Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Suffers FATAL BLOW at Comey CRIMINAL Hearing

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

A federal judge came in “hot” off the bench and right at Trump’s DOJ and Lindsey Halligan, excoriating them for “indicting first and investigating second” in the Former FBI Dir. James Comey criminal case, and ordering them to immediately turn over tens of thousands of documents and ALL the secret grand jury transcripts to the defense ASAP. Michael Popok examines Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick, who used to be a Division Chief in Halligan’s once proud Eastern District of Virginia US Attorney’s Office, and he wasn’t having it with the DOJ’s footdragging and incompetence, given that we are only 60 days until the start of the trial! Learn more about the Popok Firm at https://thepopokfirm.com 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 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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investigating him. And that doesn't fly in Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick's courtroom at all. Skolled the Department of Justice told them they are not allowed to indict first and investigate later and they are to turn over immediately all of the documents that they've been withholding from the defense. This case is going to trial the first week in January. That was always an advantage to the defense because it left the Department of Justice scrambling because they had to provide all of the documents,

we call it Brady material, to allow the defense to fashion a defense. And they picked on the wrong magistrate judge. See, there's an Article III judge, Judge Nakmanoff, who presides over the case. And then there's a magistrate judge. And magistrate judges, especially in criminal proceedings, do many of the activities that we associate with judges.

They handle search warrants and subpoenas and a lot of times arraignments and bonds and bail. They take, as I said, they take arraignments. They take guilty pleas or not guilty, please. And they handle things like documents that need to be turned over. They answer to the federal judge, Judge Nakmanoff, but they are a judge in their own right. And Judge William Fitzpatrick is one you don't want to mess with.

He's been on the bench about three years, but where did he come from? He came from the Eastern District of Virginia, U.S. Attorney's Office, where he was the head of many divisions about complicated complex criminal litigation. So he knows a thing or two about the Eastern District of Virginia

now headed by Lindsay Halligan and a bunch of carpetbaggers from outside of the Eastern District of Virginia that she brought in to help her with the case. And he is none too pleased. He's ordered that by tomorrow, all tens of thousands of people, of documents and the grand jury materials to find out exactly what Lindsey Halligan said or did

to obtain that indictment, that strange, wacko, inferior, sloppy indictment against former FBI director James Comey, we're now one way or the other with two separate judges now ordering grand jury material to be turned over so early in a case. It's remarkable. I'm glad you're here on the Midas Touch Network and on legal AF on Michael Popock. Now, Judge Fitzpatrick is, for all intents and purposes, the one who's going to make all the decisions about documents in the case. We call it Brady material when it's a criminal case. And the turnover of this material is very important to the Sixth Amendment rights of a defendant. Because without it, they can't fashion a defense.

And the prosecutors, I mean, this isn't my cousin Vinnie, the prosecutors aren't allowed to hide the ball and hide the documents and turn them over late. And that's what got Judge Fitzpatrick so upset. Now, just to add to the confusion, the lawyer arguing for James Comey, is his lawyer, and his name is Patrick Fitzgerald. So you had Patrick Fitzgerald arguing to William Fitzpatrick and waiting for the bagpipes to start playing. And it was entirely in favor of the Comey side during today's hearing.

Now, Judge McNamanoff, who presides over the case, he sent all these issues to have to be resolved by Judge Fitzpatrick. Like the Department of Justice, because they don't like the fact that everybody's moving to dismiss Lindsay Halligan, as illegally appointed as the Eastern District Virginia U.S. attorney, they were suggesting that they might move to disqualify Patrick Fitzgerald, the lawyer for James Comey, because he might have been exposed to some classified documents in the past related to Comey as an attorney for Comey. Yeah. Fitzpatrick, the magistrate, is not buying that at all. Okay. And as to the grand jury, we now have two different federal

judges ordering the turnover by tomorrow of the grand jury materials. on Thursday. One, you've got Judge Curry, who sits in South Carolina. She presides over one major issue in both the Comey indictment and the Letitia James indictment, both by Halligan, which is, is Halligan properly appointed under Section 546 of the Vacancy Reform Act? Yes or no? And she wants the grand jury materials. Now, she already ordered them to be turned over to her in South Carolina, because she's only handling this one issue by Monday. And it didn't happen. So she issued a second order, giving them until, actually until today, I'm sorry, until Wednesday, to issue, to give her every piece of paper about Lindsay Halligan's role, about the grand jury proceeding, a full transcripts. If there's an audio version, the full audio version to her today. By tomorrow, they've got to do the exact same thing and turn that over to the defense in the Comey indictment because magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick has ordered that.

See, these magistrate judges, it's sort of a training academy. They want to become Article III judges. I've never met a magistrate judge that just wanted to be a magistrate judge. It's a stepping stone. A lot of magistrate judges get elevated to a full judge, Article III judge, lifetime appointed judge at some point in their career. At least they hope for that. They try out for that.

And this one is Lindsay Halligan's worst nightmare because he's a real federal prosecutor and a deputy chief from within the office that she now heads in the last month, I'm sure that he's concerned with what he's observing with the destruction of the Department of Justice in a once proud office that he worked in. And I'm sure he's concerned about the weaponization of the Department of Justice. And he's holding their feet to the fire. Now, it's not because of that because any magistrate judge would be pissed off and annoyed at the prosecutors who were dragging their feet turning over documents. Hey, everybody. Ben Mysellis here from the Midas Touch Network. I wanted to let you know about my podcast partner, Michael Popock's new law firm.

It's called the Popok firm. Michael Popock's pursuing his dream of starting his own law firm, really based on the popular demand by all the Midas, Mighty, and Legal A-Fers who were approaching Michael Popak with their cases and saying, can you help us? And at that time, Popock was not able to. So he went out on his own. He started the Popok firm. where he is now handling catastrophic injury cases like car accident cases, trucking cases, malpractice cases, big negligence cases, wrongful death cases. So if you or someone you know have a case like this, the consultation with Popok's firm is free. Give him a call. See if you have a case.

It's thepopokfirm.com. Thepopofirm.com or you can call 877 PopokAFirm A.F.F. P-O-P-O-K-A-F. So 1-877 P-O-P-O-K-A-F. Give Michael Popak a call. And I'm really proud of you, Popak. Thanks for all the hard work you're putting in. Now, this was here to wind it back.

This hearing was about a motion made by the Department of Justice. You wouldn't know it from the way the hearing went. They brought a motion to establish a filter protocol to make sure documents get delivered in a certain way to certain parties. And they raised the issue about. maybe there's a conflict. The judge was like, yeah, okay, great. You're turning all this over. When you hear a magistrate judge, say out loud,

indict first and investigate later is not the way it's going to happen and this gets fixed in my courtroom now, you're in trouble. Now, I've been doing this for 35 years in federal courts. And when you, I mean, regardless of their title, full-blown, you know, full-blown Article III, federal judge like Nakmanoff or magistrate judge like Fitzpatrick judge like Fitzpatrick, they get the same respect. They get, they have similar powers. You can't say, well, you can't make me do that. You're not a real judge. You're a magistrate judge. I've had cases

where I've never seen the real judge. I've only dealt with the magistrate judge for every major issue in the case. The only time I saw the judge is when I went to trial. And if I settled the case, I never saw the judge at all. You know, maybe at a, maybe at a cocktail reception, but not in the case. So they are for all intents and purposes. You're judge. And you have to treat them with that respect because they handle the lion's share, the bulk of the procedural issues and about documents, about bond, about bail, about release, about all sorts of things are handled the magistrate judge level. So let me put it this way. This did not go well for Donald Trump. I mean, it didn't go well in the electorate.

And it's not just, I have a friend of mine who's Republican who wrote me a text message interpreting the election results. You know, oh, the only one in blue states. I don't think that's the way you can interpret that. The way to interpret the election results is not only did the Democrats overwhelm their Republican counterparts in Virginia governor race, New Jersey governor race, Prop 50. But if you look below that, the delegate race in Pennsylvania,

they flipped 13 seats away from the Republicans. In New Jersey, she won Mikey Cheryl, counties that had gone Trump before. Same thing in Virginia was Spanberger, Governor Spanberger. So, you know, when you look at the details of how women and Hispanics and the young people and the elderly

and all of that independence all voted, it was a terrible night for Donald Trump. And you, and it's just a shalacking of epic proportion that they can't wish away in the White House. And then you come into the courtrooms where they are also losing at a 93% clip in the courts.

Even at the United States Supreme Court during oral argument of the tariffs, and I'll do a separate hot take on the tariffs that were before the Supreme Court today for Donald Trump. It's not looking good. For him to keep his signature linchpin of his entire presidency

is being able to punish 138 countries and Americans with tariffs. I'm not so sure that survives. I'll do a deeper dive on that along with bringing in some people who were in the room at the United States Supreme Court like Attorney General Banta. So I'm glad you're here on Midas Touch. And maybe you were here from Midas Touch's coverage of election night in America and saw my show, the intersection that preceded it. If not, I'm Michael Popak. Hit the free subscribe button here on Midas Touch. Come over to Legal AF YouTube and be a part of our March to 1 million subscribers. We're at 910,000.

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