Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump VERDICT TSUNAMI is Ready to DROWN HIM

Episode Date: February 4, 2024

Trial attorneys Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back with a new episode of the weekend edition of the LegalAF podcast. On this episode, they debate/discuss: the reason for the delay in Judge Engoron entering the expected up to $500 million judgment against Trump for fraud; the impact of the delay in the DC Court of Appeals issuing its order on presidential criminal immunity on the other criminal trials; whether the Manhattan DA criminal case against Trump for business record fraud goes forward as planned at the end of March; updates in the Fulton County (Georgia) election interference criminal case against Trump and others; and when not if the Special Counsel will file his appeal of Judge Cannon’s rulings in the Mar a Lago criminal case against Trump and 2 others, and seek her removal, and so much more from the intersection of law, politics and justice. DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS! LOMI: Visit https://Lomi.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF and checkout to save $50! 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. FUM: Head to https://TryFum.com/legalaf and use code LEGALAF to save 10% off when you get the journey pack today! ROCKET MONEY: Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://RocketMoney.com/legalaf 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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and the sea withdraws, there may be a tsunami on the horizon. The same is true with the Trump cases. Quiet in the New York Attorney General's civil fraud case. Well, Justice Arthur and Goron did not deliver the verdict this week of $370 plus million like we all expected. And like he said, he would likely do before February 1st, but he did receive a letter from the Independent Monitor, retired federal judge Barbara Jones, showing major problems with Donald Trump's financials during the period where the New York

Attorney General's civil fraudud lawsuit was pending, and we also learned that Donald Trump's former chief financial officer and felon, Alan Weisselberg, is now in plea deal negotiations with the Manhattan District Attorney for perjury for things that he said during the New York Attorney General's Civil Fraud trial. So no wonder Justice Arthur and Goran needed

just a little bit more time. Now quiet in the Manhattan District Attorney criminal case against Donald Trump for hush money payments, not for long. Later in March, that felony criminal trial against Donald Trump will start and we're going to start talking about that. And the media is going to start talking about that because that is big Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg the first to file the first to trial will break it down also what's going on in Fulton County District Attorney Fawney Willis submitted a powerful brief showing the meritless nature of the personal and vindictive attacks against her by Donald Trump and his code defendants. She also included some pretty great photographs and other evidence that she submitted and we will talk about that.

Also, what's going on in the Mar-a-Lago document case in the Southern District of Florida? Well, we're now learning that Donald Trump's co-defendant, Waltine Nauta, who was his former valet in the White House, also referred to as his current body man, was previously accused of sexual harassment and revenge porn before Donald Trump decided to hire him. Surprise, surprise, birds of a feather, you know what they say. Also, we learned that Donald Trump had hidden rooms in Moral Lago that may not have been searched by the FBI and he changed the locks to his closet before the search by the FBI took place. Also, Special Counsel Jack Smith's team met with Judge Cannon this week to discuss classified documents that issue. In the case, Judge Cannon made up her own type of hearing,

a pre-hearing to a SEPA section for hearing. She just makes things up, but we don't make things up here. We just spit facts. This is Legal AF. I'm Ben Myselis. Join by Michael Popak. Popak, how are you, sir? I'm doing great. How are you sir? You were yes, sir We're spit. We're spit in the facts. I I like the whole tsunami reference I like the the tide rolling back because Although we've all been tapping our foot and looking at our watch waiting for the DC Court of Appeals to make its decision We'll talk we'll touch on that today But when we think that's gonna come and then then the impact of that, like a domino, on the other things that you touched on.

I did a hot take on the red letter day for Donald Trump being the 15th of February, because that's when we're really gonna find out what Judge Michonne is gonna do in New York with the Stormy Daniels hush money case, or as Alvin Bragg has taken to calling it, the dress rehearsal for election interference by Donald Trump, which I think is a very smart and canny way to phrase what's going on.

We keep calling it the affair, hush money cover-up case. I like the election interference first draft case better. But we're going to know, and I think we'll get to it when we get to it today, but the DC Court of Appeals ruling would be known, I believe, hopefully, by Judge Mershan by the 15th. And I still think that if the DC Court of Appeals makes its ruling quick enough, and the little cheat sheet I can give our audience is that whatever date the DC court of appeals

returns the mandate to Judge Chutkin, hopefully, and says immunity is off. Get your case restarted. Just add plus two months because Donald Trump basically had been preparing for five months and Judge Chutkin's position has always been he needs seven, at least in total, to prepare. So we're going to have to add plus two months to whatever comes back. So if it happens in February, we're looking at maybe May. I think that's going to go into the minds of Judge Mershan, who's respectful of Judge Chutkin. If she says I can't get it done,

then I think he'll slide his case and we'll talk about it in March. But if she says she's going to go in April or May, I'm not sure that the Stormy Daniels case actually ends up going first. But I'll tell you more why when we get to that segment. And we're going to debate that because I think that this Manhattan District Attorney case is going to go late March, early April. I think we'll have a verdict there by May. I think you then will have the Washington, D the Washington DC federal criminal case against Donald Trump slotted in sometime

shortly thereafter Maybe June July would be ideal the question is also though What's judge Eileen Cannon going to do because she still has that trial date set for May 20th of this year, Judge Eileen Cannon does, but Judge Cannon has not issued a single substantive order. We're approaching that status conference and trial setting review that she scheduled for March 1st. So where she hasn't made any substantive order on some of the most basic of things. How's Judge Eileen Cannon going to be able to make any rulings when Donald Trump starts

filing his frivolous motions to dismiss and other more kind of substantive motions if she can't even read a statute like SIPA but we will get to that later in the show. So all eyes were on the New York Attorney General, Civil Fraud Justice Arthur Ngoran, the Justice presiding over that case because back on January 11th after closing arguments concluded, it was Justice Arthur Engorron who stated that he hoped to have his final verdict in before February 1st. Now, although aspirational, Justice Arthur Engorron's MO is to beat his aspirational deadlines and not go past them. So something had to happen this week when we learned that the final ruling may be the first week of February, maybe the second week of February. There may be some delay there and I understand why people would be upset. I was getting the comments, Ben,

you, Popak, Karen, Midas Touch, you told us that this ruling was going to happen before February 1st. Well, we told you what Justice Arthur and Goran said, that he said that's when the order was going to happen. But when we follow data the same way a meteorologist kind of follows weather patterns, right? There could be intervening variables that sometimes slow down the storm, push the storm in a different direction.

So that's just a natural part of kind of reviewing data to make these best case predictions. So the question becomes, were there intervening acts that could have led to a fastidious, meticulous justice like Arthur and Goron saying, I need another week or I need another two weeks now. I think the answer, and I'll get you or take popup, is a resounding yes to major developments, not small developments, major case shattering in way, or I would say case compounding

in this case pieces of data that we got first on Monday, retired federal judge Barbara Jones, who's the independent monitor for the past 14 months who was appointed in this case after Justice Arthur and Goran found systemic, persistent, ongoing fraud by the Trump Organization. She submitted a letter to Justice Arthur and Goran and said, look, Judge, during the pendency of my monitorship, over the past 14 months, I found incomplete financial statements. I found inconsistent financial statements. I've found inconsistent financial statements. I've found erroneous financial statements. Then she dropped this bombshell in footnote 6 that says on some of Donald Trump's financials, he talks about this $48 million loan from one entity he controlled called Chicago Unit

Acquisitions. It's a springing loan made to himself, meaning he as the lender characterized himself as the borrower, as basically being a problematic borrower, necessitating a spring loan. But in any event, as weird as that is, the loan doesn't exist, she says. No one could find this $48 million. So she said, look, I'm just a monitor. I don't have additional authority. So I'm just telling you what I've seen. Justice Ngoran, Trump's lawyer Cliff Robert responded and said that this judge, she's like one of the most respected monitors out there, like one of the most respected Retired Federal Judge. Trump's lawyer Cliff Robert, like a nobody lawyer who's now getting paid millions of dollars by Trump's political action committee, said that she lacks competency, attacks the

monitor, this well-respected retired federal judge. And then, Popak, you got this bombshell with Allen Weisselberg and plea negotiations for committing perjury in this case in the New York Attorney General's civil broad case. So I would say that those are two major things that if I'm the judge and I'm finishing up my order, I'm dotting my eyes, I'm crossing my T's, those two things come across my desk, any judge would say, whoa, whoa, whoa,

let me process this data. Let me see how I react. Popak, what do you make of it, sir? I'm gonna continue your meteorological thematic here. Sometimes when you see the tides, something is influencing them going up and down, and we found out later as primitive people it was the moon. Now I think we're seeing why there is delay. It's not because Arthur Angoran has writer's block and he can't finish the order, which was probably

two-thirds done before he even entertained closing arguments two or three weeks ago. It's because he knew that the monitor report was coming in from Barbara Jones. I want to talk about that next. And he maybe got an inkling that the relatively new lawyer for the disgraced Allen Weisselberg, who apparently everybody knew, we reported it on the Midas Touch Network Legal AF, Forbes magazine ran it in real time while Allen Weisselberg was testifying effectively or not effectively for Donald Trump in the civil fraud case that Weisselberg had perjured himself. The headline in the Forbes magazine article was, Allen Weisselberg had perjured himself that line in the Forbes magazine article was

Alan Weisselberg just perjured himself because he lied about his interactions with Forbes magazine who was setting the the value of Donald Trump's balance sheet for its Forbes 400 list About the size we're back to the site. Whenever I talk about Trump and size I always start to giggle but the size of we're back to the, whenever I talk about Trump and size, I always start to giggle, but the size of his triplex apartment, 10,000 versus 30,000 square feet. And now, Weisberg told the judge on the stand under oath that he never, never thought twice about the size of the apartment on the balance sheet because it wasn't a big driver of the ultimate number.

And that's a lie. He had told Forbes magazine in an interview, in the Triplex, waving his arms around, look at this, it's three levels, it's 30,000 square feet. It has multiple balconies here on Fifth Avenue. And they said, okay, great, well, so he's got $1.7 billion then. So that was a lie.

And the problem, I'll just stay on the Allen Weisselberg thing, he's got Seth Klayman, a very well-known white collar lawyer. More importantly, he's not being paid by Donald Trump's side. Originally, Allen Weisselberg had a Trump-paid lawyer, but he doesn't now. And that's why we've always known that the Manhattan DA's office was putting pressure on Weisselberg. We knew that from last February

in articles and reporting. They were trying to squeeze him to either use him in the Stormy Daniels election interference case that we'll talk about soon or to get him or through the New York Attorney General in that case to get him to cooperate. But now they just caught him in a lie. And so what does the judge now have in front of him? It's now fully reported in the paper, whether the judge was tipped off or not by the New York Attorney General's office, which he might have been, but if not, he read it, that Allen Weisselberg, one of the key witnesses

for Donald Trump, is now gonna admit to committing the crime of perjury, not once but twice, including in an interview that he gave to the Manhattan DA's office way back when that was under oath as well. So what do you have if you're the judge? You take all of Donald Trump's experts off the board because he already found that all of the experts were either not helpful, not expert in the field that was relevant to the issues that he had to decide, or were paid. There's a word for it, it has to do with a person that's a sex worker because they'll

do anything for a million dollars, which is what he called the NYU professor who got on the stand for Donald Trump. So take all of them off the board. He already found Donald Trump to be a liar and not truthful under oath about the doxing and attack of his, uh, his principal law clerk leading to the gag order when he got him under oath. Take him off the board. So who are you left with?

You've got the Weisselbergs gone. Now you're left with McConaughey, the controller, a bunch of lower level, mid-level executives at the company who told the truth about cooking the books on the statement of financial condition. And that all helps the judge ratchet, this number could go up from $370 million plus, based on the fact that there was no countervailing evidence

and worse, perjury committed in the judge's court. On the monitor issue, like stop, the attacks on the monitor, let me just explain monitors to our audience for a minute, having worked with receivers and monitors in my career. Monitors are the quarterback, but they hire other professionals to help them in areas where they may not be expert. I don't expect Barbara Jones, a really well-known and accomplished civil litigator who then became a federal judge, to know her ins and outs of balance sheet and general accepted accounting principles, gap accounting. But I do expect, and I'm sure it's in her bills, that she has hired a top three accounting

firm to be her advisor, monitors higher experts and consultants to consult with them about things that they're looking at with their being asked to look at balance sheets. The $48 million issue that is troubling on a number of levels. First of all, as you said, it's a phantom made up loan. What it really indicates is that they needed to come up with a plug because they couldn't get their balance sheets. They couldn't get their accounting papers to balance and you got to balance them. But that's a huge plug to stick in as a whole number, And so, but that's a huge plug to stick in as a whole number, a 48 million, then write it off as a loan to Donald Trump when none existed.

It completely undermines the reliability as we expect of any of the financial records for the judge or otherwise. And is exactly what this case is all about, which is the unreliability and the fraud that's baked into financial records in New York. Lastly, on the, what I might take away on the monitor, and I think the judge will also add this into the order, is that we're maybe not in the order, but I think it's the byproduct of what's happened here. The Trump Organization apparently is like almost out of business of day-to-day operations other

than revenue-generating assets like 40 Wall Street, which Donald Trump loves to do press conferences from. It's a commercial property down in Lower Manhattan or Mar-a-Lago or some golf courses and some other licensing agreements. Sure, it's generating $50 or $60 million, probably a profit a year. But in 14 months, the monitor reported there was not another transaction. There wasn't a bank loan because who's going to lend him money? There wasn't a buy, a sell. They're trying to sell a house in an airplane, but they're not doing day-to-day development or real estate transactional work in 14 months, which is very unusual

Probably because they can't do it without committing fraud But the reality is that then puts and we'll talk about it throughout the podcast that then puts tremendous financial pressure on On Trump because look asking your your gullible supporters to send you another 10 or 20 or 30 million dollars Okay, but the judgments that he's looking at, the $83.5 million to Eugene Carroll, the four of $500 million, which will all be due around the same time, subject to appeals, that's a lot of effing money.

And he doesn't have it from assets generated. Like I'm not here to feel sorry for Donald Trump, because the Trump family brings in $60 million a year or so in in net profit But you know, he's got a lot expensive habits a lot of people on the dole a lot of family members sucking off that you know, you know what and Now he's gonna have to go find another $500 million to pay off judgments. It's everything you and I said a year and a half ago about this collision on Donald Trump

and the pressure on Donald Trump financially caused by the New York Attorney General case. I think we're starting to see the beginnings of it right now. A lot of strong imagery right there, Michael Popeye. By the way, did you see those FEC reports from Donald Trump's political action committees all looking like a shell game? This one lent, this one that lent,

this one that lent, this one. But then Melania got $368,000 funneled to her stylist and $1.7 million went to Donald Trump's private jet and $50 million to $ million dollars went to legal fees. Waltine Nauta, who we'll talk about in a little bit, got paid $155,000 in the last financial disclosures. I think he's been paid a total of $360,000 to $400,000 since he first started working for Donald Trump.

So over the past... Well, let me tie it to this. You guys do a great job in the brothers podcast He's he's he's he's mowing his way through the primaries on the Republican side But every day that Nikki Haley stays in the race is another 10 million 20 million 30 million dollars that he has to that he has To spend to attack her leading into South Carolina beyond but then he's he's his money is fairly exhausted going into a very hard-fought general election campaign against Joe Biden, who between the Democratic Committee and Joe Biden's own abilities to raise copious amounts of money, he's going to have a problem. And if he keeps taking that $46 million transfer from the super PAC that's for his presidential

campaign back to a PAC that could be used for his legal fees, that's $50 million he doesn't have to try to beat Joe Biden. So I don't think we should underestimate how much of a dire, straight Donald Trump may be in come the battle, the real battle, not the polling battle, not, you know, all, you know, I love all the polls. We're all starting around in the form for Joe Biden now, but the real election campaign, when you got to buy media and you got to spend money on jets to get places, he's getting tapped out. And this new order by Ingoron, which should come out now, I think mid-February, mid-February is going to be very exciting

on the Mid-Estech Network for a lot of. It's going to be one nail in his coffin. I want to make one more point about that $48 million so-called springing loan between an entity controlled by Donald Trump, Chicago Union acquisitions, and made to Donald Trump characterized as a bad bar. I want to talk about that. I also have this question though for you, Michael Popak. You and I have been around lawyers who charge a lot of money. I am familiar with legal fees that are very action committees paid for in just the year 2023 is shockingly high of a number. And if you paid these lawyers, you think about the four main criminal cases, and those lawyers in that given year were making a million and a half or two million dollars each, which

would be a lot of money for a lawyer. But I can see that maybe slightly more. But the math just ain't math in Popak to get to 60 million dollars with those four cases and then some of the civil cases, $60 million. And I just want to get your, it's 73 before it's 73 in total, it's 60 from the facts, it's 73 million. It's even higher. It makes your point even more.

We'll take it up after your commercial. I want to ask you about that. I want to talk about that $48 million alone. And then I want to like a rocket ship go right into the Manhattan District attorney criminal case. We'll do all of that when we come back from our first quick break. What if ordinary people just like you and me could change the world with the push of a button? Meet Lomi, the world's first kitchen appliance designed to turn your home into a climate solution by transforming your food scraps into nutrient-rich plant food.

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The most interesting data point I found when I looked at these various Trump financial disclosures from his political action committees, The only one that was actually labeled legal defense fund that had that name, that raised like the least, like $1.6 million. So I think when people kind of knew, oh, that's where it's going. That one did 1.6, but you know, the other ones were spending all of this money

on legal bills. What's your take though, just on the amount? What's your opinion? It just seems very, very high for any law firm or law firms for a year, even with the amount of cases he's facing. Well, I was doing the math here on the back of an envelope with my green pen while you were talking, and I agree with you. I'll tell you why. I mean, why I agree with you. I mean, why you're right. First of all, let's set the cast of characters here. We are not talking about, for obvious reasons,

the leading elite lawyers in America working at the top law firms. I'll give you an example. The lawyers involved are closer to my vintage than yours, Ben. And people at that vintage, let's say in a major firm in New York or Washington or LA where you practice is $1,200, $1,300, $1,400 an hour. So, but that's at the top, top firms. If you're at a boutique firm like mine, it's less, and then you go from there. These are lawyers that are working at two and three person law firms, not 2,000 person, two and three person law firms. Two of them, Todd Blanche and Chris Kice left major law firms to set up their own, not together, two separate law firms just to represent basically Donald Trump. Alina Habba, okay, in her little, and I'm in New Jersey, where I live, her little New Jersey law firm, God, if she, before she met Donald Trump, if she was bringing in as a

firm $3 million for the entire year, I'd be shocked. Okay? So these are not people that were charging $1,400 an hour. So I did the math, a firm of their size, even without trial, this has all been motion practice, indictments, arraignments for the four criminal cases. Let's say that was 5 million a year. Problem is he's got multiple firms on these things.

So, but he could have done it for, let's say, 20 million in total. The E. Gene Carroll case twice another 10 million now I'm at 30 the all the plaintiffs work that Boris Epstein told him he should file Against Hillary Clinton the New York Times the Pulitzer board you name it Michael Cohen Let's just make that another 5 million because then none of those cases got out of the starting blocks. They all got dismissed and he got sanctioned before they could even be cases.

So I'm up to 35 million, but what happened to the other, if I'm right about the 73 million in total and you're right about the 60 million that's on the packs, what happened, why is it double? And so because, first of all, and then, but then he's also paying, let me just throw another fudge factor in there, he's also reportedly paying, not Rudy Giuliani's attorney's fees, but apparently has been paying attorney's fees for others for periods of time, ones in the Jan 6 committee.

He paid Cassidy Hutchinson's for a while until she grew a moral conscience and went out and hired her lawyer or vice versa. And so if you add in, I don't know, another 15 million, you're still short. You're still short. But whether it's your numbers, your math, my math, or the real math, whatever it is, I figure it now the burn rate for Donald Trump for his own defense costs, his own own plaintiffs costs, the trials that have already happened, the trials that will happen in the future, like there's another major class action civil

fraud case against Trump, Ivanka, the kids, all that. That's also being prosecuted by Eugene Carroll's lawyer, Robbie Kaplan. He's got a- Although I think the cast wasn't certified in that one. Oh, wasn't certified? Okay, so, but is it going to trial? No. Yeah, no, I think that one got derailed because the judges in the United States one. Oh, was it certified? Okay. So, but is it going to trial? No.

Yeah, no. I think that one got derailed because the GINs are not certified. Oh, okay. All right. But anyway, whatever the civil fraud cases that are out there, you're, he's got a burn rate. What do you think then? 10 million a month? 10 million a month. The way he's purportedly spending his money.

You know, when I, when I look at those financials too, and I saw, you know, what was it? You know, 7.8 million on ads, but all this other money that was being spent on his legal fees. This is someone who purports to be a billionaire. He goes out and says how rich he is, but then Mr. and Mrs. Magadonia in middle America, they're paying $368,000 for a billionaire's wife's hair and stylist, $18,000 every month for her stylist. And by the way, she's not even on the campaign trail. She's nowhere to be seen.

And then you have a Mr. and Mrs. Magadonia are paying $1.7 million for Donald Trump's private jet. You're paying for a billionaire's legal fees, a billionaire's private jet. And when Donald Trump was asked at a recent press conference, if he would use campaign money to pay for these penalties or judgments, Donald Trump's response was like, what do you mean? I've won all of the cases. And the reporter's like, no, you've lost.

You have major, he goes, no, I didn't, I won. The court of appeals said I won and that's not real. That's what he, and you know, and Mr. and Mrs. Magadonia keep on spending on me. You remember we did this, we did this six months to a year ago, we found buried in the footnotes that now when you donate to his pack, 10 cents of every dollar

is being brought over to pay for his attorney's fees, whether you like it or not. This is independent from send me money for my attorney's fees. Just 10 cents of every dollar that Mr. and Mrs. Magadonia donate is just siphoned off to pay for his attorney's fees. So, whether it's $5 million, $7 million or $10 million a month, all of that, it's a zero-sum game. Every dollar he's got to pay for attorney's fees is one less dollar he has to do battle with Joe Biden, which is one of the reasons Joe Biden is sitting pretty now in a pile of cash and the DNC looking good while the Republican National Committee looks like they're about to file bankruptcy if that's possible.

Well, because why would you donate to the RNC if you know that the likely place where that's going to go is Melania's hair or Donald Trump's legal fees and that a purported billionaire is not going to spend a single cent of his own money? One of the reasons I asked you about and why why I wanted to raise, at least a red flag there, that even if you're estimating high on these legal fees, the math still ain't math, and this entity gives to this entity, which gives to that entity,

which by the way is how he's run all of his businesses, his entire life into the ground. I mean, here's the thing, Trump's a lifelong loser. He's a destroyer, not a builder, before he disgraced the White House. Almost every business he touched went bankrupt. He bankrupted casinos and he would do the stupidest thing like he'd open up a casino and then open up a casino

to compete against his casino. And people would say you're going to cannibalize your casino by having two casinos competing against each other and what would he do? He would do the whole kind of flash thing, get the media attention. Everybody would be raising the red flag saying this is not sustainable. He would just say it is, it is, and then it would go bankrupt. That's the story of this guy's life, who inherited all of this

money. And now the Republican Party, the RNC, his political action committees, the state Republican parties are all looking like this. You go to the Arizona, Michigan, you take a look at the, you know, state Republican parties across Minnesota. Take a look at state Republican parties across the country. They are all going bankrupt because they're in the image of Donald Trump. But I digress there. I wanted to mention this one thing too though. This $48 million loan. One thing it could be is this unlawful debt parking scheme. I need more data of course, but it raises serious questions that I think are worth investigating, questions that I think are worth investigating, which is that the entity Chicago unit acquisitions, which claims it held this debt, a claim that the borrower was Donald Trump. Donald Trump owned an

entity. He was borrowing from the entity. As you dig deeper, what seems to have happened was in 2008, when Donald Trump took these loans from Deutsche Bank and Fortress and a bunch of other Financial entities Donald Trump screwed up the financing with the Chicago skyscraper There was an economic downturn of course in 2008 the housing market term Donald Trump was again facing more bankruptcies more default So what does he do? He sues Deutsche Bank? He sues all of the lenders because that's what he does. Brings these kind of bogus claims that he's just going to grind people down and bully them. Ultimately, the lenders, they forgave his debt or a significant portion of the debt. In other words, allowing him to

basically build the building for free. The issue is the IRS taxes debt that is forgiven as income. But if you want to avoid that, sometimes there's a way to park your debt somewhere else, but you have to be paying it back. Someone else can acquire your debt. You could renegotiate the terms. So it raised a lot of red flags when it seems that Donald Trump was saying that that debt, forgiven in 2008, was being parked at a company that he owned doing a loan with himself, a springing loan, which is a way of having some punitive type repercussions because the borrower is viewed as someone who could be problematic. By one kind of structuring it as a springing loan and knowing that certain interest off of debt can also be written off if Trump was structuring these terms with himself.

Then you factor in that Trump was probably claiming that the debt was not forgiven by Deutsche Bank and Fortress and others, but that it simply transferred to this other entity. Now knowing that this other entity actually didn't hold the debt at all, but it was being reflected as though it existed. One can argue or one can investigate the fact, again, more data is needed here, that this was a way for Trump to avoid paying income taxes on the debt that was forgiven in the debt forgiveness settlement with Deutsche Bank. That has always been a question that's, what's this $48 million springing loan?

What is this about? So I think it raises a lot of questions. I wanted to explain debt parking for people who, we're a little bit confused about what that means, but that's why I wanted to flag that one. One other quick point, Judge Barbara Jones, she's been paid about $2.6 million to date as part of her

monitorship. One of the arguments that Trump made this past week is that she just wants to stay on this case because she's getting rich off of Donald Trump and she's greedy. She doesn't need this case. You know how Michael Popak talked about those big prestigious law firms that can get paid huge amounts of money. She's one of them. Anybody would hire her.

She's one of the most in demand people for this. So she certainly doesn't need Donald Trump. It's probably a headache. But one of the things I want everybody to look for in Justice Arthur and Goron's final order is a continued monitor ship with more robust powers for somebody like a Judge Barbara Jones, who can kind of swoop in very quickly, post-judgment, flag problems, and Justice Ngoran can issue immediate remedies going forward, as opposed to the New York Attorney General having to file seriatim new lawsuits, new lawsuits each time there's an incident.

That's going to be almost equally as powerful in my view as the over, as the underlying monetary amount, which of course is going to be there. One comment on that. She's basically begging the judge to expand, as you mentioned, to expand the scope of her monitor ship. She keeps saying, I was not hired to look for fraud. I can't tell you whether there's fraud going on in this organization. I can tell you a lot of things. I can tell you

about their not being responsive and them doing transactions they didn't tell me about until after the fact and then money that was flying around that should have been reported to me at the $5 million threshold. I can tell you all that. I can tell you about what they've done or haven't done. I can't tell you whether there's fraud. If I'm Judge Angoran, in a case that's all about fraud, at least in the past, if he's going to allow these companies to stay in business going forward, you're right, Ben. She has to. She's inviting more...

Yes, I know Donald Trump will say she's inviting more work to line her pockets, you know, the way the faunty willows says when we get to Georgia, because she likes to, you know, sip mimosas with her boyfriend in double trees and the taxpayer dole. This is Trump's argument, not reality. But Barbara Jones is right. I mean, if I'm the judge, how can you ignore? How do you not circle? I cannot tell you whether there's fraud going on in the organization. Well, find out, Barbara.

I'm now putting that as part of the scope of your engagement. Dr. D. L. G. I think that will be in the final order. I think that's what Ngoran is doing now. Oh, got it. This weird spring alone. This, that. We want you to report back to us on these inconsistencies in addition to all of the other remedies from dissolution to the ban to the monetary remedy. Michael Popak, Manhattan District Attorney, criminal case for the hush money payments, as you said, Alvin Bragg's referring it to as the Trump's first attempt to interfere with an election because that's really what it was. He wanted to hide

whatever you want to call the three seconds he happened to whatever with Stormy Daniels and then cover it up through referring to it as or putting it on his books as legal fees. This is a felony case, carries with it felony implications. And it's gonna start heating up. So why don't we hear about just kind of, your thoughts on this case heating up. And then let's do that debate, and I'll let you kind of start it off.

Why you think that the DC case, if we hear from the DC circuit, you think that the Manhattan District Attorney case still may be pushed back to allow for the DC case to go first? Happy to. So, again, this is all our reasoned speculation based on data points, and they can be read different ways, and it could just as easily go the way that you outlined it. So let me kind of give where I, what my understanding is.

Gearing up for a trial is not something that a trial team led by Alvin Bragg and I've been on plenty of trial teams. You don't just wake up one morning and look at your clock and go, shit, I got a trial in two months I better get going they've been working on preparing for this with a March trial date target Regardless of whether it actually goes in March for at least the last three to four months And the reporting is that it's starting in earnest now as the calendar turned from January to February And they've reached out to key witnesses like our fellow podcaster

on the Midas Touch Network, Michael Cohen, who will play a role, the way he played a role in the New York Attorney General case, probably a bigger role, frankly. The reporting has always been, and Alvin Bragg has been on our show being interviewed by our former prosecutor and leader of Legal AF Karen Fried Fremont-Nifolo, Alvin, it's public, had to get comfortable with Michael Cohen as a primary witness for the prosecution. And he wasn't in the beginning when he first took office. And that was the whole public display

by special prosecutors, Mark Pomerance and his partner, who left noisily. We did a whole lot. I pulled over on the side of a road and we did all live, you know, whatever it was at the time, Twitter live at the moment, spaces about it. But that was because fundamentally, Alvin had to get comfortable with Michael as a witness. But he did after six or seven or eight and whatever it is the many times that Michael has reportedly met with the Manhattan DA's office, Alvin, Malvin sat in a few of those. He got comfortable. He got comfortable that knowing everything about Michael's

background and knowing everything about his serving time and what he's admitted to doing and all of that and having seen him be a witness, he got a dress rehearsal at the New York Attorney General's case, Alvin got right with Michael as a major witness. And there's other witnesses, of course, Alan Weisselberg, because the way just, we keep talking about it in shorthand because you and I have lived, not like Michael, but we've lived the Stormy Daniels election interference

case for so long But let me just do two-minute primer While he was a candidate Donald Trump had affairs as you alluded to Ben is not the right word He had a 20-minute sexual encounter with a porn star Who's to go some say it was There Stormy said it was 30 seconds. He's the original minute man, as we like to say. So Donald Trump wanted that to go away, along with a bunch of other sexual encounters that

he had outside of his marriage while he was a candidate. So the evidence, as alleged in the indictmentment is that he devised, along with the publisher of the National Enquirer, a buddy of his down in Boca Raton, Florida, named David Pacar, who's now been kicked out and is cooperating with another big witness for the Manhattan DA, devised a plan they called it, or what David called it, the Catch and Kill Program, as opposed to catch and release. And what it would be is David and the National Enquirer would reach out to these women, buy their story from them, pay them money, see where this is going, and then kill the story, not run it, and sign them up to confidentiality

provisions and non-disclosure agreements to make sure that they don't talk. And so they did a test run with, what could go wrong there? What could go wrong with that? What could go wrong with that arrangement? This is nothing. So he, and this is all the aspects of Donald Trump, cheap, not paying people,

all came to a head with David Picard. Because David Picard, they did a test run with Susan McDougal, I know it's McDonald, You know all came to a head with David Picard because David Picard they did a test run with Susan McDougal. I know it's McDonald but or she was a former miss Miss America They paid her a hundred David Picard paid her a hundred thousand hundred and thirty thousand dollars Which seems to be going great to pay off people But he did it out of his own money expecting to be paid back by Donald Trump And he caught the he caught it signed her to an NDA and she never went public while Donald Trump was running for office in 2016, which is exactly the purpose of the plan. But then he didn't get paid back by Donald Trump.

So he said, I'm not doing that again. So Michael Cohen, who was Donald Trump's lawyer and consulieri, he stepped forward, or Donald Trump made him step forward, and devised a plan with Allen Weisselberg, that now disgraced to be second time convicted perjurer Who was the cfo at the time who they devised a plan where michael would lay out the money To pay stormy daniels the hundred and whatever thousand dollars and then michael would submit invoices for legal services And then Michael would submit invoices for legal services, not provided, so to speak. And he would get back, plus a bonus for participating,

a VIG, as we like to say in New York, for doing it. And Michael, that's how they did it. He paid Stormy, they signed an NDA, and then Michael got paid back. And on the books and records of the company, this is the fraud, this is the crime. This is the felony. They wrote, you know, legal expenses. Michael Cohen, bonus Michael Cohen, didn't reference the Stormy Daniels payoff, which Donald Trump did to it to help his campaign. Now, the campaign, they shouldn't have

used their dollars either, but it was a campaign benefit to Donald Trump. This is the argument. This is the second crime that's required to ratchet this up to a felony, this election interference aspect of it. And so that's, that was the scheme. So Michael Cohen as a lead, a lead witness, the now soon to be taking a plea deal potentially for perjury, Allen Weisselberg, David Pacar. They might bring in Susan McDougal, McDonald, whatever her name is. The McDonald. I'll just, it's Karen McDougal. Okay, thank you.

Susan was the other, Clinton. Karen McDougal and Playboy, not Miss America. Shit, okay. I'm sorry to keep you still. You've given a lot of good imagery of good imagery today. So all right. Thank you And and I'm sorry to miss America pageant. I'm not trying to confuse you with Playboy magazine. Okay now look That's the that's the there's not a lot of moving parts here The feds were rumored to have not been interested in that case

Because they had concerns about Michael Cohen as a witness, let's be frank. And secondly, they had already, and Jack Smith was involved, they had already tried a similar case like this against John Edwards, who was running for president, when he used campaign dollars to pay off his mistress who was having his baby. And that didn't go well with the jury. And so they had already been singed, And they didn't want to do another campaign money used for mistress or sexual exploit thing. They didn't want to do that.

But now we're ready. We're ready to go. Now, let me just end it this way. There's a tremendous amount of respect between Alvin Bragg and Judge Marshawn on one side, and Jack Smith and Judge Chutkin, DC election interference case on the other. We know from reporting that the two chambers talked to each other, the chambers for Chutkin,

the chambers for Marshawn, and Bragg had graciously agreed, as usual, for the feds to go first if they were going to be conflicting and let that trial go first. And again, let me just say what I've said before and you've said before it not takes. There's no simultaneous criminal trials that would violate due process of even Donald Trump. So one at a time. There has to be a gap in between to give somebody time to ramp back up for the next criminal trial. So that that would happen. So for the next criminal trial. So that, that would happen.

So the, we've always talked about March 24th or so for the trial of Stormy Daniels, but the reality is there is a hearing that's been on the books for a while on February 15th. Same time, Judge McAfee is gonna be deciding what to do about Fawnie Willis. We'll get there next in an evidentiary hearing is also a day when Judge Mershawn is going to finally set the trial and the pretrial

moments in the milestones in the case leading to that trial. It could easily be the March 24th date that's been reserved on the calendar. We don't have any reason to believe that he's taken it off the calendar the way Judge Schutkin has. We'll talk about that a little bit later. However, by that point, he may also get the benefit, the rest of America too, of the DC appellate court finally wrestling with whatever Henderson is doing over there. Judge Henderson, who seems to never want to vote against Donald Trump in caucus when she has to make a decision. And hopefully they finally render a decision which lets the DC election interference case restart plus two months.

If that happens, I could easily see a scenario where Judge Chutkin announces before February 15th that she's able to do her trial in Fill in the Blank. And these people, Mershawn and Bragg say, you go first, Judge Chutkin. However, there's also that other overlay, which I know, which is the Supreme Court stepping in and the Supreme Court holding the trial again in on ice.

And then you've got, we're back to, let's just let the New York case go first and stop waiting around to see let's just let the New York case go first and stop waiting around to see what's gonna happen in DC. So my data point is, if they come out early enough and the Supreme Court doesn't stop the DC election interference case, I could see a world where on the 15th of February,

Mashawn knowing these issues doesn't take the March 24th date and still defers to Judge Chutkin. You know, when you mentioned Susan McDougal there for a second, not Karen McDougal. Clinton. Well, perhaps, you know, you're onto something though, because I think it is kind of a, it shows the hypocrisy of where the Republican Party has become. Because remember, they were going after Bill Clinton for, they claim that Susan McDougal was involved in this $300,000 loan with the Clintons.

They were never able to prove anything. So then they focused using the kind of subpoena power there into like Monica Lewinsky. And then they went all in on Monica Lewinsky and then they went, you know, all in on, you know, Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. This is the modern day. You know, compare that to the modern day Republican party. I mean, Karen McDougal, you know, and the catch and kill scheme with Donald Trump, which

we all know about, which was reported that happened,. That happened after he was married to Melania. So did the Stormy Daniels. So did Donald Trump's attempt to hide this on his books and records and to pay them off in this way. And then, of course, you get to the other crimes that Donald Trump committed, like, I don't know, trying to overthrow our democracy, stealing national defense information. We've got a lot more information about that, even this week. And the Republican party has just become this completely lawless machine. It's really sad to see, frankly, it was sad to see them going on those witch hunts back in the mid 1990s.

Like, we shouldn't forget some of the stuff they were doing back then, but then to point out that y'all were doing the Susan McDougal, you know, real estate thing with Clinton back then that you turned into a Monica Lewinsky thing, and now you're all in on Trump, like what? Anyway, I also think though, Popak, I respectfully disagree that I think no matter what the DC circuit does, this is where we'll see what happens.

I think at this point, with your two to three month delay from when that trial was supposed to take place, the federal case in Washington DC on March 4th of 2024. That's now off calendar. So the earliest that trial would happen now would be in May. I think it's actually, you know, it could be fortuitous, you know, the delay in a way. If that trial then gets scheduled for like June or July. You finish the Manhattan District Attorney case by early May. Donald Trump is a convicted felon, number one. He also has half a billion dollars in verdicts against him. And then at that point, and we're seeing Donald Trump

deteriorate now, then he goes before special counsel Jack Smith in the summer on the Washington DC criminal case. I think that's actually a possible scenario and you can see why laid out that way. It could be a good outcome right there. Let's talk about what's going on in Fulton County though because some great filings there are some powerful filings by Fulton County though, because some great filings there are some powerful filings by Fulton County District Attorney Fawney Willis, some ridiculous and I think frivolous filings by Donald Trump and his code defendants.

And Fawney Willis came with receipts in this filing. I want to talk about that, but Popak, let's take our last quick break of the show. Ever tried to break a bad habit and felt like you're climbing about Everest and flip flops? Yeah, we've been there too. But here's the breath of fresh air, Fume. It's not about giving up, it's about switching up. Fume takes your bad habit and simply makes it better, healthier, and a whole lot more enjoyable. Fume is an innovative, award-winning, flavored air device that does just that. Instead of vapor, Fume uses flavored air. Instead of electronics, Fume is an innovative, award-winning flavored air device that does just that. Instead of vapor, fume uses flavored air.

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Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com. legal AF rocket money.com slash legal AF. You know, Michael Popak seeing everything. I'm glad you mentioned Susan McDougal and I can't make it because it refreshed my whole recollection of the historical debacle of this kind of Republican Party that the good thing I think about this MAGA stuff is it's like just showed in a raw, undulterated fashion the utter hypocrisy and and who they are. They're not like sneaking

around it anymore. It's like here we are everybody. Here we are. Here's what it is. You know and when you just take a look at like what's going on in Fulton County, the attack on Fawnie Willis for having an adult relationship with someone who she knew the relationship according to all of the declarations, took place after the investigation of Donald Trump started. And that happens sometimes in a work environment. I think that we could have discussions about that, but we ain't the morality police here on legal AF.

And I think that it is what it is. And it just seems to be this really hypocritical attack on Fawnie Willis, very personal, vindictive, that she had this personal relationship with Nathan Wade. I think it's tinged with racism and calling people who are supremely qualified, unqualified, where not only have they handled this case incredibly, but their whole life's work has been incredible, undermining their

achievements in their career and acting like this is some sort of like get rich quick scheme when you have Donald Trump as a co-defendant or as a defendant in this case with all of the behavior that he's engaged in. But give us the latest update, Popak, on what was filed. Maybe you could touch on that photograph, too, of Roman's lawyer that was in the filing. Break it all down for us. Okay. Well, first, let me answer the question that I might be on people's minds

Why is it Mike wrote? Why is it Mike Roman that is attacking the prosecutor as a surrogate? Proxy for Donald Trump. Why Mike Roman in particular and having done some sleuthing and research about Mike Roman I got a hot tick on up about it. I think earlier in the week It was obvious why it's Mike Roman. Mike Roman is a brass knuckle fighter, a political operative who cut his teeth with the Koch brothers and Koch industries. He ran something that was only half jokingly referredIA, the Koch Intelligence Agency, where he used a CIA, former CIA analyst, to train his people. He ran research ops programs, dirty tricks programs for the Koch Brothers and got paid

a lot of money to do it. Then got brought in having help run Rudy Giuliani's campaign at one time when he was running for mayor. And others got into the world of Donald Trump and got brought into the White House as a person in charge of special projects and research. You know what that means? That's sort of the black ops.

And then also got made the election day coordinator and what I've referred to as the Mule who brought the fake elector certificates in the seven battleground states to Mike Pence. He is known as a brass knuckler, as hard-nosed, and as a fighter. And it doesn't surprise me that he's the one that put his lawyer either up to this. And I think he's maybe, I was out on a hot tank, I think he's writing part of this motion practice because his lawyer, Ashley Merchant, apparently was so close to Nathan Wade, the person that he's, that she's attacking for being incompetent. I put a pin in that for a minute. It was the last time you heard a criminal defendant

challenge the credentials of the prosecutor against them calling for a more qualified prosecutor to prosecute the case I mean, that's what that's what Mike Roman is saying that guy over there Nathan Wade He's never tried a Rico case for Prosecutor to go after me a Secutor who is it and Fawnie will has called that out her papers go after me. A prosecutor, who is, and Fawni Will has called that out in her papers, when has a defendant ever done that? Because he's being put up to it by Donald Trump

and the others. And so in a mean spirited way, as you said, which is tinged, and that's putting it mildly, with racism and misogyny, they've gone after this black powerful Fulton County district attorney and her Black fellow colleague who she may or may not, well, now she's admitted she's dating. But dated started the relationship after the indictment by the grand jury and after certainly the special purpose grand jury recommended the indictment. So the fact that after some late nights they decided to start dating

each other as two consenting adults, who cares? I love that Foney Willis pointed out in their opposition papers to the motion to disqualify, not just disqualify her and Nathan Wade, Mike Roman, and now Donald Trump and a Me Too brief, Me Too motion, they want the whole indictment thrown out because she's seeing Nathan Wade on the side. Okay, let's break all this down. Nathan Wade took a pay cut to become a special prosecutor. There's no other way to put it. Whether he's being paid $250 an hour or $300 an hour, I am sure, given his practice as a former judge, as a person that was being hired as special counsel throughout the state who was well known, who was a go-to person, was doing better

than $300 an hour, which may sound like a lot of money to our audience, but you heard our numbers that I gave you earlier for lawyers of his vintage, even in Georgia would be closer to $6, $7 or $800 an hour. So he took a pay cut. He could have made more than $750,000 in two full years, doing full-time work in his law practice.

That, I don't think that's beyond dispute. So he takes a pay cut. He starts a relationship with Fonny Willis. Who cares? It turns out they split their double tree visits to Napa Valley and some cheap cruises on Carnival Cruise Line when they were in off hours and he wasn't working the case. In the meantime, look at the guy's performance with Fawney Willis. Look at their track record. They've won every major hearing. They've got, they had a special purpose grand jury,

a regular grand jury. They've fought off federal removal, trying to take the case across the street to federal court, up to the appellate courts. They've gotten Lindsey Graham to testify. They've gotten, you've gotten four convictions already, including three lawyers for Donald Trump. They've gotten a dozen or more cooperating witnesses now

to turn state's evidence, including fake electors. And he did it all for just $700,000? I mean, that sounds like the bargain of the century. So why are we even talking about it? And you see it in the mean spirited filing that came out. I don't know if you caught it, Ben. They created Mike Roman, and I'll talk about the social media posts that are just completely blew the doors off of Ashley Merchant, the lawyer for Mike Roman in a minute. But Mike Romans did not have the right to file two briefs in his motion.

He filed a motion to disqualify. Then there's an opposition paper that was filed on briefing set by Judge McAfee that Fawney Willis filed yesterday along with her affidavits and supporting affidavits. That's it. Then there's a reply brief, and then there's the hearing on the 15th of February, which is an evidentiary hearing. But, oh no, Mike Roman gave himself his own two bites at the apple second piece of paper. He didn't want the news cycle to have her get the final word, so he made up his own

paper and filed a reply, but not a reply, not a full reply. Just need to answer the evidentiary hearing issue and It just gives me six pages to go to go trash Fawnie Willis again, and he starts it with oh you see judge if we hadn't brought to your attention this salacious relationship of cohabitation Between Fawnie and her underling you never know about it right Because it's not relevant to anything because there's no ethical rule or Prosecutor ethics rule that's been violated by by having a relationship and she points out in her papers that there are defense lawyers in this case representing

With clients that are at odds in terms of testifying against each other, yet they have pillow talk. There's married couples that are representing defendants in this case. Nobody ever says anything about them. And Ashley Merchant, who spent a long period of time, and in this new paper also, saying that Nathan Wade does not have the credentials to prosecute my client, whatever that means, right?

She, in 2016, and we'll put up the photo, It's just to prosecute my client, whatever that means, right? She in 2016, and we'll put up the photo, she's at a Greek festival. So I think she's partially Greek with a shirt that says Nathan Wade for judge. And then in her social media post says, he's the most ethical, most accomplished, reciting his whole biography, his whole recitation.

And I thought he wasn't qualified. If he's not so qualified, what are you doing wearing his shirt at the Greek festival pushing for his candidacy to be a judge? And she did a little footnote in her response, which was not, if I'm Fawnie Willis, I'd move to strike the response, or if I were Judge McAfee, I would say, you don't get another response.

That was your response. You don't get to create your own briefing schedule. Like I like to have another closing argument. No, you don't get another closing. You get one. But you know they hurt Mike Roman and Ashley Merch, the fact they slit this new paper under the door for the judge and now he'll give them whatever reply paper.

But at the end of the day, this is the takeaway. There is nothing about the relationship that started after the indictment that implicates or undermines the ethics or the indictment itself violates a canon of ethics for Fawni Willis or for Nathan Wade, jeopardizes taxpayer dollars. There's not a shred of evidence, not even in the new paper made up and filed by Mike Roman at the last minute yesterday, that has any evidence that Fawnie Willis is lining her pocket and financial benefit because she's having a relationship with Nathan Wade and he's making money to do a day's honest labor on that case. That's all he's getting paid at a tremendous

discount from his law practice. Speaking about legal fees, he's the he's getting paid at a tremendous discount from his law practice. Speaking about legal fees, he's the opposite. There's not a shred of evidence. And you need to have that evidence in order to get rid of a prosecutor because otherwise you can, prosecutors are allowed, as the Georgia case that she cited in her brief said, they're allowed to have intimate relationships with other people. We don't automatically assume that people are sacrificing their professional ethics because they're also in a relationship where human beings. And then she also, Fawney had a good way to respond to Donald Trump's motion, which is basically entirely based on her statements that she made at the historical black church the day before Martin Luther King, Martin Luther Jr. day

two weeks ago in which she defended herself on the pulpit and said, oh, she violated the rule that prosecutors can't speak outside of the court about the case in a way that would prejudice the defendant. Well, how was the, how was the defendant prejudiced because she's defending herself in a black church and and the body said That's what what dear the jury selection processes for you can find out if they know anything about My statements at the church and if they didn't we move on there's nothing to see here now look I

Want to get your view and I've been I did a hot take about maybe Nathan Wachitt's step aside and let Fony Welles do her job and not be a distraction even just for an appearance. But the more I read of what's been filed, I think Scott McAfee needs to do two things on February 15 that we'll cover it. Unfortunately, he'll be on YouTube, so hopefully some combination of you, me, and Karen can jump on and watch it in real time.

I think he should do two things, though, not just one. I think he should put an end after the evidentiary hearing and quickly following it. He should deny the motion to dismiss the indictment and he should take the cloud, speaking of meteorology for today, take the cloud away that's hanging over inappropriately under Faudi Willis' head

and that of Nathan Wade and say, there's no grounds to dismiss the indictment, nor to dismiss the prosecutors move on. But the second thing I think he has to do, because what's it called, idle hands is the devil's play thing, he's got to set the trial date. He's got to set the trial date

for Donald Trump and Roman and the rest. And whereas at the beginning he was like, well, I'll have a courtroom that's big enough to do one big trial. Forget it. I think he's got to set one big trial in August and have something for them to shoot for because you see what's happened in bed with all of this idle time. You're getting all the acting out and craziness and motion practice that would be a little bit tamped down if he would just set the trial date.

I agree with you. There's a hearing February 15th. I don't think Nathan Wade should step aside. Look, did this unfortunately create some issue that perhaps shouldn't have been created? I mean, look, the bottom line is that you know that Trump and the co-defendants are gonna throw mud Against the wall see whatever sticks. This is I wanted to follow the data I didn't want to rush in the last episode or before that to be like well. I think this is absolutely frivolous I really wanted to see what was To what was gonna come out of this and again, you know, it's much to do about not just absolutely nothing, but seems to be very vindictive as well. To that point, I'll disagree with you about one thing,

Popak. You kind of cast Roman as this kind of Machiavellian, calculating person linked with the Koch brothers. And that's why he's the one doing this. And sometimes I think Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is sometimes the explanation. And I don't quite think it's that, but I think it's something that you kind of put your finger on right there. And it's this photo right here of Roman's lawyer. That's Roman's lawyer, Ashley Merchant right there,

wearing the Nathan Wade shirt. And I'll just leave it at this. There seems to be something perhaps a bit more deeply, personally vindictive at Fawnie Willis, learning that she was in a relationship with Nathan Wade, then may meet the eye. And I think when Fawnonia Willis dropped that photo, she was kind of giving us a hint at that,

but I think it's actually being driven by Roman's lawyer at a deeper level. And look, here's the thing with Roman. Roman's cooperating with special counsel Jack Smith. So that approach does not transmute. He's limitedly cooperating with Jack Smith. Well, you know, he's cooperating, whether it's limited or not, he could choose not to and invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. So look, I don't know if it's, you know, all I know is that there seems to be some deeper

personal issues and personal animosity and resentment at play. So the jeans were more data, but that's my initial. So the jeans shorts meant more to you in that photo, I get you. Well, not the, it was the fact how Fony Willis was specifically posting that photo, I think, to signify a little bit of a deeper meaning of what's going on. I like it. If that's true, I like it. Well, I think there's some personal issues that, and it's deeply rooted in Atlanta politics and Fulton County politics. And that's kind of driving these very personal attacks. Let's move on to the Mar-a-Lago document case here involving...

You lead on this one. This is you. It's before Judge Eileen Kennedy. There's really three issues I want to tackle here. And we'll do it in this order. First, let's talk about the new data of this hidden room, this locked room that Trump changed the locks before the search warrant, what that means. Then let's take on this new story from the Daily Beast about Waltein now to Trump's co-defendant

and body man, his background of seeing how birds of a feather flock together here and his past and why Donald Trump brought him on. I think that's illuminating. And then finally, let's conclude with Special Counsel Jack Smith meeting with Judge Eileen Cannon this past week and what that's all about. Let's start with this hidden room, the secret room, the changing of the locks popock. I know you did a hot take on this as well. What can you tell us about this? Yeah, I was a little surprised by it. Now, let me do a quick primer for Legal AF.

Legal AFers, you get a search warrant issued by a federal magistrate and federal court on submissions by the prosecutor, which are not originally made public, along with a fee-ins people that are going to testify about why there's probable cause to believe that there's evidence of a crime located within a certain location. And it's limited. The judge has to, and they spend a fair amount of time in hearings like this, and I know you've been involved with them too, Penn,

where the judge tries to come up with the narrowest scope of the search warrant possible so that constitutional rights aren't being violated for search and seizure. And so you can't just go, well, go look for it anywhere you can find it. Go ahead, anywhere in Mar-a-Lago, go ahead. just go, well, go look for it anywhere you can find it. Go ahead. Anywhere in Mar-a-Lago, go ahead. There's a more detailed molecular analysis by a magistrate judge in order to have that search warrant not ultimately be quashed at the trial court level, at the district court level. But here, the search warrant scope was for all rooms, storage and otherwise where records could be maintained. It was pretty broad at Mar-a-Lago. And the FBI after, and this is where the Trump world never gets it right, after a year and a half of voluntary negotiations

that went awry with Donald Trump playing hide documents from the National Archive. And the National Archive finally getting a first wave, but not everything from Donald Trump and seeing classified documents in there and freaking out about that, then redoubling their efforts all voluntarily, all by demand with Donald Trump. This is before subpoena.

This is before search warrant. And then when all that failed and the Department of Justice started getting insider information from people on the ground and in the know in Mar-a-Lago, that what they were being told by Donald Trump, the National Archive and the Department of Justice was not true, that there were rooms and locked rooms and movement of boxes and

all of the video surveillance and then cooperating witnesses, they were like, yeah, no. So they got a subpoena first, which came from a grand jury out of out of DC, which asked for everything that was classified national defense information, defined, defined, defined. And that's when Donald Trump's then lawyer and current lawyer in Georgia, Jennifer Little, is reported to have told Donald Trump, because it came out because she testified or gave a testimony to Jack Smith.

She told him, okay, boss, if you don't comply with this subpoena, because he was talking a lot about what if we told them that I complied? What if we didn't give him everything? What if we took this position or that position? What if we made things disappear? That was literally what he told Evan Corcoran, one of the other lawyers that was representing him at Bar-a-Lago. And that's what Jennifer Little told him, hey, boss, it's going to be a crime if you don't comply, literally. You'll be charged with a crime if you don't comply with the subpoena. And then he still screwed around with the subpoena,

hid 30 boxes from Evan Corcoran. This is where we get to the search warrant. And then Evan Corcoran was left with egg on his face because they sent him into a, Donald Trump apparently staged a room literally with his now co-conspirators, D'Olaviera, the maintenance worker, and Walt now to the body man and staged a room and told Evan Corker, yeah, go in there. Go in there, that's where everything is.

You know, you don't have to look anywhere else. Don't look in the locked doors. Don't go in my desk. Don't come up to my personal residence. Don't go into the locked room in my... Underneath the staircase. Don't do any of that. Just look here. And he spent... And I've seen the earlier reporting. He spent 20 minutes, which is amazing,

especially given the billing records that you and I talked about earlier. He spent 20 minutes and came out with 38 total documents in a sealed envelope. And again, because the FBI and the Department of Justice had cooperating witnesses on the inside, they knew that that was a lie. And so they went to the magistrate and got the search warrant. This is step three in the process, and that got executed in. This is step three in the process, and that got executed in August of last year, a year ago, August, and that was the big, first time a former president has ever had

a execution of a search warrant to look for things. Now, the new reporting is they missed a couple of rooms, and they didn't know about a certain thing, particularly that while Evan Corcoran was down searching for documents in the room that they told him to go in, Donald Trump, Donald Trump was at the same time having the lock changed on a closet underneath a stairwell, an old stairwell's extra space. A lot of people have them in their homes that had shelves in it,

that had always been under the auspices and managed by the Secret Service. He changed the lock and kept the key for himself and didn't give it to the Secret Service. A fact that apparently the new reporting is the FBI did not know about at the time they executed the search warrant. When they got to the lock closet, they were told there was no key for it. And they were like, okay. And they didn't, which is weird given the fact that they were there for hours, eight, nine, 10 hours at Mar-a-Lago.

And that there was another room in Donald Trump's bedroom behind a heavy dresser, behind a television that IT workers used. I guess they had cabling back there and other things But it was another room that never got searched which is sort of weird. I always thought it was when I'm gonna get your opinion Ben on this I'll turn it back to you. I always thought a couple of things were weird I thought it was weird. They never got a search warrant for betminster Especially since he was at betminster While this while the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was going on up in New Jersey and Bedminster.

They knew they knew that that there was an SUV that Walton now to drove from Florida to New Jersey with boxes in it out or around the same time. They never got the search warrant for Bedminster and said they went back to Donald Trump's lawyers and asked them to look again and they went, oh, we found another storage unit West Palm Beach. And oh, here's a couple more documents. That's weird. And this new information that there were a couple of locked and secret rooms that they never bothered to look at, it's also sort of weird. Now, one last thing, 99% of the documents that they did find, they found in the storage unit, the basement,

the office, they found nothing other than an empty folder in Donald Trump's bedroom. So it's not like I think there's a mother load that was underneath the staircase. Maybe there was, but the fact that professionally in executing the search warrant, they didn't do that is sort of weird. Here's the thing. There's a bit of a disparity of information that we know covering this than other cases because there are a lot of documents that are protected under CEPA, Classified Information Procedures Act. And that was one of the meetings that took place this past week between Special Counsel Jack Smith's team and judge aileen can and under sepa section four the government in cases involving classified information can file a motion to withhold certain documents from their normal discovery obligations in the interest of national security, if those documents are not useful and helpful to the criminal

defendant and then there could be some sort of substitution in its place like a summary of what the document is or some other description of the document instead of actually turning over the nuclear, you know, like the nuclear secrets or the war plans. And so Donald Trump's lawyers asked to be a part of the SEPA Section 4 hearing to look through this information. That's just not allowed. Like SEPA Section 4 says no. Every court to ever rule on SEPA's well-established body of case law around SEPA, there's not a single court that's ever granted that request, but then you got Judge Eileen Cannon, was the only judge in history who said that

she could assert equitable jurisdiction over the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, where she was then very quickly overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals twice. A lot of people are wondering why Special Counsel Jack Smith has not challenged Judge Eileen Cannon to try to seek her removal at this point in time

and why he hasn't filed any appeals, in this case with the 11th Circuit Judge Cannon has not made any substantive order for special counsel Jack Smith to appeal and you really only got one shot at disqualification of a judge. There's a body of case law in the 11th Circuit. It's hard to disqualify a judge for being compromised. And there's one case in the 11th Circuit where a judge basically made three wrong orders in sentencing of a criminal defendant, and there the 11th Circuit removed that judge. So I think when this case got assigned to Judge Eileen Cannon, Special Counsel Jack Smith thought,

well, the 11th Circuit may still give Judge Cannon the benefit of the doubt and say, maybe she learned her lesson. So if you sought the disqualification at the outset and then the 11th Circuit denied it, you can never really seek it again because you would seem that you're really just have a vindictive whatever against the Judge. So I think Jack Smith said, we have to wait until she makes an order. Now I think Judge Eileen Cannon, her lesson from being overturned by the Eleventh Circuit was, wait a minute, maybe I should just not make orders. And if I don't make substantive orders, I can't be appealed and I can't

be overturned. So she does everything as these paperless orders. And even this meeting with Special Counsel Jack Smith, she set a SEPA section for pre-hearing with the government to determine if she will then allow Donald Trump's lawyers to be present at the SEPA section for hearing, which the answer is no, there's nothing that could take place at this pre-hearing to ever allow a criminal defendant's lawyers to show up at a SEPA section 4. So what she's doing, she's just kind of just wasting everybody's time by holding all of these pre-hearing.

Jack Smith knows it, but look, at some point the rubber's going to hit the road because March 1st there's a scheduling conference with Judge Eileen Cannon. She's going to have to make some substantive ruling on the trial. She's going to have to do something before March 1st. So that's what I'm kind of focused on there. And look, she has a May 20th trial date. She hasn't made any ruling on the most basic SIPA issues yet. So how is she going to make any ruling on the substantive motions

before the May 20th trial date? So there's no way that could actually be a real trial date. Also, one of the things that Donald Trump did recently was he filed a motion to compel all of these documents. Then Special Counsel Jack Smith responded on Friday and said, what are you even talking about? Like you have these documents, you have the CCTV footage, you're making up some like conspiracy that you still have some security clearance

from the Department of Energy, like that just doesn't exist. And like your motion to compel is frivolous. One of the kind of interesting things too, I thought from that motion, this opposition that special counsel, Jackson Mithyle to Donald Trump's motion to compel. It talked about the people who were in Mar-a-Lago.

I just found this incredibly interesting, this data, just like a little Easter egg that was in special counsel Jack Smith's motion on page 51. It said, from approximately 48,000 guests who visited Mar-a-Lago between January 2021 and May 2022, while classified documents were at the property, only 2,200 had their names checked and only 2,900 passed through magnometers. That's just an interesting data point because Trump wanted discovery on these security protocols for Mar-a-Lago and special counsel Jack Smith's like, you control Mar-a-Lago, you know, and here's the data right here.

So Jack Smith filed an opposition to Trump's motion to compel there. We still don't have a ruling from Judge Eileen Cannon. And then I'll throw it to you Pope. I can just moment but then you know we get this information about Waltine Nauta who Left the Navy as a chief petty officer to work for Donald Trump full-time He was Trump's valet in the White House And then it was just kind of weird like like who is the who is this now to guy? Why would he leave his career in the Navy to work at Mar-a-Lago?

Here's what we know when he started working. August 2021 for Donald Trump, this is what we knew that his security clearance had been docked after accusations of fraternization, adultery, harassment, and other inappropriate sexual conduct, including revenge porn. Two people with direct knowledge told the Daily Beast. Alligations came from three female service members. Nauta's behavior had been ongoing for years, it is alleged. The woman reported it in spring of 2021. And it talked about how Nauta is alleged to have had these abusive relationships while he was married and assigned to the White House, the revenge porn by Nauta included supposedly compromising images of women that Nauta retained

and threatened to make public. So just give you that data point there that was reported by the Daily Beast Popak. I'll let you get the final answer. I'll do it quick on my end. Ben, I don't think you're being fair. How many of the 48,000 people that came through Mar-a-Lago had Q clearance at the energy department?

I'll just, my asking you that kind of question is the equivalent of the arguments that have been raised by John Laro and Todd Blanch down in Mar-a-Lago. They're getting called out perfectly by Jack Smith. I'll leave my analysis or commentary on this. Jack Smith in his 68-page filing in response put it this way, just elegant in its simplicity, even to Judge Cannon. They said that there are only three questions. That's it.

That the jury is going to have to answer in this case about whether he willfully retain documents containing highly sensitive national defense information. One, whether he and his co-defendants, the Walt Mounder that you just talked about, and Carlos de Oliveira, who I talked about earlier, the maintenance worker, conspired to obstruct the government's inquiry into the records and whether they made false statements to the FBI. That's it. That's the three questions. And then Jack Smith ended it with this argument

with to the judge. The jury will not be asked to decide whether the investigation and prosecution of the case were politically motivated and biased. That's it. This is what this case is about. Those three issues did Donald Trump willfully retain documents that contained highly sensitive national defense information and did they conspire to obstruct the government's inquiry into the records and make false statements to the FBI? That is the simplicity of the entire case. This case has been made more complicated and more nettlesome and more frustrating and maddening because of two reasons. It has a

SIPA, FEN's Jam, it has the classified information procedures act element to it, obviously, because of the nature, the very nature of the gravament of the indictment, and it has a judge that seems incapable, unwilling or unable to properly handle the procedures around it in a timely and efficient way. But the underlying case, once you get by, how do you produce and how you use and making sure there's no gray mail and all of that, and the national defense information for the American people is properly protected and

The the defendants right to a fair trial is also preserved How do you do that? Which would normally be have already done months ago the case underneath it is is just breathtakingly simple Against Donald Trump thumbs up or thumbs down? Ultimately whether it's judge cannon or the replacement for judge cannon down. Ultimately, whether it's Judge Cannon or the replacement for Judge Cannon, we're going to get to a trial, hopefully, before November. The fear I have is that even though he's a special prosecutor, it's spent a special independent counsel, and it's harder to fire an independent counsel than it is a regular attorney general or Department of Justice prosecuting the case. If for the reasons that we started this entire podcast with,

all the meteorological, meteorological reasons that we can't yet anticipate, right? That would be coming into the case in terms of appeals and tracking. And somehow this all gets stretched out. Like we're watching the DC court of appeals, three judges who are struggling obviously with whatever they're struggling with to render their decision, but time is a waste in. And if that continues and people don't get out of their Ivy League towers and start getting into the real world of the electors,

the voters voting for knowing whether Donald Trump's a criminal or not, one way or the other, yet thumbs up or thumbs down, then we get to an election. And if he gets elected, which I don't think based on current polling, although it's early for current polling, that's going to happen. But if it were to happen, could he fire the special counsel and prevent the very trial from happening that we're waiting on? Yes.

I don't want to even have that discussion existentially about the prosecution because I just want to get one of these cases tried before November. Well, look, the Mar-a-Lago case has, I think, a 0% chance of going before. I agree. Let me just be very clear. I think it has a 0% chance of going before November.

The Fulton County District Attorney case, I think, has a 0% chance of going before November. The Manhattan District Attorney case, I think has a 0% chance of going before November. The Manhattan District Attorney case, I think has a 85 to 90 plus percent chance of going. And I would put the Washington, D.C. federal criminal case going before still at 65 to 70%, where I would normally have that at kind of 85, 90%. There's no certainties in any of these things, but I'm still thinking that there's going to be Manhattan District Attorney. Then I think you'll have Washington D.C. federal case when the D.C. circuit kind of makes

its ruling and then we'll see what happens there. But I do feel confident though as we are in that May time period, Trump will have over half a billion dollars or at least close to that half a billion dollars of civil verdicts against him where he's going to have to post bonds there. I think you will also have Donald Trump be a felon by then in one of these cases. And if you went back in 18 months ago or perhaps more, before the first indictment dropped before, and I remember very vividly when we did that episode when the Manhattan DA indicted Donald Trump,

there was a feeling out there when we were saying, we were confident that indictments were going to take place and that Manhattan would go first. I remember a lot of people saying he's never going to be indicted at all. There's never going to be a civil verdict. None of this is ever going to happen. When we were saying here, look, the data suggests it is going to happen. Here's why. Tying this whole episode together with the meteorological kind of examples,

you can track the storm, you can track the way the clouds are developing. That doesn't mean there could always be intervening acts that adjust and adjust to make the storm worse, adjust to make the storm less. That's really what we have to be focused on here, not making blind predictions based on narratives and our gut. It's not why you come to Legal AF. It's not why you listen. We're tracking the data the same way a meteorologist tracks weather patterns, and we are showing where it's going, why it's going this way, the likely outcomes in each the same way we were predicting the E. Jean Carroll outcome and exactly the way it did.

And then we kind of look and assess where we are, how our predictions can get better, but we always got to be tethered to the data, the data first, the facts first, and what is happening in the courts. And that's why it's such an honor for Michael Popak and myself to bring you that, to bring you the facts. Another great episode of Legal AF, spending this time with you, Michael Popak,

and all of the Legal AFers, wanna remind everybody, sign up for the Legal AFers want to remind everybody, sign up for the Midas Touch newsletter, MidasTouch.com, slash newsletter, MidasTouch.com, slash newsletter, it is free. Make sure you're subscribed to Legal AF for all of our YouTube Watchers. Please, it's super simple. Just go and subscribe on the audio podcast to Legal AF. It'll take you like 20 seconds to do just if you're on your phone or whatever podcasts

you know, app you use, just search Legal AF and make sure you're subscribed to that as well. That helps to our podcast listeners subscribe to the Midas Touch YouTube channel as well. I hope everybody's enjoying that newsletter that we're putting out there, getting you that information each and every day. And finally, congratulations to Jordy Mycelis, a new father, he and Lexi, his wife, Lexi. Congratulations, Jordy and Lexi for a beautiful baby boy.

Jordy was trending on Twitter with all of the great well wishes from the LegalA efforts on the minus mighty. So that means a lot to us here. I know it means a lot to Jordy. Popak, thank you everybody. Thank you. And we will see you next time on Legal AF.

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