Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump MISSED DEADLINE, Time to PAY THE PRICE

Episode Date: March 24, 2024

Meidas Touch founder Ben Meiselas and trial lawyer Michael Popok are back with a new episode of the weekend edition of the top rated Legal AF podcast. On this episode, they debate/discuss: Trump’s next moves to try to stop the seizure and sale of his trophy properties and stop the execution of the NYAG $465 million civil fraud judgment against him; speaking of Trump financial difficulties, whether Trump is going to be able use his new public company that owns Truth Social to bail out his financial problems; whether Judge Merchan in the Manhattan DA’s criminal prosecution of Trump will next week set the Stormy Daniels hush money cover up trial to start in April; whether Judge Cannon in the Mar a Lago obstruction and espionage act case will get removed from the case by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump’s filing of a bogus defamation suit against ABC and its anchor George Stephanopoulous in Miami to distract from his troubles, so much more at the intersection of law and politics. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! 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. Beam: Get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to https://shopbeam.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF at checkout! Fum: Head to https://TryFum.com/legalaf and use code LEGALAF to save 10% off when you get the journey pack today! Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://RocketMoney.com/legalaf SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop NEW LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on 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 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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to the voice in your head and get a Canon Megatank printer so you don't have to think about ink for a long, long time. Visit canon.ca slash megat tank for details. Trump tower is mine. You can't take it away from me. New York attorney general edition. James, I kid you not. That's what Donald Trump was sending to his followers this morning. As the deadline has passed for him to post a bond in the New York attorney general civil fraud case for those watching on YouTube and video, you see it. Right there. We're going to talk about the implications. New York attorney general, Letitia James has also registered the judgment with

Westchester County where Donald Trump's golf course and the seven acres property is based. What does this mean? What happens next? And how does the merger of Donald Trump's not doing well? And how does the merger of Donald Trump's not doing well, just put it that way, social media platform with digital world acquisition company, the SPAC that in our opinion is very, very much inflated

in valuation right now, but dropped about 14% on Friday on the announcement of the merger. How does that play into this all? Well, we'll discuss it here on Legal AF. Also, we'll discuss updates in the Manhattan District Attorney criminal case. Of course, last week we talked about this document dump of about 30,000 or so, maybe even a little more, plus documents that were turned over by the Department of Justice, the Southern District of New York. On the eve of trial, we talked about how the New York Supreme

Court Justice, that's the trial court judge presiding over the criminal case, Justice Juan Marchand, adjourned trial briefly to mid-April. Well, we now got filings from the Manhattan district attorney, basically saying this is a lot to do about nothing. We're really talking about 270 or so documents and this whole discovery issue, this whole belated production of documents is really not belated at all. It's really Donald Trump's fault for when he requestedquested these documents so a big hearing is scheduled next week But I think popok and I will share our predictions we think this trial is going to be back on track and

Coming to your neighborhood very very very sooner coming to a theater near you. I should say very very soon Hopefully what's not coming to a theater near you very, very soon, cause it would be a horror film is a judge, Eileen Cannon, and what she's doing in the Southern district of Florida. I've always said that her corruption is matched or exceeded by her, uh, incompetence. And, uh, she proved that once again this week, you know, she issued this order, what's referred to as kind of a Sue Espante order, like kind of on her own initiative, asking special counsel Jack Smith primarily, but I guess also Donald Trump to engage in a hypothetical

exercise to speculate these scenarios and game out scenarios in front of a hypothetical jury. And then she gave two scenarios for the parties to grapple with, or as she says, engage with, and to come back up with an answer. Everything she does, Michael Popak, reminds me of like a law professor who would be asking law students to kind of identify everything that's wrong,

except these are her actual orders. Like they're that bad You and I will break that all down and also as Donald Trump continues to break down. He filed a defamation lawsuit this week against George Stephanopoulos and ABC George Stephanopoulos conducted an interview in early March with MAGA Republican Nancy Mace where George Stephanopoulos was essentially quoting from the federal judge Louis Kaplan's order in the E. Jean Carroll case and Stephanopoulos had asked a question of Nancy Mace or said how are you supporting Donald Trump?

Who was found liable for rape? Donald Trump is claiming that he was found liable only for sexual assault, digital rape, not general rape. And then Donald Trump says that that is actually defamation of his character and he filed a lawsuit in federal court in the Southern District of Florida, notwithstanding court orders from federal judge Lewis Kaplan saying that it does meet the technical definition. Um, but we will break this all down for you. Another busy week. Things are moving back on track. I think Michael Popak, it's why, you know, you can't overreact.

I think, and that's one of the things that you and I talk about here. And sometimes when we, you know, tell people, okay, patience, sometimes I also understand with all of the trauma that Donald Trump's caused, it's easier said than done. But what you and I, I think mean when we say that is last week, there may be this massive headline about documents and what's going on and is this going to derail trial and you really just got to wait to get more of the data to really be in an informed position. How you doing, Michael Bopach?

I'm doing great, Ben. Good to be back with you. You pitched in and did midweek with me and now we're back for our regular show on Saturday. Totally agree with you. We're going to talk about the stock market today at one point when we talk about Donald Trump and his soon to be public truth social. Uh, and it's sort of like the stock market. You can't get, unless you're a day trader, which we are not here, you can't get concerned with the up and down, the micro movements of a case or a stock

price, oh my God, it's up a penny. It's down a penny. It's down $2. It's up $3. You got to be in the justice system and our analysis of it here on Legal AF for the long haul. It's sort of like the S&P 500 over time, over 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, it does well. And our justice system sometimes gets hit with a punch to the solar plexus and has to gasp and recover, but it does. It does recover. It's been here for hundreds of years,

our justice system, our court system. It will survive even this current combination of Supreme Court justices. This too shall pass. There will be changes on the Supreme Court over the next two, five and 10 years. There just will be. I don't have to go into the reasons why. Um, and we just need to be patient and diligent and focused. And just to prove your point, to make your point, you know, three weeks ago, you know, it was a little bit of Henny Penny. The sky was falling on media about any, any case involving Donald Trump. Oh, they're all off the New York and the Manhattan DA.

We're going to talk about it today. Oh, it's off. It's not happening in March. And Fonny Willis looks like she could be canned as a prosecutor. That's going to set back that case. And what is going on with Mar-a-Lago? Well, that's a recurring theme that you and I always cover. And the appeal, the appeal for the Supreme Court, why is it the last day and the last hour on April 25th for the hearing? Why don't they do things earlier? Well, now if you just take the plane up 5,000 feet and you look down, which we try to do

on each episode in our hot takes, what you're seeing here is, as I said, the justice system and the judges and the system, the process, the rules might take it on the chin for a moment, but then they recover. And so now where are we today? Today we have, and we'll talk about it when we get there on the Manhattan DA, a hearing next week that's going to set that trial for early spring.

You and I'll make our predictions for what we think that is with Judge Brashawn, Fonny Willis got off the canvas and put back on her boxing gloves. And she said, I want to, I'm ready for trial in August. Let's go. And she will talk. Well, you know, we'll touch on that. ready for trial in August, let's go. And we'll talk, well, you know, we'll touch on that. And the more I read the papers filed by the Trump side in the immunity appeal, the more I believe that they are going to lose and lose badly, my prediction, with even with this Supreme Court

makeup. And this trial for Judge Shutkin will be back on sometime in the summer. But you know, if you had taken our temperature three weeks ago with a couple of these things that came out, you know, we might've had a slightly different combination of events, but here we are. Yeah. You know, and when you take our temperature though, I hope you appreciate that we give you the scenarios in the way I've described it as also kind of like the meteorologist tracking a storm and

you can track where it goes. You can track if the pattern diverges and sometimes there's an anomaly and you just don't get it right. But we try to track it every step of the way to minimize the surprises. That doesn't mean that there's going to be no surprises, but we can adapt and then we can kind of recalibrate our models. But we can adapt and then we can kind of recalibrate our models. A footnote this week and just goes to show you how many things are just happening when it comes to these legal developments as one of Donald Trump's

former top aides and current top allies, Peter Navarro went to jail. He was finally remanded into custody after trying to do everything in his power to avoid going into jail, including trying to file an emergency writ with the Supreme court, which was rejected. So Navarro is, as we speak right now, serving his prison sentence for contempt of Congress. The same charge that one of Donald Trump's other former aides, Steve Bannon, was convicted of as well. And Steve Bannon's prison sentence has currently stayed

pending his appellate process. And we haven't heard back from the Court of Appeals, but in that oral argument it seemed that all of the judges were leading against Bannon, but we will get back to you there as we learn more. And of course, at Trump's former aide, Bannon, and now kind of podcaster, Bannon's also on criminal, there's a criminal case against him in Manhattan as well for the same charges that he was pardoned for by Donald Trump from basically it's alleged that he stole from the We Build the Wall Fund where Trump said he was going to build it, but it turns out that it was gonna be, we were gonna build it on a GoFundMe account, and then that was actually gonna go fund

a lavish lifestyle and Bannon's co-conspirators, in that matter, had pled guilty. But let's, a lot going on, eh? Let's dive right into it here. Here's what Donald Trump was posting this morning. This is what he was sending around rather, on his email to kind of fundraise off of this. Trump tower is mine, breaking. Trump alert.

Rabid, he calls New York Attorney General Letitia James, rabid. Rabid, Trump hating Democrat AG Letitia James wants to seize my properties in New York. Pause there for one second. The law just simply requires that if you want to stay the enforcement of a judgment, big, small, medium sized judgments, you just have to post a bond. You can go and find a surety to help you post the bond, but that's just what the law is. This is not unique to Donald Trump. This is just what every litigant does who wants to file an appeal and wants to stay

the enforcement of a judgment. They don't go around in all caps letters whining and complaining. In fact, New York attorney general, Letitia James submitted what you and I predicted she would do this week after Donald Trump filed that brief last week saying it was impossible to be able to post a bond and that this is so unprecedented. New York attorney general, Letitia James filed a surreply

which was accepted by the appellate division and she's showed numerous companies that are real companies with real assets in cases that have posted bonds the same size or slightly less or some that were larger. She talked about in her brief how, you know, one of the things you can do, you don't have to go to one surety,

you can go to a syndicate of sureties who come together so that the risk is minimized and you have a tower of sureties. And she also said Donald Trump's brief provided not a scintilla of evidence of the steps he even went through in order to secure a surety bond. All Donald Trump's brief did was his lawyer said he just doesn't have the cash or the means to do it. But then Donald Trump posted, and I'll toss it to you in a second, Popak, Donald Trump

posted on social media at the end of last week that he's got all of this money. Trump basically said that he has, you know, he's got all this cash, he's able to post it. Then he posted another one saying it's impossible. What do you make of all of this Michael popok and and and what do you think is gonna happen next? Yeah Yeah, it's it's a head-scratcher. Let's see we can unpack it First of all, he gave a good overview there of his attacks on Letitia James and they're they're actually more disgusting than that We were being kind

Made comments about her appearance again about her mouth, you know, sort of racist tropes against Letitia James, trying to dehumanize people of color that are his prosecutors and his in his mind, his tormentors again. And then misstating as he always does both the law, the results in his cases, the rights of parties against him who are now judgment creditors like the people of the state of New York. By the way, it's not just seizing his assets, it's seizing, selling, and using them to pay the judgment. One thing that we didn't talk about yet that I'll start with is Judge Engoran is watching

and issued in the middle of this maelstrom of Donald Trump's own creation, issued enhanced superpowers for the monitor. The monitor has been in place for 16 months, former federal judge Barbara Jones. She had some extensive powers, but not the robust powers that he just gave her for the next three years. And particularly, he's interested in finding out what Donald Trump is telling bonding agencies, bonding companies, sureties, insurance companies, and the like, what properties he's talking about pledging, what's the result of that, and he wants the monitor

to be empowered in this new monitorship order that he said was coming in February when he issued his decision and order, which led to the judgment of 465 million over 500 million with interest in other requirements to post, he said, I'm going to issue a monitorship order that's going to expand her powers. And here it is. And Donald Trump can't do a darn thing about it except piss in the wind and tweet and social media away because it's going to have no impact. The trial judge has full authority and power under a 1956 set of laws called 63-12 with executive laws of New York, which gives the attorney general and therefore the judge tremendous

powers to do exactly what he's doing. And so he's also curious when Donald Trump files a three-page affidavit, the declaration under oath by his general counsel, Alan Garten, who is also a participant in the fraud as a judge by that judge, as determined by that judge, and his golfing buddy down in Palm Beach County who filed, you know, who's not really a full-time bond expert and was telling the court, you know, telling the appellate court, the appeals court, we can't find a bond. We looked everywhere. Didn't talk about things you can do to get a bond, like syndicate it, meaning sell the bond size off to different insurance companies so no one has as

much risk. You can sell them at a hundred, let's say a hundred million or $50 million tranches, and you can have a syndicate, like you syndicate a loan of like five or ten people. Never did that, never tried that and never talked about that and never listed as Ben as you outlined. Who did you talk to? What did you supply? What assets did you try to pledge? Why did they reject you?

Where's the affidavits and declarations from the surety companies, from the bonding companies, from the banks about letters of credit? None of that. And the judge is watching all this and going, you know what, let me update my order that I'm issuing this week. I want the monitor to have full access and transparency to all of these communications Donald Trump is having about his finances with third parties and specifically sureties and bonding companies.

Because he's troubled by what appears to be, again, a series of lies to the appellate division first department, which is the first stop on the train. It's the appellate court that sits in Manhattan over Judge Angkoran before you get to the court of appeals at the top level. All we're watching on the other side of the aisle, I mean, on the other side of the split screen is the attorney general executing on a judgment, a New York judgment like she would against anybody else. Donald Trump's got until the morning on Monday basically to do one of two or three things.

He either posts money, which he says he has $500 million, either puts up $530 or $40 million cash into the court registry, that stops the execution of the bond. He could ask for, but he hasn't, alternative relief where he pledges the deeds of his allegedly masterpiece properties that are worth billions of dollars when they're not, like the deed to Mar-a-Lago, the deed to 40 Wall Street, the deed to 7 Springs Golf Course, the deed to Bedminster. He could pledge the deeds. He'd have to over pledge to compensate for the fact that nobody trusts him on value. That's the problem. But he could put up a couple of deeds.

Here you go. And then if he doesn't pay the judgment after the appeal, then the people of the state of New York through Letitia James own Mar-a-Lago. They own Trump Tower or whatever it is. He could do that. Or he could syndicate out that bond and find a bonding company or a series of bonding companies, which I assume they are continuing to work on. The thing I don't think that he's doing, and I want to get your opinion, Ben, I can't believe

that he's going to allow her for a performative art piece for him to be able to continue to grift on it, because that's all he's doing. He's sending out emails and emails and emails to try to raise money, to raise money for the judgment and all of that. I can't believe he's going to actually let her have the sheriff of New York seize, padlock, and set up for sheriff sale his property and be publicly embarrassed by that. I mean, you and I thought, okay, right at the last minute on the hundred million dollar bond he needed to post for E. Gene Carroll, he'll come up with the money or the bond. And he did. He lied to the court

about it. He told the court, we can't get the bond. And then when they finally posted the bond on time, it was backdated two days before they told the judge, Judge Kaplan, they didn't get the bond. And then when they finally posted the bond on time, it was backdated two days before they told the judge, Judge Kaplan, they didn't have the money. So that's another lie at the time by Lena Kaplan. And when he needed to post the bond, the first judgment against them by E. Gene Carroll for 5.5 million, he came up with the scratch. He came up with the cash

and deposited the cash in the bank. So he's always, even if he's playing with fire, if he's playing his own version of Russian roulette, he eventually ponies up. I wanna hear from you. You think he misses the deadline and doesn't do something? And I'll just leave it on this. As of right now, as of our recording tonight,

the Appellate Division First Department seems to not care a whit about holding an emergency hearing or giving him emergency relief. Now maybe it'll change on Monday, but as of Friday and as of today, the appellate court is like, that's interesting, yeah, file your briefs. Well, they haven't set oral argument. They haven't set a hearing. Some sort of emergency duty judge hasn't issued an emergency injunction to stay. None of the things we've seen in the past, which is a little bit of also of a head scratcher,

not for me, on the Donald Trump side. What do you think he does on Monday that you and I on Hot Takes are going to have to report on? Look, Donald Trump is someone though who blows deadlines. He is someone who makes a career out of whining. And there is a school of thought that he, he allows New York attorney general Letitia James to, you know, take over the property so he can basically whine and say, oh, look how unfair I'm being treated.

This is communism. This is the government seizing, you know, private property. And, and while I, you know, while I agree with you that for most people who, and who use logic, and if you had people out there who understood the situation, they would view it through a logic prism that Trump simply is lying about the amount of money he has. I think Trump can always sell his supporters a bill of goods. And I've already seen some of Donald Trump's proxies out there kind of intimating that if New York attorney general, Letitia James does this, this

is going to be great for Donald Trump. This is going to be great for his election and that this is what he wants. I think I saw a New York post article. I saw Frank Lutz talk about it. So to me, there are some people who are already kind of seeding that, which is a kind of a real wide thing to see that actually happen, but that's how Donald Trump deals with everything. I mean, he cons until the very last moment.

And then if you look historically though, Michael Popak, all of his things, like most of his things have gone bankrupt. Most of his things actually result in the outcome that you and I are talking about. He very rarely makes the smart move that saves the business. You want to talk about the casinos, want to talk about you know his prior businesses I mean we'll talk in a little bit about the merger between the SPAC Digital World Acquisition Company also known as a blank check company with Trump media Which controls truth social and that formal merger taking place at the end of last week in the disclosure Documents that the shareholders

had to approve, they had to list all of Trump's bankruptcies and all of Trump's business failures. And it was a massive, massive list. So that's a great segue to talk about this final lingering question that I think a lot of people have, which is we heard about this merger between this Trump media, which controls Truth Social and a SPAC, Digital World Acquisition Company, and now this

company is going public together and it's gonna now trade under the ticker symbol DJT early next week, but the stock was down 13% last week. What does this all mean? How does this tie into Donald Trump's assets? Is this liquid? Can he access it now? We're gonna answer all of those questions, but let's take our first quick break of the show.

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That's shopbeam.com slash legal af and use legal af the code when you check out for up to 40% off. Hey, Karen. Great to see Karen Freeman-Agnifilo there. Love it. I love it. I love it. We've got a big announcement that we're making though right now on LegalAF that I can officially say. And this is something that we've been waiting to announce. We're going to be starting a Legal AF Patreon. There it is right there. Patreon.com slash Legal AF, if you want to join. It's patreon.com slash Legal AF.

And I think the best way to think about that is it's going to be, or I'm just going to teach it like it's law school. is it's going to be, or I'm just going to teach it like it's law school. And we're going to go into the background of elements of causes of action. We're going to really do a deep dive, not so much on the cases themselves, which we cover here, but if you ever wanted, I think a taste of what it would be like to be in a professor Mycelis or Professor Popok law school class where we can get a little more granular on claims, causes of action, jurisdictional issues.

I mean, look, let's be real. It's gonna get a little geeky and dorky on there, but that's what that's gonna be for. Popok and I said we really need an outlet to be a little more dorky than we already are or geeky. I'm not sure if those terms are, but that's how I consider myself. So if those terms aren't politically correct anymore, I apologize. But what is correct is you're going to get those breakdowns on the Patreon,

patreon.com slash legal AF. You can sign up right now. Michael Popok, or I should say professor Pope, what can people expect from that? Patreon? Yeah, I think you framed it right. You and I talked about different ways of doing it and different kind of content rather than just doing, um, exclusive hot takes on cutting edge, you know, uh, in the rip from the headlines issues.

Although we may do that as well. I've got, I've got one up there that sort of fits that category. What we're really going to focus on is when you and I and Karen talk about a topic, whether it be race judicata or federal versus state processes or the discovery process in civil court or enforcement of judgments, things that are part and parcel of the molecular level of what we are talking about when we're talking about civil rights, constitutional rights, the standards of review for certain types of constitutional rights and how that's applied, things that happen at the Supreme Court level, what they mean. We'll toss off because we feel an obligation to not just use some sort of term of art or industry

term, some sort of geeky lawyer thing that only you and I can giggle about. We try to take the moment at that time to say, well, that means the following, but here we're really going to be able to continue your theme, geek out and teach about what that means. And then people we hope will be able to use those building blocks and that toolbox and take it back to the hot takes, take it back to the podcast and really get a better understanding. I mean, I likened it to sort of Ted talk, or as you said, some sort of unaccredited law school. It's not really a law school, but we are going to treat it as we've always done. We don't, despite the name, we don't patronize. We don't talk down to our audience. We try to, we know everybody is educated and very interested. And by the way, I did spill water while I was on a break.

I'm sorry about that. And, and we, and that's the way we teach that there is a, a, a, a, an audience that is hungry for this kind of information. And that's the way we're going to approach it. And you and I have been talking about it for a while. You and I teased it a little bit when I came out and visited you last October. That was a very important momentous day that I'll leave for another time. And I visited you in California.

One of the things we were talking about was sort of like, what does 2024 look like? Both in terms of content, what's going on in the world of politics and law and things like this. Absolutely. And let's geek out on what a SPAC is, a special purpose acquisition company, also referred to as a blank check company, is a kind of a shortcut path, which is why the SEC has really started to clamp down on these and this vehicle. It's a way to bring

private companies public. One route that I'm sure you're aware of is the initial public offering IPO, where established companies go through this rigorous process before they can go public and trade on public exchanges. Well, in the infinite wisdom of the private investment and public and stock brokers and all of the stuff that they were kind of creating and securities lawyers, they created this kind of Frankensteinian vehicle called a SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company that basically it goes kind of semi-public first, it starts trading on a stock exchange, it gets this infusion of cash when it files a document or a form called an S1, and then it is tasked or it's usually

viewed as having like, in theory, sophisticated investors who other investors will put money into so they could go out and they could go and find a company that meets a certain criteria. That's a private company and bring that private company public. And so that's the process that took place here. There was a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition Company. It was started by this guy named Patrick Orlando, who's since been kind of kicked off this digital world acquisition company, SPAC, and is now suing Donald Trump and Trump Media and suing the SPAC, which is kind of everything in Donald Trump's world turns into kind of litigation, but Orlando kind of founded this thing. You're not allowed to have communications about the merger before you end up doing

it with your target company, because the idea is it's supposed to be a blank check company. People put money into it, then you go out and you interview all of these companies, and then you try to find the right one that meets the criteria merge with, bring that private company public. The SEC then sue Digital World Acquisition Company for having improper communications with Trump Media prior to the merger. That resulted in a settlement, I think an $18 million fine right there and a stipulation by Digital World Acquisition Company that they engaged in this misconduct, nonetheless, with all of the disclosures being made about Trump's bankruptcies and business failures, the SEC then at least approved the merger

to take place between Trump media, which controls truth values, the SEC then at least approved the merger to take place between Trump Media, which controls Truth Social, the social media company that Trump runs, which by the way, I mean, I'll have to look at the metrics again, but when I looked at it last time, they get like less views on Truth Social than we do here on Midas Touch Network in a 48 hour period here, than I think they do in like a 30 day period,

was one of the last stats I saw, it's close to that range, I would say. Also this Trump media was doing kind of, I think low to mid, probably low seven figure revenue, no profit at all. And so, if you normally, in terms of evaluation of a media company, right now, and again,

I would say it's not always the case, but like evaluation of a media company, say it's about five times EBITDA, or maybe slightly higher, but say five times EBITDA. EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or it's another way of,

or you can just say five times profit, which is slightly different concepts. But Trump media has no profits, it's all loss, even if it was trading at five times revenue. I mean, I think you- It's three million in revenue against 50 million in losses. It's three million in revenue. So you're not talking about a billion dollars,

but anyway, it would be trading, and if you valued this at $3 billion, it would be trading at somewhere near a thousand times revenue, which is just something that is so absurd as to not even have that conversation in a series. Is it overinflated? It just simply doesn't exist other than in a meme type of stock. But what happened is the shareholders voted to approve the merger.

That happens on Friday. On Friday, with this merger being announced, now it goes from being like this SPAC to, okay, now it's going to be on the public markets. It officially has a name change early next week. It goes from DWAC to DJT is what it's going to be trading under. And now I think the kind of smart money, you know, that's looking at the meme stock, that starts to kick in once it actually is publicly traded.

looking at the meme stock, that starts to kick in once it actually is publicly traded. And this is why the SEC has been clamping down on SPACs in general. If you look at 2023, there have been so many SPACs that have gone bankrupt because they've not taken mature companies, but they've taken very immature, financially defective companies public that don't go through the rigors of the IPO process and so now we saw in the first day of trading this Trump's backdrop about 14% when the merged company now is about you know was trading at $36 and you know there's some other staples that I think we should talk about that there is a six month lock up period where Trump and the other kind of top executives would not be able to sell their shares.

That can be amended by the board, the boards like Trump's kids and Trump starts to dump his stock, in my opinion, the thing starts to crash and then you'll see an avalanche of lawsuits take place. So that's kind of where we're at. And Popak, this is where I want to throw it to you. In many ways now, the temptation for Donald Trump could be his undoing in the sense that he sees this paper money right here that could be in the billions. He sees the stock price going down. He wants to convert the paper into actual liquidity. The moment he does that, the meme stock, in my opinion,

starts to totally take a nosedive like we've never seen before the litigation starts to mount like crazy what do you what do you make of all this mess yeah yeah I rereading a lot of his truth social and listening to you describe it he's he's become the living embodiment of Scrooge McDuck it's mine mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. Everything's mine. Unfortunately, that doesn't work. He's he let's let me tie the SPAC money. And it's funny money right now until he can get access to it back to the bond and his leak and his financial difficulties. We've always said and we predicted and I did a

hot take on it like six weeks ago, that he was trying to delay the judgment, having the judgments being put in place against them and E. Jean Carroll and in the Manhattan DA's office to get over the March 22nd deadline for the shareholders to approve the merger of his Truth Social Company with the Special Purpose Acquisition Company, therefore going public, as you said, in a very short-cutty way without having to properly comply with SEC regulations if you went public the old fashioned way and take the thing public. Then you've got the combination of that is that the relatively low number of people on

a social media platform, the last time I saw that number, it was like 9 million against 3 billion for Meta, for Facebook, things like that, and Twitter. But they are pumping up the stock price because they think they don't care about the fundamentals of the economics of the company, that at best, and you were being kind, would value the company at 15 million with an M, not six billion with a B, and that Delta is just the feverish dreams of his cult followers.

It's really not even a meme stock anymore. It's a cult stock because there's no rational investor who based on the numbers here or the projected numbers into the future would invest at the numbers. I mean, I saw some postings in Truth Social where people were going, let's just get it to 45, 47, because it would be cool, because he was 45th president, he'll be the 47th president. I'm like, that's your stock recommendation?

Let's pump it up to 45, 47. I mean, this is dumb money. We saw the movie, the book on dumb money. This is it. And they know they're doing it. It's like the group in Reddit that circled the wagons around GameStop, Bed Bath & Beyond, and AMC Theaters whose underlying metrics and business model were not good. I mean, renting video games at a mall

for various obvious reasons is not a compelling business model in 2024. And yet that stock got saved from the institutional investors who were squeezing the stock in short sales. That's where the phrase, don't sell me short. What's going on now is they are selling Donald Trump short in advance of open trading

on Monday. That's where the 14% decline already and value is coming because people who know what they're doing are betting that the stock is going to drop from $34 to $35 a share. It's already dropped in the mid 40s already. It's going to go lower and they'll be able to make the difference in their transaction. Donald Trump is right now prevented for the next six months from actually taking a loan out against the shares, it's called hypothecating, or selling the shares. However, just as in everything in his life, he controls the company and he'll be able to convince the sucker bet on the shareholders to give him the right to sell his shares early, because he needs the money. And they're like, let's help Donald Trump.

We ought to save America, make America great, let him out of the lockup. And that's what's going to happen. And then they're going to, he's going to, as you said, crush the stock because he owns 79 million shares of this stock. And if he sells, let's just say he sells 500 million worth to replenish his coffers. What do you think the average investor is going to happen to their stock as it then trends down into the 20s or below? But these people don't care. That's the thing.

This is just a vote for Donald Trump by virtue of owning his stock and riding it into oblivion. So we know he's been trying to replenish his coffers there and it's all paper. It's 3.5 billion like three days ago, but it's less than 3 billion now. Then we'll have to see with the stock market and whether he gets short squeezed by institutional investors betting that the stock price is going to drop, I don't think as opposed to Reddit, there's enough money, even small donation money in Trump social media subscriber base to compensate for the squeeze. It was different on Reddit. It was like tens of millions of people who flooded their money and it became, you know, a hundred millionaires on a $5,000 investment overnight

until they lost it all. I don't think there's enough leverage on that side. And so, by the way, this is an example of what we'll do more of on Patreon, where when Ben talks about SPACs and talks about, you know, all's where we can spend 10, 15 minutes doing that as an even deeper dive, little plug there. So look, to answer your question,

I think that the stock price, the stock over time will crash. Donald Trump will get some relief and some life preserver, some lifesaver from this. And then I wanted to just touch on one last thing and turn it back to you because I didn't get a chance to talk about it. Monday is the technical deadline for him

to put up the money, put up or shut up. However, until she goes through, and there's a process, because I do creditors rights in New York, until Letitia James is able to seize, advertise, sell at sheriff's sale and auction. And there's always the right of redemption where the party whose property is being sold can redeem if they have the money. He has more, I don't want to, you know, we don't blow smoke or sunshine. He has more than Monday to come up with the money because she's going to have to go through

at least a 30 day process even after she seizes it. and she's not going to throw the tenants out of 40 Wall Street. She's not going to throw Donald Trump out of the thing that she's selling. I'm not sure she can either under New York law. So she'll have to go through a process and that'll be the extra time he needs to get the money until the very last moment when, and it's done electronically, it used to be done literally on the courthouse steps when they sold property and the gavel would drop.

And that was electronic gavel. Until the moment when the gavel drops electronically, he can bid back the property and put up, he has to put up real money at that moment or not. But that's what I think now in listening to us talk is what he's doing. He's gonna wait for the process to happen, grift off of it, raise the money, get access to this money that we just identified, and then at the

last minute, redeem the properties when he can and stop the judgment until his appeal is over. By the way, his appeal will end in him losing, and he will have to either put up this cash that he then puts up will then go directly to the general treasury of the people of the state of New York. But he will lose. But we are watching this whole machinations that you and I are trying to identify here of what he's doing until he loses. You know, because these disclosures about whether or not he's gonna access this money was not made

prior to the actual merger taking place and if he were to do it I think abruptly he may be able to access some portion of that capital but I think it will invite as I mentioned before like a tsunami of securities litigation that he and all others on that board are going to be embroiled in for the rest of their lives, which could then result once again in the disgorgement of that money through the types of process that we've seen

in some of this other litigation. I wanna talk about what's going on in the Manhattan District Attorney criminal case. I wanna talk about what's going on in the Manhattan District Attorney criminal case. I want to talk about what's going on with Judge Eileen Cannon, and then briefly touch upon this George Stephanopoulos defamation lawsuit. Let's take our last quick break of the show. Ever tried to break a bad habit and felt like you're climbing Mount Everest in flip-flops? Yeah, we've been there too. But here's a breath of fresh air, fume. It's not about giving up, it's about switching up. Fume takes your bad habit and simply makes it better, healthier,

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Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash LegalAF. That's rocketmoney.com slash LegalAF. Rocketmoney.com slash legal AF rocketmoney.com slash legal AF. Thank you to our pro democracy sponsors right there. You can check out the discount codes in the description below. Michael Popak, a lot of developments been taken place over the past two weeks in the Manhattan district attorney criminal case against Donald Trump for his making of those hush money payments and the falsification of the

business records and trying in his trying to interfere with the 2016 election and to conceal what he believed was very damaging information, which was very damaging information about him and his whatever the heck even happened with Stormy Daniels. I wouldn't call it an affair or relationship because it lasted about two and a half seconds and the way she described what occurred is quite frankly vomit inducing. But a lot of developments from Judge Murchon ruling on motions in Limone, which I think tells us these pre-trial motions allowing Cohen and Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal and others to testify. Donald Trump wanted to exclude their testimony.

Trump wanted to exclude his own testimony. Trump wanted to exclude, Trump wanted to rather try to assert kind of a semi advice of counsel defense, but didn't want to waive attorney-client privilege, which he would be required to do, which the judge says that doesn't exist. There's no such thing as a semi-advice of counsel defense. If you're going to blame your lawyers, you got to assert that in advance of trial. You did not do that.

So, I'm not going to allow you to claim an advice council defense. That's not like a real advice of council defense. And then we learned of course, about the 31,000 documents after 70,000 documents, and then another 15,000. It's not like a lot of documents coming in from the department of justice and the SDNY after Trump requested them back in January of this past year, 2024. They started coming in March and then trickled in last week and more. Finally, the final production came in last week and then Trump said,

ah, look, this is misconduct by the Manhattan district attorney. They hid this from us. The Manhattan district attorney was like, what are you talking about? Like we requested this a year ago. You requested it for the first time in January. This is your fault. We're not the reason for this. Judge Marshawn's like, I don't know what's going on. I'm gonna set a hearing on March 25th when the trial was supposed to start. I'm going to adjourn trial until mid-April, which

is where it's currently scheduled for. And now the Manhattan District Attorney responded, Michael Popak, tell us the status of this case right now. Where do we go from here? Yeah. It's not as bad as it sounded in some of the filings. It was less than 70,000, not documents, pages of information that came out.

And the Manhattan DA has already gone through it from the Southern District of New York Department of Justice, US Attorney's Office, a dump, and determined that there's only 275 documents, 275 documents, meaning documents. Could be five-page document, 10-page document, but that's it. There's just 275 pages of documents, most of which are inculpatory, meaning they tend to prove the guilt of Donald Trump, not the innocence. And they're not the Manhattan DA's fault for

their late production. Manhattan DA only has an obligation as a prosecutor to produce exculpatory or inculpatory material in their care, custody, and control in their possession. Sometimes the defendant will be able to convince a judge, federal or state, to expand the definition of the prosecution team, to expand the reach of what is in their care, custody, and control. But that wasn't done here. And everything the Manhattan DA had that they obtained from the Southern District of New York and just the little side exit ramp here for the, you know, I don't want to assume anybody knows what I'm talking about, is that the the feds investigated certain

aspects but not completely of Donald Trump's use of Michael Cohen, Allen Weisselberg, and others to run what we've now referred to as the Catch and Kill program to sign up improperly, criminally, and to cover up Donald Trump's sexual exploits, mainly because he had tremendous blowback after the Access Hollywood tape was the hot take was revealed about him bragging that he could sexually assault women and get away with it as a celebrity. He needed to tamp down that as he was in a dogfight of an election. It's a terrible term, sorry. He was in a hand-to-hand combat with Hillary Clinton to try to win the election. That's how this program came up. So the Feds, including a little overlap when

Donald Trump got into office, and Bill Barr and others were the head of the Justice Department, did their own investigation. They interviewed Michael Cohen a few times. You know, it's public. Michael Cohen went to jail and there was some pleas and some convictions of him. Alan Weisselberg was evaluated apparently as the chief financial officer of Donald Trump and they found him to be not that credible. Just a big shock. Alan Weisselberg is about to, has pled guilty already to perjury and is going to be sentenced by Judge Mershon related to his testimony in the New York Attorney General fraud case that you and I talked about at the top of the show. So there's nothing in there that either hasn't been publicly reported. All you got to do

is pull the docket, the federal docket. Everybody can pull it electronically. You can read every document related to Michael Cohen that he's filed on his own behalf or filed against them by the government. And you know exactly what you need to know if you're in Donald Trump shoes and you want to cross-ex Donald Michael Cohen. And the judge said that in his recent order. He said, I'm not going to exclude Michael Cohen from, he's a fact witness with recipient knowledge that goes to the heart of the conspiracy that's been alleged. You know, it's only got four parts. It's Alan Weisselberg, the guys over at the National Enquirer, Donald Trump Trump and Michael

Cohen and then the recipients like Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougall and we can't forget Dino Sajudin who's my favorite witness because Donald Trump thought that his story that he had a baby out of wedlock with a concierge at one of his buildings shouldn't go out to the public whether it was true or not and pay the guy $30,000. He was actually the first Stormy Daniels. It was a guy who was a doorman in New York named Dino Sedudin. You can look him up and I have a hot take on it. So those, that's it.

There's not a lot of moving parts here. My head scratcher continuing my theme today is who does Donald Trump have in his favor to testify at trial? I know the overwhelming amount of evidence arrayed against him, documents, evidence, witnesses, and the like. Who does he have? I mean, that's his problem, and it's not going to be him, even though you and I are on one side of the betting line with Karen about our colleague about Donald Trump taking the stand. I don't think there's any way he takes the stand. But in terms of what's gonna happen next leading into the, what was gonna be the start of the trial

has now become a hearing. And the hearing is for the judge who has now completely cleared the underbrush of all issues in advance of this hearing. He issued two orders denying every everyone of Donald Trump's motions related to the exclusion of evidence and witnesses and defenses he wanted to try to run up the flag pole in front of the jury, not happening, including the one you called the presence of counsel. I call it the essence of counsel. It's like a new cologne owed to counsel. It's just they're in the air

somewhere and therefore I get away with whatever crime that I committed because there was a lawyer standing behind me. That's not how that works. So what the judge has done with a machete is just cut down everything. Any issue. What's the issue? 75,000 pages of documents. Did you go through them? Do you have time to go through them? We're done. I don't want to hear about the documents ever again. You got plenty of time. So what I think is gonna happen at this hearing, and we'll report on it when it does, no cameras, no audio, but we'll have people in the room that we trust that will be able to give us info, is that

he's going to say, all right, I've resolved all the motions. I've resolved the issue. You guys have worked out this last minute delay of Donald Trump's creation because you waited until January in a case going to trial in March to ask for documents by subpoena to the Department of Justice. That should have been done a year and a half ago. So A, you're not gonna benefit from your own malfeasance and foot dragging and deletory conduct. And secondly, you got them now and you got plenty of time.

Okay. They're not going to be used on day one. And I take the government at its word, the prosecutors at their word, that there's very little in this giant haystack, there are very little needles that are going to help you in your case. You know what you need to know about Michael Cohen. You know what you need to know about Allen Weisselberg and anybody else that you're going to cross-examine. And that's it. We're done. And we're setting the trial. And here's where I want to hear from you, Ben, of course, is I think he sets the trial in April. He'll bound. He, we mentioned the Bannon trial. The Bannon trial is being prosecuted by the Manhattan DA's office, the same, in

front of the same judge, Judge Murchon. Some people at home might be thinking, is this the only criminal court judge that exists in the Supreme Court of New York? No. But he's gotten the Trump case on the 17-count criminal conviction for tax evasion of the Trump Organization. He's got the this case, he's he's gonna be handling the Allen Weisselberg sentencing off the plea and he's got the Steve Bannon build the wall state criminal prosecution case. Now that case was scheduled for April but he's in control of his own docket. He'll say this one is more important than that one. We're going in April and then we'll see

the invariable social media posts and election interference. He's taking trials out of turn. Yeah, that's what happens in our justice system. So I think he sets an April trial date. It's projected to be a six to eight week trial, which puts us into June. Fine.

There's a little breather. And if the, by that point in June, at the end of the Supreme court term, they've made their ruling against Donald Trump on immunity, Judge Chuckin can pick up, add her 90 days, and get her trial done in August, while Fonny Willis says July is her trial. Now, they're not all going to go at the same time,

and there is going to be a gap between them. I just want to manage expectations. No judge is going to force Donald Trump, like, to overlap trials. No judge is going to force Donald Trump to overlap trials. They're not happening, but there's still time to get uh, Chutkin and Mershon done in those two trials before November 5th. You know what's interesting, we're going to talk about Judge Eileen Cannon in a little bit who still has not removed that May 20th date, which she has her as her fake trial date, even though she held a hearing earlier this month, the very beginning of this month where she said that

special counsel Jack Smith's July request of a trial date was way too soon and that she was inclined to set this more like 2025. So that may push upon Judge Mershon to set this right away mid April and basically say, look, I'd consider setting it, May 6th to me was always a good target date. It's after Passover. It builds a little more time for people to kind of come back to prepare the security measures,

but he still may be looking at that May 20th date and say, my hands are tied, we're going in April right now because of that federal trial date, which is still scheduled despite the fact that we all know that she's just kind of putting it on there, Judge Canada is to kind of create kind of confusion and distraction. So I'll say this to kind of hedge my bets, I'll say it's not going to be later than May 6th. But Popok, I would not be surprised if it occurs in April, which by the way is our perfect segue to Judge Cannon and everything that she's doing, not doing. I mean, the messiest, sloppiest docket I've ever seen.

I mean, the messiest, sloppiest docket I've ever seen. I'm not sure that she even knows which motions she hasn't even ruled on yet. We also learned that for some various odd and suspicious reasons, some of her clerks quit in 2023 as well, which is very unusual. And then they try to come up with justifications of why they left.

It still sounds pretty suspicious to me. Like she hasn't made basic rulings on the status of whether documents that Donald Trump wants to make public like classified rather, I should say, um, confidential witness information and confidential witness list, confidential statements pursuant to the protective order can go to the public, which special counsel Jack Smith filed a motion for Reconsideration when Judge Cannon previously wanted to release them saying it would cause Manifest injustice and that she applied a clearly

erroneous legal standard by converting a basic good cause standard for keeping this information basic good cause standard for keeping this information confidential to one of the government needing to show a compelling interest, which Jack Smith said, you just followed the complete wrong 11 circuit law. Just look up the most basic case. So she hasn't really ruled on that. She issued a SEPA ruling this past week that we've been waiting for, although she said she would be issuing kind of the non-classified portion of the order, but she hasn't released that yet. So all we see is the sealed order, which is basically literally

just a caption page right there. But in typical Judge canon fashion, she kind of makes the order non-order, where she rules that special counsel Jack Smith can withhold documents pursuant to CIPA section 4 certain classified documents but she always does this on all of her things reserving ruling on part of it so she like reserves the ruling so she could avoid actually making the order that Jack Smith can appeal so that's kind of a very odd way of doing it. I mean, you either grant a motion or you deny a motion or you can continue the motion. She kind of comes up with these things where she's like,

well, when it comes to something, I will kind of temporarily deny it without prejudice, but let me come up with the game, everybody. You wanna play a game? You know, and I kid you not when you're like, Ben, what the heck are you talking about? Are you losing your mind? Why would I wanna sign up for patreon.com legal AF

if you're talking about games? Well, because that's what Judge Eileen Cannon is doing right here. And in one of the strangest orders I've ever seen, and Popak, I've reached out to everyone from like Harry Litman and all of my national Defense and national security lawyer friends and they're like we've just never seen anything like we don't know what this is You know like this is not a normal order at all and basically in it judge

Eileen Cannon tells special counsel Jack Smith and Donald Trump, but it's really directed at Jack Smith I want you to assume that the jury makes the following factual findings and therefore I want you to assume both of these scenarios are correct, these different scenarios, and provide jury instructions to a hypothetical jury about how you would instruct them under 18 USC section 793, which is the Espionage Act. We just pause there for a second and say this, like instruct the jury. Look, there are model, what's called model jury instructions

that juries get in criminal cases and civil cases. And it's actually the lawyers for the different parties, the prosecution, the criminal defendants, or the plaintiffs and the defendants, who basically you go, you look up what the model instructions are, and you provide the model instructions to the judge. So you do the work,

the judge usually looks at them and goes, got it. These are the ones I'm turning over to the jury. When the jury ultimately reaches a verdict, or when the jury gets instructed on the law, you're providing those to the judge and the judge turns it over. Now, there's usually not a lot of controversy here at all because there are model instructions that are followed. Here when it comes to the Espionage Act, there would be model Espionage Act instructions

because guess what? Espionage Act 18 USC 793 has been around since 1917. So we know how to do this. This is not some novel law that was just created. There are model instructions in a case like this. This is the Mar-a-Lago document case where Trump unauthorized and in an authorized matter withheld national defense information,

you would go and look up, okay, I do my little research on my legal tools, I would say, okay, here's the model instructions, or I would look at other cases in Florida or the 11th circuit federal court, and I would say, got it, here are my jury instructions, judge, here they are, and they're just model generic instructions

that the jury gets. Here, Judge Cannon basically says, here are two scenarios I want you to consider. Riddle me this. In one scenario, I want you to assume in a prosecution of a former president for allegedly retaining documents in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 793,

a jury is permitted to examine a record retained by a former president in his or her personal possession. And then another hypothetical scenario, assume Jack Smith that a president has sole authority under the PRA, the Presidential Records Act, to categorize records as personal or presidential during his presidency, his or her presidency, and provide instructions to the jury assuming the jury finds those things to be correct. Well, both of those things are just completely false. There

isn't a special former president presumption or exception, and by the way this is where Judge Eileen Cannon got reversed previously, twice by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals where she was acting like Donald Trump got special privileges and special benefits because he was a former president. And the 11th circuit said he doesn't. And the 11th circuit previously ruled in reversing Judge Eileen Cannon twice regarding the search warrant that Donald Trump has no,

this is a direct quote from the 11th circuit, no possessory interest over these documents which belong to the government, which belong to we, the people, not Donald Trump. Her second hypothetical scenario is saying, basically, Jack Smith assume that Trump can telepathically declass, this is what it means when you break it down, that Trump can telepathically

declassify records and not only that, declare it his personal property under the presidential records act, including our nuclear codes, our classified information, just because he's like, trust me, bro. And then the courts have to just agree with that. And no federal courts can question that at all. Both of those scenarios are not just flawed, but like tinfoil hat flawed, and she wants Jack Smith to assume this.

So let me just round it out by saying, she wants Jack Smith to respond. I think Jack Smith is not going to take the bait. He's not gonna respond to either of these. I think he's gonna say, we can't, both are flawed. Here are the model jury instructions. Here's what the 11th circuit says. We think that you should submit the model instructions

and then see what she does. Again, you go, well, why isn't Jack Smith filing an appeal to this? Why isn't he filing a mandamus? The question becomes like a mandamus to, but what is this? Like, I'm not, no one even recognizes what the heck this thing even is that.

Is this a final order? Is this a game she's playing? Like what in the world is this even's it is this a final order is this is this a game she's playing like what in the world is is this even what is this even so that's kind of the quagmire jack smith and ultimately canon not qualified to be a judge not qualified for this case but like this is again no one's even seen this uh before so michael popak i think i rounded out that issue i'd love for you to talk about Stephanopoulos and the defamation case there. Anything else you'd like to say on Canon, do that. But I think I chewed that topic up.

Yeah. And so the people know, Ben and I communicate and we agreed that he would do the lion's share of Canon. I don't want people like in the chat like, Oh, Polklock didn't get to say anything. We, we, we chatted. Then we decided that was, that was a good use of both of our time. You got DA, I got Canon. You get Stefanopolis. Right. Right.

I don't want to think people are like, Oh shit, you know, they didn't, they didn't do that right. But the only thing I'm going to say is, and we'll keep track of it. And Judge Ludic, who's one of our honored, hopefully regular guests here on the Midas Touch Network on illegal AF, we're going to watch whether the lemon law is going to be implemented at the 11th circuit level, once Jack Smith finally gets around to being able to find a way to bring an appeal of anything that she's been doing that you just outlined and whether

the three strikes in your hour or what I call the lemon law is going to be applied to remove a link on it from continuing to preside over this case. I think the way I would put it, I'll leave it on this before I turn to the other case down in Florida, Southern District of Florida, the Stephanopoulos case, which won't be around long by the time we're done talking about it, it'll probably be about over and against Donald Trump, is that she, from a canon standpoint and from a removal standpoint, the quicker she gets off the case, the more likely justice is ever gonna be done.

And she has basically painted herself into a corner and she keeps doubling down on these ridiculous decisions that she makes. Like she starts off on the wrong foot in the choreography and she keeps doubling down on these ridiculous decisions that she makes. She starts off on the wrong foot in the choreography and she never catches up and then she doubles down on it as you've just described. The result is she's painted herself into a corner and now her ego is invested. This is what I think the 11th Circuit, regardless of which three judge panel gets assigned to this. And she better hope it's not Rosenberg or Chief Judge Pryor, because they've already had it with her in the first

two appeals before the case even got to an indictment stage when she tried to interfere with the executive branch doing its job. I think that they go, you know what, she's just, there's just too many wrongheaded lack of judgment decisions, and it's impacting and undermining the administration of justice in her courtroom. That's what I would do as Judge Popok. I don't get to be that. I get to be podcast host, colleague of yours, and a part-time professor on YouTube, but that's what I would do. On the Stephanopoulos thing, it is obvious, this is just the MO, you can write this down, it's like a parlor game or a drinking game you can play at home. When Donald Trump has a terrible news cycle because he can't come up with a scratch

in his civil case for fraud, he's gotta tell the world that he's up for sale and he's auctioning himself off to the highest bidder, foreign or domestic, and compromising himself as a candidate. As a result, I don't have the money. My children don't love me. I can't find the money. And then on the same day or overlapping, Judge Murchon gives him nine separate losses of everything leading into his criminal trial. He's got to distract attention. And the way he does that is, and try to grab the news cycle, is he files meritless bad

faith cases, even ones in which he knows he's going to get ultimately fined or sanctioned. It's just the cost of doing business. To Donald Trump, a million dollar sanction like he got last time, profiling something meritlessly in the Southern District of Florida in a civil case against somebody is just Trump change. Literally it's Trump, Trump change coming from his followers. He just, he's, he's has a knack like PT Barnum of separating his followers from their money.

There are, there is a sucker board every minute. And so for him, it's just a toll on the road of his BS that he'll gladly pay because he'll make it back a hundredfold in duping, you know, in selling sneakers or meme cult stock or grifting with emails. A million dollars is nothing that's a that's an ad campaign for him so he files without without any remorse or repercussion he's a he is a vexatious litigant that should be slapped back for this he forum shopped he judge shopped on this one because he should have filed in the West Palm Beach division of the Southern District of Florida where I

practice and where I'm a member. And instead, which is right across the bridge from Palm Beach where he lives, West Palm is literally five miles away. That's where he should have filed. Instead he filed or attempted to file in Miami Division, which is 70 miles south of where he lives because he wanted to avoid. Some people may be going, well, isn't Aileen Cannon up there? No, Aileen Cannon is one of four judges up there. And a lot of the cases, especially in West Palm, go to Judge Middlebrooks. And Don Middlebrooks has already had it with Donald Trump. And find him a million dollars for a fake lawsuit against the DNs, the Democratic National

Committee and Hillary Clinton. So they want to get as far away from Don Middlebrooks as possible. The last time they randomly filed, when they were trying to go after the New York Attorney General and arguing she didn't have jurisdiction over their trust, because it's a Florida trust, they filed in state court to avoid Don Middlebrooks. The New York Attorney General removed the case to federal court where it belonged, and it got a sign of Don Middlebrooks, the New York Attorney General removed the case to federal court where it belonged and it got a sign of Don Middlebrooks and then he quickly, Trump quickly dismissed it. So to avoid Don Middlebrooks completely, well I practiced in front of him, tried cases in front of him, he drove the case down or electronically drove the case down to Miami.

He got assigned the chief judge of the Southern District. She is not to be trifled with. Celia Altenaga is a well respected jurist. I've appeared in front of her when she was a state court judge before she got elevated to the federal court by Bush. She's not a MAGA Trump-er. She doesn't wear politics on her sleeve. Sure, she's Federalist Society. She's a Cuban American. First Latin woman to be on the federal bench in Miami, which is quite an honor. And she runs a tight ship. In fact, she's the one that I wanted to take over the Cannon case from the very, very beginning. And this case against George

Stephanopoulos, because while he was interviewing a representative Mace and challenging her, because she was one of these proxy surrogates with Donald Trump, trying to pump him up, and he said, well, that's great. But what about the fact that he's been judged by a jury and a federal judge to be a rapist? Doesn't that give you pause? And Donald Trump's, oh, I'm not a rapist. I'm a technical rapist. I'm not a rapist.

I'm a sexual abuser under arcane interpretation of New York criminal law. Really? And that's the defamation? He already tried this exact same approach, exact same claim against E. Jean Carroll herself because she went on television and when she was interviewed, she said he raped her. And he tried to bring a counterclaim against her. And the judge, on numerous occasions, federal Judge Luke Kaplan, has come out and said, you are a rapist.

You are technically a rapist. The fact that she couldn't remember to the jury's satisfaction, whether it was your finger, a digit, or your genital, does not render you not a rapist. And so you haven't been defamed because somebody has called you that. Even putting aside for a minute whether somebody with Donald Trump's reputation for sexual abuse and bragging about it, misogyny and attacks on women could have a reputation that could be

defamed. Let's set that aside for a minute. That's for a Patreon, a Pope Hacker, my cellist talk. But how do you bring a case against George Stephanopoulos and ABC News and ultimately Disney, who owns them, who have First Amendment rights to do reporting, who use terminology that is identical to what a federal judge has already ruled in a case and therefore is law of the case up there or race judicata we like to call it. And then with a straight face filed the suit. The answer is they don't straight face file the suit. They hire a local guy who, I'll be frank, who I practice in Coral Gables. I never heard of this guy. He's in a small little shop. I think it's three people. He doesn't apparently care about his law license. He signs anything that's put in front of him. Lord knows who drafted this. And he's now sued them for

defamation. And the defense, obviously, is going to be a number of things on a motion to dismiss or, as I've said in another venue with us, that they're gonna file a Rule 11 motion for sanctions early, early on in the case. They'll cite all the ridiculous, meritless litigation. They'll try to have Donald Trump declared a vexatious litigant that should not be allowed without court permission to file any more lawsuits. Because whether it's the Pulitzer board or it's the DNC and Hillary or it's this case or Michael Cohen also in the Southern District of Florida in front of Judge Gales,

a great judge that I know in Miami. And that got, as soon as he had to sit for his deposition, that got dismissed and attorney's fees had to be paid to Michael Cohen and all that. That's what's going to happen here. And early, like you're going to see boom, because the ABC News has good lawyers as opposed to Donald Trump. And they're going to crush this lawyer for Donald Trump. But I want this to be the message here, the takeaway. Donald Trump doesn't care. He doesn't

care whether this has merit. He doesn't ever think in his wildest dreams he's going to win the case against George Stephanopoulos. He also probably already understands and he's been told that he's going to get sanctioned for this. And so are his lawyers, right? And, you know, we'll have to figure that out later. He doesn't care. It allows him to grift, it allows him to distract from the story, it allows him to grab the media cycle, and it gives him something to talk about when he's at his fundraisers and when he's at his rallies. And so this case, just like the Michael Cohen case and the DNC case, has no merit. And he's pulled a judge that is, I can't tell you how no nonsense, most federal judges are no nonsense. I've never met one that was nonsense. But she is not to be trifled with. You don't mess around with Judge Altenaga. And I

think he's met his match. The only question for me has been how quickly in the life cycle of the case, the case gets dismissed and he gets sanctioned. It will happen. question for me has been how quickly in the life cycle of the case, the case gets dismissed and he gets sanctioned. It will happen. I don't know if it happens in the first quarter after it's filing or it happens towards the end of 2024, but it will happen. But he has no intention of winning this case anyway. Because what Trump will do is here's what will happen. ABC will file a rule 11 sanctions with a 12 B 6 motion to dismiss. Like you can predict Donald Trump's tactics like so easily. Trump, rather than dismissing the case as he should, when you get the

letter, he will do what he did in all the other cases. He will then file an amended complaint, try to get another headline that he's filed an amended lawsuit. So he'll double down on it. He'll basically just tweak a few things with the complaint at the very last day to try to justify the amendment, to try to delay it even more. And then that will force ABC and its lawyers and Stephanopoulos' lawyers to file another rule 11,

another 12b6 motion, and then Donald Trump will try to delay that motion from being heard. And that's the only reason, Popak, why that may be heard in late 2024 as opposed to in the next 45 days when it otherwise would be heard because Trump will do those tactics. Ultimately, what that means is that the sanctions get higher because ABC then is going to have to file multiple motions to dismiss. So it's like two to three X the attorney's fees. And then that's how Trump gets hit with a million dollars in fees, as opposed to

say $300,000 in fees. And then he whines about it. Then he grifts, rinse, grift, repeat. Finally, you say that you've never seen a federal judge or you've never known a no-nonsense federal judge and that's you. No, a nonsense federal judge. Well, I would say Judge Cannon's middle name is nonsense, Judge nonsense Cannon,

Judge Eileen nonsense, nonsense. But anyway, I wanna thank everybody for watching. I wanna remind you about our new Legal AF Patreon. We already got some videos from Professor Popok in there and Popok's already telling me multiple times before the show started, Professor Mycelis, when are you getting your videos up? And I was like, Popok, chill, man.

I remember it was literally right before the show, I said, you've got a lot of videos up, let's let everybody enjoy that. And then I'll do a little Professor Mycelis right there. But check it out, I think you will like it. It's different than this show. So I want to kind of warn you about that, but also entice you with that,

that it is more granular, more molecular, more kind of academic. And so if that's what you're looking for, go there, but I don't want you to go there and think that you're getting kind of more hot takes like this because we're gonna get very molecular, granular, academic, and if that's what you're looking for, then that's the place for you. But again, no worries if that's not what you're looking for

and you do not have to worry about signing up. Like we appreciate and we're grateful just for your involvement in this community and sharing these videos and subscribing to the network. So I want to make that very, very very very clear. So thank you everybody again It's patreon.com slash legal AF you can check that out Subscribe to our YouTube channel Popak always enjoy spending this time with you want to thank salty Jeremy Sydney our entire editorial team here at the Midas touch Network. Great work with all of the work that you do. Thank you everybody for watching

and we'll see you next time on Legal AF. Shout out to the Midas Mighty.