Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump STUNNED by Worst Week OF HIS LIFE

Episode Date: July 28, 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 how the political landscape has turned against Trump and how that has impacted all of his criminal cases; another loss for Trump in New York with Judge Engoron denying Trump’s efforts to remove him from the civil fraud case and overturn the $465 million judgment; another likely loss for Trump in trying to overturn his 34 count felony conviction in New York based on a new filing by the Manhattan DA; the 11th Circuit setting up a path to reverse Judge Cannon’s decision to dismiss the Mar a Lago indictment; 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. Beam: Get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to https://shopbeam.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF at checkout! Zbiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. 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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sandwich for only $5 at A&W's in Ontario. Last weekend, we told you to think about that historical moment, like a trial. And look, there were lots of people whose morale was, let's just say, not peak. And we said, look, in a trial, you're going to have good days. You're going to have bad days, but we got to stick in it together. 24 hours, president Biden announced that he would be stepping down from the campaign and he would no longer be seeking reelection vice president. Kamala Harris became the presumptive democratic nominee. Energy momentum started to surround her.

It continued to grow. And right now we are in a completely different universe. It seems like a decade happened in a week, but very positive developments for our democracy and Donald Trump and the Trumpers have no clue what to do. And that has been mimicked when it's been coming to these legal updates that we're going to be reporting on right now. So on the one hand, the election right now, the framing is the prosecutor and

vice president Kamala Harris versus the convicted felon, the predator in Donald Trump and the prosecutor vice president, Kamala Harris, who was a state prosecutor. She rose to become the attorney general of California, then a Senator, then the vice president. She's not afraid to call Donald Trump out. Say that he is a sexual predator. Say he's a deviant, call him a convicted felon.

And so as that is taking place, you also have these updates in the criminal cases, the prosecutor versus the felon. In those cases, for example, the prosecutor, New York attorney general, Letitia James and her team got a win this week when justice Arthur and Goran did not only just deny Donald Trump's request that he recuse himself from the case where Donald Trump was already fined about $500 million, but it was a scathing order where and Goran basically said, this is frivolous. This is vexatious.

This is contrived. And I am absolutely denying this request. I'm not refusing myself. Go away. Then you pivot to what happened in the Manhattan district attorney criminal case were there. The district attorney, the prosecutor versus the felon, Alvin Bragg responded to Donald Trump's request to dismiss the

action on the grounds of absolute presidential immunity. And Alvin Bragg said, these are an official acts. You should be going to prison. We don't think the Supreme court's decision granting you absolute immunity has any impact on the jury verdict. Let's move to sentencing in September. Throw him in jail, Justice Mershon. Then I thought what was a positive update where the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals set

a briefing schedule on the appeal of Judge Eileen Cannon's horrific order where she dismissed the Mar-a-Lago document case. And I think we will be seeing this year a scathing order against Judge Eileen Cannon and her potential removal. So if all lines up with this momentum, if vice president Kamala Harris' surges to victory in November, we could have no Judge Eileen Cannon on the Mar-a-Lago document case. That case can be set for trial sometime in early to mid 2025.

Trump could get thrown in jail for that one. He can get sentenced this September in the Manhattan district attorney case. And I think he's gonna lose the appeals regarding the $500 million fine for his civil fraud. Let's bring in Michael Popok. Michael Popok, what a difference a week makes. I don't know if I could couch this any other differently, but this

Trump vans ticket is absolutely weird. They are unhinged. It is led by a criminal. You have JD Vance talking about childless cat ladies being a threat to democracy. You've got Donald Trump giving this unhinged speech last night where he's saying that you'll never have to vote again if you vote for him this time. Pathetic stuff, huh? Yeah, look, this is why we on Legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network have just kind of tried to keep

a firm hand on the tiller as we navigated this political, ever-changing political and legal landscape. The things that you and I were talking about online and offline about what could happen to the political landscape depending upon President Biden's ultimate decision and what it would mean and how that would map onto the various pending suits and future suits and future careers of judges like Aileen Cannon. Two weeks ago, we were talking about a potential We were talking about a potential convention bump, which is the usual bump that any candidate gets for four days of nonstop wall-to-wall coverage on corporate media of a convention. You always get some sort of bump, 1.2, 0.5 points or something in the polls combined

with a Butler, Pennsylvania bump for whatever that was. And then what I've referred to on a hot take as a cannon bump, which was right in between the Butler event and the convention, Judge Cannon going all in with a losing hand on supporting her patron, her patron, Donald Trump, and giving him a win temporarily at Mar-a-Lago with the dismissal of the case by ruling against 50 years of precedent that a special counsel is a figment of our imagination and doesn't exist in the world of constitutional separation of powers where she's wrong. So I'm like, cannon bump, convention bump, you know, and you had people then, Ben, it seems like I'm talking about, like you said,

like 10 years ago. Do you remember back, two Tuesdays ago, when people were saying on the Republican side after Butler, Pennsylvania, give them the crown now. We don't even need an election. See, they like not ever having elections. They don't want their people to vote. They don't want us to vote.

They want it to just be a Christian theocracy of some sort, no wall between church and state. And they were saying, it's over. It's over. Give him the presidency, meaning Trump, now, based on what just happened to him and his whatever he did after he was hit. You and I and others were saying, patience, pump the brakes. This is July. They don't call it a July surprise. They call it an October surprise. The election is not yet here and we don't know what Joe Biden's doing yet. And let's see, you know, two weeks ago we were thinking, is there going to be a mini

primary? Is, are the delegates just going to wrap their arms around Kamala? How is this going to work? And within, you know, for as much crap as the Democrats get for being sort of hand-wringers and can't get their act together, and they're going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here, look how quickly they united behind Kamala and look at the polls. They're not tied. The fact that off of three bumps that I just described, they are within a point of each

other after a four-day candidacy, five-day candidacy for Kamala Harris tells you one is on the ascent and the other is on the descent, or they're sort of just meeting in the middle in the meantime. Now, this impacts that we're going to talk about piece by piece on this podcast and on all the hot takes and on our future legal layoffs. This impacts the political, the legal landscape, the political landscape maps on to future legal layoffs. This impacts the political landscape, the political landscape maps on to the legal landscape. We won't talk about it too much today, but Judge Cannon thought she was playing a winning hand. It's now a losing hand and by a lot. Same thing

with immunity. The arguments raised three weeks ago about the 34 counts in New York seem to have a certain resonance. They no longer have that resonance when it's more likely than not that Kamala Harris is going to be heading the Department of Justice as the president. And Supreme Court justices are also mindful of the political calendar and who could be the next president of the United States. All of that turned on a dime and now we're going to break it down in legal life. Well, that's where a lot of people are often frustrated at the diligence and the time it

takes for special counsel Jack Smith to make moves. Some of these prosecutors, Michael Popak, who you and I admire, they don't make rash decisions. Sometimes they work way slower than I think a lot of people would like. But also it's because they recognize that, yeah, sure, there's times where you can win the battle, but ultimately the goal is to win the war. And if you go historically look at wars, there are a lot of times where, you know, the battlefield ships momentum

before there is a kind of a final outcome. And you can't act precipitously in these moments. And one of the things you and I have always said, and this kind of trickles down, if you will, pun intended to the entire MAGA movement, you know, Donald Trump's been a historically horrible decision maker. And he's not a builder. He's a destroyer.

He's destroyed companies his entire life. He's been embroiled in all of this kind of litigation and he's always because he's such a malignant narcissist and he's so pathologically sociopathic that he can't control that in his decision making tree. There isn't a decision making tree. It's an impulse. It's a feeling. He thinks he's smarter than experts and ultimately that leads him to actually get defrauded by JD Vance. I mean, the irony here is that JD Vance is a total fraud.

His entire life is a fraud. He's somebody who grew up gay. He's pretending to be straight. He then went on and pretended to be a hillbilly. He's not. He's from the suburbs of Cincinnati. He then pretended like his whole schtick, why he got famous was he pretended to be a hillbilly who didn't like Trump.

He was the never Trump or hillbilly. And so he went out and he gave these speeches. He started a fraud charity to help the opioid epidemic, but he did nothing. He just funneled the funds to his political advisors. Then they told him that he had to be MAGA if he wanted to win. He was always funded by all the big tech bro money. And then they basically negotiated a truce with him and Trump in 2022, where Trump would give a speech in Ohio and Trump would say,

J.D. Vance and call him the wrong name, J.B. Mandel, kissed my ass. He's an ass kisser. You kissed my ass, right, J.D.? J.D. changed his personality and then became this like right wing Putin puppet, all these heinous, weird, cringey right wing talking points that have always existed in that right wing echo chamber. Like if you go and watch this right wing stuff, they're always attacking Taylor Swift and the Swifties, they're always talking about this childless cat lady threat to democracy thing is one of their main go-to lines in that kind of right-wing MAGA media echo chamber. So JD Vance just kind of mimics whatever world he kind of goes into. So then he infiltrated MAGA, like defrauded them. And now all of like his past stuff. I mean, the guys googled dolphins and women and sex dolphins, women like this guy's a creepy weird

dude. And then he's he's calling Jennifer Aniston disgusting. He went on Megyn Kelly and he was asked about his childless cat lady comment in Pope Park. He apologized to the cats. Well, he said, I'm sorry for the cats. I was being sarcastic to the cats. Cats are voters too Ben. Yeah. Well, well, listen, yeah, let me, let me just talk about JD Vance. I'm surprised there's not a conspiracy theory, Ben, that he's a Trojan horse that was developed in a lab by the Democrats. I'm looking under the couch for those conspiracy theories, Popeye.

Well, I mean, everybody in Pennsylvania, there was a conspiracy theory about Joe Biden's involvement. Why are people on the MAGA side saying, JD Vance with his wife, his Hindu Indian wife and children and vegetarian and all of that, he must have been concocted by the Democrats. JD Vance shows you, and this is what I've said in Hot Take Show of that. He must have been concocted by the Democrats. JD Vance shows you, and this is what I've said in Hot Take So Have You, there's two major decisions that you make as a presidential candidate if you didn't already serve as a president and you have a body of work to be evaluated. One of them is how you run your campaign. How's Donald Trump doing on that?

And the second is who you pick as your vice president. Now I would have thought after Butler, Pennsylvania, whatever happened there, I would have thought he would have taken a breath having had a whatever hit his ear next to his head, next to his brain, and not make an immediate decision about who should be under the Republicans, a president of the United States, because that's what's going to happen. Donald Trump's going to be 80 ish if he ever got elected, and you're really voting on JD Vance as president, not vice president. It's always been co-presidencies, you know, a Gore, you know, Clinton, Gore, Biden, Obama,

Kamala, and Biden. It's a package deal. And look at this package. And the fact that he didn't, Trump picked somebody that was more qualified, like a governor, somebody who had run anything, somebody that wasn't a fraud and did very little to any due diligence on the guy. The fact that your, the Midas Touch Network is able to unearth these things, Kamala Harris's campaign is able to unearth these secret recordings.

They're only secret because they were out in 2016 and 2018 and more recently where he was shilling his book. Was it Shillbilly Elegy? This isn't- Yeah, Hillbilly Elegy. Right, this isn't Hillbilly Elegy. This is Hillbilly Alchemy. He's converted himself before our very eyes

into what he thought would get him elected to ride some sort of coattail for Donald Trump. And in reality, he's the anti-Trump. I'd like the JD Vance that had transgender people as friends, that married a woman who happened to be of a different faith of his, who raised children that way, who has said all those terrible things about the guy he's now running with. What happened? about the guy he's now running with. What happened? He look, he's a gay guy who then went anti LGBTQ plus who then who went like an extremist. He then pretended to be a hillbilly. You know, I mean, he's not even from Appalachia. Right.

Pull back the whole thing is at every layer is you mentioned the shooting though, can I want to address this too? Because Donald Trump keeps on talking about this over and over again. Look, it is a serious deal that in Butler, Pennsylvania, there was an assassination attempt. But Donald Trump, why do you then have to like, exaggerate it and turn it into something else? It is something that conjured sympathy if you were just normal about it. Like we took it very seriously here. Our reporting was we need to get to the bottom of it, that there should be no place for political violence. We were having that discussion and then what does Donald Trump do? He immediately within 24 hours starts selling fight,

fight, fight high tops. He sells the assassination edition sneakers for $299. He has 5,000 of them. He autographs 10 random ones. So you're gonna make $1.5 million on the shooting. Can you imagine if Jackie O had issued shoes right after Dallas, the Democrats? I mean, the fact that he doesn't even take it seriously and so craps on the presidential

position, his, the assassination attempt, whatever it was, the fact that he doesn't even honor it. Why should we? And his whole thing is he wants to make everyone know that it was a bullet. It was, I got, I got hit in the head with a bullet. Okay. I mean, look, the bottom line is this is what his ear looks like now. Okay. He wore the, he wore the bandage. This is what his ear looks like. Okay.

Let me show you the other photo. What's the AP part? What's that AP part? Oh no, that was just the Associated Press took that. Oh, that was their photo. Um, this is him showing Netanyahu his ear. Okay. There's not even a nick on his ear anymore.

Now look, if you get hit with an AR-15 bullet in the face. From 300 feet away? Or in the ear. From 300 feet away? Yeah. It's going to leave a mark. Okay. So whether it was shrapnel, a fragment of a bullet,

the glass from nearby, but Donald Trump's whole thing now is attack the FBI director and Donald Trump was posting yesterday. He was reposting Tucker Carlson saying that Christopher Ray, the FBI director is a criminal. That was a post from Donald Trump. Donald Trump appointed Christopher Ray. Christopher Ray is a Republican FBI director, but in why Donald Trump attacked Christopher Ray? Cause Christopher Ray was asked during a congressional testimony.

Hey, do you know if it was a bullet or, and Christopher Ray said, look, I, we don't know if it was a bullet or if it was a fragment or a piece of a bullet or shrapnel, but something clearly nicked his ear. And we take it very seriously because he's a criminal. The good thing that came out of it is there is a bipartisan here, as we predicted here on Mightest Tachaliga-Leif, there is a bipartisan congressional committee that's going to be almost equally split, one more Republican than Democrat, to evaluate what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania and make sure it never happens again. I lived through an era when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, when Gerald Ford was hit twice through two separate assassination attempts when I was 12

years old. By the time I was 15 years old, the pope and Ronald Reagan were hit the same year. So there were failings in Butler, Pennsylvania. That could have been Joe Biden standing there and the kid had the shooter had all sorts of stuff on his phone that we've now been able to unlock through the FBI about, you know, Fonny Willis in Georgia and Joe Biden. He just wanted to go and make a name for himself in his final moment by shooting somebody famous that was running for office. If it wasn't him, it could have been Joe Biden. So yes, the bipartisan blue ribbon panel is going to have to get to the bottom of it. Secret service heads have already rolled. That's not the FBI issue.

There were mistakes made. I'm not a forensic reconstructionist, but I could tell you that that rooftop should have been part of the perimeter that should have been protected. That is the difference. We're on this network calling out things that are wrong without partisan influence. It was wrong what happened that day. He should not have been, that kid should not have been able to fire at him

at will that way and get off eight rounds. It was wrong. It'll be fixed. We've got to fix it. But for him to use it, as you've said, to shill, to grift, to try to get, to exploit it beyond necessary. I'll give you one example, Ben, I'll turn it back. The Republicans, because I got nothing else to talk about, about Kamala,

didn't like the video that she put on her website about Barack and Michelle calling her. And people said, oh, it's so cheesy. That's not, oh, cheesy. It's Gorgonzola Pierce Morgan said, oh, you know, that she took a good moment and turned it into something. Really? What is their candidate doing who, like you said, had legitimate sympathy that would have attached to him if he had treated it appropriately instead of doing what he's doing, which is trying to call for the hanging and the assassination of federal officials because he got hit with something in Pennsylvania. You know, look, when Kimberly Cheadle, who was the FBI, who was the Secret Service Director testified before Congress, if you go to the hot take that I

did right after that, I said that she needed to step down. I said that that was a, it was a horrible testimony that she gave. If you looked at the Democrats who were questioning her as well, they were being very critical of, of her. You had Jamie Raskin, who chaired the oversight committee called on her to step down because it wasn't a partisan, it wasn't a partisan issue. She failed. And then she doubly failed at that congressional hearing where she couldn't even answer very basic questions and she tried to deflect and do this whole, you know,

well, you know, we're just looking into it like, no, answer the questions. And that was, you know, again, that's not partisan one way or another. And the same way when we're calling out Donald Trump for selling $299 assassination edition sneakers, that's not a partisan thing. When Donald Trump goes and gives speeches and says that he doesn't want elections in the future, if you vote for him this time, there won't be elections in the future, that's not partisan. And if you're corporate media and you're not putting that on the front page of your newspaper and then you want to say that, you know, well, what will both campaigns have issues, both campaigns? No, you're not covering what probably is the most

heinous statement ever made by anybody running for office. And you don't even cover it, corporate media. When we get back, I'm going to gonna show that clip and then I want to talk a little bit more because this is the intersection of law and politics right now we're at that politic intersection point about these cases you know in a moment but it's all it's all. I want to remind everybody about our Patreon, patreon.com slash legal AF. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash legal AF. Michael Popok and I will be holding a live Zoom meeting next week. We will be posting the date in the next 48 hours when it will be taking place.

So if you ever wanted to meet Michael Popok or myself and ask us whatever legal questions that you have about the intersection of law and politics, we're not gonna be, can't be your lawyer on this one. We will answer any questions that we have. Let's go take quick break. We'll be right back. With the summer Olympics in full swing, hydration is key for

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Michael Popak. We were talking about the intersection of law and politics and we're kind of about at that intersection point where we're gonna talk about the cases But we have to remind people about what's at stake right here first What I want to share with you though is are the emails that Donald Trump sends to his supporters, right? There's no policy. There's nothing to it other than hate. You don't believe me? Here's what Donald Trump sends to his supporters. It says, Ben, it's Kamala. This is, it's an emergency message from Trump. And this is what he sends to the people on his listserv.

I subscribe so you don't have to. It says, Ben, she's crooked and she just insulted all of MAGA. She hates you because you love America. I don't care how much crooked Kamala raises in dirty, liberal cash, I've got the entire force of MAGA standing with Donald Trump and that's all that matters." Then the next email he sends is, Obama is back and he hates Ben.

And it goes on to say, Barack Obama doesn't just hate America, he hates Ben. So it's no surprise that he ditched his zombie pet Biden and officially endorsed Crooked Kamala. They're even joining forces with Soros Money Machine, Hollywood Elites, and corrupt special interest mega-donors just to come after the ultimate target, Ben. But unlike these ultra-liberals, Donald J. Trump and JD Vance loves you. And just to prove how much you mean to us, we're making you our special guest. And then they show you this kind of creepy picture right here of them. Pope, Pope, that's very violent language. That is language that should be nowhere

in our political discourse. And that's why I always say, this is not Obama Romney, Obama McCain, George W. Bush Kerry, George W. Bush Gore, Clinton Dole, right? Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Gore, George W. Bush. You go back, this is very different. This is authoritarianism. This is Viktor Orban. This is Vladimir Putin versus a candidate in Kamala Harris that supports democracy and normalcy. The problem, you're exactly right. The problem that they're having is recalibrating now that

they don't have old guy jokes to tell anymore. And I mean that without any pun intended. Now they've got a vibrant, dynamic, qualified vice president who constitutionally was prepared to be the president of the United States at any time, and now she's able to carry forward the legacy of the body and run on the complete body of work, that compelling body of work of the Biden administration, Biden Harris administration, take full credit for all the things that you contributed to in being kind of the co-president with him and without the, let's be frank, some of the baggage that Joe Biden had developed mainly because of his age. And so now they don't know what to do. So it used to be, don't mail in vote, don't

absentee vote, don't early register to vote because you voting can't be trusted. And then it became, no, you have to vote because we won't win if you don't vote, which is a tautology. And now it's, you don't have to just vote one more time. I'm not you, I'm somebody else. I'm not Christian, but you got to vote one more time because then I'll just do all those Christian theocracy things that you wanted me to impose. Just give me one more term and I'll get it done for you and or I may never leave.

And that's, this is what they're down to. And they they're down to appealing only to the red meat Maga base. There is no one else that finds this argument, this closing argument by Donald Trump slash JD Vance to be compelling. In fact, quite the opposite. We find it to be dystopic of the American carnage landscape and downright scary. And he's going to, if Kamala wasn't going to win, which she is, he's going to scare enough people over to her side. They've been just waiting for a reason to vote Democrat.

And now we've given it to them. Michael Popok, what does your shirt say? Do I have to stand up? It says baby daddy. And Michael Popock, doesn't it feel good though, knowing as a girl dad that we can have our first female president of the United States. And, you know, I've shared this, I think you may have broke the news that my wife Sochi, we are expecting in September, we're having a daughter and our baby girls will be friends.

One of the hardest things for me to try to process. And the thing that would keep me up working and grinding out all these videos too, is that I just did not want my daughter growing up in a Trump America where there's someone found liable for sexual assault, a convicted felon, a predator, someone who's on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women, someone who's just weird and deranged, you know, ever being in that office. So the energy right now surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris is something special. Or, and to turn it, and you and I were both built to be girl dads. I mean, how long I've known you and you've known me. And to have those little eyes look up at us

in five or 10 years and say that when they get to that chapter in the history book and there's the Trump chapter and they look at you and me and say, what did you do daddy to stop Donald Trump from being reelected? Like did you, did you know what, you know, and we, I want to be able to look them in the eye and say, we did quite a lot, babe, and we were able to accomplish it. Yeah, and that we is all of you, the Midas Mighty. How about this stat, Michael Popak? In the past 40 hours,

the Midas Touch Network has done over 23 million views. That means the Midas Touch YouTube channel was the number one most watched YouTube channel in the entire United States of America in all genres, including news, but all genres. And we beat Fox, MSNBC, CNN, all coverage and all other genres as well. And that's because the people power this movement and power this network. We were all saying, we are frustrated

and fed up with corporate media. So guess what you did? Those of you who are listening and watching, you created this network and you built the network that you always wanted. Here it is. I wanna share this with you. It's like Obama, you're the network you've been waiting for.

You create, you know, look, I'm glad that Michael Popak and I can be messengers on this network and share, you know, and talk about these cases and, and, but we are members of the community, just like all of you, you know, and we're a small part of this community. You're the force that powers this community. Let me show force that powers this community. Let me show you this clip right here, just so everybody can see what Donald Trump said.

This is what Donald Trump said in West Palm beach. He gave this speech at turning points USA. This is the organization led by Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk is the person who says MLK day should be abolished. He's the one who says that there shouldn't be black pilots. He's the person who had the event in Detroit that handed out the signs and the hats that say white boy summer.

He's the person who mocks Taylor Swift over and over again. This is where Donald Trump decided to speak last night. And this is what Donald Trump decided to say. Let's play it. And again, Christians get out and vote just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what?

It'll be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore. My beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you. Get out. You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again.

We'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote. He says, in four years, we'll have it fixed, so you won't have to go out and vote. I only need your vote this time. Christians, Christians, not other Christians, I need your vote." And then he goes, I'm not Christian. I just want to repeat what he just said, that he's going to fix the voting so that there won't be future elections and that you only have to vote this time. And Michael Popak, the fact that that is not leading coverage on any major newspaper, how is that not news?

Well, okay. Hold that. Hold. Okay. You're right about that. But look, and this is where Trump is going to fail. Biden was successful during 2020 and a COVID era to after he survived South Carolina and the Democrats rallied around him, he was able to kind of run from the basement and win an election that worked in 2020. Today, Donald Trump who does not hold press conferences, I'm not saying candidates have to, but he holds no press conferences where the free press actually pushes him on, yesterday,

Mr. Trump, you just, to most people, think you just declared that you're going to install a Christian theocracy and do away with voting. How do you respond to that? See, he doesn't have to be challenged by that because he doesn't subject himself to any types of unfriendly environments that would come with like a press conference. The debates, forget the last debate. It's like an etch a sketch. That was Biden versus Trump. Kamala, who he may or may not be debating against, but if he doesn't, that's advantage Kamala Harris. And if he does, that's advantage Kamala Harris. Because this prosecutor versus felon thematic,

which is genius, fits neatly on a bumper sticker and is so accurate. And you can use it. It's like a Swiss Army knife. You can use it for everything. You can use it to analyze everything. You can use it to counter everything. And she, if they think that she sometimes gets tongue tied or says things that become

memes, wait till they see her in action. No longer the vice president, a presidential candidate, proving to the American people that she's qualified to be president, debating, prosecuting, giving closing argument and opening statement which she's born to do with years. That's all she did. She wasn't a community organizer. She wasn't a community organizer. She wasn't a part-time senator and book writer. She was a career line prosecutor, line prosecutor, state and then attorney general. That's all she did. And so, he does not put

himself, rallies, these stupid comments in front of adoring adulation of people already voting for him. That's the problem. He's not making any new voters on a daily basis. And that's all that Kamala Harris is doing. All right, Popak, let's get into more bad legal news for Donald Trump. Let's take a look at Justice Nguyen's order denying Donald Trump's demand that Ngoran recuse himself. There's the order right there.

And in the order Ngoran recounts this interaction with this guy, this lawyer, this landlord, tenant lawyer who he somewhat knew, but this guy shows up with the last name Bailey. He, he like a costs justice and Goran as he's leaving. And then he just starts shouting at justice and Goran. You don't know anything about New York executive law section 6312. You've got it wrong. section 6312, you've got it wrong. Justice and Goran says this interaction lasts maybe 90 seconds.

And then Goran's like, I get accosted all the time. Some people like me, some people don't like me. They shout things out to me. They yell at me. I don't think I need to report anytime somebody does it because it happens with a great deal of frequency and none of that ever influences anything for me. I've researched the law, I exercise independent judgment. So Donald Trump, you're trying to claim that this guy shouting stuff at me is somehow grounds for recusal because this guy who wants his five minutes of fame, and I like

what Justice and Goran says and is apparently willing to tarnish his professional reputation to get on some cable news networks and talk about me. Um, I don't know. I don't have a relationship with this guy. I know of him. He's a distant acquaintance, I guess. And he, I wouldn't even have remembered this event, except that this guy's giving a media tour and telling people

that he thinks that he had some impact on me. He didn't have an impact on me at all. And this is the furthest thing from any grounds to recuse myself. Justice Inguhran also drops some other messages where he doesn't say it directly, but he basically also accuses that lawyer of engaging in crimes and saying he's unethical, what he did was unlawful, essentially hinting out that someone should take action against that lawyer. And what I also like that Justice Nguyen Goren did is, and you called this out, Michael Popak, where Donald Trump demanded a subpoena of that lawyer. We want you to issue a subpoena, Justice Nguyen Goren,

so we can get his documents and text messages and all of his communications. What did Nguyen Goren do? Okay, yeah, sure. Issue the subpoena, I'll sign it right now. Go to this weirdo guy, go and get these notes. I don't talk to this guy. So when Ngoran signed it, Ngoran uses the word here,

if I may use some basic parlance, it was a nothing burger that you're trying to turn into something. I'm not recusing myself the $500 million verdict or fine stands. Donald Trump now has to continue that appeal and I think he's going to lose that appeal. It's just a matter of when the court of, when the appellate division rules, but didn't jot the headline. Donald Trump's attempt to recuse and Goran in the civil fraud case denied.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll just put a little color around that. And Goran, any judge that's hit with a motion to disqualify or recuse themselves has to handle it in the first instance. That's just the way it happens in the United States. Some people might think it sounds counterintuitive. You mean the person you're trying to get rid of is the person that rules on the motion? And the answer to that is yes, everywhere, state and federal, including the United States Supreme Court. Having said that, Bailey, a couple of things that you went over that I wanna like drill down on.

First of all, I don't think it was a vague reference to possible misconduct. I think this judge is actually going to make a referral of Mr. Bailey to the grievance committee for the first department. I've never seen a recusal order in which the judge said, you've defamed me. That's defamation. You've committed professional misconduct. You've been unethical and not have the judge rather than wait around for some other bar member to drop a dime, not make the referral himself. In fact, the secondary remedy that Trump was looking for was, if you're not going to grant it, give us a full-blown

evidentiary hearing where we can take witnesses and prosecute them. The judge reminded them, the only case you cite is a case where if a lawyer is accused of professional misconduct, which I've accused Mr. Bailey of professional misconduct, he would have the right to cross examine witnesses, not you, not Trump. This whole order was about Mr. Bailey, somebody that you and I never heard of and we will never hear of again. And that's the problem. And I told people in a hot take that I did about this issue,

this is a teachable moment for people that are in law school or have graduated. Here's what you don't do. If there's a very high profile case and you know a judge has not yet rendered his order or his decision where the appeal is not over, don't go over and start kibitzing with them and giving him your two cents

about how you think he should rule. Don't chase him down the judge's staircase in a courthouse and stalk the judge while he's... Don't try to abuse what little interaction you've had with him in the past, quote unquote distant friend. Don't try to abuse that, to try to get to bend the ear of the judge about a case that's before him, and then go to the media and act like you're some sort of Angoran whisperer, some sort of person who has influence, you're trying to puff yourself up, like you have influence over judges, they listen to you.

And the judge even said in his footnote, you know how I know this has nothing to do with a true ethical violation that Trump believes happened? And why it's only about trying to change the outcome and the contours of the outcome. It's because Mr. Bailey, as he told the press, and I'm telling you here, he was advocating for Mr. Trump.

He was advocating for a misbegotten, woeful interpretation of that executive law about persistent fraud, which is the Trump argument. And it's Trump that's trying to get rid of me for having an interaction with him. So if anybody was lobbying anybody, it was Mr. Bailey lobbying me about Mr. Trump. And you don't hear the New York attorney general trying to get rid of me. And he, of course, he made it clear that nothing about what Bailey said in 90 seconds about a body of law that the judge says, I've been studying in this case for almost three years, and I've made dozens and dozens of rulings about,

none of that impacted my decision in order. And I didn't have to even tell you about it because he's not involved with the case, he's not a lawyer for the case, and nothing that he told me ended up in the actual order itself. It's just about the professional misconduct of Mr. Bailey.

Now here's what's gonna happen. They're now gonna wrap that issue into either the current appeal that's gonna be heard in September in front of the first department in Manhattan, which is the first appellate division, or they're gonna try to separate appeal, which they're gonna get denied.

It's gonna get denied at the first department. No way are they going to find, I mean, there's exactly the same percentage chance of Donald Trump prevailing on this as him getting a black vote in the Midwest. Zero, zero percent chance. And then he'll take another appeal to the court of appeals sometime in 2025. And that judgment, which has only been stayed because people like whatever happened to that judgment it's still running with interest it's up to five over five hundred million dollars with interest in New York there's a

hundred and seventy five million dollar bond that Donald Trump had a post through one of his one of his fan boyfriends who had happened to have a bonding company and who they posted the bond so there there's at least 175 that's been secured until this, we get over the summer, we get into the appellate briefing and the oral argument in the first part of the fall in New York and then that'll be affirmed. I don't know if the whole 465 will be affirmed. They might take a little bit, the appellate court, a little bit of a surgeon's knife and whack off a couple of million here and a couple of million there. But the majority of what Angoran did, I believe is going to be preserved on this appeal. And then that's it. And that judgment,

he can try one more appeal to the court of appeals. So maybe later in 2025, all the dust will settle, but he will eventually be paying several hundreds of millions of dollars running with interest to the people of the state of New York because as you started this podcast with, he is a persistent fraudster. Every company he's ever, it's the opposite of Midas Touch. Every company he's ever touched has turned to bankruptcy and shit, pardon my French. And that is who Donald Trump is. He's just been a modern day incarnation of PT

Barnum and, and a sucker has been born every minute in the form of some voters for him. And now it's all becoming revealed through the legal process. You know, and that's why I do enjoy the karmic relief here of JD Vance defrauding Trump and Trump's kids. And they got frauded by a fraud. Let's take our last ad break. I want to remind everybody, patreon.com slash legal AF.

One of the ways you can support this network, support this show. We don't have outside investors. So one of the ways we build this network that actually gets more views and engagement than Fox, MSNBC, or CNN is through this Patreon. You go patreon.com slash legal AF and we'll be announcing this week the meeting for all of our patrons. So if you wanted to meet Michael Popok, ask him questions, do it on patreon.com slash legal AF. We'll be right back after our last quick break. As we age, balancing our social life with next day

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and business professionals. If you wanna try Beam's best-selling dream powder, get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to shopbeam.com slash Legal AF and use code Legal AF at checkout. That's shopbeam.com slash Legal AF and use code Legal AF for up to 40% off. Welcome back to Legal AF. Michael Popak, We talked about the intersection of law and politics to start. First, we started with the intersection portion relating to politics. Then we got into the law. We talked about the fine, the verdict, $500 million.

We think that's going to stick. Donald Trump's going to have to deal with that. Let's talk about two other things. I'm going to turn it to you to chat about him. One, the Manhattan district attorney, criminal trial. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsification of business records. Donald Trump trying to throw out the verdict against him by a jury of his peers that found unanimously that he was guilty 34 times over.

Trump argues that his buddies on the Supreme Court, those right-wing extremists who gave him absolute immunity and also evidentiary immunity from information when he was in the White House being introduced at trial, if it involves official conduct, that that should have been excluded. So Trump's main argument here is not that the underlying criminal conduct of the falsification of business records is subject to the immunity. Trump's argument is the prosecution introduced a lot of evidence of things I did while I was in the White House.

That's official conduct. You now have to dismiss the case. Um, the, uh, district attorney's office did an incredible job. And I think they navigated that Supreme court order. Popeye tell us what they did. And then I'll let you, then I think you do, you take the pivot there after as well to the 11 circuit briefing schedule, not that much to discuss there, but also I think it's going to show that judge Eileen Cannon's days, I think are numbered as her being the judge.

Popeye. Agreed. I agree with that. She doubled down on a losing hand. We'll talk about that next. In New York, I really appreciate it. You and I and Karen all read the 64 pages that came out by the Manhattan DA. Another credit to you, we often credit each other when we are right about things.

Our crystal balls are right about things. And you said right after July 1st, the immunity decision came out by the United States Supreme court that within moments, they were going to try to file and use that to vacate or overturn the 34 count felony conviction against Donald Trump, which was done by 12 New Yorkers, fair and impartial jury in state court. And we were all, I agreed with you that they were gonna try it. Now having seen it, it was always a weaker motion

than even I thought that they were gonna come up with. And Manhattan DA has taken them to task. Their argument, just to be clear, is not that this is Trump's argument, is not that the Stormy Daniels hushush money, sex act, cover up, election interference thing was an official immune conduct by Donald Trump. Core conduct or absolute immune conduct or official conduct. It's not that.

They can't argue that because the whole Trump Tower conspiracy, as the Manhattan DA called it, between Trump, David Pecker, the National Enquirer, and Michael Cohen, then supported and facilitated by others in the Trump Organization, like the accountant and the auditor and the controller and all of the money men, all of that, that was all before the election against Hillary Clinton. This was all September, October, maybe November of 2016 before the election, but certainly not after January's inauguration of that year, of the following year. And so how could any of that and the coverup and the hush money and the payments be immune? So their argument, even Donald Trump did not argue that. Donald Trump's argument is,

well, we're not arguing that the conduct's immune. We're arguing that there were certain pieces of evidence that were presented to the jury that under the immunity decisions kind of alternate theory could not be used against, which again, I'm gonna tell you this is wrong, but I'm telling you their argument. Their argument is that there was official conduct

of the president, President Trump, that was presented to the jury, which is against the decision of the immunity decision in which official conduct cannot be used to prove a conviction. Okay, first of all, that's an upside down reading of the immunity decision. The immunity decision said is you can't use official conduct

as evidence to try to prove the unofficial conduct to prosecute. That's not what's going on here. The conviction already happened. This is now whether the evidence pieces, which are really just three, it's Madeline Westerhoek, who was like the scheduler in the White House for Donald Trump and helped determine the

swing of the revolving door in front of his office, who got in and who got out and when, and the couple of times that Michael Cohen visited, and a couple of times that checks, personal checks for Donald Trump got delivered to him and then signed to get paid off, to pay off Michael Cohen about this very private non-official conduct affair. That was her testimony. Some stray testimony about, that Hope Hicks gave when she was the White House Communications Director and before when she was press secretary about Michael Cohen, but Michael Cohen already testified, so you have that, and in like a federal election commission form. It's like three straight pieces of evidence over a six, seven week trial in which there were

hundreds and hundreds of hours of live testimony and dozens and dozens and dozens of pages of exhibits presented to the jury. So the argument, which was masterful by the Manhattan DA's office, started with, you effed up Donald Trump and your legal team because you did not preserve this issue appropriately on appeal. You did not object to this evidence as it was being brought in

to allow the trial judge to handle it, and therefore you have waived, and you have not properly preserved on appeal, any of your immunity argument. And they point to, as we predicted, and Karen actually talked about, about a month or two ago on Legal AF with me, that it reminded us that there was that huge hearing

a summer ago, God, it seems like a lifetime ago, that we reported on from our various vacation locations, in which the senior status judge, handling a motion to remove the case from state to federal court, which is what Donald Trump wanted to do, evaluated all of the conduct and said, it's not under color of the federal office,

this is a private affair and private matters, and I don't wanna hear about immunity, and they never appealed or properly perfected that appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. And so the issue of immunity right there should have been raised, wasn't raised, wasn't perfected and they can't raise it now. That's the argument, the first argument that Alvin Bragg's office has raised. And Donald Trump knows how to go to the Second Circuit because they ran to the Second Circuit late with Alina Haba on the E. Jean Carroll case and didn't properly preserve immunity

and supremacy clause issues then. So he knows how to get to the appellate court. He just didn't do it. And in trial, when Madeleine Westerhout, who took the stand and Hope Hicks took the stand, they made some limited objections, but none on executive privilege, none on immunity. Now, one of their arguments was, well, how can we make the immunity argument? The Supreme Court hadn't ruled in our favor yet, but the Court of Appeals in New York, the highest court about the gun decision, the New York versus Bruin decision,

which expanded Second Amendment rights said said you need to anticipate these things Especially when they're on the docket and they've been litigated and you've got to preserve issues that you knew or should have known We're going to be there that the law could change you have to anticipate a possible change in the law And you have to preserve it. You didn't do that. That's first major argument. Second major argument is it's harmless error, which means Donald Trump would have to have shown in his briefing, which he did not, that but for the Westerhoek testimony and the Hope Hicks testimony and that one piece of form from the Federal Election Commission and some testimony by Michael Cohen, the jury would not have convicted. He cannot prove that because there was overwhelming amount of evidence. So it's not this quote unquote

error of letting in this quote unquote official conduct testimony is not outcome determinative. The jury would not, the jury ruled with or without that evidence that Donald Trump was guilty of 34 felony counts. That's the argument. And then lastly, they remind the court of the proper reading of the immunity decision, which is that this is not core presidential conduct, paying off with private checks, a private affair, just because it happened in the White House does not render that core presidential conduct that enjoys absolute immunity.

It's not official conduct stretched to its outer perimeter that enjoys a presumption of immunity. It's the other thing. It's the private unofficial conduct that gets no immunity. This, one more brief from Donald Trump will come in, you and I and others will do hot takes on it. That'll be sometime in August. And then Judge Mershon, who's waiting patiently,

but I'm sure has already written his opinion, is going to rule against Donald Trump. He's not going to overturn the will of the 12-person jury. Donald Trump's then gotta go back, here we go again, back to the First Department, Appellate Division, same court as Angwaran, to get a ruling there. He'll lose there. Then the Court of Appeals. And then if he doesn't like the court of appeals sometime in 2025, he's going to have to go over and try to take a special writ to the

United States Supreme Court, which I don't think is going to work. What does that all mean from all these different timetables that you and I have been talking about on this show? The sentencing is scheduled, I think, for the ninth or so of September on these 34 counts. However, if the appeal is still ongoing, I'm pretty sure Mershon is going to postpone, just to manage expectations here, is gonna postpone the sentencing until the appeal is fully exhausted.

So we may not get, and I want to just manage, we're not, I don't think we're going to get a sentenced Donald Trump before the November 5th election given the timetables of these various appeals. But we will one day, and if he loses in November as we expect, he's just going to be citizen, non-candidate Trump standing before Judge Mershon, having lost 34 counts of a felony in New York, right, with his other track record being sentenced. So Michael Popak, there we have, so just everyone follows the kind of order of this episode. First, we talked about the intersection of law and politics and how with the momentum, energy, a lot of what I think Trump and their legal plan

was informed by Trump basically taking over as a dictator, right? And now those legal plans, you know, are backfiring. Trump lost his recusal request in New York. Those, the wheels continue there. The wheels of justice continue there. Now the Manhattan district attorney, smart, sharp lawyers who didn't panic after the Supreme Court's decision,

they found a way around the absolute immunity ruling that you and I, I think, feel confident that Trump is going to get sentenced in September. I mean, I think Trump, you know, Do you think September? I just said not September. You think September? Well, I think that, yeah, I think that the sentencing stays. I think that Judge Murchon stay, I think ultimately he'll He sentences, but he stays it.

Correct. Okay, I'll go with that. I'll, I'll, I'll put it, but he stays it. Correct. Okay, I'll go with that. I'll put it on. We're saying the same thing. I'll put a bet on both red and black. I think he either delays it to let the appeal go by or he sentences it and stays it.

I agree. Yeah, I don't think that there will be an actual prison sentence served pre-election, but I think it will go through the appeals process, which then intersects with Judge Cannon's appeal based on her horrific order. You know, the 11th circuit set a briefing schedule that has this thing being heard by the 11th circuit sometime in October, November, when there'll be oral arguments.

Judge Cannon is going to get reversed. It's going to be a scathing decision. And Michael Popak, this case is an easy one. Trump stole war plans, nuclear secrets. It didn't belong to him. There's surveillance footage of his valet, Walti Nauta, moving and taking the boxes and, you know, hiding it when like literally like it looked like an Abbott and Costello routine.

Like the three stooges, like you have the FBI there, FBI is upstairs, then downstairs, the guys and the guys moving it. And those are our new, I'm laughing in the absurdity of it, but pull the photo up salty. Those are our, those are their nuclear secrets in there. There are war plans in there. That gets people killed overseas.

Our troops are foreign assets. It has real world implications. And so the foolishness of the act, I should be clear, should not overcompensate for the severity of what we're talking about. But Popak, briefly talk to us about this briefing schedule and when do we expect Judge Cannon to be reversed? I, this is, the 11th Circuit has set up

a clear glide path to reverse Alien Cannon. Let me just back it up for a minute. Dozens of judges around the country, federal judges around the country, one major appellate court, the DC Court of Appeals, and something that you and I like to refer to as the United States Supreme Court, have all ruled prior to Judge Cannon's trying to do a solid for her patron, Donald Trump, have all ruled that whether you call it special prosecutor, special counsel, or independent counsel, they're all valid as exercises of the Department of Justice,

the Attorney General, the powers of the Attorney General, and all of that. And which starts with US versus Nixon in 1974 with a unanimous nine zero, might've been eight zero with a recusal, opinion by the United States Supreme Court. Then it's been settled law since then and super precedent since then,

all the way to 2019, where Robert Mueller as special counsel was affirmed as a living, breathing, appropriate thing under constitutional delegation of powers and authorities and all of that by the DC Court of Appeals, which is the second highest most prestigious Court of Appeals in which is the second highest, most prestigious court of appeals in America, just below the United States Supreme Court from 2019. And the only one that's ever believed this thought experiment, this fringe academic exercise is the Federalist Society, is Steve Calabresi, who co-founded the Federalist Society and wrote the brief, who's also another patron or mentor for the Federalist

Society, Judge Cannon, who got to speak in court, who got to file his brief in court, and the other leader of that fringe thinking, Clarence Thomas. The only one, I believe, on the United States Supreme Court who thinks there's an argument that the special counsel is a figment of our imagination, is constitutionally improper and rogue, and his indictments therefore should be dismissed as one Clarence Thomas. Maybe as a sympathy vote, out of just sheer mercy, he gets Alito to join him. So maybe it's seven to two against Clarence Thomas when it finally comes up the United States Supreme Court. I believe the 11th Circuit led by Chief Justice Pryor and even

Trump appointed federal judges there who have routinely reversed at least two other times this same judge about this case. And I mean that. I mean, there's at least out of the six total judges, half of them were Trump appointed. They are waiting to get this third reversal up to them. And she served it up on a platter. And now they've set an initial, I did a hot take on this one, they set an initial, the clerk of the court for the 11th Circuit up in Atlanta set an initial briefing schedule is a little bit tighter than the one that the computer generated, which would allow this to be argued in the fall through full briefing, but also extended an invitation to special counsel Jack Smith, who is the appellant, which is the party who

takes the appeal, and said, unless you want to ask for a faster schedule. I believe that Jack Smith is going to take that invitation and whether it's today, tonight, tomorrow, Monday, he's going to file a request for expedited briefing. And I think this, any panel of the 11th Circuit is going to take this quite seriously. When she screwed up at the beginning, they set an expedited schedule that was weeks in length, twice to get the issues resolved. That's how important they thought it was to the administration of justice and the appearance and the protection of the reputation of all courts within the 11th

Circuit, including the Southern District of Florida, to get this resolved quickly and for them to rule. I believe they'll do the exact same thing here as soon as Jack Smith gets around to tap it out through his team as three pages and sends it to the 11th Circuit. Then you and I can talk about that next week. Well, I think we covered it all and I really liked the way we kind of laid it out. We weren't a little heavy on the politics to start, but I think it informed how these legal cases are being treated.

And I guess I'll leave everybody with this. Michael Popat, the good prosecutors were actually never informed by the politics of it. They just went about their jobs, right? They did their diligence. They tried these cases. Um, they investigated them. And on the other hand, you know, Trump's arguments, if you even want to call it

that the decision by the Trump judges were all politically based and motivated. And so now what we're seeing is these, these really sharp prosecutors, ultimately outsmarting Donald Trump and the Trump judges kind of very short myopic vision of things where, you know, where they were trying to deliver quick wins, but didn't have the broader kind of outset of how to actually operate a functioning, successful legal system that we have here. So there we have it.

Everybody, I hope you will join us at patreon.com slash legal AF. We're going to be announcing our meeting. So if you ever wanted to meet Michael Popok on a Zoom chat and get to know Michael Popok a little better, ask him some legal questions that you may have, that's the place to do it and it helps grow this platform. Big, big, big momentum shifts here

and we are honored to be spending this time with all of you Legal AFers. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your weekend. If you're watching it during the week or listening during the week, have a great week and we'll be back as always for new episodes of Legal AF. Thanks for watching.

Shout out to the Midas.