From the Reflecting Pool to the Supreme Court: Major Legal Updates

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Welcome to the midwek edition of Legal AF. I'm your
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host Karen Friedman Agniffilo. Joining me today is Lisa Graves,
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who I'm thrilled to have as a co host. Michael
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Popok is traveling and Lisa always steps in for us
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when we need it.
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It's great to see you, Lisa. How are you good.
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Good to see you too, Karen. It's nice to be on.
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And Hope Popok is having one all time traveling. I
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know he's been on from away and as always, it's
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great to have this conversation with you, Karen and be
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here on legallyf Yeah, there's so much.
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To talk about.
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I mean, when we were looking at the things to
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talk about today, we had to cut things off the
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list as usual, but there's so many things to talk
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about this today's episode is going to be about more
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about Todd blanche and whether or not he is going
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to become the Attorney General and what is still going
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on in the votes that he needs. We're also going
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to talk about the Reflecting Pool and the cases that
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have been dismissed by the United States Attorney Jeanine Piro
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and why and what is happening there, and Trump is
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not happy about it. We're also going to talk about
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thirty five former federal judges who have filed an amicus
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brief in the Trump versus the Irs case down in Florida.
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They are intervening in that case because there really was
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no adversarial party, so they are stepping in to be
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to take the position, the adverse position in that case,
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and so there's some developments there. We also are going
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to talk about mail in ballots and the Supreme Court
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and what's happening there and whether Trump is going to
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be allowed to have his executive order go into effect
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that severely limits mail in ballots and gives the United
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States Postal Service tons of power over our elections. And
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there's also some really colorful language in Judge Metta's decision
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dismissing the remaining jan six cases, including Stuart Rhodes's case.
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So that's worth talking about.
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And we're going to round it out with Trump trying
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to get out of the lawsuit he brought against the BBC,
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the defamation lawsuit, and he doesn't want to open up
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his books and records to them, even though he's going
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to be required to as part of discovery since he
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brought the lawsuit climbing damages.
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So there's a lot to talk about, and that's.
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Only the tip of the iceberg. So I look forward
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to talking about all these issues with you, Lisa.
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Let's just jump right in.
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Let's talk about what's going on in the Senate and
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Todd blanche who's up for confirmation for Attorney General, and
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just to sort of tell everyone where we are. In
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order to become confirmed as the attorney General, he had
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to testify in front of the Senate and be questioned,
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and it was looking like there were some people who
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are concerned about his independence and some senators who were
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upset about things like and we're talking Republicans, not just Democrats,
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who were concerned about how he's treated the Epstein victims,
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how whether he's independent, and whether he's still Trump's personal
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lawyer as opposed to representing the United States of America
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and the Department of Justice, and a lot of people
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were also a lot of senators were also concerned about
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this slush fund, the one billion, seven hundred and seventy
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six thousand dollars slush fund that he the anti weaponization fund,
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as he called it, that he wanted to be able
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to dole out to primarily the January sixth people who
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he pardoned all of them. And so you have a
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lot of senators who who I think had some genuine
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legitimate concerns, a lot of Democrat and several Republicans, And
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it was getting stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee because
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they had to vote it out of that committee into
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the full Senate. And he was having a hard time
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getting out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I thought, actually
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there was a chance he wouldn't because Cornyn and Tillis
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were kind of holding it up, and he seems to
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He did convince them, however, and he now has it
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in front of the full Senate. He faces now a
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really tight, high stakes vote. And look, just to also
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tell everybody kind of the word the math is on this.
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Republicans hold fifty three seats, but because Mitch McConnell is MIA,
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and we have no idea where he is or what's
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going on with him, because he's not providing any health
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updates to people, so they really have they really only
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have a two vote lead here. And Senator Collins has
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already said that she is not going to vote for
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for a blanche. I think that was a calculation on
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her part. I don't know if this is some sort
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of deal that she's struck, that she's not they'd led
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her so that she can stay on the ballot because
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or that she can I should say, she's on the
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ballot in November and she's fighting for her life and
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and so maybe maybe it was a deal they struck
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that she had to vote no to try to keep
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her seat. But this leaves the outcome to just a
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few a handful of senators and what's going to happen there?
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And so some people have said Murkowski is up for grabs,
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build Cassidy's up for grabs. Even Senator Curtis is up
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for grabs. So who knows, and maybe some other senators
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might also might also be holding out. But what do
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you make of of the concerns, Lisa, and what do
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you think about about the issues surrounding the issue that
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people are concerned about, especially regarding the slush fund that
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he seems to have allayed the concer arns of Cornyn
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and Tillis. You know, I've heard people say that it's
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kind of toothless and not worth the paper it's written
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on him, saying essentially that the fund is dead.
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Well, this is an issue I've been tracking closely and
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writing about. And as you and others know, I was
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the chief council for nominations for the US Senate Judiciary
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Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy when he was the chair
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and then the ranking member, and so I have been
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following what the Senate Judie Committee does quite closely. I
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have to admit that I was very hopeful for a
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moment when Senator Cornyn was asking really good questions about
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that non settlement, the so called settlement that judge, a
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federal judge has found to be collusive to be not
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a settlement because it's not adversarial. And we will talk
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about that a little bit more in this conversation later on.
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But in terms of this particular the hearing that was
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on Todd Blanche's nomination to become the Attorney General, officially,
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Corner was asking the right questions, which is the terms
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of that agreement, that non agreement, but the terms that
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agreement on their face, or that this is a contract
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between the parties, between the Justice Department and between and Trump.
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Even though Todd Blanche did not, you know, file an
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appearance in that case, even though the federal government did
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nothing to raise the defenses that were readily available to
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the government to prevent paying anything out and instead entered
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into this really terrible smelling deal. What we saw Cornyan
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saying was by the terms of that agreement, it can
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only be modified by signature of both parties. It's a contract,
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and a contract can't just be unilaterally modified. And that
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was his position. It was it was the correct position.
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And then over the past weekend he decided to capitulate
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to Trump in exchange for a press release from the
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Justice Department asserting that the fund is dead and a
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signed statement by Todd Blanche saying that the fund you know,
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in essence that the fund is dead, and also putting
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some sort of theoretical limit on the other part of
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this deal, which I consider to be a dirty deal
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involving the settlement of claims against Donald Trump in any
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other capacity. And you know, Todd Blanche's signature on that
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means nothing. It does not have any legal effect. It's
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not a contract amendment assigned by both parties. It's a
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face saving measure for Cornyn, John Cornyn and Senator Tom
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Tillis to claim they got something from Blanche and from
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the Trump administration in exchange for their vote, when instead
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they traded what was left of their reputation for a
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meaningless set of papers from Todd Blanche. And the reason
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it's meaningless is not just that the document that was
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initially signed is a contract, as Todd Blanch conceded in
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his testimony before the Judiciar Committee just two weeks ago.
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It's also meaningless because we have already seen how Todd
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Blanche has been using the settlement funds that are available
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to the Justice Department. Aside from this specific commitment of
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this pernicious one point seven to seven six billion dollar
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trust to pay out money to the thugs who attacked
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our capital and the Capitol police on January sixth, already
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this Justice Department has been making payouts. It made a
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payout of more than five million dollars to Ashley Babbitt,
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who was violently throwing herself against the doors the chambers
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of Congress, trying to break in in order to stop
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the counting of our ballots, and she was shot. The
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courts and the just Front reviewed that shooting and found
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it was not criminal, that it was justified shooting at
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the time, but this Justice Department settled that for more
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than five million dollars. Then just a few months ago,
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this Justice Department a case with Michael Flynn, who had
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previously pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his
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contacts with Russia in twenty sixteen coming into twenty seventeen,
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and paid him out one point two five million dollars
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for that. Those settlements have been publicized in a way,
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but not really fully disclosed through the process for disclosing settlements.
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A number of the settlements that are in that judgment
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fund are listed as redacted, So we don't know whether
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other people have already been paid out through the regular
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Justice Department settlement fund under the Federal Tour Claims Act
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and the like. And so there's nothing in the law
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right now that would prohibit Todd Blanche from paying out
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anyone he chooses, separate from this so called commission that
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was going to be established under that fund. But the
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other part of this is the statement that Todd Blanche
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signed that Tillis and Corner are hanging their hat on.
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That so called you know, signed statement merely says that
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the quote settlement of Donald Trump's I R S claims
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claims against the I R S for the theft of
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some of his data along with other iris date of
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hundreds of other people by a contractor who was found
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guilty of that theft. That that as part of that
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quote settlement, Todd Blanche agrees that it only applies retroactively
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to anything that Donald Trump may have done up through
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this spring May of this year. Previously, that the government
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cannot investigate him, not just the I R S, but
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any government entity cannot investigate him civilly or criminally for
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any violation law, which would include any tax violations, any
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you know, felony or criminal tax violation, or any other
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activities for both Donald Trump, for not both, but for
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Donald Trump, his sons in particular, and his three or
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four hundred businesses. This statement by Todd Blanch comes as
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we just learned in the past seventy two hours or
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more that Capital One Bank had debanked Donald Trump and
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his three hundred plus businesses because its software and its
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experts found that the types of transactions that were coming
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through Capital One as of twenty twenty one were so
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suspicious that they raised serious concerns about money laundering and
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money liability by the bank. For money laundering if they
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did not debank Donald Trump. So that's just a snapshot
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of what was going on in twenty twenty one. Meanwhile,
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we all know from the financial disclosures that Donald Trump
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has made at least two billion dollars in the first
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year of his presidency from crypto and other deals, and so,
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in essence, what Todd blanche is saying is that he
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has given Donald Trump immunity from any liability of any
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kind whatsoever through May of this year for anything that's
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happened in the past, which actually is not the job
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of the Attorney General and should never been signed. This
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nomination should have been dead on arrival. It should have
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never been he should never have been given a hearing,
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letting alone a committee vote. But unfortunately, as you point out,
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Cornyn and Tillis have signed off, so he was passed
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out of the committee. And the next step will be
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a cloture vote in the Senate on Friday, which would
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allow for a formal vote on his nomination by Saturday,
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before the senators leave town and go home to their
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home districts or to their vacations.
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Well, so what's a cloture vote.
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A cloture vote is a process under the Senate rules
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to end the debate. It ends the possibility of any
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sort of standing filibuster, and so it basically is a
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super majority threshold that if the Democrats, you know, can't
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get to a certain number of votes in general for cloture,
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the matters go forward to a full vote, and so
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it basically takes away the last procedural hurdle for trying
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to slow down or stop Todd blanche from being confirmed
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as the Attorney General.
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So I just want to clarify something for people who
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might not know this, or maybe everybody does know this,
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But the Department of Justice doesn't only handle criminal cases.
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They also handle civil cases. So they are the United
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States government's lawyer for anyone who's going to sue the
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United States government. So it could be I'm suing I'm
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bringing a lawsuit based on civil rights, for example, or
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I think that the FBI agent shot me and shouldn't have.
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And you know, there's all sorts of civil matters that
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get brought by the Department of Justice. And the reason
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that's significant is that is why Trump was on the
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other side of the v on the Trump versus IRS case, Right,
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That's why he's on both sides. And why Todd blanche
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as the Attorney General of the United States has the
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authority to settle this and all the S six cases.
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Right what you were talking about that why is it
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that they're paying all this money to people who in
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the January sixth pardon cases, they're bringing these civil lawsuits
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for damages saying, you know, I don't even know what
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they're alleging.
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How how they can credit.
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Distress mental distress charged?
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Yeah, exactly, And so they're suing. They're suing the United
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States government. And because they have civil authority, which not
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all prosecutors' offices have, but but the Department of Justice does.
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He they settle all the.
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Time with people, and so they have under and as
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you pointed out, the Federal Towrts Claims Act is typically
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what they the lawsuit that they bring that they that
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they bring these under and then when they they when
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they settle it, there are funds that they can access.
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They don't have to establish a separate slush fund. There's
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other funds they can access that they can pay as
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they do for any time they settle a civil suit.
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And so it makes you realize that this seventeen seventy
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six fund. You know, this one point seven, you know,
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billion dollar slush fund. Weaponization fund was nothing more than
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a press release anyway. It was nothing more than a
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political press stunt anyway, because they they have this ability,
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and so it's almost like giving ice in winter and
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them saying the fund is dead doesn't matter because they
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can do this anyway, and they are. And that's what's
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so astounding to me is is that that they're going
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to get what they want anyway. And as you just
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pointed out, Donald Trump is getting the greatest gift of all.
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He's going to keep hundreds and hundreds of millions of
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dollars in potential tax liability because he was being audited
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and that was the problem. So that's a huge win
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for Donald Trump and a huge win for Todd Blanche.
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But I'm just so surprised.
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That these senators, really, all of them, who I thought
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for a minute there because they were present on January sixth,
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they were the victims of that crime.
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I thought maybe then.
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They would they would say, you know what, this is
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a bridge too far even for me, or I was
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even had some hope during these hearings that that that
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the Epstein survivors who who were treated so poorly by
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the Department of Justice, and Todd Blanch who met with
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them because you know, he checked off that box when
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when when he was when he was forced to. But
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they were they felt that that was nothing, that that
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was not a substantive meeting, and that he didn't really
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hear them or listen to them in good faith. So
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I'm just surprised that he was able to convince these senators.
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I mean, it's just shocking to me.
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Yeah, it really is. It's it's so outrageous. I mean,
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the fact is that Todd Blanche never should have been
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confirmed to be Deputy Attorney General. Part of the lem
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in essence that Cornyn posed was that there was no
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way to remove Todd Blanche without an impeachment, so he
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was going to remain as Deputy Attorney General regardless of
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what happened here. And there's this specter that somehow Trump
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would have chosen someone worse to come in as acting
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than Todd Blanche, and that supposedly Todd Blanche is a
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reasonable man who will tell Donald Trump the law as
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it is. We haven't actually seen that. What we've seen
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is that Todd Blanche has been devoted to Donald Trump,
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to serving Donald Trump, not to the American people, to
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advancing Donald Trump's weaponization schemes to attack his so called
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political enemies, pursuing criminal charges against James Comey and Letitia
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James and others, pursuing the appointment of other former criminal
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or civil defense attorneys to key roles in the Justice
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Department or the US Attorney's Office, Pursuing United States Congress
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people for daring to say that the military has an
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obligation to follow the constitution, not a person if those
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if a person issues orders that are contrary to the
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Constitution or the law. And so Todd Blanche has been
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the chief expedi or basically of Donald Trump's agenda at
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the Justice Department. He hasn't been behaving like any former
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anyone who previously held that role has. And he should
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not be confirmed to be the Attorney General of the
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United States. He should not be confirmed to that position
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of public trust. And like you said, you would think
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that there would be some members who might have, you know,
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reservations in the form of voting for this man, voting
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for Todd Blanche to become the kind of ongoing official
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Attorney General based on Donald Trump's determination to send our
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tax dollars to people who attacked the capital. Even Josh Holly,
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who ran through the halls after holding his fist up
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in alliance with the crowd before it became a mob
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out there, he you know, folded immediately in supporting Todd Blanche.
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But tell Us has been publicly out spoken about opposing
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the payout for people he calls thugs, and I agree.
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And yet just this weekend, Donald Trump was insisting, you know,
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we've got to pay these poor January sixth, people who've
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been convicted that he pardoned in his blanket, pardon poor them,
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with no sympathy whatsoever to the Capitol police who died
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or committed suicide in the aftermath of being attacked by
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citizen of the United States. At the behest of Donald Trump,
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and similarly for Todd Blanche, at that hearing, Todd Blanche
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expressed out loud his concern for poor Glaine Maxwell, the
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convicted sex offender who was the co conspirator, one of
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the major co conspirators for Top you know, with Epstein.
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And there was Todd Blanche saying, you know, he, you know,
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she needed to be moved for her safety, but he
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really showed the back of the hand to these Epsteins vivors,
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wouldn't meet with them, and then finally capitulated to a
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very brief meeting that they described as disrespectful, but ultimately
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they he was never going to do any thing to
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actually address their concerns. The fact is is that what
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we saw in January when Todd Blanche, as the Deputy
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Attorney General, announced that he was not going to release
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any more of the Epstein files, even though there are
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thousands and thousands of pages that have not been released
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that members of Congress have said should be released, including
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thousands of references to Donald Trump. Todd Blanche said that
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the files that were released were cleared of any depictions
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or references to child porn, of course that should not
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be released, and that it also included the deletion or
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removal of information about people who were killed or tortured
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or assaulted in these files. And so in essence, he
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conceded that there are depictions of violence in these files
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and other crimes. And yet this Justice Department under Todd Blanche,
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regardless of meeting briefly with the Epstein survivors, has done
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nothing to bring any further charges against any other people
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who are implicated in these files. And remember, one of
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the things that we learned from the reporting last year
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around the Epstein files was that Donald Trump said he
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couldn't get them released. He didn't want to release because
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people he knows were going to be hurt by them.
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Those aren't the survivors. Those are the other men whose
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names were redacted by Todd Blanche from those files while
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the victims' names were released to the public.
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Yeah, pretty pretty outrageous.
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While we're on this subject of this fund, this slush fund,
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why don't we dive right into the Trump Versus IRS
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case and what happened yesterday, because this is kind of
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a sham lawsuit, to put it nicely, And yesterday a
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bipartisan group of former federal judges filed a formal opposition
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brief in the Trump Versus IRS to block Trump from
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freezing the court ordered sanctions stemming from this lawsuit. This
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was led by former judge federal judge Nancy Gertner and
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Michael Ludig. And essentially, why don't you talk about that,
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because I think it's so important. What some of the
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things that they said and what's going on there.
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Yes, so this is the case that underlies this, this
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faux settlement, this collusive settlement, as the as the federal
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District Court judge found. You know, Initially, what happened was
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Trump files this ridiculous ten billion dollar lawsuit against the
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government shortly after he is sworn in as president, claiming
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he deserves ten billion dollars for the fact that a
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year of his tax filings were made available by the
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criminal acts of a contractor. Other cases that were filed
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about that breach were strongly assailed by the Justice Department.
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They were there were motions to dismiss, there were efforts
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to prevent those cases from going forward because those are
401
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the actions of a third party contract. They were basically
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00:24:00.920 --> 00:24:04.079
what is known as Ultravira's acts, criminal acts that were
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not authorized in the course of their non employment by
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the government. They're contracting with a contractor. And yet Donald
405
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Trump's case went forward while this secret, in my view,
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dirty deal was being cut. Then what happened was that
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Donald Trump's attorneys moved to dismiss that lawsuit did not
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indicate to the court that there had been a settlement,
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In fact, indicated the opposite. So to dismiss that case.
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And then what happened was these former federal judges, including
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Judge Michael Lutdig, who was appointed to the Federal Court
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of Appeals by George Herbert Walker Bush, who was the
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finalist for the Supreme Court Chief Justice position alongside John Roberts,
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a very well regarded jurist who also testified about the
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devastating effect of Donald Trump's actions. On January sixth, Michael Luddig,
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along with over thirty other federal judges, filed an motion
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with the Court saying that that dismissal, that proposed dismissal
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was a fraud upon the Court, that everything indicated that
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subsequent to that dismissal, we learned that there was a
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secret settlement that had the two parts. One was the
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settlement of any claims quote forever in capital letters involving
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Donald Trump, his family, or his businesses from any part
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of the federal government, you know, going forward forever that
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they could not be pursued. And the second part was
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this one point seven to seven six billion dollars slush
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fund as a specific set aside to settle to make
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big payouts seven figure payouts to January sixth, convicts to
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these thugs in the words of Tom Tillis. And so
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the judge, Kathleen Williams, took a look at that motion,
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reviewed the evidence, and you know, issued a very compelling
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statement about what had happened. She found that the Trump's
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lawyers had filed a quote non adversarial and collusive lawsuit
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quote to manipulate the digital process and in her view,
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to force the IRS into a settlement that had quote
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no viable basis in law or fact and as and
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as a result of the settlement, actually a high ranking
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IRIS official resigned, as that a settlement was being pinned
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and inked in essence by Todd Blanche and his minions
439
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along with along with the Trump team. What happened next
440
00:26:26.680 --> 00:26:31.000
is that you have that case, you know, gets issued.
441
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She makes a referral for Todd Blanche to the New
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00:26:33.880 --> 00:26:36.720
York Bar, requesting that the New York Bar look into
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00:26:36.759 --> 00:26:41.000
his actions as the person who signed that settlement. And
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she also referred Alejandro Brito to the to the Florida Bar.
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And and she noted that she thought that monetary sanctions
446
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were one of the appropriate remedies for this what she
447
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considered to be this fraud on the court in this
448
00:26:56.599 --> 00:27:00.359
collusive settlement Brito we can talk about shortly. I'm sure
449
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he's denied these claims, but he's also the lawyer for
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Donald Trump in the BBC case, which we're going to
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talk about in a moment. But you come back to
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what the judges said. So what happened is Judge Williams
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issued this order. It was on the eve of Todd
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Blanche's nomination hearing. That should have been the end of
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his nomination hearing. Any Senate that is worth their salt
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would have said, we're going to put this on hold
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until this matter is resolved. We've never had an attorney
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general who's been subject to potential sanctions by a federal
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court for their behavior, for their conduct, or involved in
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what the lower court considers to be a fraud upon
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the court. And so but no, the nomination went forward.
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In the meantime, Trump's attorneys appealed that decision to the
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Eleventh Circuit. They're trying to get that decision by the
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lower court judge reversed. And in the meantime, then just
465
00:27:54.799 --> 00:27:58.480
in the past twenty four hours, what we have is
466
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a statement by those federal judges, those thirty five federal
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judgessing opposing the effort to get a stay by you know,
468
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by Trump's lawyers, and their words were that there is
469
00:28:11.960 --> 00:28:15.680
strong evidence of collusion and a lack of adversity meaning
470
00:28:15.720 --> 00:28:18.680
a lack of adverse parties in this case, and what
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they describe as bad faith underlying Trump's lawsuit against the government.
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He leads, Now, let me just add one more fact
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into there, which is when I was reviewing Todd Blanch's
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nomination and looking through his papers for his nomination to
475
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become a Deputy Attorney General, he described his role for
476
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Donald Trump previously not just as his clminel defense attorney,
477
00:28:39.440 --> 00:28:43.160
but also providing advice on civil matters. We don't know
478
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what matters Todd Lanch gave advice to Donald Trump on
479
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whether they involved his desire, whether they ever discussed in
480
00:28:51.039 --> 00:28:54.440
the preceding two years his desire to sue the irs.
481
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What we do know is that Todd Blanch spent sixty
482
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six hundred hours six thousand, six hundred hours in less
483
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than two years defending Donald Trump and aiding Donald Trump,
484
00:29:05.599 --> 00:29:09.400
basically almost every working hour for the preceding two years
485
00:29:09.440 --> 00:29:12.160
before he became Deputy Attorney General, And in my view
486
00:29:12.839 --> 00:29:16.720
as acting Attorney General with a capital A what we've
487
00:29:16.759 --> 00:29:19.480
seen as Todd Blunt continued to be acting with a
488
00:29:19.480 --> 00:29:22.839
lowercase A as Donald Trump's attorney in getting him these
489
00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:27.519
sweetheart deals both for his Trump's loyalists who were who
490
00:29:27.640 --> 00:29:30.880
violently attacked our capital, and also to get Trump off
491
00:29:30.920 --> 00:29:37.000
the hook with this outrageous civil immunity and criminal immunity,
492
00:29:37.119 --> 00:29:42.119
also for any actions that took place before before May
493
00:29:42.160 --> 00:29:45.359
of this year and possibly after, because the language was
494
00:29:45.400 --> 00:29:48.559
ambiguous in terms of how that agreement was written to
495
00:29:48.599 --> 00:29:52.880
basically give Donald Trump, in his personal capacity and his
496
00:29:53.039 --> 00:29:56.440
sons and his businesses the kind of immunity that John
497
00:29:56.559 --> 00:30:00.759
Roberts could not give him when John Roberts created immunity
498
00:30:00.759 --> 00:30:05.200
from criminal prosecution for presidents so called official acts. This
499
00:30:05.279 --> 00:30:08.279
reaches the other half of the equation, basically giving Donald
500
00:30:08.319 --> 00:30:12.440
Trump immunity for his civil acts over the past several years,
501
00:30:12.640 --> 00:30:16.559
regardless of the consequences both to our law and to
502
00:30:16.599 --> 00:30:17.240
our treasury.
503
00:30:17.519 --> 00:30:21.279
Well, let's see, the Supreme Court has that argument tied
504
00:30:21.400 --> 00:30:24.039
up in the other Egen Carol case, right, the eighty
505
00:30:24.079 --> 00:30:30.359
five million dollar Egen Carol case. They denied hearing the
506
00:30:30.680 --> 00:30:35.240
Donald Trump's appeal of the five million dollar case because
507
00:30:35.759 --> 00:30:40.319
that was just a private matter. The eighty five million
508
00:30:40.359 --> 00:30:45.119
dollar verdict or judgment, I should say, comes stems from
509
00:30:45.359 --> 00:30:48.279
comments that he made while he was president, and the
510
00:30:48.440 --> 00:30:51.319
issue in that case has to do with whether he
511
00:30:51.400 --> 00:30:56.359
will have civil immunity, right, what you're talking about, And
512
00:30:56.440 --> 00:30:59.119
so it'll be interesting to see if the Supreme Court
513
00:30:59.119 --> 00:31:01.440
takes up that case and what they say about that,
514
00:31:01.519 --> 00:31:06.160
because it will have ramifications for this case as well
515
00:31:06.200 --> 00:31:09.480
that we're talking about, right, I mean, it's it's just
516
00:31:09.559 --> 00:31:10.480
fascinating to me.
517
00:31:11.759 --> 00:31:11.920
Right.
518
00:31:11.960 --> 00:31:14.319
And he's actually sought to have the Justice front way
519
00:31:14.359 --> 00:31:17.799
in on those Eging Carroll cases, even though his actions
520
00:31:17.880 --> 00:31:21.960
quote as president were certainly in his personal capacity, those
521
00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:26.400
were not official acts to defame Eging Carol. But in essence,
522
00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:29.400
Donald Trump is also trying to use the Justice Department
523
00:31:29.680 --> 00:31:33.640
to assail that litigation in which the lower court found
524
00:31:33.680 --> 00:31:36.680
that he was liable for defamation for his repeated attacks
525
00:31:36.680 --> 00:31:40.240
on Egen Carroll, who prevailed in her primary litigation, as
526
00:31:40.240 --> 00:31:43.160
you pointed out, and who was finally paid that five
527
00:31:43.200 --> 00:31:46.440
million dollar judgment for the sexual abuse that she experienced
528
00:31:47.440 --> 00:31:50.039
at the hands of Donald Trump, and really for the defamation,
529
00:31:52.160 --> 00:31:56.480
how he defamed her in denying her allegations about that
530
00:31:56.599 --> 00:32:01.920
sexual abuse, and so these issues of Donald Trump's personal liability.
531
00:32:02.799 --> 00:32:05.559
What what what Todd Lanche did in this case in
532
00:32:05.559 --> 00:32:08.200
which the judge objected to in the in the case
533
00:32:08.240 --> 00:32:13.400
filed before Judge Williams was that the Justice Department entered
534
00:32:13.440 --> 00:32:19.839
into a non unsupportable, illegally and factually indefensible settlement with
535
00:32:19.880 --> 00:32:22.440
Donald Trump to let him off the hook from any
536
00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:26.839
investigation of his conduct by the federal government basically for
537
00:32:26.960 --> 00:32:29.759
the for his actions over the preceding decade or more.
538
00:32:29.960 --> 00:32:33.920
We you know, the hypocrisy here or the contrast here
539
00:32:34.160 --> 00:32:37.440
is so stark to me when you think about Donald
540
00:32:37.480 --> 00:32:38.559
Trump and Todd.
541
00:32:38.319 --> 00:32:44.319
Blanche basically not only absolving and pardoning people who committed
542
00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:47.920
violent acts against police officers, against you know, storm to
543
00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:50.759
the Capitol. We all saw with our own eyes what
544
00:32:50.920 --> 00:32:55.359
these violent individuals did. We see the conduct that Donald
545
00:32:55.359 --> 00:32:59.480
Trump does, right, He's accused of sexual assault, He's accused
546
00:32:59.559 --> 00:33:04.799
of of potentially violating tax laws and ow and owing
547
00:33:04.839 --> 00:33:10.359
tax money. He he's adjudicated a sexual abuser in federal court,
548
00:33:10.359 --> 00:33:15.680
he's adjudicated in state court, as as his business businesses
549
00:33:16.640 --> 00:33:21.079
of fraud. And and yet you know, on the one hand,
550
00:33:21.119 --> 00:33:24.440
and he's pardoning all these people, you know, a massive
551
00:33:24.480 --> 00:33:27.960
Central American drug trafficker, you know, the former prime minister
552
00:33:28.200 --> 00:33:31.400
of you know, was it Honduras, you know, like he
553
00:33:31.839 --> 00:33:34.720
or the president of Honduras. Like he's just he on
554
00:33:34.799 --> 00:33:36.880
the on the one hand, and on the other hand,
555
00:33:37.480 --> 00:33:42.359
he is prosecuting Jim Comey for for posting a picture
556
00:33:42.400 --> 00:33:46.599
of seashells right, or of Leticia James of checking the
557
00:33:46.640 --> 00:33:49.599
wrong box on her mortgage. I mean, it's just it's
558
00:33:49.680 --> 00:33:55.599
just the hypocrisy and and just inconsistency is so atrocious,
559
00:33:55.759 --> 00:34:02.400
and and the politicization of our justice system and is
560
00:34:02.480 --> 00:34:05.839
you know, it's just it's just unbelievable if kind of
561
00:34:05.880 --> 00:34:08.320
what he's getting away with. And I just hope people,
562
00:34:09.360 --> 00:34:12.440
I hope, I hope the results of the midterm elections
563
00:34:12.480 --> 00:34:16.000
will account for for all of what's happening, because it's
564
00:34:16.079 --> 00:34:16.760
just appalling.
565
00:34:16.960 --> 00:34:19.800
And you know, but anyway, that's my rant.
566
00:34:19.840 --> 00:34:23.400
But we have to take a quick break, and when
567
00:34:23.440 --> 00:34:26.840
we come back, we're going to talk about Janine Piro
568
00:34:27.039 --> 00:34:30.480
and reflecting Pool and what's going on there, as well
569
00:34:30.519 --> 00:34:33.239
as several other topics that we have to talk about.
570
00:34:33.760 --> 00:34:36.079
But we're to take a quick break. We love our sponsors.
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They support our show, they know what we're about, and
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but there they help us keep the lights on because
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we don't have a big We were just sort of
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independent where the independent might's Touched network. And we appreciate
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everyone coming here and listening and watching and supporting our
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show and supporting the Legal AF YouTube channel. If you're
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not already a subscriber to the Legal AF YouTube channel,
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please hit subscribe, and same thing with Midas Touch. If
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you're not part of the Midas Mighty, subscribe there as well,
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and we're going to take our first quick break.
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We're back.
630
00:38:15.480 --> 00:38:19.599
While we were on that short break, there's breaking news
631
00:38:19.920 --> 00:38:25.480
that in Trump's lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, where
632
00:38:26.280 --> 00:38:29.079
don't forget, he brought a defamation case against the Wall
633
00:38:29.079 --> 00:38:32.639
Street Journal for publishing that birthday book and that famous
634
00:38:32.880 --> 00:38:36.159
card that he wrote with the outline of a woman's
635
00:38:36.199 --> 00:38:42.119
body signing it in her privates to Jeffrey Epstein. This
636
00:38:42.599 --> 00:38:46.920
case was going to headed towards discovery, and Trump and
637
00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:51.559
his lawyers obviously would love to take Rupert Murdoch's deposition,
638
00:38:51.719 --> 00:38:56.320
and the judge just stayed all discovery pending the motion
639
00:38:56.480 --> 00:39:00.199
to dismiss. So, Lisa, is that a signal to you
640
00:39:00.480 --> 00:39:03.480
that the judge is considering that you think there's a
641
00:39:03.599 --> 00:39:08.199
chance that this judge is going to dismiss this defamation
642
00:39:08.360 --> 00:39:12.360
lawsuit and hand Donald Trump yet another huge loss.
643
00:39:13.159 --> 00:39:16.280
I think so. I mean, this deposition could have gone forward,
644
00:39:16.320 --> 00:39:18.760
but that was the deposition that Donald Trump's team wanted
645
00:39:18.800 --> 00:39:22.280
so badly to try to squeeze Rupert Murdoch, who Donald
646
00:39:22.320 --> 00:39:26.679
Trump previously said he told you know, he told Murdoch
647
00:39:26.719 --> 00:39:30.119
that the card was not legit, that they shouldn't run
648
00:39:30.159 --> 00:39:35.280
the story even though the card is in a leather
649
00:39:35.480 --> 00:39:38.880
bound book with all these other birthday cards. The idea
650
00:39:38.920 --> 00:39:43.159
that is somehow planted is ridiculous, and you know, it's
651
00:39:43.440 --> 00:39:46.400
of part of material that is you know, preserved from
652
00:39:46.559 --> 00:39:50.039
that time frame, as the Wall Street Jernal reported. So
653
00:39:50.559 --> 00:39:52.679
I don't think that I don't again, like many of
654
00:39:52.679 --> 00:39:55.840
these suits that had been brought against these media companies
655
00:39:56.400 --> 00:39:59.079
by Donald Trump. You know, in what we've seen in
656
00:39:59.119 --> 00:40:02.199
some of these cases, like with ABC or CBS, is
657
00:40:02.800 --> 00:40:05.559
sort of a capitulation to you know, rather than continue
658
00:40:05.559 --> 00:40:08.880
the litigation just to pay some some like almost like
659
00:40:08.920 --> 00:40:12.119
a nuisance suit, to make this nuisance go away. The
660
00:40:12.119 --> 00:40:14.559
Wall Street Journal has not approached it that way, nor
661
00:40:14.599 --> 00:40:18.400
has the BBC. They have been unwilling to settle these
662
00:40:18.440 --> 00:40:21.800
claims as Trump demands in what I can sort of be,
663
00:40:22.280 --> 00:40:25.880
in my opinion, sort of a shakedown effort. And in
664
00:40:25.920 --> 00:40:29.639
this instance, what you have is a judge basically stopping
665
00:40:29.719 --> 00:40:32.239
the discovery process right now at a moment when Donald
666
00:40:32.280 --> 00:40:36.079
Trump's team has been eager to try to put that
667
00:40:36.119 --> 00:40:39.920
squeeze on Murdoch and say, let's wait until we resolve
668
00:40:40.679 --> 00:40:43.440
the motions to dismiss, which we don't know how it's
669
00:40:43.480 --> 00:40:45.639
going to come out. But I would say, you know,
670
00:40:45.679 --> 00:40:48.320
the tea leaves probably are sixty forty in favor of
671
00:40:48.360 --> 00:40:53.639
dismissal given the facts as they are known, despite Trump's
672
00:40:53.679 --> 00:40:55.119
claims about the facts.
673
00:40:56.360 --> 00:40:59.719
So since you brought up the BBC, we're talking about defamation,
674
00:41:00.159 --> 00:41:02.440
just go right into what's going on with the BBC case.
675
00:41:02.519 --> 00:41:05.519
So I love the BBC case. It was kind of
676
00:41:05.519 --> 00:41:09.079
this case that went under the radar. I had forgotten
677
00:41:09.199 --> 00:41:11.760
or didn't realize it was being brought and.
678
00:41:13.960 --> 00:41:17.199
It Donald Trump was asking for.
679
00:41:17.880 --> 00:41:23.280
Essentially, the dispute centers on a discovery issue right now,
680
00:41:24.079 --> 00:41:27.719
and that's what where we're where we're getting to. But
681
00:41:27.880 --> 00:41:30.159
let me just tell the background really quick. So Trump
682
00:41:30.239 --> 00:41:35.400
sued the BBC in federal court in Miami alleging that
683
00:41:35.679 --> 00:41:41.199
there was a document documentary that was deceptively edited and
684
00:41:41.880 --> 00:41:45.159
it was about his Jan sixth speech on the Ellipse,
685
00:41:45.760 --> 00:41:50.079
and that he claims that it made it appear that
686
00:41:50.119 --> 00:41:55.320
he encouraged the capital attack. And so he alleged ten
687
00:41:55.440 --> 00:42:01.559
billion dollars in damages, basically seeing a crazy figure, essentially
688
00:42:01.599 --> 00:42:04.440
asserting that the broadcast of this and the edit of
689
00:42:04.480 --> 00:42:08.400
this severely harmed his reputation and his business interest. Now,
690
00:42:08.760 --> 00:42:11.239
you don't have to put a dollar amount in a lawsuit, right,
691
00:42:11.239 --> 00:42:13.880
but he chose to put a dollar amount in the lawsuit.
692
00:42:14.320 --> 00:42:17.760
And the BBC acknowledged that the edit was misleading and
693
00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:22.079
apologized for it, which you know, I guess they didn't
694
00:42:22.079 --> 00:42:24.000
have to do. I don't think it was misleading. Personally,
695
00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:26.519
I think he did encourage the right on the capitol.
696
00:42:26.559 --> 00:42:29.639
But still, you know, they're British and they're very polite,
697
00:42:29.679 --> 00:42:34.400
and so they said sorry and apologized, but they denied
698
00:42:34.440 --> 00:42:38.079
that this was defamation. And so they are seeking dismissal
699
00:42:38.119 --> 00:42:42.360
of the lawsuit. And why did Trump's finances become an issue?
700
00:42:42.360 --> 00:42:45.400
And why this is a discovery issue, because that's where
701
00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:47.960
we are right now. This lawsuit is kind of old news.
702
00:42:48.000 --> 00:42:50.000
But the reason we're in the news now is because
703
00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.679
there's this discovery dispute because Trump's finances are now an
704
00:42:54.679 --> 00:42:59.920
issue and BBC is seeking all his books and records. Like, okay,
705
00:43:00.159 --> 00:43:02.320
say you were harmed for ten billion dollars, You've got
706
00:43:02.360 --> 00:43:04.920
to show us, right, give us your books and records
707
00:43:04.920 --> 00:43:07.760
of your finance. You know that basically you put the
708
00:43:07.760 --> 00:43:11.360
financial condition of your entities at issue, saying they were
709
00:43:11.360 --> 00:43:15.000
allegedly harmed. So we get to look at that, we
710
00:43:15.079 --> 00:43:17.960
get to see the value of your business empire, whether
711
00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:21.199
any losses actually occurred. Yeah, and of course, you know,
712
00:43:21.800 --> 00:43:23.880
Donald Trump does not want to do that, and he
713
00:43:23.960 --> 00:43:26.360
tried to walk that back, right, He tried to be like, Okay,
714
00:43:26.440 --> 00:43:28.480
you know, no, we don't have to we don't have
715
00:43:28.519 --> 00:43:30.400
to do that part of it. But they're like, no, no, no,
716
00:43:30.440 --> 00:43:32.760
this is still part of it. But anyway, why don't
717
00:43:32.760 --> 00:43:34.960
you take it from there and update us on where
718
00:43:34.960 --> 00:43:35.320
we are.
719
00:43:35.719 --> 00:43:37.760
Yeah, I really appreciate that. I agree with you. I
720
00:43:38.079 --> 00:43:40.960
would not have conceded that. You know, they're doing a
721
00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:43.800
documentary in which they are taking portions of the speech.
722
00:43:43.960 --> 00:43:45.880
You know, he spoke for over an hour. Was just
723
00:43:46.360 --> 00:43:50.039
an obnoxious, obnoxiously long speech, as is par for the
724
00:43:50.039 --> 00:43:53.760
course in my view, larded with all these attacks on
725
00:43:53.920 --> 00:43:57.280
Pence and more. And so the claim was that it
726
00:43:57.320 --> 00:44:00.360
included two pieces of speech fifty seven minutes apart, that
727
00:44:00.760 --> 00:44:03.559
suggested that he incited the crowded riot. Well, that's what
728
00:44:03.639 --> 00:44:06.679
the grand jury found in the District of Columbia. Uh
729
00:44:06.800 --> 00:44:09.360
In the in the prosecution that was brought by Jack
730
00:44:09.400 --> 00:44:13.119
Smith was that he he did do so so I
731
00:44:13.119 --> 00:44:15.199
wouldn't have apologized for it. But as you point out,
732
00:44:15.239 --> 00:44:18.519
they they, you know, said, you know that having those
733
00:44:18.559 --> 00:44:21.960
two excerpts, you know, perhaps might have misled people, and
734
00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:25.480
so they apologize. And so the issue that is left
735
00:44:25.519 --> 00:44:29.559
in the case really is a whether that's defamatory. I
736
00:44:29.559 --> 00:44:32.519
think it's not, that's my personal opinion. And b if
737
00:44:32.559 --> 00:44:34.880
it is, you know, what, what are the damages? And
738
00:44:34.880 --> 00:44:38.199
as you point out, Trump put up front in that
739
00:44:38.360 --> 00:44:43.360
suit that this supposedly harmed his finances, including his businesses,
740
00:44:43.400 --> 00:44:46.360
and so it's perfectly legitimate for the VBC to say,
741
00:44:46.360 --> 00:44:48.719
all right, well, let's let's see your businesses. Let's see
742
00:44:48.760 --> 00:44:52.480
how they were affected by this documentary that aired in Britain,
743
00:44:52.719 --> 00:44:55.039
by the way, was not aired in the United States.
744
00:44:55.679 --> 00:44:58.760
There's no indication at all that it harmed his businesses
745
00:44:58.760 --> 00:45:01.800
in any way. And in essence, I think, you know,
746
00:45:01.840 --> 00:45:04.000
Trump was hoping that this case would settle and he
747
00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:07.320
would never have to reveal whether his businesses were harmed
748
00:45:07.400 --> 00:45:09.960
or not. I suspect they weren't harmed at all. In fact,
749
00:45:09.960 --> 00:45:12.920
he's continued to use the presidency, the post presidency, and
750
00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:16.719
the new presidency as a money making operation and what
751
00:45:16.840 --> 00:45:19.440
happened on January sixth, you know, has not in essence
752
00:45:19.480 --> 00:45:23.719
diminished his ability to attract a wealth and people seeking
753
00:45:23.719 --> 00:45:27.920
to cur you know, you know, curry his favor. And
754
00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:31.880
so the BBC, you know, they have been standing up
755
00:45:31.920 --> 00:45:34.480
strong and saying, look, you want this suit. You brought
756
00:45:34.519 --> 00:45:37.119
this suit to us, Let's have discovery, let's do it.
757
00:45:37.599 --> 00:45:42.719
And so what just happened is that Donald Trump's lawyers
758
00:45:43.039 --> 00:45:45.280
in this case, a mister Brito, who I mentioned before,
759
00:45:46.280 --> 00:45:51.119
filed an emergence, an emergency motion in like italics, emergency
760
00:45:51.199 --> 00:45:54.719
motion to stay the enforcement of the judge's order from
761
00:45:55.119 --> 00:46:00.760
from July twenty seventh, which required the the you know,
762
00:46:00.800 --> 00:46:04.679
the plaintiff in that case, Donald Trump, to cooperate with discovery.
763
00:46:05.079 --> 00:46:08.920
And this suit is being this particular motion was filed
764
00:46:08.920 --> 00:46:12.679
by the revocable by Donald J. Trump's revocable trust. They
765
00:46:12.679 --> 00:46:16.119
don't want anyone to see into that trust, which is
766
00:46:16.119 --> 00:46:19.519
where so much money is moving in that period. And
767
00:46:19.599 --> 00:46:23.400
let's remember that this period, you know, twenty twenty one,
768
00:46:23.679 --> 00:46:28.280
is the same period where we now know that Capital
769
00:46:28.320 --> 00:46:33.519
One was so concerned about suspicious activity happening through the
770
00:46:33.599 --> 00:46:37.480
various Trump accounts that were held at Capital One to
771
00:46:37.679 --> 00:46:41.199
Capital One Banks that they debanked Donald Trump because that
772
00:46:41.320 --> 00:46:46.280
triggered their internal process for reviewing whether there was money laundering.
773
00:46:46.280 --> 00:46:49.880
Now they have not said that Trump was engaged in
774
00:46:49.880 --> 00:46:53.159
money laundering. That has not been alleged in court, but
775
00:46:53.280 --> 00:46:57.840
the triggering process was consistent with the patterns for money laundering.
776
00:46:57.840 --> 00:47:00.760
And so you have these two things happening simultaneous. On
777
00:47:00.800 --> 00:47:03.360
the one hand, you have this lawsuit against the BBC
778
00:47:03.440 --> 00:47:08.119
claiming that Donald Trump suffered as a result of his
779
00:47:09.079 --> 00:47:12.000
of the BBC's documentary that I think was aired the
780
00:47:12.039 --> 00:47:15.320
following year, and then in this same time span twenty
781
00:47:15.360 --> 00:47:18.039
twenty one to twenty twenty two, you have a major
782
00:47:18.199 --> 00:47:21.920
US bank and international bank in many regards, but this
783
00:47:22.039 --> 00:47:25.320
major US bank saying we're going to debank Trump because
784
00:47:25.320 --> 00:47:28.519
there's so many suspicious transactions happening in terms of the
785
00:47:28.559 --> 00:47:31.119
pattern and the amounts of these transactions, that we can't
786
00:47:31.199 --> 00:47:34.159
run the risk of continuing to be his bank. So
787
00:47:34.320 --> 00:47:37.719
what's in Donald Trump's banking records? I think people have
788
00:47:37.760 --> 00:47:40.079
a right to know, and I certainly think the BBC
789
00:47:40.199 --> 00:47:42.079
has a right to know. Given the fact that Donald
790
00:47:42.079 --> 00:47:45.039
Trump was trying to exact ten billion dollars from them
791
00:47:45.280 --> 00:47:48.800
for the supposed harms to his business in this timeframe
792
00:47:48.840 --> 00:47:51.519
before he became president again in this second term.
793
00:47:52.360 --> 00:47:55.320
Yeah, it's kind of outrageous again the double standard, right,
794
00:47:55.800 --> 00:47:59.920
he's being accused of he's being debanked, as you call,
795
00:48:00.239 --> 00:48:03.519
you know, being accused of suspicious activity, and they're filing
796
00:48:03.559 --> 00:48:08.960
these specific suspicious activity reports also known as stars against
797
00:48:09.519 --> 00:48:13.000
about him, I should say, and and and seeing patterns
798
00:48:13.039 --> 00:48:18.639
that look like money laundering. It just seems like such
799
00:48:18.719 --> 00:48:22.480
hypocrisy again that he can do all this stuff and
800
00:48:22.559 --> 00:48:26.039
get away with it and sue people and you know,
801
00:48:26.159 --> 00:48:28.679
use all the might and power of the federal government
802
00:48:28.719 --> 00:48:32.599
to go after people. And it's just shocking to me.
803
00:48:32.880 --> 00:48:34.679
Yeah, you know that. The only reason we know that
804
00:48:34.719 --> 00:48:37.440
about Capitol One is because he sued Capital one too,
805
00:48:38.119 --> 00:48:41.199
claiming that he was debanked for his statements around January
806
00:48:41.239 --> 00:48:44.280
sixth and there and their defenses. No, no, we didn't
807
00:48:44.280 --> 00:48:46.960
stop banking with you because of the statements you made
808
00:48:46.960 --> 00:48:49.719
around January sixth that incited that riot in my in
809
00:48:49.760 --> 00:48:53.760
my view and before our eyes, we're debanking. We debanked
810
00:48:53.800 --> 00:48:57.199
you because the money flow, the money patterns were so
811
00:48:57.280 --> 00:49:00.000
troubling that we could not bear the risk of losing
812
00:49:00.320 --> 00:49:03.679
our banking licenses by doing the kind of business that
813
00:49:03.719 --> 00:49:06.320
you were engaged in. And they gave him months to
814
00:49:06.400 --> 00:49:08.639
find a new way to transfer all of his accounts
815
00:49:08.679 --> 00:49:11.559
out of Capital One, and he still sued them. So
816
00:49:11.639 --> 00:49:15.719
this is Donald Trump suing people you know, left and right,
817
00:49:15.800 --> 00:49:19.440
and now the consequences are coming. The birds are the
818
00:49:19.559 --> 00:49:21.880
you know, are coming home to roost. Now he's dealing
819
00:49:21.920 --> 00:49:24.400
with the fact that Capital One had to mount this
820
00:49:24.480 --> 00:49:27.800
defense to say, look, what really happened is you had
821
00:49:27.840 --> 00:49:31.960
all these suspicious, really suspicious activities that deeply concerned us
822
00:49:31.960 --> 00:49:33.920
that we were willing to walk away from, you know,
823
00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:36.719
potentially you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions
824
00:49:36.719 --> 00:49:40.760
to protect ourselves. And then similarly, suing the BBC based
825
00:49:40.800 --> 00:49:45.000
on a documentary that it made about what happened to
826
00:49:45.039 --> 00:49:48.599
America on January sixth, now becomes a vehicle for the
827
00:49:48.639 --> 00:49:51.400
BBC to say, show us the money, you know, show
828
00:49:51.480 --> 00:49:54.360
us the paper, reveal how you've been damaged or not,
829
00:49:54.760 --> 00:49:56.159
or shut up. You know.
830
00:49:56.159 --> 00:49:59.039
It's like he doesn't care what the consequences are because,
831
00:50:00.199 --> 00:50:02.400
as he said, I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue
832
00:50:02.400 --> 00:50:04.599
and get away with it. And it seems like so
833
00:50:04.719 --> 00:50:07.800
far that's that's true. He can literally do anything and
834
00:50:07.840 --> 00:50:09.880
get away with it. It doesn't people aren't going to
835
00:50:10.079 --> 00:50:12.280
look at the fact that he was debanked. They closed
836
00:50:12.280 --> 00:50:15.519
what three over three hundred bank accounts of his because
837
00:50:15.519 --> 00:50:19.000
of suspicious activity, They stopped banking with him because of
838
00:50:19.039 --> 00:50:23.880
suspicious activity. They you know, it's not the fact that
839
00:50:23.920 --> 00:50:26.400
he was adjudicated a rapist. You know. I could go on,
840
00:50:26.639 --> 00:50:27.880
I could go on and on and on with the
841
00:50:27.920 --> 00:50:30.159
list of all the things that have happened, and it
842
00:50:30.199 --> 00:50:31.679
doesn't seem to matter.
843
00:50:32.079 --> 00:50:35.559
So things matter to some people, right of the judicated
844
00:50:35.559 --> 00:50:38.719
a sex abuser matters to a lot of people, But
845
00:50:38.800 --> 00:50:40.880
it didn't matter enough people, right.
846
00:50:40.840 --> 00:50:43.559
Right, right exactly. I guess that's that's my point.
847
00:50:43.599 --> 00:50:47.239
Because he's still elected president of the United States, and
848
00:50:47.400 --> 00:50:50.679
he is doing the damage that he is able to
849
00:50:50.719 --> 00:50:53.960
do as a result and continue to grift and make
850
00:50:54.039 --> 00:50:57.159
money off of the backs of people.
851
00:50:56.920 --> 00:50:57.719
In this country.
852
00:50:58.199 --> 00:51:01.800
He's treating people in humanly, he's deporting people, he's I
853
00:51:01.800 --> 00:51:04.079
mean again, I could go on. This whole thing could
854
00:51:04.119 --> 00:51:07.280
be about the harm he's causing to the rule of
855
00:51:07.360 --> 00:51:11.199
law to this country, and yet he gets away with
856
00:51:11.280 --> 00:51:13.840
it right, He gets away with it because you've got Congress.
857
00:51:13.840 --> 00:51:16.440
He's got Congress in his back pocket. They will do
858
00:51:16.519 --> 00:51:20.960
whatever he wants and there's nobody who's going to hold
859
00:51:21.039 --> 00:51:24.639
him accountable. And so and I think he's just made
860
00:51:24.679 --> 00:51:28.000
the calculation that some of these people will fold and
861
00:51:28.079 --> 00:51:31.119
pay me more money, and the ones that well, okay,
862
00:51:31.559 --> 00:51:34.679
I'll dismiss the case eventually. You know, whether it's bombing Iran,
863
00:51:34.719 --> 00:51:37.639
whether it's bombing voats in the Pacific, I mean, you know,
864
00:51:37.679 --> 00:51:41.079
he can just indiscriminately do whatever he wants to do
865
00:51:41.679 --> 00:51:46.079
and nobody holds him accountable in a meaningful way. He's
866
00:51:46.119 --> 00:51:49.280
not being impeached. Obviously, he was re elected president. Yes,
867
00:51:49.320 --> 00:51:51.920
of course people care. I care, you care, and so
868
00:51:52.000 --> 00:51:55.039
many and I'm sure our listeners and who are listening
869
00:51:55.079 --> 00:51:56.960
to this and watching this obviously care too.
870
00:51:57.440 --> 00:52:01.760
But he's made it seems like he has made this calculus.
871
00:52:01.800 --> 00:52:03.320
And again this is just my opinion.
872
00:52:03.360 --> 00:52:06.480
Now, he seems like he has made this calculus that
873
00:52:07.119 --> 00:52:10.719
some people will cave. Right, whether it's certain universities, whether
874
00:52:10.840 --> 00:52:15.159
it's certain law firms, yeah, exactly what it's. Whether it's
875
00:52:15.239 --> 00:52:20.519
whether it's certain news organizations, you name it. Some will
876
00:52:20.559 --> 00:52:23.280
cave and then I'll get money, and the ones that don't,
877
00:52:23.320 --> 00:52:24.800
I'll push it as far as I can go, all
878
00:52:24.800 --> 00:52:30.400
the way up to the Supreme Court. And and yeah,
879
00:52:30.519 --> 00:52:32.239
exactly run out the clock. And if I have to
880
00:52:32.239 --> 00:52:33.960
pull the plug, I can always pull the plug in In
881
00:52:33.960 --> 00:52:36.960
the meantime, I forced them to spend all this money
882
00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:41.039
on you know, lawyers and lawsuits and and and it
883
00:52:41.239 --> 00:52:43.559
just doesn't seem to have that much to do that
884
00:52:43.679 --> 00:52:44.639
much damage to him.
885
00:52:45.079 --> 00:52:47.519
Well, it does seem like Roy Cohne lives in terms
886
00:52:47.599 --> 00:52:51.639
of that despicable lawyer who was an early advisor to
887
00:52:51.679 --> 00:52:54.440
Donald Trump, who was the main lawyer for the McCarthy era,
888
00:52:54.920 --> 00:52:59.079
that witch hunt area where the law the House, you know,
889
00:52:59.280 --> 00:53:02.760
House and Senate weaponized against people, you know, with these
890
00:53:02.800 --> 00:53:05.960
false claims of communism. And you know, that's the guy
891
00:53:05.960 --> 00:53:09.079
who really trained Trump in how to talk about these issues.
892
00:53:09.079 --> 00:53:11.960
When Donald Trump says people say, you know, that's a
893
00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:14.360
way for him to give cover to anything he wants
894
00:53:14.400 --> 00:53:17.559
to say. When he floats these trial balloons, these supposed
895
00:53:17.639 --> 00:53:20.400
jokes of a third or fourth term. You know, these
896
00:53:20.559 --> 00:53:24.679
I think are early tactics he learned from from Roy Cone,
897
00:53:24.719 --> 00:53:28.480
who was a truly despicable person based on his actions
898
00:53:28.519 --> 00:53:32.880
in public life. And then since then, Trump has recruited
899
00:53:32.920 --> 00:53:36.480
a series of lawyers to basically do whatever he wants
900
00:53:36.519 --> 00:53:40.199
to help him accomplish things that are, you know, contrary
901
00:53:40.199 --> 00:53:43.760
to the law, like Rudy Giuliani who face bar sanctions,
902
00:53:43.840 --> 00:53:46.679
other people who face bar sanctions, and Todd Lanche, you
903
00:53:46.679 --> 00:53:50.000
know who's facing this referral right now. The only thing
904
00:53:50.079 --> 00:53:52.519
in some ways that is holding part of this together
905
00:53:52.719 --> 00:53:55.880
is the is the potential threat that some of these lawyers,
906
00:53:55.880 --> 00:53:58.679
whether it's Jenine Piro if she did not reveal Brady
907
00:53:59.199 --> 00:54:02.599
information in the David Hearn case when there was exonerating
908
00:54:02.639 --> 00:54:08.159
information provided about the contractor's failures, whether it's you know,
909
00:54:08.519 --> 00:54:12.599
whether it's uh Todd Blanche being possibly held accountable by
910
00:54:12.599 --> 00:54:15.480
the New York Bar for his role in this so
911
00:54:15.599 --> 00:54:18.719
called settlement. It's the it's the bar that is one
912
00:54:18.760 --> 00:54:21.920
of the last legs left standing to try to hold
913
00:54:21.960 --> 00:54:26.360
the lawyers advising Donald Trump accountable. Because we know that
914
00:54:26.440 --> 00:54:29.639
this Supreme Court, you know, six judges, three of whom
915
00:54:29.679 --> 00:54:34.039
were appointed by Donald Trump, chose to issue a totally
916
00:54:34.119 --> 00:54:38.280
partisan decision, a fully partisan decision to give Donald Trump
917
00:54:38.320 --> 00:54:41.880
immunity from clinel prosecution, which had the effect of pardoning
918
00:54:41.960 --> 00:54:46.000
him retroactively take getting him off the hook for the
919
00:54:46.079 --> 00:54:49.920
charges that he was facing around January sixth, and in
920
00:54:50.039 --> 00:54:53.039
essence paving his way for return to power with more
921
00:54:53.079 --> 00:54:58.320
power than any president has had, which includes this aggrandized
922
00:54:58.519 --> 00:55:01.880
power to pardon, which I think is illegitimate. I think
923
00:55:01.880 --> 00:55:04.079
we're going to have to claw back and put proper
924
00:55:04.159 --> 00:55:07.039
restraints on the part and power because it's been used
925
00:55:07.079 --> 00:55:10.239
to by Donald Trump to pardon basically as co conspirators
926
00:55:10.239 --> 00:55:14.519
the January sixth people who acted on his words in
927
00:55:14.559 --> 00:55:18.119
attacking the capital and trying to stop stop that vote,
928
00:55:18.119 --> 00:55:20.800
as he praised on the day, praise them for their
929
00:55:20.840 --> 00:55:25.000
supposed patriotism for their actions, and even this weekend was
930
00:55:25.039 --> 00:55:28.280
praising them and saying that they should get compensation. And
931
00:55:28.360 --> 00:55:33.239
so there are some consequences that could be brought to
932
00:55:33.280 --> 00:55:36.920
bear even if Todd Blanche were pardoned. For example, if
933
00:55:36.920 --> 00:55:39.800
he committed any crimes and he were pardoned, he could
934
00:55:39.840 --> 00:55:42.960
still face bar sanctions like Rudy Giuliani his face bar
935
00:55:43.039 --> 00:55:46.679
sanctions and others have, which is why the Justice Department
936
00:55:46.719 --> 00:55:48.960
is fighting so hard to claim that the bars should
937
00:55:48.960 --> 00:55:51.880
not have any authority, that the state bars should not
938
00:55:51.920 --> 00:55:56.440
have any authority over Justice Department attorneys, even though the statues,
939
00:55:56.480 --> 00:55:58.960
the laws on the book say that Justice Partman attorneys
940
00:55:59.000 --> 00:56:01.559
are subject to the rules of the bar that they're
941
00:56:01.599 --> 00:56:04.679
admitted to. So there's just a desperate effort by people
942
00:56:04.760 --> 00:56:07.599
around Trump to try to make sure that they are
943
00:56:07.639 --> 00:56:11.119
doing his bidding or and or I think that they
944
00:56:11.320 --> 00:56:14.719
the implication is that they'll get they'll get a pardon
945
00:56:14.920 --> 00:56:17.719
if they go along with what he says, which means,
946
00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:20.480
I don't know what you what credibility you can give
947
00:56:20.519 --> 00:56:24.480
to someone testifying in Congress who is one of Trump's
948
00:56:24.639 --> 00:56:28.000
as in essence agents, because they have to be operating,
949
00:56:28.079 --> 00:56:31.119
in my view, under the assumption that whatever they do
950
00:56:31.199 --> 00:56:33.719
and say for Trump, he will protect them, He will
951
00:56:33.719 --> 00:56:36.960
give them immunity, uh you know, or you know, try
952
00:56:37.000 --> 00:56:39.239
to bar you know, part of them or pre pardon them,
953
00:56:39.880 --> 00:56:42.239
part of them from any charges that could be brought
954
00:56:42.239 --> 00:56:45.000
against them. So we're really living in a sort of
955
00:56:45.079 --> 00:56:47.639
upside down land in which, as you pointed out, Karen,
956
00:56:48.320 --> 00:56:50.800
what does the law mean if the president is not
957
00:56:50.920 --> 00:56:53.440
bound by it, even though he takes an oath to
958
00:56:53.559 --> 00:56:54.039
uphold it.
959
00:56:54.719 --> 00:56:59.880
Yeah, no, it's it's bananas. So let's let's talk about
960
00:57:00.039 --> 00:57:03.960
speaking of defamation suits that we were just talking about.
961
00:57:04.360 --> 00:57:05.480
Let's talk about the.
962
00:57:06.960 --> 00:57:10.360
Future defamation suit that we see coming out of the
963
00:57:10.440 --> 00:57:14.119
reflecting pool. I know that was a secure I'm trying
964
00:57:14.119 --> 00:57:15.280
to link these things Togeah.
965
00:57:16.280 --> 00:57:17.920
No, No, that was a little bit of a stretch.
966
00:57:18.079 --> 00:57:19.280
That was a stretch, I get it.
967
00:57:19.320 --> 00:57:23.119
But so let's talk about what's going on with the
968
00:57:23.159 --> 00:57:27.320
reflecting pool. So if you remember that several people are
969
00:57:27.480 --> 00:57:33.880
being prosecuted were being prosecuted for accused of vandalizing the
970
00:57:34.440 --> 00:57:38.079
link the reflecting pool that reflects the Lincoln Memorial right
971
00:57:38.239 --> 00:57:41.880
the the peeling paint that was coming off. They were
972
00:57:42.760 --> 00:57:45.599
one person I guess was floating on the top and
973
00:57:45.639 --> 00:57:49.840
they picked it up and they got got arrested for it.
974
00:57:50.159 --> 00:57:52.440
Well, one of those individuals.
975
00:57:51.719 --> 00:57:56.599
Happened to be a United States Olympian, a cyclist and
976
00:57:57.000 --> 00:58:01.679
Davey Hearn, and he was charged with a and this
977
00:58:01.960 --> 00:58:06.199
was a felony because they alleged damaged federal property and
978
00:58:06.760 --> 00:58:12.440
greater than one thousand dollars was the damage. And yesterday,
979
00:58:13.239 --> 00:58:16.239
it was either yesterday or the day before. I was
980
00:58:16.280 --> 00:58:20.079
surprised to see that the that the United States Attorney
981
00:58:20.280 --> 00:58:24.159
for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirot, who is a
982
00:58:24.320 --> 00:58:29.679
super Trump loyalist, dismissed the case against against Davey Hearn
983
00:58:30.239 --> 00:58:32.719
as well as three others who were charged with misdemeanors.
984
00:58:32.719 --> 00:58:34.039
I think he was the only one charged with a
985
00:58:34.039 --> 00:58:40.159
felony and and really seemed to grow the Department of
986
00:58:40.199 --> 00:58:43.519
the Interior under the bus. I mean, there seems to
987
00:58:43.519 --> 00:58:46.000
be a lot of drama going on there. She filed
988
00:58:46.000 --> 00:58:48.800
a motion to dismiss the indictment. Uh. And now this
989
00:58:48.840 --> 00:58:51.079
is after they went into the grand jury, because you
990
00:58:51.159 --> 00:58:53.440
obviously go into the grand jury to get an indictment.
991
00:58:53.920 --> 00:58:58.199
And and you know when she when she announced the
992
00:58:58.199 --> 00:59:03.159
grand jury indictment, she was saying, oh, the park service
993
00:59:03.199 --> 00:59:09.119
employees observed Davey Hearn violently pulling at the lining and
994
00:59:09.199 --> 00:59:12.239
that there was damage over one thousand dollars, and you know,
995
00:59:12.519 --> 00:59:18.480
just all all this language of seemingly, you know, really
996
00:59:18.559 --> 00:59:22.800
terrible language that that I think is could be the
997
00:59:22.840 --> 00:59:26.000
basis of a defamation suit that he will have against
998
00:59:26.480 --> 00:59:30.440
against her aunt Donald Trump basically saying, you know, he
999
00:59:30.519 --> 00:59:35.480
willfully and violent violently destroyed property deliberately to damage the
1000
00:59:35.719 --> 00:59:39.960
reflecting pool. And and she said, you know, by his
1001
00:59:40.000 --> 00:59:43.320
own by his own admission, he grabbed it, and he
1002
00:59:43.400 --> 00:59:46.199
did it forcefully and violently, et cetera, et cetera.
1003
00:59:46.599 --> 00:59:48.639
But then she filed.
1004
00:59:48.800 --> 00:59:53.440
Something in court that was very surprising to me that
1005
00:59:53.559 --> 00:59:56.639
she would do this because you could predict that this
1006
00:59:56.679 --> 01:00:01.119
would not make Trump happy, basically saying that this was
1007
01:00:01.199 --> 01:00:05.159
a rushed no bid contract to do the reflecting pool.
1008
01:00:05.599 --> 01:00:10.519
She laid out the facts in detail and showed that
1009
01:00:10.599 --> 01:00:14.760
this was a rush no bid contract and as a result,
1010
01:00:15.320 --> 01:00:19.719
there was damage and that's what caused it, not you know,
1011
01:00:20.159 --> 01:00:22.679
these guys who came along and picked the pieces that
1012
01:00:22.719 --> 01:00:25.239
were floating up off the top. You know, that's not
1013
01:00:25.400 --> 01:00:31.360
damaging the pool. The widespread damage was not caused by
1014
01:00:31.519 --> 01:00:35.199
the vandalism. And what's concerning about so she moved to
1015
01:00:35.199 --> 01:00:38.920
dismiss the case. What's concerning about this is how come
1016
01:00:39.000 --> 01:00:41.719
she didn't know this ahead of time? How come she
1017
01:00:41.840 --> 01:00:45.400
indicted first? You rushed to indict and then investigate later.
1018
01:00:45.559 --> 01:00:48.079
You know, she didn't have to rush to indict this case.
1019
01:00:48.079 --> 01:00:50.880
There was no risk that Davy Herd was going to
1020
01:00:50.920 --> 01:00:54.320
flee the jurisdiction right, or that he was a danger
1021
01:00:54.400 --> 01:00:57.280
to others. I mean, and those are the reasons sometimes
1022
01:00:57.360 --> 01:01:01.840
you rush to indict someone, but this seemed like not
1023
01:01:01.920 --> 01:01:07.800
just a rushed botched reflecting pool. You know, it was
1024
01:01:07.840 --> 01:01:09.480
a rush job, but this seemed like to be a
1025
01:01:09.559 --> 01:01:12.960
rush job too to to indict the case. And and
1026
01:01:13.039 --> 01:01:15.480
I think, you know, there's going to be I think
1027
01:01:15.559 --> 01:01:20.320
he could potentially bring a defamation suit about I mean,
1028
01:01:20.639 --> 01:01:23.000
no offense. Who I had never heard of Davey Hearn.
1029
01:01:23.039 --> 01:01:24.840
I don't think he most people had heard of him,
1030
01:01:24.880 --> 01:01:26.360
even though he's an Olympian. I don't think he's a
1031
01:01:26.360 --> 01:01:28.599
public I don't think he's a public figure, which would
1032
01:01:28.719 --> 01:01:34.199
raise the defamation bar higher to actual malice. But now
1033
01:01:34.239 --> 01:01:37.559
everyone's heard of him right now, everyone knows who he is.
1034
01:01:37.840 --> 01:01:40.280
And I think, I don't know, what do you what
1035
01:01:40.320 --> 01:01:42.599
do you? What do you think? And about all this?
1036
01:01:42.800 --> 01:01:45.480
Well, I think that I think that he is probably
1037
01:01:45.760 --> 01:01:48.079
he's got to be talking with lawyers about his reputation
1038
01:01:48.199 --> 01:01:51.960
and how it was harmed not just by the actions
1039
01:01:52.079 --> 01:01:55.800
of the pederal government, but also you know Trump's claims.
1040
01:01:56.159 --> 01:01:58.119
Some of the coverage on Fox, you know, So we'll
1041
01:01:58.159 --> 01:02:00.920
see if if a defamations it comes forward because, as
1042
01:02:00.960 --> 01:02:03.719
you point out, there's a different standard for someone who
1043
01:02:04.039 --> 01:02:07.760
is a public person, like a public figure, like a politician,
1044
01:02:07.840 --> 01:02:11.119
which requires which follows the malice test, the New York
1045
01:02:11.159 --> 01:02:13.880
Times versus Sullivan test, where you have to have actual
1046
01:02:13.880 --> 01:02:16.960
malice or reckless disregard for the truth to be held
1047
01:02:17.039 --> 01:02:20.639
liable for defamation for a public figure. But the standard
1048
01:02:20.719 --> 01:02:22.880
is lower for someone who is a private figure. And
1049
01:02:22.960 --> 01:02:26.760
for all intents and purposes, David Hearn was a pretty
1050
01:02:26.800 --> 01:02:29.679
private person. He was not well known before this, and
1051
01:02:29.679 --> 01:02:33.199
then he was accused of being a you know, a
1052
01:02:33.280 --> 01:02:38.679
felon destructive property to destroy her and was you know,
1053
01:02:39.159 --> 01:02:44.320
arrested and charged. And you know, what happened here is
1054
01:02:44.360 --> 01:02:48.719
really extraordinary because, as you point out, typically prosecutors work
1055
01:02:48.800 --> 01:02:51.079
to get their case, you know, all lined up before
1056
01:02:51.119 --> 01:02:54.079
they present to the grand jury. There was no urgency here.
1057
01:02:54.119 --> 01:02:57.000
There was no sort of ticking statute limitations. There was
1058
01:02:57.039 --> 01:03:00.320
probably just political pressure from Trump to try to make
1059
01:03:00.400 --> 01:03:06.360
his claims about there being vandals into reality by punishing someone,
1060
01:03:06.400 --> 01:03:09.559
which is in my view, shows exactly this sort of
1061
01:03:09.599 --> 01:03:12.719
problem we have, with this recklessness of having people who
1062
01:03:12.800 --> 01:03:16.400
are sycophants for Trump in these important roles wielding the
1063
01:03:16.400 --> 01:03:21.599
prosecutorial power in a way to serve him regardless of
1064
01:03:21.639 --> 01:03:24.079
what you know, common sense and the facts the law
1065
01:03:24.119 --> 01:03:28.000
may show. Now interestingly in this in this filing where
1066
01:03:28.760 --> 01:03:31.000
she you know, joined in this or you know, she
1067
01:03:31.440 --> 01:03:35.000
approved of this motion to dismiss without prejudice, meaning that
1068
01:03:35.079 --> 01:03:38.440
the case could be refiled. She goes out of her
1069
01:03:38.480 --> 01:03:42.920
way to describe how the information she says she had
1070
01:03:43.000 --> 01:03:46.400
before the grand jury was just the statements by the
1071
01:03:46.440 --> 01:03:51.199
Department of the Interior other into government agents who supposedly
1072
01:03:51.239 --> 01:03:54.599
saw him, you know, tearing the you know, tearing and
1073
01:03:54.639 --> 01:03:57.239
destroying the bottom of the pool, even though he says
1074
01:03:57.239 --> 01:03:59.480
he just reached in to to you know, see this
1075
01:03:59.679 --> 01:04:05.960
float piece of the resurfacing material. And then she describes
1076
01:04:06.000 --> 01:04:09.599
how she was repeatedly asking for information for the Department
1077
01:04:09.639 --> 01:04:13.039
AIA and finally, finally, finally they gave her the material
1078
01:04:13.079 --> 01:04:16.280
and it showed, as you said at the outset here
1079
01:04:16.760 --> 01:04:20.079
that the departmentier had information showing that this was a
1080
01:04:20.159 --> 01:04:22.840
rush job, that the no big contract that Donald Trump
1081
01:04:22.880 --> 01:04:26.440
issued to try to make the pond super blue in
1082
01:04:26.559 --> 01:04:29.079
honor of his birthday and time for his birthday, and
1083
01:04:29.119 --> 01:04:31.599
the fight match that was going to take place on
1084
01:04:31.639 --> 01:04:35.719
the White House lawn, that the surface was not properly prepared,
1085
01:04:35.920 --> 01:04:39.800
that the material didn't properly adhere to the material to
1086
01:04:39.960 --> 01:04:42.719
stick it to the granite, and that it was already
1087
01:04:42.800 --> 01:04:46.119
even as it was being applied, was falling apart also
1088
01:04:46.239 --> 01:04:49.639
that when they drained the pool, there was no indication
1089
01:04:49.800 --> 01:04:53.639
of any three hundred or twelve hundred or two thousand
1090
01:04:53.639 --> 01:04:59.039
foot box cutter cutting away the reflection pool bottom. What
1091
01:04:59.119 --> 01:05:02.480
there was was a s showing that the bottom was
1092
01:05:02.559 --> 01:05:05.119
defectively applied, and in fact, with the materials that are
1093
01:05:05.119 --> 01:05:09.960
submitted in that motion show, along with pictures that were
1094
01:05:10.000 --> 01:05:14.000
included in that motion, show that this contractor is going
1095
01:05:14.079 --> 01:05:17.440
to be reapplying that surface because it failed, and as
1096
01:05:17.559 --> 01:05:21.559
is the warranty that was guaranteed as part of that contract,
1097
01:05:21.559 --> 01:05:24.440
that it would stick, that it would be durable, when
1098
01:05:24.480 --> 01:05:27.960
in fact it is not and is proven not to be.
1099
01:05:28.320 --> 01:05:31.280
And so what you have is a case in which
1100
01:05:31.360 --> 01:05:35.320
this was a defective application of this surface to the
1101
01:05:35.360 --> 01:05:39.480
reflection pool, that it's been conceded to have been defective,
1102
01:05:39.639 --> 01:05:43.039
such that the replacement of that surface is supposed to
1103
01:05:43.039 --> 01:05:45.360
be coming at no cost to us because it did
1104
01:05:45.400 --> 01:05:48.960
not do perform as it was supposed to. And this
1105
01:05:49.039 --> 01:05:51.360
is all the result in a way, of Donald Trump
1106
01:05:51.880 --> 01:05:54.840
issuing a no big contract to someone who was apparently
1107
01:05:54.880 --> 01:05:57.280
a friend of his or an associate of his to
1108
01:05:57.360 --> 01:05:59.280
do a job in which I don't think that they
1109
01:05:59.360 --> 01:06:02.920
or their contract necessarily had the experience to do. They
1110
01:06:02.960 --> 01:06:06.320
weren't vetted, there was not the type of preparation for
1111
01:06:06.360 --> 01:06:09.280
this sort of work. The Obama administration looked at some
1112
01:06:09.360 --> 01:06:13.039
of these issues, not the reflection pond bottom flecking off
1113
01:06:13.079 --> 01:06:16.760
because there was no such plasticized surface, but looked at
1114
01:06:16.800 --> 01:06:19.440
the issue of the leaking of the reflection pool and
1115
01:06:19.480 --> 01:06:22.519
the pumps that needed to be maintained in order to
1116
01:06:22.519 --> 01:06:26.239
protect the integrity of that pool and the water. And
1117
01:06:26.320 --> 01:06:29.039
instead what you had was Donald Trump acting like it
1118
01:06:29.079 --> 01:06:33.719
was his personal personal pool, the reflection pool, this historic site,
1119
01:06:34.119 --> 01:06:38.119
and trying to get it covered with some colored bottom,
1120
01:06:38.239 --> 01:06:42.199
this flag blue that he wanted in time for his birthday.
1121
01:06:42.239 --> 01:06:44.960
And so it really is a travesty. Now, the last
1122
01:06:45.000 --> 01:06:47.199
thing I'll say on this before I go back to
1123
01:06:47.239 --> 01:06:51.800
you is, you know, I have to give to the
1124
01:06:51.840 --> 01:06:55.960
Impiro credit for taking the lawyer's box, the black box,
1125
01:06:56.039 --> 01:06:58.360
and the Banker's box to the White House to show
1126
01:06:58.440 --> 01:07:02.480
him the evidence that purportedly he's been lied to, that
1127
01:07:02.519 --> 01:07:05.679
he's been misled by Doug Borgham of the Interior Department,
1128
01:07:06.039 --> 01:07:09.639
that she believed that she could convince him with actual
1129
01:07:09.719 --> 01:07:12.480
evidence what was really happening, and that these claims of
1130
01:07:12.559 --> 01:07:17.880
vandals was just not viable. But instead he continued to
1131
01:07:17.880 --> 01:07:20.639
address her down and criticize her, saying she's wrong. Well,
1132
01:07:20.639 --> 01:07:23.039
that's evidence, and so I guess I would put it
1133
01:07:23.079 --> 01:07:26.440
back to you, Karen. You have this amazing career as
1134
01:07:26.440 --> 01:07:30.039
a prosecutor, dealing with you know, grand juries, dealing with
1135
01:07:30.360 --> 01:07:34.320
judges and actual, you know, full on juries in trials.
1136
01:07:34.679 --> 01:07:38.639
This idea of the fact that Janine Piro, unlike Donald Trump,
1137
01:07:38.760 --> 01:07:42.000
is bound by the rules, the Brady Rules in terms
1138
01:07:42.039 --> 01:07:45.119
of disclosing exonerating information in a way that Donald Trump
1139
01:07:45.239 --> 01:07:47.599
is not bound. And so here she is as a
1140
01:07:47.639 --> 01:07:52.559
lawyer saying, look, I had to disclose this exonerating information,
1141
01:07:52.920 --> 01:07:55.960
but he doesn't. It just sort of underscores how having
1142
01:07:56.000 --> 01:07:58.559
someone like Trump at the top means that the law,
1143
01:07:58.960 --> 01:08:02.159
you know, is meaningless to him. She's bound by it, though,
1144
01:08:02.239 --> 01:08:03.679
or she could lose her law license.
1145
01:08:04.159 --> 01:08:08.719
Yeah, I mean, look, that is very true, and she
1146
01:08:08.880 --> 01:08:12.400
showed at first blush, she would say, wow, she showed
1147
01:08:12.440 --> 01:08:14.880
she did exactly what you would want a prosecutor to
1148
01:08:14.960 --> 01:08:18.680
do and showing integrity and saying, look that this guy's innocent,
1149
01:08:18.920 --> 01:08:21.119
and we can't prove the case beyond a reasonable debt,
1150
01:08:21.319 --> 01:08:24.079
and therefore we have to dismiss the case. Now, she
1151
01:08:24.079 --> 01:08:26.960
didn't do it, as you pointed out, she did it
1152
01:08:27.000 --> 01:08:32.439
without prejudice, meaning she could refile. And you know, you
1153
01:08:32.520 --> 01:08:34.760
have to give her credit for that right, and that's
1154
01:08:34.760 --> 01:08:37.640
exactly what you want is when you have evidence like that.
1155
01:08:37.720 --> 01:08:40.239
But on the same token, she shouldn't have rushed to
1156
01:08:40.239 --> 01:08:45.319
the grand jury and upend these individuals' lives and b
1157
01:08:46.079 --> 01:08:50.119
there's also, according to certain things I've read, there's not
1158
01:08:50.239 --> 01:08:53.880
a lot of love between Jeanine Piro and Doug Burkham
1159
01:08:54.439 --> 01:08:58.680
the interior. So this might be a little fight here
1160
01:08:58.760 --> 01:09:02.359
that's happening between the two of them, as much as
1161
01:09:02.359 --> 01:09:05.520
it is a trying to do the right thing. I
1162
01:09:05.520 --> 01:09:07.199
hope she was doing it to do the right thing.
1163
01:09:07.600 --> 01:09:11.000
But you're right, as she would have to turn that
1164
01:09:11.079 --> 01:09:14.439
over anyway to the defense. But you're not supposed to
1165
01:09:14.439 --> 01:09:17.760
go into the grand jury. The Department of Justice manual
1166
01:09:17.960 --> 01:09:21.720
and rules say unless you can, unless you can prove
1167
01:09:21.760 --> 01:09:26.039
the case beyond a reasonable doubt and get a conviction
1168
01:09:26.279 --> 01:09:29.279
and sustain appeal, you're not supposed to indict a case.
1169
01:09:29.439 --> 01:09:30.399
You're just not supposed to.
1170
01:09:30.680 --> 01:09:32.680
And let's remember, right, she tried to indict the guy
1171
01:09:32.800 --> 01:09:35.560
for throwing the subway sandwich for a federal crime, and
1172
01:09:35.600 --> 01:09:39.159
the grand jury said no. She tried to indict sitting
1173
01:09:39.199 --> 01:09:41.720
members of Congress for daring to say out loud what
1174
01:09:41.800 --> 01:09:46.520
West Point graduates are taught and the course of becoming officers,
1175
01:09:46.560 --> 01:09:48.239
which is that they have a duty to follow the
1176
01:09:48.319 --> 01:09:52.920
law and the constitution, not an illegal order, which goes
1177
01:09:53.000 --> 01:09:56.640
back to the Nuremberg defense. You cannot have soldiers following
1178
01:09:56.920 --> 01:09:59.520
illegal orders saying I was just following orders and comic
1179
01:09:59.560 --> 01:10:03.960
committing crimes against humanity or you know, human rights violations.
1180
01:10:04.239 --> 01:10:06.479
And she tried to indict and try to indict them
1181
01:10:06.520 --> 01:10:08.760
as well, and she's been partying.
1182
01:10:08.479 --> 01:10:10.680
Which is why, which is why, even though she did
1183
01:10:10.720 --> 01:10:14.039
the right thing here, I you know, you raise an
1184
01:10:14.039 --> 01:10:17.079
eyebrow and you wonder what's going on. And that's why people,
1185
01:10:17.119 --> 01:10:18.960
I think, are saying, oh, this is just a fight
1186
01:10:19.039 --> 01:10:21.359
between her and the Department of Interior person. You know,
1187
01:10:21.359 --> 01:10:24.319
she's trying to get throw him under the bus. Yeah,
1188
01:10:24.399 --> 01:10:26.600
so maybe he was throwing her under the bus. Who knows,
1189
01:10:26.680 --> 01:10:29.840
who knows what's going on, But I'm I'm I'm a
1190
01:10:29.880 --> 01:10:33.000
little suspect here. We have to take our next break
1191
01:10:33.279 --> 01:10:35.279
and then we're going to come back and we're going
1192
01:10:35.359 --> 01:10:38.319
to talk about mail in ballots in the Supreme Court.
1193
01:10:38.399 --> 01:10:41.520
Because who better than to talk about the Supreme Court
1194
01:10:41.800 --> 01:10:45.840
with than Lisa Graves. So let's take our next quick
1195
01:10:46.000 --> 01:10:48.159
break for our sponsors.
1196
01:10:48.600 --> 01:10:50.880
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All right, we're back, and uh, Lisa, I want to
1245
01:13:42.239 --> 01:13:45.560
jump right in and talk about what's happening at the
1246
01:13:45.640 --> 01:13:50.680
United States Supreme Court with the with our mail in
1247
01:13:50.760 --> 01:13:53.039
ballots in the post office, et cetera. And I'm just
1248
01:13:53.119 --> 01:13:55.159
going to turn it over to you to frame the
1249
01:13:55.199 --> 01:13:57.359
issue and tell us what's going on.
1250
01:13:58.439 --> 01:14:01.560
Yes, well, this is a major issue that's going on
1251
01:14:01.720 --> 01:14:06.000
where we have an executive order and I that's the
1252
01:14:06.039 --> 01:14:09.279
technical term from what Donald Trump did earlier this spring
1253
01:14:09.399 --> 01:14:12.880
in issuing an order that the Postal Service should not
1254
01:14:13.119 --> 01:14:18.640
deliver any ballots from from states to voters or return
1255
01:14:18.760 --> 01:14:23.880
their ballots to the polling places if the state does
1256
01:14:23.920 --> 01:14:27.800
not cooperate with Donald Trump's demands that he have access
1257
01:14:27.880 --> 01:14:31.279
to the voter roles in the states. And so that's
1258
01:14:31.520 --> 01:14:34.920
that executive order, which you know, I don't think of
1259
01:14:35.039 --> 01:14:38.640
as an actual effective order since I think it's plainly unconstitutional,
1260
01:14:38.920 --> 01:14:43.479
but framed as an executive order, that order has been litigated.
1261
01:14:43.840 --> 01:14:48.359
There was a suit filed against the implementation of that
1262
01:14:49.079 --> 01:14:53.960
of that order in federal court, and just this past
1263
01:14:54.560 --> 01:14:57.399
day or so, you have twenty three states in the
1264
01:14:57.439 --> 01:15:01.000
District of Columbia on Monday urg the Supreme Court to
1265
01:15:01.079 --> 01:15:04.399
leave in place and order by the lower federal court
1266
01:15:04.479 --> 01:15:10.079
barring the federal government from applying those provisions in those states,
1267
01:15:10.880 --> 01:15:12.720
you know, before the election, and so what you have
1268
01:15:12.840 --> 01:15:15.319
right now is an effort by Donald Trump to try
1269
01:15:15.319 --> 01:15:19.439
to commandeer the election process from the states. And the Constitution,
1270
01:15:19.920 --> 01:15:23.560
you know, is very clear on this point. It specifically
1271
01:15:23.600 --> 01:15:28.439
says that it is the states are empowered to set
1272
01:15:28.479 --> 01:15:31.920
the time, place, and manner of voting in congressional elections,
1273
01:15:31.960 --> 01:15:35.239
not the federal government. And in fact, what we've seen
1274
01:15:35.439 --> 01:15:37.800
in a number of these state efforts, these efforts to
1275
01:15:37.800 --> 01:15:40.880
squeeze these states to give over this information, is that
1276
01:15:40.960 --> 01:15:43.239
the federal government has lost every single one of those
1277
01:15:43.279 --> 01:15:48.079
cases that has reached a decision. Mark Elias has, you know,
1278
01:15:48.159 --> 01:15:51.199
with the Democracy Docket in his firm, the Elias Law Group,
1279
01:15:51.560 --> 01:15:55.199
have brought suit along with other groups against those efforts,
1280
01:15:55.199 --> 01:15:58.319
along with the state attorneys general in those states, saying
1281
01:15:58.319 --> 01:16:01.680
that the federal government has no right to have access
1282
01:16:01.680 --> 01:16:04.920
to those voter roles, that the states are maintaining those
1283
01:16:05.000 --> 01:16:08.359
roles as is consistent with the process that they've always
1284
01:16:08.399 --> 01:16:12.840
engaged in. There's no evidence whatsoever of any widespread fraud
1285
01:16:13.079 --> 01:16:15.840
in voting in the United States. Every single investigation that
1286
01:16:15.880 --> 01:16:19.239
has taken a look at any blue Ribbon commission by
1287
01:16:19.319 --> 01:16:22.680
former US attorneys or former state attorneys general have found
1288
01:16:22.720 --> 01:16:26.159
no evidence of widespread voting fraud. There's no basis for
1289
01:16:26.199 --> 01:16:30.000
the federal government to assert control over the voting roles,
1290
01:16:30.039 --> 01:16:33.600
and quite frankly, there are real problems with doing so.
1291
01:16:34.159 --> 01:16:36.920
For example, one of the things we saw, one of
1292
01:16:36.960 --> 01:16:40.439
the claims we saw in twenty twenty coming into twenty
1293
01:16:40.479 --> 01:16:44.119
twenty four was this sort of trumped up false notion
1294
01:16:44.600 --> 01:16:48.039
that there were people voting multiple times, or that people
1295
01:16:48.079 --> 01:16:51.439
were voting even though they had moved. But the fact is,
1296
01:16:51.479 --> 01:16:54.319
and I think everyone else that really knows this, there
1297
01:16:54.319 --> 01:16:57.159
are so many people who have your same name. There's
1298
01:16:57.159 --> 01:16:59.760
probably thirty Lisa Graves's. I found this out once the
1299
01:16:59.800 --> 01:17:02.159
inner that became, you know, a real thing, how many
1300
01:17:02.159 --> 01:17:04.520
Lisa Graves are And my name isn't even that common,
1301
01:17:05.000 --> 01:17:06.800
And so there are other Lisa graves Is in my
1302
01:17:06.920 --> 01:17:09.359
state and innother states who may move. It doesn't mean
1303
01:17:09.399 --> 01:17:13.159
that my voter registration in my state is invalid. And
1304
01:17:13.560 --> 01:17:15.840
so we've seen this effort to try to say under
1305
01:17:15.880 --> 01:17:19.800
people like Chris Kobok, who was previously the Attorney General
1306
01:17:19.880 --> 01:17:21.600
of Kansas and who was one of the advisors to
1307
01:17:21.640 --> 01:17:24.039
Donald Trump in the first term, this idea that they're
1308
01:17:24.039 --> 01:17:26.800
supposed to be checking people's names against people's names in
1309
01:17:26.840 --> 01:17:29.960
other states and then disqualifying people, basically ripping people off
1310
01:17:30.000 --> 01:17:33.399
of the voter rolls even though they're registered in that
1311
01:17:33.439 --> 01:17:36.479
state and there's no indication that they've moved or that
1312
01:17:36.520 --> 01:17:39.680
they are somehow voting twice or anything. And so you
1313
01:17:39.720 --> 01:17:43.279
have this continuation of the big lie, donald Trump's lie
1314
01:17:43.359 --> 01:17:47.279
that he supposedly won the twenty twenty election even though
1315
01:17:47.319 --> 01:17:50.000
he lost, the continuation of the claim that there was
1316
01:17:50.000 --> 01:17:53.239
supposedly voter fraud when there was not. In fact, I
1317
01:17:53.279 --> 01:17:57.880
took a look at the Heritage Foundation's database of supposed
1318
01:17:57.960 --> 01:18:00.880
voter fraud over the course of you know, ten twenty years,
1319
01:18:01.159 --> 01:18:03.279
and if you look at the amount of voter fraud
1320
01:18:03.319 --> 01:18:07.840
that's been prosecuted or found in like over decades, compared
1321
01:18:07.840 --> 01:18:10.640
to the amount of votes cast, it's like point zero
1322
01:18:10.800 --> 01:18:13.560
zero zero zero zero zero zero zero, And I think
1323
01:18:13.600 --> 01:18:17.039
another zero percent of the vote's cast could even be
1324
01:18:17.119 --> 01:18:22.199
considered to have been a fraudulent or inappropriate vote. It's
1325
01:18:22.319 --> 01:18:25.319
like so rare. It's you're more likely to be struck
1326
01:18:25.359 --> 01:18:28.840
by lightning than for there to be voter fraud or
1327
01:18:28.840 --> 01:18:31.159
fraud by a voter. And so this is just another
1328
01:18:31.199 --> 01:18:34.680
way in which Donald Trump is threatening to take over
1329
01:18:34.920 --> 01:18:39.000
our congressional elections this year as his polling plummets, as
1330
01:18:39.039 --> 01:18:41.880
support for him plummets in the face of his disastrous
1331
01:18:42.239 --> 01:18:45.800
policies both in the US in terms of the continuing
1332
01:18:45.920 --> 01:18:49.239
squeeze on the American family for just the cost of
1333
01:18:49.319 --> 01:18:52.600
goods and the groceries, and healthcare costs and soon to
1334
01:18:52.640 --> 01:18:56.399
be increased costs for medicines due to the efforts of
1335
01:18:56.520 --> 01:18:59.560
the Trump team with its congressional loyalists to mess with
1336
01:18:59.640 --> 01:19:04.439
Medicare and Medicaid and you know part D of Medicare
1337
01:19:04.520 --> 01:19:08.239
and more, along with just the absurd cost that we
1338
01:19:08.319 --> 01:19:11.199
are facing as a result of Donald Trump's foreign policies
1339
01:19:11.239 --> 01:19:14.119
as well. And so you have a president who's flailing,
1340
01:19:14.560 --> 01:19:17.479
who's whose policies have proven to me very controversial, including
1341
01:19:17.520 --> 01:19:19.880
on civil rights issues and free speech issues and more,
1342
01:19:20.479 --> 01:19:24.640
and who is looking at potential losses in these midterms,
1343
01:19:25.439 --> 01:19:28.960
basically threatening through this executive order to use the Postal
1344
01:19:29.039 --> 01:19:32.800
Service to try to take over our elections and determine
1345
01:19:33.199 --> 01:19:35.399
who gets to vote in any state. Now, a lot
1346
01:19:35.439 --> 01:19:38.359
of states rely on mail in voting. A lot of
1347
01:19:38.479 --> 01:19:40.199
a lot of people in the United States rely on
1348
01:19:40.279 --> 01:19:43.039
mail in voting. And we not only have this situation
1349
01:19:43.159 --> 01:19:43.640
with this.
1350
01:19:43.680 --> 01:19:44.960
Trump mails in his votes too.
1351
01:19:45.000 --> 01:19:48.359
But yeah, yes, exactly, Trump mails in his vote. He
1352
01:19:48.359 --> 01:19:50.319
claims he gets do that because he's president. But you
1353
01:19:50.439 --> 01:19:53.760
don't like more of you know, the law does not
1354
01:19:53.840 --> 01:19:56.359
apply to me, but it applies to the sort of thing.
1355
01:19:56.880 --> 01:19:59.159
And so this is this is an instance where it's
1356
01:19:59.199 --> 01:20:01.560
now going to go to this US Supreme Court. We've
1357
01:20:01.560 --> 01:20:03.520
already seen the Roberts Court put a thumb on the
1358
01:20:03.600 --> 01:20:06.840
scale in favor of Trump through the voting ruling earlier
1359
01:20:06.880 --> 01:20:09.680
this year in the Kalay case, where it destroyed key
1360
01:20:09.720 --> 01:20:12.039
protections of the Voting Rights Act in order to allow
1361
01:20:12.119 --> 01:20:15.359
these Republican legislatures to redraw maps, to try to give
1362
01:20:15.399 --> 01:20:18.960
Republicans an additional advantage in these midterm elections, to try
1363
01:20:18.960 --> 01:20:22.039
to hold on to the control of Congress, and try
1364
01:20:22.079 --> 01:20:25.479
to protect Donald Trump, in my view, from oversight and
1365
01:20:25.520 --> 01:20:28.880
the check of Congress, and protect the Court as well
1366
01:20:29.119 --> 01:20:31.960
from oversight an investigation of the scandals that have plagued
1367
01:20:32.000 --> 01:20:35.720
the Supreme Court. And so we'll see if this Court
1368
01:20:35.800 --> 01:20:40.279
decides to intervene here and overturn that lower court order
1369
01:20:40.399 --> 01:20:43.960
stopping this executive order from going into effect just weeks
1370
01:20:44.039 --> 01:20:48.840
before this election takes place. And I will say, I
1371
01:20:48.840 --> 01:20:51.840
guess the hopeful sign here is that earlier this year
1372
01:20:51.880 --> 01:20:54.760
in the Watson case, in a case coming out of Mississippi,
1373
01:20:55.199 --> 01:20:58.279
where the Republican Party in Mississippi was trying to stop
1374
01:20:58.399 --> 01:21:03.159
votes from being counted if they after election day but
1375
01:21:03.199 --> 01:21:05.880
they were postmarked by election day. This applies a lot
1376
01:21:05.920 --> 01:21:10.840
to military voters abroad, for example, that those votes can
1377
01:21:10.880 --> 01:21:14.079
still be counted because they were cast by election day.
1378
01:21:14.319 --> 01:21:18.680
The Supreme Court, in a divided decision, decided not to
1379
01:21:19.079 --> 01:21:21.840
go along with the Republican effort to block people's votes
1380
01:21:21.840 --> 01:21:24.880
from being counted if those votes were mailed in time.
1381
01:21:24.960 --> 01:21:27.960
And so you have a hopeful sign in this arena
1382
01:21:28.079 --> 01:21:31.439
of mail in voting that hopefully the Court will not intervene,
1383
01:21:31.640 --> 01:21:34.960
but you have a desire in demand by Trump and
1384
01:21:35.000 --> 01:21:37.279
by some of the Republican states that are beholden to
1385
01:21:37.359 --> 01:21:38.439
him to do so.
1386
01:21:38.840 --> 01:21:43.039
And yeah, and you have the twenty three attorneys general
1387
01:21:43.119 --> 01:21:46.920
from blue states filing basically saying too close to the elections,
1388
01:21:46.920 --> 01:21:48.960
this would be really disruptive if you can't do this.
1389
01:21:49.159 --> 01:21:53.159
So yep, yeah, well we'll see what they do if anything,
1390
01:21:53.239 --> 01:21:57.199
hopefully nothing. So let's just move on because I know
1391
01:21:57.239 --> 01:22:00.239
we're running along in time. I want to move on
1392
01:22:00.479 --> 01:22:07.000
to Judge Metta, who made some comments in dismissing Stuart
1393
01:22:07.039 --> 01:22:10.239
Road's case and the Jan six indictments that I think
1394
01:22:10.359 --> 01:22:15.239
was remarkable, not because he dismissed the case is when
1395
01:22:15.279 --> 01:22:18.359
he was asked to, but because what he said, and
1396
01:22:18.640 --> 01:22:21.920
he was unusually candid, let's just say in his language
1397
01:22:22.239 --> 01:22:25.279
that he used explaining why he believed he was compelled
1398
01:22:25.319 --> 01:22:29.640
to grant the government's motion despite strongly disagreeing with it.
1399
01:22:29.720 --> 01:22:33.880
And so the case was basically the last remaining Jan
1400
01:22:34.000 --> 01:22:38.199
six prosecutions against members of the oath Keepers, including Stuart Roads,
1401
01:22:38.439 --> 01:22:41.680
so really the worst of the worst right seditious conspiracy cases.
1402
01:22:42.199 --> 01:22:43.479
And this was.
1403
01:22:43.479 --> 01:22:47.119
After Trump pardoned, you know, or communed all the Jan
1404
01:22:47.199 --> 01:22:50.600
six defendants, the Department of Justice still had to move
1405
01:22:50.680 --> 01:22:55.000
to vacate the remaining convictions, right because procedurally that's what
1406
01:22:55.199 --> 01:22:56.760
had to happen, because they were in front of they
1407
01:22:56.760 --> 01:22:58.600
were in court, and they had to move to dismiss
1408
01:22:58.600 --> 01:23:04.840
the indictments and Judge Metta concluded that under the executive
1409
01:23:04.840 --> 01:23:09.199
branch's charging authority, he had no discretion essentially to deny
1410
01:23:09.319 --> 01:23:13.199
this request. Right, he had to grant it because prosecutors
1411
01:23:13.239 --> 01:23:15.800
have all the discretion whether to charge or not charge.
1412
01:23:16.439 --> 01:23:19.960
But what made, like I said, the opinion extremely noteworthy
1413
01:23:20.000 --> 01:23:23.880
to me, was some of his words. I mean, he
1414
01:23:24.960 --> 01:23:27.479
essentially said that he believed the dismissals were wrong as
1415
01:23:27.479 --> 01:23:30.479
a matter of public policy, but he concluded that, you know,
1416
01:23:30.680 --> 01:23:33.600
separation of powers. He had to do it, he had
1417
01:23:33.640 --> 01:23:36.239
to grant it, And he wrote things like, I'm reluctant,
1418
01:23:36.359 --> 01:23:40.319
reluctantly doing that, you know, reluctantly the court grants the motion,
1419
01:23:40.720 --> 01:23:44.079
or this is the last of the prosecutions seeking to
1420
01:23:44.119 --> 01:23:48.199
hold accountable those responsible for the events of January sixth.
1421
01:23:48.560 --> 01:23:51.640
That book is now closed, you know. And then he said,
1422
01:23:51.800 --> 01:23:56.800
today's epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day and denigrates
1423
01:23:56.840 --> 01:24:01.159
the work of the prosecutors law enforcement officers who secured
1424
01:24:01.199 --> 01:24:06.399
those convictions and excuses criminal conduct that caused a centuries
1425
01:24:06.680 --> 01:24:10.960
long pillar of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of presidential
1426
01:24:11.000 --> 01:24:14.560
power to buckle. The court cannot write a different ending.
1427
01:24:15.039 --> 01:24:17.039
I mean, I got the chills when I read that.
1428
01:24:17.239 --> 01:24:21.039
You know, it was just amazing that he clearly expressed
1429
01:24:21.039 --> 01:24:25.760
his point of view. He criticized the Department of Justice,
1430
01:24:26.079 --> 01:24:30.159
and yet he noted that this is what he had
1431
01:24:30.199 --> 01:24:30.479
to do.
1432
01:24:31.319 --> 01:24:34.439
Yeah, it was so eloquent. I just can't think of
1433
01:24:34.479 --> 01:24:38.079
any other words to supplement it, because people should read
1434
01:24:38.079 --> 01:24:41.239
that opinion. And as you point out, Karen, there were
1435
01:24:41.239 --> 01:24:46.479
a number of charges against January sixth defendants, including violent
1436
01:24:46.720 --> 01:24:51.920
acts against the Capitol Police, destruction of property, press pass,
1437
01:24:52.000 --> 01:24:54.800
and more. But these were some of the most serious charges.
1438
01:24:54.840 --> 01:24:59.720
Seditious conspiracy is a serious charge. It involves the potential
1439
01:24:59.760 --> 01:25:04.239
for or spending fifteen fifteen to twenty years in jail
1440
01:25:04.399 --> 01:25:08.039
if convicted. The people who were subject to these charges
1441
01:25:08.079 --> 01:25:12.359
were part of basically a paramilitary group that was actively
1442
01:25:12.399 --> 01:25:18.239
communicating with each other in preparation for January sixth and
1443
01:25:18.319 --> 01:25:21.520
to sort of execute the plan to disrupt those proceedings
1444
01:25:22.119 --> 01:25:24.640
where our votes through the electoral College were going to
1445
01:25:24.680 --> 01:25:28.479
be counted, affirming that Joe Biden won the presidency and
1446
01:25:28.520 --> 01:25:32.279
that Donald Trump had to leave office. Seditious conspiracy is
1447
01:25:32.319 --> 01:25:34.640
a very serious charge. They were also charged I think
1448
01:25:34.680 --> 01:25:36.800
in at least two of them I think were charged
1449
01:25:37.039 --> 01:25:40.760
with trying to hide or destroy evidence about those crimes,
1450
01:25:40.840 --> 01:25:45.399
and so these were serious offenses theyved, they deserved, in
1451
01:25:45.399 --> 01:25:48.199
my view, prosecution, and the fact that they had to
1452
01:25:48.199 --> 01:25:52.039
be dismissed is so unfortunate, and it is certainly a
1453
01:25:52.079 --> 01:25:55.399
product of the fact that in our system, unlike in
1454
01:25:55.439 --> 01:25:58.880
some other countries, the judges aren't prosecutors. There isn't an
1455
01:25:58.880 --> 01:26:03.039
adjudicative cross the gatorial role. This is the role of
1456
01:26:03.079 --> 01:26:06.479
the Justice Department, and unfortunately, under Todd Blanche at the
1457
01:26:06.479 --> 01:26:09.520
bidding and direction of Donald Trump, which is where we began,
1458
01:26:10.079 --> 01:26:14.319
we see a Justice department willing to capitulate and cave
1459
01:26:14.399 --> 01:26:17.520
in on some of the most serious crimes ever committed
1460
01:26:17.640 --> 01:26:20.760
in this you know, in this modern era against our
1461
01:26:20.880 --> 01:26:26.119
nation by people who were engaged in a conspiracy to
1462
01:26:26.199 --> 01:26:27.000
commit sedition.
1463
01:26:27.920 --> 01:26:31.600
Lisa, Yeah, but Lisa, Jim Jim Comey posted a picture
1464
01:26:31.640 --> 01:26:32.600
of seashells.
1465
01:26:32.920 --> 01:26:36.079
Yeah, well there's that. You know that that's prepared to
1466
01:26:36.119 --> 01:26:40.119
purportedly a crime. But working with your with your walkie
1467
01:26:40.159 --> 01:26:43.039
talkies or your phones and the disappearing messages and trying
1468
01:26:43.039 --> 01:26:46.159
to plan out who is going to be where to
1469
01:26:46.279 --> 01:26:48.960
effectuate what I think was you know quite frankly, in
1470
01:26:49.000 --> 01:26:52.079
my opinion, what was happening on January sixth was in
1471
01:26:52.159 --> 01:26:55.399
part and attempted coup. And I think that if those
1472
01:26:56.039 --> 01:26:58.840
those rioters had managed to seize a member of Congress,
1473
01:26:59.079 --> 01:27:01.920
had managed to get to Nancy Pelosi, who they were targeting,
1474
01:27:02.479 --> 01:27:06.119
or Mike Pince, that Donald Trump would have declared an emergency.
1475
01:27:06.159 --> 01:27:10.439
He would have followed the urging of of you know,
1476
01:27:11.039 --> 01:27:15.479
his some of his you know, top advisors, to declare
1477
01:27:15.800 --> 01:27:19.159
declare martial law, and would have stopped the counting of
1478
01:27:19.199 --> 01:27:23.000
the vote. But because the Capitol police were so valiant
1479
01:27:23.039 --> 01:27:25.600
in defending the capital, and because the security was able
1480
01:27:25.600 --> 01:27:28.600
to get the members to safety, he could not trigger
1481
01:27:28.640 --> 01:27:30.520
that basis. And part of the reason I say that
1482
01:27:30.600 --> 01:27:33.039
is because when I look through the details of the
1483
01:27:33.159 --> 01:27:37.119
January sixth Committee's report, the Special Committee on Congress, that
1484
01:27:37.199 --> 01:27:40.359
bipartisan committee, one of the pieces of paper that really
1485
01:27:40.520 --> 01:27:43.079
shocked me and stood out to me was the fact
1486
01:27:43.119 --> 01:27:47.039
that Donald Trump had asked his acting Secretary of Defense
1487
01:27:47.520 --> 01:27:50.600
to not have the National Guard on the mall armed
1488
01:27:50.640 --> 01:27:53.479
on January sixth. He asked for them to be disarmed.
1489
01:27:54.039 --> 01:27:58.640
And that's in writing the deputy who reported to the
1490
01:27:58.680 --> 01:28:02.720
acting Secretary issued that order and said that none of
1491
01:28:02.720 --> 01:28:05.159
the Capital, none of the National Guard on the mall
1492
01:28:05.239 --> 01:28:08.279
that day, could be armed without the express you know,
1493
01:28:08.319 --> 01:28:12.479
basically express order of the Secretary of Defense, And so
1494
01:28:12.640 --> 01:28:15.720
as the Capital was being attacked, the National Guard could
1495
01:28:15.760 --> 01:28:19.119
not assist. They did not have the gear, they didn't
1496
01:28:19.119 --> 01:28:23.319
have the batons or the equipment to defend the Capitol Police.
1497
01:28:23.560 --> 01:28:26.119
And it was only in that afternoon, after Donald Trump
1498
01:28:26.239 --> 01:28:31.399
finally relented in urging that urging his followers to go home,
1499
01:28:31.640 --> 01:28:34.520
who he called patriots, who he loved, it was only
1500
01:28:34.600 --> 01:28:37.800
then that the National Guard was allowed to assemble at
1501
01:28:37.800 --> 01:28:43.359
the DC Armory over by RFK Stadium, get the tools
1502
01:28:43.359 --> 01:28:46.239
that they needed to defend themselves and defend the Capitol Police,
1503
01:28:46.640 --> 01:28:49.640
get the engagement orders for how they could engage with
1504
01:28:49.680 --> 01:28:52.159
the crowd, and then report back to the Capitol as
1505
01:28:52.159 --> 01:28:56.560
the crowd was already dispersing. That's premeditated. In my view,
1506
01:28:56.960 --> 01:28:58.960
that was an effort to try to make sure that
1507
01:28:59.359 --> 01:29:01.439
there was the least amount of help possible. And we
1508
01:29:01.560 --> 01:29:06.239
also know from the former governor of Maryland, a Republican,
1509
01:29:06.600 --> 01:29:09.720
who attested to this before Congress, that he was calling
1510
01:29:09.720 --> 01:29:13.119
the Secretary Defense over the course of hours to try
1511
01:29:13.159 --> 01:29:16.000
to get him to allow the National Guard, the Maryland
1512
01:29:16.079 --> 01:29:19.159
National Guard, to come across the bridge to help help
1513
01:29:19.199 --> 01:29:23.119
protect the Capitol, and he got no answer back until basically,
1514
01:29:23.560 --> 01:29:27.199
the effort to topple our government, to stop our votes
1515
01:29:27.199 --> 01:29:30.880
from being counted was already defeated by the valiant efforts
1516
01:29:30.880 --> 01:29:33.199
of those Capitol police and by the Secret Service in
1517
01:29:33.279 --> 01:29:36.159
protecting Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi and the others.
1518
01:29:37.000 --> 01:29:38.239
Yeah.
1519
01:29:38.279 --> 01:29:43.119
Wow, all right, well we've reached the end of another
1520
01:29:43.239 --> 01:29:47.479
midweek edition of Legal af Lisa, thank you so much
1521
01:29:47.520 --> 01:29:51.920
for joining and being here and pinch hitting and going
1522
01:29:51.960 --> 01:29:54.640
through what is it six or seven or eight topics
1523
01:29:54.680 --> 01:29:56.920
with me. I know, Pope Bok's going to kill me
1524
01:29:57.279 --> 01:29:59.760
for not cutting this shorter, but there's just so.
1525
01:29:59.720 --> 01:30:01.800
Much no, no, no, for everyone.
1526
01:30:02.039 --> 01:30:04.199
No, it's just it's because the number of things we
1527
01:30:04.199 --> 01:30:06.600
couldn't I couldn't decide what to cut out and what
1528
01:30:06.640 --> 01:30:08.840
not to cut out, because these are such important things.
1529
01:30:08.920 --> 01:30:12.399
And I have you here and I wanted to I
1530
01:30:12.439 --> 01:30:14.359
want everyone to hear what you have to say. I mean,
1531
01:30:14.439 --> 01:30:19.399
you're just such a brilliant legal mind and somebody who
1532
01:30:19.520 --> 01:30:22.600
just really understands this on such a deep level, and
1533
01:30:22.760 --> 01:30:26.039
the fact that you come here and you're willing to
1534
01:30:26.079 --> 01:30:29.800
share with our with our wonderful, amazing loyal audience who
1535
01:30:29.800 --> 01:30:32.560
were so lucky to have, who comes week after week,
1536
01:30:32.680 --> 01:30:36.680
and who listens to our podcast, who subscribes to our channels,
1537
01:30:36.760 --> 01:30:40.279
who goes to the Legal AF sub stack, who goes
1538
01:30:40.319 --> 01:30:42.680
to the Legal AF YouTube channel, and who wants to
1539
01:30:42.720 --> 01:30:46.119
stay informed because we have to stay informed. We have
1540
01:30:46.199 --> 01:30:49.720
to understand what's going on. We have to be able
1541
01:30:49.760 --> 01:30:52.680
to fight back at the dinner table against our family
1542
01:30:52.680 --> 01:30:55.479
members or you know, or try to win over the
1543
01:30:55.560 --> 01:30:58.359
hearts and minds of people who are who are undecided,
1544
01:30:58.479 --> 01:31:01.840
or who don't have all the information, and not everyone
1545
01:31:01.920 --> 01:31:04.359
has the hours and hours that you and I have
1546
01:31:04.600 --> 01:31:08.680
to actually read the legal filings ourselves and digest them
1547
01:31:08.880 --> 01:31:11.880
and synthesize them and be able to explain them in
1548
01:31:12.600 --> 01:31:15.840
explain them to people. So we do it because frankly,
1549
01:31:15.960 --> 01:31:21.479
our democracy is on the line and at stake, and
1550
01:31:22.319 --> 01:31:24.439
we have to fight for it. It's worth fighting for
1551
01:31:24.600 --> 01:31:29.600
and it's not hopeless. And so we're here and just
1552
01:31:29.640 --> 01:31:31.760
thank you so much, Lisa. I can't thank you enough
1553
01:31:31.760 --> 01:31:33.880
for being here. It's such a pleasure to do this
1554
01:31:33.960 --> 01:31:34.239
with you.
1555
01:31:34.479 --> 01:31:36.680
Oh, it's always an honor to be here with you, Karen.
1556
01:31:36.720 --> 01:31:39.439
I always learn from you, and I so appreciate this
1557
01:31:39.520 --> 01:31:42.319
channel and all of the followers, all the Midas Mighty.
1558
01:31:42.720 --> 01:31:46.000
We're in this together, and we're growing stronger. We're growing
1559
01:31:46.039 --> 01:31:49.640
stronger agst of this and knowledge is powers. So just
1560
01:31:49.800 --> 01:31:51.920
a deep honor to be part of this effort with
1561
01:31:52.000 --> 01:31:54.039
you and with Popac and with the whole team.
1562
01:31:54.680 --> 01:31:57.479
So big, big shout out to the Legal A efforts
1563
01:31:57.520 --> 01:32:00.000
and the Midas Mighty and until next week,