Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump STUNNED as Judge DROPS THE GAUNTLET

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo host the midweek edition of the top-rated Legal AF podcast. On tap? 1. Trump’s biggest nightmare just happened: Judge Chutkan just disclosed to the public ...ALL of Special Counsel’s Jack Smith’s evidence against Trump in the DC Election Interference criminal case; 2. Whether the Special Counsel carried his burden of proving that all of the criminal acts alleged in the indictment against Trump are not immune from prosecution; 3. Trump 2.0 has learned from the 2020 model, and has now filed all his election denying, fraud seeking lawsuits BEFORE the election not after, in order to stop the peaceful transfer of power in 2025, 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: VIIA: Try VIIA Hemp! https://bit.ly/viialegalaf and use code LEGALAF! Smalls: Head to https://Smalls.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 50% off your first order PLUS free shipping! Mud/wtr: Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% OFF your @MUDWTR by going to https://mudwtr.com/LEGALAF #mudwtrpod Lumen: Head to https://Lumen.me/legalaf and use code: LEGALAF to get 15% off your lumen today! Zbiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. Qualia: To boost YOUR NAD+ levels up to 50%, Go to https://qualialife.com/LAW for up to 50% off and use code LAW at checkout for an additional 15% off. Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 It's the Rosh Hashanah edition of Legal AF Midweek. Happy New Year to those that follow. We got a lot to talk about because right about the time that we decided to put this show together today, Judge Chutkin, maybe knowing our production schedule, decided that today was the day that she would tell the clerk of the court to post on the public docket for all to see the 180 page mini trial of a brief that Jack Smith was compelled and commanded to file by the United States Supreme Court and it's setting up of a procedure to determine if immunity applied to the superseding indictment. What do they think was going to happen? Exactly this. Sit
Starting point is 00:00:40 out everybody, grab a big cup of coffee because we're gonna be talking about 180 pages of evidence and every line in that 180 pages, most of which is not redacted. And the parts that are redacted, meaning black tape, we can put up a version of that. Most of that we can piece it together both on this hot, on this Legal AF podcast and if not in future hot takes. It'll probably take us just a hot minute to figure out who everybody is starting with the original five co-conspirators and then other people that by their title and by their proximity to the conspiracy we can sort of piece it together. What this really is is something that we never get in criminal law ever which which is almost a complete recitation of the volume of evidence each line supported by some witness statement, some grand jury testimony, some sworn testimony,
Starting point is 00:01:33 some documents, some text message, some tweet, every line. I assure you that if Jack Smith put it in there, it was fully vetted and they were yelling out, what do we have to support line six page 98? And some young lawyer yelled out, we've got this folder, this folder, this folder, this folder of information and data. Okay, great. Next. There's nothing in here that he's not going to be able to carry the burden on or he wouldn't have put it in there. But he had no choice. Jack Smith is getting accused of weaponization and politicization and all that, and Judge Chuck can do nothing of the sort.
Starting point is 00:02:07 Break it all down with Karen Freeman-Diffalo, my illustrious colleague and prosecutor, and then when we're done with all of that, digesting 180 pages, remember, in about 9 days, we're going to get another 200 pages plus, plus exhibits to support the 180 pages in an appendix. And at the rate and the velocity at which the judge made this ruling and ruled against Donald Trump and completely sided with the Department of Justice, rightly so, we're going to get that next batch for the next show about two or three weeks before the election. Is that the October surprise? There always is one. When you read it and we talk about it on this case, anybody out there that's on the fence
Starting point is 00:02:49 about putting this guy back in office should get off the fence after they hear the weight of the evidence that's now been presented at this particular moment in time. It reads like an opening statement or closing argument against Donald Trump. Then we're going to talk about the couple of things that have happened in Georgia that are pretty momentous and ironically assigned to the same judge. And we know the judge well on the Midas Touch and Legal AF shows. Judge McBurney, who at the time as the chief judge of the Georgia Superior Court in Fulton County, presided over Fonny Willis's presentation of evidence against Donald Trump and
Starting point is 00:03:25 others to the special purpose grand jury. And now he got assigned the abortion decision about whether the six-week abortion ban in Georgia was constitutional under Georgia's constitution and liberty rights and privacy rights contrasted with the United States Constitution. We'll talk about the profile and courage of what happened with Judge McBurney and the decision that he wrote in blocking the ban and upholding a woman's right to choose in Georgia, again, so close to the election in a battleground state. And then we'll do a whole survey of the new MAGA strategy that they learned. I joked on an earlier hot take that it's like Terminator 1 and Terminator 2.
Starting point is 00:04:11 This is like T1 and T2, Trump 1 and Trump 2. Trump 1, they filed their lawsuits after he lost. And they lost all those lawsuits 70 to 1 or 70, 070. Here they're filing the lawsuits now in advance in order to have something to take to the United States Supreme Court during this term. That's T2. We're gonna talk about all the suits
Starting point is 00:04:31 that have been filed so far and what it means for the preservation of our democracy with my regular anchor and always friend, Karen Freeman-Eknipolo first, Lashana Tova. Hello, happy new year, Popok. Thank you very much. Rosh Hashanah, I'm very lucky my father and stepmother are here visiting for Rosh Hashanah
Starting point is 00:04:53 and it'll be very nice to spend time with family. I know we weren't gonna talk about the debate today because there's so much to talk about but I do wanna just say one thing. Katie Britt looks like a Stepford wife and a like just she I think she's like a mashup of like a of like one of these, you know, kind of. I don't even know how to say it, but it's it's kind of cultish. Do you not see what I'm saying when you see her? She the senator from Alabama.
Starting point is 00:05:23 She's I know Saturday Night Live did a great skit about her. So anyway, Oh, the one that did. She's the one that did the rejoinder to the state of the union. Yes. Oh, yeah. She's definitely they still wheeling her out in the spin room. Yes. And it's terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. I can't even I can't even watch her. So that was that's all. All right. That's what you That's what you stuck with.
Starting point is 00:05:46 So we were gonna, we talked about what we were gonna do today. Sometimes we do that. And we decided let's lead with the debate and talk about that moment that leads to the intersection of law and politics where JD Vance refused to acknowledge the results of the 2020 election.
Starting point is 00:06:01 But I think we can touch on that. And that moment that went viral. I mean, you know, as I said to people, you know, maybe it was a mid-west nice debate, and it was sort of a push because the polling says it was a push. It was sort of equal and whatever. I think clearly Walls did what he needed to do and all he needed to do do no harm during it. But the only thing people are going to remember the way they remembered when George Bush looked at his George Bush one looked at his watch in the the middle of the debate and that's one of the reasons he lost and I defy you to tell me Anything that was said in the debate with Barack Obama other than George Bush looking at his watch. Hmm Yep, and that was the end of the he was that was it for him same thing here with JD Vance refusing
Starting point is 00:06:40 He had to be prepped for it refusing to acknowledge the peaceful transfer of power, and what that means for January 6, 2025, we'll get there next. But let's think of the peaceful transfer of power and a conspiracy of it. I had time to go through it. I'm sure it's 180 pages, so we haven't completely digested it, but we did it at the nice high level that we needed to. You want to go first about it, Karen? Uh, sure. Happy to, you know, it was just to tell everyone where we are.
Starting point is 00:07:12 Uh, Jack Smith filed his big tome, his opus, his, uh, really his prosecution memo, essentially that details what the facts are that are going to be presented against Donald Trump, what the law is and what the issues are that are going to be presented against Donald Trump, what the law is, and what the issues are, and really kind of took Judge Chuck and spoon-fed to her exactly why it is that this new superseding indictment does not trigger presidential immunity that the United States Supreme Court created in Trump versus United States. And we were all a little bit scratching our head about what will we actually see because there's been a lot of motion practice back and forth with a lot of harrumping on the part of Trump saying, you know, getting very, you can always tell by the number of adjectives they use and big words they use and
Starting point is 00:08:03 calling things monstrosities and all of that and they get so angry that you can always tell, A, they don't have a law on their side, so they're just sort of going insane. And so, we just didn't know how much of this was going to be public because some of it had to be redacted because it contained sensitive information, a la the protective order that is in place and has been in place for about a year in this case that that specifically says any sensitive material has to be redacted from there. And look, one of the things that that Trump said was very much, you know, that one of the things Trump said was that he didn't want that protective order. So in this filing, he was like, we weren't even the ones who wanted it, Jack Smith, you were, but now all of a sudden, when this is a political thing, you wanna drop this, this political monstrosity, it's biased.
Starting point is 00:09:00 You can just tell how angry they are because they just use words like that. But anyway, so we weren't sure what we were going to actually see. And right before we began Legal AF, it dropped about a few hours before. And so we just got a chance to kind of look at it. And the thing that struck me first was, first of all, not that much is redacted, just really the names and where in the grand jury materials this information is located. So as you see in the footnotes where they cite to particular pieces of evidence, that's where it's the grand jury material kind of location or where, meaning like in the transcripts where it is
Starting point is 00:09:47 or who did it, who testified or whose witness statement was testified about in the grand jury. So it's just interesting that really all the facts are there. You can go through it and see it's just, they just insert whether it's co-conspirator one through six, they took out number four because that was Jeffrey Clark from the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court ruled that any DOJ stuff Trump was immune from because that is considered core. And so there were a lot of
Starting point is 00:10:19 CCs, there was a lot of Ps which are person, you know, or witness like person one, person two, went up to I can't even remember the number but it went up to I think the 60s or 70s. They have a lot of people that they refer to in here and companies, corporations. So and the types of evidence that they have are witness testimony, they have videos, they have books, quotes from books. They have, they're taking evidence from interviews that were done and recorded and broadcast. They're taking evidence from cell phone records, search warrants. I mean, they have evidence from all sorts of locations
Starting point is 00:10:59 and all of that is described in there. And they basically make the case for why it is that this new superseding indictment meets this new presidential immunity test for immunity for core responsibilities. So things that are the president's core responsibilities in the constitution, those are things that he can never be prosecuted for because he has to do those things, nor can Congress ever legislate and say
Starting point is 00:11:32 he cannot do those things. So those items that are his core responsibilities, those are all the things that he is absolutely immune from. And so what's left in here and what they're fighting over is what Jack Smith's position is everything left is unofficial, it's just private citizen, candidate Trump acting, and therefore immunity doesn't apply and he gets to be prosecuted for it. But there is a category within this. Of course, Trump's position is no,
Starting point is 00:12:03 everything was official, right? Everything, I'm immune from everything. So Judge Shetkin is gonna have to determine is it official or is it unofficial? Now there's this middle category of presumptively, it's still official acts, but things that could go either way, right? You're presumptively official acts like things
Starting point is 00:12:23 like when he talks to Mike Pence, but that could go either way because Mike Pence could be acting as candidate Pence or he could be acting as vice president Pence. And if obviously he's acting as vice president, talking to his president, they're both in the executive branch, that would be considered core or presumptive, that would be considered immune and the government would not be able to rebut the presumption. So the first section takes you through all of the facts and, and I'm sure we're going to go through it in more detail, but I'm just giving the high level kind of what this document is. And
Starting point is 00:12:57 that's the first section, the second section, and it goes through the facts in excruciating detail, and it's quite long, and it's frankly most of, you know, it's the meat of or the heart of this document. But the second section is where they apply the law to the facts. And you know, in the way that you put your strongest argument first, right, and that's sort of what lawyers typically do. You always know what argument
Starting point is 00:13:25 a lawyer thinks is its strongest argument. You can tell that Jack Smith thinks that he is, like, the thing that's not going to be stricken by even by this Supreme Court's rule, the thing that's not going to be stricken down is all of Trump's actions towards the states because in the seven battlegrounds, seven swing states, he only called Republican governors or Republican election people, he called Republicans only in those states and only in the ones that he lost. He only called people in his party and he had no role whatsoever in the election, in the state's roles in certifying the election. And so you can tell Jack Smith thinks that that's completely going to be considered unofficial. And you are candidate Trump and you had no official role whatsoever there.
Starting point is 00:14:16 And so that's his first kind of set of arguments. The second one involves Pence and Pence is tricky because, you know, and you can tell from, I think it was on, I think it's page, salty is going to get mad at me for not knowing the page number. So it's page 90 on page 90. Just just the way the he puts the the header. It's the defendant's interactions with Pence as the president of the Senate were official, but the rebuttable presumption of immunity is overcome. And so it's interesting because although it's an official act, what he's saying is, because what he's saying is, it can be overcome. And the reason is because Pence was not acting as part of the executive branch or vice
Starting point is 00:15:06 president. He was acting as part of the legislative branch because in that moment in the ministerial ceremonial role of certifying an election, the vice president who is president of the Senate, right? So he's part of the legislative branch when he is president of the Senate. That is, uh, that rebuts it. It's no longer, although it's official because he was acting officially, he is not, uh, part of the executive branch and therefore not immune. Now, so that is, again, going to be something the Supreme Court has to rule on, but Smith puts that kind of second, has the second argument, and then of course, the third argument, he goes kind of chronological
Starting point is 00:15:51 for there into the whole January 6 conduct. And when you read that section, and this is a long document, but anyone who wants to just remind themselves, you know, of just how outrageous the conduct is, I say read that section because I'll tell you, you know, you can become, I don't know if it's numb to this or immune to it. I mean, you know, Trump is, and his MAGA people, I mean, just the fact that he could win, the fact that he has supporters, these blind supporters, the fact that he calls the Jan 6 rioters, patriots. You know, you kind of, it has this effect of, you forget how egregious it was. And when you read that section, it comes back and it just, my blood
Starting point is 00:16:39 was boiling when I was reading it. I just can't believe that this man, that this traitor, frankly, that this liar, I mean, the he is he is a liar. And that is the other thing that's in this over and over and over again, whether you call it deceit, whether you call it disinformation, or you call it misinformation, they call it all three. He lies, lies, lies and lies. Anyway, so so that was sort of the third section. And I just think it's brilliantly written. And although it's long, I think everybody should read it. Yeah, so, you know, look, I'll give a high level too and call out some pages that I think were interesting in my first pass through the document.
Starting point is 00:17:20 There'll be other passes. I joked with our team that we could, you, me, and Ben could be doing hot takes for the next month on nothing but what the kernels of information we find here. Let me give some big picture observations for our audience and for those that don't read legal briefs for a living the way that Karen and I do and to analyze them. First of all, it is unusual.
Starting point is 00:17:42 In fact, the only reason that Jack Smith had to was forced, his hand was forced, to file such a large evidence-based presentation of a brief, a closing argument, if you will, a worst for Donald Trump, a special counsel report, before trial, before jurors are even picked. It's not because he wanted to. He didn't want to. It's not because he wanted to, he didn't want to. It's because he would have been very content
Starting point is 00:18:06 with having his original indictment, not having Judge Chuckin's decision about immunity upheld and the court above her, and we go to trial. And just for those that follow along around the world in our justice system, Donald Trump has everything that they have recited recited to in this 180 pages and we'll talk a little bit more about it here. Donald Trump has a copy of it. There's no hiding the ball from the defendant in our criminal justice
Starting point is 00:18:36 system. Whether you call it Jenks material or Brady material named after cases, there is an obligation under our system of government for the defense to be provided every scrap of documentation that's material that can go to his guilt or innocence and they have all of it. So I don't want anybody to think that that Donald Trump was shocked by anything that's in this 180 pages like whoa they got that coke and cc4 coke and spirit or four shit. They got that teenager that used to work for me. They got that lawyer. he knows about all these. He has the witness statements for all of these people. He knows who has cooperated against him.
Starting point is 00:19:12 He knows the lawyers now disbarred some not that have cooperated against him. All the attorney generals and he had more than one, attorneys general and he had more than one, especially in the last days have testified against him he's known it he's just not seen it all pulled together like he's not it's like a it's like an amateur chef you know versus like a five star three star michelin chef all the ingredients are in the kitchen he can see them all but he but he has to watch the three star michelin chef put them all. But he has to watch the three-star Michelin chef put them all together to say,
Starting point is 00:19:45 oh shit, my goose is cooked to continue. You can tell I'm hungry as I'm leading into dinner tonight. So we have that. Donald Trump is always known, but he hasn't seen the power of the presentation of how it would be. And I've said in another Hot Take about this that you could read the whole passages of this, not that Jack Smith is going to, as your opening statement or closing argument. Let me read from page three in particular, which if I were making a closing argument, it would be very similar to this in the case. And then I want everybody to understand that every line in this, you can put it up back up, every line in this brief is supported by one, two, or three
Starting point is 00:20:25 or more pieces of evidence against Donald Trump and Donald Trump knows it. But now the American people know it in this decision. What I love, it's one last thing before I read, what I love about Judge Chuckin, what I respect about Judge Chuckin, is that she didn't allow for mischief to happen this time around. She made her decision in two days, one day, actually one day after full briefing had happened between Donald Trump and the government about how much of this should be redacted.
Starting point is 00:20:53 Did Donald Trump redact more? In fact, don't even file anything. I don't want anybody to see this. It should be just pages of black to the government. No, there's a factor analysis and we've weighed the factors and you should go with us and the judge looked At it and said yep government had it right But rather than saying it I'm gonna delay the decision to post this on the docket to give Donald Trump time to take an appeal
Starting point is 00:21:13 She ordered the clerk to immediately publish it on the public docket boom No time wasn't even there wasn't even a second for Donald Trump to try to stay the order and get and block this from happening right in time for legal AF that's one so on page three when the defendant every time I say defendant it's Trump lost the 2020 presidential election he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office with private co-conspirators the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he lost. Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, now known as the targeted states. His efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts.
Starting point is 00:22:01 I call this Trump bingo. So if you had lying to state officials, manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states, attempting to enlist Vice President Pence to obstruct Congress's certification of the election by using fraudulent electoral votes, and when all else failed on Jan 6, directing an angry crowd to attack the Capitol, to obstruct the official proceeding, you win Trump bingo. Those are the five major things. The through line that the brief continues, the government continues, of these efforts was deceit. That's the common denominator. Trump's and the co-conspirators knowingly false claims of election fraud. Look how eloquent, look how efficient in one
Starting point is 00:22:43 sentence summarizing all the criminal act. They use these lies in furtherance of three conspiracies. Now here's the organizing principle of the brief. There's a couple of them. The first is the three conspiracies. Similar to what the Jan 6 committee did when it it organized its presentation to the American people. Three conspiracies. One, a conspiracy to interfere with the federal government and its function by which the nation collects and counts electoral results as set forth in the Electoral Count Act and the Constitution. Two, a conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding in which Congress certifies the legitimate results of the presidential election.
Starting point is 00:23:22 And three, and this is the worst one and this goes to your point Karen this one against the American people a conspiracy against the rights of millions of Americans to vote and have their votes counted and everything here that goes on is a private act the second organizing principle is a timeline of events the third organizing principle is battle ground state by battleground state or targeted state by targeted state and a pulling together of the array of evidence against Donald Trump. The reason they have to do it is the one you touched on earlier, Karen, is because they need to carry, unlike, normally you have to carry all your burdens as a prosecutor or
Starting point is 00:24:02 any party that has the burden at trial, not in advance, but because of the immunity decision. For the first time in our constitutional jurisprudence, the prosecutor has to meet his burden now in order to bring a case and get beyond immunity. Because we knew that Donald Trump worried about this, and this is what keeps him up at night. He tried to argue to Judge Chutkin, ignore the Supreme Court decision even though it's all in my favor. We don't like that. Everything should be absolutely immune. He set it into filing. Everything. It's the only way to protect the presidency, the core functions. You have to find everything absolutely immune. No balancing. No overcoming the burden because they didn't want to see
Starting point is 00:24:42 this. The judge says, yeah, no, that's not what the Supreme Court decision says. The Supreme Court decision commands Judge Chutkin and puts the burden on the shoulders of the government to prove that the superseding indictment, which came out after the immunity decision, remember, the earlier indictment was before the immunity decision in July. He didn't have the benefit of that decision, but it was pretty good. I thought it could have survived. But he said, screw that. I'm gonna, I gotta grant a jury around, don't I?
Starting point is 00:25:10 Okay, let's get a superseding indictment knowing now the exact categories of things that are allowed and not allowed under this decision. And he did it. And so he, his argument, as you can see, is that there is an entire category of things in this organizing principle that Donald Trump did that's private in nature, with private lawyers, private people, private conversations, private emails.
Starting point is 00:25:32 I mean, if you took a drink every time this brief said private, you would be drunk halfway through. And I get the reason why. But then he hones in on the things that Donald Trump is claiming is official conduct, which this Supreme Court has said, if it's official conduct, stretched to its outer boundaries, then you have to rebut the presumption that we're going to give it immunity. But the government can rebut the presumption. And most of this brief is rebutting that presumption by putting on all of the evidence to show
Starting point is 00:26:02 the criminal conduct and conspiracy was private in nature, even though it looked like it had a thin veneer of official conduct on the top. But when you look right beneath it and scratch the surface, it's a private conspiracy. What are the three private conspiracies in the brief? Right? And so you have that. And they don't even need to touch, but they do it just a little bit. The absolute immunity category, which is the Constitutional core conduct. Other than to say, and I love the fact that they didn't run away from this, because the big thing that Donald Trump's been saying in every filing, besides it's politicized and that's the reason Jack Smith wants to file a brief against me, is that the entire case is based on Mike
Starting point is 00:26:42 Pence. And when presidents and vice presidents talk, it's always official, or it's always absolute immune. And Jack Smith said, no, no, no. Even when he went back to the new grand jury, he put Mike Pence in there because it's part of the criminal conspiracy to pressure Mike Pence. And they needed it because in order to overcome, there's another issue here, one last cycle of issues.
Starting point is 00:27:05 One more wheel that's spinning. It's like a complicated watch mechanism. One more wheel spinning is that Judge Chuckett also has to decide how many of the four counts against Donald Trump survive. Two of them, obstruction of an official proceeding, was put on life support because of an earlier decision called Fisher. But there's a way around it. There's a way to thread the needle and make that survive. It's the use of fake or false evidence.
Starting point is 00:27:30 And that's the fake election certificates, which ties you to Mike Pence. Because it's not just it's not standing alone like, hey, look fake election certificates for sale. No, you have to take the fake election certificates and you have to pressure Mike Pence with them and then get him to capitulate and go, well, can't figure it out. Got a whole nother slate of electors here, seem to be for Trump instead of for Biden. Let's throw it over to the House and let the House pick Donald Trump as president. That was the object of the conspiracy. So you got to tell the story with Mike Pence and they did it in a way that I think survives
Starting point is 00:28:05 the immunity decision. But my last takeaway, this 180 pages, again, we'll be doing breakdowns of all this, is that this is a masterful presentation and a suggestion or a preview of the mountain of evidence and witness testimony, dozens of them, by Republicans and Donald Trump's own people against him once they get into a wood paneling of a courtroom one day. Because when you read this, and we commend everybody to read it for themselves, every line in it, American people, outside of this audience, is supported by evidence and witnesses. Not the prattle of Donald Trump, the death prattle of Donald Trump
Starting point is 00:28:46 as he goes down the drain in a campaign and he'll say anything to get elected. Evidence, empirically positive evidence. And we'll continue to follow it all. We're going to talk about it on the other end. We'll bring Karen back from a prosecutor's standpoint about the rest of the Jack Smith filing and Judge Chuckin's maneuvers. We're also going to talk about Georgia and McBurney right back in it with an amazing decision. I mean, that was an audition, I think, for the United States Supreme Court. Forget Georgia Supreme Court. He should go on the United States Supreme Court.
Starting point is 00:29:17 If that's the way he thinks and writes and talks, amazing and unexpected. And he's got another decision that you follow closely in a hearing related to Election shenanigans already by the republicans in advance of the november 5th election We're going to talk about all that. We're going to first we're going to talk about ways to support this show firstly As you can tell we have so much to talk about We're bursting at the seams That we formed a new channel to capture it related to legal AF and it's called legal AF MTN at legal AF MTN on YouTube. We're doing in collaboration with the Midas Touch Network. I'm executive producing it We're sitting at that intersection of law and politics and we're bringing it that kind of content that you've been looking forward to
Starting point is 00:30:00 Including right now if you go there now where we already already have 129,000, 130,000 people in the last two weeks have joined us, not one, but two hot takes by Karen Friedman at Knifilow. Now's the time to go. We'll be bringing the whole mistrial group over there to do some great work with us. I just recorded unprecedented, a once a week show about the United States Supreme Court,
Starting point is 00:30:22 my first guest, Dina Dahl, all on Legal AF MTN. And then you've got Mistrial, Kathleen Rice, Danya Perry, and anchored by Karen Freeman-Iknipolo on Thursdays on the Midas Touch Network. And I just, I had the pleasure of being on there last week, really appreciated that. And each one of the people on Mistrial are gonna be contributors in helping us
Starting point is 00:30:44 over on Legal AF MTN. Help us get to 200,000 subscribers before Halloween. We're going to get there, but only with your help. And then of course we've got our pro-democracy sponsors who don't tell us what to say, who know what our audience is all about, who are pro-democracy themselves, and now we got a nice batch of them right now. Let's face it, after a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I have to make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day. That is until I found Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink. Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic.
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Starting point is 00:37:45 You're always thinking about the courtroom or the hearing room, wherever you're gonna present things, the beginning of the case, middle of the case, end of the case. And from what you can see, I guess the first question our audience is gonna ask and has been asking in the chat, do you think on a first pass, understanding,
Starting point is 00:38:04 that Jack Smith has carried his burden on the official conduct to demonstrate to Judge Chutkin and to appellate courts and the Supreme Court that these are prosecutable acts and crimes and or place the appropriate things in the bucket of private conduct to allow for the prosecution. And then specifically also comment about the Mike Pence evidence and how you think that will ultimately survive not Chutkin, but the not even the DC Court of Appeals, but a re a return return to sender return to the Supreme Court. Yeah, well, you definitely put your finger on the issue, Popok, because, you know, the
Starting point is 00:38:47 answer unfortunately isn't the same to Judge Shetkin or the D.C. Court of Appeals. Those are the same, which is yes, he's absolutely met his burden. He spells it out in detail. He spoon feeds us all and the judges about exactly how this was, even if this were official, it was private, right? Even if you were calling as president or tweeting as president, this was on behalf of his private, unofficial candidate kind of role. So he goes into excruciating detail, not just about the charges, but also the evidence that will be used, because that too, you can't use evidence of official conduct even to prove private acts. So so Jack Smith does an excellent job at going through the evidence, at going through the witnesses, at going through the conduct, all of that. And I think Judge Chutkin is going to, if not find Smith's way in all of it, I'd say most of it. And the DC Circuit, you know, look, they are a little more
Starting point is 00:39:56 cautious and they tend to narrow things even more. Also given the Supreme Court and how knowing that that's the ultimate audience here, I think that the DC Circuit might also take a very conservative approach to this, frankly. And so I do think we're going to see potentially certain pieces of evidence that don't come in and maybe even certain interactions with Mike Pence. I don't think all of the Mike Pence conduct will be thrown out. I think most of it is definitely either talking to him as candidate, in his capacity as a candidate.
Starting point is 00:40:39 But the thing about Mike Pence that's tricky here is he's not a co-conspirator. If he were a co-conspirator, in other words, acting as a candidate, Pence trying to also steal the election along with candidate Trump, right, because they were running on the same ticket. If they were co-conspirators doing all this together, then it would all come in no matter what. But the one thing that came out in this filing,
Starting point is 00:41:06 and you know, we had glimmers of it as well from his book and from his testimony or his way, you know, the Jan six stuff. We had glimmers of it, but it really what this really I think showed shows us is how at odds they were and how he kept although he would entertain Conversations with Trump and say okay. I'll look and see or I'll talk about this. He'd say we can't do it, right? Ultimately, he'd say this isn't there is no evidence of fraud or I can't do that or I have to do this You know, he really pushed back and pushed back hard Which is why he's not a co-conspirator. Cause he did not have the same mindset that Trump did, which he, which you have
Starting point is 00:41:51 to have, you have to have the same mens rea or the same mindset or the same criminal intent, the intent to steal the election, which is what the co-conspirators, the remaining five co-conspirators, you know, let's just remind everyone who they are. CC1 or co-conspirator one is Rudy Giuliani. Co-conspirator two is John Eastman. Co-conspirator three is Sydney Powell, the lawyer who team crazy they called her and Rudy. Co-conspirator four was Jeffrey Clark,
Starting point is 00:42:23 but he's now out of the indictment because he was the assistant attorney general who was had the same criminal mindset with Donald Trump trying to essentially find fraud in an election where there wasn't any. Co-conspirator five was Ken Chesbrough and co-conspirator six. I don't think we know who it is But I think we think it's do we think it's Boris Epstein. Yeah, it's Boris Epstein. Okay, that's what I thought That's my that was my memory But but you know, it's it's Very much Pence is not a co-conspirator. He did not have the same criminal mindset or the criminal intent to steal the election He was actually the one pushing back. So
Starting point is 00:43:07 You know that I I do think certain conduct there might be deemed official But I don't think his role in certifying, you know when he was acting as uh, As the president of the senate and he was going to certify The election president of the Senate and he was going to certify the election, he was acting as part of his role in the legislative branch. And so hopefully the Supreme Court will see that and all of that will be in there. To answer your first question as a prosecutor, how do you try this case? I think there's a couple of ways you could do it.
Starting point is 00:43:46 You could do chronological, go state by state, kind of the way they do it here, which is one way and an easy way to do it. But interestingly, I think the way I would do it, and again, this is just I'm not not, you know, I don't know that this for sure, but this is my initial reaction of how I would do it. I really would want to set the stage. I'd really want to get everyone on my side morally and emotionally before I start giving them all the details and the facts because this is going to be a long trial. I don't know what Jack Smith originally estimated.
Starting point is 00:44:29 I can't recall, but I think this is a four to six month trial. That's just my opinion. Just the number. At least. Yeah. Just the number of witnesses, the amount of evidence, just they have to go state by state, person by person, you know, all that stuff. This is a long trial. So given that, that can get tedious. Some of this stuff is going to be, you know, slogging, boring, you know, phone, triangulating phone records, like calling some guy from Verizon who's going to have to talk about, you know, like that stuff just nobody knows what any of that's for and you can get, you can get lost in the sauce. So I think I would start this by trying to really grip the jury and get them on my side emotionally. And I, to me, there's no
Starting point is 00:45:20 better way of doing that than starting on January 6. And so I think that I would find a way to start with that, and not maybe the whole Jan 6 piece, but to start by showing some video of January 6 and Trump on the ellipse. And I would start with that, I think, that speech. And then I'd say that I would work backwards from there and kind of talk about all the reasons why and prove all the reasons why what he intended to do there
Starting point is 00:45:53 was exactly what happened. So I think that's where my initial reaction is here. I agree with you. You need to have, as you know well as a trial lawyer, you need to have an organizing principle and a thematic that sort of the jury can hang on to. I sometimes I tell my jurors, my juries, look there is a shed load of data and information and I juggle them in an opening. You're gonna hear from witnesses that you, you know, you're gonna be sleeping with your eyes open.
Starting point is 00:46:25 I'm going to try to make it as interesting as possible, but I'm going to give you an outline here that you can hold onto and use as your North Star to navigate everything. I make promises in the opening, as the prosecution will hear, that I know I can deliver. I write checks in the opening that I can cash in the closing. I know the evidence that I have and no joke about the four months, six months thing that you just laid out. That was the estimate. It's funny Willis said it would be six months in Georgia. So I have no doubt it would be about that length. Because just think about it. There's just one week or more of just witnesses. And I mean four or five witnesses a day
Starting point is 00:46:59 every day. And they don't meet every day for trial. There's always like, oh, I can't meet on Thursday. Or the judge says every Wednesday, we're going to start at noon because I'm going to do my other cases or we're going to do every other Friday. They try to break it up so the jury doesn't want to jump out of a window generally and keep them fresh. But think about just a week of people who will start by saying at some point in their direct examination, I was a lawyer in the White House for Donald Trump, like a week of those. I was in the Department of Justice, not Jeff Clark, like other attorney generals. I was a White House counsel that worked for Donald Trump.
Starting point is 00:47:44 Are you Republican or Democrat? Republican. And who picked you? Donald Trump. Chiefs of staff that work for Donald Trump. Mark Meadows. Then you get to the high level elected officials. The Mike Pence's, the Lindsey Graham's. Then you go from federal level to state level. The former speaker of the House of Arizona, the governor of Georgia, the governor of this battleground state, not battleground state. You bring all of them in. Then you got just a week of
Starting point is 00:48:14 disbarred lawyers that used to work for Donald Trump and or have been indicted. Ken Chesbrough, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani. Then you got the campaign people and a lot of them have just run for cover and are testifying against Donald Trump. And then my favorite week, Karen, of all weeks is what I call Administrative Assistant Week, which we have that in America. It's like a week or day where you honor the people that work for you and support staff positions and you make sure you take care of them as you should. This is just going to be a week of people who Donald Trump can barely remember their names, but they were a fly on the
Starting point is 00:48:53 wall to history. They heard it, they saw it, they wrote it, they saved it, and they testified to it under oath in a grand jury and or to Jack Smith. Just a week of administrative assistance. They're gonna get their 15 minutes of fame and so on and so on. And by the time the jury is done with like, wow, and they're sitting in the jury deliberation room one day in 2025 and they're like, wow, remember what Mike Pence said?
Starting point is 00:49:21 Remember what Sidney Powell said? Remember Ken Chesbrough in the White House gave him the idea for Jan 6? Remember John Eastman? And what about this? I mean, it's just, as I've only half joked, Jack Smith has enough evidence to successfully prosecute 10 Donald Trumps, 20 Donald Trumps, let alone one, just to give people perspective as to is this a lot of evidence against one person, Popok and KFA? Yes! Yes, it is! And it just shows you how, I'm just shocked, you started the podcast with this, I did hot takes all day, I'm sorry, about is, are there still people out there that want to vote for this guy? When you just read, I read it out loud, that page three or four or five of the brief,
Starting point is 00:50:07 and I don't know how you can justify, other than to completely detach from reality, become untethered from planet Earth, and believe all of the mean tweets and social media posts, there's no other way. If you just took that as received wisdom, as empirical objective fact, supported by competent evidence, to one day be presented to a jury, you would say, I must be mad to put this guy anywhere near the White House. But that's where we are. So there's a lot of different audiences for this. The only one that Jack Smith cared about is the one that he was commanded to file this in front of, the Supreme Court.
Starting point is 00:50:50 The fact that it's happening before the election is not the fault of Jack Smith and the timing. The fact that it's an October surprise is not the fault of Jack Smith. It's the fault of the Supreme Court. Had they ruled earlier, had, forget the DC Court of Appeals that took a month and a half, if the Supreme Court held oral argument, not the last day in April on the last day of the term, but they had held it two months earlier, three months earlier, if they had not issued the order on the last day of issuing orders on July the 1st, and they had issued it in May or March, this wouldn't be October when we were doing this. You
Starting point is 00:51:25 and I would have been doing this podcast four months ago. So whose fault is it that it's October and it's the last set of things that the American people are going to hear in a presentation and one more brief coming. It's already filed. We're gonna be doing another one of these. We're gonna have to hire more legal AF people. We need a bigger boat just for the 300 pages of additional backup evidence to support every piece and every line in this 180 pages. But again, I want people to have talking points for their rush-and-shun dinners, in case there's some people there that aren't in the same political vein as they are. This is not Jack Smith's doing.
Starting point is 00:52:08 This was started by the Supreme Court and an order of Chief Justice Roberts has written. This is what they have to do and the timing of it was not in Jack Smith's hands. It was in the hands of the Supreme Court, right? I want to get anything else on this. I mean, we're going to be unpacking this for a while, but anything else here or do we want to wrap it up and sort of move on to our other major topics before we end up ending the podcast? Yeah, no, we can move on. I just want to just read one tiny little, when I first, when we got this, I love just the first line, Okay. I love the first retort.
Starting point is 00:52:45 So it starts with the defendant asserts that he's immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because he claims it entailed official conduct. Next sentence. Not so it's like, it's beautiful. Like not so retort. Reminds me of, uh, in my, in my cousin Vinny, when, when Vinny gets up and says everything that guy just said was bullshit. And then he sat down, right? Sort of like that.
Starting point is 00:53:19 Yeah, exactly. Anyway, it's a beautifully written document, but, and it's not too much legal ease. It's not confusing It's really accessible if anyone wants to read it and more than anything. It's just such a it's just a reminder of just what a criminal Donald Trump is he really is like, you know anyone who when you see that when they every time they put up that, you know fist in the air, blood coming out, whatever, whatever that, the American flag, that thing,
Starting point is 00:53:52 just go back and read this, read this, that's who he is. That's what he's banking on, he's banking on, nobody reads this, and everybody just reads his mean tweets in his clips. We're gonna talk about other battleground states his mean tweets, and his clips. We're going to talk about other battleground states that are on, that are important for this coming election. And things like in Georgia, which it seems like every day or every week, we're talking about something related to a woman's right to choose in Georgia. And we know, and we know, that every time abortion and a woman's right to choose is on the ballot since
Starting point is 00:54:26 the Dobbs decision two and a half years ago, Democrats have won every special election, everything in front in Alabama and in Kentucky, all these places where where women's right to choose was on the ballot or a candidate supporting that Democrats have won bad harbinger for Donald Trump for November because abortion, more importantly, a woman being restored to first class citizenship is on the ballot in November. We're gonna talk about that, what just happened in Georgia, which for me was jaw dropping.
Starting point is 00:54:55 And I know you did a hot take on it too, I did a hot take on it too, but we gotta also do a shout out to our pro-democracy sponsors. We do hard work and we tackle hard issues. We tackle all the issues that you're not supposed to talk about in polite company on legal AF. We talk about abortion.
Starting point is 00:55:12 We talk about a woman's right to choose, right? We talk about gun controls and guns and all of that and religion because the Supreme Court of this United States forces us to do that. And also because we find it very interesting and good topics to unpack here on Legal AF. And there's the ways to support it. There's so much. We did a hot take on the new channel, Legal AF MTN, with Dean Adalt today called unprecedented. We're going to cover the Supreme Court once a week that way. And there's 16 oral arguments that are already scheduled
Starting point is 00:55:45 in the first term out of the 28 cases that they've decided to accept. And that's, we're not done at 28 cases. The average Supreme Court term issues 75 decisions. They've only taken 28 cases so far, but you can figure out how they're gonna fill in the rest. A lot of Mark Meadows, a lot of what's going on right here right now, a lot of these cases that we're going to talk about coming up next
Starting point is 00:56:09 that that MAGA has already filed early rather than late about trying to claim that the election's already stolen before it's even been run. And that's going to fill out this United States Supreme Court. They are not done, unfortunately, with interfering with people's voting rights and the transition of power. I fear that we're going to be all we're going to be back at it once again with this with this supreme court. So Legal AF MTN was founded to capture all this amazing information. I'm curating it at the intersection of law and politics and it's not just me. I'm bringing on some great commentators from the Midas universe sort of like the Marvel universe including Karen Freeman, Nick Nifilo and Kathleen Rice and Donya Perry and Dina doll
Starting point is 00:56:51 Anthony Davis just wrote me and said he wants to come on and do some work over there, too It is great We're posting now five times a day in order for us to try to get to our goal of 200,000 subscribers in the first month of our existence We're already over 130,000 at this recording, at this live thing we're doing here. So we really appreciate that. And of course, Miss Trial, Thursdays, Midas Touch Network, Karen Freeman at Nifilo, a unique show, a unique voice with her law partners and friends and colleagues and former prosecutors, Kathleen Rice, a former
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Starting point is 01:04:45 where a I wear bingo at home. Let's move to Georgia and other places where Terminator 2 Trump 2 and as MAGA have decided to file election Denying lawsuits other ways to suppress the vote put up barriers to voting mail-in voting registration Counting new counting rules all coming to a head Karen. You did a great hot take and analysis got it sat in and listened I think you're on the you're on the notification list for Fulton County Courthouse and got the live feed of Judge McBurney We're gonna talk about Judge McBurney twice here About the the change in the rules the rules of the game 35 days away from the election in Georgia or the attempt to do that and then these other cases Why don't you tie it all together?
Starting point is 01:05:27 And tell this audience what we're talking about and what we should and what the Democrats are doing to ensure that bad things don't happen On election day or beyond. Yeah, so just a really first of all This fits in nicely with what we just discussed because what we discussed was Trump's amateur effort to steal the election in 2020. Right? He he dabbled in trying to steal the election back in 2016, when he's tried to suppress information about a porn star and pay paying off that whole thing. That was election related, right? That was his, his toe in the water of trying to steal elections, which succeeded.
Starting point is 01:06:07 He then did amateur hour trying to steal the election. And in 2020, thank god, it didn't work. But he's gotten smart. And his people have gotten smart. And so they have designed this. And first of all, before I explain it, I just want to talk about how panicked Donald Trump is by Jack Smith's filing because he has been tweeting like a crazy person since this brief came out that we just talked about.
Starting point is 01:06:41 But if anyone's going to read his tweets where he makes all kinds of crazy accusations about weaponizing the DOJ and it's all lies, etc., read this brief, okay? Read this brief, because it's insidious. That is the word I would use about MAGA and Donald Trump and how they are trying to manipulate this election and steal it. But this time they've gotten smarter and craftier and they don't want to lose. And so what they're doing is they're engaging in what's called lawfare. Okay, it's like warfare, but using the law, using legal cases. And they are filing, there are some democracy organizations and lawyers, election lawyers that are reviewing this and keeping track of it. Mark Elias is one of them. He's an expert election attorney. And he was in the New York Times and he's been writing on this and he's litigating many of these cases. And he's been involved in all the historical election related litigation and what he says and what these organizations are saying
Starting point is 01:07:49 is that more than three times the number of pre-election litigation lawsuits are being teed up in the states, in the battleground states so that they're already in court. They're already talking about things like dead voters and non-citizen voters and fraud. They're already teeing these issues up, but then they're hitting pause because they're civil. And so in civil cases, there's no urgency unless the parties push for urgency. And so what they're doing is they're getting ready, right?
Starting point is 01:08:19 They're kind of getting ready to have these court cases with judges ready to go so that as the election happens, they can just run in and already have a captive audience saying, look what we said, look at what we have here. We said there was going to be all these people that weren't supposed to register. And here they are. North Carolina's identification, the requirement rules. North Carolina tried to suppress voters from voting by essentially requiring all sorts of tricky identification. And so what it's happening, Duke University, University of North Carolina, they're providing their students
Starting point is 01:09:02 with that type of identification so that the students can vote. And, you know, and they don't like that. So they're going to court and they're challenging these identifications. I mean, they're really doing everything they can to keep voters from voting, to try to eliminate voters. And, you know, look, and there's no, you know, I'll tell you before we get to the McBurney part, there's no better place to highlight just how incredibly, incredibly in bad faith these decisions are than in Arizona.
Starting point is 01:09:38 Because in Arizona, they bring litigation about non-citizen voting. And then when they realize that the people who are gonna get harmed, the people who are going to not be able to vote in Arizona are actually Republicans, not Democrats. Guess what they do? Oh, well, we don't wanna go forward with that lawsuit.
Starting point is 01:09:56 We only wanna go forward. So it's only when it's Democrats that are affected that they will make these claims and bring these cases. And it's only in battleground states. And it's only in battleground states, and it's only in states where that's gonna be an issue. So that just goes to show you what their actual motives are. So in Georgia, what happened this week, and for some reason I'm addicted to Georgia trials
Starting point is 01:10:29 and Georgia courts because they're all videotaped. I wish all trials were videotaped because you can see for yourself what is going on. You don't have to rely on what reporters say and they might have a certain point of view or perspective or you don't have to rely on what Donald Trump says or what the parties say. There's no spin room, for example. I can just watch it myself and say, okay, this is what's happening and this is what it is. So I absolutely love that they broadcast these things. And what happened in Georgia in McBurney's courtroom, and he's the chief judge of Fulton County, the superior court there. And as you pointed out, he was the judge who oversaw the special purpose grand jury that
Starting point is 01:11:12 ultimately said there was enough to bring charges against Donald Trump and others. These are all the possible charges. And so then Fonny Willis went into a charging grand jury and brought this indictment. And Judge McBurney, what he did was basically, there was this state election board in Georgia passed these rules very recently, basically requiring the superintendents or the election boards, the
Starting point is 01:11:47 counties essentially, to do a reasonable inquiry before they're permitted to certify the votes. They have to examine them and do a reasonable inquiry. And there has been a challenge to this. And look, McBurney recognized that time is of the essence because an election is about to happen. And so we have to have this emergency hearing and he allowed the national Republican, national committee lawyers to come in and national democratic national Committee lawyers to come in
Starting point is 01:12:25 and national Democratic National Committee people to come in. So these were kind of, wasn't very, although it was a local case about Georgia, this was high stakes that people and lawyers arguing this, basically saying, and what the plaintiffs were seeking, the pro-democracy plaintiffs, they were seeking a declaratory judgment and injunctive really from requiring this to happen and hand counting and all of
Starting point is 01:12:53 the things that Georgia is talking about doing and the state election board is talking about doing and there were of ballots. And there was some pretty compelling arguments talking about, first of all, what is a reasonable inquiry? Right, what if people don't agree on what a reasonable inquiry is? What if in one county they said, there's 11 people who vote there. What if a reasonable inquiry means the guy
Starting point is 01:13:18 drinks a cup of coffee and then certifies the 11 votes? Like, is that reasonable? Or what if there's five different people and three of them think a reasonable inquiry is this, but two think it's that, and then they vote differently or they argue, or what if they refuse to certify? That was another thing that was talking about is what if the superintendents refuse to certify? Or what if they refuse to certify. That was another thing that was talking about is what if the superintendents refused to certify? Or what if they refuse to certify and or they certify the loser?
Starting point is 01:13:51 They just choose to certify the loser. Then what happens? And, you know, and there was all these hypotheticals that they were talking about, you know, what if the reason what if they determine a reasonable inquiry is to hand count every single vote. And even if you put 100 people on it 24-7, it wouldn't get done before the date it's supposed to get certified, which is November 12th at 5 p.m. What happens then? Can they certify? Do they not certify? Can they say, well, we're doing our reasonable inquiry?
Starting point is 01:14:21 So it was just this whole back and forth. And so what McBurney did a really good job doing is he got both sides to agree that certification is mandatory, period, full stop. They have to certify no matter what. They have to certify, number one. Number two, certification is mandatory by November 12th at 5 p.m. That has to happen. And he got both sides to agree to that. So he's like, so the only issue here is what is a reasonable inquiry and whether the state election board is permitted to pass that rule because there are statutes already that that already govern what is supposed to happen so how are they allowed to kind of impose these things especially at the
Starting point is 01:15:00 11th hour and what is what happens you know, you have a bad actor that refuses to certify or certifies the wrong person. You know, so a lot of that was discussed and what's going to happen. And McBurney was, you know, interesting. Although he was extremely, he was extremely, I should say, open to or he, I think he really, he agreed that reasonable inquiry language is very vague and open to or I think he agreed that a reasonable inquiry language is very vague and open to interpretation, and frankly, open to mischief making. And he's very concerned about it.
Starting point is 01:15:33 So I could see him ruling in favor of the plaintiffs. However, because they agreed that it has to be certified and has to be certified by November 12, he was kind of saying, but you know what? to be certified and has to be certified by November 12. He was kind of saying, but you know what? So in some ways, you're asking me, there's nothing to declare, there's nothing for me to do a declaratory judgment on. You're asking for an advisory opinion, essentially.
Starting point is 01:15:56 And advisory opinions are really not something that courts typically do, right? They issue rulings. And since everybody agrees, so I don't know that, even though he was clearly sympathetic to the plaintiffs, I don't know that he's ultimately going to rule that it is within his authority to give an opinion here. But what's terrifying about it is, you can just see what they're setting up to do. And places like Georgia, you're going to see that, and there are other states as well, that they are setting this up, and everybody needs to understand this
Starting point is 01:16:32 because this is what's gonna happen. November 5th is gonna come and go, and you're gonna have places like Georgia that are gonna say, oh, I'm sorry, we have to hand count, like the sloths in Zootopia, at the DMV. They're gonna have to hand count each of them. And then what's gonna happen, November 12th is gonna come and go, and they're gonna in Zootopia, you know, at the DMV. They're going to have to hand count, you know, each of them. And then what's going to happen? November 12 is going to come and go and they're going to go,
Starting point is 01:16:48 oh, I'm sorry, we didn't have enough time. And during that time, Trump is going to do exactly what he did in the January 6 filing that Jack Smith wrote, which is start to sow doubt, start to say things like there's fraud, there's dead people, there's, you know, non-citizen voting, there's all these things happening, and he's going to start getting that out into the universe, and there's going to be a lot of people who actually believe it. There's going to be court cases, and there's going to be, potentially, at least what he's trying to do is create chaos so that there is no winner, and there's
Starting point is 01:17:20 no certification of the election in Congress by the vice president. And that's what he's trying to set up. And it's happening in plain sight. And it is, thank God there are people who are watching these cases and reporting on these cases. And I'm gonna make it my mission to report on as many as I can because the more we know about them, I mean, the real
Starting point is 01:17:45 answer is you go out and you vote and you win by a landslide because that's the only way they can't get around this, I think, and get a mandate. So, you know, that's what's happening and that's what's going on out there. But this insidious attempt to steal the election is happening. It's happening in advance, and it's more organized and it's more, it's more concerted than certainly it was in 2020. And, you know, the fact that this is where we are, that the Republicans who are, you know, like this Katie Britt, who to me is like the Handmaid's Tale, you know, meets Stepford wives, you know, the fact that they can't just win or lose fair and square, and just shake hands and let, you know, and just we all support each other and lift all boats, even if your side, even if your team loses, you know, why would you want to rip the country down by doing what what MAGA is doing? I don't understand it. And, but that's where we are. And we have to fight back, even
Starting point is 01:18:43 if you don't agree with every single policy that one side or the other does, you have to be on the side of truth and ethics and decency and winning fair and square and democracy. And that is what's at stake in this election. That's a great way to end the podcast. I was going to do an entire section with you about the abortion decision by McBurney and I caught it sort of tease it in The beginning but with the holiday and the length that we've gone. I got a better Invitation for you. Will you come on and do it with me on a hot take exclusive to legal AF MTN tomorrow Anything for you, yeah, I don't want to do it alone
Starting point is 01:19:26 for obvious reasons, even though I'm a big supporter of women's rights and restoring them to first-class citizenship in America. But I really want it to be a back and forth with you and me about such an important profile encouraged by the same Judge McBurney about abortion in Georgia. I'm teasing it and also getting people to come over to Legal AF MTN in collaboration with the Midas Touch Network. For those that wondered what the initials are, I was on with Harry Lippman. While Ben was out for good reason, a little bit of family leave,
Starting point is 01:19:56 I don't know, 24 hours of family leave, when he and his wife had the joyous occasion of their new daughter arriving, I did some hosting with Harry Lippman. And Harry said to me, I don't know if he said it to me on the air, he said it to me in pre-production. He was like, what, Legal AF, and what does MTN stand for? And I was like, Midas Touch Network. And like a lot of people don't know that MSNBC, because it's such so long ago,
Starting point is 01:20:19 they're no longer in business together, was named after Microsoft and NBC, MSNBC, so we're legal AF, MTN. And Karen, we'll do it there, all right? You and I will find some time tomorrow. We'll get it up on that network. And I think we will find it a fascinating discussion. And I think it sets a framework, McBurney does, an intellectual framework in Blueprint for how other judges and other advocates, state by state, which is what we're left with now, of people who support women's rights to try to get them reproductive autonomy again, at least state by state. I think it provides that roadmap. And when I saw it, I was like,
Starting point is 01:20:55 oh, this is like our kindred spirit, just to tease it a little bit more, because we've been talking about we're in a handmaid's tale world and actually Judge McBurney used those very words and used handmaid's tale and the word commander and forcing women to do things against their will in his order, all on Legal AF, MTN, Tomorrow, Karen Freeman, Ignifilo and me. Karen, you still with me? Okay. Okay. So long, everybody. All right, so anyway, Karen,
Starting point is 01:21:27 this is again, we're hitting on holidays here, so I appreciate you taking the time out of your, if you celebrate your holiday today, to spend it with us here on LegalAF. You know how to support us, you're here with us now, can't ask for a better set of supporters or audience than what we find on Legal AF and on MTN on Midas Touch Network and that's why we formed that brand new channel Legal AF MTN. Free subscribe, help us get to our target number of 200,000.
Starting point is 01:21:56 I think Salty wants it to be 250. I'm all right with 200,000 by Halloween. So until our next Legal AF, which will be this Saturday, with Ben Mycelis and me, this is Michael Popak with a shout out to both the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.

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