Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump MAKES FINAL MOVE before LEGAL DEVASTATION

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back for the weekend edition of the top-rated Legal AF podcast. On tap? 1. Trump is creating new evidence against him and committing more potential crimes on the campaign trail; 2. A startling series of new filings and orders in the DC Election Interference criminal case against Trump signals trouble for Trump, as the DOJ moves to protect secret cooperating witnesses and evidence; 3. A NY appeals court considers just how much money Trump will be forced to fork over to the State in the $456 million dollar civil fraud case; 4. The DOJ is doing a terrible job at “lawfare” because it keeps indicting Democrats and those trying to harm Trump; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Subscribe to the new Legal AF channel: https://youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com Thanks to our sponsors: One Skin: Get started today at https://OneSkin.co and receive 15% Off using code: LEGALAF 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://GETSUPERBEETS.COM, promo code LEGALAF BetterHelp: This is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://BetterHelp.com/LEGALAF today to get 10% off your first month and get on your way to being your best self! Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. 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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Looking for a collaborator for your career? A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Another very busy week in the courts and the various Trump-related cases. We'll give an update on what's going on in the Washington, D.C. federal criminal case

where the federal judge Tanya Chukin greenlit a massive 180-page filing by special counsel Jack Smith over Donald Trump's objections. We know that there's going to be bombshell after bombshell in this filing that was made. The question becomes what's going to be redacted? What is the public going to see? And what is the order of operations to even determine what gets filed or doesn't get filed? We will break that down.

There was also a major oral argument before the appellate division in New York in the massive civil fraud judgment that was entered against Donald Trump a few months ago for his inflating of valuations at his various properties. I also want to talk about how this week showed yet again, the Department of Justice is quite actually doing the exact opposite of what Donald Trump is accusing them of doing. Donald Trump keeps saying, oh, the Department of Justice is weaponized against me. If you look at all the various cases right now, I mean, the Department of Justice prosecuting Hunter Biden prosecuting and convicting Senator

Menendez in New Jersey,, the Department of Justice prosecuting Hunter Biden, prosecuting and convicting Senator Menendez in New Jersey, and this week, Eric Adams, the mayor in New York, got indicted in a massive case. Want to break that down, all of that and more here on Legal AF. Let's bring in Michael Popak. Michael Popak, how you doing, sir? I'm doing fantastic. I'm so glad you're home and with your baby.

I think you have a hospital wristlet on there. That just shows you the commitment that we have not only to Midas's family, but to our own personal families. I'm so happy to have you back. It's backbreaking to help contribute to the network when you're not around. I tried a Ben yesterday and it's a lot, but I'm glad I'm here. We got so many amazing things to talk about

at that intersection of law and politics. And so let's jump in with it. Why everybody's here. Michael Popak, trying a Ben is just doing what? A lot of videos. What's the trying the Ben? Michael Popak trying a band is just doing what a lot of videos. What's the trying the band? That came out wrong. That was like, for those that follow along and support both of us, and I know there's so many that do, I sat down and did 14 videos between the Midas Touch Network and our new legal AF MTN YouTube channel. And we broke a hundred thousand subscribers in 10 days.

We're only 10 days old. Pretty impressive stuff right there. Thank you, Michael Popak. Thank you to my brother, Brett, who did an incredible job holding down the Midas Touch channel and to all of our editors, producers. Thank you as well. Let's just show you what Donald Trump's been doing just this past week, because this is the intersection of law and politics.

So I don't just want to talk about the past crimes. I want to look to the future to show you Donald Trump's ongoing conduct. And we could just kind of call it out and be descriptive of what's happening in the future as well, not just retrospective. So take a look right here. Here are certain speeches that Donald Trump gave this week and we could just show you why he's involved in so many criminal cases.

So here Donald Trump giving a speech in Walker, Michigan, and then he gave a speech at Trump Tower as well earlier in the week. These are supposed to be campaign speeches, right? Where you tell the American people what you're going to do for them. Social security. What are you going to do with healthcare?

What are you going to do with the economy, infrastructure, jobs, things like that. And you should lay it out in a great deal of detail. When I show people the vice president Kamala Harris speeches, we show you what her plans are, tax cuts for small businesses tax cuts for families Stuff like that. She went to the border she rolled out a very comprehensive border plan that Donald Trump wants to kill and tried to kill and did kill before because He thinks that chaos is a winning issue for him under the authoritarian playbook But here's what Donald Trump's talking about. Here's Trump on Pelosi in Walker, Michigan

Let's play this one first. By the way, did you see yesterday two days ago? So I'm not much into this stuff but visa Crashed because the government went after the government filed a big suit against visa Nancy and her husband sold their stock the day before it was announced He's a Nancy and her husband sold their stock the day before it was announced. Nancy Pelosi. So why don't we get some a G somewhere like in a Republican territory? And why don't we get them to, uh, do a little investigation.

And then over here, he says that Nancy Pelosi should be prosecuted for January 6th. Play this clip. And Nancy Pelosi has a little problem because her husband sold their visa stock. They had a lot of visa stock one day before visa was announced. That visa is being sued by the department of justice. Think of that. Nancy Pelosi sold vast amounts of visa stock one day before the big lawsuit that we all read about a few days ago was brought against visa. You think it was luck? I don't think.

She should be prosecuted. Nancy Pelosi should be prosecuted for that. And she was she'll also be prosecuted for J six because she turned down 10,000 or any number she wanted soldiers or National Guard. And I hope you all read john Solomon and what john Solomon wrote two days ago. No one just think about that there. You have the leader of a major political party, one, spreading lies,

but two, saying that he wants to have attorney generals or anyone that he can exercise control and authority over, weaponized against his political enemies. There's a point there, though, where he talks about that she should be prosecuted for January 6 which to me is a self-own and frankly what we would like to call an admission against Self-interest that that certainly would come in in a criminal case. And by the way, it's a statement of a party opponent He's a criminal defendant so statements like that will come in in the criminal prosecutions of

Donald Trump by special counsel, Jack Smith, that we'll talk about in a moment as well. But finally, as part of this trifecta that I want to show you, Michael Popock, I want to show you what Donald Trump was also doing this week where he was selling $100,000 watches. He put together an infomercial. Like you remember, I remember growing up, it wasn't all that long ago, where they would have like whatever it was,

like the five minute abs or like ShamWow or Shamwoo or whatever it would be. You know, and Mike Lindell, you know, made his money. That's why Donald Trump likes the guy so much too. You know, selling the pillows for 9.99. I'm gonna get you this,'m going to get you this. I'm going to get you this. Trump's taken that to a whole new level.

The leader of the Republican party, Donald Trump, we've covered this before. Right after Butler, Pennsylvania, what did he do? He sold assassination edition sneakers with his image on it that says, fight, fight, fight. These are assassination edition sneakers. He sells the coins, he sells the NFTs. Now he's selling a $100,000 watch. And I also want to reflect from a legal perspective

why this is significant as well. But here's the infomercial. You gotta go to trumpwatches.com, $100,000. You're not gonna wanna miss this. Here, play this clip. Special, I think you're gonna love it my new Trump watches We're doing quite a number with watches and the quality to me is very important the Trump victory Turbion this isn't just any watch. It's one of the best watches made

It's a turbian watch with almost 200 grams of gold and more than 100 real diamonds. That's a lot of diamonds. I love gold. I love diamonds. We all do. Only 147 of these extraordinary watches will ever exist in the world, and owning one puts you in a very exclusive club. I have watch number one, and I'm going to keep it. It's mine, and that's the way I want to have it. Each watch is numbered and extremely rare, a true collector's item,

and it includes a personal letter signed by me. Get your Trump watch right now. Go to gettrumpwatches.com. It's Trump time. It says you'll be a part of a very exclusive club. That's notable. Then when you go to the frequently asked question section of the website, the question is,

will I be getting the exact watch that I see on the website? Answer, the images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be the exact representation of the product. In other words, what you're being shown is not the watch that you may receive. They may just send you anything. Another question is about the shipping dates. When will they arrive?

Shipping and delivery dates are estimates only and cannot be guaranteed. We're not liable for any delays in shipments. They may come in October, November or December, but they're estimates and they can send to you whenever. Can I buy my items with credit card or crypto? Yes. Buy the fight, fight, fight watches with credit card or Bitcoin.

So you can buy it in ways that are hard to trace. And as I said, Michael Popok, dig deeper into these $100,000 Trump watches and think about it. You can buy with Bitcoin hard to trace. Foreigners and foreign entities can also buy this.'s one of the things that it says the photos on the site are not actual Watches, they're just illustrations of what one might look like and there's no guarantee when or if a watch will ever even arrive So just say it raises lots of red flags. Sorry for that long buildup there with all of those videos, but I think it's so key right now that we start thinking

about 2025 and 2026 and the various schemes that are emerging and percolating now, as well as the evidence that Donald Trump's continuing to create against himself now. Polpok, break that all down for us, sir. Okay, that's called a hospital pass. That's where you throw it over the middle of the receiver Trump's continuing to create against himself now. Bopak, break that all down for us, sir. Yeah, okay. No, that's called a hospital pass. That's where you throw it over the middle of the receiver

and it gets clobbered. All right, I think I can do it though. Let's start with the watches and work backwards. I love the fact that in that video, maybe Brett who's working with us today can put it back up. There's a one point font at the bottom that has that disclaimer that you just talked about, that these are for representative purposes, illustrative purposes only, not representative of what

you may actually get. You know, you're already at late night TV when you see these kind of infomercials. He also has this weird affectation, you know, besides that sniffing, snorting thing that Donald Trump has developed in his old age, he now has this weird way of over emphasizing the wrong syllable or the wrong world. Diamonds. Who doesn't like diamonds? I mean, he's getting to be a characterization of, sorry about that. So we're ready for that, Popeye. I can print diamonds. And who doesn't love gold and diamonds? You know, they made them a mock. There it is. It's like a one point font at the bottom. And then even though they had in their disclaimer

that you put up earlier, we may need additional information from other customers, i.e. we have things like Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money laundering requirements, and the Patriot Act that tries to stop, you know, things like money laundering from happening, which is of course, it's ripe for that when you're asking for Bitcoin. You know, it's another way to skirt the federal election law and campaign contribution laws. While the Department of Justice, I'll call it what it is,

the Biden Department of Justice is working overtime trying to keep foreign influence and foreign donations out of our election system because they are illegal. You know, what keeps Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice up at night is, and Merrick Garland looks like he hasn't slept, is the October surprise being Russia, Iran, India, even some of our frenemies trying to influence the outcome of the election.

And here, you got a vulnerable, compromised candidate in Donald Trump, financially compromised because of his failures in the business community and the judgment of $500 million, whatever that's going to end up being, we'll talk about later. He's compromised because of his own narcissism and his own ego. Flattery will get a dictator anywhere with Donald Trump. He's compromised because even his own former deputy FBI director said it recently that he believes he's a turned asset for Russia. I mean, this is remarkable things that you and I need to talk about on a legal IF podcast about a presidential candidate and former president that the intelligence community believes is a Russian asset.

And here he's opened the door. You want to influence me? You want to put money in my pocket, in the pocket of my family's? Here's an opportunity. Buy $100,000 gold, turbulent watch or whatever the heck it is. Let's turn to Nancy Pelosi for a minute. There is no evidence. there's no evidence for anything he says out loud about Nancy Pelosi.

There's no evidence at all that the reason that Paul Pelosi sold a couple of thousand shares of stock in his portfolio had anything more to do than just trying to rebalance his portfolio as he comes to the end of the year. He didn't sell out his entire position. He sold a portion of it. I don't know what percentage of it, but if you have any type of portfolio

and you're coming towards the end of the year, you'll wanna start taking profit or you wanna start rebalancing and putting in different things. The Visa stock has done frankly, I'll put my Wall Street hat on for a minute, has done well over the last five years. It's up 50, 60% over the last year, up six or 8%.

And he hit it at a peak where it was up, not down. Now, Donald Trump doesn't understand up and down when it comes to stock prices, because his stock price arrow only goes down and goes down further after eight million, eight million out of the 20 million shares out there with co-founders got sold a couple of days ago. The stock is still hovering at $14, but it's heading down past 10 and even five, I think,

based on the fact it is nothing more than a penny stock. It has absolute, it's a Potemkin village. There's absolutely nothing behind it. No economics, no nothing. And this is why, this is why, I don't know why, I don't even know why some of the polls like the Times poll is even as close as they are. I don't know why Donald Trump is just completely in the trash with supporters. Because when I've never seen in my life, I can't determine if I were just looking at it, like I was like,

like you have that alien show, if I just came down from Mars, and you just showed that Martian the Twitter or social media feed for Donald Trump, the official of social, not a parody account, and you said, tell me what this person is trying to do for a living, and you just saw gold coins being, silver coins being sold, gold watches being sold, sneakers being sold, a couple of attacks about Kamala down at the border, dogs and cats being protected by the memes back to the cryptocurrency.

And now we're back to the, you'd be like, I don't know, he's a late night snake oil salesman? Like, no, he's the major, he is the candidate for one of the two major parties for the presidency and this is less than 40 days before the presidency where every bit of his effort should be in trying to win the campaign in some way and instead he's just trying to make his family and him financially better off than they were four years ago, to use his own

slogan, by setting them up up you got Jared Kushner Which I've done a hot take on who's got a three billion dollar fund that's returned no profits to the Saudi government or to Anything else in the in the Arab world yet? He's earned hundreds of millions of dollars of fees for the Trump family earned hundreds of millions of dollars of fees for the Trump family. Another way that foreign influence is trying to curry favor with Donald Trump. As to the last lie that you raised about Nancy Pelosi, the lie that he continues to perpetuate because corporate media doesn't hold his feet to the fire on this and they don't, whenever they get him in a question and answer,

which is rare, they think Kamala Harris isn't sitting for enough interviews, Donald Trump's sitting for no interviews except for these fake campaign stops with Newsmax or Fox News or some podcaster, that's it. He doesn't, he does not take questions because the question that needs to be asked is, sir, isn't it a fact that your own secretary of defense, Chris Miller, testified to the Jan 6 committee under

oath that you never gave an order whatsoever to bring out any National Guardsmen during Jan 6. You had a discussion about it in your waning days of your administration, but you never gave an order, not for 20,000, not for 10,000 National Guardsmen, not for zero National Guardsmen. And this is the part you said about, which I liked, I wrote it down, about all of the investigations that haven't yet gone to trial, all the prosecutions that have not yet gone to trial are active, live prosecutions. Meaning, Donald Trump continues to make new evidence every day against himself in the cases that are being prosecuted by the special counsel and other prosecutors around America. Until they go through trial and there's a verdict, it's an ongoing investigation.

And I am sure, it may even rival Midas Touch's newsroom, run by Ron, I am sure there is a group of 100 or 200 young professionals that are attached to the Department of Justice, that all they do all day is plug in the social media feed, the rallies, the speeches, the ex-Tweets, social media posts of Donald Trump to scrape them for use as evidence against him in his trials. For instance, when he said finally, finally admitted out loud that what happened at Jan 6th wasn't a Capitol Torgonari. It wasn't led by loving patriots that are now political prisoners or hostages.

It was a crime. It was a crime scene, what happened at Jan 6th and the attack on the Capitol, the siege on the Capitol. He just wants to blame Nancy Pelosi for it. But he's already admitted, mental state, he's already admitted that it's a crime when he says she could go to jail for what happened. I thought Jan 6th was just a walk in the park, Don. I didn't realize it was a crime scene. Now he reminds me, I did this on a hot take, Ben, he reminds me of OJ Simpson, the lady OJ Simpson, who used to regularly go on podcasts and news interviews, and he would say he'll put up a hundred thousand dollar reward for the killer of Nicole

Brown Simpson. I always wanted to phone in and say, I've got it, OJ, it was you. So for Donald Trump to say, it was Nancy. The only thing that Nancy Pelosi ever did, and it's been taken completely out of context, is like an adult. She in a documentary that her daughter prepared said that after the attack happened, in retrospect, she should have, working with the sergeant of arms of Congress, should have been better prepared for the siege on

the Capitol. But to blame her and to argue that she's the criminal is the equivalent of a family who has their house set on fire by an arsonist being charged with a crime because they didn't do enough to get out of the burning house and the arsonist goes free. Donald Trump's the arsonist. And the quicker this justice system, and we'll talk a lot about a major development, almost startling, in the in the DC election interference case, the sooner that happens, the better. And so, I don't know, did I cover it all? You covered it all. There was a lot there. You mentioned one thing though, and you said, look, in the polling earlier today and end of last week has been very favorable to Vice President Kamala Harris, but it's close.

And there are so many people who go, how is this even close? And lots of the people who say that are consumers of accurate data and information like on the Midas Touch Network. But I'll tell you, having spent five days in a hospital room with my wife and newborn, and by the way, they're both doing great and such an incredible joy. I can't even express it in words, but we had the TV on and I watched a full day of news on ABC, a full day of news on NBC,

which would just play throughout the day. It was maddening. The way they present Donald Trump and they not only sanewash, they do the PR forum. It's unbelievable. They show very little vice president Kamala Harris, if at all. And then they present these images of Donald Trump. Like it's totally normal. They'll take just literally, like quite literally five seconds of his speech where he'll say things like, and that's why we need a strong border. And they'll edit out the fact that before that, he'll say, like Hannibal Lecter once said, you know, or something like that.

And I'm like, you are just completely sane washing this. And then they'll just both sides of the thing. And so if you're, you know, working two jobs or working all day and taking care of a family, and you're not a consumer of a lot of news, because you're very busy, you turn on your news stations, which a lot of local news is either owned by Fox, Murdoch Properties, Sinclair or whoever. You're not getting, you're getting right tilted news

to begin with. Then you turn on corporate media at night, you're not really getting accurate news. And then lots of people watch Fox. So there's really not accurate information getting out there, which is the project we're all engaging on here and Midas Touch Network and in building this digital media network to just get out the truth and the facts to people. We're coming with more receipts here on the Midas Touch Network. I want to give a hat tip to you though, Michael Popok, on the launch of the Legal AF YouTube

channel as you mentioned at the outset, clearing 100,000 subscribers already. Now let's get you to a million. Make sure you all subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel. It is free to subscribe and also support the growth of independent media right here by going to patreon.com slash legal AF. We'll be right back after our first break of the show. Support for today's episode comes from one skin. Did you know that your body starts accumulating senescent

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You know, oftentimes legal shows focus on the ultimate drama, which is the trial itself or maybe the filing of the complaint, but often it's just to focus on the trial. What I love about this program is that from the complaint being filed or in a criminal case, an indictment being unsealed through the discovery process, through all of the motions, through the stuff that goes on behind the scenes about how long can the motions even be? Can the motions be 180 pages, a million pages, five pages? What are the rules surrounding how a motion even gets filed?

What's the content of the motion itself? Do motions just stand alone or are there oppositions filed by a party? Then do you get to reply to the opposition? How is that structured? Who sets the schedule? Right? To me, all of that's important.

So we don't just wake up one day and go, oh, guilty or not guilty or this. We follow the process every step of the way. So we understand. It'd be like watching football and not actually understanding like how the rules are. Can you throw the ball? Can you kick the ball? Can you run out of bounds? So that's why it's so

important that we cover that here. So we're gonna talk about in the Washington DC federal criminal case against Donald Trump for his efforts to overthrow the free and fair election. As you all know, the previous, the reason why that case has been delayed, despite the indictment being filed originally or unsealed in August of 2023, was the Supreme Court said that, you know, Donald Trump was entitled to absolute immunity. Immunity for core constitutional functions, official acts, and broad presumptions that the conduct of what you do while in the office of the presidency is an official act. And also the Supreme Court gave an evidentiary immunity

that core constitutional functions and official acts really can't even be introduced in evidence. There's also what's called dicta, which is not the core finding in a Supreme Court ruling, but the right wing justices and making that ruling in favor of Donald Trump and in favor of kings and monarchs and authoritarians more broadly. Also put in this bizarre language as well about the reason that they think that you should have King like immunity is that someone who holds the office of presidency should not be, uh, have their names tarnished.

I think the word they use is what? Popak, a probrium, a probrium, uh, and, and that you shouldn't face kind of these like even negative consequences at all. So Donald Trump latched onto that language. And one of the things Trump's been arguing this past week or really since the ruling is that the immunity is even further than what the Supreme Court said. Not only should I be immune

from core constitutional functions and official acts, but you can't say anything negative about me. And there shouldn't be filings that have mean and I'm not making this up folks. This is actually Trump's argument this week that if Jack Smith puts mean things in a filing about me, that's runs a foul to the Supreme Court. I have immunity from meanie heads. That's basically the argument in layman's terms. So there was this whole argument today, this week rather, about what special counsel Jack Smith could even file at this stage because now post-Supreme Court ruling on absolute immunity, what has to be argued

is whether or not the conduct in the superseding indictment, which is the new indictment since the Supreme Court issued that ruling that was brought about a month ago or so, the superseding indictment was unsealed, whether that is subject to what the Supreme Court said, absolute immunity, or does it fall outside of it because it's not official acts? Trump's arguing, you can't even file things against me because you're being mean.

And the Supreme Court said, you can't be mean to me, Jack Smith. So that's kind of where we're at. I want to throw it to Popeye, but I do want to show this before digging deeper into, into the Washington DC updates, which is you reference what Chris Miller said, Donald Trump's acting defense secretary. Everybody in the Trump administration was like an acting defense secretary or acting this or act because Trump never actually went through the legal process of getting anybody confirmed. And we don't talk enough about that as well, but these are non-confirmed people.

So for example, Donald Trump's Homeland Security Director was not confirmed. Ken Cuccinelli. Yeah. You know, it was, it was, it was a Ken Cuccinelli, but it was Cuccinelli reported. He was the deputy, but he reported to the other guy. I'm going to get the guy's name in a second, who's a federal judge said you you're acting. So none of what you did was actually authorized by law anyway. But anyway, here's the former acting defense secretary,

Chris Miller right here, his under oath testimony to January 6th committee. This guy would go on Hannity and Fox and say the opposite. He would lie. So when Donald Trump is saying, Oh, you know, I ordered 10,000 national guard troops. Trump would then have Chris Miller go on Hannity and lie to the Fox audience. But then when the guy was under oath, here's what he said to the January 6th committee.

This is what Trump's own acting defense secretary said. Let's play it. So let me clear here that it's since then, in February of 2021, Mark Meadows said on Fox News, Fox News that, quote, even in January, that was a given. As many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the Secretary of Defense.

Is there any accuracy to that statement? I'm not not from my perspective. I was never given any direction or order or due of any plans of that nature. So I was surprised by seeing that publicly. But I don't know the context or even where it was. No, there was no, we obviously have plans for activating more folks. But that was not anything more than contingency planning. There was no official message traffic

or anything of that nature. With regard to- And just so we're clear, you did not have 10,000 troops to be on the ready for January 6th, prior to January 6th? A non-military person probably could have some sort of weird interpretation, but no,

to answer the question, that was not part of my plan or the Department of Defense's plan. And just the rest of his statement was, quote, that was a direct order from President Trump, and yet here is what we see all kinds of blame going around but not a whole lot of accountability. To be crystal clear, there was no correct order from President Trump to put 10,000 troops to be on the ready for January 6th. Correct?

No. Yeah, that's correct. There was no direct, there was no order from the President. See Michael Popak, what we just did there was just show the facts. And if you watch your corporate media at night, their entire segment will only be 30 seconds. And they'll have Trump saying his piece.

Then they'll have, you know, perhaps the other side, maybe, or maybe just Donald Trump saying his piece. And they just move on to talk about other stuff. And it's like, just give me that information. That's Donald Trump's guy. We know Trump's lying because Trump's guy says he's lying under oath. That's the guy who would know. There's no other guy who would know that's, that's the person. Oh, and the Homeland Security Secretary, Chad Wolf. That's why I was thinking. You know, Cuccinelli had his own problems too, including, as you said, being told by a federal judge, you had no power here. And one of the reasons that there were so many actings is because Donald Trump kept firing people like Mark Esper, who was the Secretary of Defense, in the waning days of his administration. He was going through attorney generals

like he was going through his underwear in the last remaining days, until he finally landed on one who would do his bidding in Jeff Clark. And that's why they're also another reason why there were so many, there were so many actings. Here is the truth, as you just laid out. Donald Trump did not give a command to reinforce

the protection of the Capitol at any time before Jan 6th. And he was derelict in his duties as he sat in the dining room, despite numerous aides, including Dan Scavino and other people coming to him and imploring him to do something. He instead thought everything that was going on at the Capitol was a natural, appropriate reaction for people who had the feeling that the election had been stolen the way he had that feeling

and what Donald Trump has to worry about. So there's no order. There's no order at all. And there's plenty of testimony that as the commander in chief to cut through the traffic and the analysis paralysis that was going on at the Pentagon when they were running around, this sounds like a scary concept, but they were running around like a chicken with their heads cut off with no leadership at that moment. So bad that Nancy Pelosi hiding under her desk, and we've seen the video, hiding under her desk with Chuck Schumer, called into the Virginia governor, controlling his own National Guard as a cry for help. That's how bad it was, okay, as they were belly crawling

and otherwise trying to get their way out of the Capitol. Now, this all goes to my new evidence every day being generated by Donald Trump against his own case. So you have that going for you. Let me segue into what you touched on with the DC, what's going on in DC with Judge Chuckins. I think people want to hear about that because there was some startling developments there.

We had always been focused and so was Donald Trump on this 180 page, an extra 140 pages between friends that Judge Chuckin gave to Jack Smith to file an oversized brief. Like, okay, I've been doing this for over 30 years. I don't think there's been a complicated matter that I've handled in federal or state court where I haven't asked for more pages. It's assumed that it'll be 45 and 45 in a certain amount for reply briefs, in the three briefings and a briefing schedule. But the judge can always change her mind and if there's good cause shown,

increase the amount of pages. And to answer the question that you raised before for our audience, what about other things that you file along with the brief? Is there a page limit there? And the answer is no. And that's the part that should be keeping and will be keeping Donald Trump literally

and his lawyers up at night because they have a very limited amount of time to review this. It's the appendix. The appendix is a compendium. It is a series of documents, exhibits, if you will, like trial exhibits, but submitted now, that includes, according to the new filing by Jack Smith,

witness statements, secret grand jury information, statements they've taken from cooperating witnesses, some of which we know, some of which we don't know, text messages from Mark Meadows, the Twitter account that they got by a subpoena over Elon Musk's dead body and objections in federal court. All of that is now, Jack Smith rightly believes he has to now present the context around the facts in his superseding indictment.

Now, let's back up. The original indictment was before the immunity decision. The superseding indictment was with the benefit of having seen the immunity decision. Jack Smith went back to an ongoing grand jury and got a new indictment. That's why you and I and Karen and everyone on Legal AF talk about a superseding indictment, a second indictment, another grand jury having indicted Donald Trump. But this time, Jack Smith had the benefit of the immunity decision he didn't have before. So he was very careful to make sure that the facts, the operative facts, the overt acts of the crime, the elements of the crime coming out of that grand jury, were gonna comply with what the Supreme Court

was looking for in the hard work now that Judge Chuckin's been tasked with in remand in the sendback of the Supreme Court back to the district court judge. And they've told her, you gotta sort it all out. Because normally when you look at an indictment, to be fair, and I just did a, I covered for you with Harry Lippman,

we did a Harry Lippman odd take, we talked about this. Normally the indictment, somebody moves to dismiss it, it's the defendant. And so you have to stay within the four corners of the indictment. You don't get to go out, the prosecutor doesn't go out, oh yeah, there's a missing element in there, a missing act. But the grand jury, there's a great piece of evidence charge. Let me just bring it in. You don't get to do that because the indictment has to rise and fall on its own merits. But here, this is an

entirely different process because the Supreme Court has created an entirely new process and really demanded that Jack Smith do this because they've said take your indictment and your facts but give us the context, meaning the evidence around it, so that the judge can figure out whether this falls into the category of absolutely immune constitutional core presidential functions that are listed in the Constitution or official conduct. And here's where the rubber meets the road. Official conduct, like the job description for the president, stretched to its outer boundaries, is given a lower level of immunity protection

by the Supreme Court than absolute. It's given a rebuttable presumption of immunity, meaning the government can, on its own burden, with its own burden, with enough evidence, overcome the presumption and prosecute, make those prosecutable acts and crimes. That means he has the burden. The burden's coming up now, not at trial.

It's coming up in the briefing, in the appendix, which will be thousands of pages. As I said on a hot take recently, that's sort of the loophole. I've used it. You get 180 or 50 or 70 for your brief, but you get an unlimited number for the thing that's the companion, the sidecar, if you will, for the brief. And that's what they've done. But they had to do it because of the way that the Supreme Court commanded them to do it. Put on your evidence, put up or shut up now to overcome the presumption, otherwise you're left with very little of private, prosecutable crime conduct in the third category.

So that's why they're doing it. They're not doing it to embarrass or to heap scorn or approbation on Donald Trump. They're doing it to cover and carry their burden that has been established since July 1st of this year in that earth-shattering pro-Trump ruling by John Roberts and the Supreme Court. That's all they're doing. Now, to your point, you said something very, very right on it. Again, earlier you said they're trying to even expand the tremendous win they got and the gift they got by the United States Supreme Court of Immunity. They are, and remember we talked about it a couple weeks ago,

buried within one of the several papers that Donald Trump and his lawyers have filed recently. It's always the wrong paper. It's not the one that Judge Chutkin wants. It's always like, why are we, we should just be immediately dismissed the indictment. You shouldn't have to look at anything. Just promptly dismiss it now. Don't listen to that guy over dismissed, the indictment. You shouldn't have to look at anything. Just promptly dismiss it now. Don't listen to that guy over there, the special counsel.

He's not even legitimate. We'll get to that later. The briefing schedule is all fecocta. That's a legal term. Don't let them file a thing, and especially not an appendix. The judge is like, that's not the purpose of this motion

or this piece of paper. Stop talking about reconsidering my position about the logistics and the process I'm going to use to follow the edict of the Supreme Court and get on with it, man. And so he said in there that in his view, this is his lawyers, that everything should be absolutely immune, going further than even the MAGA right wing of the Supreme Court went. Everything, there's the only way to implement, I'm paraphrasing, the only way to implement the ruling of the Supreme Court is to find everything

in the superseding and divining ultimately absolute immune. In other words, you don't go over, there's no burden to worry about. So they don't have to put on any evidence because they don't have a burden Because everything's absolute shove it all over to absolute immunity That's not what the Supreme Court ruling says and that's not the requirement But they have been as as Lawrence or Donald said the other night on last word

Donald Trump is scared about this filing and he should be now the judge has there's two things that happened and he should be. Now the judge has, there's two things that happened. We got the filing, but it's under seal because of prior protective orders in the case. And now there's a process supervised by the judge of what is going to end up on the public docket for you, me, Karen, and the public to see, and what is going to be under black tape or black out. We call it redaction. And the reason for that is, and the number one thing that seems to be on the tape or black out. We call it redaction. And the reason for that is, and the number one thing that seems to be on the mind of Jack Smith is witness protection and to stop Donald Trump from intimidating and going after with violent rhetoric witnesses and cooperating witnesses. And I'll give an example. And that, because that is about half of what Jack Smith

filed yesterday when he said, we need to redact the names of all of the witnesses, except for guys like Mike Pence, because they're cooperators and we're worried about witness intimidation. He raised that argument in Mar-a-Lago with Judge Cannon. He raised it in other places and he's got a receptive audience and Judge Chutkin, who's already gagged Donald Trump about certain of these things. And that gag order has been affirmed on appeal to the next level of appellate court. So that is the number one thing he's worried about. And so he wants to redact the names.

Donald Trump, of course, two things. He doesn't want any of this filed. And so we could see, and I talked about this with you, Ben and with Harry yesterday, we could see an attempted appeal to run it up to the DC Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court and talk about process and say to the DC Court of Appeals on Trump's behalf, what are we even doing here? Look what she's doing, Judge Chutkin. She's doing a whole evidence mini trial against me in the public domain and that's not what she's supposed to be doing. Somebody tell her that that's not what she's supposed to be doing and don't let that that up that

appendix, oh my god, don't let that get out of the public domain. We might see that. I think he gets slapped back pretty quickly because you know decisions about process and redaction and all of that is not something I think the Supreme Court is gonna find even four or five of them are going to find that interesting at this moment because they gave her the instructions and they don't give, I mean I've seen Supreme Court occasionally clarify their remand instructions but I, but Donald Trump did delay, well they try that process again. Finally, the fight is over the names. So on October the 1st, The fight is over the names. So on October the 1st, which is not that far away, it's off this show,

and the day of the vice presidential debate, Donald Trump and his lawyers have to tell the judge what their proposed blackout is on the brief, the 180 pages. That's only like four or five days away, and you gotta line by line this thing. Now, the reason we're talking about redaction is because the public in our system of criminal justice has a seat at the table.

It's, we don't do, as you said earlier in this, we don't do secret trials. We don't do star chambers. We don't take people out in the back and give them fake trials and then shoot them. That's for other dictators in other parts of the world, unfortunately. So the public has a right to know. The media, the First Amendment freedom of press, has a right to know about what is happening at every stage in a case. But there's also a balancing act, because we

have to make sure that at the same time, the defendant is not heaped with scorn, that his same time, the defendant is not heaped with scorn, that his being presumed to be not guilty, presumed to be innocent, is preserved, and that his ability to pick a fair and impartial jury in the future so their minds are unblown by all this evidence in advance is also preserved. At the same time, the government is worried about witnesses. So that's where the judge comes in. So she's saying to Trump, October 1, tell me how you would redact this to balance all of these competing interests. Then she gave him, this is how we know the appendix is gigantic. Then she said, you're going to need more time with the appendix. Because for our audience, the judge and the parties always see the clean copy

without redactions. So it's not like Donald Trump doesn't know, like, oh, wonder what's underneath that black tape. He knows, the lawyers know, they can do their defense. It's for the public. We're only talking about public filing here. The judge says, you need more time with that appendix. You take till the 10th of October. So 10 days to go through, during his campaign, selling his watches, selling his crypto, right?

There's the timetable, 10-10. And then she will take all of that. And by the way, I also think she's effing with Donald Trump. Leave that up for a minute. Donald Trump last week and his lawyers missed the deadline because they forgot that she had, or they didn't calendar, that she had ordered 5 PM for something to be filed. And they didn't file by 5 PM. And then they had to go and ask for an emergency application. for something to be filed. And they didn't file by 5 p.m. And then they had to go and ask for emerges the application. For the 10-1 filing, she gave them till noon. But for the 10-10 filing, she gave them till 5. I think she's effing with them. She's like, you know, like, she didn't keep track of this. You know, most cases you get to file at midnight, unless the judge wants it a lot

earlier. I have a case in Vegas where the magistrate judge wants everything by 5 p.m. Vegas time, I get it. But I did think that one's 12, one's five. I mean, they can't keep two thoughts in their head straight. These four lawyers who are basically exhausted. So that will then sit with the judge starting on 10, 10, and it's gonna take a minute for her to get through it. Because maybe even not at the time of the, up to the election.

She always says she's colorblind, justice is blind, and she doesn't look at the election calendar. If that's true, she's gonna do what she needs to do with her staff to compare these competing documents line for line and come up with a version that ends up on the public docket.

Now, lastly, what ends up on the public docket, maybe before the election or right after the election is not the final word. Because as the case continues and as they go through trial and things become less, you don't have to protect witnesses, things will get stripped off and we'll get new iterations and versions of this. And like a year from now, you and I will be talking with Karen about what we finally saw. Dan Scavino should be the one that keeps Donald Trump up at night as a cooperating witness, because we know from reporting what his statements were

under oath to the prosecutors, forget what he says on a social media. Like you said, that Chris Miller used to go on Fox and do the bidding of Donald Trump. To this day, Dan Scavino is still MAGA dyed in the wool. But what he told the Department of Justice, the special counsel is chilling. That he went in on Jan six to try to get his boss

who he's known since he was a teenager. And this is the guy that was posting on X, ghost writing for Donald Trump. When Trump did all his mean tweets, half of them were Scavino's or more. And he went in there and says, this is your legacy. Look at the smoke coming out of the Capitol. You can fix this. Say something. Stop it. And it wasn't until 417 in the afternoon, after

all of the death and mayhem, and the bloody medieval battles that happened, that Donald Trump finally gave a video. And even that video said, you know, the election's been stolen from you we I I feel it but go home now you're loved that was 417 in the meantime he sent out a tweet that poured gasoline on the fire and the testimony is including from lawyers in the White House Counsel's Office like Pat Cipollone his testimony is they ran to scavenger and said what kind of text is that that's not calming anybody to tell them that they're right. The election's been stolen and Mike Pence isn't doing his job.

He said, I didn't write it, meaning Donald Trump wrote it. So Scavino is going to be, we're going to be seeing and talking a lot about Dan Scavino, Mark Meadows, thousands of text messages and other testimony from secret grand jury witnesses when we finally get our hot little hands on that filing. Michael Popak, I want to read that one, the language that I was referring to and that you mentioned there, just so people know

from the filing when I was saying that Donald Trump's lawyers are now arguing that the immunity extends to being mean to him in filings, that he thinks that you can't file negative things about him. Here's what his lawyers say. They dress it up in lawyerly articulate language, but I'm just telling you what they mean by this. It says, the path preferred by the special counsel's office would result in an independent violation of the presidential immunity doctrine by exacerbating, quote, the peculiar public opprobrium that attaches

to criminal proceedings. A 180 page filing would be the embodiment of the type of improper extended proceeding that the Supreme Court forbid as quote, an impediment to the effective functioning of government. The court may not adjudicate superfluous presidential immunity issues, including by allowing the office to file this monstrosity if Trump can establish immunity at the outset requires the dismissal. So all of those big words right there are saying, we think the Supreme

Court says you can't be a meanie head and file documents that will make Donald Trump upset because if you make him sad, he won't be able to do his job or go through his day. So don't file this monstrosity. That's what they're saying right there. And it's absolutely pathetic. Make sure you're all are subscribed to Michael Popak's leadership under the new YouTube channel, Legal AF, just an extension of the Midas Touch channel. We just know you want more Michael Popok,

you want more law, you want some of our other great hosts. We're gonna start having Karen go on that channel and Donya and the whole crew. There's just gonna be a lot more legal analysis on issues that we can't always cover on the Midas Touch YouTube channel. Subscribe now, we'll be back after our last quick break. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Another great way is, you know, we just started a Midas touch sub stack as well, which is MidasPlus.com. That's pretty cool. And then of course we've got the new Popok YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel, which is just as Michael Popok told me, when Midas Touch started and we had literally

three followers and one of them was my mom, the other was Popok. He said, Ben, you're building a rocket ship in 2020. And I said, oh really? Yes. And Popok's been here with us from day one. We've been covering from day one, the civil fraud case against Donald Trump, quite literally from before it was even a civil fraud case, when it was a civil

investigation being performed by the AG, we covered all the investigatory steps before it was even a civil fraud case, when it was a civil investigation being performed by the AG. We covered all the investigatory steps that were being taken, the pre-filing depositions. Then of course, we talked about the case, the trial, we went through it all, and now we're at the appeals. Donald Trump, if he loses, is gonna have to pay a judgment

in the range of $500 million. I mean, he's already lost with post-judgment interest accruing every day. That's what he would face. There's a judgment entered against him. The appellate division heard oral arguments. And I think it was a mixed bag, to be fair. There was a lot of judges who thought the number may be too high. But Popak, you practice in New York,

you know that appellate division well. People come here for the facts, the good, the bad, the ugly, the... Yeah, happy to, thank you. So I listened to the oral argument, I also talked to some people in advance, including former judges in and around New York, about it to get kind of ready. We talked afterwards and this is the takeaway. And you set it up just perfectly. It's the 456 million dollar

disgorgement order judgment by Judge Angoron finding that Donald Trump, the Trump family, and the Trump Organization, except for Ivanka, committed persistent fraud as that term is used under a unique New York statute. We call it Executive Law 63-12. Talk about granular. Which is just a way for these whoever is sitting in the Attorney General's office at the time and to have a robust superpower to police and be the watchdog of financial markets, the business community, and Wall Street because New York is the financial powerhouse and capital of the world. And so you

would think that the Attorney General of that state would have that kind of power. That's sort of a trade-off because the Attorney General in New York has almost a limit, very limited, almost no criminal prosecution power unlike other attorney generals around the country. But she does have this. And this is the one that everybody has used, whoever's been attorney general, Schneiderman, Spitzer, her, you know, it's often a stepping stone to the governorship, the attorney general position in New York. And so they have been the police watchdogs of it. And as a result, there doesn't need to be a victim necessarily. You can just do bad things and tilt the playing field in your favor.

And even if the other person on the other side doesn't catch it, doesn't catch it, or isn't technically hurt like in a normal fraud case, you've still violated the law. It's sort of like, I'm thinking about this now in my Wall Street background, it's sort of like violating the Securities and Exchange Commission laws or the CFTC laws or the laws of FINRA, another regulator for Wall Street. And there doesn't have to be a victim on the other side. I mean, certain types of fraud do, but other just technical violations of the rules, because you tried to give yourself an advantage or you didn't play by the rules, gets you in trouble. Same thing here. Same thing here. They never quite wanted to understand that on the Trump side. So in Goran, after listening to dozens and dozens of witnesses and thousands and thousands of, it's his words, a mountain full of evidence in six weeks with experts for Donald Trump and for the New York attorney general's office, entered his order.

It was around Christmas time. He took a break of about a month in January of last year. He issued his order and he said that Donald Trump lied about his personal financial statement and inflated the value of his assets, used reverse engineering, working with Michael Cohen, our fellow podcaster and friend, and other people like Allen Weisselberg, who's going to jail twice now, having worked for Donald Trump and lied about it, and then just said, I want to be a four-billionaire today. Make that the number. And like, well, we can't do that boss because we don't have enough assets

and they're not valued that high. We'll just use an eraser and a pencil and just increase the number. Okay, that's sort of the scheme. It wasn't that people think that Donald Trump's, I know he likes to stand in front of his audience like, I came up with this idea about a sinking electric boat, and whether I should let it sink or I should be eaten by a shark.

I talked to people from MIT. This wasn't that bright of a plan. Anybody come up with this, just change the numbers. The final result is what we call disgorgement, which is a fancy way of saying that the court orders you to disgorge or rip away profits and amounts of money that you earn that you should not have earned, we call them ill-gotten gains.

You gained it in an illegal way, it should be coughed up. And in this case, given to the people of the state of New York, because the New York attorney general is on the other up. And in this case, given to the people of the state of New York, because the New York Attorney General is on the other side. And so that discouragement amount, he calculated a property by property, transaction by transaction,

because Donald Trump lied to his counterparties. And that total, $456 million. That is now running with interest at $100,000 a day. It's something, a day. That's three million or more a month, okay? So he'd like to stop that. That's why it's up to almost like $490 million right now. Now, the way that the appellate courts work in New York,

the Appellate Division First Department sits in Manhattan, handles all first level appeals, criminal or civil. That's why the sentencing issue for Donald Trump and the other criminal cases can also go to the same court, but just a different rotating panel of judges. Five justices here, the cases. And I will tell you as a practitioner in New York

for over 30 years, that nobody gets a judgment of a dollar amount and rests easy until the automatic, almost appeal happens and you go through the meat grinder of the first department, and you hope that a lot of what you got awarded to you by a jury or a judge comes out the other side. They are notorious for taking their blue pen or red pen and striking off categories of damages.

I will tell you that in 30 years, I've never been given more money by the panel. I've never been like, whoa, Mr. Polpock, you should have got five million more for your client. Oh, that's nice, thank you. Put that down. No, it's always, well,

the judge calculated the interest wrong. The judge, this category of damages wasn't available. Or we lop it off 10%, 20%, 30%. So we were expecting a haircut. This same panel led by Justice Renwick, who is the preside, he's like the chief judge of the first department and others, had already about five or six months ago given a break to Donald Trump and said,

because he said, I can't come up with the 500 million, the bond, time and trouble. They said, put up 175 million. It's the same panel. Now some people thought, oh shit, they're going to reduce the whole thing to 175. That's not quite how I read it, but that is a floor here of 175. Having listened to the oral argument, I was most troubled by a comment made by Justice Moulton who could be the person that ends up writing the ultimate decision. Really smart, really methodical, quiet person know, the big brain, if you will, on that panel. And when he led with a question, to continue the troubling theme, to the Miss,

I can't remember her last name here, I think it's Jay, he'll come to me in a minute, the advocate, the appellate advocate for the New York Attorney General, he started the question with, I am troubled by the size of the judgment. I mean, there's no way to sugarcoat this. That's not a good start. Now I've had plenty of appellate panels that have been fiery and I've left there thinking, wow, do I still have my back pocket?

Are they still there? And then I get home, you know, a month later and the order comes out, wait, I won? Or vice versa. I was like, wow, I did great. They loved me. And then I get the order and it's like nope you lost. So it's hard sometimes to tell but I don't

like the fact that Moulton because you got to get the three votes. It's a majority. So if it's Moulton, Renwick and one other person I'll tell you it's not gonna be. It's not gonna be Friedman because Justice Friedman is the person that kept siding with Trump over and over again every time an emergency application was filed and Friedman, because Justice Friedman is the person that kept siding with Trump over and over again. Every time an emergency application was filed and Friedman was sitting around, he was like, yep, I'll grant that. And then it would be reversed by the full panel.

So he was already not only throwing softballs at Donald Trump's lawyers, he was blowing kisses. You know, here you go. What about that? Don't you think that? Yeah, I think that. So he's going to be an outlier. Question is, can Renwick and Moulton pull one other vote over by Rosado or one of these other people and

and preserve the judgment short answer bottom line I think the order does not get the decision the judgment does not get tossed in its entirety I think they come up with a number that is lower than 546 million and higher than 175. If I were a batting man, I'd say, I don't know, $200 or $300 million. Not nothing, not Trump change, but the only thing that left me a little bit troubled is they were questioning the use of this same statute that I just described in this context. They kept saying, well, if a sophisticated party parties on both sides, haven't we gone too far with the use of 63-12 as the law? And to which the lawyers for the New York attorney general

was like, why should he get benefited because his fraud scheme was so successful and he stole so much money? Is that a new defense? It's just too big of a number for the appellate court to consider. It's just too big. It can't be what the statute intended.

I mean, the statute is made in the 50s, but the actions are today, and just because he's a super criminal doesn't mean he should get a break. I mean, that was sort of her argument. So we're gonna wait, and it's gonna come relatively soon. I think this decision will come out before the election, before November 5th. Usually it's about a month, six weeks. It's a little complicated here. But we could get it. we could be talking about this ruling in October and the loser, whoever that is, is going to take an appeal to the top court in New York, which is the Court of Appeals. And even if there's a winner, like they affirm the judgment but they cut it down to size, the attorney

general could say no, that number's not right. The 500 was right. Let's go, and she, we could have cross appeals. Donald Trump could say, the whole thing should have been tossed, and she could be appealing and say, the number's not high enough. And then all those issues go to the Court of Appeals,

which is the last stop on the train. No federal involvement, no Supreme Court involvement. That will be the last, and if the judgment in any form gets affirmed 30 days later, he's got to pay it, whatever the amount is, not the bonding company. The bonding company is only if he doesn't pay. And if he pays it, he pays it. If he doesn't pay it, she's going to start selling off his assets, starting, I hope, with Trump Tower. That's where I think that goes. So I think Ben has family duties. So I'm going to do a final wrap here very, very quickly about what we started in the topic. Sorry to make this a hot take,

a pop-up hot take, but you know, here we go. So to give you some talking points around the dinner table about lawfare and the weaponization of the Department of Justice. Just look at what has happened in the last two months or three months, which totally blows apart Donald Trump's argument that the Department of Justice is weaponized, it's going after for election interference, me and MAGA and other people, they don't like us, make them stop, the meanie part that Ben, my partner, raised earlier. And just look at who they prosecuted recently. Starting with Hunter Biden, the son of the sitting president, not once but twice by a special counsel, pleading guilty to several counts related to tax

fraud, meaning he'll probably be looking at a jail time of a year or two. Then you have the Menendez prosecution of a Democratic senator, longtime senator from my home state of New Jersey. This is not the first bribery scandal he's been involved with. He was exonerated by the first one. But when you have stacks of gold bars in your wife's walk-in closet, you may be going to jail. And that was over an Egyptian scandal about halal,al kosher certification in the Arab world, of all things. So that prosecution led to a guilty verdict. And then you had, on top of that, you have the Iranian indictment that just came out against Iranians trying to interfere with our election and hack Donald Trump's campaign headquarters, which they successfully did

obtaining the JD Vance dossier, the white paper. And after hearing about the white paper and saying it, I don't know how Donald Trump actually picked the guy to be his vice president. He may be ruining the day that he did that as his campaign chances go heading for the toilet and circling the drain. So you have that, and now you have Mayor Adams, who is the mayor of arguably the fourth largest economy in the world in New York, who just got brought low in an indictment and an arrest just a day or so ago of the mayor of the city of New York for a bribery foreign interference in election campaign violation case stretching back to when

he was Brooklyn borough president starting in 2016 involving the Turkish government, the Israeli government, and the Chinese government, and the South Korean government. Where he's had his hand out, apparently according to the indictment, for years in hundreds of thousands of dollars and then at a quid pro quo would change policy, would approve or force the approval of buildings like the Turkish consulate that weren't ready for occupancy and force the fire marshal to do it. I mean a real quid pro quo. I mean when I met, I mean you know the moment of candor here, I did go to a fundraiser for Eric Adams when he was first running.

And I did write a campaign check for him and shake his hand. So there's a picture out there. And I looked at him and I said, look, former police captain, looks great, wearing Gucci loafers. This guy was created in a lab. He's perfect for New York and following de Blasio and COVID. Wrong. That didn't really work out well. But these are all examples of what? Weaponization of the Department of Justice. Weaponization would be none of these people I just outlined are entities would be prosecuted.

And then you've got, of course, what keeps the Department of Justice's hair on fire, which is foreign interference with our election process where our foreign enemies, Russia, China, Iran, looking at you for enemies like India, you try to put the Americans at each other's throat through social media disinformation campaigns and AI and get the vote for whoever you think is favorable to you. And that's why in another recent prosecution, you've got this Tennessee-based media, right-wing media company,

sort of the Midas Touch of Tennessee, I don't know, right-wing media go down in flames and have Russian television, RTTV, be prosecuted for putting $10 million to buy right-wing podcasters to give positions on their shows adverse to American foreign policy and pro-Russia. So we just saw that.

And then of course, you've got the assassin, the would-be assassin of Donald Trump being prosecuted, rightly so, for trying to kill a major presidential campaign candidate and being put into the courtroom of Aileen Cannon. So if this is weaponization by the Department of Justice, they're doing a terrible, terrible job. Get on it, Merrick. So I just want to kind of give that overview. So people have that as talking points because it is a major, apparently, campaign plank of Donald Trump. We've reached the end, yes we have, sorry, of this episode of Legal AF. We do

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