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[00:02]
A
Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal af. I'm your host, Karen Friedman. Agnifolo. Joining me today is Lisa Graves, who I'm thrilled to have as a co host. Michael Popak is traveling and Lisa always steps in for us when we need it. It's great to see you, Lisa. How are you?
[00:21]
B
Good. Good to see you too, Karen. It's nice to be on and hopeoc is having a wonderful time traveling. I know he's been on from away and as always, it's great to have this con with you, Karen, and be here on Legal af.
[00:34]
A
Yeah. There's so much to talk about. I mean, when we were looking at the things to talk about today, we had to cut things off the list as usual. But there's so many things to talk about. This today's episode is going to be about more about Todd Blanche and whether or not he is going to become the attorney general and what is still going on and the votes that he needs. We're also going to talk about the reflecting pool and the cases that have been dismissed by the United States Attorney, Jan Pirro and why and what is happening there. And Trump is not happy about it. We're also going to talk about 35 former federal judges who have filed an amicus brief in the Trump versus the IRS case down in Florida. They are intervening in that case because there really was no adversarial party. So they are stepping in to be to take the position, the adverse position in that case. And so there's some developments there. We also are going to talk about mail in ballots and the Supreme Court and what's happening there and whether Trump is going to be allowed to have his executive order go into effect that severely limits mail in ballots and gives the United States Postal Service tons of power over our elections. And there's also some really colorful language in Judge Mehta's decision dismissing the remaining Jan6 cases, including Stuart Rhodes case. So that's worth talking about. And we're going to round it out with Trump trying to get out of his the lawsuit he brought against the BBC, the defamation lawsuit, and he doesn't want to open up his books and records to them, even though he's going to be required to as part of discovery since he brought the lawsuit claiming damages. So there's a lot to talk about and that's only the tip of the iceberg. So I look forward to talking about all these issues with you, Lisa. Let's just jump right in. Let's talk about what's going on in the Senate and Todd Blanche, who's up for confirmation for Attorney general. And just to sort of tell everyone where we are. In order to become confirmed as the attorney general, he had to testify in front of the Senate and be questioned. And it was looking like there were some people who are concerned about his independence and some senators who were upset. Things like, and we're talking Republicans, not just Democrats, who were concerned about how he's treated the Epstein victims, how whether he's independent and whether he's still Trump's personal lawyer as opposed to representing the United States of America and the Department of Justice. And a lot of people were also, a lot of senators were also concerned about this slush fund, the, you know, $1,776,000 slush fund that he, the anti weaponization fund, as he called it, that he wanted to be able to dole out to primarily the January six people who he pardoned all of them. And so you have a lot of senators who I think had some genuine, legitimate concerns, a lot of Democrats and several Republicans. And it was getting stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee because they had to vote it out of committee into the full Senate. And he was having a hard time getting out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I thought actually there was a chance he wouldn't because Cornyn and Tillis were kind of holding it up. And he seems to. He did convince them, however, and he now has it in front of the full Senate. He faces now a really tight, high stakes vote. And look, just to also tell everybody kind of where the math is on this. Republicans hold 53 seats, but because Mitch McConnell is MIA and we have no idea where he is or what's going on with him because he's not providing any health updates to people. So they really only have a two vote lead here. And Senator Collins has already said that she is not going to vote for Blanche. I think that was a calculation on her part. I don't know if this was some sort of deal that she struck that she's not. They let her so that she can stay on the ballot because. Or that she can, I should say, she's on the ballot in November and she's fighting for her life. And so maybe that was a deal they struck that she had to vote no to try to keep her seat. But this leaves the outcome to just a few, a handful of senators and what's gonna happen there? And so some people have said Murkowski is up for grabs, Bill Cassidy's up for grabs, even Senator Curtis is up for grabs. So who knows and maybe some other senators might also be holding out. But what do you make of the concerns, Lisa, and what do you think about the issues surrounding the issue that people are concerned about, especially regarding the slush fund, that he seems to have allayed the concerns of Cornyn and Tillis? I've heard people say that it's kind of toothless and not worth the paper it's written on him saying essentially that the fund is dead.
[06:15]
B
Well, this is an issue I've been tracking closely and writing about. And as you and others know, I was the chief counsel for nominations for the U.S. senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy when he was the chair and then the ranking member. And so I have been following what the Senate Judiciary Committee does quite clear, closely. I have to admit that I was very hopeful for a moment when Senator Cornyn was asking really good questions about that non settlement, the so called settlement that a federal judge has found to be collusive to be not a settlement because it's not adversarial. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in this conversation later on. But in terms of this particular the hearing that was on Todd Blanche's nomination to become the Attorney general official, Corny was asking the right questions, which is the terms of that agreement, that non agreement. But the terms of that agreement on their face are that this is a contract between the parties, between the Justice Department and Trump, even though Todd Blanche did not file an appearance in that case, even though the federal government did nothing to raise the defenses that were readily available to the government to prevent paying anything out and instead entered into this really terrible smelling deal. What we saw Cornyn saying was by the terms of that agreement, it can only be modified by signature of both parties. It's a contract. And a contract can't just be unilaterally modified. And that was his position. It was the correct position. And then over the past weekend, he decided to capitulate to Trump in exchange for a press release from the Justice Department asserting that the fund is, is dead and a signed statement by Todd Blanche saying that the fund, you know, in essence that the fund is dead and also putting some sort of theoretical limit on the other part of this deal, which I consider to be a dirty deal involving the settlement of claims against Donald Trump in, in any other capacity. And you know, Todd Blanche's signature on that means nothing. It does not have any legal effect. It's not a contract amendment signed by both parties. It's a face saving measure for Cornyn. John Cornyn and Senator Thom Tillis to claim they got something from, from Blanche and from the Trump administration in exchange for their vote, when instead they traded what was left of their reputation for a meaningless set of papers from Todd Blanche. And the reason it's meaningless is not just that the document that was initially signed is a contract, as Todd Blanche conceded in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee just two weeks ago. It's also meaningless because we have already seen how Todd Blanche has been using the settlement funds that are available to the Justice Department, aside from this specific commitment of this pernicious $1.776 billion trust, to pay out money to the thugs who attacked our Capitol and the capitol police on January 6th. Already this justice Department has been making payouts. It made a payout of more than $5 million to Ashley Babbitt, who is violently throwing herself against the doors, the chambers of Congress, trying to break in in order to stop, stop the counting of our ballots, and she was shot. The, the courts and the just reviewed that shooting and found it was not criminal, that it was a justified shooting at the time. But this Justice Department settled that for more than $5 million. Then just a few months ago, this Justice Department settled a case with Michael Flynn, who had previously pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia in 2016, coming into 2017, and paid him out $1.25 million for that. Those settlements have been, you know, publicized in a way, but not really fully disclosed through the process for disclosing settlements. A number of the settlements that are in that judgment fund are listed as redacted. So we don't know whether other people have already been paid out through the regular Justice Department settlement fund under the federal Torture Claims act and the like. And so there's nothing in the law right now that would prohibit Todd Blanche from, from paying out anyone he chooses separate from this so called commission that was going to be established under that fund. But the, the other part of this is the statement that Todd Blanche signed that Tillis and Cornyn are hanging their hat on. That so called, you know, signed statement merely says that the, quote, settlement of Donald Trump's IRS claims, claims against the IRS for the theft of some of his data, along with other IRS data of hundreds of other people by a contractor who is found guilty of that theft, that, that as part of that, quote, settlement, Todd Blanche agrees that it only applies retroactively to any theft thing that Donald Trump may have done up through this spring, May of this year previously, that the government cannot investigate him, not just the irs, but any government entity cannot investigate him civilly or criminally for any violation of the law, which would include any tax violations, any, you know, felony or criminal tax violation, or, or any other activities for both Donald Trump. For not both, but for Donald Trump, his sons in particular, and his three or four hundred businesses. This statement by Todd Blanche comes, as we just learned in the past 72 hours or more that Capital One bank had debanked Donald Trump and his 300 plus businesses because its software and its experts found that the types of transactions that were coming through Capital one as of 2021 were so suspicious that they raised serious concerns about money laundering and money liability by the bank for money laundering if they did not debank Donald Trump. So that's just a snapshot of what was going on in 2021. Meanwhile, we all know from the financial disclosures that Donald Trump has made at least $2 billion in the first year of his presidency from crypto and other deals. And so, in essence, what Todd Blanche is saying is that he has given Donald Trump immunity from any liability of any kind whatsoever through May of this year for anything that's happened in the past, which actually is not the job of the Attorney General and should never been signed. This nomination should have been dead on arrival. It should have never been. He should never have been given a hearing, let alone a committee vote. But unfortunately, as you point out, Cornyn and Tillis have signed off. So he was passed out of the committee. And the next step will be a cloture vote in the Senate on Friday, which would allow for a formal vote on his nomination by Saturday before these senators leave town and go home to their home districts or to their vacations.
[13:27]
A
Lisa, what's a cloture vote?
[13:29]
B
A cloture vote is a process under the Senate rules to end the debate. It ends the possibility of any sort of standing filibuster. And so it basically is a super majority threshold that if the Democrats can't get to a certain number of votes in general for cloture, the matters go forward to a full vote. It basically takes away the last procedural hurdle for trying to slow down or stop Todd Blanche from being confirmed as the Attorney General.
[14:01]
A
I just want to clarify something for people who might not know this, or maybe everybody does know this, but the Department of Justice doesn't only handle corporate criminal cases. They also handle civil cases. So they are the United States government's lawyer for anyone who's going to sue the United States government. So it could be, I'm suing, I'm Bringing a lawsuit based on civil rights, for example, or I think that the FBI agent shot me and shouldn't have. There's all sorts of civilization matters that get brought by the Department of Justice. And the reason that's significant is that is why Trump was on the other side of the V on the Trump versus IRS case. Right. That's why he's on both sides and why Todd Blanche, as the Attorney General of the United States, has the authority to settle this and all the Jan6 cases. Right. What you were talking about that. Why is it that they're paying all this money to people who, in the January 6th pardon cases, they're bringing these civil lawsuits for damages saying I don't even know what they're alleging, how they can credit mental distress.
[15:19]
B
Mental distress that they were charged.
[15:20]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so they're suing the United States government. And because they have civil authority, which not all prosecutors offices have, but the Department of Justice does. He. They settle all the time with people. And so they have. And as you pointed out, the Federal Torts Claims act is typically what they, the lawsuit that they bring, that they, that they bring these under. And then when they, when they settle it, there's funds that they can access. They don't have to establish a separate slush fund. There's other funds they can access that they can pay as they do for any time they settle a civil suit. And so it makes you realize that the 1776 fund, you know, this $1.7 billion slush fund weaponization fund, was nothing more than a press release anyway. It was nothing more than a political press stunt anyway, because they, they have this ability. And so it's almost like giving ice in winter. Them saying the fund is dead doesn' because they can do this anyway. And they are. And that's what's so astounding to me, is that they're going to get what they want anyway. And as you just pointed out, Donald Trump is getting the greatest gift of all. He's going to keep hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in potential tax liability because he was being audited. And that was the problem. So that's a huge win for Donald Trump and a huge win for Todd Blanche. But I'm just so surprised that these senators, really, all of them, who I thought for a minute there, because they were present on January 6, they were the victims of that crime. I thought maybe then they would say, you know what? This is a bridge too far even for me, or I even had some hope during these hearings that the Epstein survivors who, who were treated so poorly by the Department of Justice, and Todd Blanche who met with them because, you know, he checked off that box when he was forced to. But they were, they felt that that was nothing, that that was not a substantive meeting and that he didn't really hear them or listen to them in good faith. So I'm just surprised that he was able to convince these senators. I mean, it's just shocking to me.
[17:51]
B
Yeah, it really is. It's so outrageous. I mean, the fact is that Todd Blanche never should have been confirmed to be Deputy Attorney General. Part of the dilemma, in essence, that Cornyn posed was that there was no way to remove Todd Blanche without an impeachment. So he was going to remain as Deputy Attorney General regardless of what happened here. And there's this specter that somehow Trump would have chosen someone worse to come in as acting than Todd Blanche and that supposedly Todd Blanche is a reasonable man who will tell Donald Trump the law as it is. We haven't actually seen that. What we've seen is that Todd Blanche has been devoted to Donald Trump, to serving Donald Trump, not to the American people, to advancing Donald Trump's weaponization schemes to attack his so called political enemies. Pursuing criminal charges against James Comey and Letitia James and others. Pursuing the appointment of other other former criminal or civil defense attorneys to key roles in the Justice Department or the U.S. attorney's Office. Pursuing United States Congresspeople for daring to say that the military has an obligation to follow the Constitution, not a person. If a person issues orders that are contrary to the Constitution or the law. And so Todd Blanche has been the chief expediter basically of Donald Trump's agenda at the Justice Department. He hasn't been behaving like any former anyone who previously held that role has. And he should not be confirmed to be the Attorney General of the United States. He should not be confirmed to that position of public trust. And like you said, you, you would think that there would be some members who might have, you know, reservations in the form of voting for this man, voting for Todd Blanche to become the, the kind of ongoing official Attorney General based on Donald Trump's determination to send our tax dollars to people who attacked the Capitol. Even Josh Hawley, who ran through the halls after holding his fist up in alliance with the crowd before it became a mob out there. He folded immediately in supporting Todd Blanche. But Tellis has been publicly outspoken about opposing the payout for people he calls thugs. And I agree. And yet just this weekend, Donald Trump was insisting we've got to pay these poor January 6th people who've been convicted that he pardoned in his blanket pardon poor them with no sympathy whatsoever to the Capitol Police who died or committed suicide in the aftermath of being attacked by Citizens United States at the behest of Donald Trump. And similarly for Todd Blanche. At that hearing, Todd Blanche expressed out loud his concern for poor Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex offender who was the co conspirator, one of the major co conspirators for top. You know, with Epstein and Todd Blanche saying, you know, he, you know, she needed to be moved for her safety, but he really showed the back of the hand to these Epstein survivors, wouldn't meet with them, and then finally capitulated to a very brief meeting that they described as disrespectful. But ultimately they, he was never going to do anything to actually address their concerns. The fact is, is that what we saw in January when Todd Blanche, as the deputy Attorney General, announced that he was no, he was not going to release any more of the Epstein files, even though there are thousands and thousands of pages that have not been released that members of Congress have said should be released, including thousands of references to Donald Trump. Todd Blanche said that the files that were were released were cleared of any depictions or references to child porn. Of course that should not be released. And it also included the deletion or removal of information about people who were killed or tried, tortured or assaulted in these files. And so in essence, he conceded that there are depictions of violence in these files and other crimes. And yet this Justice Department under Todd Blanche, regardless of meeting briefly with the Epstein survivors, has done nothing to bring any further charges against any other people who are implicated in these files. And remember, one of the things that we learned from the reporting last year around the Epstein files was that Donald Trump said he couldn't get the release. He didn't want them released because people he knows were going to be hurt by them. Those aren't the survivors. Those are the other men whose names were redacted by Todd Blanche from those files while the victims names were released to the public.
[22:23]
A
Yeah, pretty, pretty outrageous. While we're on this subject of this fund, this slush fund, why don't we dive right into the Trump vs. IRS case and what happened yesterday because this is kind of a sham lawsuit to put it nicely. And yesterday a bipartisan group of former federal judges filed a formal opposition brief in the Trump versus IRS to block Trump from freezing the court ordered sanctions stemming from this lawsuit. This was led by former Federal Judge Nancy Gertner and Michael Ludig and essentially why don't you talk about that? Because I think it's so important what some of the things that they said and what's going on there.
[23:16]
B
Yes. So this is the case that underlies this faux settlement, this collusive settlement. As the federal District court judge found initially, what happened was Trump files this ridiculous $10 billion lawsuit against the government shortly after he is sworn in as president, claiming he, he deserves $10 billion for the fact that a year of his tax filings were made available by the criminal acts of a contractor. Other cases that were filed about that breach were strongly assailed by the Justice Department. They were, there were motions to dismiss, there were efforts to prevent those cases from going forward because those were the actions of a third party contractor. They were basically what is known as ultravirus acts acts, criminal acts that were not authorized in the course of their non employment by the government. They're contracting with a sub, you know, a contractor. And yet Donald Trump's case went forward while this secret, in my view, dirty deal was being cut. Then what happened was that Donald Trump's attorneys moved to dismiss that lawsuit, did not indicate to the court that there had been a settlement, in fact indicated the opposite. So to dismiss that case. And then what happened was these former federal judges, including Judge Michael Ludig, who was appointed to the federal Federal Court of Appeals by George Herbert Walker Bush, who was the finalist for the Supreme Court Chief justice position alongside John Roberts, a very well regarded jurist who also testified about the devastating effect of Donald Trump's actions. On January 6th, Michael Ludig, along with over 30 other federal judges, filed a motion with the court saying that that dismissal, that proposed dismissal was a fraud upon the court. That everything indicated that. Subsequent to that dismissal, we learned that there was a secret settlement that had the two parts. One was the settlement of any claims, quote, forever in capital letters involving Donald Trump, his family or his businesses from any part of the federal government, you know, going forward forever, that they could not be pursued. And the second part was this $1.776 billion slush fund as a specific set aside to settle, to make big payouts, seven figure payouts to January, six convicts to these thugs, in the words of Thom Tillis. And so the judge, Kathleen Williams, took a look at that motion, reviewed the evidence and you know, issued a very compelling statement about what had happened. She found that the Trump's lawyers had filed a, quote, non adversarial and collusive lawsuit, quote, to manipulate the judicial process and in her view, to force the IRS into a settlement that had, quote, no viable basis in law or fact. And as, and as a result of the settlement, actually a high ranking IRS official resigned as that a settlement was being penned and inked, in essence by Todd Blanche and his min, along with, along with the Trump team. What happened next is that you have that case gets issued. She makes a referral for Todd Blanche to the New York bar, requesting that the New York bar look into his actions as the person who signed that settlement. And she also referred Alejandro Brito to the Florida bar. And, and she noted that she thought that monetary sanctions were, were one of the appropriate remedies for this, what she considered to be this fraud on the court in this collusive settlement. Brito, who we can talk about shortly, I'm sure he's denied these claims, but he's also the lawyer for Donald Trump in the beat in the BBC case, which we're going to talk about in a moment. But you come back to what the judges said. So what happened is Judge Williams issued this order. It was on the eve of Todd Blanche's nomination hearing. That should have been the end of his nomination. Any Senate that is worth their salt would have said, we're going to put this on hold until this matter is resolved. We've never had an attorney general who's been subject to potential sanctions by a federal court for their behavior, for their conduct, or involved in what the lower court considers to be a fraud upon the court. But no, the nomination went forward. In the meantime, Trump's attorneys appealed that decision to the 11th Circuit. They're trying to get that decision by the lower court judge reversed. And in the meantime, then just in the past 24 hours, what we have is a statement by those federal judges, those 35 federal judges opposing the effort to get a stay by Trump's lawyers. And their words were that there is strong evidence of collusion and a lack of adversity, meaning a lack of adverse parties in this case and what they describe as bad faith underlying Trump's lawsuit against the government he leads. Now, let me just add one more fact into there, which is when I was reviewing Todd Blanche's nomination and looking through his papers for his nomination to become a deputy attorney general, he described his role for Donald Trump previously, not just as his criminal defense attorney, but also providing advice on civil matters. We don't know what matters. Todd Blanche gave advice to Donald Trump on whether they involved his desire or whether they ever discussed in the preceding two years his desire to sue the IRS. What we do know is that Todd Blanche spent 6600 hours, 6600 hours in less than two years defending Donald Trump and aiding Donald Trump basically almost every working hour for the preceding two years before he became Deputy Attorney General. And in my view, as acting Attorney General with a capital A, what we've seen is Todd Blunt continued to be acting with a lowercase a as Donald Trump's attorney and getting him these sweetheart deals both for his Trump's loyalists who were, who violently attacked our Capitol, and also to get Trump off the hook with this outrageous civil immunity and criminal immunity, also for any actions that took place before May of this year and possibly after, because the language was ambiguous in terms of how that agreement was written to basically give Donald Trump in his personal capacity and his sons and his businesses the kind of immunity that John Roberts could not give him. When John Roberts created immunity from criminal prosecution for president's so called official act acts, this reaches the other half of the equation, basically giving Donald Trump immunity for his civil acts over the past several years, regardless of the consequences both to our law and to our Treasury.
[30:17]
A
Well, let's see. The Supreme Court has that argument teed up in the other E. Jean Carroll case, right? The $85 million E. Jean Carroll case. They denied hearing the Donald Trump's appeal of the $5 million case because that was just a private matter. The $85 million verdict or judgment, I should say comes stems from comments that he made while he was president. And the issue in that case has to do with whether he will have civil immunity. Right. What you're talking about. And so it'll be interesting to see if the Supreme Court takes up that case and what they say about that, because it will have ramifications for this case as well that we're talking about. Right. I mean, it's just, it's just fascinating to me.
[31:12]
B
Right. And he's actually sought to have the Justice Department weigh in on those E. Jean Carroll cases, even though his actions, quote, as president, were certainly in his personal capacity. Those were not official acts to defame E. Jean Carroll. But in essence, Donald Trump is, is also trying to use the Justice Department to assail that litigation in which the lower court found that he was liable for defamation for his repeated attacks on Eugene Carroll, who prevailed in her primary litigation, as you pointed out, and who was finally paid that $5 million judgment for the sexual abuse that she experienced at the hands of Donald Trump and really for the defamation that he, that he, how he defamed her in denying her allegations about, about that sexual abuse. And so these issues of Donald Trump's personal liability, what Todd Blanche did in this case, in which the judge objected to, in the case filed before Judge Williams was that the Justice Department entered into an unsupportable, a legally and factually indefensible settlement with Donald Trump to let him off the hook from any investigation of his conduct by the federal government, basically for his actions over the preceding decade or more.
[32:31]
A
The hypocrisy here or the contrast here is so stark to me when you think about Donald Trump and Todd Blanche basically not only absolving and pardoning people who committed violent acts against police officers, against stormed the Capitol. We all saw with our own eyes what these violent individuals did. We see the conduct that Donald Trump does. Right. He's accused of sexual assault. He's accused of potentially violating tax laws and owing tax money. He's adjudicated a sexual abuser in federal court. He's adjudicated in state court as his businesses. Yeah. Of fraud. And yet on the one hand, and he's pardoning all these people, a massive Central American drug trafficker, the former prime minister of. Was it Honduras or the president of Honduras, on the one hand. And on the other hand, he is prosecuting Jim Comey for posting a picture of Seashells. Right. Or of Letitia James of checking the wrong box on her mortgage. I mean, it's just the hypocrisy and just inconsistency is so atrocious and the politicization of our justice system, it's just unbelievable what he's getting away with. And I just hope people, I hope the results of the midterm elections will account for, for all of what's happening because it's just appalling. And, you know, but anyway, that's my rant, but we have to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about Jeanine Pirro and the Reflecting Pool and what's going on there, as well as several other topics that we have to talk about. But we're going to take a quick break. We love our sponsors. They support our show. They know what we're about.
[34:39]
B
And.
[34:40]
A
But they help us keep the lights on because we don't have. We're just sort of independent. We're the Independent Midas Touch Network, and we appreciate everyone coming here and listening and watching and supporting our show and supporting the Legal AF YouTube channel. If you're not already a subscriber to the Legal AF YouTube channel, please hit subscribe and same thing with Midas Touch. If you're not part of the Midas mighty, subscribe there as well and we're going to take our first quick break.
[35:12]
C
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[38:14]
A
We're back. While we were on that short break, there's breaking news that in Trump's lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal where don't forget, he brought a defamation case against the Wall Street Journal for publishing that birthday book and that famous card that he wrote with the outline of a woman's body, signing it in her privates to Jeffrey Epstein. This case was going to headed towards discovery and Trump and his lawyers obviously would love to take Rupert Murdoch's deposition. And the judge just stayed all discovery pending the motion to dismiss. So, Lisa, is that a signal to you that the judge is considering that you think there's a chance that this judge is going to dismiss this defamation lawsuit and hand Donald Trump yet another huge loss?
[39:13]
B
I think so. I mean, this deposition could have gone forward, but that was the deposition that Donald Trump's team wanted so badly to try to squeeze Rupert Murdoch, who Donald Trump previously said he told, you know, he told Murdoch that the, the card was not legit, that they shouldn't run the story, even though the card is in a leather bound book with all these other birthday cards. The idea that it's somehow planted is ridiculous. And you know, it's part of, part of material that is, you know, preserved from that timeframe as the Wall Street Journal reported. So I don't think that, I don't, again, like many of these suits that have been brought against these media companies by Donald Trump, you know, in what we've seen in some of these cases, like with ABC or cbs, is sort of a capitulation to, you know, rather than continue the litigation just to pay some sum like almost like a nuisance suit to make this nuisance go away. The Wall Street Journal has not approached it that way, nor has the BBC. They have been unwilling to settle these claims as Trump demands in what I consider to be, in my opinion, sort of a shakedown effort. And in this instance, what you have is a judge basically stopping the discovery process right now at a moment when Donald Trump's team has been eager to try to put that squeeze on Murdoch and say, let's wait until we resolve the motions to dismiss, which we don't know how it's going to come out. But I would say, you know, the tea leaves probably are 60, 40 in favor of dismissal, given the facts as they are known, despite Trump's claims about the facts.
[40:56]
A
So since you brought up the BBC and we're talking about defamation, let's just go right into what's going on with the BBC case. So, I love the BBC case. It was kind of this case that went under the radar. I had forgotten or didn't realize it was being brought. And Donald Trump was asking for. Essentially, the dispute centers on a discovery issue right now, and that's where we're getting to. But let me just tell the background really quick. So Trump sued the BBC in federal court in Miami, alleging that there was a documentary that was deceptively edited, and it was about his January 6 speech on the Ellipse, and that he claims that it made it appear that he encouraged the Capitol attack. And so he alleged $10 billion in damages, basically saying, yeah, crazy figure. Essentially asserting that the broadcast of this and the edit of this severely harmed his reputation and his business interests. Now, you don't have to put a dollar amount in a lawsuit, Right? But he chose to put a dollar amount in the lawsuit, and the BBC acknowledged that the edit was misleading and apologized for it, which, you know, I guess they didn't have to do. I don't think it was misleading, personally. I think he did encourage the riot on the Capitol, but. But still, they're British and they're very polite, and so they said sorry and apologized, but they denied that this was defamation, and so they are seeking dismissal of the lawsuit. And why did Trump's finances become an issue and why this is a discovery issue? Because that's where we are right now. This lawsuit is kind of old news, but the reason we're in the news now is because there's this discovery dispute, because Trump's finances are now an issue, and BBC is seeking all his books and records. Like, okay, you say you were harmed for $10 billion. You got to show us, right? Give us your books and records of your finance. Basically, you put the financial condition of your entities at issue, saying they were allegedly harmed. So we get to look at that. We get to see the value of your business empire, whether any losses actually occurred.
[43:20]
B
Yeah.
[43:20]
A
And of course, you know, Donald Trump does not want to do that. And he tried to walk that back, Right. He tried to be like, okay, you know, no, we don't have to. We don't have to do that part of it. But they're like, no, no, no, this is still part of it. But anyway, why don't you, why don't you take it from there and update us on where we are?
[43:36]
B
Yeah, I really appreciate that. I agree with you. I would not have conceded that, you know, they're doing a documentary in which they are taking portions of the speech. You know, he spoke for over an hour. It was just, just an obnoxious, obnoxiously long speech, as is par for the course, in my view, larded with all these attacks on Pence and more. And so the claim was that it included two pieces of speech 57 minutes apart that suggested that he incited the crowd to riot. Well, that's what the grand jury found in the District of Columbia in the prosecution that was brought by Jack Smith was that he did do so. So I wouldn't have apologized for it. But as you point out, they, they, you know, said, you know, that having those two excerpts, you know, perhaps might have misled people, and so they apologize. And so the issue that is left in the case really is A, whether that's defamatory. I think it's not. That's my personal opinion. And B, if it is, you know, what, what are the damages? And as you point out, Trump put up upfront in that suit that this supposedly harmed his finances, including his businesses. And so it's perfectly legitimate for the BBC to say, all right, well, let's show, let's see your businesses, let's see how they were affected by this documentary that aired in Britain, by the way, was not aired in the United States. There's no indication at all that it harmed his businesses in any way. And in essence, I think, you know, Trump was hoping that this case would settle and he would never have to reveal whether his businesses were harmed or not. I suspect they weren't harmed at all. In fact, he's continued to use the presidency, the post presidency and the new presidency as a money making operation. And what happened on January 6 has not, in essence diminished his ability to attract wealth and people seeking to curry his favor. And so the BBC, they have been standing up strong and saying, look, you want this suit, you brought this suit to us, let's have discovery, let's do it. And so what just happened is that Donald Trump's lawyers In this case, Mr. Brito, who I mentioned before, filed an emergent, an emergency motion in like italics, emergency motion to stay the enforcement of the judge's order from, from July 27th, which required the, the, the, you know, the plaintiff in that case, Donald Trump, to cooperate with discovery. And this suit is being this particular motion was filed by the revocable. By Donald J. Trump's revocable trust. They don't want anyone to see into that trust, which is where so much money is moving in that period. And let's remember that this period, you know, 2021, is the same period where we now know that Capital One was so concerned about suspicious activity happening through the various Trump accounts that were held at Capital One, through Capital One banks, that they debanked Donald Trump because that triggered their internal process for reviewing whether there was money laundering. Now, they have, they have not said that Trump was engaged in money laundering. That has not been alleged in gaining court, but the triggering process was consistent with the patterns for money laundering. And so you have these two things happening simultaneously. On the one hand, you have this lawsuit against the BBC claiming that, you know, Donald Trump suffered as a result of his. Of the BBC's documentary that I think was aired the following year. And then in the same time span, 2021 to 2022, you have a major US bank and, you know, international bank in many regards, but this major US bank saying, we're going to debank Trump because there's so many suspicious transactions happening in terms of the pattern and the amounts of these transactions that we can't run the risk of continuing to be his bank. So what's in Donald Trump's banking records? I think people have a right to know, and I certainly think the BBC has a right to know, given the fact that Donald Trump was trying to exact $10 billion from them for the supposed harms to his business in this timeframe before he became president again in this second term.
[47:52]
A
Yeah, it's kind of outrageous. Again, the double standard. Right. He's being accused of. He's being debanked, as you call it, you know, being accused of suspicious activity. And they're filing these suspicious activity reports, also known as sars, against about him, I should say. And so, and seeing patterns that look like money laundering, it just seems like such hypocrisy, again, that he can do all this stuff and get away with it and sue people and use all the might and power of the federal government to go after people. And it's just shocking to me. Yeah.
[48:34]
B
The only reason we know that about Capital One is because he sued Capital One, too, claiming that he was debanked for his statements around January 6th. And they're. And their defense is, no, no, we didn't stop banking with you because of the statements you made around January 6th that incited that riot in my. In My view. And before our eyes, we're debanking. We debanked you because the money flow, the money patterns were so troubling that we could not bear the risk of losing our banking licenses by doing the kind of business that you were engaged in. And they gave him months to find a new way to transfer all of his accounts out of Capital One, and he still sued them. So this is Donald Trump suing people, you know, left and right. And now he's. Now the consequences are coming. The. The birds are, you know, are coming home to roost. Now he's dealing with the fact that Capital One had to mount this defense to say, look, what really happened is you had all these suspicious, really suspicious activities that deeply concerned us, that we were willing to walk away from, you know, potentially, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions to protect ourselves. And then similarly, suing the BBC based on a documentary that it. It. It made about what happened to America on January 6th now becomes a vehicle for the BBC to say, show us the money, you know, show us the paper. Reveal how you've been damaged or not. Or shut up.
[49:56]
A
You know, it's like he doesn't care what the consequences are, because, as he said, I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. And it seems like so far that's true. He can literally do anything and get away with it. People aren't gonna look at the fact that he was debanked. They closed, what, three, over 300 bank accounts of his because of suspicious activity. They stopped banking with him because of suspicious activity. The fact that he was adjudicated a rapist. I could go on and on and on with the list of all the things that have happened, and it doesn't seem to matter.
[50:32]
B
So he doesn't seem to matter to some people. Right. Of the. The adjudicated sex abuser matters to a lot of people, but it didn't matter to enough people.
[50:40]
A
Right, right, right, exactly. I guess that's. That's my point, because he's still elected President of the United States, and he is doing the damage that he is able to do as a result and continue to grift and make money off of the backs of people in this country. He's treating people inhumanely. He's deporting people. He's. I mean, again, I could go on. This whole thing could be about the harm he's causing to the rule of law to this country, and yet he gets away with it. Right? He gets away with it because you've got Congress. He's got Congress in his back pocket. They will do whatever he wants, and there's nobody who's going to hold him accountable. And so, and I think he's just made the calculation that some of these people will fold and pay me more money. And the ones that won't, okay, I'll dismiss the case eventually. Whether it's bombing Iran, whether it's bombing boats in the Pacific. I mean, he can just indiscriminately do whatever he wants to do, and nobody holds him accountable in a meaningful way. He's not being impeached, obviously. He was reelected president. Yes, of course. People care. I care, you care, and so many, I'm sure our listeners who are listening to this and watching this obviously care, too. But, but he's made, it seems like he has made this calculus. And again, this is just my opinion now. He seems like he has made this calculus that some people will cave, right? Whether it's certain universities, whether it's certain law firms. Yeah, exactly. It's. Whether it's, whether it's certain news organizations, you name it, some will cave. And then I'll get money. And the ones that don't, I'll push it as far as I can, go all the way up to the side Supreme Court and try to run the clock. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Run out the clock. And if I have to pull the plug, I can always pull the plug. And in the meantime, I forced them to spend all this money on, you know, lawyers and lawsuits. And it just doesn't seem to have that much, do that much damage to him.
[52:45]
B
Well, it does seem like Roy Cohn lives in terms of that despicable lawyer who was an early advisor to Donald Trump, who was the main lawyer for the McCarthy era, that witch hunt era where the law, the House and Senate were weaponized against people with these false claims of communism. And that's the guy who really trained Trump in how to talk about these issues. When Donald Trump says, people say that's a way for him to give cover to anything he wants to say. When he floats these trial balloons, these supposed jokes of a third or a fourth, fourth term, you know, these I think, are early tactics he learned from, from Roy Cohn, who was a truly despicable person based on his actions in public life. And then since then, Trump has recruited a series of lawyers to basically do whatever he wants to help him accomplish things that are, you know, contrary to the law, like Rudy Giuliani, who faced bar sanctions, other people who face bar sanctions, and Todd Blanchard, you know, who's facing this referral right now. The only thing in some ways that is holding part of this together is the, is the potential threat that some of these lawyers, whether it's Jeanine Pirro, if she did not reveal Brady information in the David Hearn case when there was exonerating information provided about the contractor's failures, whether it's, you know, whether it's Todd Blanche being possibly held accountable by the New York bar for his role in this so called settlement. It's the bar that is one of the last legs left standing to try to hold the lawyers advising Donald Trump accountable. Because we know that this Supreme Court, you know, six judges, three of whom were appointed by Donald Trump, chose to issue a totally partisan decision, a fully partisan decision to give Donald Trump immunity from criminal prosecution, which had the effect of pardoning him retroactively, getting him off the hook for the charges that he was facing around January 6, and in essence paving his way for a return to power with more power than any president has had, which includes this aggrandized power to pardon, which I think is illegitimate. I think we're going to have to claw back and put proper restraints on the pardon power because it's been used to by Donald Trump to pardon basically his co conspirators, the January 6 people who acted on his words in attacking the Capitol and trying to stop that vote, as he praised on the day, praised them for their supposed patriotism, for their actions, and even this weekend was praising them and saying that they should get compensation. And so there are some consequences that could be brought to bear. Even if Todd Blanche were pardoned, for example, if he committed any crimes and he were pardoned, he could still face bar sanctions like Rudy Giuliani has faced bar sanctions and others have, which is why the Justice Department is fighting so hard to claim that the bar should not have any authority, that the state bars should not have any authority over Justice Department attorneys, even though the statutes, the laws on the book say that Justice Department attorneys are subject to, to the rules of the bar that they're admitted to. So there's just a desperate effort by people around Trump to try to make sure that they are doing his bidding. Or, and, or I think that they, the implication is that they'll get, they'll get a pardon if they go along with what he says, which means I don't know what you, what credibility you can give to someone testifying in Congress who is one of Trump's, in essence, agents. Because they have to be operating, in my view, under the assumption that Whatever they do and say for Trump, he will protect them, he will give them immunity, you know, or, you know, try to bar, you know, pardon them or pre pardon them, pardon them from any charges that could be brought against them. So we're really living in a sort of upside down land in which, as you pointed out, Karen, what does the law mean if the President is not bound by it, even though he takes an oath to uphold it?
[56:55]
A
Yeah, no, it's, it's bananas. So let's talk about, speaking of defamation suits that we were just talking about, let's talk about the future defamation suit that we see coming out of the Reflecting Pool. I know that was a secure. I'm trying to link these things. I know, but yeah, no, no, that was a little bit of a stretch. That was a stretch. I get it. But so let's talk about what's going on with the Reflecting Pool. So if you remember that several people are being prosecuted or were being prosecuted for, accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool that reflects the Lincoln Memorial. Right. The peeling paint that was coming off one person, I guess, was floating on the top and they picked it up and they got arrested for it. Well, one of those individuals happened to be a United States Olympian, a cyclist, and Davey Hearn, and he was charged with a felony. And this was a felony because they alleged damage to federal property and greater than $1,000 was the damage. And yesterday, it was either yesterday or the day before. I was surprised to see that, that the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, who is a super Trump loyalist, dismissed the case against Davey Hearn as well as three others who were charged with misdemeanors. I think he was the only one charged with a felony and really seemed to throw the Department of the Interior under the bus. I mean, there seems to be a lot of drama going on there. She filed a motion to dismiss the indictment. Now, this is after they went into the grand jury, because you obviously go into the grand jury to get an indictment. And, you know, when she, when she announced the grand jury indictment, she was saying, oh, the Park Service employees observed Davey Hearn violently pulling at the lining and that there was damage over $1,000. And, you know, just all this language of seemingly really terrible language that I think could be the basis of a defamation suit that he will have against her. And Donald Trump basically saying he willfully and violently destroyed property deliberately to damage the Reflecting Pool. And she said, by his own, by his own admission, he grabbed it and he did it forcefully and violently Et cetera, et cetera. But then she filed something in court that was very surprising to me that she would do this because you could predict that this would not make Trump happy. Basically saying that this was a rushed, no bid contract to do the reflecting pool. She laid out the facts in detail and showed that this was a rushed, no bid contract. And as a result, there was damage and that's what caused it. Not, you know, these guys who came along and picked the pieces that were floating up off the top, you know, that's not damaging the pool. The widespread damage was not caused by the vandalism. And what's concerning about. So she moved to dismiss the case. What's concerning about this is how come she didn't know this ahead of time, how come she indicted first, rushed to indict and then investigate later? You know, she didn't have to rush to indict this case. There was no risk that Davey Hearn was going to flee the jurisdiction. Right. Or that he was a danger to others. I mean, and those are the reasons sometimes you rush to indict someone. But this seemed like not just a rushed botched reflecting pool, you know, it was a rushed job, but this seemed like to be a rush job too, to, to indict the case. And, and I think, you know, there's going to be, I think he, he could potentially bring a defamation suit about, I mean, no offense, who I'd never heard of Davey Hearn. I don't think he, most people had heard of him, even though he's an Olympian. I don't think he's a public, I don't think he's a public figure, which would raise the defamation bar higher to actual malice. But now everyone's heard of him, right? Now everyone knows who he is. And I think, I don't know. What do you think about all this?
[61:43]
B
Well, I think that, I think that he is probably, he's got to be talking with lawyers about his reputation and how it was harmed not just by the actions of the federal government, but also, you know, Trump's claims, some of the coverage on Fox, you know, so we'll see if, if a defamation suit comes forward because as you point out, there's a different standard for someone who is a public person, like a public figure, like a politician, which requires, which follows the malice test, the New York Times versus Sullivan test, where you have to have actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth to be held liable for defamation for a public figure. But the standard is lower for someone who is a private figure. And for all intents and purposes, David Hearn was a pretty private person. He was not well known before this. And then he was accused of being, you know, a felon, destructive property destroyer, and was, you know, arrested and charged. And, you know, what, what happened here is really extraordinary because as you point out, typically prosecutors work to get their case, you know, all lined up before, before they present to the grand jury. There was no urgency here. There was no sort of ticking statute of limitations. There was probably just political pressure from Trump to try to make his claims about there being vandals into reality by punishing someone, which is, in my view, shows exactly the sort of problem we have with this recklessness of having people who are sycophants for Trump in these important roles wielding the prosecutorial power in a way to serve him, regardless of what, you know, common sense and the facts and the law may show. Now, interestingly, in this, in this filing where she, you know, joined in this or, you know, she approved of this motion to dismiss without prejudice, meaning that the case could be refiled, she goes out of her way to describe how the information she says she had before the grand jury was just the statements by the Department of the Interior, other government agents who supposedly saw him tearing and destroying the bottom of the pool, even though he says he just reached in to see this floating piece of the resurfacing material. And then she describes how she was repeatedly asking for information from the Department of Interior. And finally, finally, finally they gave her the material. And it showed, as you said at the outset here, that the Department of Interior had information showing that this was a rush job, that the no bid contract that Donald Trump issued to try to make the pond super blue in honor of his birthday, in time for his birthday and the fight match that was going to take place on the White House lawn, that the surface was not properly prepared, that the material didn't properly adhere to the material to stick it to the granite, and that it was already, even as it was being applied, was falling apart. Also that when they drained the pool, there was no indication of any 300 or 1200 or 2000 foot box cutter cutting away the reflection pool bottom. What there was was a showing that the bottom was defectively applied. And in fact, with the materials that are submitted in that, in that motion show, along with pictures that were included in that motion show, that this contractor is going to be reapplying that surface because it failed, in essence, the warranty that was guaranteed as part of that contract, that it would stick, that it would be durable when in fact it is not and is proven not to be. And so what you have is a case in which this was a defective application of this surface to the reflection pool, that it's been conceded to have been defective, such that the replacement of that surface is supposed to be coming at no cost to us because it did not do perform as it was supposed to. And this is all the result, in a way, of Donald Trump issuing a no bid contract to someone who was apparently a friend of his or an associate of his to do a job in which I don't think that they or their contractors necessarily had the experience to do. They weren't vetted. There was not the type of preparation for this sort of work. The Obama administration looked at some of these issues, not the reflection pond bottom flecking off because there was no such plasticized surface, but looked at the issue of the leaking of the reflection pool and the pumps that needed to be maintained in order to protect the integrity of that pool and the water. And instead what you had was Donald Trump acting like it was his personal, personal pool, the reflection pool, this historic site, and trying to get it covered with some, some colored bottom, this flag blue that he wanted in time for his birthday. And so it really is a travesty. Now, the, the last thing I'll say on this before I go back to you is, you know, I, I have to give Jean Pirro credit for taking the lawyer's box, the black box and the banker's box to the White House to show him the evidence that purportedly he's been lied to, that he's been misled by Doug Borgum of the Interior Department, that she believed that she could convince him with actual evidence what was really happening and that these claims of vandals was just not viable. But instead he continued to dress her down and criticize her, saying she's wrong. Well, that's, that's evidence. And so I guess I would put it back to you, Karen. You have this amazing career as a prosecutor dealing with, you know, grand juries, dealing with judges and actual, you know, full on juries in trials. This idea of the fact that Jeanine Pirro, unlike Donald Trump, is bound by the rules, the Brady rules, in terms of disclosing exonerating information in a way that Donald Trump is not bound. And so here she is as a lawyer saying, look, I had to disclose this exonerating information, but he doesn't. It just sort of underscores how having someone like Trump at the top means that the law, you know, is is meaningless to him. She's bound by it though or she could lose her law license.
[68:04]
A
Yeah, I mean look that, that is very true. And she showed at first blush you would say, wow, she showed she did exactly what you would want a prosecutor to do and showing integrity and saying look that this guy innocent and we can't prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore we have to dismiss the case. Now she didn't do it with, you know, as you pointed out, she did it with without prejudice, meaning she could refile. And you know, you have to give her credit for that. Right. And that's exactly what you want is when you have evidence like that. But on the same token, she a shouldn't have rushed to the grand jury and upend these individuals lives and babies. There's also, according to certain things I've read, there's not a lot of love between Jeanine Pirro and Doug Bergen, the interior. So this might be a little fight here that's happening between the two of them as much as it is a trying to do the right thing. I hope she was doing it to do the right thing. But you're right, she would have to turn that over anyway to the defense. But you're not supposed to go into the grand jury. The Department of Justice manual and rules say unless you can prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt and get a conviction and sustain appeal, you're not supposed to indict a case. You're just not supposed to.
[69:31]
B
And let's remember, right, she tried to indict the guy for throwing the subway sandwich for a federal crime. And the grand jury said no, she tried to indict sitting members of Congress for daring to say out loud what western West Point graduates are taught in the course of becoming officers, which is that they have a duty to follow the law and the Constitution, not an illegal order. Which you know, goes back to the Nuremberg defense that you cannot have soldiers following illegal orders, saying I was just following orders and committing crimes against humanity or you know, human rights violations. And she tried to indict and try to indict them as well. And she's, you know, been party which
[70:09]
A
is why, which is why even though she did the right thing here, I, you know, you raise an eyebrow and you wonder what's going on. And that's why people I think are saying, oh, this is just a fight between her and the Department of Interior person. You know, she's trying to get. Throw him under the bus. Yeah, so maybe he was throwing her under the bus. Who knows who knows what's going on, but I'm a little suspect here. We have to take our next break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about mail in ballots in the Supreme Court because who better than to talk about the Supreme Court with than Lisa Graves? So let's take our next quick break for our sponsors.
[70:48]
C
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[73:38]
A
right, we're back and Lisa, I want to jump right in and talk about what's happening at the United States Supreme Court with our mail in ballots and the post office, et cetera. And I'm just going to turn it over to you to frame the issue and tell us what's going.
[73:58]
B
Yes, well, this is a major issue that's going on where we have an executive order and I that's the technical term for what Donald Trump did earlier this spring in issuing an order that the postal service should not deliver any ballots from from states to voters or return their ballots to the the polling places if if the state does not cooperate with Donald Trump's demands that he have access to the voter rolls in the states. And so that that executive order, which, you know, I don't think of as an actual effective order since I think it's plainly unconstitutional, but framed as an executive order, that order has been litigated. There was a suit filed against the implementation of that, of that order in federal court. And just this past day or so, you have 23 states in the District of Columbia on Monday urging the Supreme Court to leave in place an order by the lower federal court barring the federal government from applying those provisions in those states before the election. What you have right now is an effort by Donald Trump to try to commandeer the election process from the states. And the Constitution, you know, is very clear on this point. It specifically says that it is the the states are empowered to set the time, place and manner of voting in congressional elections, not the federal government. And in fact, what we've seen in a number of these state efforts, these efforts to squeeze these states to give over this information is that the federal government has lost every single one of those cases that has reached a decision. Mark Elias has with the democracy docket in his firm, the Elias Law Group, have brought suit along with Other groups against those efforts, along with the state attorneys general in those states, saying that the federal government has no right to have access to those voter rolls, that the states are maintaining those roles as is consistent with the process that they've always engaged in. There's no evidence whatsoever of any widespread fraud in voting in the United States. Every single investigation that has taken a look at, you know, any blue ribbon commission by former U.S. attorneys or former state attorneys general, have found no evidence of widespread voting fraud. There's no basis for the federal government to assert control over the voting rolls. And quite frankly, there are real problems with doing so. For example, one of the things we saw, one of the claims we saw in 2020, coming into 2024, was this, this sort of trumped up false notion that there were people voting multiple times or that people were voting even though they had moved. But the fact is, and I think everyone out there really knows this, there are so many people who have your same name. There's probably 30 Lisa Graveses. I found this out once the Internet became, you know, a real thing. How many Lisa Graves there? And my name isn't even that common. And so there are other Lisa Graves in my state and in other states who may move. It doesn't mean that my voter registration in my state is invalid. And so we've seen this effort to try to say under people like Kris Kobach, who was previously the Attorney General of Kansas and who was one of the advisors to Donald Trump in the first term, this idea that they're supposed to be checking people's names against people's names in other states and then disqualifying people, basically ripping people off of the voter rolls. And even though they're registered in that state and there's no indication that they've moved or that they are somehow voting twice or anything. And so you have this continuation of the big lie, Donald Trump's lie that he supposedly won the 2020 election even though he lost. The continuation of the claim that there was supposedly voter fraud when there was not. In fact, I took a look at the Heritage Foundation's database of, of supposed voter fraud over the course of, you know, 10, 20 years. And if you look at the amount of voter fraud that's been prosecuted or found in like over decades compared to the amount of votes cast, it's like 0.00000000. And I think another 0% of the votes cast could even be considered to have been a fraudulent or inappropriate vote. It's so rare. You're more likely to be struck by lightning than for there to be voter fraud or fraud by a voter. And so this is just another way in which Donald Trump is threatening to take over our congressional elections this year as his polling plummets, as support for him plummets in the face of his disastrous policies, both in the US in terms of the continuing squeeze on the American family for just the cost of goods and the groceries and health care costs and and soon to be increased costs for medicines due to the efforts of the Trump team, with its congressional loyalists, to mess with Medicare and Medicaid and Part D of Medicare and more, along with just the absurd costs that we are facing as a result of Donald Trump's foreign policies as well. And so you have a president who's flailing, whose policies have proven to be very controversial, including on civil rights issues and free speech issues and more, and who is looking at potential losses in these midterms, basically threatening, through this executive order to use the Postal Service to try to take over our elections and determine who gets to vote in any state. Now, a lot of states rely on mail in voting. A lot of, a lot of people in the United States rely on mail in voting. And we not only have this situation
[79:43]
A
with this, Trump mails in his votes, too, by the way.
[79:45]
B
Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. Trump mails in his votes. He claims he gets to that because he's president, but you don't like more of the law does not apply to me, but it applies to the sort of thing. And so this is an instance where it's now going to go to this U.S. supreme Court. We've already seen the Roberts Court put a thumb on the scale in favor of Trump through the voting ruling earlier this year in the Calais case, where it destroyed key protections of the Voting Rights act in order to allow these Republican legislatures to redraw maps to try to give Republicans an additional advantage in these midterm elections to try to hold on to the control of Congress and try to protect Donald Trump, in my view, from oversight and the check of Congress and protect the court as well from oversight and investigation of the scandals that have plagued the Supreme Court. And so we'll see if this court decides to intervene here and overturn that lower court order, stopping this executive order from going into effect just, just weeks before this election takes place. And I will say, I guess the hopeful sign here is that earlier this year in the Watson case, in a case coming out of Mississippi where the Republican Party in Mississippi was trying to stop votes from being counted if they arrived after Election Day, but they were postmarked by Election Day. This applies a lot to military voters abroad, for example, that those votes could still be counted because they were cast by Election Day. The Supreme Court, in a divided decision, decided not to go along with the Republican effort to block people's votes from being counted if those votes were mailed in time. And so you have a hopeful sign in this arena of mail in voting that hopefully the court will not intervene, but you have a desire and demand by Trump and by some of the Republican states that are beholden to him to do so.
[81:39]
A
And yeah, and you have the 23 attorneys general from blue states filing basically saying, too close to the elections. This would be really disruptive. You can't do this. So, yep, yep. We'll see. We'll see what they do, if anything. Hopefully nothing. So let's just move on because I know we're running long in time. I want to move on to Judge Mehta, who made some comments in dismissing Stewart Rhodes case and the Jan.6 indictments that I think was remarkable, not because he dismissed the cases when he was asked to, but because what he said, and he was unusually candid, let's just say, in his language that he used explaining why he believed he was compelled to grant the government's motion despite quite strongly disagreeing with it. And so the case is basically the last remaining January, six prosecutions against members of the Oath Keepers, including Stewart Rhodes. So really, the worst of the worst, right? Seditious conspiracy cases. And this was after Trump pardoned or commuted all the Jan.6 defendants, the Department of Justice still had to move to vacate the remaining convictions. Right, Because. Because procedurally, that's what had to happen because they were in court and they had to move to dismiss the indictments. And Judge Mehta concluded that under the executive branch's charging authority, he had no discretion essentially, to deny this request. Right. He had to grant it because prosecutors have all the discretion whether to charge or not charge. But what made, like I said, the opinion extremely noteworthy to me was some of his words. I mean, he essentially said that he believed the dismissals were wrong as a matter of public policy, but he concluded that separation of powers. He had to do it. He had to grant it. And he wrote things like, I'm reluctantly doing that. Reluctantly, the court grants the motion, or this is the last of the prosecution seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6th. That book is now closed. And then he said, today's epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day. And denigrates the work of the prosecutors, law enforcement officers who secured those convictions and excuses criminal conduct that caused a centuries long pillar of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of presidential power to buckle. The court cannot write a different ending. I mean, like, I got the chills when I read that. You know, it was just amazing that he clearly expressed his point of view. He criticized the Department of Justice, and yet he noted that this is what he had to do.
[84:31]
B
Yeah, it was so eloquent. I just can't think of any other words to supplement it because people should read that opinion. And as you point out, Karen, there were a number of charges against January 6th defendants, including violent acts against the Capitol Police, destruction of property, trespass, and more. But these were some of the most serious charges. Seditious conspiracy is a serious charge. It involves the potential for spending, you know, 15 to 20 years in jail if convicted. The people who were subject to these charges were part of a, basically a paramilitary group that was actively communicating with each other in preparation for January 6th and to sort of execute the plan to disrupt those proceedings where our votes through the Electoral College were going to be counted, affirming that Joe Biden won the presidency and that Donald Trump had to leave office. Seditious conspiracy is a very serious charge. They were also charged, I think, in at least two of them, I think, were charged with trying to hide or destroy evidence about those crimes. And so these were serious offenses. They deserved, in my view, prosecution. And the fact that they had to be dismissed is, is so unfortunate. And it is certainly a product of the fact that in our system, unlike in some other countries, the judges aren't prosecutors. There isn't an adjudicative prosecutorial role. This is the role of the Justice Department. And unfortunately, under Todd Blanche, at the bidding and direction of Donald Trump, which is where we began, we see a Justice Department willing to capitulate and cave in on some of the most serious crimes ever committed in this, you know, in this modern era against our nation by people who were engaged in a conspiracy to commit sedition.
[86:29]
A
But, Lisa. Jim. Jim Comey posted a picture of seashells.
[86:33]
B
Yeah, well, there's that. That's purportedly a crime, but working with your walkie talkies or your phones and the disappearing messages and trying to plan out who is going to be where to effectuate what I think was, quite frankly, in my opinion, what was happening on January 6 was in part an attempted coup. And I think that if those rioters had managed to seize a member of Congress, had managed to get to Nancy Pelosi, who they were targeting, or Mike Pence, that Donald Trump would have declared an emergency. He would have followed the urging of some of his top advisors to declare martial law and would have stopped the counting of the vote. But because the Capitol Police were so valiant in defending the Capitol and because the state Security was able to get the members to safety, he could not trigger that basis. And part of the reason I say that is because when I looked through the details of the January 6 committee's report, the Special Committee on Congress, that bipartisan committee, one of the pieces of paper that really shocked me and stood out to me was the fact that Donald Trump had asked his acting Secretary of Defense to not have the National Guard on the mall armed on January 6th. He asked for them to be disarmed. And that's in writing. The. The deputy who reported to the acting secretary issued that order and said that no one, none of the Capitol, none of the National Guard on the Mall that day could be armed without the express, you know, basically express order of the Secretary of Defense. And so as the Capitol was, was being attacked, the National Guard could not assist. They did not have the gear. They didn't have the batons or the, the equipment to defend the Capitol Police. And it was only in that afternoon, after Donald Trump finally relented in urging that, urging his followers to go home, who he called patriots, who he loved. It was only then that the National Guard was allowed to assemble at the DC Armory over by RFK Stadium, get them, get the tools that they needed to defend themselves and defend the Capitol Police, get the engagement orders for how they could engage with the crowd and then report back to the Capitol as the crowd was already dispersing. That's premeditated, in my view. That was an effort to try to make sure that there was the least amount of help possible. And we also know from the former governor of Maryland, a Republican who attested to this before Congress, that he was calling the Secretary of Defense over the course of hours to try to get him to allow the National Guard, the Maryland National Guard, to come across the bridge to help protect the Capitol. And he got no answer back until basically the effort to topple our government to stop our votes from being counted was already defeated by the valiant efforts of those Capitol Police and by the Secret Service in protecting Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi and the others.
[89:37]
A
Yeah. Wow. All right, well, we've reached the end of another midweek edition of Legal af. Lisa, thank you so much for joining and being here and pinch hitting and going through, what is it, six or seven or eight topics with me. I know popo's gonna kill me for not cutting this shorter, but there's just so much going on. No, no, no.
[90:01]
B
Sorry, everyone.
[90:02]
A
No, it's just. It's because of the number of things I couldn't decide what to cut out and what not to cut out because these are such important things. And I have you here, and I wanted to. I want everyone to hear what you have to say. I mean, you're just such a brilliant legal mind and somebody who just really understands this on such a deep level, and the fact that you come here and you're willing to share with our wonderful, amazing, loyal audience who we're so lucky to have, who comes week after week and who listens to our podcast, who subscribes to our channels, who goes to the Legal AF substack, who goes to the Legal AF YouTube channel, and who wants to stay informed. Because we have to stay informed. We have to understand what's going on. We have to be able to fight back at the dinner table against our family members or try to win over the hearts and minds of people who are undecided or who. Who don't have all the information. And not everyone has the hours and hours that you and I have to actually read the legal filings ourselves and digest them and synthesize them and be able to explain them in. Explain them to people. So we do it because, frankly, our democracy is on the line and at stake, and we have to fight for it. It's worth fighting for, and it's not hopeless. And. And so we're here. And just thank you so much, Lisa. I can't thank you enough for being here. It's such a pleasure to do this with you.
[91:34]
B
Oh, it's always an honor to be here with you, Karen. I always learn from you, and I so appreciate this channel and all of the followers. All the might is mighty. We're in this together, and we're growing stronger. We're growing stronger in the midst of this, and knowledge is power. So just a deep honor to be part of this effort. Effort with you and with Popoc and with the whole team.
[91:55]
A
So big, big shout out to the Legal afers and the Midas mighty. And until next. Time,

Summary8 min read

Legal AF by MeidasTouch — Episode Summary (August 6, 2026)

Main Theme & Purpose

This midweek Legal AF episode, hosted by Karen Friedman Agnifilo (former Manhattan DA) and Lisa Graves (veteran Senate Judiciary staffer and legal analyst), provides an incisive, no-holds-barred breakdown of key legal and political developments involving Donald Trump, his administration, and the justice system. Topics include Todd Blanche’s embattled confirmation as Attorney General, controversial settlements benefitting Trump and Jan. 6 defendants, ongoing pivotal lawsuits (Trump v. IRS, BBC/Wall Street Journal defamation), the Supreme Court’s looming decisions on mail-in ballots, and the fallout from recent Department of Justice actions.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Todd Blanche’s Attorney General Confirmation Battle

Senate Confirmation Dynamics

Todd Blanche, former Trump attorney and current Deputy Attorney General, is up for the Attorney General post. Questions swirl around his independence and loyalty. (00:34)
Both Democrats and some Republicans raised issues:
- Concerns over $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" (slush fund for Jan. 6 pardonees).
- Blanche’s handling of Epstein victims.
- Blanche’s continued role as Trump's personal advocate rather than representing the nation. (01:00–06:14)
Senate Judiciary Committee nearly stalled his nomination. Senators Cornyn and Tillis “folded” after accepting a "toothless" statement from Blanche declaring the slush fund “dead”. (06:14–15:18)
Blanche gave Trump, sons, and businesses effective immunity from prosecution/investigation for previous conduct. (06:14–15:18, 23:16–30:17)
Republicans hold a slim 2-vote majority due to McConnell’s absence; Susan Collins is a “No”; outcome remains precarious. (03:52)

“Todd Blanche’s signature on that [agreement] means nothing. It does not have any legal effect... It’s a face-saving measure for Cornyn.”
— Lisa Graves [08:24]

Department of Justice’s Civil & Criminal Roles

DOJ’s authority includes settling both criminal and civil cases, enabling deals like those with Jan. 6 defendants. (14:00–17:51)
The $1.776B fund is largely symbolic; DOJ already has existing civil settlement authority. (15:20)

Blanche’s Record & Concerns

Blanche pivotal in DOJ payouts:
- $5M to Ashley Babbitt’s family, $1.25M to Michael Flynn—both settlements surrounded in secrecy, with other payouts possible but redacted from public view. (09:56)
DOJ, under Blanche, has shielded Trump with broad civil and criminal immunity in IRS settlement—even as Capital One debanked Trump’s businesses over money laundering concerns. (11:30)

“What Todd Blanche is saying is that he has given Donald Trump immunity from any liability of any kind whatsoever through May of this year... This nomination should have been dead on arrival.”
— Lisa Graves [11:55]

2. Trump v. IRS Lawsuit & Federal Judges’ Intervention

Collusive Settlement and Legal Backlash

Trump sued IRS for $10 billion, claiming damages after a contractor leaked his tax returns. DOJ moved to settle; settlement included immunity for Trump and the slush fund. (23:16–30:17)
A bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges, including Michael Luttig and Nancy Gertner, filed an amicus brief, calling out the "collusive" and “fraudulent” nature of the settlement. (23:16–26:34)
Federal judge Kathleen Williams:
- Found the settlement had “no viable basis in law or fact.”
- Referred Todd Blanche and Trump’s lawyer to respective state bars for possible discipline.
- Imposed monetary sanctions.
- Senate ignored these ethics red flags in Blanche’s nomination. (26:34–30:17)

“Strong evidence of collusion and a lack of adversity...bad faith underlying Trump’s lawsuit against the government he leads.” — Lisa Graves, quoting federal judges [28:41]

3. Supreme Court & Trump’s Battle Over Civil Immunity

Ramifications of Blanche’s DOJ Deal

The scope of Trump’s civil and criminal immunity is further in play with the Supreme Court considering the E. Jean Carroll case (comments while in office, $85M judgment). (30:17–32:30)
Trump also seeks DOJ intervention in Carroll’s defamation case to claim official act immunity.

“He’s prosecuted Jim Comey for posting a picture of seashells...On the other hand, he’s pardoning a drug trafficker and the president of Honduras.”
— Karen Friedman Agnifilo [32:30]

4. Trump’s Defamation Lawsuits: Wall Street Journal & BBC

Wall Street Journal Lawsuit

Trump filed a defamation suit over the “birthday book” story linking him to Jeffrey Epstein. Trump’s lawyers sought to depose Rupert Murdoch.
Judge has stayed discovery pending a motion to dismiss, signaling probable dismissal. (38:14–40:56)

BBC Lawsuit: Discovery Standoff

Trump sued the BBC, claiming a documentary defamed him re: Jan. 6. Sought $10B in damages. (40:56–47:52)
The BBC demands access to Trump’s books/records as he claimed financial harm. Trump tries to block discovery.
During the claimed harm period, Capital One debanked Trump over suspicious activity, with hundreds of accounts closed — raising further questions about his business practices.

“BBC...has been standing up strong and saying, ‘You brought this suit to us, let’s have discovery, let’s do it.’”
— Lisa Graves [43:35]

5. Capital One & Trump’s Debanking

Trump also suing Capital One after closure of >300 accounts, claiming it was due to Jan. 6. The bank’s defense: his suspicious transaction patterns, not his political activity, forced the move. (48:33–49:55)
Birds come home to roost, as Trump’s pattern of aggressive litigation finally brings exposure to his finances.

“He can literally do anything and get away with it. People aren’t going to look at the fact that he was debanked...They stopped banking with him because of suspicious activity.”
— Karen [49:55]

6. The DOJ, Bar Ethics, and the Power of Pardons

The Roy Cohn Legacy

Trump continually deploys lawyers willing to bend or break legal precedent; relies on the possibility of a presidential pardon to protect enablers.
Last possible check? State bar discipline for DOJ attorneys — even as the DOJ tries to argue it’s above such regulation. (52:44)

7. Reflecting Pool Vandalism Case & DOJ Missteps

U.S. Attorney (and Trump loyalist) Jeanine Pirro indicted Olympic cyclist Davey Hearn for felony vandalism after he picked up peeling paint from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. (56:54–68:04)
Pirro later moved to dismiss after it was revealed a Trump-connected, no-bid contractor had done a faulty resurfacing job. She blamed the Department of Interior for misleading her.
Raises questions of prosecutorial integrity, possible defamation of Hearn, and DOJ’s hurried approach driven by political rather than legal factors.

“There was probably just political pressure from Trump to try to make his claims about there being vandals into reality by punishing someone…”
— Lisa Graves [61:42]

8. Supreme Court, Mail-in Ballots, and USPS

Trump’s Executive Order & States’ Legal Challenge

Trump issued an executive order restricting Postal Service ballot delivery unless states hand over voter rolls.
23 states + DC have asked the Supreme Court to block the order ahead of the midterms. (73:37–81:38)
The Constitution gives states authority over elections. Trump’s efforts seen as unconstitutional, aim to suppress mail voting as his poll numbers dip.
Hopeful sign: Court earlier declined to block counting of timely mailed ballots in Mississippi case, but anxiety remains over Roberts Court partisanship.

“You’re more likely to be struck by lightning than for there to be voter fraud or fraud by a voter.” — Lisa Graves [76:42]

9. Judge Mehta on Jan. 6 Dismissals: A Stark Rebuke

Closing the Book on Jan. 6 Prosecutions

Following Trump’s broad pardons, the DOJ is compelled to dismiss remaining major Jan. 6 charges, including Stewart Rhodes’ seditious conspiracy.
Judge Mehta’s opinion:
- Denounces the DOJ’s capitulation as a denigration of law enforcement’s work and an insult to democratic principles.
- Expresses he is “reluctantly” compelled by law and separation of powers.

“Today’s epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day and denigrates the work of prosecutors, law enforcement officers who secured those convictions, and excuses criminal conduct that caused a centuries long pillar of our democracy...to buckle.”
— Judge Mehta [82:14/83:50, paraphrased at 81:38–84:31]

“He asked [the Secretary of Defense] for the National Guard to not be armed on January 6th...That’s premeditated, in my view.”
— Lisa Graves [86:32]

Notable Quotes & Moments

“[Todd Blanche’s] nomination should have been dead on arrival. He should never have been given a hearing.”
— Lisa Graves [11:55]
“Donald Trump is getting the greatest gift of all. He’s going to keep hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in potential tax liability because he was being audited. And that was the problem. So that’s a huge win.”
— Karen Friedman Agnifilo [15:18]
“Strong evidence of collusion...and bad faith underlying Trump’s lawsuit against the government he leads.”
— Lisa Graves [28:41]
“He can literally do anything and get away with it.”
— Karen [49:55]
“The birds are coming home to roost...now he’s dealing with...Capital One had to mount this defense to say, ‘you had all these suspicious, really suspicious activities...’”
— Lisa Graves [48:33]
“Knowledge is power. Just a deep honor to be part of this effort.”
— Lisa Graves [91:34]

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Start | |-----------------------------------------------|------------| | Senate/Todd Blanche confirmation | 00:34 | | Blanche’s independence/slush fund | 03:52 | | DOJ’s settlements and immunity | 09:56 | | Collusive IRS settlement/judges intervene | 23:16 | | Defamation cases: Wall Street Journal/BBC | 38:14 | | Debanking by Capital One | 48:33 | | DOJ, bar ethics and Roy Cohn’s legacy | 52:44 | | Reflecting Pool vandalism case | 56:54 | | Supreme Court/mail-in ballot fight | 73:37 | | Judge Mehta/Jan. 6 dismissals | 81:38 |

Tone & Overall Message

The conversation is pointed, urgent, and deeply informed, retaining the show’s signature mix of legal rigor, political reality, and passionate advocacy for democratic accountability. Both hosts repeatedly lament the erosion of legal norms and accountability but urge listeners to stay informed, engaged, and ready to fight for the rule of law.

To stay updated and join the conversation, the hosts encourage listeners to subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel/Substack and join the Meidas Mighty community.

Loading summary

Transcript49 lines

[00:02]
A
Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal af. I'm your host, Karen Friedman. Agnifolo. Joining me today is Lisa Graves, who I'm thrilled to have as a co host. Michael Popak is traveling and Lisa always steps in for us when we need it. It's great to see you, Lisa. How are you?
[00:21]
B
Good. Good to see you too, Karen. It's nice to be on and hopeoc is having a wonderful time traveling. I know he's been on from away and as always, it's great to have this con with you, Karen, and be here on Legal af.
[00:34]
A
Yeah. There's so much to talk about. I mean, when we were looking at the things to talk about today, we had to cut things off the list as usual. But there's so many things to talk about. This today's episode is going to be about more about Todd Blanche and whether or not he is going to become the attorney general and what is still going on and the votes that he needs. We're also going to talk about the reflecting pool and the cases that have been dismissed by the United States Attorney, Jan Pirro and why and what is happening there. And Trump is not happy about it. We're also going to talk about 35 former federal judges who have filed an amicus brief in the Trump versus the IRS case down in Florida. They are intervening in that case because there really was no adversarial party. So they are stepping in to be to take the position, the adverse position in that case. And so there's some developments there. We also are going to talk about mail in ballots and the Supreme Court and what's happening there and whether Trump is going to be allowed to have his executive order go into effect that severely limits mail in ballots and gives the United States Postal Service tons of power over our elections. And there's also some really colorful language in Judge Mehta's decision dismissing the remaining Jan6 cases, including Stuart Rhodes case. So that's worth talking about. And we're going to round it out with Trump trying to get out of his the lawsuit he brought against the BBC, the defamation lawsuit, and he doesn't want to open up his books and records to them, even though he's going to be required to as part of discovery since he brought the lawsuit claiming damages. So there's a lot to talk about and that's only the tip of the iceberg. So I look forward to talking about all these issues with you, Lisa. Let's just jump right in. Let's talk about what's going on in the Senate and Todd Blanche, who's up for confirmation for Attorney general. And just to sort of tell everyone where we are. In order to become confirmed as the attorney general, he had to testify in front of the Senate and be questioned. And it was looking like there were some people who are concerned about his independence and some senators who were upset. Things like, and we're talking Republicans, not just Democrats, who were concerned about how he's treated the Epstein victims, how whether he's independent and whether he's still Trump's personal lawyer as opposed to representing the United States of America and the Department of Justice. And a lot of people were also, a lot of senators were also concerned about this slush fund, the, you know, $1,776,000 slush fund that he, the anti weaponization fund, as he called it, that he wanted to be able to dole out to primarily the January six people who he pardoned all of them. And so you have a lot of senators who I think had some genuine, legitimate concerns, a lot of Democrats and several Republicans. And it was getting stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee because they had to vote it out of committee into the full Senate. And he was having a hard time getting out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I thought actually there was a chance he wouldn't because Cornyn and Tillis were kind of holding it up. And he seems to. He did convince them, however, and he now has it in front of the full Senate. He faces now a really tight, high stakes vote. And look, just to also tell everybody kind of where the math is on this. Republicans hold 53 seats, but because Mitch McConnell is MIA and we have no idea where he is or what's going on with him because he's not providing any health updates to people. So they really only have a two vote lead here. And Senator Collins has already said that she is not going to vote for Blanche. I think that was a calculation on her part. I don't know if this was some sort of deal that she struck that she's not. They let her so that she can stay on the ballot because. Or that she can, I should say, she's on the ballot in November and she's fighting for her life. And so maybe that was a deal they struck that she had to vote no to try to keep her seat. But this leaves the outcome to just a few, a handful of senators and what's gonna happen there? And so some people have said Murkowski is up for grabs, Bill Cassidy's up for grabs, even Senator Curtis is up for grabs. So who knows and maybe some other senators might also be holding out. But what do you make of the concerns, Lisa, and what do you think about the issues surrounding the issue that people are concerned about, especially regarding the slush fund, that he seems to have allayed the concerns of Cornyn and Tillis? I've heard people say that it's kind of toothless and not worth the paper it's written on him saying essentially that the fund is dead.
[06:15]
B
Well, this is an issue I've been tracking closely and writing about. And as you and others know, I was the chief counsel for nominations for the U.S. senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy when he was the chair and then the ranking member. And so I have been following what the Senate Judiciary Committee does quite clear, closely. I have to admit that I was very hopeful for a moment when Senator Cornyn was asking really good questions about that non settlement, the so called settlement that a federal judge has found to be collusive to be not a settlement because it's not adversarial. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in this conversation later on. But in terms of this particular the hearing that was on Todd Blanche's nomination to become the Attorney general official, Corny was asking the right questions, which is the terms of that agreement, that non agreement. But the terms of that agreement on their face are that this is a contract between the parties, between the Justice Department and Trump, even though Todd Blanche did not file an appearance in that case, even though the federal government did nothing to raise the defenses that were readily available to the government to prevent paying anything out and instead entered into this really terrible smelling deal. What we saw Cornyn saying was by the terms of that agreement, it can only be modified by signature of both parties. It's a contract. And a contract can't just be unilaterally modified. And that was his position. It was the correct position. And then over the past weekend, he decided to capitulate to Trump in exchange for a press release from the Justice Department asserting that the fund is, is dead and a signed statement by Todd Blanche saying that the fund, you know, in essence that the fund is dead and also putting some sort of theoretical limit on the other part of this deal, which I consider to be a dirty deal involving the settlement of claims against Donald Trump in, in any other capacity. And you know, Todd Blanche's signature on that means nothing. It does not have any legal effect. It's not a contract amendment signed by both parties. It's a face saving measure for Cornyn. John Cornyn and Senator Thom Tillis to claim they got something from, from Blanche and from the Trump administration in exchange for their vote, when instead they traded what was left of their reputation for a meaningless set of papers from Todd Blanche. And the reason it's meaningless is not just that the document that was initially signed is a contract, as Todd Blanche conceded in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee just two weeks ago. It's also meaningless because we have already seen how Todd Blanche has been using the settlement funds that are available to the Justice Department, aside from this specific commitment of this pernicious $1.776 billion trust, to pay out money to the thugs who attacked our Capitol and the capitol police on January 6th. Already this justice Department has been making payouts. It made a payout of more than $5 million to Ashley Babbitt, who is violently throwing herself against the doors, the chambers of Congress, trying to break in in order to stop, stop the counting of our ballots, and she was shot. The, the courts and the just reviewed that shooting and found it was not criminal, that it was a justified shooting at the time. But this Justice Department settled that for more than $5 million. Then just a few months ago, this Justice Department settled a case with Michael Flynn, who had previously pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia in 2016, coming into 2017, and paid him out $1.25 million for that. Those settlements have been, you know, publicized in a way, but not really fully disclosed through the process for disclosing settlements. A number of the settlements that are in that judgment fund are listed as redacted. So we don't know whether other people have already been paid out through the regular Justice Department settlement fund under the federal Torture Claims act and the like. And so there's nothing in the law right now that would prohibit Todd Blanche from, from paying out anyone he chooses separate from this so called commission that was going to be established under that fund. But the, the other part of this is the statement that Todd Blanche signed that Tillis and Cornyn are hanging their hat on. That so called, you know, signed statement merely says that the, quote, settlement of Donald Trump's IRS claims, claims against the IRS for the theft of some of his data, along with other IRS data of hundreds of other people by a contractor who is found guilty of that theft, that, that as part of that, quote, settlement, Todd Blanche agrees that it only applies retroactively to any theft thing that Donald Trump may have done up through this spring, May of this year previously, that the government cannot investigate him, not just the irs, but any government entity cannot investigate him civilly or criminally for any violation of the law, which would include any tax violations, any, you know, felony or criminal tax violation, or, or any other activities for both Donald Trump. For not both, but for Donald Trump, his sons in particular, and his three or four hundred businesses. This statement by Todd Blanche comes, as we just learned in the past 72 hours or more that Capital One bank had debanked Donald Trump and his 300 plus businesses because its software and its experts found that the types of transactions that were coming through Capital one as of 2021 were so suspicious that they raised serious concerns about money laundering and money liability by the bank for money laundering if they did not debank Donald Trump. So that's just a snapshot of what was going on in 2021. Meanwhile, we all know from the financial disclosures that Donald Trump has made at least $2 billion in the first year of his presidency from crypto and other deals. And so, in essence, what Todd Blanche is saying is that he has given Donald Trump immunity from any liability of any kind whatsoever through May of this year for anything that's happened in the past, which actually is not the job of the Attorney General and should never been signed. This nomination should have been dead on arrival. It should have never been. He should never have been given a hearing, let alone a committee vote. But unfortunately, as you point out, Cornyn and Tillis have signed off. So he was passed out of the committee. And the next step will be a cloture vote in the Senate on Friday, which would allow for a formal vote on his nomination by Saturday before these senators leave town and go home to their home districts or to their vacations.
[13:27]
A
Lisa, what's a cloture vote?
[13:29]
B
A cloture vote is a process under the Senate rules to end the debate. It ends the possibility of any sort of standing filibuster. And so it basically is a super majority threshold that if the Democrats can't get to a certain number of votes in general for cloture, the matters go forward to a full vote. It basically takes away the last procedural hurdle for trying to slow down or stop Todd Blanche from being confirmed as the Attorney General.
[14:01]
A
I just want to clarify something for people who might not know this, or maybe everybody does know this, but the Department of Justice doesn't only handle corporate criminal cases. They also handle civil cases. So they are the United States government's lawyer for anyone who's going to sue the United States government. So it could be, I'm suing, I'm Bringing a lawsuit based on civil rights, for example, or I think that the FBI agent shot me and shouldn't have. There's all sorts of civilization matters that get brought by the Department of Justice. And the reason that's significant is that is why Trump was on the other side of the V on the Trump versus IRS case. Right. That's why he's on both sides and why Todd Blanche, as the Attorney General of the United States, has the authority to settle this and all the Jan6 cases. Right. What you were talking about that. Why is it that they're paying all this money to people who, in the January 6th pardon cases, they're bringing these civil lawsuits for damages saying I don't even know what they're alleging, how they can credit mental distress.
[15:19]
B
Mental distress that they were charged.
[15:20]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so they're suing the United States government. And because they have civil authority, which not all prosecutors offices have, but the Department of Justice does. He. They settle all the time with people. And so they have. And as you pointed out, the Federal Torts Claims act is typically what they, the lawsuit that they bring, that they, that they bring these under. And then when they, when they settle it, there's funds that they can access. They don't have to establish a separate slush fund. There's other funds they can access that they can pay as they do for any time they settle a civil suit. And so it makes you realize that the 1776 fund, you know, this $1.7 billion slush fund weaponization fund, was nothing more than a press release anyway. It was nothing more than a political press stunt anyway, because they, they have this ability. And so it's almost like giving ice in winter. Them saying the fund is dead doesn' because they can do this anyway. And they are. And that's what's so astounding to me, is that they're going to get what they want anyway. And as you just pointed out, Donald Trump is getting the greatest gift of all. He's going to keep hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in potential tax liability because he was being audited. And that was the problem. So that's a huge win for Donald Trump and a huge win for Todd Blanche. But I'm just so surprised that these senators, really, all of them, who I thought for a minute there, because they were present on January 6, they were the victims of that crime. I thought maybe then they would say, you know what? This is a bridge too far even for me, or I even had some hope during these hearings that the Epstein survivors who, who were treated so poorly by the Department of Justice, and Todd Blanche who met with them because, you know, he checked off that box when he was forced to. But they were, they felt that that was nothing, that that was not a substantive meeting and that he didn't really hear them or listen to them in good faith. So I'm just surprised that he was able to convince these senators. I mean, it's just shocking to me.
[17:51]
B
Yeah, it really is. It's so outrageous. I mean, the fact is that Todd Blanche never should have been confirmed to be Deputy Attorney General. Part of the dilemma, in essence, that Cornyn posed was that there was no way to remove Todd Blanche without an impeachment. So he was going to remain as Deputy Attorney General regardless of what happened here. And there's this specter that somehow Trump would have chosen someone worse to come in as acting than Todd Blanche and that supposedly Todd Blanche is a reasonable man who will tell Donald Trump the law as it is. We haven't actually seen that. What we've seen is that Todd Blanche has been devoted to Donald Trump, to serving Donald Trump, not to the American people, to advancing Donald Trump's weaponization schemes to attack his so called political enemies. Pursuing criminal charges against James Comey and Letitia James and others. Pursuing the appointment of other other former criminal or civil defense attorneys to key roles in the Justice Department or the U.S. attorney's Office. Pursuing United States Congresspeople for daring to say that the military has an obligation to follow the Constitution, not a person. If a person issues orders that are contrary to the Constitution or the law. And so Todd Blanche has been the chief expediter basically of Donald Trump's agenda at the Justice Department. He hasn't been behaving like any former anyone who previously held that role has. And he should not be confirmed to be the Attorney General of the United States. He should not be confirmed to that position of public trust. And like you said, you, you would think that there would be some members who might have, you know, reservations in the form of voting for this man, voting for Todd Blanche to become the, the kind of ongoing official Attorney General based on Donald Trump's determination to send our tax dollars to people who attacked the Capitol. Even Josh Hawley, who ran through the halls after holding his fist up in alliance with the crowd before it became a mob out there. He folded immediately in supporting Todd Blanche. But Tellis has been publicly outspoken about opposing the payout for people he calls thugs. And I agree. And yet just this weekend, Donald Trump was insisting we've got to pay these poor January 6th people who've been convicted that he pardoned in his blanket pardon poor them with no sympathy whatsoever to the Capitol Police who died or committed suicide in the aftermath of being attacked by Citizens United States at the behest of Donald Trump. And similarly for Todd Blanche. At that hearing, Todd Blanche expressed out loud his concern for poor Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex offender who was the co conspirator, one of the major co conspirators for top. You know, with Epstein and Todd Blanche saying, you know, he, you know, she needed to be moved for her safety, but he really showed the back of the hand to these Epstein survivors, wouldn't meet with them, and then finally capitulated to a very brief meeting that they described as disrespectful. But ultimately they, he was never going to do anything to actually address their concerns. The fact is, is that what we saw in January when Todd Blanche, as the deputy Attorney General, announced that he was no, he was not going to release any more of the Epstein files, even though there are thousands and thousands of pages that have not been released that members of Congress have said should be released, including thousands of references to Donald Trump. Todd Blanche said that the files that were were released were cleared of any depictions or references to child porn. Of course that should not be released. And it also included the deletion or removal of information about people who were killed or tried, tortured or assaulted in these files. And so in essence, he conceded that there are depictions of violence in these files and other crimes. And yet this Justice Department under Todd Blanche, regardless of meeting briefly with the Epstein survivors, has done nothing to bring any further charges against any other people who are implicated in these files. And remember, one of the things that we learned from the reporting last year around the Epstein files was that Donald Trump said he couldn't get the release. He didn't want them released because people he knows were going to be hurt by them. Those aren't the survivors. Those are the other men whose names were redacted by Todd Blanche from those files while the victims names were released to the public.
[22:23]
A
Yeah, pretty, pretty outrageous. While we're on this subject of this fund, this slush fund, why don't we dive right into the Trump vs. IRS case and what happened yesterday because this is kind of a sham lawsuit to put it nicely. And yesterday a bipartisan group of former federal judges filed a formal opposition brief in the Trump versus IRS to block Trump from freezing the court ordered sanctions stemming from this lawsuit. This was led by former Federal Judge Nancy Gertner and Michael Ludig and essentially why don't you talk about that? Because I think it's so important what some of the things that they said and what's going on there.
[23:16]
B
Yes. So this is the case that underlies this faux settlement, this collusive settlement. As the federal District court judge found initially, what happened was Trump files this ridiculous $10 billion lawsuit against the government shortly after he is sworn in as president, claiming he, he deserves $10 billion for the fact that a year of his tax filings were made available by the criminal acts of a contractor. Other cases that were filed about that breach were strongly assailed by the Justice Department. They were, there were motions to dismiss, there were efforts to prevent those cases from going forward because those were the actions of a third party contractor. They were basically what is known as ultravirus acts acts, criminal acts that were not authorized in the course of their non employment by the government. They're contracting with a sub, you know, a contractor. And yet Donald Trump's case went forward while this secret, in my view, dirty deal was being cut. Then what happened was that Donald Trump's attorneys moved to dismiss that lawsuit, did not indicate to the court that there had been a settlement, in fact indicated the opposite. So to dismiss that case. And then what happened was these former federal judges, including Judge Michael Ludig, who was appointed to the federal Federal Court of Appeals by George Herbert Walker Bush, who was the finalist for the Supreme Court Chief justice position alongside John Roberts, a very well regarded jurist who also testified about the devastating effect of Donald Trump's actions. On January 6th, Michael Ludig, along with over 30 other federal judges, filed a motion with the court saying that that dismissal, that proposed dismissal was a fraud upon the court. That everything indicated that. Subsequent to that dismissal, we learned that there was a secret settlement that had the two parts. One was the settlement of any claims, quote, forever in capital letters involving Donald Trump, his family or his businesses from any part of the federal government, you know, going forward forever, that they could not be pursued. And the second part was this $1.776 billion slush fund as a specific set aside to settle, to make big payouts, seven figure payouts to January, six convicts to these thugs, in the words of Thom Tillis. And so the judge, Kathleen Williams, took a look at that motion, reviewed the evidence and you know, issued a very compelling statement about what had happened. She found that the Trump's lawyers had filed a, quote, non adversarial and collusive lawsuit, quote, to manipulate the judicial process and in her view, to force the IRS into a settlement that had, quote, no viable basis in law or fact. And as, and as a result of the settlement, actually a high ranking IRS official resigned as that a settlement was being penned and inked, in essence by Todd Blanche and his min, along with, along with the Trump team. What happened next is that you have that case gets issued. She makes a referral for Todd Blanche to the New York bar, requesting that the New York bar look into his actions as the person who signed that settlement. And she also referred Alejandro Brito to the Florida bar. And, and she noted that she thought that monetary sanctions were, were one of the appropriate remedies for this, what she considered to be this fraud on the court in this collusive settlement. Brito, who we can talk about shortly, I'm sure he's denied these claims, but he's also the lawyer for Donald Trump in the beat in the BBC case, which we're going to talk about in a moment. But you come back to what the judges said. So what happened is Judge Williams issued this order. It was on the eve of Todd Blanche's nomination hearing. That should have been the end of his nomination. Any Senate that is worth their salt would have said, we're going to put this on hold until this matter is resolved. We've never had an attorney general who's been subject to potential sanctions by a federal court for their behavior, for their conduct, or involved in what the lower court considers to be a fraud upon the court. But no, the nomination went forward. In the meantime, Trump's attorneys appealed that decision to the 11th Circuit. They're trying to get that decision by the lower court judge reversed. And in the meantime, then just in the past 24 hours, what we have is a statement by those federal judges, those 35 federal judges opposing the effort to get a stay by Trump's lawyers. And their words were that there is strong evidence of collusion and a lack of adversity, meaning a lack of adverse parties in this case and what they describe as bad faith underlying Trump's lawsuit against the government he leads. Now, let me just add one more fact into there, which is when I was reviewing Todd Blanche's nomination and looking through his papers for his nomination to become a deputy attorney general, he described his role for Donald Trump previously, not just as his criminal defense attorney, but also providing advice on civil matters. We don't know what matters. Todd Blanche gave advice to Donald Trump on whether they involved his desire or whether they ever discussed in the preceding two years his desire to sue the IRS. What we do know is that Todd Blanche spent 6600 hours, 6600 hours in less than two years defending Donald Trump and aiding Donald Trump basically almost every working hour for the preceding two years before he became Deputy Attorney General. And in my view, as acting Attorney General with a capital A, what we've seen is Todd Blunt continued to be acting with a lowercase a as Donald Trump's attorney and getting him these sweetheart deals both for his Trump's loyalists who were, who violently attacked our Capitol, and also to get Trump off the hook with this outrageous civil immunity and criminal immunity, also for any actions that took place before May of this year and possibly after, because the language was ambiguous in terms of how that agreement was written to basically give Donald Trump in his personal capacity and his sons and his businesses the kind of immunity that John Roberts could not give him. When John Roberts created immunity from criminal prosecution for president's so called official act acts, this reaches the other half of the equation, basically giving Donald Trump immunity for his civil acts over the past several years, regardless of the consequences both to our law and to our Treasury.
[30:17]
A
Well, let's see. The Supreme Court has that argument teed up in the other E. Jean Carroll case, right? The $85 million E. Jean Carroll case. They denied hearing the Donald Trump's appeal of the $5 million case because that was just a private matter. The $85 million verdict or judgment, I should say comes stems from comments that he made while he was president. And the issue in that case has to do with whether he will have civil immunity. Right. What you're talking about. And so it'll be interesting to see if the Supreme Court takes up that case and what they say about that, because it will have ramifications for this case as well that we're talking about. Right. I mean, it's just, it's just fascinating to me.
[31:12]
B
Right. And he's actually sought to have the Justice Department weigh in on those E. Jean Carroll cases, even though his actions, quote, as president, were certainly in his personal capacity. Those were not official acts to defame E. Jean Carroll. But in essence, Donald Trump is, is also trying to use the Justice Department to assail that litigation in which the lower court found that he was liable for defamation for his repeated attacks on Eugene Carroll, who prevailed in her primary litigation, as you pointed out, and who was finally paid that $5 million judgment for the sexual abuse that she experienced at the hands of Donald Trump and really for the defamation that he, that he, how he defamed her in denying her allegations about, about that sexual abuse. And so these issues of Donald Trump's personal liability, what Todd Blanche did in this case, in which the judge objected to, in the case filed before Judge Williams was that the Justice Department entered into an unsupportable, a legally and factually indefensible settlement with Donald Trump to let him off the hook from any investigation of his conduct by the federal government, basically for his actions over the preceding decade or more.
[32:31]
A
The hypocrisy here or the contrast here is so stark to me when you think about Donald Trump and Todd Blanche basically not only absolving and pardoning people who committed violent acts against police officers, against stormed the Capitol. We all saw with our own eyes what these violent individuals did. We see the conduct that Donald Trump does. Right. He's accused of sexual assault. He's accused of potentially violating tax laws and owing tax money. He's adjudicated a sexual abuser in federal court. He's adjudicated in state court as his businesses. Yeah. Of fraud. And yet on the one hand, and he's pardoning all these people, a massive Central American drug trafficker, the former prime minister of. Was it Honduras or the president of Honduras, on the one hand. And on the other hand, he is prosecuting Jim Comey for posting a picture of Seashells. Right. Or of Letitia James of checking the wrong box on her mortgage. I mean, it's just the hypocrisy and just inconsistency is so atrocious and the politicization of our justice system, it's just unbelievable what he's getting away with. And I just hope people, I hope the results of the midterm elections will account for, for all of what's happening because it's just appalling. And, you know, but anyway, that's my rant, but we have to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about Jeanine Pirro and the Reflecting Pool and what's going on there, as well as several other topics that we have to talk about. But we're going to take a quick break. We love our sponsors. They support our show. They know what we're about.
[34:39]
B
And.
[34:40]
A
But they help us keep the lights on because we don't have. We're just sort of independent. We're the Independent Midas Touch Network, and we appreciate everyone coming here and listening and watching and supporting our show and supporting the Legal AF YouTube channel. If you're not already a subscriber to the Legal AF YouTube channel, please hit subscribe and same thing with Midas Touch. If you're not part of the Midas mighty, subscribe there as well and we're going to take our first quick break.
[35:12]
C
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[38:14]
A
We're back. While we were on that short break, there's breaking news that in Trump's lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal where don't forget, he brought a defamation case against the Wall Street Journal for publishing that birthday book and that famous card that he wrote with the outline of a woman's body, signing it in her privates to Jeffrey Epstein. This case was going to headed towards discovery and Trump and his lawyers obviously would love to take Rupert Murdoch's deposition. And the judge just stayed all discovery pending the motion to dismiss. So, Lisa, is that a signal to you that the judge is considering that you think there's a chance that this judge is going to dismiss this defamation lawsuit and hand Donald Trump yet another huge loss?
[39:13]
B
I think so. I mean, this deposition could have gone forward, but that was the deposition that Donald Trump's team wanted so badly to try to squeeze Rupert Murdoch, who Donald Trump previously said he told, you know, he told Murdoch that the, the card was not legit, that they shouldn't run the story, even though the card is in a leather bound book with all these other birthday cards. The idea that it's somehow planted is ridiculous. And you know, it's part of, part of material that is, you know, preserved from that timeframe as the Wall Street Journal reported. So I don't think that, I don't, again, like many of these suits that have been brought against these media companies by Donald Trump, you know, in what we've seen in some of these cases, like with ABC or cbs, is sort of a capitulation to, you know, rather than continue the litigation just to pay some sum like almost like a nuisance suit to make this nuisance go away. The Wall Street Journal has not approached it that way, nor has the BBC. They have been unwilling to settle these claims as Trump demands in what I consider to be, in my opinion, sort of a shakedown effort. And in this instance, what you have is a judge basically stopping the discovery process right now at a moment when Donald Trump's team has been eager to try to put that squeeze on Murdoch and say, let's wait until we resolve the motions to dismiss, which we don't know how it's going to come out. But I would say, you know, the tea leaves probably are 60, 40 in favor of dismissal, given the facts as they are known, despite Trump's claims about the facts.
[40:56]
A
So since you brought up the BBC and we're talking about defamation, let's just go right into what's going on with the BBC case. So, I love the BBC case. It was kind of this case that went under the radar. I had forgotten or didn't realize it was being brought. And Donald Trump was asking for. Essentially, the dispute centers on a discovery issue right now, and that's where we're getting to. But let me just tell the background really quick. So Trump sued the BBC in federal court in Miami, alleging that there was a documentary that was deceptively edited, and it was about his January 6 speech on the Ellipse, and that he claims that it made it appear that he encouraged the Capitol attack. And so he alleged $10 billion in damages, basically saying, yeah, crazy figure. Essentially asserting that the broadcast of this and the edit of this severely harmed his reputation and his business interests. Now, you don't have to put a dollar amount in a lawsuit, Right? But he chose to put a dollar amount in the lawsuit, and the BBC acknowledged that the edit was misleading and apologized for it, which, you know, I guess they didn't have to do. I don't think it was misleading, personally. I think he did encourage the riot on the Capitol, but. But still, they're British and they're very polite, and so they said sorry and apologized, but they denied that this was defamation, and so they are seeking dismissal of the lawsuit. And why did Trump's finances become an issue and why this is a discovery issue? Because that's where we are right now. This lawsuit is kind of old news, but the reason we're in the news now is because there's this discovery dispute, because Trump's finances are now an issue, and BBC is seeking all his books and records. Like, okay, you say you were harmed for $10 billion. You got to show us, right? Give us your books and records of your finance. Basically, you put the financial condition of your entities at issue, saying they were allegedly harmed. So we get to look at that. We get to see the value of your business empire, whether any losses actually occurred.
[43:20]
B
Yeah.
[43:20]
A
And of course, you know, Donald Trump does not want to do that. And he tried to walk that back, Right. He tried to be like, okay, you know, no, we don't have to. We don't have to do that part of it. But they're like, no, no, no, this is still part of it. But anyway, why don't you, why don't you take it from there and update us on where we are?
[43:36]
B
Yeah, I really appreciate that. I agree with you. I would not have conceded that, you know, they're doing a documentary in which they are taking portions of the speech. You know, he spoke for over an hour. It was just, just an obnoxious, obnoxiously long speech, as is par for the course, in my view, larded with all these attacks on Pence and more. And so the claim was that it included two pieces of speech 57 minutes apart that suggested that he incited the crowd to riot. Well, that's what the grand jury found in the District of Columbia in the prosecution that was brought by Jack Smith was that he did do so. So I wouldn't have apologized for it. But as you point out, they, they, you know, said, you know, that having those two excerpts, you know, perhaps might have misled people, and so they apologize. And so the issue that is left in the case really is A, whether that's defamatory. I think it's not. That's my personal opinion. And B, if it is, you know, what, what are the damages? And as you point out, Trump put up upfront in that suit that this supposedly harmed his finances, including his businesses. And so it's perfectly legitimate for the BBC to say, all right, well, let's show, let's see your businesses, let's see how they were affected by this documentary that aired in Britain, by the way, was not aired in the United States. There's no indication at all that it harmed his businesses in any way. And in essence, I think, you know, Trump was hoping that this case would settle and he would never have to reveal whether his businesses were harmed or not. I suspect they weren't harmed at all. In fact, he's continued to use the presidency, the post presidency and the new presidency as a money making operation. And what happened on January 6 has not, in essence diminished his ability to attract wealth and people seeking to curry his favor. And so the BBC, they have been standing up strong and saying, look, you want this suit, you brought this suit to us, let's have discovery, let's do it. And so what just happened is that Donald Trump's lawyers In this case, Mr. Brito, who I mentioned before, filed an emergent, an emergency motion in like italics, emergency motion to stay the enforcement of the judge's order from, from July 27th, which required the, the, the, you know, the plaintiff in that case, Donald Trump, to cooperate with discovery. And this suit is being this particular motion was filed by the revocable. By Donald J. Trump's revocable trust. They don't want anyone to see into that trust, which is where so much money is moving in that period. And let's remember that this period, you know, 2021, is the same period where we now know that Capital One was so concerned about suspicious activity happening through the various Trump accounts that were held at Capital One, through Capital One banks, that they debanked Donald Trump because that triggered their internal process for reviewing whether there was money laundering. Now, they have, they have not said that Trump was engaged in money laundering. That has not been alleged in gaining court, but the triggering process was consistent with the patterns for money laundering. And so you have these two things happening simultaneously. On the one hand, you have this lawsuit against the BBC claiming that, you know, Donald Trump suffered as a result of his. Of the BBC's documentary that I think was aired the following year. And then in the same time span, 2021 to 2022, you have a major US bank and, you know, international bank in many regards, but this major US bank saying, we're going to debank Trump because there's so many suspicious transactions happening in terms of the pattern and the amounts of these transactions that we can't run the risk of continuing to be his bank. So what's in Donald Trump's banking records? I think people have a right to know, and I certainly think the BBC has a right to know, given the fact that Donald Trump was trying to exact $10 billion from them for the supposed harms to his business in this timeframe before he became president again in this second term.
[47:52]
A
Yeah, it's kind of outrageous. Again, the double standard. Right. He's being accused of. He's being debanked, as you call it, you know, being accused of suspicious activity. And they're filing these suspicious activity reports, also known as sars, against about him, I should say. And so, and seeing patterns that look like money laundering, it just seems like such hypocrisy, again, that he can do all this stuff and get away with it and sue people and use all the might and power of the federal government to go after people. And it's just shocking to me. Yeah.
[48:34]
B
The only reason we know that about Capital One is because he sued Capital One, too, claiming that he was debanked for his statements around January 6th. And they're. And their defense is, no, no, we didn't stop banking with you because of the statements you made around January 6th that incited that riot in my. In My view. And before our eyes, we're debanking. We debanked you because the money flow, the money patterns were so troubling that we could not bear the risk of losing our banking licenses by doing the kind of business that you were engaged in. And they gave him months to find a new way to transfer all of his accounts out of Capital One, and he still sued them. So this is Donald Trump suing people, you know, left and right. And now he's. Now the consequences are coming. The. The birds are, you know, are coming home to roost. Now he's dealing with the fact that Capital One had to mount this defense to say, look, what really happened is you had all these suspicious, really suspicious activities that deeply concerned us, that we were willing to walk away from, you know, potentially, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions to protect ourselves. And then similarly, suing the BBC based on a documentary that it. It. It made about what happened to America on January 6th now becomes a vehicle for the BBC to say, show us the money, you know, show us the paper. Reveal how you've been damaged or not. Or shut up.
[49:56]
A
You know, it's like he doesn't care what the consequences are, because, as he said, I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. And it seems like so far that's true. He can literally do anything and get away with it. People aren't gonna look at the fact that he was debanked. They closed, what, three, over 300 bank accounts of his because of suspicious activity. They stopped banking with him because of suspicious activity. The fact that he was adjudicated a rapist. I could go on and on and on with the list of all the things that have happened, and it doesn't seem to matter.
[50:32]
B
So he doesn't seem to matter to some people. Right. Of the. The adjudicated sex abuser matters to a lot of people, but it didn't matter to enough people.
[50:40]
A
Right, right, right, exactly. I guess that's. That's my point, because he's still elected President of the United States, and he is doing the damage that he is able to do as a result and continue to grift and make money off of the backs of people in this country. He's treating people inhumanely. He's deporting people. He's. I mean, again, I could go on. This whole thing could be about the harm he's causing to the rule of law to this country, and yet he gets away with it. Right? He gets away with it because you've got Congress. He's got Congress in his back pocket. They will do whatever he wants, and there's nobody who's going to hold him accountable. And so, and I think he's just made the calculation that some of these people will fold and pay me more money. And the ones that won't, okay, I'll dismiss the case eventually. Whether it's bombing Iran, whether it's bombing boats in the Pacific. I mean, he can just indiscriminately do whatever he wants to do, and nobody holds him accountable in a meaningful way. He's not being impeached, obviously. He was reelected president. Yes, of course. People care. I care, you care, and so many, I'm sure our listeners who are listening to this and watching this obviously care, too. But, but he's made, it seems like he has made this calculus. And again, this is just my opinion now. He seems like he has made this calculus that some people will cave, right? Whether it's certain universities, whether it's certain law firms. Yeah, exactly. It's. Whether it's, whether it's certain news organizations, you name it, some will cave. And then I'll get money. And the ones that don't, I'll push it as far as I can, go all the way up to the side Supreme Court and try to run the clock. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Run out the clock. And if I have to pull the plug, I can always pull the plug. And in the meantime, I forced them to spend all this money on, you know, lawyers and lawsuits. And it just doesn't seem to have that much, do that much damage to him.
[52:45]
B
Well, it does seem like Roy Cohn lives in terms of that despicable lawyer who was an early advisor to Donald Trump, who was the main lawyer for the McCarthy era, that witch hunt era where the law, the House and Senate were weaponized against people with these false claims of communism. And that's the guy who really trained Trump in how to talk about these issues. When Donald Trump says, people say that's a way for him to give cover to anything he wants to say. When he floats these trial balloons, these supposed jokes of a third or a fourth, fourth term, you know, these I think, are early tactics he learned from, from Roy Cohn, who was a truly despicable person based on his actions in public life. And then since then, Trump has recruited a series of lawyers to basically do whatever he wants to help him accomplish things that are, you know, contrary to the law, like Rudy Giuliani, who faced bar sanctions, other people who face bar sanctions, and Todd Blanchard, you know, who's facing this referral right now. The only thing in some ways that is holding part of this together is the, is the potential threat that some of these lawyers, whether it's Jeanine Pirro, if she did not reveal Brady information in the David Hearn case when there was exonerating information provided about the contractor's failures, whether it's, you know, whether it's Todd Blanche being possibly held accountable by the New York bar for his role in this so called settlement. It's the bar that is one of the last legs left standing to try to hold the lawyers advising Donald Trump accountable. Because we know that this Supreme Court, you know, six judges, three of whom were appointed by Donald Trump, chose to issue a totally partisan decision, a fully partisan decision to give Donald Trump immunity from criminal prosecution, which had the effect of pardoning him retroactively, getting him off the hook for the charges that he was facing around January 6, and in essence paving his way for a return to power with more power than any president has had, which includes this aggrandized power to pardon, which I think is illegitimate. I think we're going to have to claw back and put proper restraints on the pardon power because it's been used to by Donald Trump to pardon basically his co conspirators, the January 6 people who acted on his words in attacking the Capitol and trying to stop that vote, as he praised on the day, praised them for their supposed patriotism, for their actions, and even this weekend was praising them and saying that they should get compensation. And so there are some consequences that could be brought to bear. Even if Todd Blanche were pardoned, for example, if he committed any crimes and he were pardoned, he could still face bar sanctions like Rudy Giuliani has faced bar sanctions and others have, which is why the Justice Department is fighting so hard to claim that the bar should not have any authority, that the state bars should not have any authority over Justice Department attorneys, even though the statutes, the laws on the book say that Justice Department attorneys are subject to, to the rules of the bar that they're admitted to. So there's just a desperate effort by people around Trump to try to make sure that they are doing his bidding. Or, and, or I think that they, the implication is that they'll get, they'll get a pardon if they go along with what he says, which means I don't know what you, what credibility you can give to someone testifying in Congress who is one of Trump's, in essence, agents. Because they have to be operating, in my view, under the assumption that Whatever they do and say for Trump, he will protect them, he will give them immunity, you know, or, you know, try to bar, you know, pardon them or pre pardon them, pardon them from any charges that could be brought against them. So we're really living in a sort of upside down land in which, as you pointed out, Karen, what does the law mean if the President is not bound by it, even though he takes an oath to uphold it?
[56:55]
A
Yeah, no, it's, it's bananas. So let's talk about, speaking of defamation suits that we were just talking about, let's talk about the future defamation suit that we see coming out of the Reflecting Pool. I know that was a secure. I'm trying to link these things. I know, but yeah, no, no, that was a little bit of a stretch. That was a stretch. I get it. But so let's talk about what's going on with the Reflecting Pool. So if you remember that several people are being prosecuted or were being prosecuted for, accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool that reflects the Lincoln Memorial. Right. The peeling paint that was coming off one person, I guess, was floating on the top and they picked it up and they got arrested for it. Well, one of those individuals happened to be a United States Olympian, a cyclist, and Davey Hearn, and he was charged with a felony. And this was a felony because they alleged damage to federal property and greater than $1,000 was the damage. And yesterday, it was either yesterday or the day before. I was surprised to see that, that the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, who is a super Trump loyalist, dismissed the case against Davey Hearn as well as three others who were charged with misdemeanors. I think he was the only one charged with a felony and really seemed to throw the Department of the Interior under the bus. I mean, there seems to be a lot of drama going on there. She filed a motion to dismiss the indictment. Now, this is after they went into the grand jury, because you obviously go into the grand jury to get an indictment. And, you know, when she, when she announced the grand jury indictment, she was saying, oh, the Park Service employees observed Davey Hearn violently pulling at the lining and that there was damage over $1,000. And, you know, just all this language of seemingly really terrible language that I think could be the basis of a defamation suit that he will have against her. And Donald Trump basically saying he willfully and violently destroyed property deliberately to damage the Reflecting Pool. And she said, by his own, by his own admission, he grabbed it and he did it forcefully and violently Et cetera, et cetera. But then she filed something in court that was very surprising to me that she would do this because you could predict that this would not make Trump happy. Basically saying that this was a rushed, no bid contract to do the reflecting pool. She laid out the facts in detail and showed that this was a rushed, no bid contract. And as a result, there was damage and that's what caused it. Not, you know, these guys who came along and picked the pieces that were floating up off the top, you know, that's not damaging the pool. The widespread damage was not caused by the vandalism. And what's concerning about. So she moved to dismiss the case. What's concerning about this is how come she didn't know this ahead of time, how come she indicted first, rushed to indict and then investigate later? You know, she didn't have to rush to indict this case. There was no risk that Davey Hearn was going to flee the jurisdiction. Right. Or that he was a danger to others. I mean, and those are the reasons sometimes you rush to indict someone. But this seemed like not just a rushed botched reflecting pool, you know, it was a rushed job, but this seemed like to be a rush job too, to, to indict the case. And, and I think, you know, there's going to be, I think he, he could potentially bring a defamation suit about, I mean, no offense, who I'd never heard of Davey Hearn. I don't think he, most people had heard of him, even though he's an Olympian. I don't think he's a public, I don't think he's a public figure, which would raise the defamation bar higher to actual malice. But now everyone's heard of him, right? Now everyone knows who he is. And I think, I don't know. What do you think about all this?
[61:43]
B
Well, I think that, I think that he is probably, he's got to be talking with lawyers about his reputation and how it was harmed not just by the actions of the federal government, but also, you know, Trump's claims, some of the coverage on Fox, you know, so we'll see if, if a defamation suit comes forward because as you point out, there's a different standard for someone who is a public person, like a public figure, like a politician, which requires, which follows the malice test, the New York Times versus Sullivan test, where you have to have actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth to be held liable for defamation for a public figure. But the standard is lower for someone who is a private figure. And for all intents and purposes, David Hearn was a pretty private person. He was not well known before this. And then he was accused of being, you know, a felon, destructive property destroyer, and was, you know, arrested and charged. And, you know, what, what happened here is really extraordinary because as you point out, typically prosecutors work to get their case, you know, all lined up before, before they present to the grand jury. There was no urgency here. There was no sort of ticking statute of limitations. There was probably just political pressure from Trump to try to make his claims about there being vandals into reality by punishing someone, which is, in my view, shows exactly the sort of problem we have with this recklessness of having people who are sycophants for Trump in these important roles wielding the prosecutorial power in a way to serve him, regardless of what, you know, common sense and the facts and the law may show. Now, interestingly, in this, in this filing where she, you know, joined in this or, you know, she approved of this motion to dismiss without prejudice, meaning that the case could be refiled, she goes out of her way to describe how the information she says she had before the grand jury was just the statements by the Department of the Interior, other government agents who supposedly saw him tearing and destroying the bottom of the pool, even though he says he just reached in to see this floating piece of the resurfacing material. And then she describes how she was repeatedly asking for information from the Department of Interior. And finally, finally, finally they gave her the material. And it showed, as you said at the outset here, that the Department of Interior had information showing that this was a rush job, that the no bid contract that Donald Trump issued to try to make the pond super blue in honor of his birthday, in time for his birthday and the fight match that was going to take place on the White House lawn, that the surface was not properly prepared, that the material didn't properly adhere to the material to stick it to the granite, and that it was already, even as it was being applied, was falling apart. Also that when they drained the pool, there was no indication of any 300 or 1200 or 2000 foot box cutter cutting away the reflection pool bottom. What there was was a showing that the bottom was defectively applied. And in fact, with the materials that are submitted in that, in that motion show, along with pictures that were included in that motion show, that this contractor is going to be reapplying that surface because it failed, in essence, the warranty that was guaranteed as part of that contract, that it would stick, that it would be durable when in fact it is not and is proven not to be. And so what you have is a case in which this was a defective application of this surface to the reflection pool, that it's been conceded to have been defective, such that the replacement of that surface is supposed to be coming at no cost to us because it did not do perform as it was supposed to. And this is all the result, in a way, of Donald Trump issuing a no bid contract to someone who was apparently a friend of his or an associate of his to do a job in which I don't think that they or their contractors necessarily had the experience to do. They weren't vetted. There was not the type of preparation for this sort of work. The Obama administration looked at some of these issues, not the reflection pond bottom flecking off because there was no such plasticized surface, but looked at the issue of the leaking of the reflection pool and the pumps that needed to be maintained in order to protect the integrity of that pool and the water. And instead what you had was Donald Trump acting like it was his personal, personal pool, the reflection pool, this historic site, and trying to get it covered with some, some colored bottom, this flag blue that he wanted in time for his birthday. And so it really is a travesty. Now, the, the last thing I'll say on this before I go back to you is, you know, I, I have to give Jean Pirro credit for taking the lawyer's box, the black box and the banker's box to the White House to show him the evidence that purportedly he's been lied to, that he's been misled by Doug Borgum of the Interior Department, that she believed that she could convince him with actual evidence what was really happening and that these claims of vandals was just not viable. But instead he continued to dress her down and criticize her, saying she's wrong. Well, that's, that's evidence. And so I guess I would put it back to you, Karen. You have this amazing career as a prosecutor dealing with, you know, grand juries, dealing with judges and actual, you know, full on juries in trials. This idea of the fact that Jeanine Pirro, unlike Donald Trump, is bound by the rules, the Brady rules, in terms of disclosing exonerating information in a way that Donald Trump is not bound. And so here she is as a lawyer saying, look, I had to disclose this exonerating information, but he doesn't. It just sort of underscores how having someone like Trump at the top means that the law, you know, is is meaningless to him. She's bound by it though or she could lose her law license.
[68:04]
A
Yeah, I mean look that, that is very true. And she showed at first blush you would say, wow, she showed she did exactly what you would want a prosecutor to do and showing integrity and saying look that this guy innocent and we can't prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore we have to dismiss the case. Now she didn't do it with, you know, as you pointed out, she did it with without prejudice, meaning she could refile. And you know, you have to give her credit for that. Right. And that's exactly what you want is when you have evidence like that. But on the same token, she a shouldn't have rushed to the grand jury and upend these individuals lives and babies. There's also, according to certain things I've read, there's not a lot of love between Jeanine Pirro and Doug Bergen, the interior. So this might be a little fight here that's happening between the two of them as much as it is a trying to do the right thing. I hope she was doing it to do the right thing. But you're right, she would have to turn that over anyway to the defense. But you're not supposed to go into the grand jury. The Department of Justice manual and rules say unless you can prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt and get a conviction and sustain appeal, you're not supposed to indict a case. You're just not supposed to.
[69:31]
B
And let's remember, right, she tried to indict the guy for throwing the subway sandwich for a federal crime. And the grand jury said no, she tried to indict sitting members of Congress for daring to say out loud what western West Point graduates are taught in the course of becoming officers, which is that they have a duty to follow the law and the Constitution, not an illegal order. Which you know, goes back to the Nuremberg defense that you cannot have soldiers following illegal orders, saying I was just following orders and committing crimes against humanity or you know, human rights violations. And she tried to indict and try to indict them as well. And she's, you know, been party which
[70:09]
A
is why, which is why even though she did the right thing here, I, you know, you raise an eyebrow and you wonder what's going on. And that's why people I think are saying, oh, this is just a fight between her and the Department of Interior person. You know, she's trying to get. Throw him under the bus. Yeah, so maybe he was throwing her under the bus. Who knows who knows what's going on, but I'm a little suspect here. We have to take our next break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about mail in ballots in the Supreme Court because who better than to talk about the Supreme Court with than Lisa Graves? So let's take our next quick break for our sponsors.
[70:48]
C
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[73:38]
A
right, we're back and Lisa, I want to jump right in and talk about what's happening at the United States Supreme Court with our mail in ballots and the post office, et cetera. And I'm just going to turn it over to you to frame the issue and tell us what's going.
[73:58]
B
Yes, well, this is a major issue that's going on where we have an executive order and I that's the technical term for what Donald Trump did earlier this spring in issuing an order that the postal service should not deliver any ballots from from states to voters or return their ballots to the the polling places if if the state does not cooperate with Donald Trump's demands that he have access to the voter rolls in the states. And so that that executive order, which, you know, I don't think of as an actual effective order since I think it's plainly unconstitutional, but framed as an executive order, that order has been litigated. There was a suit filed against the implementation of that, of that order in federal court. And just this past day or so, you have 23 states in the District of Columbia on Monday urging the Supreme Court to leave in place an order by the lower federal court barring the federal government from applying those provisions in those states before the election. What you have right now is an effort by Donald Trump to try to commandeer the election process from the states. And the Constitution, you know, is very clear on this point. It specifically says that it is the the states are empowered to set the time, place and manner of voting in congressional elections, not the federal government. And in fact, what we've seen in a number of these state efforts, these efforts to squeeze these states to give over this information is that the federal government has lost every single one of those cases that has reached a decision. Mark Elias has with the democracy docket in his firm, the Elias Law Group, have brought suit along with Other groups against those efforts, along with the state attorneys general in those states, saying that the federal government has no right to have access to those voter rolls, that the states are maintaining those roles as is consistent with the process that they've always engaged in. There's no evidence whatsoever of any widespread fraud in voting in the United States. Every single investigation that has taken a look at, you know, any blue ribbon commission by former U.S. attorneys or former state attorneys general, have found no evidence of widespread voting fraud. There's no basis for the federal government to assert control over the voting rolls. And quite frankly, there are real problems with doing so. For example, one of the things we saw, one of the claims we saw in 2020, coming into 2024, was this, this sort of trumped up false notion that there were people voting multiple times or that people were voting even though they had moved. But the fact is, and I think everyone out there really knows this, there are so many people who have your same name. There's probably 30 Lisa Graveses. I found this out once the Internet became, you know, a real thing. How many Lisa Graves there? And my name isn't even that common. And so there are other Lisa Graves in my state and in other states who may move. It doesn't mean that my voter registration in my state is invalid. And so we've seen this effort to try to say under people like Kris Kobach, who was previously the Attorney General of Kansas and who was one of the advisors to Donald Trump in the first term, this idea that they're supposed to be checking people's names against people's names in other states and then disqualifying people, basically ripping people off of the voter rolls. And even though they're registered in that state and there's no indication that they've moved or that they are somehow voting twice or anything. And so you have this continuation of the big lie, Donald Trump's lie that he supposedly won the 2020 election even though he lost. The continuation of the claim that there was supposedly voter fraud when there was not. In fact, I took a look at the Heritage Foundation's database of, of supposed voter fraud over the course of, you know, 10, 20 years. And if you look at the amount of voter fraud that's been prosecuted or found in like over decades compared to the amount of votes cast, it's like 0.00000000. And I think another 0% of the votes cast could even be considered to have been a fraudulent or inappropriate vote. It's so rare. You're more likely to be struck by lightning than for there to be voter fraud or fraud by a voter. And so this is just another way in which Donald Trump is threatening to take over our congressional elections this year as his polling plummets, as support for him plummets in the face of his disastrous policies, both in the US in terms of the continuing squeeze on the American family for just the cost of goods and the groceries and health care costs and and soon to be increased costs for medicines due to the efforts of the Trump team, with its congressional loyalists, to mess with Medicare and Medicaid and Part D of Medicare and more, along with just the absurd costs that we are facing as a result of Donald Trump's foreign policies as well. And so you have a president who's flailing, whose policies have proven to be very controversial, including on civil rights issues and free speech issues and more, and who is looking at potential losses in these midterms, basically threatening, through this executive order to use the Postal Service to try to take over our elections and determine who gets to vote in any state. Now, a lot of states rely on mail in voting. A lot of, a lot of people in the United States rely on mail in voting. And we not only have this situation
[79:43]
A
with this, Trump mails in his votes, too, by the way.
[79:45]
B
Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. Trump mails in his votes. He claims he gets to that because he's president, but you don't like more of the law does not apply to me, but it applies to the sort of thing. And so this is an instance where it's now going to go to this U.S. supreme Court. We've already seen the Roberts Court put a thumb on the scale in favor of Trump through the voting ruling earlier this year in the Calais case, where it destroyed key protections of the Voting Rights act in order to allow these Republican legislatures to redraw maps to try to give Republicans an additional advantage in these midterm elections to try to hold on to the control of Congress and try to protect Donald Trump, in my view, from oversight and the check of Congress and protect the court as well from oversight and investigation of the scandals that have plagued the Supreme Court. And so we'll see if this court decides to intervene here and overturn that lower court order, stopping this executive order from going into effect just, just weeks before this election takes place. And I will say, I guess the hopeful sign here is that earlier this year in the Watson case, in a case coming out of Mississippi where the Republican Party in Mississippi was trying to stop votes from being counted if they arrived after Election Day, but they were postmarked by Election Day. This applies a lot to military voters abroad, for example, that those votes could still be counted because they were cast by Election Day. The Supreme Court, in a divided decision, decided not to go along with the Republican effort to block people's votes from being counted if those votes were mailed in time. And so you have a hopeful sign in this arena of mail in voting that hopefully the court will not intervene, but you have a desire and demand by Trump and by some of the Republican states that are beholden to him to do so.
[81:39]
A
And yeah, and you have the 23 attorneys general from blue states filing basically saying, too close to the elections. This would be really disruptive. You can't do this. So, yep, yep. We'll see. We'll see what they do, if anything. Hopefully nothing. So let's just move on because I know we're running long in time. I want to move on to Judge Mehta, who made some comments in dismissing Stewart Rhodes case and the Jan.6 indictments that I think was remarkable, not because he dismissed the cases when he was asked to, but because what he said, and he was unusually candid, let's just say, in his language that he used explaining why he believed he was compelled to grant the government's motion despite quite strongly disagreeing with it. And so the case is basically the last remaining January, six prosecutions against members of the Oath Keepers, including Stewart Rhodes. So really, the worst of the worst, right? Seditious conspiracy cases. And this was after Trump pardoned or commuted all the Jan.6 defendants, the Department of Justice still had to move to vacate the remaining convictions. Right, Because. Because procedurally, that's what had to happen because they were in court and they had to move to dismiss the indictments. And Judge Mehta concluded that under the executive branch's charging authority, he had no discretion essentially, to deny this request. Right. He had to grant it because prosecutors have all the discretion whether to charge or not charge. But what made, like I said, the opinion extremely noteworthy to me was some of his words. I mean, he essentially said that he believed the dismissals were wrong as a matter of public policy, but he concluded that separation of powers. He had to do it. He had to grant it. And he wrote things like, I'm reluctantly doing that. Reluctantly, the court grants the motion, or this is the last of the prosecution seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6th. That book is now closed. And then he said, today's epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day. And denigrates the work of the prosecutors, law enforcement officers who secured those convictions and excuses criminal conduct that caused a centuries long pillar of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of presidential power to buckle. The court cannot write a different ending. I mean, like, I got the chills when I read that. You know, it was just amazing that he clearly expressed his point of view. He criticized the Department of Justice, and yet he noted that this is what he had to do.
[84:31]
B
Yeah, it was so eloquent. I just can't think of any other words to supplement it because people should read that opinion. And as you point out, Karen, there were a number of charges against January 6th defendants, including violent acts against the Capitol Police, destruction of property, trespass, and more. But these were some of the most serious charges. Seditious conspiracy is a serious charge. It involves the potential for spending, you know, 15 to 20 years in jail if convicted. The people who were subject to these charges were part of a, basically a paramilitary group that was actively communicating with each other in preparation for January 6th and to sort of execute the plan to disrupt those proceedings where our votes through the Electoral College were going to be counted, affirming that Joe Biden won the presidency and that Donald Trump had to leave office. Seditious conspiracy is a very serious charge. They were also charged, I think, in at least two of them, I think, were charged with trying to hide or destroy evidence about those crimes. And so these were serious offenses. They deserved, in my view, prosecution. And the fact that they had to be dismissed is, is so unfortunate. And it is certainly a product of the fact that in our system, unlike in some other countries, the judges aren't prosecutors. There isn't an adjudicative prosecutorial role. This is the role of the Justice Department. And unfortunately, under Todd Blanche, at the bidding and direction of Donald Trump, which is where we began, we see a Justice Department willing to capitulate and cave in on some of the most serious crimes ever committed in this, you know, in this modern era against our nation by people who were engaged in a conspiracy to commit sedition.
[86:29]
A
But, Lisa. Jim. Jim Comey posted a picture of seashells.
[86:33]
B
Yeah, well, there's that. That's purportedly a crime, but working with your walkie talkies or your phones and the disappearing messages and trying to plan out who is going to be where to effectuate what I think was, quite frankly, in my opinion, what was happening on January 6 was in part an attempted coup. And I think that if those rioters had managed to seize a member of Congress, had managed to get to Nancy Pelosi, who they were targeting, or Mike Pence, that Donald Trump would have declared an emergency. He would have followed the urging of some of his top advisors to declare martial law and would have stopped the counting of the vote. But because the Capitol Police were so valiant in defending the Capitol and because the state Security was able to get the members to safety, he could not trigger that basis. And part of the reason I say that is because when I looked through the details of the January 6 committee's report, the Special Committee on Congress, that bipartisan committee, one of the pieces of paper that really shocked me and stood out to me was the fact that Donald Trump had asked his acting Secretary of Defense to not have the National Guard on the mall armed on January 6th. He asked for them to be disarmed. And that's in writing. The. The deputy who reported to the acting secretary issued that order and said that no one, none of the Capitol, none of the National Guard on the Mall that day could be armed without the express, you know, basically express order of the Secretary of Defense. And so as the Capitol was, was being attacked, the National Guard could not assist. They did not have the gear. They didn't have the batons or the, the equipment to defend the Capitol Police. And it was only in that afternoon, after Donald Trump finally relented in urging that, urging his followers to go home, who he called patriots, who he loved. It was only then that the National Guard was allowed to assemble at the DC Armory over by RFK Stadium, get them, get the tools that they needed to defend themselves and defend the Capitol Police, get the engagement orders for how they could engage with the crowd and then report back to the Capitol as the crowd was already dispersing. That's premeditated, in my view. That was an effort to try to make sure that there was the least amount of help possible. And we also know from the former governor of Maryland, a Republican who attested to this before Congress, that he was calling the Secretary of Defense over the course of hours to try to get him to allow the National Guard, the Maryland National Guard, to come across the bridge to help protect the Capitol. And he got no answer back until basically the effort to topple our government to stop our votes from being counted was already defeated by the valiant efforts of those Capitol Police and by the Secret Service in protecting Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi and the others.
[89:37]
A
Yeah. Wow. All right, well, we've reached the end of another midweek edition of Legal af. Lisa, thank you so much for joining and being here and pinch hitting and going through, what is it, six or seven or eight topics with me. I know popo's gonna kill me for not cutting this shorter, but there's just so much going on. No, no, no.
[90:01]
B
Sorry, everyone.
[90:02]
A
No, it's just. It's because of the number of things I couldn't decide what to cut out and what not to cut out because these are such important things. And I have you here, and I wanted to. I want everyone to hear what you have to say. I mean, you're just such a brilliant legal mind and somebody who just really understands this on such a deep level, and the fact that you come here and you're willing to share with our wonderful, amazing, loyal audience who we're so lucky to have, who comes week after week and who listens to our podcast, who subscribes to our channels, who goes to the Legal AF substack, who goes to the Legal AF YouTube channel, and who wants to stay informed. Because we have to stay informed. We have to understand what's going on. We have to be able to fight back at the dinner table against our family members or try to win over the hearts and minds of people who are undecided or who. Who don't have all the information. And not everyone has the hours and hours that you and I have to actually read the legal filings ourselves and digest them and synthesize them and be able to explain them in. Explain them to people. So we do it because, frankly, our democracy is on the line and at stake, and we have to fight for it. It's worth fighting for, and it's not hopeless. And. And so we're here. And just thank you so much, Lisa. I can't thank you enough for being here. It's such a pleasure to do this with you.
[91:34]
B
Oh, it's always an honor to be here with you, Karen. I always learn from you, and I so appreciate this channel and all of the followers. All the might is mighty. We're in this together, and we're growing stronger. We're growing stronger in the midst of this, and knowledge is power. So just a deep honor to be part of this effort. Effort with you and with Popoc and with the whole team.
[91:55]
A
So big, big shout out to the Legal afers and the Midas mighty. And until next. Time,

Legal AF - 8/5/2026

Legal AF - 8/5/2026

Legal AF by MeidasTouch — Episode Summary (August 6, 2026)

Main Theme & Purpose

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Todd Blanche’s Attorney General Confirmation Battle

2. Trump v. IRS Lawsuit & Federal Judges’ Intervention

3. Supreme Court & Trump’s Battle Over Civil Immunity

4. Trump’s Defamation Lawsuits: Wall Street Journal & BBC

5. Capital One & Trump’s Debanking

6. The DOJ, Bar Ethics, and the Power of Pardons

7. Reflecting Pool Vandalism Case & DOJ Missteps

8. Supreme Court, Mail-in Ballots, and USPS

9. Judge Mehta on Jan. 6 Dismissals: A Stark Rebuke

Notable Quotes & Moments

Timestamps for Key Segments

Tone & Overall Message

Legal AF by MeidasTouch — Episode Summary (August 6, 2026)

Main Theme & Purpose

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Todd Blanche’s Attorney General Confirmation Battle

2. Trump v. IRS Lawsuit & Federal Judges’ Intervention

3. Supreme Court & Trump’s Battle Over Civil Immunity

4. Trump’s Defamation Lawsuits: Wall Street Journal & BBC

5. Capital One & Trump’s Debanking

6. The DOJ, Bar Ethics, and the Power of Pardons

7. Reflecting Pool Vandalism Case & DOJ Missteps

8. Supreme Court, Mail-in Ballots, and USPS

9. Judge Mehta on Jan. 6 Dismissals: A Stark Rebuke

Notable Quotes & Moments

Timestamps for Key Segments

Tone & Overall Message