The MeidasTouch Podcast - Legal RAMIFICATIONS of Trump APPOINTMENTS

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas leads this live episode with Talking Feds host Harry Litman, former top federal prosecutor, on Donald Trump’s latest nominations. Thanks to our sponsors: PrizePicks: Download the PrizePicks app today https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/MEIDAS and use code MEIDAS and get $50 instantly when you play $5! Trade Coffee: Trade is offering up to $15 OFF select plans and get your first bag of coffee FREE at https://DrinkTrade.com/MEIDAS VIIA: Try VIIA Hemp! https://bit.ly/viiameidas and use code MEIDAS Join the LegalAF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/legalAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is an emergency episode of the Midas Touch podcast. I wanted to bring in Harry Littman of the Talking Feds YouTube channel, the Talking Feds podcast, which is partnered with the Midas Touch Network. Now, Harry used to be a United States attorney in Pennsylvania, which is basically the top federal law enforcement officer in the state, the top prosecutor in the state. Harry was a leader within the Department of Justice. So he knows the ins and outs here better than anybody out there pretty much. So it's important that we have Harry here for his very specific expertise. That's why his YouTube channel is called Talking Feds. He's a former fed. He brings in federal prosecutors. He has the experience in this area. So, you know, Harry, to learn that Matt Gaetz, who was under federal

investigation at one point, was nominated by Donald Trump to be the Attorney General of the United States of America. Matt Gaetz has now apparently resigned from Congress. He's intent on taking this position. We hear a lot of resistance on the Hill from senators, but Donald Trump apparently is keen to go around the senators, do recess appointments, get Matt Gaetz. And there's a whole bunch of other appointments that we should be discussing as well. Tulsi Gabbard to be the DNI head that's in charge of our national intelligence infrastructure, to have Tom Homan run ICE, Kristi Noem to be the Homeland Security Secretary, Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State. I guess out of that bunch, Marco Rubio probably the most normal of them, And that's saying something right

there. But some real dangerous people, Hillary Clinton warned that Tulsi Gabbard may have been compromised by Russia. And May is doing a lot of work there in my statement because she's been making posts that seem to just mimic Russian propaganda, almost word for word, talking about Ukrainian bio labs as the reason why Russia was justified in unlawfully invading Ukraine. She's made a lot of statements like that. But let's start at the outset here, Harry. You know the Department of Justice about better than anybody. You worked at the top positions there. How is this hitting the DOJ? What should the country know about Matt Gaetz being nominated for this position? What's your reaction, Harry?

So, you know, we've been holding our breath a little since Tuesday for how bad could it be. I think Gates would have been a likely choice if there were a parlor game of who is the absolute worst choice for Attorney General, so bad that it couldn't even be considered. And indeed, he wasn't even on the list. He is really the perfect anti-AG. He, as you say, has been a long time himself under investigation. He seemed to have skated through the raindrops because a witness wouldn't come forward, but it's inculcated him great antipathy for the mission of the DOJ. He has been a Trump loyalist in all the sort of fights with the DOJ and has been deeply hostile toward it. He will approach not just with zeal, but with a certain viciousness, the goal of hollowing out the career staff. Let me just amplify on that for a bit, because as you say, I was a line prosecutor in different offices, but I was at Maine Justice. You have today, I'm sure, a line to throw up in the bathroom.

People could not be more horrified, and I've spoken with some of them. anticipate either that they will be forced out more or less if they try to do their jobs and that the very best scenario is that their lives will be made miserable. This is a guy who has as his mission the undoing of the whole prosecuting without fear or favor goal of the, and lifeblood, the heart and soul of the Department of Justice. He's coming in like with an ax at the foundations of the entire department. People are horrified. Could literally, I think, been worse than our worst worries. He also now lets, you know, he's someone he continues to be under investigating the ethics committee for illicit drug use and sexual misconduct. He's the kind of guy, you know, he flashed his pictures of his sexual content quest on the floor of the house he is deeply unpopular there and this recess appointment we should talk about it more but I'll just say for

now he is someone who not only would be a reviled within I'm not talking about Democrat versus Republican. I'm talking about 99% of the legal culture, Republican and Democrat would say, this guy is the worst kind of figure you can have atop the Department of Justice, the most damaging, the most corrosive, the most cynical. So who will not only be there for deeply unfair reprisal prosecutions, but will just hollow out the entire career staff. I'm trying to maintain a calm tone, but this for the, in the annals of the Department of Justice really is a day that will live in infamy. He is far worse even than a Matt Whitaker, someone who maybe came in with disrespect for the Department of Justice. He's an antagonist. He himself is really suspect in his own behavior. And he will just come at it with a wrecking ball and gleefully and do it with contempt for the entire career staff, which again is the lifeblood

of the department. For all the bated breath we've had since Tuesday, this turns out to be last Tuesday, worse even than we might have thought. There's just no way to sugarcoat it. This is a disaster for the rank and file of the department, for certain people who are going to be in the crosshairs completely unfairly, like Matt Smith, and really for the American people who may not realize it now, but rely so much on a democracy that has at its foundation, the rule of law and a tradition of prosecution without fear or favor, that is just being blown up with dynamite in the form of Matt Goetz. So Harry Littman, everybody, just a reminder, he hosts the Talking Feds podcast. He runs the Talking Feds YouTube channel.

Everybody make sure you subscribe to the Talking Feds YouTube channel. Let's call in another guest who works with the Midas Touch Network. You know him, of course, Michael Popak. He runs the Legal AF YouTube channel. So both are affiliated with the Midas Touch Network as we continue to grow. Make sure you subscribe both to the Talking Feds YouTube channel and the Legal AF YouTube channel. Popak, I want to show you some of these video clips of Matt Gaetz, then get your reaction because Harry was talking about this is worse than the worst fears of people who monitor the Department of Justice, who know the ins and outs

of what Matt Gaetz means as a threat to law and order in the DOJ. Here's Matt Gaetz at a recent committee hearing comparing federal agents to cockroaches. Here, play this clip. And one thing you kind of notice is that feds are like cockroaches. You see one outside the walls, there's probably 10 behind the walls that you don't see. And in this particular case, we deserve the truth, the answer. Matt Gaetz said that the only women who care about reproductive rights are ugly women. Here, play this clip. Is it safe to say that based off of your comments, you're suggesting that these women at these

abortion rallies are ugly and overweight? Yes. What do you say to people who think that those comments are offensive? Be offended. Let me show you right here what he posted recently before the election. He said, the core plot of the Barbie movie was distracting men so they wouldn't vote. Don't make the Barbie movie come true. And let me show you this. This is Kevin McCarthy right here on CNN. Here's what he had to say about Matt Gaetz. And here, Kevin McCarthy doesn't shy away from talking about he says he hopes the young women get just as they deserve when it comes to Matt

Gaetz here play this clip he said you to get booed off the stage what's your response to him well you know he looks very unhinged. I mean, a lot of people have concerns about him. And I'm not sure if he was on something, but I do hope he gets the help that he needs. But more importantly, I hope the young women get the justice they deserve when it comes to him. I mean, you're referring to the House Ethics Committee investigation that is ongoing. Yeah, with his partner in jail because they paid underage women for sex and drugs. Yeah, that's what I'm referring to. So he has denied all of that.

I'm wondering, doesn't he deserve the presumption of innocence here? Well, people are in jail. The women have confirmed it. He came to me. If I still wanted to be speaker, I could have done something illegal and stopped the Ethics Committee investigation that started four years before. He told you to stop the Ethics Committee investigation? Yeah, that's what the whole motion to vacate was about.

He wanted me to engage and thought somehow I started this investigation. It started long before I was ever Speaker. And as you know, as Congress, I don't get involved in ethics. It's an equal number. They could investigate me. It has to be its own arm and branch. And so he wanted to leverage me to try to do that. And if I didn't, he wanted to do a motion to vacate. And he's denied that, of course, that he urged you to stop the investigation.

No, I had other members come to me. He came to me. I had other people who were on TV that he talked to. Yeah. Yeah. So no no there's no denying it so he was michael popock of the legal af youtube channel you heard what harry had to say what's your reaction to all of this i'll take it from the our adversaries abroad if um i envision a meeting right now going on a debriefing room for putin And I'm sure he said, okay, let me go through all of this with everybody. Who is their head of the Department of Defense? It's got to be a colonel or a general or some lead strategist for them, right? No, it's a talking head from Fox News that hosts their New Year's Eve show. Okay. So let's go over their attorney general position.

They're the shining light of justice around the world, right? That's part of the American brand. So they must have a former Supreme Court judge or a justice or a prosecutor of some heft and gravitas, right? Like, you know, they. Oh, the guy in the sex trafficking allegations? This is the guy who never practiced law for more than a minute? This is their head of their Department of Justice? Donald Trump must really hate his citizenry then. Who is their head of national intelligence. It's got to be somebody, a former spook or a spymaster like me, you know, my counterpart. Who is it? I'm sorry, Tulsi Gabbard is there? I mean, this is a big middle finger to the American people and insults the intelligence of even the people that voted for him. I mean, we can set aside for a minute why 2 million people on the Democratic side decided to sit out democracy for the next four years and not vote. But here, all we're doing is emboldening our adversaries. We could not. Donald Trump is doing inside this country what our adversaries could never hope to accomplish with their trolling, their cyber attacks, and the rest. He's doing it for them. I mean, to put these inflatable dolls, these puppets in front of these major, major institutions, think of the signal it

sends to the rest of the world. And just as Harry said about what this is going to do to the morale of the Department of Justice and line prosecutors and the rest, who I'm sure we're hearing the typing now of their resignation letters, because they'll never, no self-respecting prosecutor like in Harry's level, would ever even stick around to meet Matt Gaetz at the welcome party. They'll be long gone, just as Jack Smith will be long gone. In addition, he's doing the exact same thing to the military. By lopping off the heads of all of the brass. The generals, three-star and four-star, are going to replace them, I guess, with captains and colonels that will be elevated to four-star generals to support Donald Trump. And what signal does that send, not just to the American people, I'll get to that in a minute, But to our enemies, terrorists, nation states,

if anybody doubted that the American empire is in decline, look at the clown show that Donald Trump is thinking he can get away with, mainly because he's going to be with Elon Musk, his own Secretary of State, his own Secretary of Defense, his own director. He doesn't listen to intelligence briefings anyway. We knew that from 2016. So it doesn't really matter who's in that particular position. And now the major big giant middle finger to the American people, including the people that voted for him,

is Matt Gaetz, somebody who's this close to getting convicted or prosecuted for sex trafficking of underage girls, and who the ethics committee to this moment is still investigating with an open investigation. And you saw all the other disgusting clips that you had. This is the person that you're supposed to go home to your children and say, look, look, Billy, this is who our president just picked as a role model, as the chief legal officer of the United States. I'll leave it on this, Ben. I didn't think it would take this, I thought it would take longer for Donald Trump to overplay the hand that he was dealt last Tuesday.

And now we got to treat this as a gift. We got to pin him down and make him as lame duck as possible and do everything we got to do in the courts. A Matt Gaetz-led Department of Justice, we'll take them on in the courts. But here's the issue. We have to use this and point it out to all the people to say, look at this clown show that he has reduced America to with his selections and cramming it down America's throats. And if this is the reason he wants Thune or anybody in the Senate to have an immediate recess in order to cram down our throats, the acting Attorney General Matt Gaetz, then we got to stand up now, hair on fire, and make sure that Senate, which allegedly are already rebelling, we think MAGA

against this bridge too far, this gates too far that Donald Trump has just selected in the attorney general. Harry, I want you to talk through recess appointments. What that means, John Thune, Senator from South Dakota, Republican, more of a moderate. If there was any good news today, you got John Thune as the majority leader. What power he holds. I want to talk about that. I want to remind everybody though, who's watching, you have the Talking Feds YouTube channel. That's led by Harry Litman. It's so important right now that we build these sources of accurate data. The corporate media has just completely let us all down. It's a big understatement. So we here at the Midas Dutch Network are working to branch out and build all of our legal knowledge, right? So

you have the Talking Feds YouTube channel run by Harry, former United States attorney. He brings other top prosecutors on. You get some great information there, right? We have the Legal AF YouTube channel with Michael Popak, daily hot takes there led by Michael Popak. And then everybody, you should check out MidasPlus.com as well, M-E-I-D-A-S-P-L-U-S.com. That's our sub stack. We're trying to build this. Look, we all know, unfortunately, we're already under attack. We're going to be under attack from these forces.

We have to build and consolidate right now, build these protective moats around what we're doing so we can keep getting out accurate information. Harry, I'm being told by our producer, I have to cut to our pro-democracy sponsors. I'm going to be right back. This will be quick. We don't have outside investors. So this is what we got to do. Then I want to hear about the recess appointments.

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I just want to say as to- You can't just go Lauren Boebert. I saw, Harry, memes of that as a prank because I saw that just the idea of it was so preposterous that that could never happen. And I saw, given that you have Matt Gaetz as the attorney general, anything is possible. But I want to make sure that's accurate data because I saw a lot of fake memes of the Lauren Boebert. All right. Well, I have a statement from President-elect Donald J. Trump, so it'd be quite a counterfeit. I'm thrilled to announce the incredible Lauren Boebert will be taking the reins of, yeah. Can I just ask a question for the group? What does Marjorie Taylor Greene get then? She's going to, right? What is Marjorie Taylor Greene going to get in this administration?

Right? By the way, so Ben, first, good question. And, you know, if this is a fantastic counterfeit, let's put it aside for now because I want to get to it. The Lauren Boebert piece, though. Yep. I still think that, look, let's put it this way. The fact that we're even talking about that being a possibility is a strong indictment of the current situation. I still think I have to double check.

I think that there's a lot of people writing things that are inaccurate and they're attributing it to him. So I want to be super careful. I'm not sure that one is accurate yet. We'll get more data and info on it. But we do know the following. We do know Matt Gaetz, Attorney General. Fact.

We do know Kristi Noem, South Dakota governor. We do know that she's Homeland Security Secretary being nominated there. That's a fact. Tom Holman, author of Project 2025, who talks about bloody mass deportations. Borders are. We know that to be a fact. We know Tulsi Gabbard, head of DNI, she'll literally be in charge of our national intelligence. And many people believe that she is compromised by Russia because she parrots a lot of the Russia talking points. We know that to be a fact. Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, we know that to be a fact. Mike Huckabee. So for all of the people who were part of the non-commit vote or a lot of people who were protesting Vice President Kamala Harris and

said that Donald Trump's going to be great to the Palestinians, Mike Huckabee doesn't even say the word. West Bank, he calls it Judea and Sumer and says, I'm not even acknowledging the existence of it. It should basically be annexed by Israel. And Marco Rubio, the same thing. Marco Rubio's position. Who we would have considered an adult. I do want to make this point. First, mea culpa. In a commercial, it could well have been a- You got me here, Harry. You have me here. It could have been true. It easily could have been true. ranks of attorneys and especially DOJ alums in Washington, whether the R's say it or not,

are horrified. This is the department where on the fifth floor, you're talking Merrick Garland, but you're talking Edward Levy, a Republican stalwart who cleaned up the rottenness after Watergate, Robert Jackson, Robert Kennedy. This is a tradition that is way, way bigger than the Democratic-Republican kind of conflict. So Gates is really a singular figure. All right, let's talk recess appointments. And yeah, look, they get a little nerdy, but this is the way, in fact, that Trump is going to be able to work as well. And we need to be able to explain it. Why would he want a recess appointment? Gates, you already heard, and you saw it with McCarthy, is deeply unpopular. And he has, to say the least, a checkered past. Whether or not he met the federal jurisdictional requirements for sex trafficking,

his overall hijinks with the convicted associate in Florida, Greenberg, of his conduct with underage girls and drugs is really not in any dispute. That's going to be one colorful and incendiary background report, and it will give the Democrats something they have little chance at now, which is hearings where they can bring out the bad points to the American people. So what's the possible solution? The Constitution permits recess appointments. You can imagine, especially back then when the Senate sat only for a few months at a Court, is if the Senate is in recess, and the court has said that's got to be a real recess. They tried this before where they said nominally we're in recess, but we're still holding these sessions. Court said no, they have to be in real recess, at least 10 days, then you can make these appointments.

And when you make these recess appointments, which can last up to a year and then be renewed, you don't have to go through the background investigation, the hearing, the vote, et cetera, which a guy like Gates, notwithstanding Trump's large victory, could really be voted down. He would be a controversial nominee. So that seems to be the plan that Trump is calling for. He wants to do it by recess appointment. He's making it sound as if it would be for speed. It takes too long, but that's really not going to be. Speed is not the issue when you have 53 senators. The issue is airing the dirty laundry and absolute incompatibility for the job of Matt

Goetz. If he tries it, however, the question will be, is there a real recess here? Is it the kind of thing that the Supreme Court will uphold? Because if it isn't, unscrambling the eggs after is a total mess. It means that he could be in office illegitimately, and there could be a cloud over anything and everything he does. So it'll be easier for Trump to do it straight away, but that it'll be at the cost of a hearing and attention focused on Goetz and his really almost singularly poor record to try to lead the Department of Justice. note as well, after this live, you should automatically be taken to the Legal AF live as well, hosted by Michael Popak and Karen Friedman Agnifilo, the midweek episode. If for

whatever reason it doesn't take you there, just click on it because Michael Popak, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, one of the most watched shows on YouTube, Legal AF. Here's how I want to get interactive though. Do one blue heart, please. If you are subscribed to Harry Littman's YouTube channel, Talking Feds, do two blue hearts. If you are subscribed to Harry Littman's YouTube channel, Talking Feds, as well as the Legal AF YouTube channel. Now do three blue hearts if you're subscribed to Talking Feds and Legal AF on YouTube, and you are a subscriber to MidasPlus.com, our new sub stack community as well. We're trying to find ways to grow this because one of the ironies, Michael Popak, that I've seen is this is the chaos, the drama, the danger

that corporate media wanted, right? This is what they were rooting for. They sanewashed all of this and then they unleashed this on us. And Popak, they thought this would be good for their ratings, right? Now, instead of a retired four-star general like Lloyd, like Lloyd Austin as secretary of defense, you have a Fox and friends weekend host, Peter Henseth, who's not even qualified enough to make the weekday show. But here's the thing. People are cutting the cord, right? Michael, but people are, if they thought this was going to get them viewers, Hegseth, if they thought they were going to get them viewers, it's the opposite. Who wants to turn on these cable news networks and corporate news networks? Can you imagine Hegseth heading into a meeting with his counterpart overseas, one of the ones

that Donald Trump's tough talk is going to solve the world's problems, and he walks into the Israeli Hamas issue, or he walks into a meeting with Russia, with Ukraine, and in comes this guy who's been in hair and makeup for the last 14 years for Fox News. That is our best and brightest that's leading this country. I mean, this is not only an FU to the American people. It's an FU to our allies around the country and to the American brand. As I said before, I'll say it again, in Putin's wildest wet dream or in the lab of his mind, he could never have invented a person to hold the American brand and so sully it and so undermine it and hollow it out than this version of Donald Trump. He's just doing the bidding for our enemies. And the American people, and I'm okay, I'm not here to tell people I told you so. We're not on this network, on this channel. We're here to say, we're here for you when you have buyer's remorse,

and when you realize that you did not vote in alliance with your own values and your own morals, because the policies and the people that you're about to see be put in place is not going to match up with what you thought. Because you followed trolls and in the last minute gasped to decide who to vote for, you decided, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. He'll be fun for the next four years. And look, as you said, Ben, I'll leave it on this. The intersection of law and politics where you, Harry, me, that we sit has just become the most important thoroughfare in democracy. There's no other way to put it. It's time to lean into it. And now we're going to have

to work through the federal judges, the ones that weren't appointed by Donald Trump, the ones that aren't MAGA and the circuits to oppose these executive orders. He's going to be ruling by executive order and fiat. He's going to stay away from MAGA Congress. And we're going to have to challenge in courts the way we did in 2016 and 2020. We're going to have to challenge in courts on a regular basis. Well, that's all you, me and Harry are going to be talking about for the next two years. This suit got filed, this suit got signed, and this got blocked, and this got blocked because this is what we have to do. This is what's left of our checks and balance system given the Supreme Court decision about immunity. This is all we're left with.

Well, look, these are the times where you need leadership. You need people to step up. And what we're going to do here using the platform that we have, I'd love to have more power than the platform. But all I need is one mic, as a lyric from the rap song Nas. All I need is one mic, right? We've got YouTube channels. We've got sub stacks. We've got a website. And we've got an audience of about 3.34 million subscribers on our YouTube channel.

So we're going to do our part and everybody can do their part. We're going to do our part and we're going to build and support other pro-democracy voices. It's why it's so important when I say make sure you subscribe to Harry's YouTube channel, Talking Fence. Make sure you're subscribed to the Legal AF YouTube channel. Harry, before we throw it to the Legal AF live show, I want to get your just last take. What's your message to the Midas Mighty out there, other than that they need to subscribe to your YouTube channel? Yeah. I mean, look, there's so many, it really underscores what Michael had to say. People voted for him for a welder of reasons, but it wasn't, I think, except for a really small segment, because they wanted to essentially just demolish the democracy and their system of rule of law. And he's as if, to further Michael's thought experiment about Putin, if they had given Putin the nomination power, so far he couldn't have come up with a better set

of people. And it seems like legal and bureaucratic and hard to follow. But I hope if we're doing our job right, that people understand the stakes of some of these deeply cynical, nasty, callous choices for people's day-to-day liberty, not to mention economic well-being, health and welfare, security in a dangerous world. These legal arcane points are what he's going to try to exploit with a handpicked, crazy group of allies to just basically do a wrecking project on the American democratic system. It sounds hyperbolic to say, but with a day like today substantiates it in spades and it's just horrifying. And we have to,

as you say, use whatever's left state power, certain judges, the media to the extent they can be called on, but that seems very limited. And our own voice is at least educating people so they know what is going on and what's at stake. We got to rebuild this broken media. One way to start doing that is make sure you all subscribe to Harry Litman's YouTube channel, which is the Talking Feds YouTube channel. Subscribe to the

Legal AF YouTube channel run by Michael Popak. I love featuring two incredibly bright voices leading the pro-democracy legal community movement here on the Midas Touch. And before we throw you to the Legal AF Live, which is about to start at 30 seconds, I want to remind everybody about seven hours ago, we posted a poll on the community page of our YouTube. It helps us get data about what are your favorite shows? What are you looking for? How could we be better producers and hosts? So you just search the community, make sure you fill out that poll. We're getting a lot of great data and we really want to listen to all of you. It's on the community page. Thank you, everybody. You will now be transferred to the Legal AF Show. And if you don't get automatically

transferred, just click out and go to the lives and then click on Legal AF. See you, everybody. Thank you, Harry. Thank you, Popak. Thank you, Midas Mighty. Thanks, Harry. Bye, Matt. Thanks, Matt. Have a good one. All right. Cheers.