Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Suffers HUMILIATING DEFEAT in APPEALS… SCOTUS NEXT?!?!

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Trump is now 0-3 in the last 48 hours in getting NY courts to stop Friday’s criminal court sentencing, with NY’s highest court rejecting his last-minute emergency stay request. The last stop on the train is the US Supreme Court which will make its decision as to whether there is any “immunity” for a non-president/president-elect from being sentenced for non-presidential crimes, before Friday’s 9:30 am ET sentencing. Michael Popok provides his analysis. 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 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

This NFL season, get in on all the hard-hitting action with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on anything from money lines to spreads and player props, or combine your bets in a same-game parlay for a shot at an even bigger payout. Plus with super simple live betting, lightning fast bet settlement, and instant withdrawals, FanDuel makes betting on the NFL easier than ever before. So make the most of this football season and download FanDuel today. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling Palm, call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connexontario.ca. With TD Direct Investing, new and existing clients could get 1% cash back. Great! That's 1% closer to being part of the 1%. Maybe. closer to being part of the 1%. Maybe, but definitely 100% closer to getting 1% cash back with TD Direct Investing. Conditions apply, offer ends January 31st, 2025. Visit td.com slash DI offer to learn more.

Donald Trump is 0 for 3 in his attempts to try to stop Friday's sentencing in his 34-count felony conviction in front of Justice Mershon in the New York State Supreme Court. He's not looking at jail time. Justice Mershon has already said he's going to keep the felonies on the books, not going to overturn them, but he's going to give an unconditional discharge, meaning no community service, no jail time. Donald Trump doesn't want to be sentenced on Friday

So he's gotten so far. He's over three three different courts have refused in the last 48 hours To stop Friday sentencing and there's a last one on the horizon with a filing before the United States Supreme Court I'll break it all down for you. I'm Michael Popak. You're on the legal AF and the Midas Touch Network Let's start with how we got here and the 0 for 3. After Judge Murchon said he was going to sentence Donald Trump last Friday to January 10th sentencing date in advance of the inauguration, while he was only president-elect, there's no president-elect immunity, it's the least burdensome time to finish and complete filing the criminal process against them before he even takes office.

Donald Trump didn't like that. So he filed a notice of stay and a motion with the trial judge again, Judge Murchand, to have him try to reconsider his ruling, arguing that he was divested of jurisdiction because they've argued that immunity somehow applies to Donald Trump's non-presidential conduct at the heart of the 2016 Stormy Daniels-Hush Money cover-up conspiracy. Let me just remind everybody, he was charged for conduct that 99% of it dealt with his time before he was elected president in 2016. So before he was president, activity formed the basis of the

conspiracy against him. He was indicted before he was president. He was tried before he was president. He was convicted before he was president and he will be sentenced before he was president. How this implicates the quote-unquote immunity decision of the United States Supreme Court back in July, I have no idea, but I'll try to explain to you why their argument is a losing one. So they asked Justice Mershon, please revisit your argument. Well, not really please, because Donald Trump in the middle of the night starts bashing the judge again, calling him corrupt and conflicted and a hack and a puppet of Alvin Bragg and the Biden administration and everything else.

So the Justice Mershon, no surprise, rejected in a one-page order, rejected the request to reconsider his decision and he's going forward with Friday in the sentencing. That led Donald Trump to run across the street or down the street to the Manhattan Appellate Court that sits on Madison Avenue, the first department, and try to get an emergency judge, a duty judge who handles emergency applications, off of a

hearing, quick hearing, to stay, stop, block the Friday sentencing. That was a day and a half ago. Justice Guestmer was on duty and she denied Donald Trump's request. Not only that, she set a briefing schedule that will make this issue only come up again in front of the full first department, the full five members of the justices there after the inauguration. So Donald Trump, as I had expected, he tried to lob one in, two Hail Marys, one into the Court of Appeals in New York, which sounds like an intermediary court, but is actually the highest court in New York. Court of Appeal, very hard to get the Court of Appeals to give you a stay and jump over, especially after the first department has it.

And they have rejected, Court of Appeals has now this morning rejected Donald Trump's efforts in the state court system. He's exhausted all of his efforts to try to get an emergency stay of any kind before Friday. His last stop then, as I expected, was to try to lob one into the United States Supreme Court. I think he really needs to go through Sotomayor because she does preside over all things New York, but they've skipped a step. They've filed a motion for stay, sort of an odd duck of a procedural motion led by John

Sauer, who's Donald Trump's criminal appellate lawyer, who's going to be the Solicitor General if Trump has his way one day, but right now he's in private practice. And he argued to the United States Supreme Court something that completely undermines and reverses their prior position in the case, which you can't do. He switched gears. Now they're arguing that we've raised the immunity decision about whether certain pieces of evidence should have been allowed into the trial concerning after Donald Trump was elected when he was writing checks

to Michael Cohen paying him back and that alone violates the immunity decision and that decision should be determined before anything else and before sentencing so stay sentencing. Okay let me break that down for a minute. Let's face it I'm 59 and after a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I gotta make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day. That is until I found pre-alcohol,

Z-biotics, pre-alcohol, probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. And here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for your rough next day. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night, drink responsibly, and you'll feel your best tomorrow.

Look, I won't lie. I was a bit on the fence about pre-alcohol initially, but then while hanging out with some old buddies in Miami on a recent visit, I gave it a shot. And with them, it's a great dinner with cocktails and then lots of amazing old vintage wine followed by cognac and cigars so believe me I'm here to tell you pre-alcohol is the real deal I got up the next morning raring to go and meet them for our annual basketball game go to zbiotics.com slash legal AF

to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use legal AF at checkout. Zbiotics is back with 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash legal AF and use the code legal AF at checkout for 15% off. code LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off. First of all, he's post-conviction. The trial's over. The case is over. It's just going to be a one-hour sentencing on Friday.

There is no such thing as presidential elect immunity. Donald Trump has plenty of time to attack our allies, attack enemies, hold dinner dances at Mar-a-Lago. He can hang around for an hour Zoom hearing about his sentencing that's not even sending him to jail. But to John Sauer, he poses this question this way to the United States Supreme Court, right? They want an automatic stay while presidential immunity is being appealed. Okay, there is no presidential immunity.

What the presidential immunity case from the Supreme Court stood for is that you can't be prosecuted for fundamental conduct that is germane to your being the president, and you can't be prosecuted criminally for that if it's constitutionally, it's part of your constitutional powers under Article 2, or if it's part of your official conduct, it's part of your constitutional powers under Article 2, or if it's part of your official conduct, it's a rebuttable presumption that you have immunity. If it's private conduct, there's no immunity. Has nothing to do with this case. The case in New York, he's already been convicted.

There's no prosecution. He's not president. So none of that should apply. There's one area where they're hanging their hat on, has to do with evidence, arguing that Justice Mershon let in certain post-presidential evidence that they say goes to immunity. Even if that were the case, Mershon already evaluated it

and said it was harmless error at best. They were stray little strands of testimony and pieces of social media postings. It did not undermine the overwhelming amount of evidence against Donald Trump, including by his co-conspirators, Michael Cohen and David Picard. And so that's not what the immunity case is all about. And then, of course, in the Supreme Court, they also want a determination now that the justice of the Supreme Court in New York used official act evidence when

he shouldn't have. Again, that's not for the United States Supreme Court on an incomplete record. That issue has to continue to be litigated at the appellate level and exhausted there in New York, not run over to federal court with an incomplete record and have them jump over to an entire state wall and also two levels of state appellate courts and make a ruling. They're not going to do that. I think two is dead in the water.

And three, that he has presidential elect immunity. If this is the best they got, I get that the Supreme Court likes to bend over backwards, the maga right to help Donald Trump, but this is pretty weak tea here. This is pretty slim reads to be held on to. This is incomplete and inappropriate constitutional analysis here, analysis of how the immunity decision would even map on to the facts and procedure of this particular case. But is there four or five votes to find it interesting? They find it interesting because they've already ordered the Manhattan DA to respond by this morning,

and I'll do a follow-up hot take on it before they rule. And they say they're gonna rule by tonight or Friday. So stay tuned to the Midas Touch Network at Legal AF because we're gonna have a quick update. Supreme Court's either gonna be rejected, denied. I think it should be rejected. It should definitely be rejected under all constitutional and procedural analysis. There's no doubt about that. I don't think they have jurisdiction right

now. I think this is an irregular motion that's been filed that skipped about five different steps and it should be rejected by the court. Will it? I don't know. Will they maybe stay for a few days or a week or a month the issue of the sentencing if they're inclined to reverse it, but they're not gonna win, you know, Trump's not gonna win on the merits. And so if he's not gonna win on the merits, that fundamentally means that the Supreme Court can't issue a stay. That's the first finding you have to make, likelihood of success on the merits, that you're gonna be the prevailing party. It doesn't look like you're going to be based on these arguments that are being raised. So hopefully there's a battle going on within the Supreme Court, led not just by the moderate

Democratic wing of the Supreme Court, not just Sotomayor, Kagan, and Kataji Brown Jackson, but by people like Amy Coney Barrett, who's become the centrist, where she's going to have to fight to try to get Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, or Roberts over to her side on this issue, because I think she's going to be on the right side of this. Forget Gorsuch. He sides so many times with the bobsy twins of Alito and Thomas that he's almost the lost cause now, especially when it comes to presidential immunity. But maybe Roberts, having seen now the devastation he created by the immunity decision, may try to start walking it back with this opportunity.

We'll continue to follow it right here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. Come on over to the Legal AF YouTube channel. We're trying to get to half a million by our half birthday in about a month and a half. We're almost there, right? Almost at 400,000 subscribers in just two and a half or almost three months' time. Come on over. Hit the blue subscribe button. Independent media analysis and commentary for law and politics is so needed right now. We're glad you're here with us. So until my next reporting, I'm Michael Popak.

In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories the intersection of law and politics go to youtube now and free subscribe at legal af mtn that's at legal af mtn their entrance makes the bingo balls rumble in fear the free space is free out of respect for them. And their dabs are too fast for the naked eye. They're not just grandmas, they're grandmasters. Betty, Dolly, Martha, queens of Delta Bingo, haulers of the hall, and they're here

to teach the next generation of players. Learn what it takes to be a bingo master at grandmasters.ca. Must be 18 plus, play smart.