The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump’s MASSIVE Legal Fee GRIFT Hits SHOCKING Amount

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the release of Donald Trump’s federal election report showing he spent over $50 million on his legal fees from his campaign political action money. Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/MEIDAS and use the code MEIDAS to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario i'll tell you something somebody said to me alina would you rather be um would you rather be smart or pretty? And I said, oh, easy, pretty. I can fake being smart. About $4 million, $4 million. Alina Haba has been paid based on my estimates from Donald Trump's political action committee. Another lawyer named Christopher Kais, who's representing Donald Trump

in the New York Attorney General civil fraud case, has made at least $3 million. And a new report out about Donald Trump's Political Action Committee filings show that Donald Trump has probably paid over $50 million in legal expenses using the money of the donors who he's grifted off of to pay his own legal fees and to pay the legal fees of witnesses and to pay the legal fees of about kind of everybody in the MAGA world who may have information on him just about, other than Rudy Giuliani. He stiffed Rudy Giuliani out of this $50 million, this completely, in my opinion, wasteful spending and grifting off of MAGA supporters for Donald Trump's own legal bills for criminal cases

and civil cases. Giuliani got stiffed and Giuliani was out there representing Donald Trump, probably the most spreading all of the lies about the 2020 election. We know that because on the bankruptcy trustee's application and the bankruptcy court after Giuliani was hit with a $148 million verdict in the Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss case. The bankruptcy trustee lists Donald Trump as somebody who owes Rudy Giuliani an undisclosed sum of money. And the bankruptcy trustee will probably have to sue Donald Trump and go after Donald Trump to collect legal fees that were not paid to Rudy

Giuliani. Oh, by the way, when I estimated that Alina Haba was probably paid somewhere between four to five million dollars from Donald Trump, the way I estimated that is as of June or July, she was paid about three and a half million dollars, her firm. And she's been doing a lot more representation since then, if you want to call what she does. Representation. Oh, and those estimates don't include the fact that she was sanctioned, her and Donald Trump, around $1 million by a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida, Don Middlebrooks. The fact that she just lost a case suing the New York Times with Donald Trump, where she owes about $400,000 in legal fees to the New York Times.

And it certainly doesn't include the $83.3 million verdict against Donald Trump in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, nor does it include the New York Attorney General's civil fraud verdict. Let's take a look at this New York Times article. Donald Trump is facing four criminal indictments and potential trials that could drive his legal bills even higher as he seeks to lock up the presidential nomination. Really weird framing, New York Times. I mean, you have Donald Trump wasting all of this money, and the New York Times headline is, as he looks to lock up that nomination.

Oh, before going into this, if you also want to just see the complete and utter rot in the Republican Party that's now been taken over by MAGA. Take a look at this. It's this Jack Posobiec guy and Steve Bannon on Bannon's show. And they're talking about how Ronna McDaniel, who doesn't go by Romney anymore because Donald Trump doesn't like when she uses her name Romney that she was using. They basically say, you know, look, we are completely failing as

a party. Our fundraising is, is, is crappy. We're, we're in a lot of trouble right now in the Republican party. It's because of Ron and McDaniel and the RNC here play this clip. Somehow the RNC has failed in their duty to raise that money, to raise the coffers. So they're trying to leverage lines ofers so they're trying to leverage uh lines of credit they're trying to leverage going in because and and the reason for that is very simple the reason for that is very simple the people of this party and the people of this movement have checked out under the under the failed leadership and the mismanagement of ron and mcdaniel amen that is why Or, or maybe it's because donors

don't want their money going to Donald Trump's legal defense bills. And they know that Donald Trump is a total grifter. Also the Republican party is now in the image of Donald Trump, which means throughout Donald Trump's life, everything he's touched bankruptcy, bankruptcy, bankruptcy. I mean, this is not a good business leader. Like objectively, this is not a builder. This is a destroyer. Every company this guy has touched or most of the companies have gone bankrupt. He bankrupted casinos in Atlantic City when the House is always supposed to win.

So by the way, you look at the Arizona GOP, you look at the Michigan GOP, you look at Republican parties across the country and what are you seeing? That the Republican parties are losing all of their money. They're not raising money. That they, you know, previous leaders spent all of this money on these frivolous cases to try to push 2020 election conspiracies. It's the party of Trump. Losers, losers, losers. All right, back to this. Trump's PAC spent roughly $50 million.

Trump piled up legal expenses in 2023 as he was indicted four times, spending approximately $50 million in donor money on legal bills and investigation-related expenses last year, according to people briefed on the figure. It's a staggering sum. His lone remaining rival in the 2024 Republican primary, Nikki Haley, raised roughly the same amount of money across all her committees in the last year as Trump's political accounts spent paying the bills stemming from his various legal defenses, including lawyers, not just for himself, but for witnesses.

And by the way, we know how that's gone, where a lot of these MAGA lawyers were representing witnesses. The witnesses were not all that forthcoming until they had independent counsel. Did you know that your temperature at night can have one of the greatest impacts on your sleep quality? If you wake up too hot or too cold, I highly recommend that you check out Miracle Maid's bed sheets. Inspired by NASA, Miracle Maid uses silver infused fabrics and makes

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Thank you, Miracle-Mate, for sponsoring this. So the exact figure of how much money Trump has spent on legal bills is going to be released soon. But even when we get the number right now, all the sources are giving us those estimates. We're still not going to know the full extent of it just based on the way that it's characterized. And one of the things that we saw too for Trump to be able to try to pay these legal bills is this unusual transaction, I suppose, but then again, it's Donald Trump unusual or suspicious.

It's pretty much everything he does other than criminal, which oftentimes it turns out that that's what it is after further investigation. But here, Trump asked for a $60 million refund that he initially had transferred to a different group, a pro-Trump super PAC called MAGA Inc., which is supposed to do campaigning stuff. And then Trump said, nah, actually let's claw that back. We're not going to put that to the campaigning. I'm going to pay legal bills and witness bills and all of that with this money. Give Alina Habba three and a half mil, four mil, five mil,

whatevs. Christopher Keis, $3 million retainer, whatever. In addition, it says Trump has been directing 10% of donations raised online to Save America, meaning 10 cents of every dollar he has received from supporters is going to a PAC that chiefly funds his lawyers. Trump has paid legal expenses through both Save America and a second account called Make America Great Again PAC, which is an outgrowth of his 2020 election committee. One of the things that I find interesting, though, is when Trump actually created a legal defense fund and labeled it as such and said, this is a legal defense fund. Here's where it's going to legal defense for witnesses. That account only raised $1.6 million, whereas the other accounts have raised tens of millions of dollars that have been directed to Donald Trump's legal defense bills and witness legal defense bills. By the way, here is Alina Haba where she went on Fox.

And this is where she was asked, this is when the number was 40 million, not 50 or $60 million. And she was asked about that. And what Alina Haba's response was is, look, of course we're gonna use PAC money. Trump's independently wealthy. This is what independently wealthy people do. Of course they use donations of supporters

who are paying money to a campaign. Here, play this clip. Alina, let me get your take on the money being spent here on legal fees. Did you hear what Congressman Byron Donalds just said? He said that he believes the strategy of the Department of Justice is to bleed Trump dry, to bring so much legal issue and problems to Trump that he has to spend all of this money

on legal fees. You are the general counsel of his super PAC. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the political committee has spent more than 4040 million this year on legal fees as he and a constellation of advisors have been swept into these various investigations. How much has it been and how are you directing the money in terms of paying for legal fees? Tens and tens of millions of dollars. And I do think that that is part of this strategy. It is incredible. They have brought in people like myself who have nothing to do with these cases. I was not part of the administration just so that lawyers have to get lawyers and these lawyers cost money. And when you take a broad net and you try and intimidate anybody who is part of his circle, whether I couldn't even say inner circle, Maria, it's gone further than that. You know, the valet at Mar-a-Lago, the chefs, the whatever. It's crazy. And it is on purpose.

Nothing they do is not intentional. It's calculated. And it is to make him bleed. The problem is that President Trump is independently wealthy as well. And they forget that. And he has said at rallies, I will do whatever it takes. If it means I have to spend my own money, I will. He is very protective and kind and generous. And at the end of the day, they're going to try and take him down financially. And that's just frankly, not a good angle. I don't know if they've seen, you know, his wealth, but it's probably not the best angle to go at. And by the way, it should be noted too, that do you have any doubt that a lot of these MAGA supporters who have given hundreds of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars to Donald Trump's legal defense, to loser lawyers like Alina Haba and Christopher Keis and others in cases, Donald Trump has

lost big over and over again in front of juries. I would guarantee you that these are people who are probably saying, you know, oh, the economy is bad right now, despite all the metrics, you know, trending up and that, you know, we don't have enough money to do this or that, or, you know, complaining when they're giving their money to Donald Trump, someone who purports to be a billionaire to pay the purported billionaire's legal fees. So what? You can get Alina Haba to do that great legal work, like lose in a case that Donald Trump's hit with an $83.3 million verdict. And then after the verdict, you get to pay for Alina Haba to attack a prestigious federal judge

appointed to the bench in 1994 and claimed the judge had a mentor-mentee relationship with E. Jean Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. Just make crap up and cite the New York post as your anonymous source for this information. Even though you Alina Haber are quoted in the first paragraph and in the headline of the New York post, maybe, maybe that's where, you know, I think that's a great expenditure of funds only to then have it be pointed out by Roberta Kaplan, E. Jean Carroll's lawyer, that you were just lying about the judge, lying about Roberta Kaplan.

So then Alina Habas sends a letter to the judge saying, yeah, I never said what I said in the letter that we all read. I never said that, judge. I was just asking questions. That's where your money is going to, MAGA. But by the way, that's why at this point you have, you know, this MAGA cult-like small base and, you know, independents, even like Nikki Haley voters, you know, some reasonable Republicans, independent voters, former Republicans,

you know, we're all coming together and saying, okay, this Trump stuff is just wacky. This stuff is not normal. Never that guy. Okay. This guy, this MAGA movement is unhinged and deranged and is a weird cult where they pay for the billionaire's legal fees. Some weird stuff. I just think it's wild, too, that he didn't pay Giuliani. He paid Habba like $4 million but didn't pay Giuliani. And Giuliani's bankruptcy trustee now has to go after Donald Trump. So buckle up, stay tuned, folks. This is getting

interesting. I'm Ben Micellis. This is the Midas Touch Network. Hit subscribe. We're on our way to 3 million subscribers and have a great day. Hey, Midas Mighty, love this report? Continue the conversation by following us on Instagram at Midas Touch to keep up with the most important news of the day. What are you waiting for? Follow us now.