Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Trial ACCELERATES as Trump DETERIORATES

Episode Date: April 28, 2024

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back with a new episode of the weekend edition of the top-rated Legal AF podcast. On this episode, they debate/discuss: whether the jury is ready to convict after just the first 2 weeks of the Trump NY criminal trial; the powerful impact of Judge Kaplan’s denial of Trump’s motion for new trial and to reduce the punitive damages in the E Jean Carroll sex assault, defamation and punitive damages trial; whether the Supreme Court can ever recover from a future decision that a criminal, coup plotting, rival assassination planning president can get away with it and enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution; whether Trump will be indicted eventually in Arizona for election interference, and who may be cooperating with the Arizona AG to make that happen, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Thanks to our sponsors: Mack Weldon: Go to http://mackweldon.com/?utm_source=streaming&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcastlaunch&utm_content=LEGALAFutm_term=LEGALAF and get 20% off your first order with promo code LEGALAF 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. 3 Day Blinds: For their buy 1 get 1 50% off deal, head to https://3DayBlinds.com/LEGALAF 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 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://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coalition-of-the-sane/id1741663279 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Wake up Donald or put on a jacket or something because we're through week two of the Trump criminal trial. Donald Trump is falling asleep in court and complaining that he is too cold in the courtroom, but things are indeed heating up. Three witnesses have testified so far. Opening statements are complete. The prosecution filed another contempt motion for which there will be a hearing next Thursday. Michael Popock and I will break it down as Donald Trump was in a courthouse in Manhattan for the criminal trial. There was oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court

where Trump's lawyer argued that Donald Trump could steal and sell nuclear secrets, launch coups against the country, order the military to assassinate his political opponents, and of course, submit fake elector's slates claiming those are all official acts. What's the Supreme Court going to do? We will break it down. And also it should be noted that Trump's former attorney general, Bill Barr, gave an interview

following that Supreme Court oral argument where Barr said that there was numerous occasions where Donald Trump had talked about executing his political opponents. But Bill Barr said, oh, he always says things like that. I think it's important to view those things collectively. And we will talk about that. Also, all of that was going on. Let's not forget about some proceedings still taking place in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

Donald Trump has filed an appeal there. We know that, but he had also filed a motion for new trial before federal judge Louis Kaplan in a scathing order. Federal judge Louis Kaplan described in detail the sexual assault committed by Donald Trump, his defamatory conduct against his assault victim, and the level of egregiousness that judge Kaplan observed based on Trump's conduct, which Kaplan said is even unprecedented in his judicial career. We will break it all down.

And then while all of that was going on, if that's not enough, indictments handed down in Arizona against the fake electors and others in Donald Trump's inner circle, uh, we will talk about that indictment, the implications of that indictment. So in other words, a fairly busy and historic week again, and there's no one else I'd rather break this down with than my cohost, Michael Popok and no one else I'd rather be with than you legal AFers. Let's get in it.

We've got a lot to discuss. Popok, how you doing on this historic weekend? Yeah, I never thought we'd be talking about week two of a criminal trial of a former president, a Supreme Court bending over backwards to help a criminal president, a Arizona attorney general who along with other attorney generals are doing the right

thing and showing that they have brass ones to now indict almost Donald Trump, but a series of other people around Donald Trump, including a number of them that I was shocked and so were you that they had skirted by without being indicted to this moment, but now they can no longer say they've not been indicted. And we'll talk about whether Donald Trump will join them as an indicted co-conspirator in those places. And then, you know, Judge Kaplan and the Eugene Carroll case always keeps it real by reminding everybody who and what Donald Trump is that they are voting for in November, what he did, what the jury observed, and why he doesn't deserve a new trial or to have

any of the damages up to $83.5 million reduced because the jury did the right thing and Judge Kaplan called him out. It was in a petri dish, in a nutshell. It sums up where we are with Donald Trump. Those that want to vote for him in November have to ignore all of this evidence of wrong conduct, misconduct, sexual misconduct, and election interference in order to pull the switch for him. And that's okay as long as you acknowledge that you're doing that. For the rest of us that live and reside on planet Earth, facts like these matter. And juries, grand juries and judges are not demonstrating animus or bias against Donald Trump. They're just doing their jobs and weighing the evidence that's presented to them.

And we as thinking human beings, sentient human beings should take it in as data as we're trying to select the next president of the United States. You mentioned a Petri dish. You know what grows in a Petri dish? Bacteria. And when you see Donald Trump sitting there, it does kind of look like bacteria growing in a Petri dish. And when you see what he has spawned across the country, whether it's in Arizona, what his lawyer was arguing before the United States Supreme Court, some foundational principles that were, I always thought self evident here in the United States of America, that this is a country of we the people, not kings, not authoritarians, that this is a country of we, the people, not kings,

not authoritarians, that we are a people of decency, that we are a people who love democracy, that we are a people of law and order, PO-PAC, we see the ultimate stress test in our body politic, and we see the ultimate stress test in these courts as there are prosecutions for violations of the law. Period. It's that simple. And on the other hand, you have justifications for it that are extrajudicial, that frankly, based on all of your experience as a lawyer, all of my experience as a lawyer, all of the experience of Karen Friedman, Agnifilo, and the other great former federal prosecutors and state prosecutors who

we have on this network, these are unprecedented times, but in these unprecedented times, it is incumbent upon us to continue to defend and preserve and protect our constitution and to not run away from it, to not get disenchanted. That's what this show is about. Let's talk about everything that happened in the Manhattan district attorney criminal case against Donald Trump this week. Recall it's for Donald Trump's falsification of business records to interfere with the 2016 election.

Three witnesses testified this week. That's an image of Donald Trump in the court. You see Justice Mershon, the judge who's presiding over the case. In that photo you see on Donald Trump's left, Todd Blanche who gave the opening. You see Emile Bov on Donald Trump's left, Todd Blanch, who gave the opening. You see Emile Boeve on Donald Trump's right.

There you see David Pecker, one of the witnesses who testified, the most compelling witness thus far. That's Trump. And again, Emile Boeve, who did the cross exam of David Pecker. Each day we've been creating a scorecard here of the events taking place. Uh, on each day of trial, we might as well start with the last day of the second week of the Trump trial, which was day eight, David Pecker, the former head of AMI, which owned the national inquirer finished his testimony. We then heard from Ronna Graff, Ronna Graff, Donald Trump, or the Trump

organization's personal assistant for many decades. Then you had Gary Farrow, a banker, who was familiar with some of the shell companies that Cohen was setting up to make some of these hush money payments. And then more of Donald Trump whining how cold he is in the courtroom. And multiple observers talked about how Donald Trump would continue to fall asleep near REM sleep, full-fledged naps, it was described. And I think Karen Friedman Agnifilo said it best when she said, I worked in that courthouse for 30 years.

It is a government building. I've never heard people whine about the temperature. I mean, sure, the building may be cold. It's a government building, but that's just life. That's what it means when you don't sit on a golden toilet your whole life. Maybe you don't get the temperature that you like, but this whining, this complete whining. I like where Sean's comment to him. He said, you got two choices, Mr. Trump. You can either be boiling hot or you can be freezing cold. That's it, it's binary in this courtroom.

So we chose cold and you can adjust accordingly. Well, boiling hot witness and David Pecker for sure certainly exceeded my expectations as well of what a credible historian he was on the facts, talking about the deal he made with Donald Trump, multiple in-person meetings with Donald Trump, where Trump thanked him for making the hush money payments, thanked him for handling the McDougal situation, paying off Karen McDougal, who Trump had a sexual relationship with while Melania was pregnant and had given birth, thanking him for handling the doorman

situation where they paid off a Trump Tower doorman who ended up not having credible info, but they thought he did at first, inviting Pecker to the White House, holding a thank you dinner for him, knowing that the cast of characters like Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Hope Hicks, while they were in the White House, were still involved in trying to extend some of these hush money agreements

and non-disclosure agreements. We heard testimony from Pecker about what Trump was saying about Michael Cohen. Trump saying, you know, don't worry about it. I'm going to take care of Michael Cohen for handling the other hush money payments that were made. So, you know, I thought it was a very kind of credible testimony. But Popak, if you can break down your observations from week one, um, before we go into like the contempt hearing and things like that, just the three witnesses, what'd you make of it?

What'd you make of the defense strategy and where do you think we are right now? If you were, uh, evaluating the jury, where do you think they are? Take it away. I'll tell you, I'll start with that one. The prosecution is way up on points. The jury, as I've said before in other hot takes, jury science tells us that juries make decisions very quickly, doesn't matter how long your trial is,

six, eight weeks, 10 weeks, six months, juries make rapid decisions about who they trust, both as advocates and as witnesses and as a case and who they don't. Meaning after the opening statements, which I thought went well for the prosecution, did not as well for Todd Blanch. I thought his chuckling and laughing and being insincere about the quote unquote conspiracy and other ways he was trying to show his disdain actually back fire would have backfired for this jury. And then I think that the perfect roadmap witness, you and I talked about it last week, you and I had a little bit of a debate about what the

first witness would be. I said it's going to be powerful, it's going to be a roadmap type witness and I said it may be Pecker. So Pecker, the reason I thought it was going to be a roadmap type witness. And I said, it may be Pecker. So Pecker, the reason I thought it was going to be him is he's the only person that Donald Trump, he spent so much time and energy going after Michael Cohen. And I always thought Michael Cohen is what we call a sandwich witness. He's in the middle somewhere. He's down the road. He's after his testimony has been reinforced and bolstered by numerous documentary witnesses and testimonial witnesses and roadmap witnesses. But if you have anything close to a roadmap witness, you have to put it on first because

you have the jury's wrapped attention after the opening statements. And now you don't want to waste that reservoir of goodwill and energy that you have by starting with bringing on Ronna Graff and talk about, you know, the fact that Donald Trump has Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougall in his Rolodex. I mean, that's like, okay, that's interesting. And yes, they'll tie it together. She served another purpose. I'm going to talk about Ronna Graff in a minute. But if you can start off with somebody that maybe doesn't have every page of the hymnal, but has a lot of it, you know, then that's what you use. And Pecker, there's only three people

that are in the Trump Tower conspiracy, the TTC, that the prosecution presented in their opening statement. One's called Donald Trump, one's called David Pecker, and one's called Michael Cohen. And we know what Cohen and Pecker are gonna say, and who cares what Trump says after that? He gets outvoted in front of the jury, two to three, about those fateful meetings

in which the conspiracy was established for the catch and kill program, and everybody's role was established. What role Michael Cohen was gonna have in terms of calling on behalf of Trump to encourage terrible stories to be placed in the National Enquirer, not a legitimate media outlet, one that practices in David Pecker's words, checkbook journalism,

you know, and published many things on behalf of Donald Trump, not because it benefited America Media Group or the National Enquirer, but only because it was consistent with this conspiracy agreement that was created at Trump Tower. So Pecker was perfect and he got to tell the story about the first two of the three targets, almost said victims, of the catch-and-kill program. So Juden the doorman with his out-of-wedlock child story about Donald Trump, that was their test run. That was $30,000 payment by David Pecker, killed the story, didn't see the light of day. Second was Karen McDougall.

David Pecker testified at length about it. In ways that it's almost been, I almost, I was almost, I wasn't shocked by his testimony. We knew from what he was involved with that where the, actually nothing that he said shocked me. What shocked me is how cordial and friendly he was to the lawyer who was asking questions for the prosecutor. It was almost like they're having a cup of coffee and having a conversation,

which is exactly what you and I love when we're doing a deposition or an examination in court. This was not pulling teeth. Maybe because there's a non-prosecution or deferred prosecution that he's still sort of subject to related to his prior bad acts with the prosecutors. But in any event, he was just jovial, he was happy. You never heard about David Pecker out of Donald Trump's

mouth, he spent all of his resources, his lawyer, him on social media, bashing Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen, Michael Cohen, Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen is not the only witness in this case. He's a sandwich witness that's gonna come much, much later. Text messages, emails, check report, check runs, business records, that's what's gonna hang Donald Trump. Recorded conversations that Michael Cohen took with Donald Trump, which he's heard and the jury will hear.

That's going to be a shocking day when that happens. David Pecker did great for the prosecution because he established everything they needed in one witness's mouth. The conspiracy, the roles in the conspiracy, the checks that were written, why Pecker didn't handle Stormy Daniels because he didn't get paid for Karen McDougall, how upset Michael Cohen was. If it wasn't for that falling out on that issue about payment to the target, then there possibly would not be a hush money cover up felony

here because it would have been coming out of David Pecker's bank account at National Enquirer directly to sign an NDA directly. But because he wouldn't do it anymore because he didn't get paid the 150,000 that he had laid out for Karen McDougall, he wasn't going to do it again for Stormy Daniels, especially he said he didn't want to be involved with a porn star. I guess Playboy Playmate was OK. So Michael Cohen was upset, but Michael Cohen had to report back to the boss that we're going to have to do it, which is where the audio recording is

going to come in later. The other advantage to David Pecker is that he reinforces and corroborates Michael Cohen before Michael Cohen even takes the stand. And we've all acknowledged, and both sides have acknowledged, that Michael, as a witness in this case, I'm not talking about him as a podcaster on the network, as a witness in this case is,

well, I'll paraphrase the prosecutor, complicated, slightly compromised, got some issues. You gotta acknowledge it upfront, otherwise the jury's gonna, you know, otherwise you give the narrative over to the defense. So they both talked about Michael Cohen, but by the time Michael Cohen takes the stand, much of what he's going to testify to has already been established in the court of law. That's another advantage of David Pecker.

He helps Michael Cohen down the road on key facts. Next witness, Ronna Graf. Ronna's been with Donald Trump for 35 years. She is referred to as his right-hand man, right-hand person, or Trump whisperer. Everybody knows if you wanted to get to Trump, you got to get to Ronna. She didn't want to be there. She acknowledged she didn't want to testify, which made her testimony even more powerful in front of the jury because she had to give it up, but she really didn't want to be there. And what did she establish? She introduced a new witness that'll be coming down the road who was an executive

assistant who's going to be testifying later. So that name was mentioned a lot. Madeline, the name will come to me in a minute. So they talked about her training Madeline and Madeline's role working for Donald Trump. Why? Because that's a witness that's coming down the road, and they want the jury to hear that, ring the bell on that. That's one. Two, they wanted to establish that in the Trump Organization database was the phone numbers and contact information for Stormy and Karen McDougal. Yeah, that's normal. You normally have a Playboy Playmate and a Porn Star in your database for phone numbers, for contacts. And she established in advance of Stormy Daniels arrival as a witness, because she's testifying, that she did see or hear

that Stormy Daniels was in Trump Tower for a meeting with Donald Trump, she presumed, for the celebrity apprentice, which matches up perfectly with Stormy Daniels' future testimony, because we know what that's from her documentary, that he, Trump, dangled the opportunity of celebrity apprentice as a carrot to try to get in Stormy Daniels' pants. I mean, there's no other way to put that. So that is another confirming factor. So even though Ronna paled by comparison

to a witness like David Pecker, she served an important purpose and that will pay dividends later on for the prosecution as they bring in new witnesses. And then the jury will go, aha, that's why we talked about Madeline, the executive assistant. That's why we talked about the cell phone numbers and what's in the database. That's why we talked about these other items. And then you had the sort of boring witness because they only had like an hour. So they wanted to shove one more witness in.

So they brought the first Republic Bank former banker in to talk about Michael Cohen, his banking, the different shell companies that Michael used and how he took out a loan. I guess that's where that was going. Tech took out a loan that was ultimately used to for the hush money for Stormy Daniels. I learned something new.

Michael Cohen and I bank at the same bank, at the same branch. That was also interesting. I didn't have that particular banker. So it was a masterful presentation by the prosecution. It was almost a master's class on how to present all of your witnesses, some that are super exciting and interesting and riveting,

and others that you need to establish basic information in order to pay dividends later on and to bolster Michael Cohen's testimony. That's not coming next week, by the way. I don't know when exactly Michael Cohen is testifying because now he's going on lockdown. He won't speak about it until his trial, until he testifies.

But I don't think it's next week, Ben. I think I want to hear from you. I think it's going to be more corroborating bolstering of people like Michael. And then they bring Michael in as if it's like a fata complete about his testimony and the rest. I think Michael would either go in two weeks or I don't think he'll leave. I agree with you. To the extent he goes next week, I think it'll be the end of next week, a reminder. There's no court on Monday. So that only really gives what? Tuesday, Wednesday's dark, Thursday,

Friday. That gives three days of testimony. So I don't see Michael going that week. days of testimony. So I don't see Michael going that week. Then the next week, week four, I could imagine Cohen going, if anything, towards the end. If I was betting, I would say he's probably a week five testimony late, late May. You agree that I call him a sandwich witness. You don't, you don't lead or end with him recency and primacy. You stick them sort of in the middle after this bolstering. That's why I agree with you. You don't think they end with Michael Cohen, right? No, they won't end with Michael Cohen. They'll go, they'll put him, I think three fourths of the way done. I don't think they'll put him directly 50%.

I think they'll put them like 70%, you know, you know, and then they'll probably have, you know, four or five, then they'll probably have, you know, four or five, you know, more witnesses to kind of further corroborate after that. That would be my suspicion. But they are thinking we'll just talk trial strategy here for a minute. And we do more of this, of course, on our Patreon, we're doing a lot of that now. They are thinking this isn't random. I want people to do nothing is random about

the presentation of a trial by either team. The order of operation, the order of witnesses. Now, sometimes you have to, you know, in the fog of war and the fog of litigation, you know, the best laid plans go, you know, poof. Or as Mike Tyson used to say, you know, everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the face. And sometimes you get punched in the face during the trial and you got to like adjust, oh, wait a minute,'s got to plan until you get punched in the face. And sometimes you get punched in the face during the trial and you got to like adjust, oh, wait a minute, we got to move up a witness here because something's happened. But assuming that you do map out, you and I, when we do trials, we map out every week and every day.

So they know, the prosecution knows, even though you and I are doing a little bit of kibitzing here, they know who they want to end the trial with and for what reason they want to do that before the jury goes off and deliberate. It'll be a powerful witness. It'll be a bookend to Pecker. I'm not sure who exactly that is. I agree with you. It's not Cohen. I don't even think it's Stormy Daniels. It'll be somebody else we haven't thought of yet as we get going closer to end with. And then everybody else sort of sequences in a way, sometimes in order, sometimes you're able to, oh, we did checks, so let's do bank accounts and do the other side of the transaction, or sometimes not.

And it also depends on witness availability and who's actually available at any moment. But there is a storyboard that the prosecutors who have the case right now are following in the movie that they're presenting to this jury and so far I got to tell you as as producers and directors they got to be thrilled with the rushes so far because right now you could if if anybody had told the prosecutors that pecker would go as

well as he did it would be cross-examined as weakly as he was by the by the by the defense and same thing with Rana, I would say I'll take it in a heartbeat. What do you think? Couldn't agree more with you. I want to talk though about this contempt hearing. Another application for contempt that was filed. Why do you think Justice Mershon has not yet ruled on the first application for

contempt? What's going on there? Let's talk about that in a little bit. I want to remind everybody you mentioned it, Michael Popak, about the Legal AF Patreon community, patreon.com slash legalaf, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash legalaf. If you ever wanted to take a deeper dive down some of these issues and see what it was like to be in a law lecture with Professor Popak or myself, that's the destination where we really geek out on some legal minutiae and we really get into the weeds. One of the lectures that I'm going to be doing on Legal AF is about class actions. I always get all the time, can we the people file a class action against Fox? Can we the people file a class action against Donald Trump or people in his administration?

So I want to do a breakdown of class action law, what the Supreme Court has ruled over time about how class actions can be formed, arbitration provisions, class action waivers. So if all of that sounds too geeky for you, then don't join. But if you like that kind of stuff, it's patreon.com slash legal AF. We've got a lot more show. Let's take our first quick break. Sometimes I wish we could have things in life both ways, like a great glass of red wine, but without the headache. Well, that's not going to happen in that example. But it is possible to have it both ways with Mack Weldon. I know men tend to think looking sharp means starchy oxfords and stiff chinos rather than effortless comfort, But it's possible to have it both ways with Mack Weldon.

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into extraordinary hydration with Liquid IV. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to liquidiv.com and use code LegalAF at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop better hydration today using promo code LegalAF at LiquidIV.com. Welcome back. We are live on LegalAF. Great ad reads. Thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors. If you want to check out some of those products, the discount codes are in the descriptions below. I know, Popak, you're a big fan of, you make sure you use all of the products and you test everything out and you have fairly rigorous standards for those sponsors and you know, that's something that I'm proud that we do here. Getting back into the analysis on the criminal trial in Manhattan against

Donald Trump and I'm not going to spend that much time talking about how Donald Trump whines every single day and he says how cold he is and he falls asleep. And it's just a whole kind of bizarre, just very, very bizarre. But in some of these press conferences and some of his posts, although the posts have, although they've been, you know, fairly inflammatory in the past few days. I don't know in the past few days if they've run a foul of the gag order, but they certainly were at the outset of this trial, the district attorney brought an immediate application for contempt.

There was a hearing that was held, you know, right away. And then the district attorney brought another application earlier in the week as well for more statements that Donald Trump had made at the end of the previous week, including saying that the jury was unfair. It's 95% Democrat, which isn't even true. And so there's another hearing that's going to be taking place on this Thursday. that's going to be taking place on this Thursday on that. But Justice Marshawn hasn't yet ruled on the first application for contempt. Popak, do you think he's doing that to kind of just hold this over Trump's head?

And as Trump has not yet violated it again recently, it's kind of a carrot stick approach waiting to see what may happen for the next hearing on Thursday. What do you make of it? Does this, you know, I see some people saying, look, why do you have gag orders if a judge isn't going to, you know, enforce it? Does this make Justice Mershon look weak that he hasn't immediately issued these sanctions against Trump? But Trump does appear, granted while he's sleeping in court and whatever, he's not treating

this court proceeding like he did with Nguyen Oran or even with Judge Kaplan. And so there is a little bit of that going on. So what do you make of that? I'm a slightly different take on it. Although I think we come to the same place when it comes to Mershon. To answer your initial question, judges don't have to act immediately.

It's the prerogative of a judge and they're like a crocodile. It looks like they're sleeping, but if you get too close to them, you lose your leg. And with judges, they just let all the bad acts accumulate. When they get around to it, and he'll get around to it within a week or two after the initial motion was filed, he'll then, and he'll have Donald Trump. He issued an order to show cause to require Donald Trump to make sure he's in the courtroom.

They were going to do it on Wednesday, the dark day, but then Donald Trump complained about that, so the judge moved it to another day, although you wouldn't know it to listen to Donald Trump. He wants Donald Trump in the courtroom because he's going to be sanctioning Donald Trump. There's no other way to put it. The fact that it's a week or two after some of these events happen, I think a judge like Judge Mershon, who's been on the bench for a long time, who's seasoned veteran, sophisticated, unlike let's say Judge McAfee down in Georgia, has been on the bench for a year. Judge Cannon down in Florida, been on the bench a year and a half. This judge knows what he's doing. A judge

will give you as much rope as necessary for you to hang yourself, and then the judge will hang you. So that's what he did. I mean, I think there were two things. He's either gonna see Donald Trump continue to demonstrate a lack of self-restraint and a lack of contemptuous or contumacious conduct in violation of the gag order that'll be used against him. Or as you said, it'll be a carrot to hang over his head during this period. Although the reason I said I disagree with you a bit,

I don't think he's been on his best behavior. You know the interview that he gave that you ran a clip on during one of your hot takes Just happened this week the the prosecutors jumping up and down on Thursday about six more or five more Violations on top of the original seven or eight. We're now up to twelve or thirteen violations And just to put this in perspective for our audience, I've never had a client or myself be found in contempt ever in 33 years, let alone a 12 different examples of clear violations.

And the prosecutors are doing what they need to do. They're saying, Donald Trump, everything you've told him he can't do, he continues to do. Donald Trump, everything you've told him he can't do, he continues to do. And the good news about that is in the hearing over this, we already had one hearing about this, that's where Todd Blanch lost whatever was left of his shred of credibility with the judge, went out the window. Because the judge told him, you've lost all credibility with me, in the arguments that you're making. It's not, it's not, Carol, I think midweek said, well, they were just making, they were just making arguments in zealous advocacy of their client. I think it went beyond that. And the judge was like, no, now you've lost me. And that's,

that version is of, of losing credibility with the trier of fact, the judge, the jury is going on. It's something we haven't talked about. It's the little love language. It's the little decoding and coding that's going on in the courtroom. Juries watch everything in a trial, how you button your jacket, how the defendant wipes his brow,

what tie he's wearing, smirks on their face, disrespect for the judge, the jury, eye rolling, smiling. And Donald Trump, of course, is not properly trained, doesn't want to be trained how to operate in a courtroom, and neither are his lawyers. And so they have, we talked about what the testimony was in the first part of this segment on the trial. But we didn't talk about the impact on the jury of the, you know, I'll split it up this way, hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills for me in this example is the information coming out, testimonial and documentary, that's the evidence. Soft

skills that are going on in there, soft issues are how the jury feels they're being treated or mistreated, the eye rolling, the laughing. When Donald Trump smiles at Ronna and frowns or doesn't have a facial expression for David Pecker or scoffs or tries to fake sleep or real sleep, whatever he's doing, the jury's watching. And they're making their own conclusions about what an a-hole, that's a legal term, that Donald Trump is acting like in the courtroom. And they can smell a fraud and inauthenticity a mile away. Right?

It's like talk about odors in the room or let this thing come to odor, whatever you said before, one of your hot takes. They are watching this, this is a sigh, this is another thing that's going on there. For the judge, he's gonna sanction him. The question is, does he start progressively with $1,000 a day, you know, in the past, and then in the future, and then warn him one more time

that I got one last thing and left in my arsenal, Mr. Trump, Mr. Defendant, and that is putting you in jail for hours or days to make you stop. And even though Donald Trump, some of his followers are like, do it, that'll make him more of a martyr. The reporting out there is Donald Trump is very very worried about pushing this too far and ending up in some sort of jumpsuit and they don't want that to happen. But all this other stuff then it will report on what happens with this double contempt thing next week when it happens. But all this stuff where you know and you guys are doing, and Midas are doing a great job reporting on it, you know Donald and you guys are doing a might as well, you're doing a great job reporting on it. You know, Donald Trump staring and glaring at reporters and Maggie Haberman and this

one and that one. It's not lost on the jury. I mean, unless the jury's out of the room at that moment. But they are watching everything that's happening in that room. And they're also watching, I'll leave it on this, they're also watching all of the checks that the defense are writing that they'll never be able to cash in a case about cash checks, about promises that they're making about the evidence that's not consistent with the evidence that's coming into

the record. I'll leave you with one example. Blanche said in his opening, which was 20 minutes long, I guess if you've got nothing good to say, don't say anything that long. He said that the National Enquirer was, he basically suggested it was a legitimate news organization that made journalistic decisions like the New York Times or something else. Cut right to that same day, David Pecker saying, we practice checkbook journalism.

We'll publish anything. We buy stories and we only ran all these stories because Donald Trump wanted us to, to help him with the campaign. That is, the jury's gotta be eye rolling, at least in their minds, about the promises that were made and what really happened. And I thought it was remarkable that he did,

knowing that Pecker was gonna be the first witness, that Todd Blanch did very little, almost nothing, almost nothing to go after Pecker in advance of his testimony. I thought, and I can say this now because the cross is over on Pecker. So I would hate to ever be blamed of like giving them guidance on how they should have done the cross on Pecker. I thought it was an absolute disaster on cross. I mean, you should have showed Pecker all of his articles about aliens are real. You should have showed him big foot is alive and you should have made him look like, you know, look, you just published the stupidest stuff anyway, like you're not even a real serious person, like,. You're a clown. That's how I

would have done the cross. I specifically did not give that hot take because I did not want to give that guidance. But he couldn't do it, Ben, because he said in his opening, I agree with you, but then you have to do that in your opening. Instead, they said they were a legitimate news organization. And that's to me where I think they made a massive defense blunder. And I'm not one to ever try to give them the strategy. I'm often asked, like, what would you do if you were representing him? I'm like, I'd never represent him, number one.

And number two, I'm not gonna give him any guidance or strategy. But after they screwed it up, I'm happy to explain how they screwed it up. And it's something that they can't clean up at this point. Otherwise they'd even lose more credibility if they now pivoted and change their whole defense theory. Andrew Weissman talked about some potential options that Justice

Mershon has on this gag order issue. In addition to obviously finding Donald Trump or throwing him into jail right away. And there's one that's fairly close by to the courtroom. It's like right down the hall, as KFA described it to us. You could put a monitor over his use of social media posts. You can hold the sentence on a contempt finding until after the trial. You can advise Trump that his contempt of gag order can be considered at sentencing upon conviction to add to his prison term in addition to the

other options. I thought that list there is interesting as well, and I hadn't heard that really being talked about in other places other than Weissman's analysis. So I thought it was worthy of sharing. Michael Popak, I do want to talk about briefly though, while we're in Manhattan, we're obviously talking about state court criminal proceedings. Why don't we go to federal court though, and talk about federal civil proceedings where Trump we obviously know was previously hit with an 80 plus million dollar civil judgment for defamation.

Trump's appealing that. But he also filed a motion for new trial before federal judge Louis Kaplan that was denied this past week. And I want to use the language that a federal, a well-respected federal judge, Louis Kaplan. Judge Louis Kaplan was also the same judge who has handled mafia cases. He's handled some of the most high profile, big cases out there. He's been a judge since 1995. You know from being a member of the New York bar,

I mean, he's a legend. He's no nonsense. He's law and order. No one's ever accused Kaplan of being like a political hack. The guy is freaking brilliant. And, and, and, and no one's ever doubted that no matter what side of the. Case you're on. Here's what he said in denying Donald Trump's motion for a new trial.

The jury in a closely tried, excuse me, the jury in a closely related case tried previously found that Donald Trump forcibly sexually abused plaintiff E. Jean Carroll in the mid 1990s and maliciously defamed her in an October, 2022 statement. In this case, another jury awarded Ms. Carol $17.3 million in compensatory and $65 million in punitive damages against Mr. Trump for defaming her in two other statements that Mr. Trump issued from the White House on June 21 and 22 of 2019.

Mr. Trump now moves for a new trial or alternatively for judgment as a matter of law dismissing this case. Well, Judge Kaplan goes on to say, Mr. Trump's malicious and unceasing attacks on Ms. Carroll were disseminated to more than 100 million people. They included public threats and personal attacks, and they endangered Ms. Carrol's health and safety.

The jury was entitled to find that the degree of reprehensibility of Mr. Trump's conduct was remarkably high, perhaps unprecedented. It goes on to say, castigating Carol from the loudest bully pulpit in America and possibly the world through Donald Trump's courtroom demeanor and conduct, Trump put his hatred and disdain on full display. Think about that. You know, as we go talk about in our next segment, Donald Trump's claim of absolute immunity to launch coups against the country and kill political opponents and

steal nuclear secrets and sell them to whoever he wants. and steal nuclear secrets and sell them to whoever he wants. I mean, Popak, when we see what's going on, we can't be numb to this type of finding. This is not okay. This is not acceptable behavior for anyone. Get alone, someone in a position like this. So we'd love to hear your thoughts on Judge Kaplan really dropping the hammer powerfully there. Yeah, I mean, I think Luke Kaplan is the perfect person as you outlined to do it. He's presided for the last three years over both E. Jean Carroll cases. He watched a nine-person jury, because this was federal civil, for more information go to our Patreon, as opposed to 12 person criminal case in New York. He watched two nine person juries vote against Donald Trump, so 18-0 against Donald Trump, basically rape, constant,

incessant defamation, and attacks on E. Jean Carroll, and then punitive damages, 5.5 million in the first one, and then the second one, the 83 and a half million dollars, Donald Trump was trying to reduce the 83 and a half million dollars, both the actual damages and the punitive damage award, acting if they were not consistent with the facts or the law that were developed. He argued that the judge gave the jury the wrong instruction on the burden of proof that was required for, let's say, punitive damages.

As we segue into our later segments today, yes, Alina Haba and Cliff Robert were on the brief, but John Sauer, who was the advocate at the immunity argument before the United States Supreme Court, had been brought in for appellate purposes and he was on the brief. So they got New York law wrong. New York law says it is only a preponderance of the evidence, same which means balanced scales of justice with a feather on one side, ever so slightly tipping in favor of the burden of proof rather than not, not clear and convincing, which is a much higher standard to prove it.

They also said that they got the wrong standard wrong for punitive damages, that it has to be, it's not common law malice, it's actual malice as that term is understood in constitutional precepts and it's not. So the judge, the middle of the brief or the order was a lot of arcane technical New York stuff, but at the end and at the very beginning, it was you were a rapist that was a judge by two juries and they watched your reprehensible conduct which forms the basis, this is the judge now, which forms the basis of the punitive damage award in the courtroom in real time while you continued to manufacture bad reprehensible facts while the trial was still going on and they watched

your behavior in the courtroom, the jury did, before they rendered their decision a punitive damages. For instance, the judge reminded Mr. Trump, for instance, in the middle, in the beginning of the closing argument for the female attorney, Robbie Kaplan, representing E. Jean Carroll. Talk about lack of irony and misogyny on full display and disrespect. He got up, Trump got up, and the judge reminded this in his order, he got up as the advocate started her closing, buttoned his jacket and walked out of the courtroom in front of the jury. But then returned later when his lawyer,

I don't know if Alina Haba did the closing, I can't remember, but when his lawyer did the closing, came back for that. He said in his order, that kind of conduct, that kind of acting out, there's no doubt that the jury factored things like that in in real time to find you and hold you accountable. And then the judge went through a bunch of decisions in New York where the jury award, if you run it forward to $20.24, it was within the heartland what the

jury did here in trying to give a measure of dignity back as best as they could to E. Jean Carroll in the form of a punitive damage award. It kind of fell within those cases. But if Donald Trump, who tussled, and we're going to talk about it at the midweek and next week about what happens at the contempt hearing, he tussled with Lou Kaplan regularly. Kaplan would say, I know you don't like this decision that I'm making right now. And he would yell back at Luke Kaplan, not with the jury in the room, just like he took on Judge Angoran. He doesn't, to your point and your credit earlier in the podcast, he doesn't take on Varshan like that in the courtroom. Everything that we're going to be talking about, this contumacious behavior of his, has been outside of the courtroom in podcasts and social media,

in rallies and all the other stupid things that he does. But Luke Kaplan, I think, and that was the reminder I wanted to make at the beginning of the podcast. As people are making their decision to the extent that they still are, and apparently the polling says they still are. About who should be given the honor of being a leader of the free world and being in the Oval Office again. I don't know how you can ignore, you know, 18 jurors in New York finding against Donald Trump and Luke Kaplan fighting against him

as powerful as he just did. You know, I have these, unfortunately I think my analysis is accurate, although I feel so stupid articulating it. So I guess as I would tell my law students, there's no stupid questions. So perhaps there's no stupid theories. So I'll just give it to you. And I have data points for it. I think that Donald Trump treats justice Mershon a little bit differently is because Donald Trump thinks that justice Mershon is, is a good looking man and a handsome man and that Donald Trump's all like looks and appearance based that he

views justice Mershon as having this like distinguished look of what Trump thinks a judge should look like. And that gets into Donald Trump's like, like, like pig brain. Um, and if you look at past posts that he's made, Trump said things like, although he's a very distinguished looking man, he is still a Trump hating whatever. And I think that frazzles him in the courtroom. And I know that may sound like a totally like talking about, man, give me the legal. I've studied the guy's pathology now in these speeches.

And I think there's, I think there's something to it. When we come back. Well, before you leave before, so people will think you're totally crazy. There's new there's new documents came out in Mar-a-Lago. We're not going to talk about Mar-a-Lago today, in which witness number 16, and we'll figure out who that is when they finally testify against Trump,

said that Donald Trump picked lawyers based on their appearance, that he saw a trustee dressed up nice on some television show and picked him, that a woman lawyer that he picked, and I think we can figure out who that is, he liked the way she dressed. So I don't think you're off kilter in your analysis.

Yeah. And those documents that were released in the judge Eileen Cannon Mar-a-Lago document case where Trump willfully retain national defense information. They talked about a witness 16 or person 16 talked about how one of the lawyers would kind of walk in front of Donald Trump dressed a certain way at Mar-a-Lago so that she or that he or whoever we think this person may be could be getting more cases and more involvement in the cases by

doing that. That was absolutely devastating what person 16 said and broke as this was someone who was in the off Oval Office with Donald Trump, who pointed out very specifically that this person 16 had with Donald Trump, who pointed out very specifically that this person 16 had told Donald Trump, you're violating the law, return the boxes, these don't belong to you. What in the world are you doing? And then talked about all the other crazies in Trump's world who were knowingly violating

the law and giving Trump unlawful information. But Trump's argument is, is that he's immune from everything, that there is no such thing as criminal cases that can ever exist if someone holds the office of the presidency. His lawyers made some of the most, I think, gross and outrageous arguments I've ever heard, period. I want to talk about that, and we'll talk a little bit about the Arizona indictment.

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Um, look, as far as I always knew, you know, this is a country of we, the people. This is a country where no one is above the law. Um, this is a democracy. Um, this was a constitution, a revolution that was fought for that as a reaction to the very concept of absolute immunity. Absolute immunity existed. It was called kings and authoritarians and despots. That's what America was a reaction against that. So we created a government by the people for the people. That's what we did. So these concepts shouldn't be, to me, over complicated or confusing. And if they are, it's because people with agendas are trying to create complicated issues to justify a dictator, to justify an authoritarian. It's not lost on me, Michael Popak, that just recently the Supreme Court found that President Biden did not have the authority to forgive student loan debt. That was not within the executive power. That the executive power was overreaching by forgiving student loans. That's

what the right-wing Supreme Court held. On the other hand, the Supreme Court appears to be seriously contemplating the fact that while President Biden can't forgive student loan debt, Donald Trump can launch coups and kill political opponents. Donald Trump can submit fake electors. Donald Trump can sell nuclear codes. It doesn't make any sense. It's freaking outrageous. And every single person, regardless of what political party should be outraged

about that, provided you care about democracy and a government by we, the people. There's no one who should be above the law. Not president Biden, not Donald Trump, not Obama, not any future president. That should never exist. If the president commits a crime, they should be prosecuted. And why in our history has that happened before? Well, the one time it came close with Nixon, there was a pardon. Why was there a pardon? Because it was widely understood that if the president committed a crime, you could be criminally prosecuted. Why else would there be a pardon?

But other than that, we hadn't had a situation like this. Donald Trump tried to overthrow the results of a free and fair election. It happened in plain view. Yes, the January 6th committee laid it out, but we all saw it. It's not a disputed fact, what went down, no matter how many times MAGA Republicans want to talk about how it is peaceful and patriotic. That's not what took place on January 6th. And let me just share with you just a few video clips and then

Popak, I'll let you give your analysis, but let me just, let me just set the stage like this. And first let me set the stage by showing you an interview that Bill Barr just gave with CNN where he like laughs and jokes that, Oh, you know, Donald Trump did tell me he wants to execute people, but that's just Trump being Trump here, let's play that clip first. But Alyssa Farah Griffin, who was Trump's communications director, posted yesterday and said that you were present at a moment when Trump suggested executing the person who leaked information that he went to the White House bunker when those George Floyd protests were happening outside the White House.

Do you remember that? I remember him being very mad about that. I actually don't remember him saying executing, but I wouldn't dispute it. I mean, it doesn't sound, the president would lose his temper and say things like that. I doubt he would have actually carried it out. I don't, you know. But he would say that on other occasions?

You said he would say it on other occasions? The president had a, I think people sometimes took him too literally, and he would say things like Similar to that in in occasions to blow off steam But I wouldn't take him literally every time he did it. Why not? Because at the end of the day it wouldn't be carried out and you could talk sense But just because it's not carried out and you could talk sense into him. Doesn't that still mean that the the threat is there?

You know and then there was January 6th. I mean, that person was the former attorney general. And when you make a statement like that, how dare you ever say you care about law and order again? I'm not going to show you all of these clips of Donald Trump's lawyer, John Sauer, making, you know, the arguments. I'll show you one example of it so you get a flavor for it, but let me be very clear what he said.

He argued that assassinating a political opponent would be an official act. You'd receive immunity. Staging a coup with the military would be an official act. You would get immunity. Selling nuclear secrets, Trump's lawyer said, if structured as an official act, that's the exact language, if structured as an official act,

you'd be able to get immunity. Fragile in slates of electors, is it plausible that you can submit fraudulent slates of electors? No, let me show you that clip. I was gonna do the one with assassination, but y'all have heard that one before. Let me show you the one where Justice Sotomayor asks Trump's lawyer, what about creating fraudulent

slates of electors? Do you get immunity for that? And Trump's lawyer says, absolutely. Absolutely was the answer. And then he talks about some tortured view of history with President Grant, and he doesn't even answer the question. It's a bunch of words, salad.

And Justice Sotomayor is like, you're saying fraudulent. You can submit fraud to electors to overthrow an election? Here, play this clip. Play it to the allegations here. What is plausible about the president insisting in creating a fraudulent slate of electoral candidates? Assuming you accept the facts of the complaint on their face, is that plausible that that would be within his right to do?

Absolutely, Your Honor. We have the historical precedent we cite in the lower courts of President Grant sending federal troops to Louisiana and Mississippi in 1876 to make sure that the Republican electors got certified in those two cases, which delivered the election to Rutherford B. Hayes. The notion that it's completely implausible just can't be supported based on the face of this indictment or even... Knowing that the slate is fake. Knowing that the slate is fake, that they weren't actually elected, that they weren't

certified by the state. He knows all those things. The indictment itself alleges, I dispute that characterization, the indictment affixes the word label to the so-called fraudulent lectures. It affixes the word fraudulent, but that's a complete mischaracterization. On the face of the indictment, it appears that there was no deceit about who had emerged from the relevant state conventions, and this was being done as an alternative basis. But I want to- What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I'll throw it to you, Popak. The very fact that this argument taking place in the United States Supreme Court brings so much shame to our country and you and I have such a big international audience. I always get emails from people in Australia and the UK and Germany and across the world, South America. We get all, we get emails every day from people. They're looking at this and saying, saying, what? Huh? Seriously? Popak, what did you make of it?

Well, I think I agree with Lauren's tribe that the stain on the Supreme Court based on where I think this ruling is going, and I'll give you my view of where I think this ruling is going, my view of where I think this ruling is going, is going to be worse than it was on – than Bush versus Gore. And I can kind of break that down for you. And I've given the decoder ring in the midweek edition. When you hear right-wing – the right-wing conservatives, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Alito, and even Roberts, using the following phrase or version of it. Let's forget the facts of the case. Let's talk about it in the abstract. I don't care about the indictment against Donald Trump. I'm worried about the future and legacy. When you hear those judges say that, especially knowing that each of them was either in the Department of

Justice or in the White House at the time that this concept of the unitary executive branch or the supremacy of the presidency held sway and that is obviously something that Kavanaugh, who's always been referred to as a political hack, Gorsuch and Alito and Thomas believe that not only is the president the sole occupant of one of the branches of government, but the occupant of that office. It always happens to be Republican whenever they make pronouncements like this. Never a Democrat who's in office. Bush versus Gore, they side with Gore. Trump v. US, they're going to side with Trump. Even though they're saying, we don't care about the facts of this case. Well, first of all, you have to care about

the facts of the case. That's what Sata Mayor, when you played her clip, is trying to bring this back and ground it in the live case or controversy that is before the court because otherwise, what are we doing here? This isn't, as I joked before, not even joked as I said before, this isn't chat GBT. You just plug in facts and ask for a law of the land to be cranked out. This is supposed to be based on the indictment. They never mentioned the indictment on the right wing of this court during the oral argument. They rarely mentioned the issue that was supposed to be on appeal, which was as a former president, enjoy immunity for official conduct. Although Roberts got the lawyer for the Department of Justice sort of wrapped around his axle on the issue of whether,

as I said before, the DC Court of Appeals got it right or wrong on the fundamental issue that even in official acts, there can be criminality that needs to be prosecuted. Roberts doesn't like that. He said it out loud. We don't like that. And we're going to have to make a change there because I don't like that tautology of it's a crime because it's a crime. And we're going to figure it out. So this is where I think it goes after all of this thought experiment about assassinations and coups and fake electors all being official conduct. And to paraphrase Justice Kataji Brown Jackson, who continues to impress me as becoming the intellectual heavyweight on that court in only her second year, and she said, why are we

even talking about trying to divide things between official conduct and private conduct. Why does it matter if what we're talking about are moral crimes that are so obvious that it automatically takes it out of official conduct? And why are we talking about immunity in those terms? Totally agree with her. Here's how I think this comes down based on five or six votes of the right wing as I think Amy Coney Barrett gets sucked over to the right, although she seemed to dance in the middle during the oral argument. I think they're going to send it back down to either the DC Court of Appeals or likely Chutkin to figure out and look at the indictment. Because you got to, now they're going to look at the indictment. They didn't look at it at all, care about it during the hypotheticals on their oral

argument answers, questions and answers. But now they're going to tell them, go through the indictment, the overt acts and the acts that underlie each of the counts, the four counts against Donald Trump, and divide that world into private for personal gain on one end and official core presidential conduct on the other end, and hybrid things that started as official conduct or with unofficial conduct and became private, like bribery of an ambassador appointment as some of the justices talked about. And then they're going to rule that if it falls into the bucket of official conduct, no matter that it moved into criminality or as Tonjie Brown Jackson said, what I'm worried

about is not that the making something criminal that even a president at the time can be held accountable to will have a chilling effect on that president's exercise of his powers. I'm worried that without it, the White House becomes the seat of criminality. That's Katanji Brown Jackson, and she got it dead right. So what they're going to say is if it's official conduct, absolute immunity. That's going to be the new law of the land coming out of this five to four, six to three ruling. If it's private, and many of the things that are in there, campaigner in chief trying to cling to power, that's not an Article II thing. That's a Donald

Trump doesn't want to leave office thing. And that could be categorized as private. That's a Donald Trump doesn't want to leave office thing. And that could be categorized as private. That's not going to get immunity. And then you got this world of the hybrid with whatever guidance that's going to come out of this written decision written by Roberts or Alito or one of them that's going to say if it's a hybrid, then on a case by case basis, you have to do this analysis. And maybe there's absolute immunity and maybe there isn't. And all the great things we heard from Sotomayor Kagan and Katanji Brown Jackson are going to be vigorous dissents that are going on. I am making this prediction and we'll have to, hopefully we'll still be on the air 20 years from now. As history looks back on the stain of this court and what the Roberts court did. In much the way, Karamatsu,

the decision to intern Japanese Americans, was seen as a stain on the court. Decisions about education and Black Americans was seen as a stain on the court until those things were fixed and other things related to slavery. This is going to be a stain on the court until those things were fixed and other things related to slavery, this is going to be a stain on the court that's going to have to be fixed. And they're going to go back to the dissents of, I hope each of them writes one, and they're going to say those people got it right and history is going to judge the majority of opinion as being you're letting a president commit a coup or assassinate someone in the interest of official conduct, and you gave that person immunity? As you said, what kind of world are we now in?

And Popak, there's always been this doctrine that they teach you in law school and how the United States Supreme Court, one of their core doctrines is constitutional avoidance, right? Where they can avoid making sweeping statements that could have massive detrimental constitutional impact. That's what they'll do. So why would they go in the direction that you say, which I agree is where they're likely gonna go to allow authoritarians and dictators

to essentially take root in the White House versus just addressing the conduct here. Right? Like, only Justice Sotomayor in the clip that we showed, that's why I wanted to play that one, that may have been one of the only times in her and maybe Justice Contagio Brown Jackson were actually talking about this case. This case. What occurred on January 6th? What occurred here? Fake elector slates? What Trump did to try to overthrow our democracy, which by the way, Supreme Court would have then led to

the overthrowing of likely you as well and would have just led to a dictator. Why weren't we talking about the case? Same thing when it came to the disqualification case that went before the Supreme Court. They refused to talk about the insurrection. They refused to even talk about the conduct that took place that why we're even having this discussion is not some hypothetical law

school academic exercise. It's a real thing that occurred to try to overthrow our democracy. It exists. Your job as a judge is to judge. Judge the thing that happened. Are you cool with it? Are you not cool with it? That to me is a very basic principle.

That's why you're in trouble and I wanted our audience to know it. When you're listening, because I want them to be as, and you do too, and so does everybody else on our network, educated consumers of this information. We don't just host the live stream for oral arguments to the United

States Supreme Court for no good reason and to serve as our community. But we also do it in our analysis to let you know in advance. I'm just telling you right now, this is easy. This is the tell of the United States Supreme Court in the right wing. When they start talking about, we don't want to talk about the facts of the case. We don't want to get embroiled in the facts. I've heard them say it during the religion, separation of church and state arguments. When you hear that, run, run as fast as you can. Because the next thing, and it wasn't just one this time, it was Alito. Let's talk about it in the hypothetical because we don't want to get bogged down in the facts. Kavanaugh, same thing.

Gorsuch, same thing. Roberts in his own way, same thing. Look out, here comes the judicial activism that conservatives, look at you and I, you defending conservatism, not as a, but just as a principle because they're not. This isn't conservative. This is judicial activism for which they attack

democratic appointed judges when all they're doing is they, look, they came onto that oral argument and they wanted to reverse engineer with a position that they wanted to take. They knew they were gonna take it. And they wanted to throw all the distracting facts out of the way. And the problem the advocate for the Department of Justice had, I thought did a fine job, did an okay job. You know, he came in, shock,

poor guy. He came in wanting to debate the lower court decision as it related to the appellate question that was framed for the appeal based on the indictment in front of him. But what he ran into was the headwinds and the turbulence of right-wing justices that wanted to make new law. It's always for the Republican president for some reason. And just one last thing on that. We want to call them out. To say, we don't care about this president. We're making a statement for the future, the history and the legacy.

No, you're not. Yes, you are, because we're going to be stuck with this terrible, terrible decision. And if Katanji Brown Jackson is right, and I think she is, can you imagine what Trump 2.0 without this threat that he could be found in criminal conduct for something that he does in office,

what he'll do, or the worse, what the next occupant of the office does with this now as the precedent, at least Nixon, knowing that he could be prosecuted, he did really bad things. But could you imagine what he would have done had he thought that he'd have no criminal liability? And that's not even dystopia. It's not even apocalyptic, what Katanji Brown Jackson said.

Of everybody that said something on that panel, that was the one that resonated most with me. We're going to convert the White House into the seat of criminality when it's occupied by the very wrong person like Donald Trump. You know, and what I think needs to happen in response is, you know, one pro-democracy voting, but two there's got to be legislation that gets passed and has to affirmatively say every single law that exists here, um,

the president shall be held criminally responsible to then I which I guess if you play that out in the hypothetical, then that gets challenged as a separation of powers constitutional challenge. But in any event, if you look at these rulings and again, just take the same thing with Dobbs where they didn't wanna address the facts even before it, and they expanded it.

The Dobbs decision, Popak, was not, the question before the court was not do you overthrow Roe v. Wade, it was whether this law in Mississippi was valid or not valid. And then they used that to overthrow Roe v. Wade, to overthrow Roe v. Wade, to overthrow super precedent. And then they completely demolished massive precedent by answering a different

question than the one that was before. It goes against everything that you were taught at Duke law school, everything that I was taught at Georgetown, everything that we grew up learning about the law. You have these people in the Supreme Court, the right-wing justices, and they've been working to create this for decades and decades and decades, and they've been using the gaslighting terms of,

oh, we have to stop the activists, we have to stop that. Then they get on and what do they do? They're the most activists. They torture and destroy the Constitution. And ultimately they're creating the downfall of themselves too as the Supreme Court. It's so naive. It's so dystopian because if you're going to give the authority

to a dictator, the first thing they're going to do is get rid of you. It's really, it's really, I'll make one point before he moves on to the last segment, because I want, I always hate to leave. I always hate to end on a dour note and I want to tie it to what you've said. And I've said throughout this podcast and throughout legal AF, what you can do about it. Look, six to three right now, the super precedent that you talked about that used to be so enshrined

in constitutional analysis, that's something, a case that had been affirmed over and over and over again, like Roe versus Wade and the underpinnings of it, would not be easily disturbed. That's gone out the window. What that means for me is, if Biden gets back in, which we're working hard to have how that happened, and the next president is also Democratic, there could easily be two vacancies. Trump got three. There could easily be two vacancies. If there's two vacancies, we won't get into how vacancies happen, but there are two vacancies. It becomes a five to four court the other way. And a five to four court the other way could revisit Dobbs and revisit all of this crazy stuff

that's going on right now and say, what's super precedent? We just did it, I don't know, four years ago, three years ago. We need to fix it. And they could fix it because what the Republicans have done on that panel, on that court, is signaled that precedent and super precedent and starry decisis don't matter. So if they don't matter, then when the Democrats get back into power, and if it goes five to four the other way with just two votes going the other way, then we can fix the stain and the scourge on the history of, and we don't have to wait 10, 15, 20, 30 years. I'm just going to leave that out there. That means voting matters. That means November 5th matters, down ballot and otherwise. And that means getting the right person into the

occupancy of the Oval Office really matters. I have left my friends who were sort of apolitical or neutral in the past. I've said, I don't care if you care about anything else, but you have to put the right person in to pick the United States Supreme Court, or you're not going to like the result. I said that 10 years ago. I said that five years ago. And look at the landscape we're in right now. Popaka, we should do, or I'll do, a class on constitutional avoidance as well on patreon.com slash legal AF. So we have a class action course and a constitutional avoidance course. I'm giving myself some weekend homework, uh, right now or Sunday homework.

Finally, PO-PAC, you know, briefly, let's talk about Arizona. We've done a bunch of hot takes, so I don't think we need to make that, uh, you know, really go into into depth here other than the fact that you had these fake electors as well as others in Trump's inner circle indicted. Those were the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven fake electors. And then there were seven redacted names of people in Trump's inner circle and we know who they are and it's some of the people who were not indicted in the other cases, some overlaps as well.

But Popak, why don't you tell us what happened in Arizona? Yeah, you and I did a very quick breaking hot take. I jumped into the parking lot of a restaurant. We like doing that, cabs, restaurants, whatever we do, when news hits, we got to jump on it. But there's some new information and confirmation now that I got my hands on the actual indictment. And it matters. Let me answer a question that I know is coming up in the chat that's come up in the past. What's taken the attorney general so long?

Why are we four years out from 2020 and we're just indicting fake electors and people in Donald Trump's inner circle? And why wasn't Donald Trump indicted this time around? Let me answer it this way. Don't blame the attorney generals. They did the right thing. They sat mainly because they had to while the Jan 6 committee did its work for over a year while the feds waited nine months before they appointed a special counsel in Jack Smith and they sat waiting for the feds to do their job. When then the feds did their job and indicted, it was sort

of a narrow indictment of Donald Trump alone on four counts with a bunch of unindicted co-conspirators at Jack Smith's case, some of which overlap with now the indicted co-conspirators in Arizona. Then the attorney generals got to work, you know, they threw the fire, they threw the wood into the fireplace, they got, they got pumping. Now they're playing a little bit of catch up. Arizona, we're not surprised. You and I reported on it six months ago that they were getting close to indictments. We knew who they were interviewing. We knew that Ken Chesbro, unindicted co-conspirator number four in the Arizona case,

was cooperating. He already had been convicted of felonies in Georgia and now Michigan and Nevada, you and I are going to be reporting on that, they're coming up in the rear and they're going to be indicting as well. And so the attorney generals aren't to be blamed. They're doing the right thing by their voters of their states to bring to justice those that try to conspire to overthrow the will of the people of the individual states. The people that we should focus on that are in the indictment is, some of it's just interesting, like another indictment for Giuliani, okay, but Mark Meadows, who for some reason skated by with Jack Smith, but got indicted

in Georgia, indicted again. And people that I want to focus on for just a second, that have skated by by the skin of their teeth until now, much to my chagrin, finally got indicted, Boris Epstein. I've been saying for the last year, how has this guy who's been the insider consulieri for Donald Trump, who shows up at his arraignments, who ran the fake elector scheme on behalf of the campaign, along with Mike Roman, and is currently Donald Trump's inside lawyer, who brought in Todd Blanch, just to wrap our show together in one big loop from the beginning segment in New York. How has he, how has it been avoided so far that he is, has avoided

being indicted? Well, he can't claim that any longer. Co-conspirator number, unindicted co-conspirator number, I can't even remember. In Jack Smith's case, Boris Epstein is indicted here. Christina Bob, she's been skating by under the radar for so long that she had time to be involved with another criminal act down in Mar-a-Lago where she was the lawyer that signed the now infamous folder that said, "'We looked everywhere.

We could only find 38 pages of classified documents. Mar-a-Lago, thank you, Christina Bob.'" She had time to have a career on Newsmax and everything she's now indicted along with Jenna Ellis who you know got a misdemeanor indictment and conviction in Georgia so there's a little bit of an overlap with Georgia which is a much more sprawling investigation and an overlap with some unindicted co-conspirators in in the DC election interference case but now Boris Epstein branded indicted co-conspirators in the DC election interference case. But now Boris Epstein branded indicted co-conspirator

along with Christina Popp. But Chesbro, keep an eye on Chesbro. We know that he's unindicted co-conspirator number four. It's obvious the way it's listed in the indictment. We know he cooperated with Michigan and Nevada as well. Although he had some weird wobbly moments where some of what he said didn't seem to be exactly true. We'll see how that plays out. But unindicted co-conspirator number one is Trump. So to answer the question

why, I think we did it in our mid- during the week when we broke the story, and I agreed with you, which is she's got six or seven years to bring that indictment against him. Flip a couple of these people. Ken Chesbro, also not out of the woods yet. He's still on indicted co-conspirator number four and others. Flip some of these fake electors,

who Donald Trump is claimed to be the leader of the conspiracy related to it. I'll tell you the ones, I'll leave it on this, the ones that aren't going to flip, that are true believers That have taken the red or blue pill and are never gonna flip on Donald Trump are as follows Mike Roman Who got indicted again here is indicted in Georgia? He's the guy to try to take down Fonny Willis with his motion to disqualifier for having a relationship with Nathan Wade

He's never going to give a give it up and flip on Donald Trump. Mark Meadows, different story. Giuliani, true believer, never gonna flip. John Eastman, never gonna flip, I'd be shocked. But Meadows, he's weak and I think he could flip. Boris Epstein is never gonna flip on Donald Trump. So there's a couple in there that Jenna Ellis is gonna, if she hasn't already flipped by the time we recorded this, I'd be shocked, She's ready to flip. So she, they're gonna get, Chris Mays, the attorney general for

Arizona is gonna get some of these people to flip and Ken Chesbro. And then she can go for whatever they do in Arizona, superseding indictment or amended indictment, whatever it's gonna be, or a separate indictment against Donald Trump. And do we need another trial that Donald Trump can point to to try to stop the current trials from happening? Probably not. Let's get past this period. Let's get into post-November. If Trump loses, he'll just have to face the music in all of these cases.

Michael Popok, there you have it. I'm excited to do more classes at patreon.com slash Legal AF. We try to find fun ways to grow this media platform and media company as we don't have outside investors. One of the fun ways to do that is through patreon.com slash Legal AF. My semester is now complete as a professor at USC Law School. So I can now start focusing on teaching everybody on the Patreon. I'm not gonna say what the USC tuition is, but if you ever wanted to be in one of

my classes, I think the Patreon deal is a good one. I'll just leave it at that without a one-to-one comparison on tuition fees. It's not a real law school though. I'll give you that disclaimer, which I may have to legally, but you'll nonetheless get the similar types of legal classes that I teach Patreon, slightly shorter, patreon.com slash legal AF.

That's patreon.com slash legal AF. That's patreon.com slash legal AF. Thanks to our pro democracy sponsors as well. They really play a big part also in helping us grow this platform. We have to grow this platform, and build the staff some way. And so it's cool that there are pro democracy sponsors with cool products

and services that we could, that want to be on shows like this. So we're grateful for that. And of course, we're most grateful for you, all of the Legal AFers for making our trial coverage and our coverage here on Legal AF, the most watched legal coverage, not just of the Trump trials, but on the day-to-day legal developments at the intersection of law and politics in the United States of America. I haven't tested if it's the world, so I won't make that claim yet,

but at least in the United States of America, I'm pretty sure the world, but making the legal analysis the most watched in the United States, America, pretty sure of the world, but making the illegal analysis the most watched in the United States, that's thanks to you. So let's keep on growing this community together, day by day, tell your family, friends, co-workers, colleagues about this show for the thorough analysis, fact-based analysis, deep insights,

where we show you the evidence, we show you the facts, we go over the statements in detail, let others know about the show. Let's continue to grow this together. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Popak, always a pleasure to co-host these with you. And a reminder to everybody watching as well, each morning on a trial day, so they were off on Monday, but trial is Tuesday, Karen Friedman Agnifilo and I, before trial starts, we give about a 20 to 30 minute review of what to expect that day. And then as soon as trial ends for the day, Friedman Agnifilo and I, KFA and I then do a summary of everything that went down that day. And additionally, Popak, myself, Karen, some of the top former federal prosecutors, state

prosecutors that we have on this network give those daily hot takes to give you better insight than I think you'll get anywhere else. We've got great sources in the courtroom. You see a lot of them on the network as well. So you know that they have the experience to really break this down and they're not just talking heads who are just trying to just come up with a position. Research matters, evidence matters. And that's what Popak, myself and our team here know is most important. And we hope that that's what you appreciate about this.

Thank you. See you next time. Shout out to the Legal AFers. Shout out to the Midas Mighty one more time, patreon.com slash Legal AF. Thank you everybody. Shout out to the Midas.