Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump now in BIGGER TROUBLE from Manhattan Prosecutors

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on how Alvin Bragg and his new hand picked team revived the Stormy Daniels hush money “zombie” case, solved the “felony” problem, and with new evidence and Trump campaign witnesses expanded it to include a “catch and kill” conspiracy to pay off a number of other women during the 2016 campaign. Thanks to our sponsor ZBIOTICS: Head to zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 American Psyop: https://pod.link/1652143101 Majority 54: https://pod.link/1309354521 Political Beatdown: https://pod.link/1669634407 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://pod.link/1676844320 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Michael Popok, legal AF. It is time to start analyzing how Alvin Bragg got right with the case against Donald Trump. What were the changes that happened over the year and a half? How did he come to look at Michael Cohen in a better light to support many of the charges? And what do we think the 34 counts of the indictment on Tuesday are going to look like? I got a pretty good idea. As I've given the compliment to Alvin Bragg on our legal AF podcast, I think he was able to both split the atom and figure out how to conduct cold fusion in order to bring this

on off-split it. Let's start with splitting the atom. First thing is how do you bring a Mr. Meener, which is everybody at Mitzett, including Joe Takapina on network television for Donald Trump, that there are false record entries in the books and records of the Trump Organization, because they paid off at least stormy Daniels. I say at least, because I believe the indictment is going to encapsulate multiple women as part of a conspiracy and a scheme. Hold that thought. That's how we get it jacked up the 34 counts or more because of multiple women, multiple participants in the conspiracy. Some indicted like Donald Trump, some not indicted, and that's where we end up.

But you start with the books at records entry. There's no doubt these are immutable facts that everybody agrees to, including Donald Trump. He paid the hundred and thirty thousand dollars, even though he denied it in a video interview that I'm sure they showed the grand jury. It got recorded in the books and records because the payment totaled at least the stormy Daniels much more than hundred and thirty thousand because it went through Michael Cohen, who convinced the organization to make sure he didn't get hit with income tax problems by spending the money and getting it repaid by the Trump organization. So they gave him more to cover any income tax hit that Michael Cohen would suffer. Plus they gave him a bonus. So there was about 400,000 plus in payments to Michael

Cohen surrounding Stormy Daniels, recorded on the books and records as legal expenses, legal retainer to Michael Cohen. That's a lie. It was done to cover up the payment to Stormy Daniels. That we know. Everybody agrees to that. That's a misdemeanor crime, but misdemeanor in the state of New York. If it's in furtherance of a second crime, and you've heard a lot about this, then that's a felony to misdemeanors make a felony in New York. And that second crime can be anything. It could be money laundering, Presto Changeau converting money that had been listed as legal expenses or into the payment to Stormy Daniels into legal expenses, that transaction is a form of money laundering, tax evasion, because

I'm sure they took a tax deduction for the $400,000 payment to Michael Cohen through the Trump Organization listed it as an expense, a business expense, paying off-storey materials is not a business expense, at least according to the IRS. So in furtherance of tax evasion, in furtherance of a conspiracy to interfere with the election process in the state of New York, it could be state, it could be federal. The election law in New York doesn't say federal campaign. It says any election. And if you try to interfere with that or try to either promote somebody or stop somebody

from running for office using illegal means, which we've just described, that's a crime. It's a misdemeanor. You put those two together. You have your felony. Okay. It's a misdemeanor. You put those two together, you have your felony. Okay? So that's the splitting of the atom that it looks like Alvin Bragg and his team were able to do. Cold fusion is how do you make the case not so much about Michael Cohen, but about a broader

scheme, a broader conspiracy. Let's call it catch and kill led by David Pecker, the disgraced publisher, owner then of the national inquirer who was a best friend of Donald Trump back in his days when they were running around Palm Beach County as bachelors and not bachelors. And so he tried to help Donald Trump and he had a meeting and he already testified to this twice in front of the grand jury, plus we know from a written non-prosicution agreement involving his company, which was then noticed, America Media, that published the national choir, that they admitted to all of this, that they admitted that Pecker had a meeting with Kellyanne Conway and with Michael Cohen, and he came up with the idea, David Pecker,

to devise a plan to pay off these women who claimed to have had sex or affairs with Donald Trump to kill the story for the campaign by offering to buy the story and then kill it, catch it and kill it. And it looks like the going rate for that was somewhere between 130 and 150,000 dollars. The David Pecker, we know from other reporting,

likely also testified that he came up with the idea, he said, let's do it with the first one that came into the trap, which was Karen McDougall, a playboy, playmate of the year, who had an affair with Donald Trump, not just a one-nighter in a fair And she was gonna go public with it during the campaign 2016 around the same time as stormy Daniels And peckers said I got it. I'll we'll do the catch and kill program

I'll have her enter into a confidential a confidentiality agreement a settlement agreement and NDA or whatever I'm gonna do I'll pay her the money I'll pay or the money. I'll pay it. You guys pay me back. And then I won't publish the story. But it should be locked and gagged inside of a non-disclosure agreement. And they did that.

Now, why, here's curious question that we now are getting to the bottom of. Why did David Pecker and the National Enquirer pay Karen McDougal 150,000? But when it came to Stormy Daniels, they did it through Michael Cohen and the Stormy Daniels attorney. Why? Well, Michael Cohen says why it is memoir. He says it's because Donald Trump didn't pay Pecker back for the 150,000 that he laid out for Karen McDougal. He stiffed the pecker. And therefore, Pecker said, I'm not doing it again. I'm not laying out another 150,000 or so for the story of a Daniel story.

So it had to go through Michael Cohen laying the money out from his account. There's reporting that he tapped a home equity line, paid the money and then told Donald Trump and there's tape recordings of Michael Cohen secretly taping Donald Trump telling him that he's going to do it. And Donald Trump saying do it in cash. Another sign, another badge of criminality, another badge of somebody doing something they

know is wrong in a crime. And Michael Cohen does it and then gets repaid through Alan Weissselberg, the CFO, through the controller of the company at the behest of Donald Trump up to $400,000. That's story of Daniels. So the cold fusion is how do you get an indictment that doesn't rely solely on Michael Cohen? You make it about other women, some of which Michael Cohen was involved with paying and some of which he was just involved with devising the plan, with corroborating bolstering testimony from to other witnesses who were credible like David Pecker and Kelly and Conway. And that's how you, you, you slide that elephant through the eye of a needle in using Michael Cohen.

Lanny Davis, the lawyer for Michael Cohen, has been quite public recently as saying Michael Cohen has testimony and has given testimony to the grand jury, both documentary documents and testimony that he was involved with both Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal through David Pecker in that catching kill scheme, which was acknowledged by Donald Trump and authorized by him and that Donald Trump off at least paid for the Stormy Daniels part of it through repaying Michael Cohen. Lenny Davis is also said be careful to the defense about only attacking my client because my client's not the only witness. There were actually nine witnesses at least that we know of that went into the grand jury, including Hope Hicks for the Trump campaign, Kelly and Conway for the Trump campaign, David Pecker and his associate publisher for the national inquire, Michael Cohen and others

all went in all around this. So this is the shape of the 34 count indictment that we expect to see, not just store me dangles. I expect that we may even see names of women that we even haven't reported on because we weren't aware that they were part of the catching kill conspiracy. Let's think a quick break to talk about our next partner,

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Thank you, Zbiotics, for sponsoring this episode. And I'm sure we're going to see counts for conspiracy in there as well, which will bring in all of these unindicted co-conspirators like Michael Cohen, who will not be charged and prosecuted again, like David Pecker, same thing. He was given transactional immunity, meaning he could testify to the grand jury and not be prosecuted for telling the truth. So he's in the clear. Kellyanne Conway, unindicted co-conspirator number four, maybe hope Hicks, depending upon her testimony, and who's at the hub of the wheel of the conspiracy? Donald J. Trump. This is the crime. It's not political in nature. It has to do with his behavior and conduct before he was even president. He got used to be a Democrat, by the way. People seem to forget that. But that's where we are with what Alvin Bragg was able to do.

How did Alvin Bragg get right with all of that? Because when he took office two January's ago, he got a briefing from some special prosecutors that he inherited from his predecessor, Sy Vance, Mark Pomerantz, and Carrie Dunn. He had to make a presentation and he said, let me see all this evidence that you have against Donald Trump. Because now my butts on the line, buck stops with me, I'm the DA for Manhattan. And it's gonna rise and follow me. Let me see, make your presentation.

And he had in the room somebody that he trusted. And remember Alvin hadn't been in the Manhattan DA's office. He had been in other federal and state prosecutors offices and it's been a short time there. But he didn't have his people around him at the time. He brought in a couple, but he inherited a lot of prosecutors, line prosecutors, staff prosecutors, career prosecutors, and these two special prosecutors who had come from private practice.

But he did trust Chris Conroy. Now Chris Conroy is a name you should remember. You'll remember because he's the one we believe actually went to the grand jury and asked them to return the indictment. We got a picture of him going in with the statute book and his rule book, all posted noted and taped flagged and ready to make his presentation. Why Chris Conroy? Because as we heard from Karen Friedman, Agnifalo, our co-worker on legal AF, there's no bigger boy scout who's trusted

within the Manhattan DA's office for his brain power, for his analytics, for his no nonsense approach, then the career prosecutor Chris Conroy and he became very close and has become very close to Alvin Bragg and a trusted part of Alvin Bragg's inner circle. And Alvin apparently put Chris in charge of evaluating the cases against potential cases against Donald Trump. And the initial report was not so much yet on the crimes related to loans and appraisals and story manuals. There's some sticky parts of it. And there's some problems and hair on it

related to Michael Cohen's testimony. And that's when Alvin Bragg said, yeah, I'm not ready to do any of these prosecutions three months into my tenure. And then the special prosecutors left very noisily and attacked Alvin Bragg by indirection saying, these two week he didn't, you know, the case was good, we could make the case.

But Chris Conroy, who everybody trusts them on Haton days off is going back years, said, no, to Alvin Bragg, that case wasn't that strong at the time that it needed more work. It needed to be developed more, more witnesses, more facts, more evidence. And that's why, once Alvin Bragg got his team in place over the course of the next year, he had that team that he now trusts led by Chris Conroy, go back over the evidence and develop new evidence and lines of inquiry and investigation to see if the Stormy Daniels case catching kill program had legs. If it was something where they can seek the indictment and the people

that he put together, most of which he inherited, some of which he brought into the office. Susan Hofinger, these are all major lawyers in the Manhattan D.A.'s office, Peter Pope, Rebecca Margold and Catherine Ellis in the major crimes or major economic crimes bureau, Josh Steinglas and then Alvin Bragg bringing in Matt Kalangelo, formerly of the Department of Justice, who had a lot of Trump experience, including having worked in the New York Attorney General's office. Once Alvin had this team around him and he practiced his, he has his own approach to how to staff matters. He likes to put people, this is Alvin, of different skill sets together.

So Josh Steinglas is a homicide prosecutor, but he's a great trial lawyer. So he puts him together with Susan Hofinger and they try the tax fraud case together using Josh's separate skills with Susan's economic crime skills and they got a 17 count complete ran the table conviction against the Trump organization. This is Alvin Bragg. He took a lot of flack until he could get his sea legs putting his DNA on this office that he ran for and the people of New York and Manhattan voted him in. But this is how he got right on Stormy Daniels.

It's often referred to kind of negatively as a zombie case that came back to life. It did come back to life, but it's because of these factors, including Chris Conroy getting close with Alvin Bragg and the establishment of all these other people on the Alvin Bragg team that re-evaluated the evidence and came up with what they saw was a strong presentation to the grand jury. That ultimately

did get 23 members in New York, 23 citizens, to vote to indict Donald Trump. That's how we got there. We've got cold fusion. We've got splitting of the atom. We've got the new team around Alvin Bragg with new eyes looking at new evidence and old evidence before they make their presentation. And then that's how we got to the indictment. And it's not just an indictment, a prosecutor of Alvin Bragg's medal of his reputation, especially now, historically going down as the first prosecutor to ever indict a former president or any president or any one of that matter, at all, he also has the tremendous weight and responsibility to try to get a conviction.

I mean, he's already made the prosecutorial decision to seek the indictment. Now, I haven't gotten the indictment. He's got to go for the, he's got to go for the jugular. He's got to go for the win and make sure that his case, his witnesses, including now Stormy Daniels who'll testify, Karen McDougal will testify, and the other woman that was involved

with Donald Trump in any way sexually who got paid off by him in the catch and kill program, all the national inquirer people, all the campaign people, including Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway. This is going to be the case. Donald Trump is probably not going to testify in that case. His former attorney general Bill Barr has said as much on weekend television saying it

would be a terrible idea for Donald Trump who cannot control himself to take the stand in his own defense. And I think, while nuts, I think even Donald Trump will listen to some lawyer and not take the stand in his own defense and try to win this case one way or the other, but we're following it. This is how we got here. This is how the zombie case came back to life. This is how it has a broader set of implications than just stormy Daniels.

This is why it's not just all about Michael Cohen. It's about a series of other people, including co-conspirators who are gonna tell the story of the Catchett Guild program, a conspiracy story that ends up being 30 or more counts of felony and misdemeanor against Donald Trump. We'll know more about it on Tuesday when everything's unsealed.

I'll be back here in my hot takes. And when I'm not here on the Midas Touch Network, I'm doing a show on Wednesdays and Saturdays with Karen Friedman, Ignifalo on Wednesday, Ben Myceles on Saturday where we curate the top five stories that happen at the intersection of law and politics, those politically charged litigation stories, and we bring them to you just like this on Wednesdays and Saturdays. And if you like what I'm doing, you can follow me at at MS Popuck on all things social media, Michael Popuck, legal a F reporting. Lock him up.

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