Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump SENTENCING Nears + Supreme Court BOMBSHELLS

Episode Date: June 30, 2024

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back for the weekend edition of the top-rated Legal AF podcast. On this episode, the anchors discuss and debate: (1) whether Judge Cannon will give another win to Trump in the Mar a Lago prosecution and throw out and “suppress” the incriminating testimony and evidence against him by his former attorney Evan Corcoran, and the impact on the prosecution’s case if she does; (2)  whether Judge Cannon in the Trump Mar a Lago criminal case will be persuaded TO GAG HIM by the dozens of threats against the FBI Trump and MAGA have made putting their lives in the line of fire; (3) why the Supreme Court did NOT BAIL OUT Steve Bannon and instead reaffirmed the validity of the Jan6 Committee and its subpoena powers and sent him to jail in early July to serve out his sentence for contempt of Congress; (4) why Judge Merchan in New York lifted a part of the Trump gag and whether that could impact his sentencing decisions on 7/11 for Trump’s 34 count felony conviction; (5) which is more impactful on our way of life, the Supreme Court’s throwing out the window one of the main charges against the leaders and most violent insurrectionists on Jan6, or the MAGA Justices’ wholesale destruction of the entire executive branch regulatory scheme, touching every aspect of our lives by throwing out a series of 40+ year precedent, with one stroke of the pen, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Thanks to our sponsors: Liquid IV: Get 20% off when you go to https://Liquid-IV.com and use code LEGALAF at checkout! Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://RocketMoney.com/legalaf Timeline: Go to https://timeline.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF to get 10% OFF your order. Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Judge Eileen Cannon just denied a major motion filed by Donald Trump to hold a hearing to suppress evidence obtained in connection with the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago back in 2022. But although that's the headline, Michael Popak and I will dig deeper here on Legal AF because Judge Cannon then gave Donald Trump another gift, which was a evidentiary hearing on the issue of whether or not the attorney client privilege should have been pierced as it was in the Washington, D.C. grand jury proceedings that led to special counsel Jack Smith getting critical evidence. We'll break that down. Also special counsel Jack Smith submitted supplemental briefing regarding the threats that FBI and Department

of Justice officials have received as a result of Donald Trump's lies that the FBI and DOJ are actively trying to assassinate him. Special Counsel Jack Smith wants to modify the conditions of Donald Trump's release to impose a common sense gag order, arguing there is no First Amendment rights of convicted felons or in this case, a criminal defendant as well, to lie and claim that they are the target of assassination attempts by holding up the general use of force policy used by the Department of Justice and FBI on all search warrants executed always in the United States of America.

Judge Eileen Cannon has requested supplemental briefing, which I think has a whole lot to do with delay, delay, delay. Earlier in the week when she held a hearing on this matter, she seemed inclined to deny Special Counsel Jack Smith's request to protect the lives of law enforcement and the DOJ. However, since a modification of the terms and conditions of release is an immediate, appealable order to the 11th circuit.

She's going to drag this out as much as possible, but you know who can't drag it out anymore as much as possible, Steve Bannon, his emergency appeal to the United States Supreme Court to stop him from having to go to prison on Monday was denied by the United States Supreme Court. Probably the only good thing the United States Supreme Court has done in recent memory. Steve Bannon will have to check himself into prison on Monday. And because of all of the delays that he created, he's going to be in there for about four months during the critical time period when he wants to create mischief in

connection with the 2024 election. We'll also touch upon how in New York, Justice Merchant felt obligated to relieve Donald Trump of some of the requirements of the gag order there since the trial was no longer taking place. The gag order protections as to witnesses and jurors was lifted, although Donald Trump still precluded from mentioning the names and identities of jurors. Justice Marchand says he did not want to have to make a ruling lifting the gag order as to those categories of protected persons,

but he felt he had no option given that the trial is over and that he would have otherwise been reversed by the appellate division in New York's highest court, the court of appeals, the gag order protection. Still apply though to the district attorney's office, the staff and the family members of the district attorney, district attorney's staff and to Justice Mershan. It does not apply to Justice Mershan himself. It applies to Justice Mershan's daughter.

It does not apply to Alvin Bragg, just Alvin Bragg's staff will break that down. And then we got to go talk about the, just kind of breakdown of precedent by this United States Supreme Court order after order. The one that probably isn't getting the biggest headline, certainly having the biggest effect. And we'll talk about that,

which is the Supreme Court reversing 40 years of precedent in a decision known as Chevron, whereby courts would give deference to the interpretations of enabling statutes by administrative agencies. In other words, courts would defer to the expertise of administrative agencies to decide how to enforce the regulations that they were required to either enforce or not enforce by the laws of Congress. The Supreme Court said that agencies should not be given any deference at all, that it should be the courts who are the

ones who interpret these enabling statutes. Basically, the result being whether it's the EPA, the FTC, the SEC, you know, you name it. Uh, the Supreme court is going to impose their views over the agency's views and over the agency's expertise. That's going to have really detrimental effects on environment, on gun control, on, uh, securities fraud. And we'll go through the list. Also the Supreme court ruled in the Fisher case that the obstruction of official proceeding statute, 18 USC section 1512 sub C sub two, um, it was

improperly used to prosecute January 6th, uh, insurrectionists, as long as the, uh, charges did not specifically relate to the tampering or manipulation of documents, which this Supreme Court claimed is what 1512 C-2 is really about. This means that hundreds and hundreds of January 6th insurrectionists who were charged with that crime, that charge is going to be dismissed. However, even though Donald Trump was charged with two counts of obstruction of official proceedings, reading what the Supreme Court wrote, it doesn't seem that it will result in the dismissal

of any of the charges against Donald Trump. But nonetheless, Donald Trump is going to request the dismissal. It's going to cause more delay. And that's of course, if the Supreme Court depends on what the Supreme Court rules on Monday, when it will be issuing its ruling on absolute presidential immunity,

waiting to the literally last day it created to delay that ruling, and we'll get a ruling on Monday on whether or not they think that Donald Trump should be able to order the military to assassinate his political opponents and massacre the other political party and get absolute immunity for doing it. It's crazy that I even have to say that that's what they're actually deliberating while we're recording this Legal AF, but that is what they are deliberating right now.

Michael Popak, good to have you on Legal AF, or should I say Papa Popak? Congratulations, Michael Popakak for this very special edition of Legal AF, your first Legal AF as a Papa or your second? No, Wednesday was, I went on two days after birth. That's impressive. That's dedication right there. Well, congratulations. Thank you very much.

So there's Francesca, one of my favorite photos. Thank you very much. So there's Francesca, one of my favorite photos. Thank you very much. I got to carry my end of the bargain here and set a precedent, taking a precedent, we'll be talking a lot about it today, for future fathers of Midas Touch parentage and lineage in the future. But we're here. I said she has exquisite timing. She decided to be born along with my wife on Monday in between the midweek and the Legal AF Saturday, but here we are. I was just listening to your rundown. The thing that we'd have to start off a Saturday edition of Legal AF talking about not one, but two more super precedent of over 40 years being tossed by this United States Supreme Court,

only the only reason because they have the numbers, not because the prior precedent, whether we call it Chevron, or we call it anything related to the SEC or anything like that, not because it was wrong, not because it has just been sitting there, just waiting for the Supreme Court to get around after 40 or 50 years and make the change. It's only because this MAGA right-wing Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Roberts, has decided that they're going to, it's like they're going out of business sale, but they're not going out of business, but they're going to clear the shelves of any precedent that has offended them and has given too much power to other branches of government to their,

and diminishing the Supreme Court. Supreme Court always wants to remind you that they are the law interpreter and not agencies that are in the executive branch. And even though we've got delicate regulatory frameworks as you mentioned around water, clean water, clean air, the environment, securities regulation, consumer protection, and the list goes on and they're all based on when Congress has not spoken exquisitely perfectly about a particular issue in the subject matter that the agency is responsible for. The agency is able within those

parameters to develop law and rulemaking without having to go back to Congress. That's been the law for 40 plus years. It's so old, the Chevron decision that you and I are going to talk about and the Chevron doctrine, that it was seven years old when I went to law school. By the time I graduated, it's been on the books that long. And yet to this group, it's like, it's like they're going through the list of, of doctrines and precedent from, from prior Supreme courts that they don't like. That is not in their view, MAGA slash conservative and benefiting Donald Trump. And they are just stripping them away, looking for any case as an excuse to do it one by one by one.

That's all we've seen this term. If we thought it was going to end with the Dobbs decision, the anniversary of the Dobbs decision is already here two years ago where they threw out the super precedent of Roe versus Wade after 50 years and just tossed it aside as if, well, it was wrongly decided then and so we're just fixing something that was an anomaly, a historical anomaly and aberration now. If we thought they were going to end there, no. You and I always thought that they were going to try to dismantle the regulatory and administrative procedures act framework around agencies. And when we get to that certain section in our podcast today, we'll talk about be careful

what you ask for because if Donald Trump finds his way back into the White House, God forbid, and he thinks he's going to use his agencies and his agency heads and his executive orders to render fundamental change of government, retribution and retaliation, I'm not sure he's able to do that any longer based on the recent Supreme Court decisions. You know, the Chevron decision, when we're saying Chevron and people are like, why are you saying Chevron? Isn't that a company? The case was called Chevron USA versus Natural Resource Defense Council, Inc.

And it was a case that went before the United States Supreme Court in 1984. So when we refer to the Chevron decision, that's why we're doing that as a shorthand. But even before the Chevron decision, the kind of evolution of our country, our government, the world, the complexities required that there be agencies that deal with all of these things like pollution crisis, proliferation of guns, people who are finding new and sophisticated ways to engage in securities fraud, right? And a federal judge who already has a busy docket and Congress who usually can't agree on a lot of things, but they can try to build bipartisan consensus, at least in the past, to kind of put this in the power of agencies to then interpret and enforce the regulations. There's a reason why Chevron as a

decision came about. There's a reason why all of these decisions kind of came about in the sixties and the seventies and the eighties that are now being shattered in 2024. And it's not like an accident or an activist court doing it. It's that the way our country was evolving, how else could you deal with the, like a pollution crisis? How else could you deal with all of these crises that we're developing if you don't have the people to do that? Right. And then in 2024, this Supreme Court is basically now saying, you can't do that agencies, we're going to do that. Or Congress has to speak to it directly. Really, this Congress that continues to spend all of their time, like, and I'm not making this up, like showing dick pics of Hunter Biden, like they're the ones who are going to help, you know, with our climate,

and they're the ones who are going to help with the increasing complexities of AI in, you know, in business and industry and how that impacts that. That's who we expect to do that. That's just, that's just not a realistic thing. And then Popak, you talked about when, you know, you went to law school. So one of the ways to talk to our viewers and listeners about this is when Michael Popak went to law school, his textbook taught him the law the same way.

Math would tell you one plus one equals two. And Michael Popak learned about these cases like the Chevron case and Chevron deference. And Michael Popock learned about these cases like the Chevron case and Chevron deference. And there's a whole class that you learn about administrative law, administrative procedures, and you learn that you take exams on that. And you believe that's the law. And then they teach you in law school that there's precedent and they're

super precedent and these things can't be overturned and you learn about how, you know, there were, you know, how, how this has evolved over time. And then when I went to law school, guess what? Because of the concept of precedent, I learned the same thing that Michael Popock learned. I learned that. And I learned about the Chevron case. And, you know, we're not going to talk about, you know, overturning Roe v. Wade on this specific episode or go into, you know, you know, that much detail on it because we've covered it in other episodes in the Dabzition, but you learn that this is the law of the land or we've talked about on other episodes, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and, and all of these things.

So what the Supreme Court's done in this term is they've basically taken the law textbooks and they're like, we don't like this. And they threw them out. Like quite literally, if you took an administrative law exam last week before this decision, you now failed that exam, basically, because the law is not the law anymore. They just, they just shredded it. And we'll go into more detail about that, but I think that's helpful at the outset to just reflect on how dramatic it is, these things that they're doing. But look, let's talk briefly about what Judge Eileen Cannon did. Donald Trump was requesting what's called a Frank's hearing, which is

basically like a suppression of evidence hearing. And Trump claimed that the affidavit used in 2022 in August that was issued in connection with the search warrant that was executed at Mar-a-Lago had material omissions and material, intentionally material falsehoods that would require a hearing called a Frank's hearing that could then result in the evidence obtained at Mar-a-Lago, here the documents that Donald Trump stole being suppressed, so that would basically lead to the dismissal of the case if you went through a Frank's hearing

and then all of the evidence was suppressed as a result of the affidavit that was used to execute the search ward. And Donald Trump claimed that the material omissions included just like a number of things that the FBI agent who filled it out didn't give a definition of personal records or that the FBI agent didn't talk about how the FBI was consulting with NARA before the search warrant was executed, things that were actually not material at all.

And look, to her credit, Judge Eileen Cannon said, I don't think that these are any types of like material omissions or material things that would change the general character of the affidavit and the search warrant that was executed. So the headline that came out was Judge Cannon denies Donald Trump's request to have this suppression hearing that was held. So that feels like a good headline but you read deeper into it Popak and let me throw it to you. Judge Cannon's like, you know what though? I think what I need to do independently is I need to look at what that well-respected, and she didn't say this, but she is a well-respected judge, not Cannon, but Judge Beryl Howell. I need to look at what Judge Beryl Howell did when she presided

over the grand jury proceedings in Washington, DC in the grand jury that was used as part of the investigative, the criminal investigative proceedings, because Judge Barrell Howell found that Donald Trump was using his lawyers in furtherance of crimes, and therefore found the crime fraud exception applied such that attorney notes had to be handed over to Special Counsel Jack Smith. But Judge Cannon said, you know what?

I'm not sure Judge Beryl Howell was right. I think it's my job, and this was her direct quote, to look anew at what Judge Beryl Howell did in finding the crime fraud exception applies. I want the parties to meet and confer and hold an evidentiary hearing on this matter. We'll do an evidentiary hearing, meet and confer about what the contours

of this hearing looks like. So Popak, we talked in the last episode about how Judge Cannon refused to listen to the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida Court, Altenaga, when she said to, you know, you shouldn't even be taking this case. But so that was one way of just like giving the middle finger to your colleagues. But then here we have Judge Cannon also trying to usurp kind of.

I mean, look, she is the trial court judge here, but this has been ruled on by another federal judge and Judge Cannon's like, I'm I'm going to look at it anew with fresh eyes and we'll do a new hearing here. What do you make of that? Well, this is probably my third time, including a hot take, telling you I've been very concerned about her going after the Evan Corcoran, 50 pages of single-spaced notes testimony and his audio recordings about his representation of Donald Trump, which was the bassist of Pierce, the attorney-client privilege by the chief judge at the time of the DC Circuit Court, Barrel Howell, after a full evidentiary

hearing at that time, in which if they didn't like the results of it, I think that it was incumbent upon Donald Trump and his lawyers at the time, whoever they were, to take an appeal to the United States Supreme Court or to the DC Court of Appeal and they didn't do that. I don't totally disagree with her. I'll be back into this part of my contribution here. I don't totally disagree that post indictment and a suppression hearing prior to trial is the proper province of a trial judge, whether her name is Aileen Cannon or someone else that we admire like Judge Altenaga. I get that part, but I don't get the process as you so smartly noticed is just built for the purposes of delay. She, like Judge Chutkin, could have ruled on this on the papers.

She doesn't need a full-blown evidentiary hearing, not with the transcript that was already developed, which she's now asked for from this grand jury process presided over by a much smarter and wiser and more temperate judge than she, in Judge Barrell Howell, who's still on the bench, by the way. She just rotated off as chief judge. And now I get it. She wants to flex her muscle and she chafes whenever she gets a whiff that she thinks she's being disrespected by the prosecutors. And it's happened over and over again. Karen and I talked about it on the midweek. I wanted Karen's view as a former prosecutor. I've done it as a defense lawyer where I've gotten a little bit sideways with a

trial judge or a magistrate, federal judge or a magistrate. And then the impact on that. It got so bad with David Harbatch, who's one of the many prosecutors, lead prosecutors down in Mar-a-Lago that the judge even said, if you can't be civil in my courtroom and answer my questions appropriately, then there are plenty of people on your team that can argue this motion. I mean, that's how bad it has gotten with this relationship, if you will, sandpapery as it is between the special counsel's office and the judge. I mean, I've had plenty of judges where I've thought, I don't agree with this person. I think they're've had plenty of judges where I've thought,

I don't agree with this person. I think they're not properly prepared. They're not reading the case law right and they're not following me, but you can't act like that. You can't act like the judge is not getting it. You have to find another way around the brick wall. So when I first read about the Franks decision, and then until I got to the second half of it,

I was like, okay, well, this is sort of consistent with what I heard about the hearing, which is people forget this name because she doesn't really use them anymore, but magistrate Judge Reinhart, who sits in Fort Lauderdale, is her magistrate. And most judges who are more experienced than she would be using the magistrate for most of what we're watching her do if they had any intention to get this case prepared properly for trial in an expeditious fashion. But since Aileen Cannon doesn't, she's created a sandpit of her own making

where everything has to go through her with her multiple level self-created procedures of evidentiary hearings. And then those are weeks away and then briefing schedules that are extended and whatever Donald Trump Sneezes or bats an eyelash he gets an extension of that time and and and that's all self-created for those that are out there that are Not yet on our patreon Or just wonder about the law like well What is the timetable for the release of Supreme Court cases and how they

dropped? There is no. It is all created at the moment in real time by that current panel of the Supreme Court. There's no rules, there's no regulations that you can file to make them go faster. And within a trial judge's discretion, yes, there are certain rules that say how many days for this and how many days for that. But in other places, whether it is going to be an evidentiary hearing granted or not, you know, yes, there might be some precedent. We'll talk a lot about precedent with a C today. But it really is up to the judge to construct their own processes. We call them colloquially chamber rules. It's the rules of the chambers. I tell my lawyers who work with me,

there's three or four things you have to know in every case, especially if you're the junior member of the team. One, if we're in federal court, the federal rules that apply, the local rules that apply, and the chamber rules that apply. What is the judge's little peculiarities and picadillos that you have to follow? You got to get that right also. And she just creates her own because she's never been on the bench that long. She's been on the bench a very short amount of time. So when I read the Frank's decision, I was like, okay,

she's siding with magistrate Judge Reinhardt who properly got that subpoenaed issued on the evidence provided and within the scope of the, scope looks right and the searching looks right. Okay, that's fine. And she doesn't find the grounds to overturn the actual search warrant issued by her magistrate judge, who again, she should be using more as a laboring ore to kind of get through this case, but she doesn't for

a reason. She wants everything with her. Second half of it is exactly what you and I, and I've anticipated time and time again, it's the Evan Corcoran neon light. We knew when the attorney-client privilege got stripped from Donald Trump, because the client holds the privilege, under the crime-fraud exception, because Barrel Howell was the second federal judge, not the first, to find that it was more likely than not

that Donald Trump, with a lawyer, committed a crime or fraud. Judge Carter, where you practice a lot in the central district of California, in the John Eastman matter related to the Jan 6 committee, two and a half years ago, found that it was more likely than not stripped Donald Trump from the attorney-client privilege and turned over all of that material through John Eastman to the Jan 6 committee. Same thing, Beryl Howell, on her own findings based on testimony, including of Evan Corcoran, that we don't really have the transcript of yet, or we have partially of it, and then

decided that Evan Corcoran's interactions with Donald Trump were being used by Donald Trump to commit a crime or fraud on the Department of Justice and the United States, the way he handled or mishandled the classified documents. Evan Corcoran was not the first lawyer for the Mar-a-Lago matters for Donald Trump. He had an earlier one that dealt with the National Archive negotiations.

That lawyer dropped out after Donald Trump refused to take his instruction or his advice. Then we had Tim Parlett-Torre, Jim Trusty, and Evan Corcoran all there, all of which are now gone. They were handling the day-to-day along with Christina Bob and Jennifer Little out of Georgia. That group and Evan Corkwood in particular were responsible for interacting with the response to the subpoena. Let's not forget, and when I say let's not forget,

I mean our audience, that before there was a search warrant in August of two years ago, there was a subpoena. Before there was a subpoena, there was a request by letter to turn over, just turn over the documents that don't belong to you. That's all you had to do. And you can do it on your own if you do it right. But when the government figured out from insiders who were providing testimony and sworn testimony

that supported the search warrant, that Donald Trump wasn't doing that at all, he was hiding the 34 boxes. He was reviewing 70 boxes. He was staging the area for his lawyer to review after he had already sanitized the boxes and pulled out things he didn't want the lawyer to see. Because the lawyer Evan Corcoran gave him almost two weeks, turned his back on Donald Trump and let him do whatever he wanted. By the time he came back, they were like, Oh, it's all in one room. There you go. Here's the 30 boxes. And

Evan Corcoran, I don't know if you remember this, Ben, testified along the way. He spent 20 minutes looking through 30 boxes, which is almost impossible. And he turned over those 36 to 38 documents, the now infamous folder with the tape around it. He had Christina Bob sign it and said, this is all we found. But the interaction between Donald Trump and Evan Corcoran, which we already know about, was Donald Trump basically instructing Evan Corcoran to destroy evidence and to eliminate from his pile, pluck them out with a plucking sound, as Evan Corcoran put it, when he went back to his hotel at the Brazilian court around the corner from Mar-a-Lago

and Evan Corcoran didn't do that but he did record that happened and that helps with the mens rea criminal intent and willfulness component of the prosecutors. If they lose that meaning there's a suppression of the Corcoran testimony, evidence, notes, and audio, prosecutors just, their case just got a lot harder. I'm not saying it's climbing Mount Everest without oxygen, but it got a lot harder. Now you're left with grainy videos of the two co-conspirators moving around boxes, testimony of people on the fringes around Donald Trump,

but you had Donald Trump red- with Benz Rea, with through Evan Corcoran. It becomes a whole nother case and a whole harder case if the Evan Corcoran stuff is suppressed. So that, the first part I was like, okay, that's what a normal judge should do. And the second part, I've been up, I've been up at night ever since, not just because of my new baby. Well, for the crime fraud exception to apply, there has to be two things.

One was a crime committed and the standard for it doesn't have to be beyond a reasonable doubt at this stage. It just has to be, I think, by preponderance. And then were the specific documents or communications with the attorney used in furtherance of the crime. So here, the reason why it's so odd, she's like holding an evidentiary hearing is that it's kind of so obvious that the attorney client privilege should be pierced. Often the hardest prong of that two prong test is, you know, for a judge to have to make a

decision that a crime took place more probably than not. That's really why you'd need to hold the evidentiary hearing in this area because that's a big type of ruling to make. But then obviously here, especially as it relates to Corcoran, of course his communications here were then in furtherance or Trump was communicating him in furtherance of the crime. We know what they were about. It was so that Corcoran could go in a different location while Donald

Trump committed the crime and Waltie now to move the boxes. So clearly it was in connection with Prong One, the crime, you know, and just so people know, you know, again, that this is not how it's supposed to be done. Y'all remember federal judge David Carter in the central district of California, when he made the ruling with respect to John Eastman, that the crime fraud exception did not apply or that the crime fraud exception applied that attorney client privilege did not apply. It was handled, you know, in a. It was handled in a fairly concise order. There was information that was submitted. The judge read through the documents and was like, yeah, there's a crime and these communications are in furtherance of a crime. And there were certain communications that had

nothing to do with the underlying crime. And those would be attorney-client privilege. But as it related to the attempt to overthrow the government, Judge Carter was like, yeah, clearly that's in connection with the crime. These are fairly easy decisions to be made by a federal judge. But to your point, Michael Popak, Judge Cannon just keeps on delaying delay. Yeah. And just not to leave a, there is, I mean, I am recognizing that there is a difference between Judge Carter's subpoena compliance hearing and a suppression hearing related to an indictment. I get the difference, but I totally agree with you. She does not have to create this Rube Goldberg contraption of weeks delay and evidentiary hearing. She could look at the grand jury

testimony and hearing transcript, which the government will now provide her. And then with that and some briefing, that's it. She doesn't have to bring in live witnesses again. I mean, she says it's not going to be, don't worry, government. I know you're worried about a mini trial, but it's not going to be. And then she goes on in her order to describe effectively a mini trial that she's going to be conducting about this issue, which only means it's going to be like beyond November when she has, um, when she has, uh, make her ruling. We should start doing a counter. She's holding this trial hostage and the amount of days that it's taken her without having set a trial date, it should be like a, like zero dark 30. We should be writing on a, you know, with a, with a board, like 227 days and no trial date. It should be like a like zero dark 30. We should be writing on a, you know, with a with a board like 227 days and no trial set.

It's a great point. I mean, the reason that she's doing this is she sets the hearing in November, she asks for supplemental briefing that takes us into 2025. She asked for more supplemental briefing. I think in her own mind, she's going to try to do everything she can. If she was left to her own without special counsel Jack Smith being able to appeal anything, she dragged this out till 2030, you know, till as long as possible. But anyway, but the question is, is can special counsel Jack Smith appeal to the 11th circuit on this issue of modification of the conditions of Donald Trump's release, which is an appealable order. Should Judge Cannon make the order? Judge Cannon has not yet made the order. She's ordered supplemental briefing as part of her plan.

We like to show comparisons. Karen had a great one. I joined her on Wednesday. Just so we show that we're not being unfair to her to critiquing Aileen Cannon. Menendez in my home state of New York, a senator who took apparently gold bricks as bribes in an elaborate government contracting public corruption scheme involving halal certification for food going overseas for armed forces. He's already at trial. That already went to trial, is going to trial within seven months of the indictment. Hunter Biden is going to trial twice within a year of his indictments.

So no, yes, there are some civil cases, for instance, that Ben, you and I work on. They'll go on two, three, five, seven, eight years, no doubt. But criminal cases, criminal cases, they're a year, year and a half tops. Absolutely. I want to remind everybody about Patreon, patreon.com slash legal AF. Get those lectures from Michael Popok and myself. It also helps support the growth of this independent media network and this show. We don't have outside investors.

And so your help in joining the Patreon community goes a very, very long way. One more time, that's patreon.com slash legal AF, sign up. And then Michael, I'd love to do another live Zoom meeting in July with everybody, even though we were saying we were going to do kind of the quarterly partner and associate meetings. Let's do one in July, obviously, when your dad duty permits you to do that. All right, we'll be right back with our first quick break. We've got a lot more show.

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and use the code Legal AF to claim your free three-piece towel set and save over 40% off. Again, that's trymiracle.com slash Legal AF to treat yourself. Thank you Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode. I wanna thank our Pro-democracy sponsors. They make this show possible. Some great products as well.

Jordy Vetsen, Michael Popok, and I use them. So if you're able to support those companies, support those products, use our discount codes. The discount codes are in the description below. So in a little bit, we'll talk about some of the, I think, atrocious Supreme court rulings from this week. Although the Fisher case, the way it was written does not seem to be resulting in the dismissal of the two obstruction of official proceeding charges against

Donald Trump, although he'll try to make some mischief to cause delay. And of course that's pending the Supreme court's order on the issue of absolute immunity, which they've delayed until Monday. But I guess the one thing the Supreme court got right, although it should be a no brainer, the fact that, you know, you even have to hesitate for a second and go, all right, what are they going to do? Um, they've denied Steve Bannon's emergency request to try to avoid prison.

Steve Bannon filed an emergency application saying that based on the issues raised in his appeals, even though he lost before the DC Circuit, he claimed that he thought that this was an issue the Supreme Court should hear. And the Supreme Court said, no, you're going to prison. Check yourself in. So he goes to prison on Monday.

There's the order right there. So you can all see it. The application for release pending appeal presented to the chief justice and by him referred to the court is denied. And that actually means that chief justice, John Roberts submitted this to the rest of the court for their review. they did not get these sufficient votes when it was submitted to the entire court. Justice Roberts could have on his own just denied it, but that hasn't really been the practice and policy of the court. What do you make of this, Michael Popak?

Well, it hasn't been the practice and policy of the court ever since shows like ours have shined a light on shadow dockets and Let a year or two ago which had been sort of matter of course where every circuit in this case The DC circuit has a Supreme Court justice assigned to that circuit by the chief justice They do it at the beginning of the term. They don't usually change much and every Associate justice and the chief justice has one or two circuits assigned to them. And the fifth circuit has somebody in the seventh circuit, the ninth circuit. And the way it splits is the way you think it's been splitting. The more democratic, liberal, moderate circuits are headed by Kataji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan. And the red meat ones are

headed by Alito Thomas Gortzitz Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. And Chief Justice Roberts reserves for himself as all chief justices do the DC circuit where a lot of these cases are coming out. And as you so rightly put it, he could have made the decision on his own with a shadow dock. He decided to refer it in, which is actually worse for Bannon because it shows that they couldn't, not only couldn't they get the five votes that would have been required

to be interested in this appeal, they couldn't get the four votes to even consider it and stay the case. And so that doesn't mean it was nine, zero. If I had to guess, when we kick it back to you, Ben, you'll tell me your thoughts is definitely voting for Bannon having a further delay

would have been Alito and Thomas. And for some reason, and when we get to more Supreme Court stuff, I'll give you my view on it. Gorsuch has been siding with Alito and Thomas a lot in different makeups on different court decisions recently. I think we've got a couple of developments. Maybe this is the thing we can do on Patreon in July, take the plane up and look back down at the landscape of what this term meant for the United States Supreme Court

when the dust settles and we can look at all the 60 or 70 cases. But two things that I saw right away was Amy Coney Barrett stepped out of the shadows and has taken a more a more of an active role, both in dissents and concurrences and speaking out and questioning. And we'll talk about what that means at the appropriate time. And Gorsuch seems to be apparently siding on occasion with the right, right, right, right wing, which signals where his head is at for a lot of these issues. As to Bannon, he doesn't seem to care that he's going to jail for four months. He'll be going in as Navarro is coming out in Miami. And to Trump, all this means for Trump is that these are the bona fides that he's looking for for his next term. So as I've said to people,

if you want an administration filled with felons, people who have had their sentences commuted, pardoned, people who have lost their bar licenses, subject of criminal prosecution, in state and federal proceedings. I got an administration for you and it's headed by a guy named Donald Trump. I know everybody, including Democrats, were doing a lot of hand wringing off of the first debate.

And then, of course, I think the president acquitted himself well when he was on the campaign trail the next day, I think in North Carolina, but it doesn't matter. These debates don't matter. This was the old, these really old days, when George Bush, looking at his watch, tanked him being elected against Clinton.

You know, when Ronald Reagan looked really old in the first debate and in the second debate, he got off a quip against Mondale that won the debate. We're done with all of that. These two, we know as an American people, the body of work of the two people running for the highest office of the land. 50 years of a body of work for Joe Biden, from youngest senator to oldest president and everything in between. Donald Trump, his business record, fraud record, sex rape, a judged record, convicted felon record,

and everything else. And that's what you have to choose from. And the administration and the people that go along with those two. And the Supreme Court that will likely, based on precedent and historical events, there'll be one if not two openings in the next term. So if you were like, well, I really wish they'd done better in the debate. If that's where your focus is at and not who's gonna be picking your next Supreme Court justices and who's not gonna be trying to address women's rights being thrown into the trash in this country, voting rights being thrown into the trash in this country, rights for immigration going

into the trash on Monday morning. Okay, that needs to be your concern and not all this other hand wringing that's going on about, well, I just thought in the first half of the debate he was a little bit sluggish. Enough, sorry. Sorry for my diatribe. Ben is going to jail. He'll podcast somehow from there with his dime a week

that he can put into his payphone and then he'll come out after the election and hopefully he'll find the landscape has changed and Donald Trump has lost. I want to also touch upon Justice Mershon partially lifting the gag order in the Manhattan district attorney criminal case where Trump was convicted on 34 separate felony counts, we are nearing sentencing on July 11th. And, uh, Donald Trump's lawyers petitioned Justice Mershon now that trial was over, uh, to remove some of the, to remove all of the conditions of the gag

order, to remove it in all. Um, the district attorney's office said, you can remove it with the witnesses, but keep it on with respect to the jury and keep it with respect to the district attorney's office, staff members, family members, and to your own family members. The integrity of the proceeding is still necessary because the proceeding is still happening. July 11th is when sentencing will take place. still happening, July 11th is when sentencing will take place.

And Justice Murchon said, look, the proceeding is still taking place. So as a result, there needs to be a gag order and protected persons, especially based on Donald Trump's conduct, but those protected persons are limited to those who are now presently involved in the proceeding. And if I were to expand it to those no longer in the proceeding, I'm gonna get overturned, he basically said. So I'm following the law here. And Justice Mershon is always a law and order judge

when it comes to these things. And so while I guess to some extent, it's maybe upsetting to some that this gag order was partially lifted as it relates to witnesses like Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, or as it relates to the jury, I think that's ultimately what the law required Justice Mershon to do. Otherwise, he was going to get reversed and that there could be delays caused with the sentencing coming on July 11th if we were fighting these types of issues now in advance of the sentencing.

I think that also is an indication though as well that Justice Mershon though isn't going to be afraid when it comes to sentencing to make the tough decisions. And I think that he, he said in this order too, in this gag order, I'm reluctant to lift it for the jury because I know Donald Trump's behavior. He said, look, I am still going to enforce the requirements that Trump can himself or cause others to like out jurors or to like address them by name or give specifics about their backgrounds. Donald Trump is permitted to say, the jury was unfair to me. This was an unfair. He can say things like that, but he can't say juror number eight was an account.

I'm making this up. This is not juror number eight. Juror number eight was an accountant from the Upper East Side. And that was a bad jury. He can't do that still. So he can talk generally that he thinks it's unfair and he could whine. But obviously if Donald Trump commits crimes and threatens people, he can still get arrested for that.

That still could be criminal conduct. So Popeyes, I want to get your view. What do you think about what Justice Mershon did here? I think he did exactly what we would expect from a temperate, sophisticated, experienced judge. One of the things that we were able to do because we cover legal and political issues so regularly on a, really without skipping a beat,

twice a week, every week without delay, whether I can cover you, you cover me, a week, every week without delay, you know, whether I can, I can cover you, you cover me, we cover Karen, whatever it is, is that we're able to, you know, really make observations of incremental and micro things that happen and macro things that happen. And what we've always said is that Judge Mershon is somebody who's perfectly suited for this particular case, both in temperament, in decision-making, in experience, and in every way that you would expect it.

And that stands in stark contrast to how he is characterized and character-churd by the right-wing MAGA, like the Elise Stefanics, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Boebert's, Trump, Bannonannon and everybody else, where they try to make him into a cartoon character, where, oh, his daughter has a job and works for Democrats, okay.

Oh, he donated, I'm not making this up, $15 to Biden once and got sanctioned by the Judicial Ethics Committee, no he didn't. He got warned along with 3,000 other judges about, you know what, we'd rather you not make any donations at all. But you know, New York's judges are an elected position and they come out of the Democrats. And frankly, if you want to be a judge in Manhattan, you better be a Democrat, because

you're not going to get elected. That's just the way it is. And that's just what the people of the state of New York from Manhattan want. And so but other than that, there's nothing about his record, his track record, his body of work that would indicate that he does anything other than make appropriate, well thought through, well thought out, supported decisions. And this five page order on the gag order was exactly what I would have expected. Look, our president has said, regardless of what happens on Monday, he will accept the outcome of the Supreme Court in the immunity decision.

You and I will touch a little bit and preview what we think may happen based on what has already happened and the lineup of the various judges on these other cases. Let's get there in a minute. But I would accept anything. Would I like the gag order to stay in place on everything so that it would also help the special counsel who's arguing for a gag order at this very moment with Judge Cannon. Yes. But is that, did I also think his had an intellectual honesty about his analysis about why he lifted it for witnesses and jurors and not for the rest? Or did, yeah, lifted it for that, but not for the rest. Yes, I thought it was what I would have expected from a very good judge and Judge Mershon. And I want to just keep talking about that because if you only get your information, not our audience, but in general,

from right-wing MAGA, you would think this is the devil incarnate and he's the most unsophisticated, corrupt jurist out there. And the exact opposite is true. And then, of course, it's projection because they got to try to cover for Judge Cannon, who is way over her skis and compromised and goes to Federalist conferences and seems to bend backwards and out of her way like Gumby trying to help a former president, Donald J. Trump. Well said, Michael Popok. Want to remind everybody about our Patreon here. It's patreon.com slash legal AF.

Join the lectures, join the Patreon community, and it helps the show. We don't have outside investors here on the Midas Touch Network or on legal AF. We build this thanks to your emojis, thanks to our pro-democracy sponsors, and the Patreon does go a long way in helping continuing to build and grow out this network. When we come back, I want to talk a lot about what the Supreme Court's been doing and not doing, kind of both equally dangerous, but the importance of this next segment, I think cannot be emphasized enough because we have to understand what their schemes are,

what their plots are, how they are doing it so that we can call it out and share people and share with others so we know how we can protect ourselves and restore agency to we the people that these unelected Supreme Court right-wing justices have taken away from us and have are continuing to try to take away from us. Let's take our last quick break from those pro-democracy sponsors. How much do you think you're paying in subscriptions every month? The answer is probably more than you think.

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Jordy Vetsum, Jordy spends a long time working with them and then we try them out and if we like them, they get on the program and so I want to give them a shout out. And Jordy negotiates some great discount codes for everybody as well. So supports the network and you get great discounts. So everybody as well. So supports the network and you get great discounts. So that's very, you know, that's a good thing and we're grateful for Jordy to do it. And also thank you to everybody who's joined our Patreon. I see a lot more people joining. We're going to do a Zoom meeting with all of our Patreons. You can meet Michael Popak and myself. We'll answer your legal questions relating to ideally the intersection of law and politics.

We won't give you direct legal advice for yourself, but we will answer all the legal questions that you've been wondering about. Maybe we have an answer. That's patreon.com slash legal AF. Let's get into the Supreme Court, Michael Popak. Obviously they have not ruled on Donald Trump's appeal on the issue that he claims he could be able to order SEAL Team Six to kill his political opponents or massacre the other political party if he so chooses under his claim of absolute immunity.

I like to phrase it that way because it shows what he's actually asking for versus using the doctrinal name absolute immunity because let's be clear, he was asked an oral argument, his lawyers were if that's what he means and he says, yes, we should be able to, yes, if it's an official act, ordering the military to kill your political opponents, that's something that Trump should be able to do. The Supreme Court's waited until the very last possible moment on Monday. That will be the last order handed down. Then they'll go on their vacation.

Justice Clarence Thomas will go on his lavish yachts paid for by the corporate interests and Henry Crowe and others, and they'll all leave, and they'll leave our country this pile of you-know-what that they've handed us at the end of this term. A few other major rulings here that were issued this week and then I'm going to turn it over to you Popak to dissect it in any order that you so choose. The Fisher versus United States decision that's on the issue of whether the Department of Justice appropriately used the obstruction of official proceeding

statute to charge January 6th insurrectionists. The statute 18 U.S.C. Section 1512 has various subsections and subsection C1, it refers to kind of tampering, manipulating, or engaging in obstructive conduct as it relates to documents. C2 says, or otherwise engages in obstruction of official proceeding. So the question before the Supreme Court was the, was 18 U.S.C. 1512 C.2s or otherwise obstruct official proceeding, was that necessarily related to the proceeding?

Subsection, subsection C.1 that deals with documents, objects or other things like that? Or was it just other forms of obstructive conduct? This statute was passed in 2002 in connection with the Enron scandal, the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. And so it initially had to do with documents, but the text also did state, there could be other examples of obstructing official proceedings,

not just like burning documents and hiding documents and destroying documents in connections with official proceedings like Enron was doing and others were doing. The Supreme Court said, nope, it has to, even though we're strict textualists, we still think it has to deal with documents. And so we're going to look at the history of when the statute was passed and that any of the January 6th insurrectionists who engaged in there, who were

charged with the statute, who didn't direct their behavior at documents or like objects or things like that, they're not, they that, they should not have been charged with obstruction of official proceeding. That carries within a 20-year sentence. So a lot of hundreds of cases and now we're going to have to go to trial again, or those charges are going to have to be dismissed. Many insurrectionists are probably going to be let out of prison as a result of this. You'll explain why you think this isn't going to impact though, the two obstruction of official proceeding charges as it relates to Donald Trump. Just really quickly, others, the overturning of the Chevron decision,

we touched upon it at the beginning of this episode. Courts used to give what's called Chevron deference for administrative agencies to interpret their own enabling statute. So the EPA and the SEC and the FTC and all of the agencies look at their statute, apply their expertise, engage in a rulemaking process, and then regulate pursuant to the priorities of a particular administration. And then if the agencies were challenged, which they could still be challenged for the regulations and things that they engage in, you'd have to prove that their behavior was arbitrary and capricious or that there

was something improper in the rulemaking, but otherwise you would give deference to what the agency does. You wouldn't second-guess their environmental regulations to stop pollution or their regulations over big tobacco or oil or gun control or whatever it is. You would give them deference. No more deference, says the United States Supreme Court. The court says that we will substitute our own judgment. We, the unelected bureaucrats and these as judges, we're going to supplant

the expertise of regulators who are appointed or who are put in power and put in place and execute the priorities of an administration that is elected. Then you had a Jarkisi versus the SEC, which was kind of the appetizer to the overturning of Chevron, where the Supreme Court said that in any proceeding enforcement action against people for securities fraud or whatever, the SEC would have to impanel a jury and conduct a mini jury trial for civil enforcement. We're not talking about criminal cases. We're talking about when the SEC would slap people

with fines for engaging in security fraud, the Supreme Court says, nope, you need juries now. Congress is not giving the SEC the money for juries. The SEC doesn't have a jury system, so that basically guts all the enforcement power by the SEC to go after people who engage in securities fraud. So there's no mechanism anymore for the SEC to go after people who engage in securities fraud, which is what the interests who are paying Clarence Thomas and who are funding the Federalist

Society what they want. They want to go on with their securities fraud without any accountability. And that doesn't just impact the SEC, that will impact all other agencies that have civil enforcement and fines as well. And then on top of that, you layer on at the Chevron decision though, Bopak, which basically says, you know, the agency's interpretation of its own statutes and what it does shouldn't even be given deference in the first place. So really just kind of a destruction of how our government functions on a day-to-day basis. So I think it needs to be given a lot more attention. Obviously the Fisher case and the immunity case are headline grabbing cases.

Um, but I think the Chevron case also may have even a bigger impact and just cause massive disruption that I'm not quite sure how it is that government, I really don't, how is government supposed to function if administrative agencies are now no longer able to regulate? I think the Chevron decision is potentially more life altering to life as we know it in the federal regime and the agency power than the Jan six decision. Jan six decision is okay, future insurrectionists won't be able to be charged ultimately if they do a similar thing. I'm going to put Donald Trump into a separate category because I do believe that his indictment for obstruction of an official proceeding survives

with specific language. It's already been baked into the decision, which I'll read out loud. But that is a small subset of crazy, violent insurrectionists and what the Department of Justice can do in the future against them in terms of what's in their toolbox to charge. They have, we know, they have a seditious conspiracy. They actually have a charge of insurrection that they didn't use. They instead, the two highest charges the Department of Justice used was seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding because they thought that 2002 law, which comes, yes, did come out of Enron and came out of a now defunct accounting firm called Arthur Anderson that destroyed documents during a government investigation.

But we've never really held that law that is written in such a way that it still is able to be mapped onto new conduct couldn't be applied. I mean, the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organization Act, RICO, was created to fight Italian organized crime. We've used it successfully and has been validated by prior Supreme Courts in a myriad of other ways, having nothing to do with organized crime at all. It's being used right now against Trump in Georgia under a state version of RICO. So the fact that statutes get stretched to apply to new conduct and new behavior is because prosecutors don't have the luxury of ginning up and generating new crimes to fit this conduct that they just saw. They got to take old crimes and apply it to new conduct

the best that they can. But the Chevron decision, which I'll touch on in a minute, is going to change life as we know it under the Administrative Procedures Act. You and I used to joke two, three years ago, four years ago when we got into the Administrative Procedures Act. You and I used to joke two, three years ago, even four years ago when we got into the Administrative Procedures Act, we'd look at each other during the podcast and we'd say, wow, we just geeked out for 30 minutes on the APA, and then we would laugh to ourselves.

But the audience seemed to be okay with that and came back week after week. But there was a reason for it. Things that matter to a person when they get up in the morning and their families, energy policy, certain aspects of civil liberties, clean water, clean air, and everything else that the federal government touches in terms of regulation that makes this world a better place. It comes out of the Administrative Procedures Act,

which is Congress's way to delegate to agencies through a certain set of processes, that which they can't do themselves in lawmaking. The reality is, and this is going to have to change in the next Congress, is that the Congress does, I guess, the best job they think they can do to put a law on the books. And when they want to exquisitely

and expressly address something, they have to do it in the actual code that they've generated or the law that they've generated. But there's a reason that there's an agency with it, with expertise that have the experts about the environment and petroleum and regulation and child safety and all these other things. It's because they have the expertise and judges don't and others don't. And so you defer what Chevron said is when in doubt and if there's an ambiguity within the law that Congress has created but they haven't indicated that they think something else.

The agency can come in and interpret within the parameters of that ambiguity as long as they stay within the four corners of the law. And that decision by the administrative agency and its experts will be given a tremendous amount of deference by courts. It didn't mean that Article 3 judges, presiding judges, were abdicating their responsibility to review government action and regulation. It's just that there was deference that was given in this area of ambiguity. Well, the right-wing MAGA have never liked that because it led in their view to an expansion of the administrative apparatus of the executive branch and It was too intrusive and it was an improper delegation by Congress meaning Congress is now gonna have to write if we thought their thousand-page

Laws were incomprehensible now wait Do you see what they're gonna be writing with a combination of lobbyists who don't have our best interests at heart always and others and staffers and wait till you see this mess that comes out that's now going to have to be the new law because what they've said in this new decision overturning Chevron is that Chevron is inconsistent with the Administrative Procedures Act and undermines what Congress's intent was. And it's been that way since 1984, but we're just getting around now to throwing it into the trash. We knew this was coming. We saw remarks about it in other cases that if they ever got their hands on Chevron, they were going to rip it up as a doctrine.

Even the court said, well, we haven't even applied it ourselves since 2016. That's interesting. I also thought it was interesting then that Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the decision, referred to the Chevron decision as something he could just toss aside along with the others, because it was only a six to three decision. He actually like, he was always like dismissive. There was a bare majority, he called it. A bare majority is five, four. Six, three is the thing that drives us crazy every day because we keep losing on the progressive side, the Democrat side, six, three in this court. And this decision was six, three. So I don't even get the whole reference to it was only six votes in 1984, so it wasn't as super a precedent as it should have been. And then they decided in the vein of

knocking over the Temple of Chevron, or what they referred to dismissively and derisively as the Chevron Project has now come to an end, trial courts don't have to deal with it any longer as a doctrine, they decided that the SEC's entire regulatory enforcement power should be thrown into the trash and all other agencies. Now look, I'm of two minds on this one. When I worked in financial services, we thought about taking an appeal on something because we weren't sure it was right that we always had to have an administrative law judge who got paid by the agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, be our final arbiter wearing a black robe. Looked like we had too many men on the court, right?

They were, looked like it was somebody had their thumb on the scales. But do you really want to take on the SEC? And I was in the financial services business. And so that didn't really make a lot of sense at the time. But Jarkazy has been looming around out there and watched by make a lot of sense at the time. But Jarkazzy has been looming around out there and watched by Wall Street for a long, long time. And he said, no, the fine that you're imposing on me, I only get to go talk to a judge that

you pay for, and I don't get an Article 3 judge like every other place in due process. And finally, they got around to saying, yeah, you're right. And that $5 billion a year that the Securities and Exchange Commission basically self-funds by taking in all these fines is now up for grabs. And here's what's going to happen as a result, as you touched on. From the defendant's standpoint, they just gained a tremendous amount of leverage. Because it used to be when you, and I've negotiated with the SEC, when you negotiate with the SEC, it can only go so far. You can get, you can go, if you can lobby the five commissioners of the SEC and you win, great. If you lose and you're stuck with the enforcement leaders in process, then and they fine you, you got nowhere to go. Now you can say, well, I'll see you in court.

And as you rightly pointed out, the SEC doesn't have a lot of trial lawyers who have done article three jury trials laying around like the Department of Justice. So they're either going to have to deputize Department of Justice trial lawyers to come in and help them because they're not going to walk away from fine enforcement. No way. So they're going to have to gear up and get a trial division established quickly at the SEC and all the other places as well, all the other agencies as well. That is this

fundamental change and in the meantime the pendulum is swung now I think in favor of people who are violating the SEC. And who does this help? Who just went public for the first time in his life and is having a lot of problems with the SEC with insider trading, delays in his public, him going public every time he files a report. Donald Trump, Donald Trump can't wait to defang and dismantle the SEC, the internal revenue service, and everything else. And the Supreme Court just helped about that. Lastly, on what I read and what I found in the decision for a Fisher, which we were always treading because we knew if they got their hands on it and even Gorsuch in an earlier dropped opinion a couple days ago in his own concurrence, we were like, oh, here we go.

In some of the comments he made about, it seemed to suggest that he was definitely going to be siding with striking this as a count for the 300 Jan 6 insurrectionists that have either pled guilty to this count, have been convicted of this count by a bench trial or a jury, or have already been sentenced and or have served their time already. Although fortunately, almost all of the 300 were some of the worst ones out there and they had multiple other felony counts attached. And so yes, they'll have to be, their sentences will now be have to be recalculated.

If they got convicted, it will have to be vacated and expunged for over 300. And in the future, the Department of Justice is gonna have to look for something else in their toolbox, maybe the count of insurrection, to go against these people and not use the major two that they did. As to Donald Trump, he should not rest easy. He should rest with one eye open and shouldn't be popping too many champagne corks because they took time.

Robert's writing for the majority to spill ink early on in the opinion, I'm going to read it to you, in which they reference a decision by Judge Sotomayor and the Second Circuit panel before she even got on the bench, which seems to be to be a signal about Donald Trump in particular. And here's how page eight over to nine of the actual opinion. Here's what they wrote and what they referenced. And you could tell this was also lobbying by Sotomayor as the draft opinion was being circulated to get this into the decision. And as a reason, it's her particular decision is in here.

Here's what they've now said, you can use 18 USC 1512 C2 for, and what you can't use it for. When the phrase otherwise obstructs, influences, use 18 USC 1512 C2 for and what you can't use it for. When the phrase otherwise obstructs influences or impedes any official proceeding is read as having been given more precise content by that narrower list of conduct in the prior subsection. Subsection C2, which is the one at issue here, obstruction of an official proceeding makes it a crime

to impair the availability or integrity of records, documents, or objects used in an official proceeding in ways other than those specified in C-1. For example, and here's the part that should keep Donald Trump up at night over to page nine, it is possible to violate C C2 by creating false evidence rather than altering incriminating evidence. See United States versus Reich, a second circuit

case from 2007 written by then Judge Sotomayor in which in parenthetical, they wrote, prosecution under C2 for transmitting a forged court order. It also ensures that liability is still imposed for impairing the availability or integrity of other things used in official proceedings beyond the records, documents, or other objects enumerated in C1. What does that mean? It means that Donald Trump's use of fake elector certificates, which was at the heart of the last gasp effort to stay in power, led by Donald Trump, Ken Chesbrough, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Mike Roman, and the rest, in which they ginned up in fake certificates in which we have the receipts because in seven battleground states,

fake electors met surreptitiously in the basement of state houses or near the state house and signed and sealed their name to this thing, claiming it was an elector certificate. The purpose of which as a forgery was to send it to Mike Pence so that he would look at the two competing slates or certificates, one the real one, certifying Joe Biden as the winner of

the Electoral College and the other being the Trump one and have him do one of two or three things. Either throw up his hands and say I can't decide which are legit and which aren't. Let's turn it over to the state delegations which are led by Republicans majority to pick the next president, meaning Trump wins. That would be one. Two, well, these look more, the fake look more real than the real. It's like buying a purse on Fifth Avenue from somebody on the street.

This looks more real than that. I'm going to recognize the fake elector, the forged evidence, fake elector certificates and declare Donald Trump to be the winner or variations on those themes. That is exactly the creation of fake evidence to impair the integrity of an official proceeding, in this case the certification that I believe has now been carved out. Now why didn't they drop a footnote that says we know that there's a case out there involving Donald Trump, but that's because they have to deal with the facts that are in front of them, with the

record that's in front of them. But you're right, even though when this new law gets raised by Donald Trump right now, I think he'll file this motion to dismiss two of his four claims before Judge Chutkin. He'll claim that she's allowed to make this decision now because she can lift the stay for this particular purpose as it goes to the indictment or some bullshit. And he'll say, the Fisher versus US, US versus Fisher, you have to dismiss them. Government's gonna say no, see page eight and nine,

your fake elector certificates is a course of a different color and it's going to stay. But Judge Chutkin's gonna have to do a normal, efficient briefing process. Even if she got the case at the middle of July, it will know better on Monday, then she's gonna have to hold this first thing, which will push us off until end of July or beginning of August. And she's already said whenever she gets the case back, if the direction from what

we expect on Monday is that she's gonna have to she gets the case back, if the direction from what we expect on Monday is that she's gonna have to take a razor blade and cut some of the things out of the indictment if she's able to and sort through the indictment without having to, or the jury needs to do it on instruction, then she can get this trial up and running again, subject to the motion to dismiss these two issues and set a trial plus 90 days, which

is what she said she was going to give the defense if she ever got the case back. But then they could appeal the failure to dismiss the two parts of the indictment and we're right back to this, this United States Supreme court, which is in summer session by that point and won't return to this matter until they, if at all, until they get back in October. Thorough analysis there by Michael Popok, a new father. Congratulations, Michael Popok. Congratulations to Natasha. We love everybody sending their love to Michael Popok and we love your photos as well. We're so happy to have a new Midas mini in the family. There's Acacia and Francesca right there.

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