Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Tries to RUN AWAY FROM JUDGMENTS, He FAILS

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

Trial attorneys 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: Trump’s efforts to avoid liquidating assets and coming up with the $500 million he needs to stop enforcement of both the NYAG state civil fraud judgment and the E Jean Carroll punitive damages federal judgment; the several motions to dismiss Trump filed with Florida federal judge Aileen Cannon to dismiss his Mar a Lago criminal obstruction indictment and their impact on the May trial date; the possible reasons for the Supreme Court’s delay in ruling on Trump’s appeal of the DC Court of Appeal’s decision that there is no presidential immunity from criminal prosecution; the political and legal impacts of the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that IVF embryos are “children” that are entitled to constitutional and criminal law protection, and so much more from the intersection of law, politics and justice. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! DeleteMe: Go to https://joindeleteme.com/LEGALAF and use promo code LEGALAF for 20% off. HumanN: Thanks to our sponsor HumanN! Get a free 30-day supply of SuperBeets heart chews and a FREE Full - Sized Bag of Tumeric Chews valued at $25 by going to http://legalafbeets.com Nom Nom: Go Right Now for 50% off your no-risk two week trial at https://TryNom.com/LEGALAF Fum: Head to https://TryFum.com/legalaf and use code LEGALAF to save 10% off when you get the journey pack today! SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shop NEW LEGAL AF Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/meidastouch 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Call 1866 5-1-2600 or visit connexontario.ca. Please play responsible. A lot to discuss, Michael Popak, in the New York Attorney General's civil fraud case, Donald Trump tried to do everything possible to avoid that judgment being entered. Interest accumulates every day.

It's over $450 million that judgment and it is increasing each and every second. Tick tock, tick tock. Donald Trump unable to wiggle out of that one. We'll talk about the efforts by his lawyer also in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. Add another $83.3 million verdict on top of that. Let's cross that half billion dollar mark right there. Donald Trump was begging the federal judge there, Lewis Kaplan, now to

stay the enforcement of the judgment there on an Unsecured basis in other words Donald Trump does not want to post a bond in the E Jean Carroll Defamation case but Pope I didn't Alina Habba say he's got billions of dollars just hanging He's got the cash just hanging out of his pocket He's ready to post those bonds when Alina Habba said He's ready to post the bonds. That was the moment. I knew he does not have that money also Donald Trump filed numerous motions to dismiss the indictment before judge Eileen Cannon in the southern district of Florida

Mar-a-Lago document case for Donald Trump's willful retention of national defense information. His co-defendants filed motions to dismiss as well. Donald Trump's motions to dismiss now were focusing on the fact that he did intend to take the documents, he claims. He says that they were his own personal records. He both claims that he telepathically declassified the documents and converted our nation's most sensitive information to his own personal property and then claims he also has absolute presidential immunity for that. Not just frivolous, dangerous. And I want to get your take on it Michael Popak because he's essentially admitting to the crime that he intended to take this stuff

He's just claiming. Yeah, it's mine. It's my personal property those nuclear codes those warplants They don't belong to you American people they belong to me Why because I'm Donald Trump and I said so Also the United States Supreme Court has yet to rule on Donald Trump's application for a stay pending certiorari on Donald Trump's immunity challenge. Donald Trump was also claiming absolute presidential immunity in the Washington DC federal criminal case. It's about two weeks since Donald Trump filed that application for a stay. We know that special counsel Jack Smith responded very quickly with his opposition. What is the Supreme Court doing? What does this

delay signal? I mean, I thought that we'd probably get a ruling this past week, but it may be something we're okay waiting for if we read the tea leaves the same way I want to get Michael Popak's taste. Take on that. Also Alexander Smyrnoff talking not about takes, but taste tasting prison cells right now. You got Smyrnoff who was there. I've never actually seen a photo of what this Smyrnoff guy looks like. That's the closest that we've come right there This was the star witness for the Maga Republicans in the House of Representatives who actually turned out to be an Agent of Vladimir Putin and Russia. How do we know that? He's admitted to it

He says that he was basically taking orders at this point There was a whole thing where he was arrested in Las Vegas, and then there were proceedings in Nevada, and then there were proceedings in California federal court right here in Los Angeles. We'll break that all down, what's going on there. And then I do wanna talk about this Alabama IVF ruling, its implications as well,

where the Alabama Supreme Court that has all these Maga Republicans. This is what Maga Republicans have been pushing. This has been their consistent policy. They've declared that frozen embryos are children such that if anything happens to a frozen embryo, you could be charged with murder. And now you have Magga Republicans out there and Republicans recognizing how unpopular

this position is. And they're like, now let's fix it. Y'all created the problem. Y'all are creating all of these problems. This was your plan. And just like the way you overturn Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, it has lots of ripple effects throughout our system, including with this Alabama court ruling. Michael Popak, this is Legal AF.

A lot to discuss, a lot to break down. Glad to be doing it with you, sir. You too, my friend. So let's summarize. Trump is busted financially. The sneaker sale apparently didn't go as well as he thought. We'll talk about that. He's dead in the water when it comes to the trials that are coming up.

He wasn't able to avoid the March 25th start of the Stormy Daniels trial. He'll probably, we'll talk about it, avoid the May Mar-a-Lago case. But I think, and you and I'll handicap this, I think that Chutkin's trial will be back on DC election interference sometime over the summer, so he'll have two trials under his belt busted and out of money while Republican policies is exposed for what it is, anti-family in the Alabama decision and its aftermath. You know, and this is where it's the intersection of law and politics, as we always like to say,

because a lot of this political agenda that's been pushed over time by Maga Republicans, they've been relying on this kind of, I think, lack of public awareness of just the way the system works. You know, putting judges into power in certain places, pushing agendas that override what, you know, people actually, you know, want and need, and pushing these agendas. But that's why it's so important to make all of this info accessible to everyone. And that's one of our goals here at Legal AF when we break everything down. So first and foremost, let's just talk about the E. Gene Carroll case where first we had Alina Habba

go on her right wing media tour. She was asked from everyone from Hannity to Newsmax. So does Donald Trump have the money? Does Donald Trump have its what? Does Donald Trump have it's what? It's going to be $400 million, $450 million. Every day it's increasing more than $100,000 with interest, but we're in excess of $450 million that Donald Trump would have to post a bond for. And she said he's got it. No worries. He's super rich and he's ready to do it. But his actions in the courtroom, as we frequently see, are very contrary to what the propaganda is that's out there, even

if the propaganda is idiocracy. So what was happening in the court proceedings as well is that Donald Trump and his lawyers wanted to kind of challenge the submission of basically a basic judgment form, right? And Popak, you'll take us through the process here, but basically, in New York, you get a decision and order. That's what happened first. That's the 92-page filing, decision and order. But that has to be basically put into a form, a judgment, so that when you have to enforce the judgment, whether that's seizing property or seizing bank accounts, you show a literal judgment, you hold it up and you go, look what I got. Here it is. Here's the judgment bank. Let me get into his account. Here we go, sheriffs.

Let's seize the property. And it should be a pretty basic copy and paste job, right? The last two pages of the 92-page order have basically the relief. You take that, you plug it in, you add some interest, and it's as simple as that. But Trump's lawyers wanted to object to that. They wanted to settle the order. And then the judge and New York attorney, General Tisza James, like, what do you mean, settle the order? Are you trying to negotiate?

What are you talking about? So let me pass it off. I'll give you the handoff there, Pope. What happens next? Yeah, as a New York lawyer. Yeah, you got it exactly right. The D&O, the decision and order, and I get dozens of them in my cases in New York,

is the memorandum decision. It's the underpinning, and I get dozens of them in my cases in New York, is the memorandum decision. It's the underpinning, the analysis. But you can't take that to the sheriff. Sheriff's goes, where's your judgment? So every case, and this is not just in New York, this is in every place, whether you call it, I don't know exactly what it's called in California, but the memorandum decision, the decision and order, whatever it is, it's the legal decision. We call it the DNO in New York. But then you have to convert that, usually very relatively quickly, with a judgment. Sometimes a judge will tell one side or the other,

draft the proposed judgment for my review. Sometimes he'll say in New York, settle order, meaning you guys get together and try to do one agreed upon order and submit that for my review in word version, in case I want to make a change to it. And if you can't come to an agreement, then submit competing orders. The judge didn't say anything. So it was up to the parties to do that.

If I were Trump's lawyers, it's always hard for me to say that phrase. If I were Trump's lawyers almost immediately, I would have taken the shot because now you got one more shot and a little bit of advocacy and maybe getting some verbiage and some language that may be helpful to you that you can actually get this judge to agree to even though the fundamentals have to match the decision and order on the award. But they abdicated it. Once again, asleep at the switch, they abdicated their role in helping to shape

and craft the actual judgment. And instead, they lobbed in these emails and these letters, usually through Cliff Robert. They use different people for different things. Alina Habba, we'll talk about next in the Eugene Carroll case. Cliff Robert's the one that's trying to be the New York lawyer doing hand-to-hand combat with the judge and others on procedure. Judge, we need more time.

The judgment came in from the New York Attorney General. We didn't get a chance to review it. That's not the procedure. We're supposed to talk about it in advance. Give me 30 more days, which is always the transparent attempt to delay, delay, delay. Why are they trying to delay? And it didn't work because the judgment got entered basically exactly the format that the New York Attorney General submitted.

Trump should have submitted a competing format and then argue for maybe some of the fine points. There was a little screw up in the calculation of interest as to Allen Weisselberg's separate judgment or embedded judgment. That got resolved. But everything else was, as you said, sort of a form that follows the remedies and recites the grounds that are listed or reincorporates the grounds that are listed in the D&O. So the reason they were asking for the delay, and we'll talk about

delays here a lot, is that until the judgment is entered and docketed by the clerk, the timeline, the timer for appeal doesn't start to run, nor does... Now pre-judgment interest continues to run, but the timer for the appeal doesn't run that 30-day period. And then posting the bond doesn't really start to run until that judgment is in place. And we can see, as we'll talk about in the next segment, they don't have the money. And it's very hard, even for a multi-billionaire, self-professed, self-proclaimed, to scrape up half a billion dollars for two different cases and post the bonds appropriately. Despite the false bravado that you mentioned of Alina Habba bragging about,

we got the money. We'll post it Well, apparently they don't because they're constantly asking for delay So the judge already entered that judgment, which means now now unless he goes and posts his stay bond The New York Attorney General can levy on assets now There's this is even easier as you and I have done in hot takes. This is even easier than in the normal judgment creditor judgment debtor scenario. For the first time ever at this amount, an ex-president is a judgment debtor in the amount of $500 million running at $3.4 million a month in accruing interest

until he pays that judgment and or wins on appeal. So they, as a judgment debtor, on the other side is the judgment creditor, which is the people of the state of New York that are embodied by the New York attorney general. She's got creditor's rights. That's what I practice a part of my practice. And under creditor's rights,

she could normally have to like go find assets. You have to go, you have a piece of my practice. And under creditors' rights, she could normally have to like go find assets. You know, you have to go, you have a piece of paper. We call it a paper judgment. But to convert it into cash, you got to go find the assets. Sometimes that's difficult, but not here. Not when there is a monitor in Barbara Jones that has been responsible for keeping an eye on and inventorying all of the assets of Donald Trump, whether they were in his trust, they're in the Trump Organization, any of the 50 affiliates or any or a personal, any of it. She knows exactly where it is.

So all the tissue James has to go is please hit print, Ms. Monitor, and give me all of the bank accounts and bank account numbers and all of that. This is easy. Now, once you have the judgment, you can collect up until the amount of the judgment. You can't get more, you can't over collect. But let's say they grabbed, oh, I don't know, 40 Wall Street. Sheriff shows up, puts a padlock on it

and sets it for public sale, which is now done really electronically. Let's say the building goes for $250 million and making up numbers now, right? The market's gonna Let's say the building goes for $250 million and making up numbers now, right? The market's gonna tell you what the building's worth. Now, the bank that still has the loan, I think it's Deutsche Bank,

or it's actually in a commercial facility. Somebody will show up and credit bid the amount of their bank loan so they don't lose the property for less. So then the bank will end up probably owning it, but they'll have to pay in the amount of money at you know at the difference So whatever she collects goes it deducts from the amount that's owed Donald Trump's got a scramble to get this bond in place if he doesn't have the cash Which apparently it looks like he doesn't and he's buying time

He's gonna have to liquidate assets which has to go through Barbara Jones to approve effectively or He's got to get a bonding company that's gonna lend him $500 million on his personal credit and his personal credit is completely in shambles because he's been he's been a judged fraudster and somebody whose personal financial statements are just completely made up and assets that I mean, I can tell you straight bonding companies hate real estate Because they have to sell it liquidated in the market. They hate it anyway, but they certainly hate Donald Trump's assets because they're all they're all faggazie

They're all made up numbers and there's no true appraisal backing up any of these things He's gonna work it. We're going to watch with Glee, Donald Trump scrambling to try to figure out how to rob Peter, to pay Paul, to pay these bonds, and to post them in all the judgments that we're going to talk about on this show. You know, and ultimately what this could actually do and stay very close to this story is expose what Donald Trump wants to hide the most. He doesn't really have the cash and that is going to I think be the bigger story. Like is he gonna have to declare some sort of bankruptcy to try to delay the process? By the way, it's a fraud judgment, so it's not a dischargeable debt in bankruptcy, although you could try to delay the time by initiating

kind of bankruptcy proceedings, but is he going to try to do that? One interesting thing I noticed too in the back and forth with these letter briefs that were being submitted to Justice and Goron that I was like, is Trump's lawyers trying to pull another scam here? I don't know if you caught this, Popak, but in the letter, Donald Trump's lawyers almost acted like there was a ministerial error in the proposed judgment and just said, oh, it just looks like you got the address wrong of about six or seven of these Trump related entities. You say that they're based in New York. I just want to correct it. It should say that they're in Florida. And here's the page of

the filing right here where they do that. They talk about the Donald J. Trump revocable trust being in 1100 South Ocean Boulevard, not at the Park Avenue address. DJT Holdings being in Jupiter, Florida. DJT Holdings managing member LLC, Trump endeavors. And a few other entities like that. And then the New York Attorney General's lawyer, office's lawyer said, no, this should be, these are New York companies. What are you talking about?

We're not changing the address right now. That's the letter from the special counsel who works with New York Attorney General. Leticia James right there. And then the judge just basically responded, yeah, I'm not, you're not saying anything that makes me change in any way the judgment. This is what Justice Agour wrote. Dear Mr. Robert, referring to Donald Trump's lawyer, you failed to explain much less justify any basis for a stay. I am confident the appellate division will protect your appellate rights, signed

Justice Agourin, and then the judgment was entered shortly thereafter. Yeah, on that note then, before you go on. The reason there's all this, there has to be magic language that's included in judgments. The law is very specific about notice to creditors and debtors and so there's, but like you said at the top of the podcast, it's a form. You have to, but you have to make sure and case law sometimes changes

what judgements have to look like in individual states. New York did a whole update a couple of years ago and some new case law sometimes changes what judges, judgments have to look like in individual states. New York did a whole update a couple of years ago and some new case law that came out. But yeah, you got to make sure the judgment debtors, addresses are properly listed, the time and when the judge interest starts to run, there's a whole bunch of things that have to be included. But she got it right.

New York Attorney General got it right. And they knew she got it right. And they knew that there was very little of anything they could do. But as you said earlier, or you've said throughout the podcast history of legal AF, this is all about delay. They know they're going to lose this. They know they're going to lose it at the Appellate Division first department, which

is the first level of appeal they're going to try to take. There's no way they're winning this. That Appellate Division has already ruled three times against Donald Trump on this very case. They are not going to suddenly think that Judge Angoron has not done the right thing in his 92 page of analysis. And then the Court of Appeals in New York, in no way he's winning that. And that's it, that's the end of the road.

There's no, for people that follow lightly our explanations, there is no federal switch over here. We're not getting to the United States Supreme Court. This is going to stay her medically sealed in New York State practice, and that's it. Now, it could be tied up in appeals for the next year, but he's got to post that bond in the meantime. We'll talk about what they're trying to do in just a very small amount of money, comparatively the 83 and a half million for Eugene Carroll, what they're trying to do there with delaying the posting of the money, which indicates to me that they're out of

cash. But this is not about them ever thinking they're going to win and defeat just Judge Angoron. This is only about when bad things are happening, make them happen slower. Now, one of the reasons I think they were also trying to, in a very kind of tricky sleight of hands way, change the address to Florida addresses was then claim if those properties were then going to be seized by the New York Attorney General's office to claim that there wasn't jurisdiction and that you would have to initiate a separate

action in Florida to enforce the judgment and to try to delay and tie it up more. Remember back in 2022 Donald Trump initiated a lawsuit in the state of Florida that got removed to federal court against New York Attorney General Leticia James trying to claim that the Citus of the trust and therefore all of the other assets that fall under the trust were in Florida and then get an injunction to block the lawsuit. So it seemed to me also at the last minute right there kind of a bad faith scheme that was easily smoked out there by the lawyers for a... On that last point, and you you remember the just to wrap that out

He he tried that he tried to get Florida intervene on his behalf for the trusts until Leticia James as you said removed at the federal court and it got assigned to judge Middlebrooks Who had already sanctioned him and Alina Haba over a million dollars for their phony lawsuit against the DNC and Hillary Clinton. And he wrote them, if you remember, we did a whole hot take and we did a whole legal app on it. He wrote them and basically said, you may want to reconsider this lawsuit. I'll give you a short amount of time to withdraw it. And suddenly they withdrew it.

One of the biggest tell that Donald Trump does not have $500 million in cash to post as a bond, maybe because he's selling fascist clown shoes for $399. I don't exactly see real billionaires going out there and selling the clown fake red bottom shoes out of the back of their truck in order to try to make a few bucks here and there. But we'll save that political analysis for other Midas touch hot takes that I may or may not do. But another major tell is another filing that was just made at the end of last week by Donald Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba.

They also brought in John Sauer, who has that kind of salary raspy voice. You probably have heard him in the appellate arguments before for Donald Trump in the various cases. And one of the things that was just filed was this memorandum of law in support of the motion to stay execution of the judgment pending disposition of the post trial motions in the E. Jean Carroll case on an unsecured basis. Basically saying to Judge Lewis Kaplan, I'll just read from the, you know,

it says pursuant to rule 62 on page one right here too, of the federal rules of civil procedure and this court's equitable authority, defendant and they always refer to him as president. Donald J. Trump respectfully requests that this court grant an unsecured stay of the execution of the court's February 8, 2024 judgment. So they're going to justice, to federal judge, rather, Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the E. Jean Carroll defamation

case where Donald Trump was found liable by a federal jury for defaming his rape victim. Donald Trump was defaming his victim in the courtroom itself during jury selection and throughout the proceedings, which the jury saw him doing. Donald Trump was also attacking federal Judge Lewis Kaplan. Now, Michael Popak, Donald Trump's out with his hands out playing the victim saying, federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, please help me. Please stay what the jury is doing on an unsecured basis so I don't have to post a bond because I think the punitive damages was way too high against me and so was the compensatory damages and the reputational repair damages.

And so please don't make me post a bond to you. We get along well, right, Judge Kaplan? Popak, how pathetic is that? I don't know, pathetic. I don't know who is a better, more, who's a better legal writer, Judge Angoran or Judge Kaplan in two separate court systems

against Donald Trump. I don't know which one has the more withering pen between them, but I can recall if we're looking for a dress rehearsal for this motion filed by Alina Habba, again, yes, joined by what appears to be what I think will be their appellate counsel. We're always wondering who's going to take these appeals for Donald Trump. Looks like John Sauer has stepped up, got the short straw, will be handling the appeal on this case and she's added their name to the brief. They're not admitted yet into the Southern District of New York, so their admission is pending. But in their request, what I brought me back to us, the very same thing that they attempted at the court, which is they're arguing to the judge that based on motions for remittitur, which is asking the court to use its equitable powers and inherent authority to reduce substantially the amount that the jury awarded because they're

going to argue that the jury's number of $83.5 million or almost four times the compensatory damages that they awarded her. I think it was like 17.5 of compensatory damages. And then the rest was punitive damages, that that ratio between punitive damages and compensatory damages based on a series of cases is too high, that it should be anywhere between, they're gonna argue, between one times your compensatory, so just 17 and a half million, or maybe two times,

but not three and a half to four times, and they're gonna ask the judge to lower, take his red pen, his blue pencil, and lower the number before they have to deal with it on appeal. They tried this the last time on the remitter part. They tried this the last time with the five and a half million dollar judgment when Donald Trump decided to stay in Scotland and let Joe Taka Pina lead the case against Eugene

Carroll, and they lost that case as well. Because the number was lower, I presume they didn't ask to have the bond stayed and they posted that bond in cash. There's always another telltale sign of a problem in cash with the court clerk as a bond, but they also made the remitter lower, please judge, lower the number that the jury, it should be closer to one and a half, I think is what their argument was at the time. Same thing here, except now they've coupled it with, because we're likely to be successful judge

on convincing you that you should lower the number by like 75%, that's the bond amount that we should post. We should just post like 22 million or 24 and a half million dollars. And that's enough. We should never post anywhere over the 83 and a half. That number is completely made up as no merit and you're going to reduce it. And if not, we're going to win on appeal. All right.

Good luck. I could write already. You and I could probably mimic Lou Kaplan's response having seen dozens of his orders in the two cases already. And it's going to be similar to what Judge Angoran did, which you put up before, which is you've given me nothing but rhetoric. Your case law analysis is wrong. The jury has spoken. It's well within the range of permissible punitive damage ratio between compensatory

and punitive damage ratio between compensatory and punitive. And so the answer is no. And I'm not gonna let you have a temporary administrative stay without posting a bond, which is what they want. They want it on Alina Habas' letterhead without having to post the money. What are we watching again? They don't have the money. And every day they get Lewis Kaplan to delay

this, is one more day they have to go scramble to get the cash. Because if they don't get the cash, then that whole description that you and I gave about what a sheriff does with a judgment in their hand is going to be Robbie Kaplan, the lawyer for E. Jean Carroll, and going, and we know where all the assets are, and knocking on the door and taking bank accounts, I mean, literally turn over the money, turn over the car, turn over the Trump Tower, the Triplex. Maybe she owns the Triplex when this is all done at a sheriff's sale. The other thing I thought was the height of being disingenuous, but not surprising coming

out of Trump world in Alina Habba. But Robbie Kaplan will make her pay, and it will be part of Lewis Kaplan's rejection of this motion, is where they completely ignore that there's now a $550 million judgment running against Donald Trump, that he's also trying not to pay with interest running at that $3.5 million a month. Because they say, well, even in the trial, the lawyer for Eugene Carroll made a big deal that there's more than enough money in my client's bank accounts to pay for the judgment.

So under the factors that you use, Judge, about whether there's any chance that the judgment wouldn't be paid as the condition of the bond, you know, we have a lot of money, you do. You're not paying the $550 million. She doesn't mention that there's now a huge judgment against her client, that we have no idea

how he's gonna pay that, and Robbie Kaplan is gonna make her pay. What you and I would have done, again, every time, let me make it clear to our chat group, we'll never represent Donald Trump Trump and we're not giving them things that they're gonna think of so don't worry about that They're beyond help or remediation. Don't worry about Ben me or Karen giving them ideas that that they're not gonna grow a brain Overnight so don't worry about that. But if we had the case We would have at least try to take the sting out of that, at least in a footnote, and said, yes, there's a $550 million, but that's, he has three billion, and don't worry about it.

We're fine. No, they don't say that, and they don't support it with any sworn statement or declaration or affidavit from the people that have the money, right? You know, like Barbara Jones keeping an eye on everything or Donald Trump himself. It's all naked rhetoric and argument of lawyers without any support whatsoever. And this is going to, it's going to be rejected, but you and I are going to have fun reporting on Robbie Kaplan nailing them, counter punching them to death about Donald Trump and his cash. And look, I just want to be clear here that it's not just we attack all of Donald Trump's

lawyers because they're Trump's lawyers and that's what we do on the Midas-Dutch Network. If you'll recall when Donald Trump's lawyer from just a lawyering perspective made the arguments on the 14th Amendment Section 3 case before the United States Supreme Court. My hot takes were I totally disagree with the legal arguments, but I thought that was a great lawyer. It's the reality who was represented. It was a strong, like great, maybe a little bit hyperbolic, but it was a strong lawyer

I thought representing Donald Trump who did something strategically like what Michael Popak just suggested in a footnote in that case. Remember Trump's lawyer to Trump's chagrin and this is why Trump can't have good lawyers because he'll always go after them and attack him. Trump lawyer said, look, January 6th was criminal. It was a riot. It was a horrible day in our nation's history. But members of the Supreme Court, you should not use that in terms of

your rubric for how you rule. I'm paraphrasing there. But I think when you make concessions like that, you build more credibility in front of courts on very difficult cases. So that's just from a legal strategy perspective. We got a lot to discuss, including Donald Trump's frivolous motions before federal judge Eileen Kennan. That's how you don't build credibility when you claim that you had the absolute right to steal national defense information and convert it into your personal property. But then again, it's before judge Eileen Kennan. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about what the Supreme Court's doing. And let's talk a little bit more about the Alabama Supreme Court ruling the ripple effects are being felt throughout our nation. It's important we address it here.

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membership and it was eye-popping. I'll just leave it at that. Exactly. All right. Let's get into what's going on in the Southern District of Florida case. That's the federal criminal case against Donald Trump for the willful retention of national defense information as well as obstruction of justice. Judge Eileen Cannon did not give Donald Trump an extension to adjorn these

pretrial dates and deadlines. So Donald Trump had to file them at the end of last week. Donald Trump requested the ability to file a 200 page omnibus motion to dismiss indictment, which Judge Eileen Cannon also rejected and said, no, you could submit, you know, 10 separate individual motions. Some of them were on the public docket. Some of them have not hit the public docket because there's major redactions to them. So the ones that we do have though, Michael Popak, just show how kind of extra frivolous there are. There's about like 10 of these motions to dismiss that Trump filed. Also his co-defend how kind of extra frivolous there are. There's about like 10 of these motions to dismiss

that Trump filed also his co-defendants kind of filed ones as well, somewhat pointing the finger at Donald Trump saying that they didn't really even know that these were classified documents and they were just following instructions to move boxes around and therefore the co-defendants claim they don't have intent. But Donald Trump's essential argument when you combine two of his main motions to dismiss, one was a motion to dismiss based on the PRA, the Presidential Records Act, which Donald Trump claims he can declare anything at all

to be personal records. He can take government records and just say they're personal when the Presidential Records Act like expressly states, you can't do that. If the whole purpose of it is so that you don't declare presidential records as belonging to you, but Donald Trump's approach to this is to say no, what it really means, because Trump's getting his advice from a guy named Tom Fitton, who's not actually a lawyer who runs the right wing,

far right wing group called Judicial Watch, is that he can declare anything. Nuclear codes, war plans, military secrets, you name it. If Donald Trump telepathically declassifies and telepathically believes it's personal and puts it in a box, Donald Trump's argument, it is there for his. And then he kind of layers on this another motion to dismiss claiming absolute therefore his. And then he kind of layers on this another motion to dismiss claiming absolute presidential immunity. And if he does the telepathic declassification and telepathic conversion of our government secrets and records into personal property while in office, then Trump says it falls within the outer perimeter of his official

presidential responsibilities and therefore can do whatever he wants with them. I hearken back to what special counsel Jack Smith put in some of those briefs in the Washington DC case where special counsel Jack Smith said, look, under Donald Trump's logic, you could sell nuclear codes and military secrets to foreign nations and claim it's foreign diplomacy. And then I go back and think about some of those meetings

that Donald Trump even had in 2017 May when he met with the You know Russian beat the Russian leaders who showed up at the White House People forget he shared military secrets with the Russians when they were there and then he posted on social media Then Twitter was called those called out. It's called X Twitter Then that he had the absolute right to do that called X Twitter then, that he had the absolute right to do that. So you think about what he's arguing here now in this motion, that he's saying that, yes, I had the mens rea. I had the intent to withhold the national defense information

to write popup. Those are all the elements of the crime, but they're mine. Those nuclear secrets, they don't belong to you government. They're me, me, me, you know, and those war plans, the stuff about Iran, mine, those are, you think those are the government? They belong to me, you can't do anything about it. It's such an outrage, Michael Pope. I mean, you can't get more of a despicable, despicable argument. And then I see Axios post, you know, President Biden uses note cards occasionally when he talks like every politician. So your front page story Axios is how President Biden uses note cards. And meanwhile, I won't even get into Donald Trump's

speech at this Black conservative federation thing that I've done videos about and all of his other traveling fascists. I'll save that for my political takes. For my legal take, he just filed a motion claiming that he can steal our nuclear secrets and say it's his, and I don't see that on the front page. I don't see it on any pages. I see it here on the Midas Touch. It's an outrage. Michael Popak. Yeah, it is an outrage. By the way, we all use notes. Here's mine for the show. Okay, on every topic. I mean, it looks extemporaneous,

but sometimes when Ben's talking, I look down and see if there's a point in particular I wanted to make for the show. I like the president. My takeaway from the Her Report was not that he's in, that our president's in his dotage. My takeaway was, look Report was not that he's in our presidents in his dot-ed, my takeaway was look how organized he is. He's been doing diaries and binders of every meeting he's ever attended since he's been

in public office. That's a good thing. And contrasting that with Donald Trump, who they stopped giving the presidential briefing to because he was too bored, uninterested or too stupid to get the presidential briefing, daily briefing. That is the contrast that we have here and why people run stories about it, using notes. I'd be shocked if a president went up to a podium and didn't use some sort of notes

to handle all the things he has to handle. I'll put that aside for a minute. The four emotions that you talked about that we know about, two of them are just completely frivolous and ridiculous. This is the same thing that they had to do, as you mentioned, Ben, with Judge Chutkin of the D.C. election interference case. They had to do, I think it was four then, four or five then at the time. And one of them is, special counsel was improperly appointed. Can only go through the Senate. That is completely wrong.

And every court, including up to the Supreme Court, has recognized the procedure implicitly or expressly, the procedure that Merrick Garland has used for the appointment of the special prosecutor So that he's invalid and they don't even call him a special counsel Jack Smith at one point They just call him Jack Smith Jack like he's some sort of you know action hero You know that Tom Cruise is gonna start playing soon Jack Smith camp, you know, he's improperly appointed therefore everything He does is invalid, wrong. Then they didn't like that. So they said, let's do one on appropriations

as if they understand the appropriations clause or process under Congress. His budget, he shouldn't be spending taxpayer dollars chasing after me. Okay, that's even in the hands of Aileen Cannon, who you and I may differ about some of the some of the some of her actions, we all agree that she is not reliable in terms of her decision making. We can go further as we continue on this on this segment. So those two are forget those,

that's just chafe that they threw up just to throw spaghetti at the wall, hoping that Aileen Cannon would give him something. The last two is, one, they had to do, even though it's brazen, they just lost presidential immunity on a similar argument with similar lawyers in front of the DC, three-judge panel of the DC Court of Appeals. And we'll talk about it coming up next about what we're waiting on with the United States Supreme Court, whether they're going to leave it undisturbed or they're going to overturn it. But they already lost. Now, that is one circuit among a total of 12, including the DC circuit. So you can try

to invite a conflict between the circuits, even while the Supreme Court has not yet ruled, and that's what they're doing. I mean, I give them an A for consistency or a C for consistency. They're like, well, we got to keep going with this immunity thing. No one, no person really believes that Donald Trump's lawyers even believe that they have a winning argument on immunity at all. This is all about delay. And if they can get A. Lee and Cannon to make a bad decision again, and they have baited her in the past successfully into making bad decisions starting before the indictment even came out in how she interfered with the investigation and the search warrant bad decisions

Leading to her getting reprimanded twice by the court of it by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals she just recently made a bad decision totally against the way to the law, clear error, and manifest injustice, as we like to say, in the appellate world. And now she's going to have to recon... That just happened a week ago. So they know if they pressure Aileen Cannon because she doesn't have the experience and her judgment seems to be slightly off-kilter. Her initial instincts don't seem to be there.

They can get her to make a bad decision that they'll then they'll just deal with, with delay in time at the 11th circuit. So the two you talked about, yes, immunity. There's no way he has immunity from a espionage act violations, right? Because you can at the same time be a president and have committed espionage act violations, right? Because you can at the same time be a president and have committed espionage act violations if the indictment makes that out. And I'm gonna talk about the indictment procedure

for a minute here next. Then, so they don't like the espionage act. They don't like the way it's being applied to Donald Trump. Oh, it's constitutionally vague as applied to the president of the United States, because he's got these other duties under the Presidential Records Act that he also violated. But the heart of the case is not the Presidential Records Act,

which is not a defense to a criminal case. The criminal case against Donald Trump at its heart and soul is obstruction. That's why when they appointed the special prosecutor, special counsel, uh, Merrick Garland said the word obstruction more than a half a dozen times and never said the word espionage act because the case is about obstruction, obstruction of justice and all the things that lead to that and conspiracies around obstruction of justice. That's the box moving.

That's the hiding the documents in the boxes from his lawyers, not just Evan Corcoran, but also from his lawyers that were initially negotiating with the National Archive. It's the obstruction of misleading your lawyer so he misleads the Department of Justice and the Special Counsel and the FBI while people that worked in and around Mar-a-Lago,

like housekeepers and maintenance people who cooperated and executive assistants all said, hmm, there was a lot of box moving going around at the very moment when boxes should have been turned over without objection to the National Archive. He should have just turned, if he took it by accident, which is sort of the Joe Biden, Robert Herworld, didn't do it on purpose to the extent of criminality,

wanted it for other purposes, he thought his diaries were fine, that's Joe Biden. If he did it by accident, then when you get your first demand from the presidential, from the National Archive, you turn them back and let them figure out if there's personal items to send back to you, not the other way around. But that's obstruction. So their argument that the Presidential Records Act somehow presents a

defense to obstruction is ridiculous and that that is not going to be the law, or that he had classified security clearance, Q clearance at the energy department level in order to keep the nuclear secrets, that's completely wrong as well. And we've seen people, and we've had them on our channel that walk through the proper national security clearance need to know basis analysis,

and he fails that as well. So that ain't gonna work one commentator I like said on one of the YouTube channels. Oh now we're just gonna have cash Patel get up and talk about the magical Declassification that nobody saw and nobody wrote about at the time they left the White House That's gonna be his defense. Good luck even even a North Florida jury, which kind of trends a little bit towards Trump politically, would convict him if that is going to be his main defense. But the reason none of this is going to work doesn't matter to Donald Trump because his goal here is not to win on any of these.

His goal is what we're watching, which is the delay. So the reason you and I are talking on late February, almost March, about indictment that was presented a year and a half ago, this whole thing is about what the indictment says, not what the one trillion pages of documents that have been delivered in discovery, say, not the whole fight over SIPA, the Confidential, the Classified Information Kit. It's none of that. This is about the 40-page indictment that came out a year and a half ago. If they had the grounds for any of this, it should have been raised eight months ago. And you and I should have been talking about motions to dismiss at the same time we talked about the motions to dismiss the DC election interference case, which happened

around the same time. But that's when Judge Chutkin had the case and she set early briefing. This one, Aileen Cannon, let this go to two months before the trial to talk about the dismissal of a piece of paper called the indictment. What does that have to do with anything? Because here's how it's going to work. She's going to set a briefing schedule. They've asked for oral argument. There's going to be two more briefs that have to be filed. She's not going to accelerate a darn thing. And this thing is going to stretch out through the entire month of March. She's going to make a ruling in April at best.

There's going to be an appeal level up to the 11th Circuit that's going to take us over the summer. And so, bye-bye trial date. And we're going to know then, because on Friday, there is a hearing in front of Judge Akhannan where she's going to basically say that that trial in May is over. And we're going to get either a new trial date or an indefinite postponement And that's exactly what Donald Trump has wanted He's you know

He's got his group of trials that he's tried to torpedo one by one and he's gotten so far He'll get this one off the board before the election He's he's pinning down right wrong or indifferent Fawney Willis and the setting of that trial in Georgia based on the charges against her He wasn't able to stop the Stormy Daniels business record fraud case which is going to trial as we are you you and Karen especially Predict it would happen by the end of March that submarine case That's now the number one case going to trial. And now what we're going to watch and carefully hear right here on our network is going to be

this hand-to-hand combat to see if we can get the Chukkin case back up and running by the summer, depending upon what the Supreme Court does next. Well, look, there was never going to be four cases was never going to be four cases that could just actually fit in just the spacing of it before the November 2024 election. Just not possible for that to even take place at all, unless there were overlapping trials, which would not be the case because Trump has to appear at these criminal cases. So, you know, the thing is if there are two that do take place and the two that take place is the Manhattan District Attorney case and the Washington D.C. Federal Criminal case for overthrowing the results of the 2020 election or attempting to, you know, those are the two that I'd like to have seen and I think Trump will have made a massive strategic blunder not to put the case

first before the one that's before Judge Eileen Cannon, who's his preferred judge who bends over backwards who likely in jury selection and all of these other things would have been helpful to him, but also filing all of these motions before her as well. Popak, I think, has the chance of backfiring because, as I've always said, her corruption is also matched and exceeded by her incompetence. Like when she tries to be corrupt, she often even applies the wrong legal standard. That's so obvious that special counsel Jack Smith just pulls out the seminal case on an issue and says, look, you're using the compelling interest standard. It's always been a good cost standard. You're

just wrong, Cannon, in trying to help Outro. She makes mistakes like that. So now you're going to have 10 motions, 25 pages double spaced before her on these types of issues and expect that she's not going to make gross legal errors that could eventually lead to her ouster at the right time after Trump's already going to be potentially convicted on two separate felony cases, the New York State case and the Washington DC case. And again, let me just make this final point too. Usually criminal defendants don't like to just chill as criminal defendants. To your point, Popak, right?

If they have a defense that's they think, I've got this great defense, I'm going to win. You filed a motion to dismiss the indictment right away. You don't wait to the very last day of a deadline if your goal is anything other than delay, delay, delay. You want to be out of the case quicker. But again, to your point, that's never Donald Trump's goal here. He wants to delay this stuff indefinitely. We need to see what's going to happen with the United States Supreme Court, though, in

the Washington, D.C. federal criminal case. They're taking their time on a very easy response to a petition for an application for stay pending certiorari that Trump filed when he lost the absolute presidential immunity argument before the DC circuit. This we're talking about what the Supreme Court should be doing. It's a one sentence, yes or no. And they've already had two Fridays where they hold their meetings. I spoke to Harry Littman on this who clerked for two separate Supreme Court justices who

knows that process. He's like, you know, you just go out and you say yes or no, basically. I wanna get your take, Michael Popak, why it is. We haven't heard from them, but let's take our last quick break of the show. What you feed your dog goes a long way to helping them lead their best lives.

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Start the good habit at trifume.com slash legal AF to save 10% off the journey pack today. What great pro democracy sponsors we have today. All great products, all great stuff. Check it out in the description below. You have the links. You can click on them. You have the discount codes and everything there. Michael Popak, we know that back in December already, Federal Judge Tanya Chuckin rejected Donald Trump's assertion of absolute presidential immunity. She denied his motion to dismiss the indictment there. And just so you all see the track that her case was moving on, what we previously talked about with Judge Eileen Cannon. The indictment before Judge Eileen Cannon happened before the indictment before Judge Tanya Chutkin, Donald Trump is first filing the motion to dismiss indictments before

Judge Cannon and back in December, he had already been denied those frivolous motions by Judge Tonya Chutkin just so you have, you know, you could think about the pacing there. So then he appealed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. He lost there. We got an order a few weeks back there and then they gave him, I think it was until February 12th to file an application for stay pending a petition for certiorari, meaning ask the Supreme Court to still keep everything paused pending whether or not the Supreme Court will accept oral argument on this issue of absolute presidential immunity, which they can just reject as well. It requires five justices to grant the stay, four to grant certiorari. So if you're going to get the five votes to grant the stay, you'll probably then get the four.

It's kind of assumed under it that will then grant certiorari for the oral argument. So it's kind of an all or nothing proposition popak as I see it. Either grant the stay and grant certiorari or reject the stay and send this back to federal judge Tanya Chutkin. Now, it should be a relatively simple order on the stay. It's usually, you know, they meet on Fridays. So their two Fridays have now passed since they've had full briefing.

And usually what you'll get on that following Monday, and this past Monday was President's Day, I didn't see anything hit there, so I was thinking, okay, are we going to get a Tuesday? It's usually just a one sentence, you know, stay granted through DateX, submit further briefs or stay denied case, you know, to be remanded or sent back to, you know, the circuit court or back to the district court for further proceedings. We haven't heard anything. I want to get your take on what you think is going on here, Pope.

Yeah, I think you laid out the roads properly. I think it comes down to either they are using this time, and again, it's to us, it's silent, but behind the closed wooden doors, there's things going on. There's the caucus of the Supreme Court justices, the clerks are working behind the scenes. There could be memorandums that are being circulated to try to convince the hearts and minds of other people. There's coalescing of the four votes or the five votes and then these pieces of paper that you talked about. There's really two reasons for the delay.

And I'm hoping it's one. I'm cautiously optimistic that it's the one I'm going to say now, which is they're going to reject the stay. They're not going to require any further briefing, they're going to deny the appeal in this way and leave undisturbed the DC Court of Appeals decision that there is no presidential immunity, absolute immunity for criminal conduct as alleged in an indictment just because the person happened to be president at the time. But what the delay is, is that there's at

least two people that want to be heard in their dissent. But what the delay is, is that there's at least two people that want to be heard in their dissent. And what we're waiting on is not the one liner, we're waiting on the dissents. And the dissents, God, if I were a subbedding man, I would just throw it out there as Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, either writing separate dissents or joining together in one. That takes a minute to write. No pun intended. These aren't minute orders. These are things that take a little bit. Usually these guys crank out five, 10, 15 pages of a dissent and then they might try to circulate that, to try to change hearts and minds. And if things are not looking or looking bleak for

them and either the four votes needed to even consider an appeal or five for a stay, then it'll just be the dissent. They'll try to see if they can grab another vote over to them, which if I had a guess, it could be Gorsuch. That's what I think they're working on. They're working on these dissents, which is a good thing because that still means that we, if that happens, then the appeal, the stay, the interlock, all this stuff that's going on right now gets ended without further process, procedure, rigmarole, or oral argument, which would delay things another 30, 60, 90 days.

And then it gets back to Judge Chutkin with a remand to get your trial back up and running. Within a day, she schedules a hearing to status conference to bring the lawyers back in front of her and talk about the reset trial date adding a couple of months on because she said just so we have the laying the line in the sand, she's already on record of saying that seven months is good for preparation. It's enough to process time for Donald Trump. Now, she told him, this is where they can, because they, the lawyers for Donald Trump are not, how do I put this? They're not the best lawyers in town and they're not consistent with each other

and they're not monolithic. And sometimes one lawyer says something that undermines the arguments of another lawyer, representing Donald Trump in a companion case. So Schutkin and the DC Court of Appeals both told Donald Trump, you do not have to be working on preparing for your trial in the DC election case. We don't expect that you're still working on it. You shouldn't be working on it. You've said it's a burden.

We're gonna take the burden away for you on the stay. And so Chutkin has taken that position. And he was about five months into prep. So my gut is she would add two more months and take us into, you know, June-ish, July, which was gonna be her holiday. And then we get this trial, which will only take four to six weeks up and running and

Done in in the can with a jury verdict prior to the election the reason I said that there was already They've Trump's undercut his own argument is I don't know if you caught this but Todd Blanche the lawyer for Donald Trump told Judge Mershawn in the lawyer for Donald Trump told Judge Mershan in the New York Supreme Court case that's going to trial March 25th that he they have been working on them on the DC election interference case, regardless of the stay as an argument as to why he shouldn't have to gear up now for a March 25th trial in Stormy Daniels because they didn't think that was ever possible, which is bizarre because Blanche was in the courtroom when the judge told them, I don't care about your primary season, we're picking a hard date here it is, it's March 25th. So, but in arguing that, he also

undercut the argument and I'm sure Jack Smith is going to bring the attention of Judge Chutkin, if it ever gets back to her, they've been working. You don't have to give them much more time. Blanche just said they've been working on the trial as if they thought it was going And so let's get this trial up and running as fast as possible It's either what I just described that we're waiting on dissents only and the DC court of appeals case is going to be the ruling and if Trump's got an issue we can take it up after he's convicted We hope and after an appeal at the end of a case, like anybody else, like any other regular defendant, or they're struggling as we saw when you and I were trying

to figure out what is taking the DC court of appeals so long to do their for it, which by the way, four weeks to win on an opinion that turned out to be 68 or 70 pages of really hard-hitting, perfect analysis, was not really that long, but we were getting impatient, obviously, for obvious reasons. But the reason for that is, you could tell, they were trying to coalesce around and to get a complete unanimous decision. And if there were any holdouts, they were working through that, as only judges can,

in circulating drafts of opinions until they got a coherent decision that all three could join on to. So it's either what I just said on dissents or they're still lobbying going on to find a four to take the appeal and or the five for the stay. And that is what's going on behind the scenes. But as a betting man, I think they're going to keep the DC Court of Appeals decision in place on the immunity. They're still considering, we haven't gotten the ruling yet there, the ballot banning 14th Amendment Section 3 case that you talked about earlier. I think they maybe at the same time, they let them be on

the ballot, but they leave the absolute immunity thing in place to allow the trial to happen before Before November and we'll just have to see if we're right when we see dissents We know I was right or we were right and if we don't see dissents and we see something else Then they were working on something else look it is possible though that there are dissents that go in the opposite direction where the court grants the stay and in the opposite direction where the court grants the stay and accepts certiorari and then you have dissents explaining why the DC Circuit opinion made sense. Although why that's probably less likely is you would be delaying and holding up the inevitable anyway and if you were going to write that dissent unless it was super kind of quick and concise,

you're kind of lending to the delay. So why even do that just rather than say you respectfully dissent? So that's why Popak, I think yours is more likely because rejecting this day has a little bit more of a dispositive impact than accepting the stay in terms of what would encourage a lengthy, unusual descent in the circumstance. But again, what we're trying to do right here is the equivalent to use the example we've given before of tracking the weather patterns, the way a meteorologist does to tell you if it's going to snow or if it's going to snow or if it's going

to rain or if there's going to be sunshine. You don't always get it right, but we can look at those data points and share with you how we go through the data to try to make these predictions. I want to talk about this IVF ruling. I don't want to have a whole lengthy discussion on it. We've covered it elsewhere, and we're going to have other coverage on it as well. But I think it's important that we address it here on Legal AF. And Michael Popak, I know this also has a personal element to you that you and I had discussed before the show.

And just if everybody doesn't know what the ruling is, it's that this Maggar Republican stacked Alabama State Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are the same as children. And thus an IVF clinic can be charged with wrongful death if any of the frozen embryos are destroyed, the same type of wrongful death charge as if a child or other human being was killed. So in response, IVF clinics said, look, if there's any issue ever with a frozen embryo

that gets destroyed or something happens to it, even through the regular process of providing clinical services, we could be charged with murder or wrongful death, and we can't operate. It's impossible for us to operate. These are the types of decisions that we have to, in one of the examples of the cases before the Alabama Supreme Court,

it involved another patient kind of getting into a room and destroying something. But outside of the patient destroying a frozen embryo, another patient destroying a frozen embryo, every day as part of the clinical services, there are decisions about, okay, are there 10 frozen embryos and how to maintain the frozen embryos? What do you do if there is a birth? What do you do if there isn't a birth? And if you're gonna be charged with murder for every one of those decisions,

and then you can extrapolate these kind of RICO cases, if you will, wrongful death, murder type RICO case, where everybody in the clinic from the secretary all the way up to the CEO, to all of the doctors are getting charged with murder, as well as potentially even the patients themselves being charged with murder, then you can't function. And this is not something that happened out of nowhere. This is actually what people who were having all the warnings about if you overturn Roe v. Wade, this is going to happen.

of having all the warnings about if you overturn Roe v. Wade, this is going to happen and this is what happened. I understand right now there are a lot of Republicans out there who are now trying to act like this wasn't their position, but it was their position. They put judges who believe this way. That's why it happened. It's intentional. And then what happened ultimately is what they wanted, they then act like they're the firefighters when they were actually the arsonists, and now they want to put out their own fire. Some of them are applauding this ruling, but this is a predictable ruling based on the overturning of Roe v. Wade, because if you had Roe v. Wade in place, you could never have such a declaration as the one here that a frozen embryo

is basically given the same rights as a child. And that stems from overturning Roe v. Wade. Popak, I want you to share your thoughts as we close out this episode. Yeah, it's no secret that my wife and I used IVF. We're just coincidentally, my wife's pregnant, not through IVF, but we are big supporters of it. And under the Alabama law, because we made a decision with our medical provider that two of six of our embryos were not viable. I could be charged, apparently, with wrongful death and or murder in the state of Alabama.

For a party that claims to be pro-family, they are the exact opposite. And everything, as you said, Ben, that they have done has led us to this moment as a natural extension. There's no difference between Josh Hawley calling embryos extra uterine children, calling them unborn children. You'll listen to the language, the language of the right to life movement as they like to call themselves.

And them not understanding the difference between an embryo, a fetus, and a child, and the live already born parents who are supposed to be making decisions about the most intimate affairs of their life. As you said, Ben, when you put on in Alabama, there was one woman justice there, and there was one dissent. I think it was one dissent, I think it was one dissent. And the Chief Justice in his concurrence talked about everything that was just ripped from the Bible, that these embryonic entities have the

face of God imprinted on them. This is actually an illegal analysis made by the Chief Judge of Alabama. And then they wonder after they found that person, and I never really got to the bottom, maybe you know that you can tell me offline or here, I never found out why that patient was wandering around the embryonic nursery knocking over test tubes or whatever they're contained in. They said, oh, well for the three couples that lost embryos, they can sue that person for wrongful death because we find that they are children, whereas Nikki Halle likes to call them their babies.

Embryos are babies too when they are not. But the natural extension of that may have not have been clear to Sam Alito who wrote the Dobs decision overturning Roe versus Wade, putting it into the hands of states, by the way, 12 of which now, including Alabama, believe that personhood starts at the embryonic period, embryonic moment, which is, you see where this is going. The fact that they may not have considered that the very next day, the University of Alabama would stop all IVF treatment. Okay. And I can't even, my heart goes out to the families that were in the middle of a transfer or were in the middle of the process. And this is their last hope for children. And now in Alabama, they, I mean, the lawyers and doctors saw the writing on the wall immediately from the Alabama

decision and this goes back to the heartlessness of the Republican Party to be frank, especially when it comes to women and family. When Sam Alito said in ripping away a woman's constitutional right to choose after 50 years in trying to the U.S. Constitution through Roe versus Wade and a line of other cases, not just Roe versus Wade, that led us to that moment about reproductive rights and privacy. When he said basically, as only a old white male who doesn't, never born a child can say, it's not for us to worry about what happens. It's a state's rights issue. Each state should decide whether they're going to have a constitutional or other right for a woman to choose And but it's not anywhere in the Constitution and it was wrong the day was written

And it's wrong now We're finally going to fix this historical wrong once and for all and leave it to the states and let them do it And we can't be concerned about what happens really now you're watching the mad scramble I mean if it wasn't so tragic, I'd be laughing over it about watching politicians in Alabama and on the national stage trying to figure out how they can both be pro-family and also allow somebody who inadvertently or intentionally terminates an embryo because of non-viability or other reasons why they should be charged with murder or wrongful death This is the problem of the party because there's so

Their morals and law Are not uh, are not they don't intersect properly That's so when you like as you said when these movements led by the josh holly's of the world and all the other right-wingers What you get is what you got here, which is a judiciary in Alabama that now has codified this right-to-life movement and come out with decisions like embryos or babies. And now what I'm hoping is that they'll never be able to fix it fast enough. And this will then be another wedge issue that the Democrats need along with the Dobbs decision

to animate and motivate their base and get them to the polls for Joe Biden. And the fortunate thing is every time, and I've said this on one of my other hot takes, and I think polling is one thing. I mean, you and I could said this on one of my other hot takes, and I think midweek, polling is one thing. I mean, you and I could, we could do whole hot takes and we have about where the polls are at any given moment. But that's not voting. Voting is not and Joe Biden every special election that's mattered every every ruling related to women's rights that matters have all gone our way since the presidential election.

That is what I look for for six electoral success in November, not not this handicapping of how many points up or down Joe Biden is in any given moment. You know, look, I think my hope is that there is, you know, a legislative solution quickly to this crisis that was created by Republicans. But I also still, you know, firmly want people to have all of the data and realize that there was all of this legislation like the Life at Conception Act and various iterations of these bills that had been working their way through the House of Representatives that Maga Republicans had always signed on to. Like this was their position. And now the same people who affix their names to these bills are saying that they actually want to fix it. Y'all created the issue. Y'all are the arsonists. That's the issue. There are so many issues like that where they start the fire and then try to create chaos and in a very predatory way try to prey on people's

vulnerabilities with the chaos and harm that they created and that's why it's just important that we get out the raw data We just let people know what's up. I mean, where do you stand? Here are the issues? Here are the facts? Here are the data. Here's the data. Make educated decisions based on that. That's what we stand for here at Legal AF. That's what we stand for here at the Midas Touch Network. That's what we know you stand for as members of the Midas Mighty and Legal AFers. Thank you so much for watching this episode. You can sign up for our newsletter at MidasTouch.com slash newsletter.

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