Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump’s World FALLS APART as he is Criminally Referred and Taxes go Public

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

The Midweek Edition of the top-rated news podcast, LegalAF x MeidasTouch, is back for another hard-hitting look in “real time” at this week’s most consequential developments at the intersection of law and politics. On this episode, co-anchors national trial lawyer Michael Popok and former prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo analyze and discuss 3 momentous events for the week: (1) the Jan6 Committee voting to refer 4 crimes against Trump and others, including insurrection and obstruction and what it means for the DOJ and future prosecutions; (2) the House Ways and Means Committee voting to release years of Trump’s personal and business taxes as a way to discipline the IRS for breaking the law and not auditing Trump as president as the law requires and providing transparency; and (3) the start of the sedition conspiracy trial against the leaders of the Proud Boys in a D.C. courtroom, and so much more. GET MEIDAS MERCH: https://store.meidastouch.com Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal AF, the podcast that you've come to appreciate in love, we hope, because it sits at the intersection of law and politics and what a week at the midweek it has been already. And I'm joined by my host Karen Friedman, AgniFalo, I'm Michael Popock. And today we're going to break down really just what's happened since Monday of this week leading into into Christmas. We're going to start with the January 6th Committee

and their capstone hearing on Monday in which they not only announce that they're going to be releasing today, Wednesday, while after we record, there are 1,000 page or more with exhibits and all sorts of attachments of their final report. They've already issued their executive summary, which if I can make my way through my office, I will actually show to those that watch us on YouTube, this is their executive summary, which is about 200 pages by itself, let alone the reports. So that's coming out.

But of course, what everybody tuned in for, and what we've all been patiently waiting for with Bated Breath since Benny Thompson and Jamie Raskin and others announced it, was the referral for all that it's worth by the Department of Justice, I mean, by the Jan 6 Committee to the Department of Justice, of whether they believe they have enough evidence that a prosecutor would think they should prosecute crimes against Donald Trump and others and lo and behold, there were four, including insurrection. And we'll talk about that one.

That was sort of a new one for me, for Donald Trump coming out of Jan 6th. And the others, and we'll talk about it with my colleague and former prosecutor extraordinaire, Karen Friedman-Ignifalo. And then we're going to talk about Tuesday. That was Monday. Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee, all 44 members of it, primarily Democrats who are still in control until Jan 3, voted to release six years of tax returns for Donald Trump business and personal that Donald Trump promised to release while he was Canada Trump and never did after much excuse. And the subcommittee, the committee related to taxation. And this is the committee that oversees the IRS,

the Internal Revenue Service. And they felt they had no choice, but to, in the interest of transparency to release tax returns, especially after they made a finding that the Internal Revenue Service, which was then under the control of Donald Trump, by way of his Treasury Secretary, Steve Manuchin,

did not properly carry out their audit function of the sitting President Donald Trump at all until two years into his term and only after the House Ways and Means Committee put a lot of pressure on the Internal Revenue Service that they start but not complete an audit of Donald Trump violating law, breaking the law. And we'll talk more about the rationale behind the House Wains and Means Committee's vote. And then we'll talk about the start on Monday of the second seditious conspiracy trial in the last 25 years by the Department of Justice against the proud boys who were led by Enrique Tario and a number of others.

All the leaders of the proud boys are up on trial in New York again, following closely on the footsteps around the heels of the oath keeper, first oath keeper trial in which Kelly Megs and Stuart Rhodes, who are the counterparts to the leaders of the of the proud boys, were already convicted of suspicious, a seditious conspiracy, and we'll see what happens with some observations by Karen and me related to that. So we've got a busy week Karen to cover, and we're only at Wednesday at the mid-week. We're packing it in. But the chickens are all coming home to Roost now for Donald Trump.

And if you're one after his noisy departure, unwilling departure from the White House was all about getting off the mat after that knockout blow on Jan 6th and doing investigations, year two is all about the recommendations for indictment. And year two, two and a half will be about trials and hopefully convictions.

But before we jump in, Karen, I'm gonna do something at the beginning that sometimes you do at the end, but I wanna do it while we've got everybody's attention here during this holiday edition of midweek. People always ask, how can we support what might as touch the mightest media network, legal AF are doing on a regular basis on an hourly basis on a minute by minute basis to preserve our democracy and to provide valuable information

to those about the intersection of law and politics. Well, there's a number of ways to do it and none of it cost you any money. One is become a subscriber to the Midas Media Network, Midas Touch YouTube channel. We'll have our producer Adam put up a link for that during tonight's video podcast. And we'd like to get to keep this organization, this media network that's not controlled by corporations in any way, but is self-funded, keeps it alive. So let's get from 780,000 subscribers to over a million to start off the new year, wouldn't that be a nice gift for all those that work so hard on your behalf. The second thing you can do is on that channel you'll find legal AF along with the other shows that are produced and platformed by the Midas Media Network, including the Midas Brothers podcast, Mayacopa by Michael Cohen, the politics girl, and the rest. They're all there, all of our video content

for every show is sitting there, in addition. We've been doing daily, hourly, 10 times a day, what we call hot takes or trending takes, lasting between 10 and 15 minutes about a breaking news item or an analysis that we don't think should wait until the midweek or weekend edition. And by clicking on and watching those videos,

you're getting real-time analysis and breakdown and information from legal AF anchors. And you're also helping to support the network by let's face it, getting eyeballs onto our videos, which is part of the YouTube media strategy of ours, and that's important as well. And of course, League of Legends is sitting there, and you can watch it if you don't want to just listen to it. And then, of course, go on to all of our platforms where you can pull our audio podcast and subscribe to that and follow and like and review there. Again,

everything that I've just identified, Karen, is free. It's free, but it matters and it's important to us. And I do want to leave it to the end as we're all dashing off for the various things to do at the end of the show. I wanted to do it really right up front. But enough of me and the show and how to support us. Let's break in and have you lead off, Karen, with you watched it. You commented on it with me and others. Let's talk about what happened on Monday with the Jan 6th committee. It's report.

It's it's for recommendations. Any surprises that you thought were in there that you weren't expecting and just your overall sense of the Of the criminal referral by the depart by the Jan 6th to the Department of Justice Yeah, so it was really interesting to see their final hearing and watch their summary of their summaries and Bring together like a summation almost or a conclusion and then vote to make criminal referrals. It was, I thought it was really good. I read the 150, 200 page executive summary and I was surprised that I've never seen an executive summary. That's 200 pages long. I would expect the report to be more that size, but I guess it's going to be massive.

But the executive summary was quite long, quite dense. And it reminded me of what prosecutors and what we used to do with big complicated cases in the office put together a prosecution memo. And a prosecution memo lays out the pros and the cons, the evidence that's admissible, etc. and it lays out just the legal analysis and what potential charges and what potential defenses there are and we use the prosecution memos to make decisions about whether or not to charge a case and or whether or not to bring a case.

So that's what the executive summary reminded me of, but I have to say I still have very mixed opinion about whether or not they should have made a criminal referral. I do think that from a legislative branch perspective, look, they did, the select committee did the hard work. They were started investigating Trump and Jan 6 and creating a record that's going to last till the end of time. I mean, our great grandchildren are going to be, there's

going to be entire classes in law school or in college that are going to be devoted just to towards analyzing the events of January 6th. And they did that. And I think it was the most consequential and important hearing, certainly in my lifetime. And it's been widely reported that that's what motivated and got the DOJ to finally a year later start investigating Trump and his top advisors. So because of that, and because they're the ones who are going to be credited throughout history with setting the record straight and doing the hard work and interviewing the thousands of people, etc.

From their perspective, I think they had to go on record and say this is what we found and this is what we think and therefore these are the charges that I think should be brought. I wish they had left the report at that and not gone so far as to then say, I'm now giving a criminal referral to the Department of Justice. And now I'm gonna put on my prosecutors hat and explain what I mean by that. If I'm the Department of Justice.

So backing up, a criminal referral done by Congress, for example, or any agency, frankly, happens all the time. If the IRS is reviewing taxes and they see tax fraud, evidence of tax fraud, they're going to turn that over and make a referral to the Department of Justice because that's evidence that they've uncovered of a crime that wasn't already known to the prosecutors. And things like that happen every single day, and that's how largely how the Department of Justice

gets a lot of their cases, their criminal cases. A case like this, we all know they already the Department of Justice through the appointment of Jack Smith already has a investigation that is open and it's very active. If they were slow the first year, we know they are no longer slow. And so they don't the Department of Justice through Jack Smith, through the Special Counsel, does not need a criminal referral from Congress. And in fact, I would be slightly irritated that the Congress did, the Select Committee,

did make criminal referrals only because now there is going to be a claim of like pressure, partisan pressure and politics. And I know that's people will say, well, they were going to make that claim anyway and that is true. But I just think that this now makes something political that should not have been. And so I do wish they would have done the same thing they did in the report by saying, this is the evidence we've uncovered.

And these are the witnesses that we interviewed that support this evidence. And these are the charges you might want to consider. But I wish they had just stopped there. It's a slightly subtle point, but I just really worry that this could potentially make it a little political. On the flip side, there are some things that the DOJ, that this could, one could say, this

helped them. So the report and the executive summary is a roadmap for the prosecutors. I mean, to the people who say, oh, is this, are they gonna be going too slow or things very slow? This is now a roadmap to say, don't worry about investigating or about interviewing these witnesses

or looking at this evidence, focus your efforts on these people who say these crimes, etc. And so it absolutely gives a road map to the special council and the Department of Justice, but they do still need to do their own work. They still need to investigate themselves. They still need to kick the tires. And because at the end of the day, if the evidence that's uncovered is not admissible, it's useless. It has to be both relevant and admissible in a court of law. And so the Department of Justice is going to interview people. They are going to collect evidence, gather evidence, and they're even going to be able to get things that the select committee could not do because they have more tools in their toolbox, right? Don't forget prosecutors can do things like issue grand jury subpoenas or search warrants or people who are who who say,

I take the Fifth Amendment, you know, I take the Fifth and I'm refusing to cooperate. Prosecutors, if they want that testimony, they can compel it by immunizing them, by saying, you know, when someone takes the fifth, what they're saying is, I don't want to speak because I might incriminate myself. And I have a right not to incriminate myself based upon the fifth amendment of the United States Constitution. So what prosecutors do is they say, well, you know what, we will give you immunity so that even if you do incriminate yourself, you cannot be prosecuted for it. And that neutralizes anybody who takes the fifth and you can compel their testimony.

And so the prosecutors, uh, through Jack Smith are going to likely, um, decide who to do that with and they will gather more evidence. And so they will have a lot more evidence than the January 6th committee. And we'll see if they can get evidence that is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Some people will say, well, you only need probable cause to make an arrest. Why do you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt? And I can assure you that no prosecutor is going to arrest the former president of the United States on probable cause. They're going to wait until they have proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and make sure they have proof beyond reasonable doubt before they make such an extraordinary, extraordinary

step of arresting a former president. One last thing, before I turn it back over to you is, you know, there's the January 6th select committee said we're going to release everything, right? We're going to get it out there, all the evidence, all the testimony, release it publicly. And I can understand why they're doing that because look, if they don't get it out now, the minute that Congress changes hands to the Republicans, that stuff's gonna be lost forever. However, at the other reason, by the way,

I, well, however, I'll go back to where I was going to say, my concern with doing that is, yes, that means the Department of Justice also gets it because if you're releasing it to everyone that includes the Department of Justice, but that's tricky because because witnesses will now have access to other people's testimony and they could tailor their testimony for example they could prepare themselves with prior other people's statements and tailor their testimony differently. And so as a prosecutor, that's something you don't want. That's why prosecutors typically during the investigating investigation phase keep information and records close to the vest. But I get why they're doing it because again, if they just turned it over to the prosecutors, even

if there is a criminal case or not, look, say there is no criminal case brought, then this stuff will never see the light of day. And I think the January 6 committee wants to make sure that this sees the light of day. And so they're going to release it all. And the prosecutors will go through it. And like I said, build their own case, but this provides a roadmap for them. Let me pick up, that was my take. Yeah, let me pick up where you left,

where you just left off, and then I'll work backwards. I understand why they're releasing it to the public. I think they have to do in terms of transparency, although it does have an impact on the future willingness of people to participate in future. I hope we don't have another Gen 6 event, but future committees because everybody will know whatever got said to them in private is really in public.

And I'm sure they were warned that at the time but they participated. But I don't think they have a choice just like when we get to the next segment talking about the House Ways and Means Committee, the timing of when their work is over, given that the Democrats lost control of the House back to your political observation is important and it's relevant and let's not fool ourselves. If the Houseways and Main's Committee was going to be continued to be controlled by the

Democrats and by Chairman Neal, maybe they would release the tax returns to the public in the voice of, in the interest of transparency, or maybe they wouldn't, because they'd have more time to work with them and come up with legislation to address the issues that have been found by reviewing his tax returns. I'll save that for the next segment. Here's same thing. Jan 6th is, I called it a going at a business sale. I mean, we're at, we're

at, once the report is released, we're at like out of business. And the information that they want to transmit, a should be transmitted directly to the Department of Justice. You know, it's a little bit of a, it's a little bit of a shifting, a little bit of a shape shifter about how fast they have then or are willing to provide all of the information. I think it's great it's going to the public where it should have gone months ago is the Department of Justice. It is an undisputable fact that the Department of Justice was not able in real time with velocity, obtained the cooperation of the Jan 6th Committee to obtain parallel to Jan 6's work to obtain the 1000 plus witness statements and documents until the Jan 6th Committee was done with them, almost completely done with them. reporting and I just did a trending take on this this morning. It looks like that up until

about December 5th, the Department of Justice had little turned over to them from Jan 6th. And only in December, in the first week in December, was Jack Smith pounding the table, literally with a letter to Benny Thompson and phone calls behind the scenes. Able to get at least two streams, two work streams of data out of the Jan 6th Committee, also shows you where the grand juries are now under the leadership of Jack Smith. One work stream has to do with the false electors and John Eastman. And the other work stream has to do with information that the Janansics Committee developed

concerning the interference with the Georgia election, meaning, Jack Smith may have been playing catch-up for a while against Fawni Willis. I say that as a joke, prosecutors are all working on the same side ultimately, but there can be little turf wars related to state prosecutors and federal prosecutors. But Jack Smith is catching up in a hurry about the interference by Donald Trump with a phone call to Brad Raffinsburger and others, along with Mark Meadows, to try to interfere with that election and find 11,000 votes. So that came flying out of the Jan 6th committee, almost spoon fed out to the Department of Justice. But only now, like today, like I think out to the Department of Justice, but only now like today.

Like, I think it's appalling, frankly, that at the same time that I'm getting access to the thousand witness statements is about the same time that Department of Justice is getting access to it. They should have been working shoulder to shoulder with no daylight on the investigation, and they weren't, and that's just the reality.

And for whatever reason, the Jan 6th people, most of them who didn't get reelected on the Republican side will be writing memoirs. And they'll tell the story about why they didn't cooperate with the Department of Justice in real time. I thought, again, the, as you said, about the recommendation and the appearance of politics coming into play again demonstrates the masterstroke by Merrick Garland to see this coming that the Gen 6 Committee would try to box him in with a series

of symbolic recommendations, which are important to the public, to, you know, the bully pulpit that the Gen 6 Committee has, if you will, usually reserved for the president, but in this case for for the JAN-6 committee, to influence the direction of prosecutions or put pressure on Maricarlan, although I think you can't put pressure on Maricarlan, but at least the public appearances of that.

Okay, I get it. And that was important. But Maricarlan, seeing that in advance, said, I'm going to get an independent special council appointed, who's not political, because I know I'm going to get a recommendation from what is, by definition, a political body, one that was 95 percent Democratic. And so, again, reinforces the foresight, the chess master, grand chess master of Marik Garland, and appointing Jack Smith. The report, which could be right between now and a couple

hours from now and we do the live chat, is people have seen drafts of it so we can talk about it. It's going to be eight chapters, no surprise. One of it, chapter one, it's going to be the big lie perpetrated by Trump and all of his supporters, even before the election, even began, and then carried through all the way to the very end. The two is going to be the pressure on the state governments and state legislatures, always by Trump or those around him.

Three is going to be the fake electors and the use of the fake electors. And so far, those next two pressure on state governments and fake electors are also the subject we know of the Department of Justice focus because of all the subpoenas that came flying out to these entities by the Department of Justice and their grand juries in around Thanksgiving. Fourth is going to be Trump's pressure and strategy to pressure the Department of Justice at the time to do his bidding. Mainly Jeff Clark to appoint him in the closing days of his administration to appoint Jeff

Clark as the acting U.S. attorney in order to write letters around the country, including to Georgia, claiming that the Department of had some sort of a factual basis for arguing that there was election fraud when there was not. So pressure and an in an attempt by the president to co-opt the Department of Justice. Fifth is going to be pressure on Pence. Pressure on Mike Pence, primarily under a strategy developed by John Eastman, the constitutional half-scholar that Donald Trump employed, that Pence had something other than a administrative ministerial role in the electoral vote counting. It could throw it over not just to the new electors, but to the state houses and having vote of the state houses, each one being equal at a time when the Republicans controlled the majority of the state houses.

So Alabama having one vote, New York having one vote, California having the same vote as Idaho. And so that would have been a, if that had happened, and that had been upheld constitutionally, that would have been a landslide for Donald Trump by the vote of the state houses. And so there was the pressure on Pence related to that, the sixth chapter in the full 1000 page report to release today by the Jan 6 committee will focus on the summoning of the mob to Washington by Donald Trump, including his tweets in December, about it being wild.

You got to be there, which was part of his conspiracy and his strategy. Seven is something Karen, you talked about at length when it happened in real time on our podcast, about the 187 minutes of dereliction of duty as Donald Trump sat in the dining room fiddling as Washington and the Capitol burned. That's a focus because that's also a potential crime and shows Men's Rea or criminal intent by Donald Trump once it was clear that this was not just a White House tour that got out of control. And then lastly, the actual physical attack on our cradle of democracy and our seat of government on the Capitol on January 6th. And as you noted, it's about 100 page executive summary, and it's about a thousand page reports. So yeah, they probably could have done

an executive summary a little bit shorter, but they didn't. Now, the most interesting thing for me were the charges. I'd always expected obstruction of an official proceeding. It's the one that we've talked about as being debated at the DC Court of Appeals and ultimately the Supreme Court about whether that 2002 law passed by Congress to initially to fight corporate crime is applicable about what happened on Gen 6th and the lead up to Gen 6th, but they recommended obstruction of official proceeding. I wasn't surprised by that. I wasn't surprised by a conspiracy to make a false statement to the National Archive, which is the fake elector certificates. I wasn't surprised by the companion charge that they're

recommending. I've conspiracy to defraud the United States, which is also sort of related to the fake electors and the certificates there. The one that I found and they led off with, most interesting, and for many reasons, many layered reasons, is the aid and comfort to an insurrectionist, aid and comfort to an insurrection charge against Donald Trump. And the only other person really mentioned by Jamie Raskin in his closing presentation of John Eastman plus others. It's always plus one, plus others. And that one is very, very important. A, I haven't heard about it, talked about it. I hadn't heard about it, talked about as being a part

of the grand jury process in that the Department of Justice is leading in Washington. But it does have, talk about the layers here, it does have an impact because if the Department of Justice now says, hmm, let's look into aid and comfort of an insurrection, that then leads all roads then lead to the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution and Article 3, which is the disqualifying provision that disqualifies somebody from public office who participated in an insurrection, meaning everybody's hopes and dreams that Donald Trump is not able to even run for office happens because he's can charged with and convicted of a charge related to insurrection.

So I know why they let off with that one. That was a crack across the knees to Donald Trump that he's an insurrectionist and there's constitutional disqualification implications of that. The, and it's based on Judge Mato already found in one of his rulings in Washington that there was enough for insurrection and a conspiracy on insurrection, including possibly the president, as did Judge Carter in reviewing it at a lower standard of proof, proof burden of proof that in his courtroom in California related to John Eastman's emails and all of that. So, looks, listen, the other problem I have that you mentioned from a prosecutor's standpoint, I'll give it to you from a defense attorney standpoint, is that there may be an argument

that all of the material that the Jan 6th committee has developed is the government retaining materials that may have exculpatory information in their meaning, helpful to the defense to show innocence. And if it is deemed to be, and this will have to be litigated, if it is deemed to be government held and withheld information, while trials were going on next door, that could be a violation of what we refer to as the Brady law and the Janks law. And an art, a creative defense lawyer, and we've seen a few of them could argue,

I didn't get a fair trial because I didn't get a lot of that witness statement stuff that the Jan 6 committee had because they, and they didn't, and they're the government and they didn't turn it over to me. Now the Department of Justice is going to say, we didn't have it either. And it wasn't in our hands, but they're going to and they didn't turn it over to me. Now the Department of Justice is going to say, we didn't have it either. And it wasn't in our hands, but they're going to be this fight. There could be this fight about whether that is material that should have gone to defendants on trial and defendants to be on trial like we're going to talk about the proud boys. What do you think about that, Karen?

Yeah, look, there could be Brady in there for sure, and people who are going to be combing through the evidence that once it gets made public, we'll make exactly the argument that you just said. I do think that with separation of powers, there will be very, very hard for a defense attorney to prevail because what the government will say is what you just said that it was not in our control. And we did not have possession of it or control over Congress or that material because, again,

even though it's government, it's a separate branch. And so I don't think that will fly. I do think there are some interesting defenses that will obviously be made by Trump and others. If the January 6 charges are brought, a case, Brandenburg versus Ohio, where it's not incitement unless you have the imminent ability to launch people into violence. And I think that that's where some of the fight is going to be between that Jack Smith is going to have to wrestle with and whether or not that was imminent.

And you know, again, evidence has to be admissible in court. And these are, there are some real murky legal issues that the report, when you read the executive summary, I think you really get a sense that these are tricky, complicated legal issues. And there's a lot of evidence, a lot of information and my prediction is somebody that there are many, many investigative criminal investigations happening both on the federal and state level and somebody has to go first and I think once somebody goes first and prosecutes Donald Trump, I think you're gonna see many of the others quickly go after that.

I just, I get the feeling nobody wants to go first. And I think the way it's going to go, if I had to guess, is rather than waiting until they have absolutely everything they could possibly have because it's so voluminous and because it's so voluminous and because it's so complex. They might just, for example, peel off the Mar-a-Lago case, which I do think is extremely straightforward and much less complicated.

So I can imagine a scenario where Jack Smith brings the Mar-a-Lago case and perhaps the Georgia case, the same thing that Fannie Willis is bringing. Because to me, those two are fairly straightforward, fairly easy and they could just bring those quicker than they could bring a case involving the other charges and the criminal referrals that were done by the select committee. I just think that's much more sweeping and much more complicated. And frankly, prosecutors, once they start to bring charges and once the cases start, they can always either supersede the indictment or bring another indictment. So just because they start with one, I think it absolutely doesn't mean they can't do the rest,

but I think it'll just, somebody needs to go first. And I just don't think, I think this particular case for Jack Smith to prosecute Trump for the Jan 6 insurrection, which I think he deserves to be prosecuted for, and it's clear that he committed that crime. I think that that is going to take time. I think that's gonna take time. I think there's still other people below Trump that are gonna need to be arrested and potentially flipped as cooperators.

I think there are people who you're gonna have to immunize. There's just a lot more work that has to be done to get to the point where you can prosecute Trump for the Jan 6 insurrection. I think it's ultimately going to happen, but I think that case is complicated and going to take much longer. But I suspect, like I said, you're going to see some of these other charges that are much, much easier to bring and much more straightforward without these murky legal issues. I think you're gonna see them coming sooner

rather than later. All right, let's move on then on that prediction. To the Houseways and Means Committee voting on Tuesday in a closed-door session, but one that will be made ultimately public through the release of the transcript of all the statements that were made by the 44 members, mainly Democrat,

but a few Republicans, to release Donald Trump's tax returns. And for all of those that may be following some of the Republican trolling on this issue about, oh, no, and safe. And everybody's tax returns and Supreme Court justices tax returns and Joe Biden's tax return. Nobody's, nobody's safe now from this precedent that's been set. You might, you might wonder how how we got here and why it's appropriate for the legislators to do what they just did, which I believe it was. Let me give a little bit of the background. Donald Trump came into office having promised as candidate Trump on various talk shows and on the campaign trail that he would release his tax returns.

That was an idle promise. It never was fulfilled. In fact, he backflipped and and and and backtracked and walked back that that statement on numerous times and finally dug in and said, I I'd like to I'd like to release them, but I'm under an audit and you can't release your your tax returns when you're under an audit. That is a made up fictitious fantasy rule that Donald Trump, just because he said it with some sort of commanding Trumpian voice thought people were just going to believe it. Most of them did. There's no rule that says, well, you're under an audit, you can't release your tax returns as a presidential candidate. He then got into office having successfully

hidden from public view all of those tax returns, something that no modern president had ever done. I think Joe Biden is released like 25 years of his tax returns. And others have done the same, including Obama, Carter, and George W. Bush, and Bush, all the way back Nixon. I mean, there was even fights over Nixon's tax returns, but they were eventually turned over. And somewhere along the line in this separation of powers that Karen touched on earlier, the checks and balance, part of checks

and balance is that that Congress has oversight over certain branches of government and agencies of the government, one of them being the internal revenue service that reports ultimately to committees of the Houseways and Means Committee. And boy do they need oversight because what happened apparently is that for the first more than two years that Trump was in office, he successfully avoided turning over any of his tax returns. Except for one little thing, he broke the law. This is going to, this is going to be shocking to people that Donald Trump found a line and crossed it. Um law that he broke is at the IRS, which is under his control through his cabinet secretary

of the Treasury, and in this case Steve Manuchin at the time, so he ultimately report, the IRS ultimately reports through the Treasury Secretary to the executive branch. The IRS did not do its job because Steve Manuchin hollowed them out, didn't give them enough budget and didn't make auditing his boss a priority. So they didn't even though by law, by statute, the IRS is required to perform an audit function over the president of the United States and look at his returns and understand his returns.

Meaning if you don't understand the returns because they're so complicated and so convoluted and have so many pages, then you IRS go bring in experts from the outside world at the big four accounting firms or somewhere else. And you put them on this project and you have them, you have them audit the president. Well, that didn't happen. And by 2019, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who's currently the chairman, Richard Neal, went to the IRS chairman and said, why haven't you done the audit? You're two years and more into the presidency. And he got a lot of, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or my favorite, which came out in the report from yesterday, we assumed that because lawyers and certified public accounts were involved that the tax returns were fine. When is the IRS ever taken a position that somebody's private auditing firm is enough for them in terms of tax avoidance or tax tax reporting? I'll tell you when, never, especially when, as we know now, the CPA firm involved

measures just a year ago came out and disclaimed all of their prior opinions saying that they are likely false and can't be relied upon because they had been manipulated by their client, the Trump organization, and Donald Trump. So Neil had had enough after bringing in the IRS commissioner who was reporting to Trump ultimately and getting double talked. So he made a demand as he's allowed to do, as the House Ways and Means Committee is empowered to do under statute directly to the IRS to get the tax returns. They're allowed to do that in certain circumstances, and certainly a president who is not being transparent in his foot dragging and is hiding his returns would appear to be that type

of scenario that was envisioned by the statute. And Steve Manuchin, the then Treasury Secretary appointed by Donald Trump, said, no, I'm not going to do that. He refused, which required a lawsuit to be filed in 2019 by the Houseways and Means Committee in a federal court and lo and behold, it got assigned to a Trump appointee, a Trump confirmed judge in Terrence McFadden. Trump appointee, a Trump confirmed judge in Terence McFadden. Terence McFadden took his sweet time waiting until after the 2020 election, so almost a full year and a half, and didn't get around to issuing a ruling until November of this year. Two years after he had gotten the case and sided with the Houseways and Means Committee. Even a Trump judge, although he gave his, I call him his boss, he gave Donald Trump his patron a, a big break by sitting on the whole case for two years until after the election. But once he made his ruling,

Trump took the perfunctory appeal to the DC Court of Appeals in Lost. He took an appeal to the US Supreme Court dominated by people that he appointed and lost. And then finally, just a few weeks ago, he had a turnover, or the IRS had to turn over, the tax returns, these six years of tax returns. But look what the House Ways and Means Committee in order to perform their constitutionally required oversight function had to do and the time that had to be waste and burnt in order to do it to finally get their hands in the tax returns in the 11th hour before they were going out of business and being replaced by a new committee that's going to be dominated by Republicans. So I think the new rule is for all those that are up in arms.

Here's the new rule. If you're a candidate for president or you're running, or you are the president and you don't voluntarily turn over your tax returns, the House Ways and Means Committee is going to get your returns and make them public. So you have a choice. You can turn them over to the media, which is what all the

other presidents and candidates did, or the Houseways and Means Committee is going to do it for you. That's the new rule. I don't think it's anything else than that. And they had no choice in the interests of transparency. And to shine a light, a light of sunshine on this musty corrupted IRS who, who had it conceived, they did not properly perform their audit function and broke the law and Trump allowed them to do it in not performing their audit. And now they're going to properly recommend new legislation, the Houseways and Means Committee, about how to properly require presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns and how the audit should work for president so we never have another Donald Trump. Now, fortunately for us, the New York Times got

their hands on a lot of these same tax returns two years ago in 2020 because Mary Trump, the niece, had had sets of them because she was a beneficiary of a trust. And so she turned them over over the over the complaints of Donald Trump and a lawsuit, turn them over the New York Times who did their analysis 11 out of 18 years that they looked at. Donald Trump never paid one dime of federal income tax. One year, he got an $80 million tax refund with a lot of very curious tax deductions that don't seem to be supported by anything. And now we're seeing the full report and the tax returns that are coming out into the public. And we'll end up on the hands of the prosecutors. Karen, a couple of questions for you, and then I'll turn it over to you on a prosecutor side. Do you think it was politics or good government that the committee

voted to release to the public and otherwise the tax returns? And what do you think it means for ongoing prosecutions and future prosecutions of Donald Trump now that these returns will be available to all that want to see them? So look, I think they have no choice but to release them because, as you said, they're going out of business in a few days. And so had the judge not sat on this ruling for two years and had the committee been able to perform the review that they were trying to do, I think it's just a timing issue. I think they just have no choice but to release them, frankly. As far as what this

means, you know, I have my, my spidey sense went up a little bit when it came to this story. I don't, I don't know. I, there's something about this that really bothered me and I just have a slightly different take. And so number one, Donald Trump claimed in 2016 when he was running for president that he was being audited. And therefore he couldn't turn over his tax returns. He didn't say, you know, it's their private. I don't have to. I don't care about tradition in that every other president since Nixon has voluntarily given them over. He said, I'm under audit and therefore I can't turn it over.

And what we learned this week is that there was no audit that he was under. And so he lied. That's just an outright, outright lie. The second thing that really bothered me is that the way this is being said is that Richard Neal contacting the IRS is what that same day caused them to start the audit. To me, that just was a foil for Trump. That was just them saying, oops, he lied in 2016 and he wasn't under audit. So now we're going to start the audit just so he doesn't have to turn them over.

I don't know. I think it wasn't just that now they're about to do their job and now they're going to start the audit. I actually think they partly did it that same day for that reason just so that they could cover for him. And I do think that it does call for new legislation because, as you said, you know, the president is the person who appoints the commissioners and yes, they have to be confirmed by the Senate. But this is his IRS. And so you can't expect them to investigate their boss. It just, you need something more independent when it comes to presidential tax returns, I think.

So as far as future prosecutions and whether or not anyone gets prosecuted for this, I mean, as you know, the Manhattan DA's office fought and also went to the United States Supreme Court to get his tax returns and they've had them under lock and key all these years that was under siphance. So presumably that investigation is still ongoing and Alvin Bragg, the new DA, says that investigation is still ongoing. This could potentially bring to light. There will be

lots of people who are going to, lots of experts who are going to be studying his tax returns and once they are released and there are going to be lots of people who are going to be studying his tax returns and once they are released and there are going to be lots of people who come forward and say, he committed a crime when he did this or he didn't commit a crime when he did that. But part of the problem is without the supporting documentation, these are just numbers. And so to the extent that what supporting documentation will also be released will be interesting, right? Will there be receipts? Will there be, you know, loan applications? Will there be financial statements? Like what is, what, when there is an audit, right? It's not just the tax returns. The IRS asks

you for backup documentation. And so presumably, once they started that audit, presumably Trump gave them some backup documents and it'll be interesting to see that information as well. And I think that will help prosecutors because they may or may not have that backup documentation. So this one will be interesting to see, but again, there's just something really fishy going on here that I think needs to be investigated further.

Now that the ways and means committee is going to be disbanded by by the new Congress. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's we don't know where this is going to lead, but it's it's another example of a new cache of data and information against Donald Trump that will be used in some way, shape, or form. It's not going to just lay on the table because the House Ways and Means Committee released it. Somebody's going to pick it up and run with it. And we'll be reporting about it. Let's talk about reporting.

The one thing I will say just really quick, to all the naysayers who say that the House Ways and Means Committee was looking to do this as a pretext, right? That they just wanted his tax returns. They just wanted to release it and it's a pretext. I think the one thing that's clear is, and they said, no, we are looking to see what legislation needs to be changed. I think the one thing that's clear is the legislation does need to change because the audit, as you said, did not happen even though the law said that. So I think anyone who says that is wrong because

it was not pretextual. The law has to change. Yeah, this wasn't about politics. This was about proper oversight and checks and balance system. Let's talk briefly about the start. We don't have much to talk about because the trial is still in jury selection mode, but we want to put on everybody's radar that the seconds, additions, conspiracy, base charge against that other heinous group that was out at the Capitol and planning for the insurrection and used as a tool and instrument by Donald Trump and his henchmen like Roger Stone and Giuliani and Mike Flynn. Proud boys are going to trial now.

This is the group led by Adrique Tario out of Florida. He was the head along with Ethan, Nordine, Joe Biggs and Zach Rell and others. Who? Listen, they pride themselves on being no pun intended. with Ethan, Nordine, Joe Biggs, and Zach Rell and others. Who, listen, they pride themselves on being, no pun intended, on being street fighters for white supremacists. The same group was in Charlottesville, Virginia. This same group, if you shut your eyes and just listen to the rhetoric,

is no different than the neo-Nazis, the John Birch society, any of the white supremacy-based groups, the KKK. They all use the same tropes, the same rhetoric, the same racism, the same bigotry. And their assignment was just different. Their assignment at this time was to help somebody that they thought supported their ideals. As the old line goes, Donald Trump may not be a racist, but racists think he's a racist, and certainly the proud boys believe

that he was one of their own. And so there was a lot of planning that they did for violent overthrow. In fact, it is the proud boys, at least two of them, that were the first to breach the capital and the capital doors. And that led to the other 900 people following behind them. And it wasn't by accident. The proud boys on video in their social media on their own, in their own words,

led by bullhorn, by walkie talkie, by what they thought were secret and encrypted apps that they were using to communicate with each other, both before, during and after. And these are the leaders of the group. And this is the closest thing. The parallel would be Stuart Rhodes and Kelly Megs who were convicted of, you know, in the Oathkeeper's trial. Now again, like the Oathkeepers, there's's two proud boy trials. This one is of leadership.

And you know, the Department of Justice did well in the oath keepers trial, but learned a lot also because they got a hung jury on a couple accounts when you went further down the food chain to those below the top, top people. The jury had a little bit more sympathy about conspiracy counts as opposed to individual acts of of criminal violence that were charged. But look, it's the first time the Department of Justice got a conviction of seditious conspiracy in like 25 years in oath keepers and they're going to try it all again three weeks later with with Proud Boys. The interesting part about it is how many cooperating witnesses there are, those that have already taken a plea deal and been convicted of seditious conspiracy,

including their lead witness for the government, Jeremy Patino, who was one of the right-hand men of Enrique Tario, and has already been convicted and pled guilty to this very thing, seditious conspiracy. And again, there's just so much treasure trove for the Department of Justice to choose from in their own words from social media, their communications, their text messages, their emails.

Everything that they'd never thought would see the light of day, but it's now gonna be writ large on a big screen in the courtroom. I mean, that's what hanged Megs and Rhodes, and I'm sure the same for Enrique Tario and all. As soon as we get through the jury selection process, which hopefully will be done, and they'll be able to have opening statements. Karen, what do you think about this particular, we have a few minutes left, what do you think about this particular trial and this addition's conspiracy count against Proud Boys? Yeah, this particular, we have a few minutes left. What do you think about this particular trial and this addition's conspiracy count against Proud Boys?

Yeah, this is going to be a really interesting trial to watch for sure. Normally, prosecutors can't bring in prior bad acts, prior evidence of violence to show that you have a propensity to commit violence. But in this particular case, prosecutors are going to be able to rely on prior violent acts because they're going to be able to show, for example, that why would they beat up police officers? They're going to say, you know, we love police officers, police officers around the country are always been part of our, our, our supporting base. And so they're going to show this, this anti-cop feeling with a prior attack that Enrique Tario did on burning down a flat, a Black Lives Matter flag at a church. And that was

where they started getting into fights with, with the police and where they became anti-police. And so under the, the guys of showing motive and intent, they're going to be able to bring in some of these prior bad acts. Also, the proud boys are going to try to say, oh, no, we're just a guys drinking club. We're not this violent, horrible group. But so just to rebut that, they're

going to be able, the prosecutors are going to be able to bring in a lot of that evidence just to show that they really are this extremely violent just group of people who get in fights all over the country and promote violence. I think I think there's just going to be a couple things to watch you know and Rikitario is going to say I wasn't even there on January 6th how could I be responsible? So they're going to have to prove that he was part of the planning and organizing

and all of that. And they have a lot of evidence of that. There's going to be evidence that one of his girlfriends gave him to show that he gave them something called the 1776 returns, which was a plan for violence on January 6th. But the defendants who are on trial, including in Rikitario, are going to say things like maybe we're guilty of trespass, but it wasn't a planned attack and so therefore it's not seditious conspiracy and that's what they're going to do. They're going to try to fight the ones that have these these huge prison sentences on the back in like seditious conspiracy and that's how they're going to attack the evidence. They're going to say it's not a plan.

It just kind of, it came about that day. It just, things got out of control. And they're going to actually use the FBI's own informants against them. The defense is going to use it against the government because they're going to say, look, FBI, you had as many as eight informants in the group, right? And none of them told you about a plan to storm the capital. So it had there been a plan,

and they would have known about it, and they would have told you, and you would have stopped it. Again, so where's this aditious conspiracy? Where's the plan? So again, they're just going to try to portray themselves as the guys drinking club that's patriotic. And we'll see how that goes. I don't think it's going to go very well. I think this is going to be a conviction. This group is despicable and violent and they have a long history of it. So despite these defenses and despite these arguments that they're going to try to make,

I think the DOJ is going to, is going to prosecute them to the fullest and convict them. I agree with you completely. I think it's going to be interesting to watch them put on a defense. I doubt any of them are going to take the stand in their own defense. And I think a jury of their peers in Washington, to see is going to convict them just the way they convicted Kelly Megs and Stuart Rhodes. Well, what a week. Jan 6th Committee votes to make criminal referrals to a former president of the United States.

The House Ways and Means Committee, the next day votes to release and does release Donald Trump's tax return, or something that's been a guarded secret by him, like Golem in the ring for the last seven or eight years. And now we've got justice being served again in the Jansic insurrectionists being tried for seditious conspiracy by the Department of Justice. This is the end of the midweek edition of Legal AF with Michael Popak and Karen Friedman

Agnifolo. If you can't get your fill, you don't want to wait until Wednesdays and Saturdays with Ben, my Salis and I, with, and me, you can go watch our hot takes and trending takes hourly on the Midas Touch YouTube Network and Channel and download us, follow, listen, subscribe and review everywhere you can get your podcasts. All free, these are the free ways you can support

this free crowd-funded, crowd-sourced media network. Karen, I'll see you next week. Take care. Bye all.