The MeidasTouch Podcast - Special Edition: MeidasTouch Presents 'Legal AF', Episode 2

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

On Episode 2 of our new weekly law and politics podcast, Legal AF, hosts MT founder and civil rights lawyer Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and commentator, Michael Popok, take a deep dive into Trump lawyer and “Big Lie” shill Sidney Powell’s efforts to dismiss Dominion Voting Systems' new federal defamation case against her, including her eye-popping  “defense” that none of her statements of voter fraud against Dominion were true, and that no reasonable person could believe they were “facts”.  Next up, a discussion of MyPillow’s Mike Lindell’s hiring of Alan Dershowitz (we guess Rudy was tied up) to bring a defamation countersuit against Dominion, which could lead Dominion to one day owning My Pillow.  Later, Ben and Michael explore possible future prosecutions of Trump and his family for sedition for advocating the violent overthrow of the Government, and the “pay to play” scandal surrounding Trump’s pardon frenzy in his waning days, including a link between Florida’s Aleph Institute, the Kirshner family, and the pardons granted. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $5. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, English muffin sandwiches, value iced coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. Breaking news coming in from Bet365, where every nail-biting overtime win. Breakaway, pick six, three-point shot, underdog win, buzzer beater, shootout, walk-off,

and absolutely every play in between is amazing. From football to basketball and hockey to baseball, whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. Must be 19 or older, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Offer valid on standard browsers, U.S. only. When I heard about Date My Age, I thought, really? But there I was in my empty, quiet house, my laptop on the kitchen counter, and I typed in my name. Looking for a man between the ages of 40 to 60? Sure, why not? Date My Age is different. With verified profiles, you can feel safe and secure to explore meaningful connections with interesting and mature singles. Date My Age made it really easy.

I could join and view online profiles for free. All of a sudden, my empty house wasn't so quiet anymore. I got so much attention, it just made me feel seen and alive. Date My Age helped me start a totally new chapter in my life. Find a friend, a lover, a partner at Date My Age. Get 60% off when you join at DateMyAge.com today. That's DateMyAge.com to connect with thousands of singles worldwide. DateMyAge.com.

Welcome to Legal AF, Legal Analysis Friends. legal analysis friends, Ben Mycelis and Michael Popock. Michael Popock, who you can't see right now in Atlanta. Michael, how are you doing out there? How's Atlanta? Atlanta's great. I'm here visiting. Am I giving away your secret bunker location though now that you're hiding from people? Did I just give away a state secret? I am deep in my Georgia lair visiting my mom. But I've also had a good opportunity to meet a lot of people who live here in the last couple of days.

And they are just thrilled and brought up, particularly the work that Midas Touch did to help Senators Warnock and Ossoff get elected. And we had a lot of conversations with local people here, thrilled with the work that you and your brothers did. And I told them a little bit about what you and I did before with Kelly Loeffler, and they loved all that too. So it is actually fun to see your hard work in action and have people really complimentary of that project. Oh, that is so great to hear. This is Legal AF, the Midas Touch Legal Podcast. I am Ben

Micellis. I am the managing partner at Geragos and Geragos. We have Michael Popak, managing partner at Zumpano, Patricius and Popak. We are bringing you the law. We are bringing you the truth. We are bringing you the facts. If you want to know more about us, you can listen to our first inaugural episode of Legal AF. But you know what, Michael, we got to get into the law right now because that is what the people want to hear. And the first thing that I want to talk about is the Sidney Powell motion to dismiss in federal court. I believe it's filed in D.C. It is the case, the defamation case brought by the Dominion voting system. Of course, Sidney Powell was the one of the main spreaders of the big lie after the election, not just the main spreader of the big lie.

She took the big lie and went off with it and went totally crazy with it. Sidney Powell is the one saying that the Dominion voting system had deals with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Hugo Chavez is no longer alive and that the Venezuelan government had a plot to overthrow the United States government with the Dominion voting system. And so after this company, Dominion, which actually has paper ballots that even go with the electronic system, which was audited every which way and was proof that all of their counting was 100% accurate. In the face of all these lies, this company took a huge reputational hit by the Trump sector of this country. Their executives suffered death threats, horrible experience for this company. And they fought back. They filed a billion plus dollar defamation suit against a number of people,

including Sidney Powell. We will also talk about the case that they brought against the MyPillow guy because apparently he thought it was wise to, I suppose, countersue them for defamation and just trying to escalate the crazy shit that these Trumpers are doing. But let's get into what Sidney Powell is now saying as after being sued by Dominion, she has filed a motion to dismiss in federal court on two grounds, a jurisdictional ground, both jurisdictional venue, and then on a substantive ground, a motion to dismiss saying that the allegations in the Dominion lawsuit against her can't state a cause of action. So maybe, Mike, before we get into it, very briefly for our listeners who aren't deeply embedded in the legal community, maybe first just discuss what a motion to dismiss is versus

a summary judgment style motion versus trial. Like, what is this motion to dismiss procedurally? Yeah, I think that would be helpful. And we'll dive right into that through the Sidney Powell lawsuit. Remember, she's the one that said she's going to release the Kraken. I think we have found that, you know, I don't know about Kraken, but this certainly is an odd defense that she has raised through a motion to dismiss. And to answer your question for our followers, when a lawsuit is filed, the defendant on the other side of the case can do a number of things in response. They can answer the suit, which is just file an answer. It's exactly what it sounds like. You go allegation

by allegation in the complaint, and you say whether it's admitted or denied. And then you raise the fences in writing in that type of pleading, and you file it. And then that's it. You have a complaint, you have an answer. We now call that the issue has been joined, and the case can eventually be set for trial. Or you can file a motion against the court to dismiss the complaint or even the action itself based on what has been filed initially in the initial complaint. And you do it on various grounds. You can say that the claims that have been brought against the defendant don't state a claim, that they don't satisfy the elements required under the law to make out a claim, in this case, for defamation. The law says you got to have three or four elements to make out a case for defamation,

and your motion to dismiss will say none of those elements or not all of those elements are present, and therefore the case should be dismissed. You can also raise a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. You can argue that the court does not have jurisdiction over the matter, either the subject matter, so wrong court, another type of court should be hearing this dispute, or the person who's being sued, whether it's a corporation or an individual like Sidney Powell, can argue that the court has jurisdiction generally over the subject matter of the case, but a court has personal jurisdiction over a person. And it boils down to whether the person, through their activities or actions, should have reasonably believed that they'd be hailed into court in that particular courthouse in that particular district, or whether their actions, while maybe having violated a law or a contract,

and they can be sued, but they shouldn't be sued in that courthouse, they should be sued in a courthouse closer to where they live. And so there is often a fight in a motion to dismiss. It's a common argument that's raised, I've been sued in the wrong courthouse. You should sue me where I live. I don't have enough contacts or nexus to the venue or the jurisdiction that the lawsuit's been filed. And the listeners might be saying, well, who cares? If they're going to get sued anywhere, anyway, who cares where they're sued? Well, the defendant cares because frankly, they always think it's easier for them, maybe a home court advantage if they're sued in Well, the defendant cares because frankly, they always think it's easier for them, maybe a home court advantage if they're sued in their own backyard. Sidney Powell's backyard

happens to be Texas. So of course, she doesn't want to be sued in the District of Columbia, in the DC federal, in the federal court in the District of Columbia, where she thinks she's not going to get the right judge, maybe a Democrat, Democratic appointee, or the right jury. Ultimately, she wants, you know, home cooking for a Texas judge in a Texas courthouse in the federal courthouse. So that's the first argument that a lot of defendants make claiming lack of jurisdiction. And then they attack the elements. And then summary judgment is sort of a different bird altogether. Summary judgment is generally brought after discovery is concluded, or after depositions have been taken, after facts have been developed in the case.

You can bring a summary judgment early. If you say to the judge, judge, they're on the undisputed factual record. This case should never get to a trial. There's no need for a trial because you judge as a matter of law on the record indisputed. You can decide this case right now. And a lot of defendants try that or even plaintiffs try that. It's an aggressive tactic. The way to defeat a motion for summary judgment and get your day in court in a trial is to argue that the number one way to do it is to argue that there are facts that are in dispute, that only the trier of fact, either the judge or the jury, depending upon whether you have a jury trial right or not, has to decide, has to hear the evidence and sort it out. And then, and only then, can the lawgiver, the judge, or the jury, decide the case. And

that's the typical way you defeat a summary judgment. But the Sidney Powell motion right now is a motion to dismiss against Dominion's lawsuit for defamation. And just for the followers to pick up the pieces here, Dominion has contracts to operate about 40% of the voting machines in America have the Dominion brand on them. And so they are an important part of electoral process. They are, you know, when the former cybersecurity head of the U.S. elections came out early on and said this was the fairest, most honest, most accurate election in history. He was relying on, in part, the paper trail, the audit trail of machines made by companies like Dominion to show the public that for every electric ballot, electronic ballot, there was a matching paper ballot and what they call an audit trail that auditors and recount people and officials can review to determine that when the machine says 14,000 votes for Biden and 9,000 votes for Trump, that the paper ballots match. And if they do, which they did overwhelmingly in every place,

for instance, Dominion's machines were used, then that's the reason that election officials can say we had a fair election. So Dominion, having been torched by the big lie, and Sidney Powell being a primary architect of the big lie, that there was fraud in the election, undermining their entire business model, potentially costing them billions upon billions of dollars of damage, as sued as any company would. If the company was Coca-Cola or Walmart or Apple, they would do the exact same thing if somebody with the imprimatur of the president standing at a podium and giving Sunday morning interviews and filing lawsuits claiming that Dominion's software is so corrupted

that it was invented by communists in Venezuela to rig elections. I mean, what could be more damning to a election-based company, a voting company, than to be accused of having software created fraudulently in Venezuela? And then when she sued about it, she just says, well, we'll get to it next. She just says, oh, that's just my opinion. No one should really have believed me. No one should really have believed me. No reasonable person could have believed me. And that's also in her motion to dismiss. So long-winded way of giving you your answer, Ben. That's how we got to a motion to dismiss.

And so it's a 42-page motion to dismiss that, again, is not based on discovery, meaning in the litigation process, you'll have depositions taken, document requests. Depositions are when you'll speak to the other side or witnesses under oath. The motion to dismiss basically says, just based on what you're alleging in the complaint, either one, this case shouldn't be in this court, or two, based on what you're saying in the complaint, you can't even state the facts that make this sufficient to even be a case. We can't even get to the next phase. here, oh, a motion to dismiss is filed, this, this, that. But I want to really break it down on this podcast, like what specifically is in this motion and do it in a fairly brief but thorough way. And so basically what this motion starts off by saying on its very first page is one of the reasons that the court should look suspiciously at the Dominion lawsuit is because it is a law.

It's a very silly legal argument that has no validity whatsoever. But in the very first footnote on the first page, Sidney Powell's lawyers say the complaint is 124 pages with over 230 paragraphs and subparagraphs, not to mention 107 separate exhibits constituting 230 megabytes of data. First of all, you could tell that these lawyers are old because 230 megabytes is actually not a lot of megabytes of data. In cases that I do, I deal with eight terabytes of data very consistently. So 230 megs, I think that the lawyer was going over this while he was listening to his MP3 player and talking about megabytes. So they first go off by saying this is a very long lawsuit.

And then, Michael, as you said, you know number one, the only ways there can be jurisdiction in Washington, D.C. over Sidney Powell is if one, there is general jurisdiction. That means Sidney Powell has so much systematic ties to Washington, D.C. She lives in Washington, D.C. or works consistently in Washington, D.C. or has so much contact there that there should just be an exercise of general jurisdiction, regardless of what it is that she specifically does in a specific incident. There's just enough contacts with a jurisdiction so that a court can basically rule on her matter. And they argue that there shouldn't be general jurisdiction over there. My own view of it is I think general jurisdiction

could be a tough call. She does live in Texas. She spends most of her time in Texas, but she was in Washington, D.C., a ton for this election. She was in the White House a lot. She probably could be proven to have been there more than half the year at this point, based on all of the news reports that I've seen of her out there. She was certainly there a ton. So on the general jurisdiction question, I'll get to the next one where I think there's definitely specific jurisdiction. And then Washington, D.C. has another statute. If you commit tortious conduct and the results of the torts are felt in a specific state. But I think general jurisdiction could be to go either way. I think you're right. I think you're right on right on the money about General, although I think she operated so much in Washington, D.C. that she really should have been admitted to the bar to practice there. I think, the standard for general personal jurisdiction is that the

person's activity in the jurisdiction or such that she has made herself at home in the jurisdiction so that when she gets sued there, she shouldn't be surprised. Look, I think it's a tough call on general, but I think at the end of the day, you're right. The court's going to come down about whether there are sufficient connections and contacts to the jurisdiction through her use, specific conduct related to dominion and to give the court the jurisdiction that it needs. So the next question is when you're analyzing jurisdiction is, is there specific jurisdiction over a defendant? And here, Sidney Powell says there's no specific jurisdiction over her. To have specific

jurisdiction, you have to have engaged in the conduct. And the conduct that you engaged in in the jurisdiction is what's caused the specific injury here, is a general recasting of specific jurisdiction. And I think for this case, there clearly is specific jurisdiction because she was talking about it in Washington, D.C. The effects of the tortious conduct were felt in D.C., both from a government level, a policy setting level, and just a very practical level of the damage of the defamation was done in that jurisdiction. I mean, she was out there, you know, on the rallies, on the TV networks, consistently making the defamatory statements at issue. You don't get to go into a state, engage in misconduct in that state, and then say, you know what, state, you don't have jurisdiction over me for me breaking the law in your state. That's the basic recasting of specific jurisdiction. You do bad deed in state,

that state has jurisdiction over you for bad deed. Yeah, the constitutional due process analysis, which goes on for personal jurisdiction, is only to just determine whether it's fair that the person be held into court in that particular place. They're going to be in a courthouse. This is not just for the listeners. She's going to get sued somewhere, whether this case got, you know, she had her grand slam home run and it gets transferred. It's only going to get transferred to a Texas court. So there's no issue related to whether she's going to get sued once. Sorry. Live updates right now. Michael Popak is being asked a question during the live recording. Michael Popak live being asked a question from somebody. But as Michael Popak was saying, she is going to be sub-sued somewhere. At the end of the day, whether she gets sued in Texas, whether she gets sued

in Washington, D.C. or another state, this doesn't prevent her from getting sued. Strategically, why is she doing this? She wants to get sued in Texas. She believes the Texas judge is going to be advantageous to her. Yeah. So, but yes, thanks, Ben. As I said, I'm visiting family here. We did have a moment of life intruding or interrupting there. So the issue, as you said earlier, is can you go and stand on a box in a city or a state and do damage to another party and then walk away and claim there's no personal jurisdiction over you to be sued in that very place. As you noted, every interview she gave, all of the Sunday morning talk shows based in Washington, the press conferences of the White House, with or without Trump present, the interviews with the epic times run by the Korean who knows what,

all done there. If she wanted to only be sued in Texas, it was very simple. All those press conferences, all those interviews, everything that she did, she had to do it from Texas. But once she ventured into, and of course she loved the celebrity, and she loved the publicity that came from being in Washington and rubbing, rubbing elbows and rubbing shoulders with all the Trump people and Trump himself. And then for her, you know, it's a pretty, you know, it's a lot of crocodile tears to then say, wow, why am I being sued in the place where I did all of these bad things? Yeah, I said that Hugo Chavez was a co-conspirator with the Dominion voting system to rig the U.S. elections. I said it in Washington, D.C. You're suing me in Washington,

D.C. How could that have ever happened? And then and then, you know, so those are the jurisdictional issues. She makes another quick jurisdictional issue saying that there it's an inconvenient forum and that it's inconvenient for her to go to Washington, D.C. But I think that's just a totally bullshit argument. I mean, they're all bullshit arguments. But the fact to say that it's an inconvenient argument when it's convenient for you to show up in Washington, D.C., like half of the year to make these lies and then say it would be inconvenient for you to have to then deal with the repercussions of your action

there is a bit absurd. So that's just for the listeners. That's her fallback argument that even if there were personal jurisdiction over her and she could be sued in Washington, she shouldn't be sued in D.C. She should be sued in Texas. And the federal judge should transfer the case from federal courthouse D.C. to federal courthouse Texas because of a concept called forum nonconvenience, which is the here's the party saying all of the documents, all of the witnesses, all of the, you know, my lawyers and everything. They're all in in Texas. By the way, I'm not sure her lawyers are even in Texas. And certainly the witnesses are her and Dominion and the public. So I don't think she wins on that.

So you're right. And that's usually a very weak T that's argument that's brought up to, you know, a last gasp effort to get it to your home forum is to say, judge, you know, the forum is inconvenient. Send it back to my back, my backyard. And then finally, we finally get into some issues on the factual allegations. And then, Michael, you were alluding to this before. The basic argument is that this was political speech that Sidney Powell was making. It was her opinion and that no one should view those statements as factual statements that have objective bearings on whether something was true or false and that it should just be viewed as tensions were high. I was a lawyer and I made a lot of inflammatory opinion statements, but nothing that I said should be viewed as actually saying that Hugo Chavez was a co-conspirator. That was just my opinion.

Yeah, I thought it was remarkable, but frankly, it's really the only place she can go on a motion to dismiss is to have to argue and just to bring everybody up to speed here. Defamation is generally of a fact that the party that utters it knows is not true, which causes damage or injury to the other person. So you make up facts, right, which we know Trump and his minions have been doing for years. This case, Sidney Powell says all sorts of crazy things about the Dominion voting machines and how they're not reliable and they're fraudulent and they conjure up votes and all sorts of other crazy things. So she has to argue, oh, that wasn't a fact. That was my opinion. That was political rhetoric spoken in the heat of the moment. And therefore, I should be given First Amendment protection. Because at the core, if a statement can't be proved true or false, it's hard to prove

defamation. If it's a pure opinion, it's almost impossible to prove defamation. So I get why she's doing it. But it is remarkable that in this, you know, back half of her motion in her brief, she spends time saying that no reasonable person, when I said that the Dominion voting machines can't be trusted because some Venezuelan, Hugo Chavez supporter conjured up some software, that obviously was my opinion. That was rhetoric. No reasonable voter could have believed that, but we know that that's exactly the opposite of what happened. Millions and millions and millions of voters believe that and still believe that to this day, including the people, and we'll talk about it later, who charged and insurrected at our capital in the cradle of our democracy and tried to overthrow the government. So words have power, words have meaning, and words can defame. And now she's trying to argue, you know, what, me? That was just my

opinion. Who in their right mind would follow me? Many, many people, millions of people. And one of the things that could have been, you know, that she could argue is, as we mentioned earlier in the show, which is why I wanted the context and what this motion is, is she could have just answered the complaint, not filed a motion to dismiss, denied the allegations and basically said, look, the truth is on my side. The biggest defense to defamation is the truth. And so if she has the accurate information, she can say, I'm going to put forward the true facts. Here are the true facts that prove all of the things that I said. And I spoke the truth, if that's what, you know, what she claimed she was doing when she was trying to interfere with and undermine a democratic election. And she could

say, here's the true facts. But this is what, you know, so before giving you my concluding opinion, I just want to think, what do you think the outcome is going to be here, Michael? Yeah, I think the way you framed it is just right. She can't do that. And her lawyers, to their credit, even though I agree with you, I thought their opening footnote arguing, oh, my God, this is too many pages. How are we ever going to figure out how to address it? It was silly. But they must have figured out early on, I mean, reading between the lines here, that there was no way, because it's not true, there was no way they could claim truth as a defense of all of her crazy statements that were made against Dominion and others. Because having interviewed her, they must have concluded that she'd have to lie or perjure herself if she were to say that any of that was true. So once they quickly had a quick session

with her client and said, okay, let's line up the statements that are in the lawsuit. Which of these are true that you know and show us the facts you have to support them before we do battle on your behalf in a courtroom? And she looked at them, and I'm summarizing, and said, none of them are true. Everything that I said was made up, had no factual support, despite my having said it with conviction and claiming that they were true during critical moments in our election process. So they said, OK, all right, got it. So we're not going to be able to use truth as a defense. So we're not going to answer the lawsuit. We're going to have to move

to dismiss. Let's claim it's all just big fat opinion and you can't prove it true or false. Let's do that. And that's what they've done. I think at the end of the day. I think she's going to lose the motion. I think it's going to stay in Washington, D.C. And I think that she's going to lose this case when it goes to trial and it will go to trial. I think ultimately for Dominion, it's going to be bittersweet. You could mark my words here and save the tape. She will declare personal bankruptcy and she will try to delay it through saying that she's got no money. That's going to happen in about two or three years.

We'll then have a podcast then whether or not it is a dischargeable in bankruptcy or not, which I don't believe it is. But we'll have that discussion in a few years. And she'll get what you say. And she'll get disbarred either because of this lawsuit or because of the future judgment that she doesn't pay. Bar associations hate lawyers who don't pay money and don't pay judgments. And she literally can lose her bar license. It'll get yanked in Texas or wherever she's holding it at that moment because of this. So I think Dominion's doing God's work here.

They're doing it for their own purpose. I'm hoping they didn't have the damages that they claim. But if they did, you're right. They're never going to collect them against Sidney Powell, but they need to crush her in this lawsuit and put her back under the rock that she crawled out of so she doesn't do mischief in the next election or anywhere else. Yeah, no doubt about it. And I think the one strategic mistake, I mean, there's a lot of strategic mistakes that were made in this filing. But the big strategic mistake, I think, was that first footnote by talking about how long the complaint was. I think all in all, it's actually not a terribly written motion to dismiss. It's actually a pretty good motion to dismiss.

It was not written by Sidney Powell. We know that. It was not written by Sidney Powell. It was actually very well written. Right. But here's the thing. When you go with that opening footnote, which basically whines about a complaint being really long,

but then one of your defenses about why the defamatory statements were opinion is because of the momentous significance of this being a presidential election and how significant of the discourse was to then have that disparity and It just, to me, diminishes your credibility. 230 megabytes is not a lot of megabytes. And so to me, once I read that, the moment I read that footnote, everything else that followed that footnote was like, all right, this is bullshit. I mean, not even, you know,

the moment someone whines about a long complaint is, you know, totally loses credibility on me. You don't need with that on page one of your brief if you want to be taken seriously. I also don't think, and for people that go, I think the Axios website has a nice copy of this motion for the listeners that want to go look at it. But I also thought that cutting and pasting screenshots from the complaint to make their point actually made the point of that the complaint was making. And I don't I think sort of undermines their position. I don't think having these

repeated shots of Sidney Powell with the, you know, the titles underneath her helps their case. It only proves the point that she should be take people listening to her would have thought that these were facts being expressed by a, quote, former federal prosecutor, as she's identified in one screenshot, or Trump campaign lawyer, or whatever it was. These are the opinions of Sidney Powell, and no one should really believe what I'm saying. And don't sue me for defamation. That's not there. She's out advocating on a daily basis facts that are not true. That is the heart of defamation. less of a deep dive into some of these next cases, but I think it's always important and helpful to those listening. Look, if you're in the legal community and you knew all that stuff, feel free to fast forward through it and then we'll hit the other topics. But I don't think most people out

there in 90 to 95% of our listeners truly know the processes and the intricacies that go into these motions and the inside baseball and really breaking it down there, I think, is is is helpful. On the other side of this, the Sidney Powell, not on the other side, I should say the same side of craziness. Mike Liddell, the my pillow fascist, you know, conspiracy theorist, nut job. His strategy to the lawsuit that Dominion filed against him was he apparently filed his own lawsuit or threatened to file his own defamation lawsuit against Dominion. Well, well, and for your listeners, all that lead in that you just did, nut job and fascist, you're protected because for two things. One, that's your opinion. And secondly, it's true. So for those who are listening, that's not

defamation. So let's get into, let's get into Liddell. So Liddell gets sued by Dominion, rightly so, just as Sidney the Kraken Powell got sued. And his argument is, oh, I welcome that lawsuit. I'm going to bring a counter lawsuit because you've defamed me and my First Amendment rights. And who does he find to be his lawyer to represent him in this interest? And we'll leave a pause here for your listeners to fill in the blank.

And if you can't get Rudy Giuliani, you get Alan Dershowitz. So Alan Dershowitz, who we're going to talk about later in the podcast about pay to play related to the pardons and clemency process that the Trump administration used on the way out, is the lawyer of choice for nut jobs and has really crossed the line. At one time, he was a, you know, reasonably well-considered constitutional scholar. People might know him from the OJ trial, the trial of the century. He was part of the dream team that defended OJ and got him off.

But, you know, he's really gone dark into the other side. And now, you know, every crackpot theory, like I said, if you can't get Giuliani, you get Dershowitz to do your bidding. So apparently Liddell has hired Dershowitz and they're going to bring a countersuit and all sorts of discovery that you identified earlier, depositions and documents against Dominion. How he thinks this helps him in defending ultimately the suit that Dominion has brought for billions of dollars against them i mean at the end of the day if we're right about how we analyze sydney powell's culpability then we're right about um liddell going down also and and you know soon enough with the next two years or so if everything goes right dominion going to have a pillow division because they're going to own my pillow.

Unlike Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell actually has made money and is actually a deep pocket. likely, in my opinion, flee the country or declare bankruptcy, you know, one or the other, because that's just how they react to anything. Off to Venezuela. Exactly. Off to Venezuela, you know, and then he'll probably do the exact same things he's accused other people of doing falsely is what they're known for doing. So let me be clear. The Mike Lindell lawsuit has

a zero percent chance there of succeeding. There are lots of laws that have been passed to prevent litigation abuse like that. You may have heard the term anti-SLAPP or these lawsuits that are against strategic lawsuits, against public policy or against public speech and lawsuits like Mike Lindell's, which are intended to intimidate people or groups for exercising their constitutional rights, their First Amendment views, their bringing of litigation are, you know, are protected forms of speech. And so a Michael and Dell lawsuit basically suing somebody because they sued you for gauging and defamation is a tactic of a bully, but a tactic that does not frequently work or work at all in our system.

Well, look, it's like the 40 or 50 cases brought by the Trumpers across the country to challenge elections. They all got, of course, dismissed early on through motions to dismiss or otherwise by courts. And recently, the Texas judge looked at some lawyers and said, not only is this case frivolous, I'm gonna sanction you and bring fees and costs costs penalties against you for having brought these cases. There are

repercussions for prosecuting cases that have no merit. And I don't think people fully realize how almost impossibly difficult it is to lose on 70 separate motions to dismiss in about a two-month window. It is literally, it is almost impossible. I can't even imagine losing that much. The sheer impossibility with just different judges, different jurisdictions, different timing, all coming to the same conclusion that what you're bringing is completely frivolous. Yeah, it's like the old Harlem Globetrotters when they used to play the Patsy team, the Washington Generals, and they go 70 and 0 in a year. I mean, it's almost impossible for a team of lawyers to lose every case at that sheer number. But not in this instance, because they brought the same case,

versions of the same case everywhere. And every judge wearing a black robe worth their salt took one look at the case, usually on their own, and said, get out of my courthouse. Now they're throwing the book at them. And my point back with Liddell and what you raised as the anti-SLAPP part is Dershowitz, I'm sure, has not properly analyzed that he himself, along with Liddell, could be the subject of penalties and sanctions in attorney's fees for having brought the case. It's not the case that every suit you're allowed

to bring a countersuit. Dep depends on the merits of the case. And if you don't have any and the reason you're doing it is to just as you said, it's almost like malicious prosecution. You're just bringing it in order to drive up the litigation costs for the other side or to, you know, to have some sort of a balanced playing field, there's repercussions for that. And there's sanctions for that. And there's law and legislation that prevents just that type of activity. I think you're right on the money when you're talking about the anti-SLAPP component of that suit. Moving from the civil components of what we were talking now, which may have some criminal dimensions, but moving into some criminal law. New York Times has been delving into the pay-for-play scandal involving pardons of the Trump administration and his inner circle, Jared Kushner and others, facilitating pardons on a transactional basis, you know, for money and basically selling pardons out of the White House.

What can you tell us about this, Michael? Where do you think this is headed? Yeah. And to remind everybody that's following us, you know, it's on pretty good, pretty good report and pretty good evidence that Trump was this close to pardoning himself and every member of his family on the last day in the White House. I'm talking like hours before the inauguration, they were still trying to talk him out of it. There's been some good reporting of that. He was this close to pardoning himself and the entire family. I really expected it. I thought at 1158 on inauguration day, we were going to see that. But what we did see and what the New York Times has

been doing a great job along with a couple of other investigative agencies of looking at is looking at every pardon and clemency and commutation of sentence that the Trump administration issued, especially in the waning days, to see why they did it, how they did it, what was the basis for it. And just to remind everybody, you know, you had Medicare fraudsters who ripped off the federal government for hundreds of millions of dollars who were pardoned. You had lots of white collar criminals who stole money belonging to taxpayers, who stole money belonging to the disenfranchised and the fragile in our population. And they were let off scot-free by this president. So the New York Times and others have asked the question, why? What's the connective tissue between the Trump organization

and these people? Why did he pick these people? I mean, it's not just, you know, Kim Kardashian, you know, having an interest in getting one person out of jail. It went beyond that to ones that people don't understand until they looked at it. And what they found is particularly, there is an institute, an alleged charitable institute based in Bell Harbor, Florida, Florida called the Aleph Institute, which is associated with the Hasidic Lubavitch movement. And they have been friends of the Kirshner family since the time that Jared Kirshner's father went to jail because he's a federal felon himself. And he has donated hundreds and I think millions of

dollars to the Aleph Institute. And now the Aleph Institute was responsible, the Times found, for over 10 or 12% of the total amount of clemencies, pardons, and commutations of sentences issued by Trump. And the pay-to-play aspect of it is, as you alluded to, is that they found that if you make a big donation to the Aleph Institute, to the Chabad, to the Shul of Bell Harbor, a temple, a synagogue in Bell Harbor, Florida, then you can make your way onto the final cut down list that ends up being given to Trump to sign to have your pardon. There is a huge financial fraudster who ripped off the federal government and taxpayers for hundreds of millions of dollars. There's a direct line of payment from him to the Olive Institute and him getting his pardon. And that's just one of

dozens of examples. So you have an alleged policy institute having outsized influence over the pardon process, lining their pockets along the way. So make a donation to them and you can buy your pardon. And you have the Trump organization connected to the Aleph Institute through Kirshner and his father, who is their charity of choice since he's been let out of jail himself. So that's the connective tissue that's so disturbing where you can just buy. I mean, it's what people suspect that you can buy your way out of these things if the wealthy can get pardons and the people who are, you know, who are wrongly convicted of minor drug offenses, you know, the disproportionate sentencing of blacks under the guidelines for crack when white people using cocaine did not get the same kind of crime. Those are ignored in the pardon process. But if you're a rich, wealthy, white-collar criminal, and you have a connection to Jared Kushner through Olive Institute, you can buy your way out of that crime being on your record.

Michael, you think it's illegal, though? Yeah. Listen, it's hard on the illegality thing, as distasteful as it is, because the president under the Constitution has given tremendous power to pardon anyone he wants at any time he wants. And as we said earlier, there was even a rumor he was trying to pardon himself. So that power is almost inviolate. It's almost hard to undermine. But I think the linkage between the two, and he can't impeach him now he's gone. I think we've already basically shown that there's no appetite that the Senate's ever going to impeach anybody for things that happened, even while they it have committed another crime, a Wire Act crime, a mail fraud crime? Probably. But the problem is there's no stomach to prosecute, at least new attorney general, appoint a special prosecutor to look into the matter to determine whether federal charges should be brought to anyone in the Trump organization, including those who did not enjoy immunity for these kind of issues, if there's even immunity? That's going to be a question for our new attorney general.

The pardon power is based on Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the level of abuse where you would actually have a criminal president in power rewarding the co-conspirator criminals and not rewarding and punishing the people who actually stood up against the criminal conduct during the presidency. It's one of those things that for hundreds of years, we've had these systems and these norms that we felt were always sacrilege, that were inviolate, that made sense, and no one questioned it. And look, you would occasionally roll your eyes when you would see certain pardons being used inappropriately. I mean, I remember with even, you know, President Clinton, you know, he pardoned people at the end of the presidency that you would roll your eyes.

They all do. They all do. But the direct and overt scale of it and the flagrant abuse of it and almost done in just such a taunting way. Like, yeah, I committed crimes with them and I'm going to let them off. That never really had taken that. Not really. It's never taken place before. A lot of people are calling for us to reevaluate the pardon power. I think we do, frankly, need to reevaluate the presidential pardon power, because at the end of the day in the United States, no man, woman is above the law, even the president of the United States. And the pardon power can be placed in the hands of a co-conspirator president to pardon other people engaged in his criminal plots. I can't even believe I'm saying that. And there are ways, I think, to start that process early. I think one of the changes that can be made is in cases where the president is a co-conspirator or later proven to be a co-conspirator, the pardon will be deemed void and voidable at the discretion of a federal court. I think that is one way to deal with it without

totally abolishing the pardon power. But it seems that the pardon power, which is steeped in still old kind of British royalty notions of kings pardoning people. I think we're beyond that as a society, and especially here where we had a president who was willing to try to overthrow democracy. And that's another topic that I want to get to, Michael, is the culpability here. The president did not pardon himself. Again, the constitutionality of a president pardoning himself has never been tested. Most legal scholars say the president could not pardon himself because the very essence of pardoning refers to doing it to somebody else and granting a reprieve. And you can't grant linguistically when you break it down, you can't grant a reprieve to yourself is how legal scholars basically cut it. But you could grant pardons over crimes that have not yet

been committed, as was done with Richard Nixon. Crimes that had yet to be convicted that predate the impeachment were extinguished. That was never challenged legally. So I think you could have actually had a situation where the Nixon pardons were legally challenged, but never were legally. So I think you could have actually had a situation where the Nixon pardons were legally challenged, but never were challenged. But again, Trump didn't pardon himself, so we don't have to deal with that. But what is his legal culpability, Michael, looking for aiding and abetting the insurrectionists? And where is that investigation going? Yeah. Look, I think as you've laid out, the Trump presidency pressure tested our democracy in ways that the founding fathers probably never envisioned. As you alluded to them, I call them the guardrails of democracy, right?

You've got all these guardrails. And Trump took special delight in running the car into every guardrail where he could. He tested that. He was like a child testing the limits of the authority of the Constitution to see what he could get away with and to see what his Senate cronies would support, to see what those on the Supreme Court that share his political views and the Federalist Society's political views would support. And he was just like a drunken sailor doing anything he wanted at any given moment and pressure tested our democracy in a way I don't think we've seen in the last 150 or 200 years. And you're right, I think there needs to be some constitutional amendments or tweaking

to things that were put in place by the founding fathers. The charges against the people that participated in the insurrection at the Capitol, the attack on the cradle of the House and the seat of our democracy, really comes down to, as we've talked in prior broadcasts, podcasts, sedition. a civil war concept, but it is based on whether someone is trying to overthrow and violently overthrow the government. I don't think anyone who watched the footage that has now come out on the Capitol attack can call it anything other than people involved with the violent attempt to violently overthrow the government. when you're walking the halls of Congress and you're chanting for the names of individual legislators to come out so that you can hang them, draw them, quarter them, kill them, shoot them, hit them with bear spray, hit them with a fire extinguisher causing death or injury. I don't think you can call that anything other than what it is. It is sedition. And the

federal prosecutors and the one that was appointed by the Trump administration has now stepped down as of Friday. He'll be replaced by somebody, by our new attorney general. But they've done a good job. They've got over 400 indictments that they brought, criminal indictments that they brought against people that participated. But it all runs back to who started this mess, who started this, this insurrection, or this sedition. And it comes back to Trump. And even that prosecutor, now that he's been, you know, sort of quit on Friday, he's able to speak freely more freely than than probably even before. And on the Sunday morning talk show this past Sunday, he said that even Trump is being evaluated by the current team of federal prosecutors as to whether he committed crimes for which he was not pardoned, as we've discussed,

and for which he is liable. And he'll claim, as we've seen it before, well, I was president. But presidents can commit crimes, and presidents can be prosec prosecuted and ex-presidents can be prosecuted. And I think that if they look at the footage and as this prosecutor said, the cause and effect connection between the statements that were made at the rally an hour or so before, which lit the fuse, which said, I'm going to march down the Capitol with you, which of course he didn't. He went the other way and went back to the White House. But he said to the people, let's go and use your Second Amendment rights and use and fight, fight, fight, and let's go. And it was like a coach in a locker room in a football game, getting the team all juiced up for the game. And then he opened the floodgates and these people literally violently attacked our Capitol in a way we have never seen in the history of this

democracy. And there's a price to be paid for that. And those people that are being prosecuted are going to spend the rest of their lives in a federal penitentiary, taking big rocks and making them into little rocks. And it may go all the way to the president. Can he be indicted for this? Yes. Will Merrick Garland and his team of prosecutors that are taking this over do it? And if there's political will for it, I hope so. There's no better person to evaluate that charge and to decide whether to use prosecutorial discretion to bring it, than Merrick Garland. I have no doubt about that. I do think that some of those statements that the president, should the president be indicted?

Absolutely. Was the president a co-conspirator? Absolutely. If he was not the president of the United States and he stood in front of a group of people and said, I'm going with you and we need to fight you know, fight them and we need to go after him. And then they all did that, you know, and then there were all of the meetings set up before that went over the plan of what was going to happen that day. It's not even a close call to me. Like the president clearly is a co-conspirator and is clearly guilty of aiding and abetting the insurrection.

You should go to jail for the rest of his life. It's not a close call. Any other setting, that's what's going to happen. I think the political pressures and the problematic nature of going after him for that is what will be the barrier. I think ultimately where Trump is most vulnerable are the illegalities he committed in his personal and professional, quasi-professional, because nothing he's ever done is professional, you know, but quasi-professional or life as a mobster outside of the White House, because those issues don't have to deal with in any way him as the president. They're cleaner from a perspective of here's the financial document and here's the false representations

that he said. He's got a lot of problems in Manhattan. Cy Vance, the district attorney, has hired the top people who are combing through those financials. And in the next six months, I have very little doubt, very little doubt. By the next six months, or I'll just say to give myself a little buffer, by the end of 2021, Donald Trump will be indicted, period, from that New York Cy Vance prosecution. Yeah. And just for everybody that follows us, so Cy has decided after 10 years to step down as the Manhattan District Attorney. I know there's a lot of people in, you know, I work and live in Manhattan, and I know people that are close to him, and they're disappointed that he's decided to do that. But he's just sort of, after 10 years of being a crusader and taking over what

is arguably one of the or the best district attorney's office in the country, for those that follow, it's the model for all of the law and order series of television shows, was that office when it was run by Morgenthau. But Vance is not going to seek re-election. There's going to be a new, it's an elected position. There's going to be a new district attorney and we're going to have an election related to that. But I would doubt none of them, none of the people running for that office are running on a platform that they're not going to go hard on Trump. They're all going to continue the same blueprint that Tsai put in place

with this special band of prosecutors that he handpicked. I'm sure that the prosecution will be undisturbed even when Tsai isn't sitting in the big chair in that office. And if he doesn't get them and that office doesn't get them, the attorney general will of the state. The state attorney general will of the state. The state attorney general is loaded for bear. She has her own half dozen mortgage fraud, loan fraud, prosecutions, again, tax fraud, all sorts of things that are under her jurisdiction. So between, you know,

Trump is caught between this vice of the DA.A. office in Manhattan and the attorney general's office in Albany that are just that the crosshairs of these prosecutions, because as you alluded to it, the Trump organization is a criminal enterprise. And it, as lots of people, including Michael Cohen, have testified to. And there were lots of people who benefited from that criminal enterprise, and they all had the last name Trump. And we will be waiting with bated breath. We will be up to the minute on all of the reporting regarding that, those investigations and those potential indictments. And we will be the first to break that news, hopefully, when that occurs. and we will break it down the way we've broken down all of these cases for you today. Really enjoying doing this podcast with you, Michael. It is a true honor to get to work with you in the courtroom, the virtual courtroom now,

and doing these podcasts. It was great. Our first podcast last week got incredible reviews, did incredibly well. We thank everybody for listening. If you want to reach out to Michael and myself about your own cases, cases that your friends have, or you just have questions for us, if we could be helpful, you could reach out to us, you know, each individually. You can find me and my contact information is on Twitter at my cell is B M E I S E L A S B at my cell is B. And Michael, you want to give your contact? Sure. You can do it through Twitter. Also I'm at M, well, at M-S for Stephen Popok, P-O-P-O-K, or my email is MPopok at ZPLaw.com. Thank you for listening to this week's edition of Legal AF, your legal analysis. Friends, I'm Ben M Mycelis. You've been listening to Ben and Michael Popock. We'll see you again next week.