Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump makes BAD PICK for sham Texas Lawsuit

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Trump hired Florida and NY MAGA lawyers who don’t know Texas law to file a PHONY Texas lawsuit against CBS News, and now CBS can seek millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees from Trump for violating Texas First Amendment protection law. Michael Popok does a deep dive and explains Texas’ anti-SLAAP law that even their hand-picked MAGA judge will have to apply. Head to https://manukora.com/legalaf to receive $25 off your starter kit today! Join the LegalAF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/legalAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af 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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from New York and Florida to file a Texas lawsuit, in order to forum shop to make sure that your case for some sort of consumer fraud against CBS News because you don't like the Kamala Harris 60 minutes interview that she gave. When you use lawyers who don't practice regularly in a state, they may miss that there's a statute in that state that will award attorney's fees and costs as a sanction to CBS. It's called the Anti-Slap Statute and I think Donald Trump is going to get slapped with attorney's fees and costs.

I break it all down for you. I'm Michael Popock. This is Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. So let's talk about how Donald Trump's going to get slapped because Texas has an Anti-Slap Statute. What is Anti-slap statutes? Well, every state has it, including Texas surprisingly. And it's a statute that says that if somebody files

a lawsuit against you strategically, just to get you to shut up, just to get you to spend money and curtail your First Amendment or abridge your First Amendment rights, you, the person that filed the suit, are going to end up paying their attorney's fees. It's strategic lawsuits against public participation. That's sort of the acronym for SLAPP, and these are anti-SLAPP statutes. So Donald Trump's going to get slapped with an anti-SLAPP statute, and he's going to end up paying CBS's substantial attorney's fees and cost in a

very short track procedure in front of Judge Kazmarek. Now look, I get why he hired these lawyers. One of them is Dr. Daniel Z. Epstein, a PhD who never was a litigator, who was in the Trump White House, who was in the Trump transition team, who was some sort of private equity corporate guy before he became a law professor. So he's in Florida and Ed Potsick is some First Amendment, Second Amendment MAGA lawyer in New York and they just said we'll take the case Trump, we'll file it in Texas, we have an idea. We want to get to Judge Kazmeric. He's the only judge that really sits in

Amarillo, Texas. We want to file there. Why? Because Judge Kazmeric is he's the only judge that really sits in Amarillo, Texas. We want to file there. Why? Because Judge Kazmeric is a MAGA who was appointed by Trump, who used to be the deputy general counsel of a Christian anti-abortion group before he became the judge. That's the same judge that tried to do a nationwide block of the use of methampristone by women for medicated abortions. All from whenever MAGA has a meritless, phony case that they've conjured up to try to get to the Supreme Court. This is the dance they do. It's a three-step dance. First you file in Amarillo, Texas,

and you try to get Judge Kazmeric, who's probably going to rule your way and you know that before you've even filed. Then if you, depending upon the appeal on the other side that's on the losing end, they got to take it to where? The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, sitting in Louisiana, really right-wing. So right-wing that the majority of the appellate court was appointed by Donald Trump. There so out there, fringe and outliers, that more cases come out of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals up to the United States Supreme Court than any other circuit. Right now, 7 cases are up on the docket because of the 5th Circuit.

Not because they're doing a great job, because the Supreme Court has to even rein them in. When MAGA is reigning in MAGA, you know something's wrong. So CBS gets sued. Why? What's the premise of the case? It's ridiculous. I read the suit. The first argument is because they ran a promo promoting, teasing the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris on Face the Nation. Sunday morning for the Sunday night interview, when they ran the clip, she was responding to a question by Bill Whitaker about Israel and Hamas and all in that complicated issue.

And she gave a two-part nuanced answer. But when they teased it in order to get you to tune in to watch the whole interview, they gave half the answer, you interview, she gave the more complete answer. Aha! Editorial violation of our political interference of voting. What are you even talking about? Media has First Amendment rights to use editorial discretion when they put product and content out there. Nobody is obligated to run unedited just hours and hours of an interview.

Well, maybe C-SPAN, but other than C-SPAN, if you're looking for some entertainment value, you're gonna have to do some editing. I mean, we don't edit on the Midas Touch Network ever. These are all first take, as we can tell. First take, hot takes, but you know, in other corporate media, they like, they got a lot of editors and film

people and correction people and Q&A people and all that. And so they got to put them to work. And so they edit. Of course they edit. Who would watch? The show's called 60 Minutes. It's not called 1,088 Minutes. You can't show everything all the time. And Donald Trump's big complain is he made a miscalculation by not going on 60 Minutes, the first presidential candidate in over 50 years since the founding of 60 Minutes that did not join 60 Minutes with their competitor, their opponent, leading into the last month of the election.

That's his problem. Oh, they tried to help Kamala Harris election interference. And I don't even understand how he gets the billions of dollars of damages. Now look, Donald Trump knows he's gonna lose this case. This is not a lawsuit. This is as Judge Middlebrooks once called

a prior Donald Trump lawsuit, before he fined Alina Jaba and him over a million dollars. This is a political screed masquerading as a lawsuit. But they figured well we'll pick the right judge and the right circuit and we'll end up maybe at the Supreme Court. I don't think so because Judge Kazmarek sitting in the jurisdiction that he's sitting has to apply Texas law and immediately CBS is going to do one of two things or both. They're going to move to dismiss because there's no jurisdiction of the Texas courts over CBS News for this particular matter. There's gonna have to be a whole argument

about general jurisdiction and specific jurisdiction, but the way the Supreme Court has recently ruled, I think it's gonna be hard for the judge to keep CBS in Texas for this particular kind of case. There's also a standing problem. What's, in order to have any entry into the courthouse, every plaintiff has to have basic fundamental standing. It means you have an injury that is unique to everybody else. What is Donald Trump's unique injury because there was some editing

about a promo in the morning about an interview in the evening that ran in full except it was edited. I don't get the standing issue. So if there's no standing, right? And this is a suit that has been filed strategically to infringe and abridge the First Amendment freedom of the press rights of CBS, how is this not a violation, gentlemen, lawyers, Dr. Epstein, how is this not a violation of the anti-slap statute in Texas? So I think they file a motion to dismiss.

It has to be heard within 60 days. There has to be a ruling within 30 days. There's a fast track appeal to the court based on that. And there's attorney's fees to be awarded to CBS for this case. So don't worry about the $10 billion number. Just worry about the millions of dollars of attorney's fees and costs, because CBS has very high priced lawyers, I'm sure,

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Manuka. Additional usage through the day is completely fine, especially helping to cut out other sweeteners. It's a honey with superpowers! Now it's easier than ever to try Manakura honey. Head to manakura.com slash Legal AF to get 25 bucks off the starter kit, which comes with an MGO 850 plus Manuka honey jar, five honey travel sticks, a wooden spoon, and a guidebook. Doesn't he have anything better to do? Apparently not. By reading the complaint, I know that he doesn't. Because when I was reading it, thinking, well, let me get to the heart of it.

The first three paragraphs must have some really interesting legal novel theories that have been developed, right? What is he saying? All right. First paragraph is that CBS has committed news distortion and interference with voters in the election because they used their editorial, their editorial discretion to put together a show so that it fit within a 60-minute package. Okay, I don't see that at all. And they say that violates Texas law.

See, they did find their way to the Texas statute book. They just missed the chapter on anti-SLAP provisions. But they found they did find the one on false and misleading and deceptive acts, which is a consumer protection statute. But they're arguing later in the complaint that, which is a consumer protection statute. But they're arguing later in the complaint that Donald Trump is a consumer. All right. So then I go, well, what else you got? So second and third paragraphs, is it any better?

No. In the second paragraph, they then say that, um, they try to defend Joe Biden, poor Joe Biden, he was, he was the subject of an unprecedented, undemocratic political coup. This is paragraph two. Really? Donald Trump, who led an undemocratic political coup that we all watched on television, on Jan 6th, is saying that because the Democrats and Joe Biden and his family made the decision not to run for reelection and that we had to have somebody run, so the vice president stepped in, it's happened before. That that was an undemocratic and unprecedented coup.

And who is he to defend Joe Biden for that? This is what, he put his arm around Joe Biden? So that's his first paragraph. All right, I think, all right, well, the first paragraph's a little bit rough in terms of a start. What about the second paragraph? Oh, the concept of a word salad. That seems to be the injury or the liability here. I'm like, what word salad? Oh, that Kamala Harris can't string a sentence together. It's word salad and 60 Minutes is editing around it, and they're helping her. Do you see how this is a strategic lawsuit against public participation

and a First Amendment violation of 60 Minutes? I do. They just wanted to stick it to Kamala Harris about this meme about her being not able to string a sentence together. You know who can't string a sentence together? Donald Trump. Anybody watch the Madison Square Garden rally? That hate-filled rally? Anybody see him up at any of his rallies?

As people walk out the back door, they start out strong for about a minute and a half. And then they start weaving. And he starts leaving planet Earth at some point. Oxygen-deprived recitation of all of his hit list of things that he wants to do if he's ever returned to the White House. So we got the word salad paragraph and paragraph two. And then they get to the heart of it. Oh, they used a promo in which they didn't do the complete answer and said tune in at 60 minutes because they did the promo and then they did the full answer.

Somehow people were manipulated. Who? Donald Trump the consumer? I mean, and it doesn't get any better from there. So at the end, let me just tell you from a lawyer standpoint, from a federal court practitioner, you do not have to list the amount of damages. You have to say, you have to use a magic language. In order to get what's called diversity jurisdiction to bring your case to federal court when it's between two people of different states, right? Complete diversity. And the amount in controversy, the amount of damage that is alleged is in excess of just $75,000. That gives you a ticket to a federal courthouse for jurisdiction subject to all the other things I said at the top of the hot tick. You don't have to list your

damages. You can probably count on half of a hand how many times I've actually listed the amount of the damages in a filed lawsuit. Because I don't have to. And I don't have to be out. But they wanted to, because they wanted the headline to be what corporate media ran. Donald Trump files billion dollar lawsuit. I read that as Donald Trump is completely out of gas intellectually. His lawyers are up a tree. And now just to grab a news cycle, he filed this lawsuit, like he filed the failed

lawsuit against the New York Times, the failed lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize board. He's always suing or threatening to sue somebody, some media outlet, without regard to these anti-slap statutes. I think now he gets slapped back. And if Kazimerek doesn't do it, the Fifth Circuit should do it. And if the Fifth Circuit doesn't do it, the Supreme Court should do it.

In the meantime, this is all he's got to do with like five days left to the election. All of these are gonna, all these issues, just like his sentencing and things in his DC election interference case, are all gonna happen on the other side of Tuesday. It's on the other side of Tuesday. But we got a report on it because it happened. I just think the headline should be Donald Trump subjects himself to slap provisions

and major million dollar attorney's fees awards. It just doesn't fit neatly into a headline. That's why I got to do a hot take here on Legal AF and on the MindStunch Network. I'm Michael Popak. We have a podcast Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time. We call it Legal AF and now you know why. Tune in on our YouTube wherever you pick up audio podcasts from. And then great news, just in time for the election and the holiday season, we formed a new channel, pro-democracy channel here on YouTube called Legal AF. You can find it at Legal AF MTN for Midas Touch Network.

I'm the chief curator there. We're doing some amazing content, exclusive stuff over there. Free subscribe, help us build that channel so it's durable and lasting on the other side of Tuesday. So, until my next hot take before Tuesday, I'm Michael Popock and I'm reporting. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at LegalAFMTN. That's at LegalAFMTN.