The MeidasTouch Podcast - Special Edition: MeidasTouch Presents 'Legal AF', Episode 7

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

On Episode 7 of Legal AF, MeidasTouch’s weekly law and politics podcast, hosts MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok, first drill down on the “dawn raid” and search warrant on former Trump consigliere, Rudy Giuliani based on “probable cause” that the former “America’s Mayor” committed a federal crime related to the Trump Administration’s dealings with Ukraine. And for added fun, Ben and Michael discuss who is leading in the “Fredo” award race – Don Jr. or Andrew Giuliani, while commenting on the rogues' gallery of convicted, soon to be convicted and/or trying to be convicted allies of the Former 45 all attempting to witness tamper. Next up, the “Analysis Friends” tackle the aftermath of the Chauvin conviction in two ways. First, they examine the attack on one of the 12 jurors for posting photos to social media showing that he supported #BLM on his way to a march celebrating MLK in DC, and discuss whether this could give rise to a successful appeal by Chauvin. Then Ben and Michael take a hard look at the DOJ’s decision to not only criminally prosecute Chauvin and the other 3 cops involved for civil rights violations under the 4th Amendment, but to also investigate the entire Minneapolis police department. Ben and Michael then update on the Cyber Ninja/Q-anon “ballot recount” farce playing out in Arizona under Trump’s guidance. And last but not the least crazy, “Miami” Michael walks Ben through the Miami private school whose socialite and DeSantis-supporting owners took almost $1 million in federal bailout funds and then thought it would be ok to violate every one of its teacher’s Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) rights by firing them if they decided to get the COVID-19 vaccine. --- 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

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You don't want to miss out. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome to the Midas Touch Legal AF Podcast. The A stands for analysis and the F stands for friends. Ben Mycelis here of Garagos and Garagos also, of course, of Midas Touch and Michael Popak of Zupano, Patricius and Popak. Michael Popak, how you

doing today? I'm doing really great. I can't believe another week has passed and we're up to episode seven. And fortunately for our followers, there's lots of new stuff to talk about. People love Midas Touch Legal AF. Some of the Midas Touch Legal AF podcast fans go as far as to say they like the legal podcast better than the Midas Touch podcast. It's a very controversial position, but I think I see it both ways. On the one hand, you got the brother banter. You got the brothers going after each other and then telling the news without really the legal analysis. On Legal AF, you got the Ben, you got the Popock banter back and forth. And we go deep into these legal issues.

And I think the problem with legal analysis generally is that lawyers sometimes give lawyers a very bad name. They're very disconnected from reality and don't talk like straight shooters to people. And we try to deliver this in basic, understandable, digestible ways. And we use the current events and the political landscape as entry points to teach these important legal issues. Yeah, I think one of the most satisfying things of you and I doing this, and we started talking about it almost at the moment you launched Midas Touch with your brothers, and we did some early tapes, if people can find them online, I think we've come a long

way in the last year, both production values and analysis. But the most rewarding thing has been for me, getting tweets and direct messages from our followers who have complimented our ability to really explain complicated legal and constitutional legal issues in a way that they both find entertaining and instructive. And we didn't want a whole audience of lawyers. We wanted exactly what we're getting, which is interested and interesting people who want to know more about the law and not have it dumbed down. We explain it simply to them, but we don't dumb down the concepts. Absolutely. And we appreciate everybody's support out there. I mean, the audience for Midas Touch Legal AF podcast is massive. I'd probably say it's one of the largest legal podcast audiences out there. We, of course, appreciate your support. Let's get into today's legal news. What is happening with the Rudy

Giuliani raids and Ukraine investigation? That is a CNN headline, but virtually everywhere you look, you see Doody Rudy Giuliani, the feds out of the Southern District of New York. Ironically, that is where Giuliani himself used to work back in the days when Giuliani was normal 30, 40 years ago. He was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York before he was mayor. And talk about that briefly, Popak, too, because we hear about district attorneys. We hear about U.S. attorneys, assistant U.S. attorneys, assistant DAs. When you say that Giuliani, back in the day, was the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, just for our listeners out there, what does that mean? Well, I'm glad you brought that up because we're going to be talking about different concepts under

the Department of Justice and how it's arranged. So let's start at the top. The Attorney General of the United States, which is Merrick Garland, and his chief deputy, who is Lisa Monaco, who was just confirmed, they run the show out of Washington. And lawyers like you and I often refer in shorthand to Washington, D.C. as Maine Justice. So things happen and investigations can be led by Maine Justice and the various divisions of Maine Justice, including the Civil Rights Division that we're going to talk about a little bit later in the podcast when we get to the to the Shevin prosecution. But then at the local level, each each the entire federal court system is divided into district courts. So in New York, for instance, we have the Northern District, we have the Western District, and we have the Southern District of New York. In each one of

those territories, if you will, not only has a court system and a series of judges, federal judges, they also have on the prosecutor side, U.S. attorneys or assistant U.S. attorneys. You and I call them USAs or AUSAs. And they're led in each division, each department by a U.S. attorney. So the Southern District of New York, which covers Manhattan, for instance, and covers other boroughs, is led by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Before he was mayor, Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, reporting directly to the Attorney General who sits in Washington at Maine Justice. So that's what we're talking about. We talk about the Southern District.

And for some of our listeners who, you know, followed the news of Preet Bharara's firing, Preet Bharara was a United States attorney under the Obama administration. That's one of the things the presidents can appoint. Now, the U.S. attorney, though, when we talk about these raids of Rudy Giuliani's apartment, it's not like the United States attorney is himself or herself or themselves going in and barging in directly. Oftentimes you have federal agents, FBI, DEA, Postal, other agents who go in. So what's the relationship between those entities, Popak, to the United States attorney in preparing the case? Right.

That's also a good way to explain to our audience what's going on here. So in order for the Southern District of New York prosecutors, the assistant U.S. attorneys and the U.S. attorney to execute, well, first to apply for a search warrant, because let's get everybody on the same page here. They don't just wake up one morning with a wild hair and say, hey, let's go do a search of Rudy Giuliani's apartment and office at six o'clock in the morning. There are due process and constitutional safeguards, which all citizens enjoy, including Rudy Giuliani, against such a thing. So they have to go to a judge first, a federal judge. And before they even go to a federal judge, those U.S. attorneys have

to get approval at this level of target, Rudy Giuliani, of main Justice, Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney General Washington has to sign off on this. That's the main reason this didn't happen a year ago. Southern District New York U.S. attorneys wanted to execute on a search warrant and apply for a search warrant a year ago. Why didn't it happen? Because the then Attorney General Barr and all the Trump appointees rebuffed them. So we now have Merrick Garland and we now have Lisa Monaco. So Southern District prosecutors went to them and said, we want to apply for a search warrant. They said, you got it, go. They went into a courthouse. They applied secretly. It's not done in a public setting for obvious reasons. And they apply for a search warrant. They applied secretly. It's not done in a public setting for obvious reasons. And they apply for a search warrant. They tell the judge and they have to prove they have a burden. They have to prove to the judge that there's probable cause that Rudy Giuliani in this case violated criminal law, that he committed a crime. And the criminal law here specifically

involves lobbying efforts in Ukraine without permission against the law. And so Rudy Giuliani working with foreign governments to push a Trump agenda, likely at the behest of Donald Trump. And so that is what is one of the things being looked at. Also, there were questions about a $500,000 payment Giuliani received from two Soviet foreign associates who have been indicted on related cases. But at its heart, what this is about is Rudy cutting deals with foreign governments to harm the United States in support of Donald Trump's big lie about the election. So we can overcomplicate what this is. Also very interesting here because it is indeed unusual for a lawyer in a situation like this, you know, to be raided. Now, it doesn't mean that that never happens if the lawyer engages in criminal conduct. The lawyers don't get exemptions for it. But generally, the reason it doesn't happen is because people hire lawyers to give legal advice, not to actually commit the crimes. But talk about that dynamic in play here, Popak. case that would allow the government to do what they did here and actually start reviewing and

looking through Rudy Giuliani's computers and text messages? So the first step, thanks Ben, the first step is to prove to the judge that there's probable cause that the target, in this case Rudy Giuliani, committed a crime. And the crime, as you've described, is the what we call FARA, F-A-R-A, which is a law that requires, it's the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It was passed before World War II to ferret out Nazi sympathizers among us who were lobbying on behalf of the German government. It's now been applied here because if Rudy was servicing the Ukraine in trying to get the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine removed because they didn't like her, and it's pretty obvious they didn't like her

because she wasn't doing their bidding and she wasn't pro-Ukraine, if you will, if he was lobbying on their behalf, he committed a crime. If he's lobbying on behalf of Trump only without the Ukraine, he didn't commit a crime. So these attorneys had to argue to the judge, and the judge agreed that there was probable cause that he violated the Registration Act. And another issue that most certainly came up during the hearing that was held in order to get the search warrant was the issue of Rudy being a lawyer. The judge, I am quite sure, said, we also have to be mindful of the fact that Mr. Giuliani is a practicing attorney and he has clients such as the former president of the United States. What do we do about that, U.S. attorneys? And I'm sure the response was, A, we've narrowed the

search warrant in a way that we will only capture, if we can, the information that we're looking for about the Ukraine, Hunter Biden, Burisma, and John Solomon, a reporter for Fox News, who was at the heart of a lot of this disinformation campaign that's been brought up by the Republicans to go after Biden and others. And of course, if they find other things while they're looking, other crimes that have been committed, they're free to use that information as well. But look, as you said, a lawyer does not have a free pass or carte blanche to commit crimes. And so I'm sure they told the judge that we believe that there's an exception to the attorney-client privilege. It's called the crime fraud or the fraud crime exception. And it says that if the lawyer is himself participating in a crime or a fraud, he has waived his right to assert the attorney-client privilege to protect documents in a criminal prosecution. So he's going to argue that. His lawyers already started arguing that in the press, but they're likely to lose. The second overlay of privilege is Trump. Trump apparently is going to try to intervene in the matter before the same federal judge and argue that his client rights or his executive privilege that he enjoyed at the time when he

was president are somehow being implicated or trampled on by the execution of the search warrant. And the judge, you know, judge, you should take a look at all this information before you let it go out in what we call an in-camera review by the judge. I'm sure Trump is going to try to intervene. He tried to do it two years ago. He lost two years ago. He's going to lose again. You know, right, wrong, or indifferent, the information that is captured on the 10 laptops, computers, and cell phones that apparently they found and they executed the search warrant on are going to likely be pretty damning for Rudy, and they're going to go towards his ultimate prosecution. One of the things that Michael Cohen has said is that he goes, I have no doubt that

Rudy Giuliani is going to flip on Donald Trump. And I have no doubt that Andrew Giuliani, Rudy's son, his wannabe Don Jr. over there would also easily flip. I think I'm not sure if you saw the interview of Andrew Giuliani on CNN. What an embarrassing appearance when he was literally asked, do you think that your dad is going to flip on Trump? He like went, let's not even go there yet. And so you said he's a Don Jr. wannabe. I thought he's Fredo from Godfather. That's what he's trying out for. It's beyond strange.

And it's beyond strange. I'm kind of around the same age as him. And I just remember growing up as a Met fan and seeing him at those Yankee games. You know, he was the portly redhead next to his father at those games and just looked like a shithead back then. And he grew up to be a shithead right now. And I just remember thinking about that. For our followers, when they're bored, they can go find on YouTube.

I sent it to you and your brothers. The now infamous skit on Saturday Night Live where Chris Farley played a 12-year-old Andrew Giuliani at his father's mayoral swearing in. It is laugh out loud funny, but the guy hasn't changed in all this time. But look, the other reason that we haven't talked about that the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice decided to execute a 6 a.m. morning raid on Giuliani's apartment and office is also an example of shock and awe. Trump inner circle, whether it's Don Jr. or Eric or the daughters-in-law or Ivanka, to not sleep well at night and to understand that they may be next and likely will be. So this had a multiple set of audiences. This wasn't just to signal to Rudy Giuliani, we don't want to cut a deal with you. We want to prosecute you. And so we're not going to ask

nicely for your computer and your phone. We're going to take it out of your hands while you're wearing a bathrobe. But also the signal to the rest of the Trump inner circle to hope one of them caves and flips, whether it's Trump or any of the whether it's Giuliani or any of the other people, one of them is going to cave. One of the things that Cohen, Michael Cohen also said, he's like, Rudy's a drunk. Imagine all of the drunk shit that he's texting and just the filth that's going to be on that phone. And, you know, his, I mean, Giuliani, someone who got caught with his pants down, believing he was in a room with Borat's 16-year-old daughter. Okay. If you get caught doing that.

But he was bluffing himself. Can you imagine? Yes, he was. Can you imagine just what those text messages are going to say? Now, Rudy Giuliani's allies are asking that the Trump administration, the former players at the Trump administration, that people at the campaign pay Rudy Giuliani's legal bills. And one of the most outspoken advocates is somebody named Bernard Carrick. And Bernard Carrick used to be the police chief of New York, who is an ally of Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. He got pardoned by Trump. He got pardoned by Trump.

Exactly. One of the things you have to know is that all of these allies of Trump are all criminals. Every person that they hang with is a fucking criminal. And so Bernard Carrick was a former New York police commissioner. He rose to some national attention after 9-11. I think his name was floated briefly, I think, in the Bush administration for being Homeland Security. And then they found, wait a minute, this guy is a total fucking criminal. years in prison after pleading guilty to felony charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials. He was pardoned for Trump in February of 2020. But now he's out. He's out and about. This is the voice that's out there saying, I want to know what the GOP did with the quarter of a billion dollars that they collected for the election legal fight and that that money needs to be used for Rudy Giuliani. And so you see coalescing here a fight, people saying that if Trump doesn't actually pay these legal fees, you know, Rudy might flip. One of the interesting points, though,

which is which is wild is I think in the Michael Cohen side of things from years ago, Trump didn't pay those legal fees and refused and always leaves these, you know, he leaves the people in the lurch. Now, there is a concept, you know, either a legal construct or just sometimes what you do when you're an employer called indemnification. And oftentimes people who work for you in the course and scope of employment, if they're sued for working for you as the employer, usually through your insurance or just through contractually or oftentimes by the law, you have certain indemnification obligations. But just how it just goes to show you at the end of the day, just how disloyal and horrible that Trump is. You've got fucking Giuliani going to

the Four Seasons, fake Four Seasons across from the crematorium and the dildo shop, you know, out there making Four Seasons landscaping company, four seasons landscaping. And like, you're not paying the guy's legal fees. Look, these people should all go to jail for the rest of their life. But as a basic concept, it just kind of shocks you that you would that you would not pay the person's legal fees to try to help you out. It's just a very bizarre concept. Now, I don't want anybody to pay Giuliani's legal fees. I just want to be clear with that. But it's a funny thing that you have to have people leaking to the New York Times, you know, which they believe is fake news anyway, but leaking to the New York Times how Giuliani

needs his legal fees paid for Trump or else. Right, right. Which is a signal to Trump to better pay him in order to shut him up. Almost sounds like witness tampering to me, to be honest, which is also a crime. So look, you hit the nail on the head as always. You've got a rogues gallery of wannabe criminals, convicted criminals, pardoned criminals who are all satellites around Trump. They do his bidding for him. I mean, you know, they're terrible advocates for him in that sense because their own character is always in question. They're all fraudsters and the like. And then you have this concept that you raised where Trump, being penny wise and pound foolish, decides he's not going to pay the Michael Cohens and the Giulianis of the world, despite the fact that a great

personal sacrifice and professional suicide, they decided to represent and defend this guy time and time again. We had a concept in when I worked in financial services of, you know, you don't want to be the guy that's picking up nickels and dimes in front of a steamroller. How much is he possibly saving by not paying Giuliani? Why would you incentivize him to cooperate with the feds because you owe him a couple of million dollars? It's just stupid. But does that surprise you? I mean, is anything that Trump has done or said actually at this moment surprised you, Ben? No. I do think, though, for our listeners, unfortunately, the wheels of justice can sometimes move slow. We know about the district attorney investigation going on within Manhattan. We know about the attorney general investigation of Trump going on in New York.

We know about other investigations that are going on in Georgia. We've got Rudy's phone being seized here. We know about the investigations that are going on into the insurrection. When you go after someone for the criminality, the depth and breadth of it as Trump. You really want to, from a legal perspective, and this may just sound obvious, but you really want them to dot their eyes and cross their T's and to make the document impenetrable to Trump's bullshit and to Trump's intimidation and to what is naturally going to happen whenever you go and you file on him. I firmly believe that all of these things that we're seeing from the raid on Giuliani to these other investigations in short order, not necessarily weeks or even months, but short order from a legal perspective, which is often a year, 18 months, two years.

There is an existential legitimacy issue confronting the Department of Justice right now, which has a proud reputation of being diligent, of being responsible, and most importantly, being independent. Notice whenever Biden has asked questions about DOJ investigations or his administration's asked questions, he always says, I don't tell them what to do. I don't influence their decisions. They are independent. Despite the fact that technically the attorney general reports to the executive branch and to the president. And we saw under the Trump administration, Trump took that as carte blanche to use Bill Barr as his personal attorney, so much so that Bill Barr was filing civil monetary lawsuits against people. critical of Melania Trump and suing them in the name of the United States government. Or even worse, intervening. There's the famous case here in New York of the woman who was molested by Trump. I think she was an author or a publisher. She was molested by him 20 years ago.

She brought a defamation case against him. And the U.S. Department of Justice intervened in that civil case, right, to try to put the heavy weight of the federal government on the scales of justice. And, of course, I know the lawyer here, Robbie Kaplan, did a great job of getting them out of the case. And they literally changed the name or tried to. This was the arrogance. The government comes in. The Trump government comes in.

The Trump regime, I should say, comes in. And the lawsuit was her name versus Trump. Yeah. And the government comes in and basically changes Trump to the United States government. Right. changes Trump to the United States government, making the United States government a defendant in a case that arose out of Donald Trump being accused of raping a woman. I was going to say, as if the U.S. government raped and sexually assaulted this woman 20 years ago. That's how absurd that is right there. But as I said, there's an existential threat challenging our democracy. And ultimately, I think the DOJ has to zealously guard and preserve

our democracy. And so in due course, we will see the prosecutions mount, the criminal investigations proceed at a faster pace, and ultimately, I believe weeks back in connection with the George Floyd murder. There are a lot of developments taking place there that we want to keep you up to date with. First, there was a report recently that the Department of Justice will be seeking the indictment of Derek Chauvin and three other ex-Minneapolis police officers, according to reports arising out of George Floyd, as well as in connection with a violent arrest of a 14-year-old boy in 2017. In that case, according to CNN, Chauvin and a partner officer responded to a domestic assault call. In the process of attempting to arrest the 14-year-old, Chauvin hit the teen with a flashlight multiple times before applying a neck restraint with his knee until the 14-year-old lost consciousness, according to documents filed by state prosecutors. In addition, we learned that

the DOJ was planning to arrest Derek Chauvin in court and charge him in the event he was acquitted of murder. Popak, tell us the implications of this and also maybe spell out for our listeners who are confused and saying, wait, I thought he was already convicted. Like, what's the DOJ doing? Why is that different than what already took place in Minneapolis? Maybe you can explain that. Right.

And to your point about the current Department of Justice led by Merrick Garland fighting for the soul of the Justice Department to reclaim its rightful spot as a legitimate law enforcement, chief law enforcement agency of the United States and to address the existential threat under Trump. Garland, Department of Justice with Lisa Monaco as his deputy, are reviving civil rights investigations and prosecutions at a rapid clip. And the one they're doing here is, on one hand, Chauvin was convicted of the three other officers, whose names, frankly, we never say, but there are three other officers, Officer Lane, Kung, and Theo, who are going to be tried in a very similar trial, and I'm sure a very same result, for their failure

to intervene and stop the murder of Floyd. And that's going to happen sometime after, I think, Chauvin is actually sentenced. The question is whether those very same acts of those individuals also constitute federal civil rights violations and criminal civil rights violations to allow for the prosecution under a federal system, if you will. And primarily, it focuses on what you and I have talked about in the past, but in a different context, the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which you and I usually talk about it in the context of illegal search and seizure. But the Supreme Court has extended the Fourth Amendment to include police brutality and excessive force. So if there is a case of police brutality or excessive force, whether it leads to death or not, it is also a Fourth Amendment U.S. constitutional violation, in addition to being state criminal law, a state criminal law count as well. And about 50 times a year, the Justice Department, on average,

prosecutes police under the Fourth Amendment for civil rights violations related to their brutality in the arrest process. Now, having said that, there's one other aspect that we didn't mention at the top of this segment that the Justice Department is also looking at. And I think it's the reason why they're also bringing the 2017 charge against Chauvin for using a neck hole that led to incapacitation and the 14-year-old passing out, because they're also looking, the Department of Justice, main justice in Washington, is also looking at the Minneapolis police force itself and its history and its pattern and practices in making arrests and whether there is a pattern and practice of police brutality and the willful disregard for the civil rights of Minneapolis citizens, including those that are black or brown. And so this is a much broader

investigation that'll not just be about Chauvin and his cohorts that day, but about the entire Minneapolis Police Department. And if that happens, it'll probably happen on the civil side of the Department of Justice. What could happen? Well, if they're right and they prove that the entire Minneapolis Police Department is responsible and has committed these civil rights violations, that could lead to a monitor being appointed by the court, by the judge, that all their rules and standard operating procedures be rewritten, that there be new training, that there be the removal of certain personnel in the hierarchy.

This is all at the power of a federal judge here to make all of these things happen if it's proven that the entire department is a bad apple and not just Chauvin and his cohort. So this is going to be, our listeners are going to have to be patient because this is not going to happen overnight. This is going to be more along the lines of the two or three year period that you were talking about before they get it out of even, just to remind our listeners. They're not even out of grand jury yet. That grand jury apparently has been sitting since last February hearing evidence about Chauvin, about the Minneapolis Police Department.

People have testified, including the very same experts who testified in the state court criminal case, have testified for the feds in the federal grand jury because they've told the press that they have, even though they're not supposed to disclose that. And eventually, I assume an indictment, a charging document is going to come out of the grand jury against clearly Chauvin and the other three. I think they were ready to arrest them, as you said, on the courthouse steps if somehow he got acquitted. Fortunately, they didn't have to do that. And now they can sit by and watch the other trial and get other evidence in the other trial and run that back to the grand jury. So within the next six months, if not less,

there's going to be an indictment, criminal, federal, civil rights indictment of Chauvin, of the three officers likely, and we may even see civil charges brought against the entire Minneapolis Police Department. Talk to me briefly, Popak, about, there was some news about one of the jurors in the Chauvin case was, there was a photo that emerged on social media of a juror wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, and there was some reports that would that have shown juror bias in the case. There were specific questions asked on the jury questionnaire that all of the jurors received. And one of the ways in the voir dire process, the jury selection process that takes place when a bunch of potential jurors come in and start to talk about their background, talk about whether they could be impartial jurors in a specific case. They get a questionnaire where they're asked a series of questions. And this specific questions

that I think are at issue was, did you or someone close to you participate in any of the demonstrations or marches against police brutality that took place in Minneapolis after George Floyd's death? One question read and the other asked, other than what you have already described above, have you or anyone close to you participated in protests about police use of force or police brutality? This particular juror answer, no to both. In discussing this photograph, he said that I wore this in a Martin Luther King march in Washington, D.C. that related to the D.C. march in the 1960s. It was the I Have a Dream speech march commemorating the I Have a Dream speech on the Washington Mall. And so, I mean, to me, in my own view, wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt should not show anything other than the fact that you're not a racist human being. The fact that you would acknowledge that Black Lives Matter.

I think that there's the Dave Chappelle skit, Popak, that was like, and I think I'm crediting Chappelle actually, where he's like, all we're saying is they matter. And that makes white people crazy just saying that it matters, not saying it's better, not saying they're the greatest. All the whole slogan is a matter and that that's that's what ticks people off. And so here, to me, the very essence of claiming that somebody who wears a Black Lives Matter shirt demonstrates impartiality is itself an incredibly horrid and racist implication to even make. Yeah. So let me back up for our listeners and talk just from a 10,000 foot level about the jury selection process that was used in Minneapolis and everywhere else.

And again, to remind the jurors, you and I are practicing trial lawyers. We pick juries all the time. And I've gone through what you refer to as the voir dire or the jury questioning and selection process dozens and dozens of times. And I looked at the rules related to Minneapolis and Minnesota prior to the podcast today. And look, here's how it works. You get a panel of, in this case, there were probably 100 or 200 potential jurors. The first thing that happens is the lawyers on both sides, with the judge's approval, develop a questionnaire, a specific questionnaire related to this particular trial, these particular defendants,

and what happened. And in this case, it was 14 pages long. Some questions that some of the defense lawyers wanted in there didn't make it, I'm sure, and some questions that the prosecutors wanted in there didn't make it. And the judge is the ultimate arbiter about what he will or will not allow in the jury questionnaire, understanding that the Minnesota Supreme Court also has guidelines about what is appropriate to ask a question about and what isn't. You can't ask racist questions in your questionnaire, And you don't want to as a lawyer, because you're just going to have an appeal that's going to claim that you improperly excluded black and brown people from your jury, which even the US Supreme Court has said, that's not proper. So you have to be very careful when even when you're a defense lawyer trying to defend,

in this case, a heinous crime, you have to be careful about the questions that you ask because you don't want to be accused of crossing the line into unconstitutional racial profiling of the jury. So that's one. But the defense got a number of their questions into the questionnaire. The two in particular that you identified are the ones in question. So he answered, you know, this is, I'm not outing anybody. This is in the papers today. This is the news today. Brandon Mitchell, who was one out of Black Lives Matter. One of them has a slogan around it that says, get your knee off our necks. And they went wearing this appropriate, you know, t-shirts and hats to the commemoration march in Washington, D.C. for the I Have a Dream speech. And Mitchell, who's now been interviewed, said, I've never been to Washington. I felt really passionately about going to support Martin Luther King and everything he stood for. And I went. And I answered those two questions that you, Ben, just mentioned accurately. I did not participate in any march or anything else against police brutality. That's not what the Martin Luther

King march in Washington is all about. It's about black identity. It's about civil rights. It's about Martin Luther King, but it's not per se against police brutality or Shevin or pro-George Floyd or anything like that. So look, he was careful in how he answered and he answered it, but the questionnaire doesn't end the jury selection process. The lawyers then get the questionnaire, usually the night before. They get the responses. They make notes on it. They're allowed.

And then when the jury panel is in front of them, as they spend a day, two days, three days, whatever it takes to pick the 12 jurors and the alternates, they get to ask questions of each juror to follow up. Number seven, you said in your questionnaire that you are in favor of Black Lives Matter or you're against it. They can ask those questions with the caveat that if they go too far and it looks like they're targeting black and brown representation on that panel, on that jury panel, that they could end up getting a, if they win, it could be reversed on appeal because they skewed the jury in a certain direction. So those defense lawyers were mindful, but they had free run. The judge,

from what I've read, did not limit them much about what they could ask in this Q&A with the jury. And then from there, they look at their notes. The judge gives them some time over lunch, usually, to look at their notes. And then they actually say, we want juror number nine. We don't want juror number 10. They get challenges. They get a certain amount of challenges. They're allowed usually five or six in a criminal case that they can just, for no reason reason X out a juror. And then there's a panel of 12. But the hurdle that has to be met here by the defense, who's now trying to argue, whoa, he wore a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. Therefore, he lied to us in the, he wasn't

truthful to us in the jury selection process. And maybe he lied to the judge. And if he did, then we should have a whole new trial. Well, hold on. First of all, from what I've read in his interview, he didn't lie. He accurately answered the questions that were asked. And if you didn't ask the right question to elicit the right response, that's on you. That's your malpractice as a practicing lawyer, not the fault of the potential juror. Secondly, even if they were to show that there was a direct question that Mitchell did not answer properly and he is biased in some way, they then still have to overcome that it would have changed the result. This was a 12-0 vote to convict on all three counts after like a less than four hour jury deliberation.

Good luck trying to prove that he changed 11 minds in order to get a unanimous vote. I don't think they're going to be able to prove that at all. And then, so the next step in the process is what? You've already told me earlier before we started broadcasting that they filed a motion for new trial, which they have to do. Yeah, Derek Chauvin's attorney filed the motion for new trial. Which they have to do because there's a time limit for filing such things. And in the history of criminal defense lawyering, one million times out of one million, you file a motion for new trial because you probably commit malpractice if you don't. And they may try to raise this issue then. And if the judge believes that there is an issue about this juror, even though the juror has been

discharged, he can, the judge, command that the juror come back and do an interview of that juror, usually in chambers, usually outside the public's view with the lawyers to try to get to the bottom of this. I'm not sure the judge even does that here. And if he doesn't do at least that, I think the whole thing dies. I think it was very interesting in the paper, you know, BLM t-shirt, Fox News is all wild up about it. But at the end of the day, it didn't, it's not going to be found to have changed the result. And the conviction is going to be left to stand. At the end of the day, all Derek Chauvin needed to have a hung jury was to convince just one juror. I think the composition of it, and correct me if I'm wrong, Popak, there were six white jurors and six black jurors. Correct.

And all you had to do was convince one, just one juror, that there was doubt. And you could have a hung jury. They weren't able to do that. Why weren't they able to do that? Because it's on video. As we talked about contemporaneously, we all saw for our eyes what happened. And if that's not murder, then what is? We saw the eight plus minutes of Chauvin.

Nine plus. Yeah. Take the life away from George Floyd. We all saw it. And what the jury what the jurors weren't able to know, though, was what's in the DOJ filing, though. They didn't know that this officer also had a pattern and practice of putting his knee on other individuals' necks just like that. I don't believe that came into the trial at all because that would. But that's an interesting fact that the juror wasn't able to hear at the time. But yes, a motion for new trial was filed. This trial court judge, all we know about him, this trial court judge, I believe, is not going to grant the new trial. He's not going to have this juror show back up.

He's going to deny it pretty much pro forma. And then there's going to be an appeal but the pressure against Chauvin is ramped up because what we've talked about before the DOJ is going to also file against him as well and you're going to have both this conviction that already existed plus the DOJ is going to try him and I think fortunately Derek Chauvin is going to be behind bars for a significant period of time. And I'll say this. I think what the DOJ is also worried about is the Minneapolis sentencing guidelines,

which do not provide in a case like this for a life sentence. And so at sentencing, when that takes place, we talked about this on the other podcast that Derek Chauvin waived a jury to determine the sentencing that will go in front of a judge, but that that sentencing may not be as long as many people imagine. It could be 12 years, which is really, really, really small. But look, not to get too inside baseball, as we like to say on this podcast, and we'll talk about it at another time. But for those that are out there that are sort of sophisticated in their approach, this is not a case of double jeopardy.

This is not a case of somebody being prosecuted for the exact same crime twice. These are not the same crimes. One is a crime of murder under state penal code. The other is a crime of federal constitutional civil rights violation under the Fourth Amendment. And your same act can violate both things. And you can be prosecuted in this case by the feds on one side of the state and the other, and it not offend justice. Popak, I'm plugging our law firms now before we talk about cyber ninjas. Popak and I, practicing lawyers, we're not just podcast hosts. We actually, on a day-to-day basis, litigate the types of cases that we talk about. Cases I specifically handle are catastrophic injury cases,

cases where you or a friend or someone you love or someone you know may have been injured in an accident. I handle those cases. I do employment cases where employees may be harassed or sexually abused by employers. I do school cases where students may be sexually harassed or abused by teachers, principals, administrators, and others. I also do complex business cases. I represent founders of startups very frequently who are sometimes cheated from their shares of stocks when a company goes public

and makes a lot of money, feel free to always reach out to me. My email address is ben at garrigos.com. That's B-E-N at G-E-R-A-G-O-S.com. If you've reached out to me, you know I respond right away or as quick as I can, and I'll have a lawyer or myself reach out to you directly, talk about your case, talk about your friend's case, see if there is a case. So that's me. Popak, you want to plug your firm? Sure. I'm the managing partner in New York of a law firm called Zampano, Patricious and Popock. We've got offices around the country, Miami, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and as I said, in New York. And I, like you,

I have a national trial practice, which takes me, I have as many cases west of the Mississippi as I have east. You and I are working together on a series of high profile cases around the country that have been filed in California and in other places. I do everything from class action work to complex business dispute litigation, or what we call business tort litigation, similar to you. I've got a financial services background having been in my in-house position. And so I do end up representing both financial services companies and people who worked for financial services companies in complex matters, complicated issues, doing internal investigations and taking cases all the way through arbitration or trial. I have a side gig where I'm outside general counsel for a number of companies, both startup and otherwise, to provide them with sort of day-to-day advice as if I were their in-house general counsel, but I'm at my own law firm. And so there's really, at my level of my career like yours, I take cases that I'm passionate

about. I take clients on that I'm passionate about and that I want to work with. I turn down the ones that I don't. I have that luxury, but it's a working relationship with my clients that are really, really important to me as they are to you. And I'm glad that we have this opportunity both to talk about what you and I are passionate about doing day to day, and also to offer our services to people that are out there that are in need. Absolutely. Let's talk about cyber ninjas, cyber ninjas doing this phony fake audit out in Arizona of the election

results in Maricopa County. This is a completely made up bizarre QAnon inspired fake audit that the Republican GQP legislature to do Donald Trump's bidding as they censure people like Cindy McCain and Jeff Flake and other people who once called themselves Republicans. They're going full QAnon in this, you know, in whatever it is they're doing. They're talking about, I'm not making this up, folks. They're talking about the use of, and Popak, you'll make this make a little more sense, I hope. This is what the GQP is doing, using ultraviolet lights to determine if there are non-human like alien, like UFO kind of sources of manipulation of votes such that did aliens or non-humans. on to, you know, what they're even talking about here, manipulated votes and changed

them so that Biden would win in Maricopa County. So Trump would win. Trump would win. So that Trump would win. No, but they're saying that aliens came down from outer space to change the votes to allow Biden to win. First thing aliens do when they make contact with human beings is to try to influence the U.S. election. have government officials who are elected by human beings talking about non-human interference in an election. So, Popak, what we talked about Cyber Ninjas, I don't want to rehash some of the

stuff we already talked about, but you have this organization led by QAnon supporter, Doug Logan. I say he's a QAnon supporter, in my opinion, because he retweets QAnon supporter, Doug Logan. I say he's a QAnon supporter in my opinion because he retweets QAnon crazy stuff. Self-professed. You're not calling him anything he doesn't call himself. And so this is a cyber ninjas, an organization that never done this before. This is the first time they're doing any election related audit and it's a fake audit. And there's been a ton of legal issues, but where are we at now on the legal side of COPPA? Well, before I get to the Maricopa County judge, who fortunately made a very good ruling recently about the requiring cyber ninjas to finally reveal the BS secret sauce that they're using

to do ballot analysis, and we'll get into that in a minute because they had argued in court, well, judge, we have trade secrets and confidential information and we don't want to disclose it. And I think the judge rightly pushed back along with the lawyers for the state and said, you never did this before. How could you possibly have trade secrets? It's the first time you've ever looked at ballots. I want to see how you're doing this and disclose it to me. Thank God. candy land unicorn event that will have zero impact on the U.S. election that just passed. But why is it being done? Because you have Trump last week coming out in a very sad setting in front of, I don't know, 30 people on his balcony or his porch at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. You know, his supporters that, of course,

are there because they want to rub elbows with their cult leader. And he comes out at six o'clock because he's got nothing else to do. And he starts saying, Arizona, cyber ninjas, you're going to see I'm going to win there. And then we're on to, and he names five or six other states, because he's going to use this to continue to delegitimize Biden the way he delegitimized Obama for being a secret Kenyan and destabilize our democracy as a result. For instance, there are people that might be scratching their heads saying, well, is he really doing that? There are news reports, and I think the cyber ninjas have actually revealed it themselves because they're proud of it, that Trump calls himself every day to the Arizona accounting room to ask how the results are going. This is how crazy this is.

So as we talked about in the last podcast, there's not going to be an injunction to stop this because the democrats in arizona haven't raised a million dollars i don't know why they haven't to post or they may just think you know we talked about it we said we said maybe they should raise it maybe they should do it you know maybe though they do have a plan and you're going to talk about what the court ruling is yeah Maybe they have a plan that, you know what, just let, if you show how crazy these people are, let them start talking about space aliens and non-human forms and UV lights. Like why, maybe we don't want to stop it. Maybe we'll just show how crazy these people are and how psychotic they are. I mean, there is that side of the coin. I mean, if you're reasonably confident that even the crazies employing all sorts of bizarro tactics,

like UV lights and pens, and they're spinning the ballots on lazy Susans to be evaluated, you know, whether all of this hocus pocus snake oil salesman BS, they just want to rip off the mask and show it for the utter charade and QAnon conspiracy theory that it is. You're right. My fear is that they're going to somehow trump up, no pun intended, and find 20,000 ballots that are somehow questionable. And that's just going to give more oxygen to Trump and his acolytes to continue to tear down the Biden administration, a Biden administration that is trying to accomplish in a relatively short amount of time, two years, a lot of domestic and foreign policy changes and stimulus packages and voter ballot initiatives that are really, really important and vaccine rollouts and everything that's going to help us. And every

time they give oxygen to the craziness, I just fear that it's going to undermine what we're trying to accomplish. So tell us in terms of what the most recent court order was, what specifically is now being required? All right. So the judge, Judge Martin in Maricopa County ruled the day before yesterday or yesterday that the cyber ninjas have to turn over all of the methods they are using to evaluate these ballots because the judge ruled that the preservation of the sanctity of the ballots, which belong to the voters who cast them believing that they would be preserved and protected, is potentially being compromised when he's heard reports that blue pens, which are the exact same color as what the ballots were marked in, are being brought into the counting room, a big no-no from a quality control standpoint,

and that crazy UV lights are being used, which is all being recorded. Apparently, cyber ninjas are very proud of the fact that everything is like on video, on YouTube or wherever they're broadcasting this, and everybody can take a look at it. But it's also given the judge a lot of pause about, holy cow, I'm letting this go forward. And, and, and what is it? It's such an embarrassment to the state. Like it's the clownish looking state in the world right now. I clicked on and I commend our listeners do the same thing. You can find it on online. There are the actual, I don't, and I commend our listeners to do the same thing. You can find it online. There are the actual, I don't want to call them manuals, that's giving them way too much credit.

But if you can click on the procedures that the cyber ninjas have supplied to the judge, you'll see what a farce this is. I mean, it looks like it was created by an eighth grader for a science project. You know, they're barely legible. They're barely comprehensible in the way they're being written. And then you scratch your head. Of course, they say we use UV light, for instance, but they don't say what it's for. Now you've gone further because I think you've researched it to say they think they're searching for alien non-human interference in the ballots. I thought they were using it to determine whether, you know, sort of ballots got marked after the fact with different colored inks and therefore, you know, the ballot should have been thrown out. Look,

ballots that are marked by pen are often challenged. You and I were joking before we started the podcast because I have this giant magnifying glass, a la the hanging chads in Florida that were being examined by judges to see if they're hanging or not. When you go into that ballot booth or that ballot carousel that they put you in the plastic thing, and you start marking your ballot, look, I defy a human being to make every mark on that ballot from the top to the bottom identically, okay, or to sign their name perfectly so that it matches what they signed 20 years ago in the voter registration roll. I defy a human being to be able to reproduce as if he's some sort of handwriting expert. I can't even reproduce my own signature like when I'm at the bank,

let alone 22 little bubbles that I got to get right and perfect. And to have some crazy third party say, oh, bubble number six, the circle method or the scratches are not exactly like circle number three. I mean, this is beyond voodoo pseudoscience. Here's the thing.

In the Florida recount example, the cost of votes were decided by the hundreds. Not in 2000, there was several states with tens of thousands or sometimes, you know, 50 plus thousand, 75,000 votes. In Florida, the shift was that. And so when the votes are that close, then oftentimes you get the election lawyers in to start having these disputes like they did in Florida. Was this Chad hanging or was that Chad hanging? But there is no, this was not in any way even close. I mean, that's what makes this absurd.

And what the biggest threat to democracy is with all of these voter suppression laws across the country, though, is to try to make these elections closer so that they could ultimately be stolen by the GQP, by the Republicans. That's what this is. That's what this is truly about. And all of these voter suppression rules that we're, you know, that that that are out there, like the one we have in Georgia, you know, and we're like, well, there's this board that can actually flip an election. And then the GQP goes, no, the board can't flip the election. Well, if there's an ability to change county election officials who do the counting by

claiming that they're not effective or they're not doing their job right, you can have them basically change the elections by saying, you know what, that Chad wasn't angry, or this was this. But Arizona is making a fool of himself, making a fool of itself as a nation. And I want to briefly close the podcast, Popak, with talking about another location that is making a fool out of itself. It's your hometown of Miami. You're wearing the Miami Five-0 outfit right now. Is this Miami Five-0? You look like the Miami Lord. Totally. You've moved locations before you were in front of a poster that said, I can read it, that said Miami while denying your Miami roots.

It was funny. I had Michael Cohen on the Brother podcast yesterday, and I called him out for, I grew up in Long Island. He goes, I'm not from Long Island. I'm not from Long Island. And I had a data point because my dad lives on Long Island. And I know that Michael Cohen was shopping at the Miracle Mile in Manhasset in Long Island. There's no more Long Island than Manhasset. He didn't know. And this was obviously pre his arrest. This is when Cohen was able to walk in and have the ankle bracelet. And so this was like in the heart of the Cohen era of like Cohen and Trump.

And I just remember my dad saying to me, I was in Miracle, that's probably 2018. I was in Miracle Mile and I saw Cohen. He was just walking there in 2017. I saw Cohen. And so I threw that back at Cohen the same way I threw back at you that you were standing in front of a Miami poster. That's my trial skills at work. So, Popak, take us out here of this podcast by explaining to us why is there this Miami private school that is telling its teachers not to get the COVID-19

vaccine? And if in fact they get the COVID-19 vaccine, they will not be able to teach or return next year to the school. The exact opposite. These are human beings. This is what the GQP is like, a death cult. Yeah. All right. So this one's strange, but it's gotten legs and it's all over the media now. I happen to know some of the players here, not personally, but I know them by reputation because of my former Miami roots. So there's a high profile socialite wannabe couple. Their last name is Centner, C-E-N-T-N-E-R, David and Layla. They made a, this is a legal term, a shit ton of money in the highway toll technology business. So when you're driving down the highway and there is a toll-less toll charged against your license plate or your tag, you can probably blame David Centner and his company. They sold out to a private equity firm about five years ago,

and these two made a ton of money. And they entered sort of new, because Miami's into the new rich anyway. They entered Miami deciding they wanted to be socialites. And more importantly, they wanted to form and own a private school academy, what they call the only, and I'm not making this up, the only happiness school in America, which is really out of the laboratory of Layla and David's mind that they're trying to impose on the youth that sign up for this academy. And it's not just an interesting or novel curriculum. I'm okay with that. You want to use Montessori methods, or you want to use some other methods, great. You want to make people put plastic and saran wrap around their shoes before they enter a room. You want to tell teachers how to vote in the next

election. You want to tell teachers that they not only shouldn't get vaccinated because of some quackery out there about vaccines and COVID vaccines. But if they do, they will be fired from their job, which is a Americans with Disabilities Act ADA violation and a lawsuit class action waiting to happen. You heard Ben and I advertise our services for those people that are out there. You are not allowed to interfere with the medical rights or the medical decisions of an individual as a condition of employment. You can't say to somebody, don't get treatment. What if you had an underlying condition and you had to get the COVID vaccine to avoid your death? As you said, the death cult of the QDP, of the QOP. And so you can't say to somebody, you can't work here and get treatment for your underlying

condition because we have some crazy theory that through, I'm not making this up, this is their words, not mine, that through vaccine shedding through the pores of your body, you're going to pollute the child in our classroom. This is the craziness. And it goes beyond that. If it was just like a wacky preschool somewhere in some backwoods, nobody would really care. I mean, it'd still be an ADA violation waiting to happen, but nobody would really care. Why does this matter? Because these socialites are not only Trump followers and huge Trump donors, but they're super close to Governor DeSantis. You referred him to something else. They call him as Death DeSantis. Yeah. They've been currying favor in making major donations to him, along with a bunch of other places. And again, just to show you the hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of people like the Sentinels, that on the one hand, they're telling people not to get vaccinated for COVID. On the other hand, they took $800,000 in Paycheck

Protection Act PPP loans from the federal government that don't have to be paid back. So they take the largesse and they take the money from the federal government. And I'm sure they're going to take the next tranche of money that comes out of the Democratic past stimulus bill, right, for their schools. They're going to take that gladly, but then they're going to turn around and commit ADA violations by telling, not only teachers don't work here, if you're going to get vaccines, they actually went so far as to tell students not to hug their own parents if they've been vaccinated. I mean, seriously, this is bananas is the only place the way I can put it.

We try to deliver the facts to you. We try to just be logical with you. We try to be faithful to at all times, just being honest. It is always just so shocking. The batshit craziness to me of the GQP, or as Popak calls it, the QOP, the QT. Popak struggles with GQP. He can't nail the G, he can't nail those three letters. But we want to expose it. We want to call it out at all terms. And we always conclude these podcasts by talking directly to you and that you genuinely do have the power to make a difference. The fact that you're listening to this podcast shows that you have the power to make a difference. And it's a start. But you can go out there. You can learn what you're learning on this podcast,

the Other Midas Touch Brothers podcast, your search for the truth. And we got to fight for this democracy. We got to fight for this democracy because the other side, the GQP, they're fighting for an idiocracy, fascist, horrible country, and they legitimately want to destroy America every single day for their own greed. The law is the tool of the truth, but the law isn't always perfect. You have bad judges. You have politically appointed judges. You can make the arguments, but at some point, you can never give up that fight.

That's why Popak and I are here. That's why we're doing this podcast every week. And that is why we so much appreciate and love your support. And thank you for all of your support. This is Ben Mycelis and Michael Popak signing off for this week's Legal AF. Have a great rest of your week. Thanks, Ben.