Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump PSYCHO PICKS Even FREAK OUT His OWN Party

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo are back with the midweek edition of the Legal AF podcast. On tap? 1. Trump already giving a middle finger to the Rule of Law and the American People with his Attorney General pick of Matt Gaetz; 2. Whether Trump will be sentenced for the 34 felony convictions in NY state court; 3. whether Trump will rush to court to try to stop AG Merrick Garland from releasing Special Counsel Jack Smith's 2 final reports about Trump's crimes; 4. Trump's threat to use his recess appointment power to slam through his unqualified cabinet picks (see Matt Gaetz), 5. Trump's threat to immediately fire all the generals, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Subscribe to the new Legal AF channel: https//youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com Thanks to our sponsors: Arma: Head to https://tryarmra.com/legalaf or enter promo code: LEGALAF to receive 15% off your first order! Select Quote: Get you FREE Quote today at https://SelectQuote.com today! One Skin: Get started today at https://OneSkin.co and receive 15% Off using code: LEGALAF Zbiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. Create: Get 30% off any subscription or one-time purchase of Create 90-count bags at https://TRYCREATE.COM/LEGALAF Mint Mobile: Get a 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month when you go to https://mintmobile.com/LEGALAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal AF. Don't turn your dial, hit the subscribe button. We need you more than ever since last Tuesday. We got a lot of pieces to pick up. We got a lot of things to move forward with and things that we need to examine closely at that intersection of law and politics. I've said it before. I'll say it again, there is no important thoroughfare in our democracy right now than that intersection of law and politics. We appreciate you being here. We appreciate you what you've done over on the Legal AF YouTube channel. 32,000 people have joined since Tuesday of last week. And we take that as great responsibility. We've got some stories that just have to be covered and talked about tonight. We're going to start off where else with the New York Manhattan

DA case, 34 felony count conviction by a 12-0 jury in New York. Will they or won't they? Will Murchon sentence on the 26th of November or won't he? We have a strong opinion and we're going to share it with you here. All we know for now is that between now and the 19th of November there's going to be a quiescence, a pin in the case, as the parties have agreed to stay it to allow them to argue one way or the other whether the election last Tuesday matters to the sentencing of somebody already convicted for crimes that happened basically and in bulk before he was elected president the first time. We'll talk about that from one of the experts out there, my co-anchor Karen Freeman-Iknifilo,

who was the longtime number two in that very same office. And speaking of unprecedented times, we've got Jack Smith. He's going out of business. He's announced basically publicly and he's given all of the people on his team the right to start leaving. But he's got work to do. His final act will be the drafting of the report that's required under not only DOJ guidelines, but under law. By law, he has to provide a report. There's components of the report, the things that have to be in there. There's things that he has to talk about. There's things that he has to analyze. It has to be workshopped and vetted through the national intelligence community because of the sensitivity there. And then it's got to be delivered on the desk of Merrick Garland.

Yes, that Merrick Garland. Will he or won't he do what he said he was going to do before the election, which was to make it public, to make the report by Jack Smith against Donald Trump public. What will the Trump people do? You know their hair is on fire to try to stop that report from being published. I predict, and we'll talk more about it, they'll try to run into court, get it up to the United States Supreme Court, try to argue that it impairs and impedes the integrity of the office of the presidency to have this report out there. It shouldn't be released that the constitutional powers and constitutional analysis over overcomes the statute that requires the report. You can just hear it ringing in the ears of the MAGA Supreme Court justices. We'll talk about

the report, what Merrick Garland has said he's going to do, how much time they have, which they're running out of time. Look, the new Congress comes in on Jan 3. Trump is a president-elect on Jan 6, and he's president on Jan 20. We're running out of time. We're going to talk about Jack Smith and what he does with the two criminal prosecutions there. Then speaking of the new Congress coming in, we got a new Senate majority leader starting on Jan 3rd. It's Senator John Thune from South Dakota

You might be thinking is that the same guy who said that after the access Hollywood hot mic moment with Donald Trump saying He was gonna grab a woman by her p-word That he was disqualified and should drop out It's not the same John Thune who said on Jan 6th that Donald Trump was personally responsible for the burning of the Capitol, which was a disqualifier? Yeah, same guy. And is he going to do what Donald Trump has demanded as loyalty, as fealty to Donald Trump, that the Senate, bootlickers now all, they will call an immediate recess of the Senate, an artificial, concocted

recess, in order to give Donald Trump free run to do recess appointments of all his federal officers, his cabinet, and even federal judges, and have them sit around in their positions for two years without the public being involved at all. No Senate confirmation, no public hearings. Will he do that? We're going to talk about that and any kind of restrictions on the ability and what would the Supreme Court do if faced with a Senate that is ready, willing and able to abdicate their responsibilities under their Article 1 powers of the Constitution. And then finally, all right, well, it's out. I mean, Donald Trump is, it's public. We have reporting that there is already drafted an executive order, one of dozens that will be put underneath Donald Trump's Sharpie on the first days in office to purge the Pentagon of brass three and four star generals, not being reassigned,

but being forced to retire to being kicked out of the military by a finding of a non-military, former military MAGA warrior board, another made-up board that Donald Trump has created out of the figment of his imagination, but will have real consequences because they'll be plucking these generals out of their rank and replacing them with junior officers who are loyal to Donald Trump that he does sort of like Abraham Lincoln, you know, battlefield promotions to promote. Hey, you over there, you're a captain? Well, now you're a three-star general. Hey, you over there, you're a lieutenant, you're a lieutenant colonel? No, not anymore. You're a four-star general and you're now my Joint Chiefs of Staff head. Why not? He just picked a puppet. I mean, literally a talking head puppet

who's the last 14 years has spent time in hair and makeup on Fox as one of the anchors is now our Secretary of Defense. Why? Why? Because it might as well be a cardboard cutout or an inflatable doll. Because Donald Trump is going to be his own Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense with Elon Musk. We'll

break it all down. Karen, come on in. We're all fired up. We went through all the grief stages already since last Tuesday. I don't know what stage I'm in, but I'm in the fired up and ready to go stage and talk about law and politics and how we can improve what just happened going forward. We're gonna have to, we got no choice. Yeah, I know there's a lot to learn from what has happened. There's a lot of rethinking and redoubling our efforts though. We can't give up.

The things we believe in, the things we all stand for, aren't ideological. They're, they're just the right thing. It's, it's the rule of law matters, right? It's, there's an, there, the reason we're in this place, which of peace right now, and we know what's going to happen is because we belong to the party that believes in the peaceful transfer of power. Kamala Harris is going to preside over the Senate and certify the election for the person who defeated her. And she will do that with grace and dignity and peace because that's what the law requires.

And that's the party we belong to and we stand for. This MAGA party is going to run, or try to run roughshod over the law and over the norms and over the Constitution of the United States. And it is incumbent on people like us to continue to point out and share our knowledge and really just share the information that we can glean and talk about it so that people know what they voted for and know what is happening. Look, we live in a democracy. This is the way people want to live, then so be it. We have to accept it and we have to go forward with it. But they can't violate the law. Nobody can. And it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we, uh, help spread that knowledge and that information because the rule of law, peace, democracy,

it all depends on it. And so I'm always grateful, Popak, to be here with you every week and to be part of this journey with you and Ben and everyone on Midas Touch. Yeah, me too. Power grab, abuse of power, that's going to be the watchwords for the Trump administration and Donald Trump. It's already started. We're not going to cover it today, but in preparing for today's show and doing the hot takes I do, another commentary on the legal AF YouTube channel, you run into things like Donald Trump announcing by video that he's going to be paying reparations to that long suffering group in our society. I'm thinking, okay, African-Americans whose ancestors came over on slave ships. No, white people. White people are going to get

reparations for having been denied a seat in some class somewhere because of diversity concerns and affirmative action. Only a power drunk person, and we'll get to it at the end of this podcast, would actually have the balls, the temerity to say, I'm gonna take what is the greatest fighting force in the world, right? That protects us every day. There's a reason between our national intelligence

community and our armed forces. There is a reason that things aren't blowing up in America since 9-11. We're going to take that with their being apolitical. Nobody in the military, in the current military, has a First Amendment right to act out and speak out and political. They have to be apolitical. They have to swear an oath and allegiance to the Constitution and the American people. Donald Trump's going to take that and he's going to replace people and drum them out of the core, so to take that and he's going to replace people

and drum them out of the core, so to speak, under an allegation that they've lost their leadership skills after 20, 30, 40 years of service. I mean, we're going to … I'm just fired up about that one for good reason. Yeah, I can't wait to talk about that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's kick it off with you leading on the New York attorney general, and I'll do color commentary. Sorry, the New York Manhattan DA's case. Let me just, we got, we were expecting, for those that were like, where's that hot take

about how Judge Marchand ruled on November the 12th on the immunity decision? Why didn't that happen? Okay, we got that. We've got a new day, new control date of the 19th where something's gonna happen. And then date of the 19th where something's going to happen. And then we got the 26th the week after that that was supposed to be for sentencing, subject to appeals and stays.

What's happened? Why are we not, and what do you think is going to happen on the 26th, if ever, with Donald Trump getting sentenced? So on the 12th, we were all getting ready. I was washing my hair and put makeup on, getting ready to do hot takes, all ready to report on what Judge Mershon was going to do in the immunity decision.

Because after the conviction, after the jury found Donald Trump guilty, 34 counts of falsifying business records unanimously, 12 jurors had to unanimously find beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed crimes, and they did, all 34. These are called post-judgment motions, and defendants are allowed to make certain post judgment motions and very rarely, if ever, will a judge disturb a jury verdict, right? They typically will say, no, the verdict is within the law. In fact, I don't can't remember it ever happening in Manhattan, in a case that I was aware of. And so, but these are standard motions that defense always makes at the end of a case

and the end of a verdict before sentence. And every once in a while, there's new evidence or something that comes up. And this is one of those times where something did come up after the verdict. What came up after the verdict? Well, the United States Supreme Court came down with this new law that didn't exist, the United States Supreme Court came down with this new law

that didn't exist before in United States versus Trump that created presidential immunity for certain charges, for certain conduct and certain evidence. Now, the issue here is how does that new decision apply to this case? And so that's where Trump made his post-judgment motion on presidential immunity and it's been briefed back and forth. And we were waiting on the judge's decision and the judge has basically said, they got a delay already in this and they've been going back and forth. Because they're really trying to grapple with this brand new made up law that essentially says, and the way it applies to this case is that, because in this case, don't forget, Popak, this was already ruled by a federal judge to be private conduct, right? Because Trump tried

to remove this case to federal court and Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the Southern District ruled twice that this was not presidential, if you will. This was not part of his job description while he was president. There's no defense that is implicated here. This was utterly private conduct when he paid off a porn star through his private attorney and then lied about it in writing. That's private. So why are we here then if that's already been ruled on? Because in the United States versus Trump, the Supreme Court created another category. So it's not just immune from certain prosecution for certain conduct, but even if it was private conduct and a proper prosecution, which this was, you're not allowed to now use

evidence from things that might he might be immune, right? Things like immune, it's almost like immune evidence. And what could that be? Well, that could be evidence of things that Trump was doing in his official capacity as president, but but he was doing them to effectuate his private conduct breaking the law. That the United States Supreme Court said, you can't even use that evidence, that's out.

Well, the judge has to determine since this decision came down after the trial, right? So they couldn't even make this analysis or do this analysis before the trial because this law didn't exist yet. So he has to apply that to the trial, to the factual record of the trial. And he has to rule on that.

And if you recall, he said, I'm gonna rule on it. And if necessary, sentence him on the 26th. Now, why did he say if necessary? He said if necessary because if he rules that that evidence should not have come in because of this new law and that it was not harmless error. That's the legal the legal phrase and legal standard. He has to analyze this by, if it's not harmless error, he has to reverse the conviction. And if he reverses the conviction, it would have to be retried. Now, obviously, that's not going to happen now, if ever. So that's why he said,

if necessary, sentence. Now, on Sunday, over the weekend, over the Veterans Day three-day holiday, emails were going back and forth between the prosecution and the court and the defense and the court. How do we know? Because we've seen it, it's been released, where essentially you have Trump's lawyers saying to the court that they asked the people,

they asked the prosecution to stay the proceedings so that they could review and consider a number of arguments based on the impact from the results of the presidential election. And essentially what they're saying is the president's going to be certified on January 6, his inaugurations, January 20. And therefore, they want all proceedings here stayed that they can't possibly they have so much to prepare for. They can't possibly have to deal with this and prosecute this and go forward.

And they even cite the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, three United States code 102, that essentially provides for a transition of the president-elect into president. Right? So the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution says federal law trumps state law. And I think the prosecution is assessing whether or not if they seek a stay or a pause or a stop, you know, a stay means like a stop, if Trump's lawyers seek a stay and they try to get this presidential immunity decision paused so that the judge can't rule, what can the prosecution do given the supremacy clause and given this presidential transition act?

Can they force this to continue? What I can tell you is the sentencing is not happening. I can tell from reading these emails and reading this correspondence and the fact that they don't know what they're doing yet or what their position's gonna be yet, that they have determined there will be no sentence. There's no path to sentencing. And why is that? Because Trump's either going to get a stay of this decision or if Judge Marshawn rules on the decision, they will then appeal it and it'll go all the way to the

Supreme Court, but they'll seek a stay during that appeals as well. And until you get past this immunity ruling, you can't get to sentencing. And so I don't think sentencing is happening at all. And even if it did happen, I don't think the judge has any ability since he has won the election to sentence him to anything other than an unconditional discharge.

I don't think he can give him anything that would have any impact on Trump whatsoever, given his status as president elect and given that he has an official role in an office and finances and a staff as president elect as part of this presidential transition act that from the general services agency, part of this presidential transition act that from the general services agency, this is provided for by statute so that there is this uninterrupted peaceful transfer of power. I think that it'll be very, very hard for,

I think it'll be very, very, very hard, if not impossible for the government, for the prosecution to get past that hurdle and get to sentencing. So what will happen with immunity? Will Judge Marchand decide it? Will they get a stay? Those are the things we're not sure about, but I think that's what the Manhattan DA's office is thinking about. I'm very hopeful that they don't just roll over and say, well, there's no path to success, so we might as well just stop and just give in and throw in the towel.

I hope that they fight and make the courts decide this. The courts created this mess. The courts, when they created presidential immunity, make them do the hard work and make them make these decisions, but they should keep on fighting. And you know what? No matter what, he will always be convicted by a jury and he will always be president who is convicted of crimes. And he's a felon. Yeah. So, I mean, that just didn't seem to matter to the electorate that went to the polls on last

Tuesday. But yes, he should go down in the history books as somebody that committed a crime. We shouldn't undermine the hard work of a jury, a fair-minded jury, 12-0, that found that he committed these crimes. The fact that he gets off because he's the first person in history to ever committed crimes before he was president and then was president or president-elect or close to it at the time that he was about to be sentenced. I mean, I don't think many people are going to fall into that category, hopefully, other than Donald Trump in the future, but we'll have to see. You and I will do a lot of reporting come the 19th because at 10 a.m. on the 19th of November, Judge Murchon wants the position of the Manhattan DA's office, which used almost the exact same language that Jack Smith used when he filed his first paper after the election with Judge Chutkin, calling it unprecedented

times requiring them to think through all of this. We know that when Jack Smith comes back to Judge Chutkin on the 2nd of December, he's going to dismiss the indictment. I think he's just buying the extra time like he did last time. Last time he said, I need three weeks to do a status report. The judge said, okay, you can have the three weeks and instead out popped a superseding indictment that he needed. Now what I think is going to pop out between now and the 2nd of December is the report. And we'll talk more about in the next segment. But we've got to talk about Matt Gaetz now.

We've got new reporting that Matt Gaetz, what I would refer to as the disgraced Congress person who is in the middle of a sex scandal about whether he trafficked in young girls for sex and is being investigated by the Ethics Committee of Congress. He is apparently the person, Donald Trump has already now announced on social media, I'll read from it in a minute, that he is the person for Attorney General of all people. Talk about putting up a middle finger to the American people and a thumb in the eye of democracy. Let me read to you. I mean, he was not on the short list of the people that we considered alien cannon was floated out there Todd Blanche his criminal defense lawyer a couple of terrible people like Mike Davis not that Matt Gaetz is not terrible

He is terrible. Here's what Donald Trump had to say about this It is my great honor to announce that congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida is hereby nominated To be the Attorney General of the United States. Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan weaponization of our justice system. Matt will end weaponized government, protect our borders, dismantle criminal organizations, and restore America's badly shattered faith and confidence in the Justice Department. He's on the House Judiciary Committee, which performs oversight of the DOJ. He performed a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia,

Russia hoax and exposing, alarming and a systemic government corruption and weaponization. He's a champion of the Constitution. I'm almost choking getting this out, the Constitution and the rule of law. I want to hear from Karen Freeman-Iknifilo, former prosecutor who kicked this thing off today talking about the rule of law. Well, what does Matt Gaetz's appointment by Donald Trump as an affront to democracy mean to the rule of law? We're going to get Karen Freeman-Iknifilo here to comment on it. But first, we got to go to our pro-democracy sponsors. There's good news, folks. Pro-democracy sponsors are still with the channel, are still with the network, even after Tuesday's election. They

know what we do here. They know that we are, as I've said before, we are the pane of glass that you break in case of emergency. We're glad you're here for it, and we're glad that they're still here with us supporting our First Amendment right and our independent journalism without outside investors. Let's go to our first round of sponsors tonight. Have you heard about this new bioactive whole food that seems almost too good to be true? It's got thousands upon thousands of five-star reviews and literally life-changing testimonials from users.

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please. I mean, Popak, I have to say, I almost choked. I was almost speechless when I saw that. By all accounts, the Attorney General of the United States is incredibly important. I think it was JD Vance who said that's going to be the second most important person in the administration. It's the head of the Department of Justice. It's the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the country. This is the difference between rule of law and anarchy is the Attorney General of the United States of America. They appoint all the United States attorneys who report to him. They decide which cases they're going to have and which ones

they're not, which divisions in the Department of DOJ will exist and which ones won't. Will there be a civil rights division? I mean, there are over a hundred thousand employees of the Department of Justice. I mean, you're talking there's 93 jurisdictions of US attorneys' offices across the country. This, by who they make the head of the Department of Justice, by all accounts, both sides of the aisle, we'll say, is one of, if not the most important role that Donald Trump has to fill, that he would choose Matt Gaetz, who frankly was this close to being on the other side of the V in a prosecution.

The DOJ had him under investigation for this sex scandal. He was there on January 6th. He, by making him say that he's the person in charge of the law is an absolute affront to the rule of law. And I'm afraid that you will have a mass exodus. This is what Danya Perry was saying when I talked to her earlier. She was a former supervisor at the US Attorney's Office, worked for the DOJ, and still knows a lot of people there. And she said, there's a lot of people who will not serve in this administration. It's a little bit terrifying. And this is the kind of thing, you know, when there are some are some people who will say that, that the Democrats and, and we are fear mongers and, you know, that we are the big bad Trump and we're exaggerating.

And, you know, after the election, you have to ask yourself, is that true? Right. Or you have to just reevaluate what are we, are we really, is it the boogeyman or is the, is the fear real? are we really, is it the boogeyman or is the fear real? And he appoints someone like Susie Wiles, and you think, okay, maybe it's not so bad. Maybe it will be okay. Maybe it was just political rhetoric. But then you appoint, and then he did this Fox News host, Pete Hegsrath,

to be head of Department of Defense. He has a giant tattoo that signals his Christian nationalism and white supremacy apparently. And you think, okay, that's scary and he's not qualified. But then you see Matt Gaetz. That should make everybody very, very concerned. He is a dangerous person who the idea that justice is blind in this country, I don't know will exist under Matt Gaetz. So that's my initial reaction. This is very, very scary.

Yeah, I can't sugarcoat it. I mean, Matt Gaetz is literally like having the wolf be in charge of the chicken coop. The Department of Justice, I always thought made a mistake under Merrick Garland. You'll hear that a lot on Legal AF about dropping the case. They had doubts about the teenage girl victim of the sex trafficking charge. But there's a guy in jail who was Matt Gaetz's wingman for the sex crimes who went to jail over this and had the goods on Matt Gaetz, but they still couldn't get what they wanted out of the female girl victim. I mean, now she's an adult, but they decided to drop it while the House Ethics Committee, which is equally split, Democrat and Republican, continues to investigate it. We did reporting on this here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. To say Matt Gaetz is not qualified, so far his picks, the guy that's been in hair and makeup for 14 years at Fox News

and hosts their New Year's Eve celebration is now our Secretary of Defense. I mean, this would be – I would have the same reaction if Kamala Harris won and she nominated Anderson Cooper to be the Secretary of Defense. I mean, I know the guy was in the military 15 years ago, but I'm not sure that quite does it. But all of these people are basically either reliable puppets or inflatable dolls for Donald Trump, who of course controls his own power and agenda. And I'm sure Matt Gaetz, who supported him in Jan 6th, who has his own criminal, at least, investigatory past, who is MAGA to the core. I mean, you remember all the speakers that were taken down by Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz is public fight with Kevin McCarthy and he took

down Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. He's the leader of the MAGA resistance along with Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, nothing, right now, nothing would shock me. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene being given a major cabinet post on the heels of Matt Gates would not, actually, it would shock me if she wasn't given some sort of plum assignment. We just got reporting that Tulsi Gabbard, who's claimed the fame as she was in the military for 20 minutes and was in the National Guard, is now the Director of National Intelligence for the United States of America. I have to add the United States of America because you think I was about to add a third world country at the end of that. But Tulsi Gabbard isn't qualified to run a bath, let alone our national intelligence community.

Now John Ratliff, who sits under her, at least on the hierarchy, as the CIA director, at least he's got credentials. Fortunately, the CIA director is the head of all the spook operations and all the covert operations. And so that national intelligence director, on paper it's the boss, but it really isn't. It's really the CIA person. But I mean, the fact that she's even brought into the cabinet alone, and that one was shocking to me. Marco Rubio, I mean, I've known, I've rubbed elbows with Marco Rubio, he used to be a partner a million years ago in a law firm of mine.

He had a no-show job, never showed up for work. We paid him a salary, we just had him on the letterhead. That was typical Marco Rubio at the time. So, and I know, having practiced law and lived in Florida, I know him pretty well. He used to live in the town I lived in and we know people in common. But he's always been an empty suit. He was little Marco Rubio when he ran for the presidency. He's little Marco Rubio now. That's because Donald Trump doesn't want anybody that's going to stand up to him. He just needs window dressing and cover and a fig leaf for the real Secretary of State,

who's going to be Elon Musk. Let's be frank. The real head of the Department of Defense is not going to be this Fox guy, this Fox anchor, this Fox and Friends guy. It's Elon Musk. The real attorney general is not Matt Gaetz. It's Donald Trump. By the way, there's nothing in the Constitution that says that a president has to have a cabinet or can't serve all these roles himself. So all Donald Trump is looking for is somebody that he can manipulate. He got burned a number of times with his prior attorney generals, starting with Jeff Sessions, who opened up you know, starting with Jeff Sessions, you know, who opened up the Mueller, the Mueller investigation and appointed Mueller, hated that.

And then every bill bar, big fat bill bar, as he likes to call it, hated that, hated everybody until the last like five days when he landed on Jeff Clark. I'm actually surprised Jeff Clark wasn't made the attorney general, uh, based on his loyalty and, and staring down the barrel of a couple of prosecutions. But I guess because he's staring down the barrel of a couple of prosecutions, see, the rule of law helped. People like Rudy Giuliani and Jeff Clark have been maybe disqualified and Matt Gaetz having been absolved

by the Department of Justice, or at least having his case dropped is not. So let's leverage that into our Jack Smith discussion. There's more on Matt Gaetz. We'll do hot takes on it and all sorts of things, but that's our reporting for today. Jack Smith, why don't you tell everybody what Jack Smith's gonna do to wrap things up

between now and the middle of December, and then I'll give my working theory that Donald Trump is going to, now that I know that it's Matt Gaetz, is going to lead the charge to try to get the Supreme Court to block the public getting a copy of this report and being released by Merrick Garland. So the special counsel law, the enabling law,

requires the special counsel at the conclusion of a case to write a report. And we've seen those reports. We saw the Robert Herr report on Joe Biden where we criticized that he was talking about things like his age and his, not just the evidence, right? And there's also the Mueller report. I mean, having a report written at the end, sometimes you see portions of it redacted. Sometimes you see the whole thing. But it's traditionally released to the public, but the statute says he has to write a report. So, okay. So Jack Smith is going to write a report for each of his cases. There's one in

the Mar-a-Lago case and the Washington DC case. Will we see these reports? Who knows? For example, the Mar-a-Lago case will have a lot of sensitive classified information in there. So will we see that or will Jack Smith write it in such a way that it has none of that so it can be released? I'm sure those are the types of things he's thinking about there. Same thing with the, with the Jan 6 case. Now, look, both cases are speaking indictments, meaning they have lots and lots of information. They're not these bare bones indictments that usually occur. So we already know a lot about both cases.

What will the reports say that we don't know? I'm not sure. We're not gonna see classified information. We're not gonna see grand jury information because that's secret, but there could be more. But we saw, again, we saw a lot during the second superseding indictment of January 6th. And we saw a lot during the second superseding indictment of January 6. And we saw a lot in the filings that on immunity that came out. I mean, so there's a lot that's been

released to the public. And of course, there was the January 6, select committee that's been released. What more is out there that we will see? That is TBD. I agree with you, they're going to do everything they can to prevent us from seeing it. But equally, I'm also wondering what will Jack Smith do with these cases? I mean, he knows that Donald Trump has said he's going to fire him. So I'm sure Jack Smith will resign before he gets fired, right? So what happens to the cases, right? You've got one that's pending indictment and one that's a pending dismissed indictment, but it's on appeal at the 11th circuit. They're in different postures.

Only a judge, only a court can dismiss a case that's before it. So a prosecutor can make a motion to dismiss or a defense can make a motion to dismiss, but only the court can actually dismiss a case. So what will happen in these cases? Will Jack Smith, knowing that Trump will dismiss these cases, fire Jack Smith, order Matt Gaetz to not pursue these cases, not pursue the appeal of Mar-a-Lago, and move to dismiss these cases, if you heard Jack Smith and you know he's going to do that, he's probably going to pardon Walt Nauta and Carlos de la Vieta and in Mar-a-Lago and he'll pardon himself potentially. So what will Jack Smith do in anticipation of this? That is what I think they're trying to figure out

and I think that's what they are going to do. Look, if I were Jack Smith, I would force the courts to do it. I wouldn't dismiss the cases on I would force the courts to do it. I wouldn't dismiss the cases on my own or make Donald Trump do it. I would get the report out, try to make it public, but why do his job for him? The courts created this mess with their US v Trump case. Make them be the ones to do it. Kind of like what I was saying about what I've been saying about the Manhattan DA case as well, make the courts decide. But the Mar-a-Lago case is in a slightly different posture because you've got Aileen Cannon who dismissed that case saying that the special counsel, that it's illegal, right?

That it's an illegal prosecution because the special counsel law does not permit a special counsel. Like she just ruled and made it invalid. Before the 11th Circuit, I'm not usually one to be extremely confident that something's gonna be reversed. This one, I'm extremely confident

that it's going to be reversed because I think that that is just not what the law says. And so if I were Jack Smith, I would want that ruling. And I know that on Friday, his brief is due or his surreply is due. I would still file that. I would make the 11 circuit rule and get that reversal and then go from there. I just wouldn't want it kind of on the books that there's this, even though it's one district, Southern District of Florida,

I wouldn't want that on the books. That's the law down there and I wouldn't want that. So I would appeal that just so that that's not the law going forward. But that's what I think in terms of those people. Well, the appeal is ongoing. I mean, the question is whether he withdraws the appeal. Right.

Exactly right. Exactly right. I'm not sure he's going to have a choice there. I may have to disagree with you on that one. I'm not sure he's going to have a choice because the same constitutional principles that say a president-elect either in transition or once he's in office can't be bothered with this type of stuff, I think, is going to apply to that appeal, even though appellate work is not the same as trial work and he doesn't testify in an appeal. It's on a cold hard record.

But if it's fully briefed and all you need is the decision, um, why not wait for it or make the defense? Like in other words, what I'm trying to say is if I'm Jack Smith, I agree with you with that's what the law says, but I would make the court rule that I wouldn't preemptively say, oh, because of what you just said, I'm now going to move to dismiss this case or withdraw the case or whatever the posture is.

What if they ask for oral argument? I would say I'm ready. Right. And then make them make the argument and make the judge say, make that ruling. I just wouldn't roll over on it if I were the prosecutor. The only problem is we got a big fat clock that's ticking and the new Congress comes in on Jan 3, things move slowly. The 11th Circuit hasn't even scheduled it for oral argument. Jack Smith needs to get out of town. As I said in a hot take, the hunter has become the hunted.

He's literally got round the clock protection. I mean that literally. He's got round the clock protection and he's released his staff to go find other jobs in the private sector presumably. I mean, I like your thought. I just don't think that's how it's going to necessarily play out. On the report, I want to talk about what I think MAGA is going to do, what Donald Trump is going to do fresh off their recent victories in the courtroom with the Supreme Court, Todd Blanch and Emile Bové, and in their election win on Tuesday. They're not going to allow that report to come out without a fight. I'm going to talk about next the statutory requirement to issue a report and the constitutional concerns they're going to try to raise about not Trump as president but the office of the president and the Article 2 powers and law concerning the transition. But first, we got to go – we got sponsors chomping at the bit

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go after. And I think at least for the DC election interference case, there has to be a section on why are there unindicted co-conspirators and why didn't you indict them? Complicated. It's got to go through this vetting process through the national intelligence community for Mar-a-Lago and for the DC election interference case. It's got to land thump, boom, on Merrick Garland's desk and then he's going to have to release it. If he thinks, and I'm going to disabuse him now, Merrick Garland, that you're just going to leave it for the incoming Attorney General Matt Gaetz to release it the way that the prior administration on the way in thought that Donald Trump's AG bar was going to release the Mueller report? I mean, come on. I mean, that's

just not ever happening. He's going to have to move heaven and earth and fast before Jan 3, he's really the cutoff time, to release that report. Knowing that, Trump's not going to sit by idly and let Jack Smith get the last word in in a report. So they got nothing to lose, nothing to lose at all. So while they have their MAGA oversight committee and judiciary run interference, calling Jack Smith on the carpet to turn over all of his docs, which I'm fine with by the way because the minority will get it, and it'll get published. But on the report, Donald Trump will run into court. This one will have to be in the DC courts. This one will have to be. He can't run to the Amarillo, Texas for Judge

Kaczmarek or try to look for Aileen Cannon. He's going to have to file in DC, which is more likely than not a moderate and or a democratically appointed, Democrat appointed judge. And they're going to have to make the argument. And the argument, I know what the argument is. The argument's going to be, yeah, there's a statute on the books, but it still has to be constitutional. And if the interpretation of the statute about the report and turning it over to the public,

it runs headlong into constitutional Article II powers. The office of the presidency must always be protected. It can't be undermined. It can't be disparaged. It can't be impeded in any way. And that report is going to cast a big black shadow on the power of the presidency and his ability to do his job. So if that's the interpretation, it's unconstitutional. And therefore you should preclude, ultimately United States Supreme Court, you should block the publishing of that report to the public, that's the argument. And if you had told me that argument a year or two ago

or three years ago, I'd be like, well, that's not gonna work with the Supreme Court. But now it's not even a separation of powers issue because we're on the same side of the V, so to speak. This is executive branch, executive branch. This is incoming president, outgoing president, and the Department of Justice which sits in the executive branch. And so you don't have that issue, the separation of powers, which always drives the Supreme Court nuts. And now having heard oral arguments where they just blithfully and casually, like

they're ordering yogurt for lunch, they just talk about, well, this is interesting. How's the commander in chief? Could he assassinate a rival? Could he sell a pardon? Could he self-pardon? I mean, they talk about it like they just ordered the tuna fish salad special. And so you can see that, you can hear them. Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas saying things like, well, if it does undermine the office of the presidency, we don't want that. So the need of the public has to yield to the constitutional balance of power that we've established. I can write it for them now. All they got to do is find it, get it, but this has to go fast because I'm

surprised they haven't filed it already. They have to get an emergency application to a judge in anticipation that Merrick Garland has said on the record that he would publish this thing, even though I think it's a little bit premature, a little bit early, then get the ruling at the DC Court of Appeals, which will be against them, but on an emergency basis. If they don't get it fast enough, they're going to try to take a writ to the United States Supreme Court. The first one waiting to greet them is Chief Justice Roberts, who sits over the DC courts. He'll be like, that's interesting. I haven't helped Donald Trump in the last 20 minutes. Let me do it one more time." He wrote every major decision and got every major majority together to help Donald Trump in all the immunity decisions and to undercut the actual charges against him for obstruction. Why wouldn't he do

this? So my confidence, which was already waning, which got worse when we talked about Matt Gaetz, is in the trash now when it comes to getting that report out. So let's just do the final balance sheet. I had a read, along with everybody in America, at just the wrong time in an election, talk about election interference, a 350-page diatribe by Robert Herr, appointed by Merrick Garland about Joe Biden 10 years ago, five years ago, and the documents he may have taken with him for the vice presidency and talking about how he's a senile old man. That was the beginning of the end of Joe Biden to be able to run for office again. A lot of people might be thinking, well, that's probably a good thing. But at the time, we were thinking, we don't need this right now. So I got to suffer through that. But Donald Trump's where

the whole thing is outlined for us in a way that maybe the superseding indictment didn't cover, that's going to get blocked by the United States Supreme Court. Rule of law. It's easy to say. It's easy to say. It's hard. It's hard to live with. What do you think about my lawsuit stratagem that's in the works? I mean, I think it's interesting, right? I think that you have to try. There's no other choice. We have an obligation to fight this. The rule of law matters.

I do think Matt Gaetz being appointed attorney general, I'm just still reeling under the news of this, shows that we have to do everything we can to keep transparency, fight for this report to come out, fight for the rule of law, frankly. I mean, I was heartened to see that the Senate appointed Senator Thune as the next majority leader, because that wasn't that was Trump's last choice of the names that were being floated. They didn't want

him. I think to me, that was a little bit of a signal that the Senate is saying, okay, hold on, checks and balances matter, we matter. And maybe we're not going to do these recess appointments that you are saying you want the next majority leader to do. I'm going to be disagreeing on this one. Okay, good. So go ahead. Thune is a Trump-er. Thune is a Trump-er. I think they ran Rick Scott to take out Cornyn to get Thune in, even though Thune's been on the record of being a critic of Donald Trump. There's also reporting that in the last month he met with the presidential transition team. He's met with Donald Trump in

Mar-a-Lago. He said all options are on the table. He's going to get the entirety of the agenda passed. Don't be fooled by John Thune being the establishment senator and Rick Scott having run and lost, so to speak. I don't think this means anything positive about the recess appointment. So we'll talk about that. So you think he'll go along with that? You don't think he'll… Well, let's talk about it. Why don't you frame what we're talking about? It's a good time to transition to the – and now, when we were like, why are they trying to create an artificial recess? Because the president has recess appointment powers under the Constitution. When there is a real recess that has to be longer

than 10 days, which the Supreme Court has said, and you have to fill a vacancy, not use it to fill your whole cabinet and federal judges. But this is what Donald Trump wants to do and he wants the Senate to rubber stamp that. So he floated it three days ago during the time when the Senate majority leaders were being selected. Okay, take it from there. Now that we know Matt Gaetz is one of these crazies and Tulsi Gabbard and the Fox News guy, the New Year's Eve ball drop guy. Now I see why they want to try to get these people two years under their belt as acting everything because they'll never, who would confirm these people that when the public

saw these jokers, who would there be a public outcry, you would cry in the streets. Exactly. That's exactly right. So, so just to catch everyone up in exactly what we're talking about, because, you know, frankly, I didn't really quite understand this until Trump started talking about the the recess clause. So, so Article Two Section Two, Clause Two of the Constitution says that the

Senate that that the way things work, because you know, don't forget, we're all about checks and balances. We're not supposed to have a king. We're supposed to have three branches of government, separate but equal. And so when Trump is elected president, he's allowed to fill all his positions, right? Everything but chief of staff, I think.

It's like all the secretary of state, secretary of everything, all the big positions, you have to be nominated by the President and then you get the advice and consent of the Senate, meaning the Senate has to agree. The Senate does a background check, they hold hearings, we've watched these hearings. They still might allow and push the person through, but at least the public gets to see who is this person.

You get to kick the tires, ask them questions, and you get the Republicans and the Democrats, they ask questions of these individuals, and that's how the system's supposed to work. Well, there's the next clause, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution that says, the President shall have the power to fill up all vacancies. That may happen during the recess of the Senate by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of the next session, which translates to if the beginning of the first each sessions is a year. So if he appoints them, if he gets the next leader to call a recess immediately, I guess it would be January 20th when he's confirmed, let him shove all these positions

in the recess as you said has to be longer than 10 days. And then he would stay in for a whole year plus the whole second year because it's at the end of the next session. So it's two years up until the midterm elections, right? This is the recess appointments clause. Now, as you were saying, this was meant to be because Federalist number 67 written by Alexander Hamilton talks about why this is important and why this is something that needs to happen. It's because back then they didn't have cars, they had horses. People lived all over the place. It took days sometimes to get senators from one place to another. So the recesses would be long. If there was a vacancy that may happen during one of those recesses, you want the government to continue on. You want there to be continuity. You want the ability to put people in office. And so they provided for this. So it is allowed. It's

a thing. It's in the constitution, but it was never meant to be abused like this. It was never meant to be abused to to basically fill every position during a fake recess that is called for the purpose of thwarting the role of the Senate. Now, I still think MAGA or not, the Senate is like, OK, we want our guy, but we're not putting ourselves out of business and making ourselves, you know, people still have egos. These are still like these the Republican Congress. They're going to be sitting there going, wait a minute. Yeah, you're Trump and yeah, you were in power and whatever, but I still have a job and you're not taking that away from me.

I think the Senate is going to say and I think that's why they chose Thun. I think you're right. They chose a Trump-er. They're not going to pick someone who's not a Trump-er. But they could have gone crazier. They could have gone to somebody who, like the equivalent of Matt Gaetz in the Senate, and they didn't. They went with someone who may, just may, there's a chance that he will say, wait a minute, you know, the Senate still has power. We have equal power. And yes, we agree with you. We're going to give you all your crazy things, but we're still going to do our job. And so, and I think the reason they were floating this recess appointment thing and trying to get someone who would agree to that in advance was because they were about to drop the crazies, the team crazies and the scary, actually, it's not even team crazy. This is team dangerous.

This is team terrifying and scary. Matt Gaetz as attorney general is about as terrifying as it gets and I'm just in shock that this is the choice and that this is where we are. Well, but one thing people are gonna learn that didn't, you know, the two million Democrats that decided they were going to set out democracy didn't vote or the people that voted against their interests

because they fell for all the trolling and all the other things, the black and brown community, women and others, just regular – not regular, like white guys that also voted against their interests. Well, this is going to be a lesson of what the Department of Justice under the proper hands does for a living, what it does in the civil side and going after police brutality and going after terrorists and indicting bad people and bringing them to justice and making sure voting rights are properly enforced. All that's out the window. This is going to be a pared down, pared back, hollowed out Department of Justice, do nothing Department of Justice except a couple of weaponized things to go after the enemies of Donald Trump. That'll be fun. They'll tie that up for a while and we'll have to go to

the federal courts with the Department of Justice oversteps itself and craps all over itself. I think, you know, listen, I don't disagree with you. There are Senate institutionalists that are like, listen, we have six-year terms and we don't have term limits. He's got one four-year term, Donald Trump. He's a lame duck. Yeah, he's a lame duck on the way in. I got a career and I don't want to throw 250 years of Senate tradition out the door and put – and I think this is where I think the Supreme Court would be like, wait a minute. Everybody's got a job to do. Everybody has their own article. Article 1, Congress. Article 2, President. Article 3, that's us. Article 1, the checks and balance requires the Senate to confirm after, you know, we know it's public hearing, to confirm, advise,

and consent related to these things. You can't abdicate your responsibility and give it over to the executive branch and just say, hey, we're out, gone fishing for 10 days. So the reason it's 10 days is because there was a 2014 Supreme Court case on this issue where Obama, during a three-day long weekend, decided to fill his National Labor Relations Board positions. And they slapped his, you know, wrapped his knuckles. Oh, no, no, no, no. That's a violation. You don't get to do that under the appointments, under the recess appointments clause. You know, that's not a real vacancy. That's not a real adjournment. No, no. Bad boy. Like hit him with a newspaper. No. It got to be at least 10 days. So now, you know, so is the Senate going to go on

vacation for 10 days? They've got other work to do. Don't they have a job? They have, there's budgets that have to be reconciled. There's appropriations. There's military. There's wars going on. They're just gonna go home to their districts or to their states, in this case, as senators. So the more I talk about it out loud with you, I know what Donald Trump wants. He wants what one of our colleagues on court accountability said. He wants the Weimar Republic in Germany, where the legislature just completely bent over for whoever was in charge, the Führer, and did whatever he said. Yeah, that's what they want. But we have three branches of government. I mean, I know Donald Trump and Supreme Court

to a certain extent sees it as an imperial president with two lap dogs, one named the judiciary and the other one named Congress on his lap, but that's not supposed to be the way it works. And even this Supreme Court, who's busy, I think are gonna be very busy over the next three years or four years trying to put the genie back in the bottle of what they created in July with their immunity decision and

the ramifications of having a criminal president having been reelected by the people set up by the Supreme Court. But now the recess appointments is all too clear. A lot of these crackpot appointments would never see the light of day unless they get the acting position. And so, look, is Thune the worst selection? No. I could think of a lot, and so could you, a lot worse people that are senators. Josh Hawley could have been it. There's a lot of people in there that are Jan 6 insurrectionists that could have gotten the job. Rick Scott wasn't qualified, good, so they decided to get more of an institutional person. The fence mending between Thune and Trump, which has been going on for a number of years, at one point in the not too distant past, Trump wanted Christy Gnome,

the puppy killer, who's now going to be our head of Homeland Security apparently, wanted her to leave the governorship in South Dakota and run against John Thune, who is the Senator for South Dakota, to pay him back for calling Donald Trump an insurrectionist, which she was, on Jan 6th. But when it came time to vote on whether to convict him off the impeachment process, Thune and McConnell both voted no. So we know that he's been working hard to get his own political expediency at risk. So listen, we've got that. I want to talk about the Pentagon and what Donald Trump has threatened there. I just have one comment before we leave. See if you have a view on it. There's 40 or so judges that Biden has left to get filled between now and Jan 3, working overtime in the Senate,

speaking of the Senate, and it's the lame duck Senate. So it's that patched together coalition of Democratic senators with Joe Manchin from West Virginia caucusing with them to try to – and Kamala Harris breaking ties to get the remaining 40 federal judges through. There's a whole batch of them, about 18 or so, that are through committee or voted out of committee already and are ready for a floor vote with the Democrats in control. Then you've got another eight that are not out of committee yet and the Republicans who are opposing. Then you got Joe Manchin who's announced he will not vote to confirm unless at least one Republican is in favor. That's where Susan Collins, Republican from Maine and Lisa Murkowski, Republican from Alaska. Basically, the entirety of whether we're

going to be able to get federal judges through is going to be Murkowski, Collins, and Joe Manchin. That's what it's left with to try to get these last ones filled. What's your view on all that, Karen? Honestly, this just really upsets me with the Democrats. This is the one criticism I have of Obama. They thought they were going to win. They thought Hillary was going to win. And they didn't rush the judgeship. They left all these open vacant judgeships. And what did Trump do? The first thing he did is fill every single one of them.

And we got the Eileen Canons. We got the Kazmarick, the guy who, the myth of Preston, you know, decision that we had to deal with. We got, you know, the same thing happened with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and now we have this right wing MAGA majority, right? Everyone just assumed, oh, it's gonna be Democrat. We don't have to do this.

The fact that we are in this position and there's 40 open judgeships just was so upsetting to me that here we are again and we did it again. They should have filled these a long time ago. This should have been priority number one. Checks and balances matter. We have to have checks in the courts. And this is just to me outrageous.

They better do it, they better get it done and they better push this through. Just like Donald Trump did, don't forget, after he lost the election, Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away and he shoved through, pushed through Amy Coney Barrett. Yeah, in 37 days. In 37 days. So you know what? And 14 others got picked up.

And you know what? But how are we in this position? How do we not learn our lesson last time? I'm so mad at us. Yeah, part of it is that, and part of it is we have a cumbersome majority that is not, it's a difficult majority that's patched together with toilet paper and chewing gum. Yeah, but you know what, it was easier then than now. I mean, I hate to say it.

Yeah, but crazy Joe Manchin, crazy Joe. And then you got to grab Collins and then you got to run. One of the Kamala Harris was very busy running back and forth to the Senate to try to break the ties for all these people. I don't care what she does now. I mean, now she could just pitch a tent in there and get all this done. It's that important because the purge is coming. Let's switch gears and talk about the Pentagon purge. We've got new reporting and I've done a couple of hot takes on it on Legal AF. Let me take a minute and talk about that. People are like, how do we we're so glad we're here How do we support this channel this network this independent journalism? Well the pro-democracy

Sponsors of ours are important and then we've got other ways Legal AF has a patreon where we're doing some unique content over there at patreon.com slash legalaf. We've got a new Legal AF YouTube channel which we created about a month before the election, not because we thought we were going to sail through and definitely Kamala was going to win but because we wanted to be a durable lasting channel on the other side in case something happened. And that's exactly what's happened, law and politics and that intersection is becoming more important than it even was before. It was pretty important before.

So you can find us over on Legal AF. It's at Legal AF MTN from Itis Touch Network. And you can go over there and hit the subscribe button and help us there, lots of content. We got six, seven videos up a day. Karen Freeman McNifilo is over there. Dina Dahl is over there. She's doing a show with me, aptly named, unprecedented every week about the United States Supreme Court.

Court Accountability Action is there. Shan Wu, a prosecutor, is doing regular reports. And I'm sort of the curator in holding the whole thing together over on Legal AF. Karen's got a show that she does as well at the intersection of law and politics called Miss Trial with two of her law colleagues, the former prosecutors, and a member of Congress,

and Danya Perry and Kathleen Rice, Karen. And that's on Thursdays, right, Karen? Yep and that's on Thursdays, right Karen? Yep, we drop on Thursdays, but we're also doing hot takes like everybody else, shorter ones too. Okay. You'll find us on your channel and the Legal AF MTN channel, as well as on the regular Midas Touch Network channel. So yeah, we're trying to get as many out there as possible because it's so important to get the word out, right? So whatever we can do as much as we can do is what we're trying to get out. Well, I've told you, I got 42 slots a week over Legal AF MTN. All

you got to do is come over and start cooking. All right. So these are the ways to support Midas Touch Network. Hit the subscribe button. Keep them moving and growing. Keep us independent without taking outside investors. This is the way to do it. The purge. The purge is coming. Henry VI, William Shakespeare famously wrote, the first thing we do is kill all the lawyers. Apparently, the first thing that Donald Trump's going to do is to knock off all the generals, three and four star generals, the Army, brass, Navy, and the rest of the armed forces. If they're not sufficiently loyal to him, he already knows who he's getting rid of. First one to go is going to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He's a black man, the second black man to hold the position. He's,

I wouldn't call him woke, but he has talked about the need for diversity in the armed forces and supported elements of the Black Lives Matter movement, and's going to go. Then they're going to use, apparently, taking a page but a distorted page. They always pick something out of history and then they eff it up. George Marshall, who's created the Marshall Plan, created a pluck board to take old brass out and promote junior officers to move them along in the military. When it got a little top heavy, Donald Trump is like, oh, that's a good idea. So he's creating a warrior board. They already have an executive order for it in which former military, so now they're political, MAGA, MAGA military X are going to, with the consultation I assume of the new incoming Fox News anchor guy who's our secretary of defense. I can sleep better at night

knowing that Fox News is New Year's Eve host is going to be defending America. But he's going to consult and they're going to decide on litmus test, on loyalty test. No, that guy's not loyal enough for us. He didn't do anything else other than that in an apolitical armed forces. No, bounced, not just reassigned as I thought, kicked out of the military. Now, what is that going to do to the morale? You talked about people leaving the Department of Justice, longtime line prosecutors and other investigators and things because of Donald Trump naming Matt Gaetz. What's gonna happen to the military? When you're like a Colonel or even a Captain and you're a Lieutenant, you're looking up about a career in the military

and you just saw Donald Trump take out all in your chain of command, all the people you look up to, all the people that lead you, that you admire and force them into retirement, what does that do to you? I mean, these people have enough pension, they have enough ways to leave, they'll leave. So this is the hollowing out. Donald Trump said he's going to lead the greatest fighting force in the world. No, he won't. He's going to hollow it out because they're all going to leave. And now junior officers that are junior officers for a

reason are going to be elevated to top positions they're not ready for. I mean, Abraham Lincoln, I think, once took a captain and made him a colonel on the battlefield. Donald Trump is going to take a captain and make him a four-star general, okay? And this is a problem. Now, the problem is what can we do about it? We keep talking about the United States Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court said that when it's a core constitutional function, like it's written in the constitution for the president in Article II, you can't touch him.

You can't touch him, absolute immune. Can't sue him over it. You can't prosecute him over it, nothing. So I can't think of a more prevalent, a more acute constitutional power than to be the commander in chief as the president of the United States. So he gets to do whatever he effing pleases. And we have to just sit back as a democracy, as a constitutional republic, and shake our

heads. But it's scary. And now this all makes perfect sense, Karen, because of course there was reporting a couple years ago and recently with John Kelly, a former four-star general who was his chief of staff who said that Donald Trump's a fascist and shouldn't get anywhere near the White House. Mark Milley, the joint chiefs of staff chair the first time around, who said Donald Trump's a fascist and shouldn't go anywhere near the White House. Now we understand why both John

Kelly and reporting has said that Donald Trump is an admirer of Adolf Hitler and particularly said out loud that he wished he had the generals that Hitler had who were loyal to him. Okay, now we're going to have the MAGA army led by Hitler style generals moving forward. How do you like that, American electorate? Go ahead, Carol. Sorry. I mean, it's just, you know, we the world we live in is not the world we live in today is very different than the world we lived in yesterday.

I mean, this is just shocking to me. Again, I sound a little bit like a broken record and I'm still in the throes of post-election despair. And the news just keeps getting worse. Eventually I will get out of it and this will be more positive, but this is not positive. This is a terrible development. I mean, the fact that these are four star generals

that have earned this role, they are people who've devoted their life to keep us safe. They've put their lives on the line. They have fought in wars. These are true actual real life heroes. These are, they put public servants like me who sat behind a desk as a public servant, honestly, in some ways to shame.

These are the people that we should honor. And these are individuals that Trump has called losers. He has no respect for the military or people who are gold star parents or any of these things. And the fact that he's willing to do this to the generals of the military is something that everybody should be extremely scared of. What's, as you said, what's gonna be left. And the fact that they would put Pete Hegsrath in charge of them shows he has absolutely no respect

for people, for experience, and for true leadership and for values that I recognize at least. It's just absolutely unbelievable. And as you said this, Popak, there's one particular general, his name escapes me, he's a person of color, he's black. And he's the one that they've called out by name

saying that he's the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They're saying that they're gonna, that's the first one they've called out by name saying that he's the head of the joint chiefs of staff They're saying that they're gonna that's the first one. They're gonna get rid of because he's too woke which basically means he's too black and General Charles Q Brown. Okay. Thank you. Yes. So general Brown They have said we don't know if he's was a DEI hire We don't know if he was qualified or not. We'll never know. But he's the first we're going to get rid of because he's black. And what I couldn't help but think of when you were talking is, you know, my first reaction was, well, okay,

the EEOC, right? Like you can't just fire someone because of their skin color, but you can because he's immune. He is immune. There's no, there, he can do whatever he wants. He can violate other laws because he is immune. And I just can't believe we are in this position. I just can't, but we are. And so he will do things like persecute or, or, or whatever he'll do to people who are gay in the military. He will fire people at will. He could do things based on loyalty to him and skin color if he wanted, as opposed to loyalty to the Constitution, which is what they are sworn to do when they take office.

Right? Again, it's not about political party. It's about your country first. Uh, but Trump is about Trump first and MAGA first, not about country first. And this is where we live now. This is our country. This is what we voted for. Well, I wondered if they were going to overplay their hand with the win on last Tuesday, and it's now been resoundingly answered.

Yes, they are. And the benefit of that is that we have to see it as fair-minded people as a gift. I know it's hard to see it that way now, but the more that Donald Trump makes it about Donald Trump and undermines our traditional institutions and conventions, tries to overturn the Senate traditions, the House traditions, the tradition of keeping our military apolitical, uses the Department of Justice headed by a puppet to weaponize against his enemies and to implement his worst instincts and enable his worst instincts and implement them. The more the Democrats should be emboldened and know how to pivot against that to crush him in the midterms.

I wanted to crush him last Tuesday for whatever reason, maybe, and I'm not here to do an autopsy, but maybe because of the way the Democrats had to change gears so quickly with Joe Biden that we didn't have a primary process that would have galvanized people around our chosen candidate because of the way the candidate was selected, elevating the vice president without a democratic process, if you will. I'm sure that didn't help. And so, the messaging kind of got screwy. And it allowed the Republicans to project onto our party, onto the Democrats and onto moderates positions that really were not our key positions or ones that animate our party, but we allowed them to caricature us in the last remaining two months in a sprint to an election. That won't happen again,

and it's not going to happen at the midterms. Obama swept into office with all three houses, all three branches of government under his control in the first two years, got Obamacare passed, some other things too, and then got crushed at the midterm. Reagan, there was a rollback at the midterms after he took every state but Minnesota. There is plenty of precedent. The only one who didn't suffer as deeply as we thought he would was Joe Biden, but that's another anomaly because we're post-COVID and everything else happened. So that big red wave didn't happen. And we kind of took that to mean, oh, we're going to win the election. And that's not how that went. Maybe a Joe Biden who was 20 years younger that would have went that way, but not this way.

Now we just have to focus our energy and our attention. As one of our followers and listeners in Australia wrote me privately, you got to keep the bastards honest. You got to call the bastards out because burying our head in the sand, turning off our channel, literally, turning the lights off and just saying, well, we tried. So long, democracy, click, last one out, turn off the lights. That's not, resignation and abandonment is not a strategy. We have to have a strategy moving forward. And the leadership here is two ways. One, the people that are on this network are involved and are active lawyers and are involved in some of the cases there will be

in the future that will help protect our democracy. But keeping the public and our loyal audience that we're growing, to keep them engaged and to keep the public sentiment focused is important. Sometimes policies don't get passed because they wouldn't dare do it because the public has picked up pitchforks and torches just because they won this time. Again, if 2 million Democrats had gone to the polls like they did for Joe Biden, we may not be in this situation, but they didn't. So we have to go out and get them and bring them back. And in the meantime, we have to call out all of these abnormal power grabs, abuses of power, use the court system to our advantage through federal judges and all of that. But I can't express enough how important it is for you to write to

Congress people, write to senators, take to the streets, take to the marketplace of ideas in social media and other places and the public square and object and object and object. Because yes, we'll be successful in the courts on many of these things. But some of it's just gonna be that there's just such a backlash by the public. And maybe the media wakes up. I'm talking about the corporate media, not here. But this is important. This is why we do it. This is why we have to lean forward,

not back at this critical moment. And we're here for it. And we're here for you because you're here for us. We're going to work this through. The quicker we make Donald Trump – now we can see it – a lame duck president and tie up his worst executive orders in as much litigation and blocks from judges as we can, the better. But the public and this community is so important to that equation and having this community to come to once, twice, three times a week or every day in the case of Midas Touch and

the hot ticks and all that. Can't express it enough, right Karen? Absolutely. That's the most important thing. Look, sometimes it feels hard to go on. Sometimes it feels hard to continue to do this work and to have the energy to sit here and study up on these issues and talk about it when it feels a little bit futile, you know, given where we are right now. But I have to say, I agree with you, it's more

important than ever when you see picks like this, when you see people like Matt Gaetz, it's dangerous and our country's worth fighting for. And so I'm committed to continue doing this with you, Popak and I agree with you and with the Midas community, which is, you know, really what keeps us going. And the day after the election, you know, was a really hard day for a lot of people. And this day after the election, you know, was a really hard day for a lot of people. And this community, this community is, is, is partly here. And I want to make the little heart for our community. I know, but I like, I like this for the community.

I think that's so fun. So we're going to be right back here. Can we be right back in the legal AF YouTube channel, take a minute, hit the subscribe button. We're going to be right back here on Saturday with Ben Mycelis. We're going to be on hot takes here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. We got the podcast like Mistrial, got different ways to stay connected as a community. We'll give you the information, the analysis, and the commentary that you need. We need you to stay engaged, to be engaged. I mean, they were talking about the last time Donald Trump won,

that there were people took to the streets and there were protests and I lived sort of at the misfortune at the moment and living in New York between his two major buildings. And I heard the pots and pans banging and the people being upset. This time, it was more of a resignation. Like, oh, the only good thing that came out of it is he can only serve one more term. I know he thinks he said recently out loud, maybe we could find a way for me to serve a third term. The 22nd Amendment is not going anywhere and you can't get two-thirds or three-quarters of America and the Senate and the Congress to agree on anything, especially Donald Trump related. So that's not happening. Thank God he's not looking at two full terms.

That would, I mean, you know, what, you know, that would be totally crazy. But I'll be right back here with you next Wednesday. Karen Freeman at Knifilow, Michael Popak, Legal AF, and then again on Saturday with Ben and myself. So until the next time, signing off.