. So, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in this particular case. Yeah, I think as a former prosecutor, I think you hit the nail right on the head. I was like, wait a minute, I thought he's cooperating. Why is there a superseding indictment with

10 more counts? Either he's not cooperating enough and he's wrapped himself around his own axle a number of times and how he's been interviewed and his ever-changing story. And maybe they're getting impatient with him and they feel like they have to squeeze harder in order to get him to fully cooperate. And obviously his mental state has changed. He's running into Georgia to try to get out from under a felony conviction here. He already took. He might be considered like his trustworthiness may be taking a hit with some of these investigators

and prosecutors, but we'll report on it. Michigan hasn't indicted him yet. Arizona, it looks like he is the cooperating witness there based on the way the indictment came out that we reported on. God, it's already been, I think it was back in March or April, it's hard to believe. But it just, the thematic here for this show is that while the criminal cases for Donald Trump have, of course, gone into the composter, and we'll talk about some of them towards the end of this case, other, the civil cases, not so much. And especially if your name, it doesn't end with

Trump. If you're not a Trump, you don't get to use all the Trumpian superpowers that come because the majority of the American people, at least for the electorate, decided to put them back in the office. And so I wanted to, we're going to talk about it next. We're going to talk about the civil cases. And there are numbers of them. There's about eight of them against Donald Trump, mainly being presided over by Judge Amit Mehta in the District of Columbia. They were originally filed by Benny Thompson. He was taken out. Then the Metropolitan Police, the Capitol Police, members of Congress or former members of Congress like Eric Swalwell and all for violations of the KKK Act in section 1985 and civil rights violations because of Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani and

other people's role in the insurrection. They continue despite the Supreme Court rulings, despite immunity, and we'll get into how immunity applies to civil cases or does it apply? What about the Clinton Paula Jones case? What happened with that? What happened with even references in the immunity decision from the summer? How does that impact the civil cases? Will they continue or will they have a big pause snooze button put on them for four more years until Donald Trump comes out again and then restart? We're going to cover all of that. We got to do our update about, we'll touch on Christopher Wray and Cash Patel, what all

that means, some developments in the Department of Justice like Harmeet Dhillon, who that is for the Civil Rights Division, one of the most important divisions. You may not realize it, but when the Department of Justice isn't out stopping bad guys and terrorist organizations, they're help protecting your civil liberties. They do that through that department, and now they're gonna have somebody I don't think is gonna have the best interests of America at heart at all when it comes to issues

that matter and social issues that matter. We'll cover that. And then we'll catch you up on the Attorney General in New York and her response back to Donald Trump's request, no, demand that the $500 million running with interest judgment against him for fraud be ripped up and thrown in the shredder because he happened to get elected president. She has a new response of a document or a letter that went out related to that and your old office The Manhattan DA right on cue and just as we outlined a week ago Filed there, but I think it's gonna be the last paper according to the judge, but we'll see their 86 page or 90 page

Opposition to the motion to dismiss for for justices purposes under a unique element of New York law. I will talk about what happened there about is Donald Trump going to get sentenced before the inauguration? Is he going to get sentenced after the inauguration? If he gets sentenced, when would he serve that time? And what's going to happen to the underlying conviction? We'll cover it all. But first, there's a few ways to support the show. As you know, we are independent. We don't have outside investors you know, we're not like some of these shows like I Was gonna say remain nameless like MSNBC and they got to redo their whole couch because what somebody had a meltdown

We got to bring in other anchors and all that. No, we don't have that We don't have to worry about losing a trust case in Nevada Like Fox News just did to determine what what political point of view people are going to have here, editorial point of view. No, we look to our audience to support us the way we support them. So we've got pro-democracy sponsors, we've got a show, we've got individual shows like Karen's got Miss Trial on Thursdays with two of her former prosecutor friends and law partners, Karen Freeman-Cniflo, Donya Perry, Kathleen Rice. These are going to be, I assure you, from now until the end of the year and beyond, it's going to make for some very interesting and exciting times on

Miss Trial. So tune in there on Thursday. And then we're going to have Legal AF, of course, has a new YouTube channel called Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF MTN, another pro-democracy channel to help you build. I'm the curator over there. Karen's over there. Dina Dahl is with me on unprecedented court accountability action. Shan Wu does daily videos with us

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You heard me, you can now get $30 off your first customized box when you go to wildgrain.com slash legal AF or you can use promo code legalaf at checkout. Okay, we are back. Thank you for supporting our sponsors and by extension supporting us in this particular network. Why don't we talk about the cases that are before Judge Meta, I'll do a two second and I'll turn it over to you. People forget these cases, but they're very, very important. And they're brought by the victims. They're brought by people who were injured, damaged emotionally, physically, lost loved ones as a result of the attack on our Capitol and the insurrection and the attempt to burn down one of the cradles of our democracy.

And they were filed soon after those events and around the time of the Jan 6 committee. There's several of them that are being led by metropolitan police who were first responders, of course. Some of them died, some of them horribly injured, some of them had to retire as a result because of disability. Capital police, same exact thing as a couple of groups of them, including the widow of Brian Sicknick who died the following day from a heart attack at the ripe old age of 40 something. Obviously impacted negatively by what happened and the attacks on him. Then you've got some representatives in Congress that have brought them and they've all brought them under the same framework,

different lawyers, different law firms, same framework. Civil rights violations, the KKK act, which was passed, yeah, in old timey times when we had the KKK running the streets of America, trying to scare black people into exercising their civil liberties. And that's what we call it. And a number of some of the counts have been dismissed, but immunity is not gonna stop these cases. Donald Trump has tried. They are going to continue. Karen, why don't you pick it up from there

and tell us what do you think is gonna happen going forward with these cases while Donald Trump is president again? Yeah, look, I was so happy when you put this on our list of things that we're going to talk about, Popak, because you're right, people do forget about these cases. Look, these are cases that were brought by people who were really impacted by January 6. This might be the only opportunity to hold him accountable. A lot of the cases went away and were dismissed,

et cetera. But as you said, eight of them survived and have even survived a certain appellate review. There were some issues regarding presidential immunity that that judge made to ruled on. And then it went up on appeal and it was upheld, but it was sent back down to further clarify. Because of course, the whole presidential immunity issue is always a factor given the US v Trump case, but it'll be very interesting because these individuals, these cases have accused Trump of conspiracy to violate civil rights, incitement to riot, battery assault, disorderly conduct, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

And in some ways, these cases, if they go to trial and don't settle, these are going to take place of the January 6 case. Because although it's about money and civil matters, these cases are going to be a full-blown airing of what happened and what Trump did. And I think that's going to be quite interesting, quite important. And several cases have held that.

Look, when it comes to civil, you know, when it comes to private conduct in civil cases, there's no kind of pressing pause because you're president. Right. If you recall, Bill Clinton had to be deposed civilly on the Paula Jones matter while he was president because that was private, that happened previous to anything that happened. Now it's complicated here because the issue on appeal and the issue that Judge Mehta is gonna have to decide

is was any of the speech on the ellipse when he was speaking when he was president, obviously speaking publicly is a presidential function. Was he speaking as a president or was he speaking as a candidate who lost, right, on behalf of himself and as a, frankly, a criminal trying to steal the election? And that's going to be the issue, I think. Or was he just a private citizen exercising his First Amendment rights, which he can do. If that's the case and this goes forward, this case is going or these cases are going. I think it's very interesting that these cases are here. Like I said, I'm really glad you have teed these

back up for people because this might be the only opportunity we have to see the evidence and hold him accountable, even though it's not gonna be criminal. Yeah, are we back? Okay, sorry about that, Salty. Yeah, and I don't see them being, he'll try to delay them. The immunity rulings didn't work. They're not gonna stop these cases.

They went up to the district court of appeals or the DC court of appeals, and they either, In some cases, Donald Trump didn't even appeal this issue. Now he's going to have to try to stand before the courts and say that he needs more time or he can't have it impaired or impede the office of the presidency and everything else. I just don't see it happening because he has other cases in which he's continuing to prosecute appeals or try to defend himself. You can't use it as a sword and a shield.

You can't say, well, I got to work on the E. Jean Carroll case to try to knock down that $100 million judgment against me, but I don't have time to do these civil cases over here. Or, I can't be bothered with sentencing related to my criminal convictions, so put that off forever. But I do have time to prosecute a hundred million dollar federal tort claim against the Department of Justice related to Mar-a-Lago. He's got to pick a lane here, man. And I don't think ultimately the United States Supreme Court is going to stop these cases from moving forward. They're going to take some time.

Civil cases often do. I've been involved with cases that have gone, I'm sure you have too, Karen, four, five, six, eight years, almost 10 years. This case is going to be around for a while. Judge Mayd is a good judge. He's busy sentencing Jan 6th defendants. That's what the judges are left with now in the waning days of the Biden administration. Poor Judge Chutkin, she was going to try the case of a lifetime, the case of five centuries

against Donald Trump, and now she's left sentencing Jan 6th defendants every day, which is what she's been doing. We had four sentencings last week on the same day. Amy Berman Jackson did one and Daphne Friedrich for a Trump appointee did one and Royce Lamberth did one and Amit Mehta did one. And they're all facing these out of control Jan Sixers who are like, we're getting pardoned, woo! And they're literally telling off the judges

in the courtroom. One of them told Daphne, he didn't say go F herself, but it was pretty darn close. He said, this is bullshit. And I'm definitely, you know, the 50 days left, I'm out. Woo. And you know, shooting off guns or whatever they're doing in their head. That's what they got to deal with.

You know, and Royce Lampert, who was I think a Reagan appointee, he put it best. He says, Donald Trump's got a job to do. If he's president, he wants to exercise his part power. I got a job to do. And my job is you're wants to exercise his power, I got a job to do. And my job is you're going away right now. And one guy in particular, on Friday, I thought this was interesting.

You'll like this as a prosecutor, former prosecutor type, Karen. The guy came in with his defense lawyer, public defender, and he thought, well, I'm only getting a year. Misdemeanor, and Trump's about to come in, I'm gonna be, and Royce Lampert looked at him and said, well, given the procedural posture,

you're going in right now, marshals, and they take off your belt and your shoes, and they were like, what? And the lawyer- He didn't bring his toothbrush. So his lawyer didn't tell him to bring his toothbrush. I mean, listen, you and I have had a lot of criminal cases. And one of the first federal criminal cases I ever handled,

my job as a young associate was to remind our client that if this thing goes bad, they could be remanding you right now. So take off your jewelry, give us your belt, let's be ready. And it happened. So I get it. But that's how they're handling this kind of stuff. That's what's left for the tatters of the remaining criminal cases. And then you've got these civil cases, which are really continue to be important to democracy. Why don't we touch on for a minute your view of the FBI and Christopher Wray and the incoming potential of Kash Patel of all people. Give us your thoughts on that. Yeah, I don't think most people realize that the FBI director is appointed for a 10 year period.

So that specifically, it's not supposed to be political. It's supposed to be something that transcends politics and transcends administrations and allows for continuity. And most of the time that is respected, obviously Comey was an outlier, most of the time that's respected and that's how it's really always worked. And I've said this many times

and I know people roll their eyes when I say it, but justice is truly supposed to be blind and you're supposed to just follow the facts wherever they lead. And so therefore it shouldn't matter if you're a Democrat, appointed by a Democrat or a Republican when you are the FBI director, because you are literally just investigating crimes. And that's just the way it's supposed to be. So the fact that, look, the way it's supposed to be. So the fact that, look, you know, Donald Trump said he's going to fire Chris Ray and, uh, and point cash Patel, which by all accounts is a

terrifying prospect and, um, he's the opposite of what I just described. But look, Chris Ray, he knows the writings on the wall. And so rather than be fired, he's resigning when Biden walks out the door. And, you know, that's a personal choice. Do you want to be fired or do you want to, you know, leave on your own accord? And he made that choice. You know, one of the major concerns I have

about Donald Trump, among others, is the fact that he is politicizing things that shouldn't be politicized and there's no business of having politics in that area. And he's obviously really politicized law enforcement and justice and it's really a shame and it'll be terrifying to see where that goes from here. Did you work on some of your cases in collaboration with the FBI? Pardon? Did you ever work in collaboration with the FBI in any of your cases when you were in

Manhattan DA's office? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Many, many, many times. They're an incredible partnership. I mean, look, there are often times where we are the first responder as a state prosecutor because we are a 24-7 shop and then something turns into a bigger case that is already being handled by the FBI.

Terrorism, for example, human trafficking, guns, all that kind of stuff, there's a lot of overlap there. And so there are many times that as a prosecutor that you coordinate with them, you work with them and potentially hand things off to them, but there's a lot of information sharing and they're excellent.

FBI agents, when there's an FBI agent on the case, it's fantastic. Yeah, agreed, agreed. I'm glad you gave that perspective. Let me switch gears and talk about the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, which often works with the FBI to protect Americans. That's the department within the Department of Justice or the division within the Department of Justice that I think touches the most people's lives. It protects our voting rights and of those of the disenfranchised. It protects abortion clinics and abortion and reproductive rights.

When transgender people or members of the LGBTQ plus community are being attacked or losing their civil rights, there will be investigations by the Civil Division. So it matters, police brutality and the civil rights violations that go along with entire police departments and some of our communities who have run amok and are just beating and arresting and killing other Americans, how sanctuary cities are treated through the Department of Justice, all kind of makes its way through the Civil Rights Division. And so my heart sank. I don't know why it should or could anymore. But when Harmeet Dhillon, who I know, and I know her reputation, I know she's been angling to be the Attorney General, I'm sure she was disappointed she didn't get the AG job and Pam

Bondi got it, but I just don't think Donald Trump's close enough to her. I think there was also a little bit of a, she tried a coup over the summer where she tried to take over the Republican National Committee and be its chair. I don't think that sat well with Donald Trump. He ultimately wanted his daughter in law to take that job, but she's back. She's a maggGA darling, super conservative. She's sued. She lives in California in San Francisco and she's anti-COVID mitigation. She was suing the state of California and anything that Gavin Newsom did to try to tamp down on the spread of COVID. Barber shops couldn't be open. She sued over it. Churches couldn't meet with hundreds of unmasked congregants, she sued over it. She's not a big proponent of voting rights or mail-in voting or absentee

voting or anything like that. She's more of the one-day voting, only the votes the counter, that votes on election day kind of person. And she's let that be known. She's anti-transgender rights. She's anti-abortion and she's let that be known. So if you're looking for the civil rights division to like go protect people, like sometimes when I drive into an office of mine, I have to go by, no, that put it the wrong way. I go by a planned parenthood location. The reason I said I have to, because I got to see the protests of these un-American, unpatriotic people who are just abusing women who are trying to exercise their reproductive rights at Planned Parenthood. You think Harmeet Dhillon's Civil Rights Division is going to protect her right, her reproductive

rights? No, when she doesn't believe in abortion herself. So this will have a chilling effect. It'll run dovetail with our immigration, the new immigration enforcement policy, which is effectively deport American babies along with their parents out of the country, detain them, end birthright citizenship, which is a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment, but do it by executive privilege. I mean, executive order, how's that going to work? But when you have a civil rights division head, who's not going to see anything that Donald Trump

does as wrong, she's going to turn a blind eye to all of this. She's going to bury her head in the sand about all of this. There's not going to be police brutality investigations. There's not going to be voting rights, disenfranchisement investigations. There's not going to be protections for women or the LGBTQ plus community or reproductive rights at all. And this is what we saw in 2016 when Donald Trump got in the first time. It's just the neutering of the civil rights division.

It's just mothballing it as if it doesn't exist. And I've tangled with Harmeet before on behalf of the Midas Touch Network and otherwise. We sued her over Marjorie Taylor Greene blocking the Midas Touch Network over her Twitter feed at the time. She was using her personal Twitter feed really to go after her enemies and say amazingly stupid and disgusting things. But she'd say, well, I can block you from there because I've got an official at Rep

MTG and that's where I do all my official stuff. This is my private." We were like, that's not your private. It's obviously, that's your soul. That's the only one you're using. And we sued in federal court. We won and we settled and I had to have a long negotiations with Hard Meat and I know her from some other matters as well. So I get it. I get why she was picked but she's scary for democracy and she's scary for the Civil Rights Division. What do you know, Karen? What can you tell us? You know, I don't know her very well at all. I mean, I've very tangentially had a couple cases with her. She's, you know, she's scary

because she's the real deal. Like, and that's scary. She's a very, very smart lawyer. She's a very, very good lawyer. And when she has the views that she has, and she's smart, and, you know, a skilled, I should say lawyer, you know, that's scary, right? She's gonna have a lot of power. And hopefully, hopefully she will use it gingerly and humbly, which is how it should be used. And hopefully, the line assistants who work there who have pending investigations who are working on matters, who are going to break who are there's pending cases, obviously, hopefully, she doesn't do things like dismiss them or stop them

or stop the investigations. I mean, yes, she could potentially no longer do certain things and not look into certain things, but they have a lot going on there. And I hope that she doesn't bring politics into it and continues to uphold or allow people to uphold civil rights. Yeah. I wish you were right. I just don't think so. I agree with you. I like the part of being a prosecutor where you said there's just a lot of stuff in the pipeline she's not going to be able to reverse course on very, very quickly. But they're going to just gut the Civil Rights Division and other parts of the Department of Justice with Pam Bondi there. She's going to be

swinging an axe. And she's not getting this job to be a do nothing civil rights head. I mean, this is the number three position, frankly. As far as I'm concerned, it's the attorney general, it's the deputy attorney general, it's the head of the civil rights division. I mean, that's really how I see that office. You're right. It's not an Alina Haba. She's not an idiot. I don't agree with her on most of her positions. In fact, I'm not sure the Republican Party completely accepts her. She gave – she's a member of a unique, discrete Indian sect that she's public about. She's a Sikh. She gave a Sikh prayer at the Republican National Convention.

She was almost like booed off the stage because that's not a big tent party. Let's just put it that way. I don't think they knew what to do with Harmeet Dhillon, this Indian American Sikh who was giving a prayer. You know, they're all about the Christian values and Christian nationalism and that didn't sit well. But this is her party. This is what she's wanted. This is one of her dream positions and she finally got it. So we'll have to watch her closely. We'll have to call her out here on the Midas Tatch and Legal AF on a regular basis in the way that we can with whatever knowledge and understanding we have of the opposition. That's why we want you here. We want you here and why Legal AF particularly is best suited to be

your home away from home when the new administration starts because this new administration is just going to be lurching from one abuse of power to another, from one constitutional crisis to another as Donald Trump tries to destroy the guardrails of democracy again and the separations of power and tries to put the other two branches on his lap like a lap, like two, just two lap dogs. We got to be here for it. That's why we formed Legal AF, the YouTube channel, not because I necessarily adjust to get Kamala Harris elected. I wanted to get Kamala Harris elected, but we didn't form it like a month before the election for that purpose.

We formed it for just in case something happened and there's going to be a lot of lawsuits filed as a result, we want to be here for it and be prepared for it. And we are, and you and our audience are here for it, be prepared for it. And we are. And you and our audience are here for it and are prepared for it. We appreciate each and every one of you. We saw some stats off of Spotify or podcast or whatever for the year. I think we doubled our audience in the year, which is a testament to what we built here at the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF and to Karen Freeman at Knitfolo and my partner, Ben Misalas and the brothers and the other contributors, you know, that make up the

ecosystem that is the Midas Touch Network. And that's the way you can support us. There's sub stack for Midas Touch. I think it's called Midas Touch Plus. There's Legal AF, the YouTube channel, which you can help us build that pro democracy channel and get it on the ground floor. Now, I think we're at about 360,000 subscribers in about two months. There's shows like Midas, Mistrial, sorry, for Karen Freeman and Ignifilo

on Thursdays that she does there. I've got, there we go, Mistrial, Karen Freeman, Ignifilo, Donya Perry, Kathleen Rice. I'm doing Popak Live on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. right here on the Midas Touch network as well. And then we've got our sponsors and thank God they're here with us. I mean, they could have run for the hills after the election and just completely abandoned what we're doing here as a pro-democracy, independent network channel without any sponsors, but they didn't. They doubled down on us and on our speaking truth to power. Let me make this clear to everybody. Karen and I are not told what to say. Karen and I don't have consultations

with the owners of the channel or our producers about what we can and can't say. Whatever comes flying out of our mouths at any given moment is a reflection of what we want to say and how we want to say it. And if we're covering something, it's because we think it's important. And if we're not covering something,

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and politics commentary and analysis like no other. And we appreciate you being here for it. Now we've got another word. Carrie, you want say something on that? Before I, before I, we'll go, I'll give you the last word in the middle. No, it's all good. We can go, we can go straight to our sponsors. All right, let's go to our next commercial. The holidays are all about surprises, right? Well, today's sponsor, OneSkin,

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All right, we're back. Karen, what do you think about all that? I'm just happy to be here with you Popok and talking about all things at the intersection of law and politics and all the stuff that's going on. I can't even keep it straight. There's so much going on. Every day it's another announcement,

whether it's, I will give you a guilty pleasure that I do and this is a confession that people are gonna say, I can't believe you actually admit this. But the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning and have my coffee is I read the Daily Mail. I just do. And, you know, of course, that what was on this today was all or yesterday, but, you know, it was all about Don Jr. and his new socialite girlfriend and holding hands and this and that. And, you know, at the same exact time, what happens? Kimberly Guilfoyle gets a ambassadorship to Greece. And it was stunning

to me. That was obviously she was upset by this. Obviously, they want to keep her quiet. And it just felt like, wow, is this the new NDA that they do when this happens? So, you know, so much going on, so much to talk about. And, you know, we're going to have a lot to talk about for the next four years. I saw that article and that reporting. I was like, oh, the 2026 models are in the showroom, and the 2025 models are being shipped off to Greece. I mean, you know, one of our editors joked, it's like, it must be great to have a father that can send your old girlfriend off for four years to Greece while you date somebody else. I mean, that's how she got the job. I mean, she's not qualified to be the ambassador to Greece.

I mean, I don't why because she partied in Santorini? Is that why? Or Mykonos? Is that why you get to be the ambassador? It's just, we see how they hand these things out. You're supposed to give jobs to people who are qualified, whether the FBI director or whatever. You're not supposed to hand them out as, this is so you will keep quiet kind of things. You're not supposed to hand them out, because you're my friend and you donated a lot of money to my, you know, whatever. I mean, I honestly, with Pete Hegseth,

in my head, in my fantasy head, I think Donald Trump, who's been known to watch television and he loves Fox News, he probably like was watching on the weekend, watching Pete Hegsa and thinks he's like you know a buff guy and you know he's got that whole macho look and he was in the military and he's like you know what look at him he was in the military I'm gonna appoint him you know like without any kind of you know of the Defense Department without any kind of vetting

without kind of thinking like let's let's get candidates and let's look at who they are it's kind of you know it's just it's ridiculous how things are decisions are being made. I totally agree with you and Donald Trump has this weird you know what the word is for this he has this weird man crush on other men and their appearance I mean he just met with Prince Andrew when he went to the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral, and his comment was, he's a good-looking man. He's good-looking. Some people are much better looking in person. It's always he's a good-looking man. You know, even when he had his arguments, we'll get to Judge Mershon in a minute, he would say, Judge Mershon, you know, he's this, he's hateful, he's vile. He's

a good looking guy though. It's such a weird tick that he has about, but look who he hires. Everybody looks like they were either on the Fox News couch or they're going back to the Fox News couch. All the women look identical. You just twist their heads off and change their heads. It's like the dolls my sister used to play with. You just like switch the heads around and that's the same. They all go to the same plastic, you know, they all get the same stuff done. So I want to find out who that is so I don't go. Yeah. I don't want to look like that, you know, ever. Yeah. And, you know, everybody comes off of either Fox News or the Heritage Foundation, you know, Surge in general shoots and kills her own father accidentally when she's 13. Fox News. You know, I'm funny that way. I like my top doc not to have

killed their father with a handgun. So, allegedly, well, no, it's not allegedly. It just fell from the, it just fell. I'll just leave it at that. So let's move on. I'll let you lead, of course, on Manhattan DA. We've got some new developments there. We'll start with that one about the, the paper got filed as we expected. The last paper's in for Judge Brachon to decide. Tell everybody what the last paper is, how is it arranged, and what do you think? This is why we get paid the medium-sized bucks. Why do you think, what do you think? This is why we get paid the medium-sized bucks. Why do you think? What do you think is gonna happen?

So just to kind of remind everyone where we are, there's two pending motions that Trump has put into place in addition to waiting for sentencing. One is your standard, it's called a 330-30 motion, which is like a post-judgment motion where you basically ask the judge to reverse the verdict, and that's on presidential immunity. Well, they also wanted to, they want this case dismissed, right? That's different than the trial was unfair because they used evidence that shouldn't have come in,

he's immune and therefore you should reverse the verdict. That's what that motion is, fully briefed, waiting to be ruled on. They wanted to file a second motion. And the second motion is you gotta dismiss the case. Don't rule on that, don't sentence, you have to dismiss the case. Don't don't rule on that. Don't sentence you have to dismiss the case. And they it's they used the structure of dismissal in the interest of justice motion. And that's a thing, right? There's

a there's a case that's called it's we call it Clayton. After the after the after the case that made this decision is a Clayton motion. Some cases, very rare, get dismissed in the interest of justice. And I've had cases. Can you give me an example? I want to just jump in. Can you give us an example of when that justice motion works? Like what are the facts that would like be, oh yeah, your conviction is getting overturned. So there was a case that we actually they brought a they brought a dismissal in the, you know, they actually brought a Clayton motion. And I think I think if I remember correctly, I certainly advocated to support the motion as a prosecutor. It was a case that was a felony case. It wasn't it was in the person had a long, you know, had a record and but it wasn't the most

serious case in the world. Again, I'm just going off off off my my memory. It was it was serious, but it wasn't like a murder case, you know, but it was like a serious felony, kind of like this case. And the defendant was transgender and the he was. And I believe she was being held at Rikers and they were holding her in the male section because they did not have a place for trans women. And what this woman was being subjected to there was so cruel and there was so much evidence of it that they brought a clay in motion. And frankly, I advocated to consent to it because it was absolutely horrific and should

not have happened. Other examples would be things like you've got somebody who's incarcerated or who's been arrested. Again, these are usually felonies, but it could be a misdemeanor. It could be a serious case and the person is dying and has stage four pancreatic cancer and they're in their fifth year of it

and they only have months to live and can you let them live out their last months at home and not incarcerated. It's really sympathetic in the interest of justice type of scenarios where these things are granted. That's usually the type of situation. This does not meet that criteria because the Clayton case sets out about a dozen factors that you look at, and it's the nature and character of the defendant, their criminal history, the seriousness of the case, the proof, how does the victim feel about it, what kind of harm was caused in the case. You look at sort of a bunch of different factors, and they're actually listed out and

you're supposed to address them factor by factor and Trump did. And you know, in this particular, so the, but the Manhattan DA's office hit back really hard and basically, you know, their response, if I could characterize it would be, are you kidding me? This is very serious and you can't say, oh, well, I've never been convicted of a crime before and I'm a public servant. Okay, that would apply to every public corruption case ever. Right.

And it was just the things that they kind of laid out as why this case should be dismissed was ridiculous. Doesn't meet this criteria. I don't even think it comes close. But you know, dismissal of a jury verdict is such an extreme remedy. Again, it just didn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. You know, I can fairly safely say that this will be

will not be granted as a dismissal in the interest of justice. The other the other big issue in here was, look, he has immunity while he's president. You cannot criminally prosecute him while he's president. It would be a distraction. And so what their answer to that is, OK, then press pause. We'll wait. You don't have to do anything now. We'll wait.

Starting January 20, there's a lot we can do right now, because it doesn't apply. Your temporary immunity status doesn't apply to you as a candidate. So let's wait and we'll do it starting January 20th and then we'll deal with all these issues and sentencing. And I think they did a really good job at doing that. And, you know, one interesting kind of area that they talked about was, was if the judge does find that they have to dismiss it because of this whole immunity status thing, they gave an alternative scenario that compared it to the way in the majority

of states handle when somebody dies pending appeal. It's not like you're exonerated. It's not like you're innocent. It's abatement by death, but it's kind of like, you're not presumed innocent anymore. You were found guilty. And it's sort of a neither here nor there because your appellate rights haven't been perfected yet. So they sort of said,

if you have to do that extreme remedy, there's sort of this other remedy that's not so strong and then we can pick it up later when he's no longer president. So this motion, now everything is fully briefed, the two motions, and the judge is going to have to decide them before he even considers sentencing. And it'll be interesting if the judge decides them or if they go and they seek a stay and don't let the judge decide, especially the 33030 motion, the immunity motion and the sentencing. And so that could take time

and be litigated. So it's unclear to me that anything is going to be decided before he becomes president. I certainly don't think there's any chance that he will be sentenced before then. president. I certainly don't think there's any chance that he will be sentenced before then. I think they will do everything in their power to seek stays in all of this. And you can't really, especially the immunity one, you can't sentence him until that is, he can, the judge can decide this case, this, this motion, sorry, the interest of justice motion, and then he could proceed to sentencing. But he cannot proceed to sentencing without deciding the immunity matter. That has to be decided. And let's say he reverses, which would be terrible, obviously, because he says that there was not harmless error, that the new law that the Supreme Court considered that created this presidential immunity

allowed, or made it so that there's reversible error. I don't think that will happen, but that's what they're considering. That's not a great scenario. If that were to happen, then the case would be sent back, the case would be put over for retrial, and then that would be put over until after he's president. I don't see that happening. What I think is going to happen is the judge will rule on presidential immunity and say, look, yeah, there might be some evidence that came in that shouldn't have come in, but it's harmless error. And if he does that, what Trump will do is Trump will then go and appeal that because that is the thing about presidential immunity is that

is something that you can do midstream. You can appeal that interlocutorily is what it's called and he can seek a stay. And if he does that, he can't be sentenced. So let's see. I mean, he might be denied and if it's denied, then he could be sentenced. But I am not entirely sure. In fact, if I had to bet, I would say there's not going to be a sentence before he's president. And even if he were, as you've pointed out many times, if you were sentenced to prison, for example, that would be put off until after he's president.

Yeah, I think that's exactly how this is gonna go. He's gonna deny the motion for immunity. He's either gonna sentence after all the appellate process is over, which means in 2025, he's going to put a pin in it and make the sentence assuming he gives him some jail time start in four years from now, which will hopefully fly by. And I think that's what he's going to do. And I like the way your office and 88 pages, because they had to do all that factor analysis

under the Clayton factors, how they gave the judge a number of different ways to handle it, a number of different ways to reach to the same point. There's a number of different ways to count to 10, right? And so they were like, well, you could treat it like abatement by death, which is why some of the headlines were like Manhattan DA calls for the death of Donald Trump and uses a doctrine under it, like not quite. But it's similar, which is you got a four year, you got a temporary status that just happened, or a, well that's not temporary,

a status that just happened. And how do you deal with it? And they're like, well, just jot it down and terminate the proceedings, but don't do anything with the judgment. Don't do anything with vacating the conviction. There's no way this judge or any appellate court is gonna overturn the hard fought decision by a jury

on evidence because the guy that they convicted about things that happened before he was president, he got elected president again. That's not a doctrine. Well, that's the opposite. Even our founding fathers said, well, one day if you stop being president, you may be convicted. And that's the body of law that we're talking about. So I think that's

what's going to happen. Let's turn to the finally New York attorney general. I've been waiting for this one. Right before Thanksgiving on the 26th of November, John Sauer, who's going to be the solicitor general, the 10th Justice of the United States, the one who argues on behalf of the United States at all the Supreme Court oral arguments. But for right now, he's still a criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump. He wrote a letter, had no legal basis to have Letitia James, who's the attorney general of New York, just toss into the trash like it was just a piece of paper. The $500 million judgment running with interest that she obtained after a six-week trial in front of Judge Angoran, dozens and dozens of witnesses, thousands of pieces of

paper. Judge Angoran once called it a mountain of evidence in front of him, thousands of pieces of paper. Judge Angora once called it a mountain of evidence in front of him because one of the basis that Donald Trump got reelected and therefore didn't commit fraud and conviction or the judgment against him for that amount of money should disappear because he was lucky enough to win the presidency again. I really don't understand it.

And I don't think John Sauer did either because he just spent most of his time and spilled most of his ink, over sighting to, because I was looking for the cases, like where are the cases that say that if you commit a crime and you're, I'm sorry, if you commit a fraud, it's like a crime, if you commit a fraud and there's a judgment against you for dollar amount, but you happen to be then later having nothing to do with the fraud, become president of the United States. That fraud and that judgment go into the waste paper basket. Where does it say that? I mean, everybody would run for president. Every criminal would run for president if that were the case. And so there is no. And then

the only thing John Sauer cited to was, this is my favorite part, when they literally put Donald Trump up on Mount Rushmore with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, I guess he had Thanksgiving and Turkey on the brain because it was a couple of days before Thanksgiving. In Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day proclamation, he talked about we should all get along and we should unite and we should be at peace and harmony in the country. And George Washington in his farewell address, I'm not making this up, this is in the letter, in his farewell address. You know, basically, you know, I'll paraphrase, you know, we should plunge our swords into plowshares and we should stop all the fighting when unite as a country. And John F. Kennedy,

I'm like, oh, here we go, at the Kennedy Center in Boston at a speech, talked about the set, and therefore you should throw away the judgment. I'm like, why are you effing kidding me? But he couldn't help himself because, you know, he's a crazy narcissist the way Donald Trump is. So he had to put in there.

And by the way, I know my way around the law. I don't know if you've heard, I'm gonna be the Solicitor General of the United States. Like, look at this guy. He had to actually say that out loud. Yeah, we read the papers, John. We know what you've been nominated for. You didn't have to throw it in Letitia James' face.

It's not gonna work anyway. Keep an eye on Letitia James, not because she's gonna be going to jail or Cash Patel's gonna prosecute her, investigate her, whatever she's gonna, not because she's going to be going to jail, or Cash Patel is going to prosecute or investigate or whatever he's going to do, because she's going to be leading the charge against Donald Trump. And Donald Trump knows it. Because she knows how Donald Trump thinks she occupies space. She's in the real estate business. And the

real estate business is Donald Trump's brain and cranium. And she's going to go after him, along with dozens of other attorneys general in blue states about every abuse of power, every executive law that's unconstitutional, every attempt to take away our rights, take away our water, our air, our voting rights, take away our sanctuary cities. She's going to be there at the forefront just the way she was, pardon me, in 2016. And Donald Trump knows that. So they want to go after her. They want to continue to make her the pinata for the MAGA party, or the MAGA. So they can say, oh, we're going to lock her fat ass up and make all sorts of racial slurs against her. But I got bad news for them. She's

brighter than they are. And she's tougher than they are, and she's on the right side of history and justice. And she's not ripping up the $500 million judgment and nobody's going to make her. Now that judgment's going to get cut in half. Maybe not in half, but close to it. Not because she did anything wrong, just because we have courts in New York that like to cut judgments in half. Call the Appellate Division First Department. I've been in front of them. And you don't start counting your money if you're a plaintiff's lawyer where you get a judgment from one of your clients

until you get through the Appellate Division because they're gonna give it a haircut. Let's just put it that way. So it's gonna come down. It's gonna be millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. Just I'm not sure about the four or $500 million. What do you think about attorney general and her staff or deputy attorney general producing

that letter and sending it out and not doing it on his schedule like the day of Thanksgiving? They waited until like yesterday to get back to him. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a great question. I don't know what to make of all of what's of everything that's going on. You know, it'll be interesting. It'll be I'm very interested in hearing what you have to say about all this, because, Pope, you know, you're the you're the you're my civil expert go to person, you know, and the fact that you have the judgment to say, OK, yeah, it's going to take a haircut.

The judgment is going to be cut. You know, that's what happens is I think a really valuable perspective, because, you know, when that happens, Donald Trump is going to say, we won. Look at that. Even the appellate courts think that it was outrageous and insane, but you give the perspective that, no, that's very common. That happens all the time. I really think that that's something that's really helpful in this world of misinformation and spinning things in ways that aren't reality, you know, to bring that perspective to things like this.

Yeah, I appreciate that. She's doing the right thing, the attorney general. I think Donald Trump is going to take this letter. This is the box he's in. We talked about earlier in the podcast. He's going to continue to litigate on issues that he likes. Like I want to cut down the Eugene Carroll judgment for a hundred million dollars. It's still up on appeal. He's going to continue to litigate on issues that he likes. Like, I want to cut down the Eugene Carroll judgment for $100 million. It's still up on appeal. I want to continue to fight that. I want to continue to fight the $500 million. Oh, you want to have civil cases against me? Oh, no, I can't be bothered. I'm too busy as president. Have you seen the name on my, have you seen the door? Have you seen the name on the door? You know, I'm president for the next four years. That's, hooray. You know, I'm going to show my age here. Do you remember? Do you

remember a book and then a movie? The book was flowers for Algernon and the movie was Charlie. Okay, it was during our formative years. And we're the same age. Yeah, so flowers for algebra, which became a movie called Charlie was about a mentally impaired person who was given an experimental treatment that they tested first on mice that made him a genius. But he literally went from pushing a broom and being mentally disabled to being like Albert Einstein after they tested this experiment on him, experimental drug on him. But the problem is it wears off

over time and he fell in love and had a whole life for this year that he was a genius, but then it wore off. And by the end he was back, it was really sad. He's back pushing the broom and doesn't remember the girlfriend and all of that. And that's sort of what I think of when I think of Donald Trump and his four years of being president. He's a super villain right now with all these amazing powers. But one day in the, in the distant, not too distant future, he's going to be pushing a broom and he's going to be back to being mentally, mentally challenged and he's going to go to jail and he's going to be pushing a broom and he's going to be back to being mentally challenged and he's

going to go to jail and he's going to pay the price for all of these things. We just have to kind of hang in there and keep a close eye on what he does and continue to report on it. We don't report on it like, oh, it's a car accident and let's talk about the fatalities today. I hope people don't think that. We talk about it, about the bridge is out ahead, and we're hurtling towards it, but here's how to avoid it, or here's what to do after you've gone over into the abyss. And that's why we formed Legal AF. That's why I did it with Ben Myself. That's why I asked Karen Freeman-Iknip to join me, oh so many years ago, to do this. For this moment, right? I have friends of mine that were saying, oh I bet you're really excited now

because Donald Trump won, right? You get a lot more cases to talk about. Like no, because I'm a patriot first and I'm an American first and I wanted Kamala Harris to win. But we're here for it now that that didn't happen and to make sure that the right things happen into the future. I still believe in this country. I still believe we're the same country that in a way that voted for Barack Obama twice and Joe Biden once and, and it did become red and MAGA. Everybody didn't wake. It's not like the body snatchers. Everybody woke up and you looked at your neighbors. They're all wearing red MAGA hats and they're all zombies. We may feel that way, but that's not what happened. And that's not what the micro data of the election reveals. We have a brand issue as

Democrats and as moderates and free thinking people. We can fix it. And we're going to do it with your help here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. We appreciate all the support you've given us for the last four and a half years and into the future. You've made us your home for news and trustworthy news and analysis and commentary. We really appreciate that. I've got a podcast partner and close and cherished friend, Karen Freeman-Ignifilo that I'm sure is in a load of pain and potentially on painkillers with her surgery. She's three days out of surgery and she's here with us, which is a testament. I'm on Tylenol. I'm on Tylenol.

All right. Yeah. I didn't mean to suggest you're on it. No, no, but no, but that's actually was one of the issues that was a big concern was, do you take, look, as a former, I'll just be honest, as a former prosecutor, former, I'll just be honest, as a former prosecutor, I saw the devastation and destruction that opioids have done from people who become unfortunately addicted because they have things like back pain or, you know, knee pain or whatever it is, and it destroys lives. And it is created the the, you know, the crisis that we have been in and are in.

And so that is the option that they give you. I'm terrified of that drug. And that was one of the major, that's been one of the major issues for me. I was very resistant to it. So yes, I'm in a lot of pain. Yeah. Yeah.

It's okay. What did you say at the beginning? It's like a man called where he complains about... I'm telling you, that's how I've been acting. When I had the surgery that you had and I had a minor version of the surgery you had, I won't name the drug, but it became one of my best friends for at least a week. I couldn't wait for the nurse to come in and hit me with it and all of that. But now I get you and I'm glad you're here.

Why don't you wrap up the show? We've got a couple of more of these before we hit the new year. I'll turn it over to you. Yeah, look, I mean, just wanna say first of all, the most important thing in the whole world is family, right? And both your actual family and your chosen family and my actual family, my wonderful mother has been here

taking care of me and waiting on me hand and foot and I'm so grateful to her and it's kind of fun to order her around you know hey mom can you get me a Snapple you know kind of thing but I'm also just grateful to my chosen family which is you know the Midas Touch Network and the community that's been built here and and the support that everyone gives and I look forward to doing this I hated missing it last week but I missed it because I actually had surgery on last Wednesday. So we're actually six days out.

So, or maybe this is day seven, I'm not sure. I've kind of lost track of time, but it's just such a wonderful thing. And I'm just so grateful to everybody. And that's what I'm reflecting on. As we close out this year, we look at all the ups and downs and things that we have faced.

We're facing them together. And I look forward to making the best of it and moving forward into 2025 for sure. Legal AF, we are frammily. Do the music. And we'll see you on Saturday with Ben Mycelis and me on Legal AF. This trial on Thursday, with Karen Hancockered by Karen Friedman, Nick Nifilo, Kathleen Rice

and Tanya Perry and all the other shows that are hopefully you've welcomed into your hearts and your minds on the Midas Touch Network. Until that next time, I'm Michael Popok with Karen Friedman, Nickifilow, signing off.