← Legal AF by MeidasTouch
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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
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- [00:56]
Michael Popak
The ads, Trump's going to regret having filed that lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, opening the Pandora's box wide open, subjecting himself to discovery and depositions, sworn statements under oath, where he always does terrible. And now we've got the newest information. Basically, something that I said was going to happen during Legal AF podcast on Saturday has happened. The judge assigned to the case of Trump versus Murdoch in the Wall Street Journal, Trump versus Sanity is Judge Darren Gales. I know Judge Gales very well from when he was on the Florida Miami Dade Circuit Court. It's a phenomenal judge and you may recall that he was the judge that presided over the case that Donald Trump filed against Michael Cohen for defamation and breach of contract. Same lawyer for Donald Trump, Alejandro Brito. Same judge. Judge Gales, I'm going to tell you why this matters on this Midas Touch Legal AF hot take on Michael Popo. Let's get into it. I'm using my Florida legal experience, 35 years practicing down here in Florida. Let's talk about what just happened. As we said on Legal AF the podcast, one of the dumbest strategic moves I've ever seen Donald Trump make was to file this particular lawsuit and take on this particular media empire in an effort to try to distract and change the narrative of his cover up of the pedophile predatory conduct of his wingman and one of his best friends, Jeffrey Epstein. If he thought that was going to work because the Wall Street Journal ran an article on the front page about Donald Trump hand making a birthday card that was glued into a scrapbook back in 2003, it included in a 50th birthday party Epstein birthday party gift he Thought that by filing the lawsuit, claiming that it wasn't his birthday card, this was gonna change the narrative. Forget it. The headline is that Murdoch finally is severing his ties with Donald Trump and gave permission for that expose to be published on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, which also gave license, one after another, seriatim for the other corporate media outlets like the New York Times to start publishing their own pieces. New York Times is doing a hit a day against Donald Trump. Once Wall Street Journal broke the glass ceiling and gave permission, permission structures operate in every location, including in the media. And once they did that, New York Times said, we're going to run our stories about all the people and all the data points that connect Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein and make it almost impossible to believe that he did not know that Jeffrey Epstein, his wingman and best friend, was also preying on and raping girls. And so we have article after article after article, all since Donald Trump filed that lawsuit. Now, I also said using my experience, my, my superpower experience of being a trial lawyer and being a trial lawyer who's practiced for years down in this Southern District of Florida, that I found it odd that Donald Trump did not file this case up in a more friendlier venue, a more friendlier division of the Southern District of Florida, which would have been the West Palm Division, which we're where he would have had a 50, 50 shot of pulling Aileen Cannon. Why didn't he do that? You've heard me. And I'll, if not, I'll tell you straight. I think it's because he did not want Cannon for this case in case he has to elevate her to Attorney General or worse, to the United States Supreme Court. So they filed in Miami, 70 miles south of Mar a Lago, not near where he lives. He has a lawyer that he likes a lot, Alejandro Brito, who lives in Coral, who works in Coral Gables, Florida, in miam. And he filed this case. He filed the case against Cohen, he filed the case against ABC and filed the case against Paramount, cbs. So he's his go to for this kind of defamation type lawsuit. And the last time we got this gang together of Trump, Alejandro Brito, his lawyer, and a judge named Judge Gales. Things did not go well for Donald Trump. So they filed in Miami. There's 18 or 20 judges that he could have pulled. He pulled randomly. Randomly. Judge Darren Gales, that's eight. And I actually joked about it with Ben Meisellis on our Legal a podcast on Saturday. He could get gales it's 1 in 17 chance, 1 in 16 chance. But he could get him and he got him. What does it mean? Let me tell you first about my personal information that I have from knowing Judge Gales from years that he was on the Miami Dade Circuit Court. My firm, Full Disclosure supported his candidacy, helped him when he had a challenger a couple of times in terms of raising money for him, held a fundraiser for him. I spent a considerable amount of time with Judge Gales and I like him a lot. He is, I don't, I don't know if he's the first openly gay judge on the Southern District of Florida bench, but he's openly gay. I think he might be the first African American appointed by Obama. Supremely qualified, super smart and he doesn't take the bait. He's got a perfect judicial temperament. He's quiet, thoughtful, but don't f with him or any federal judge for that matter in the Southern District of Florida and in the using the Trump Cohen case as the blueprint, I think it's going to go very similarly as soon as the lawyers from Michael Cohen, who include Full Disclosure, a firm that I'm affiliated with, the Danya Perry firm, as soon as they started setting the depositions early for Donald Trump in the case, that case eventually got dismissed by Donald Trump voluntarily. They called his bluff and they set his deposition because that's what Donald Trump has exposed himself to. You know, it's not a one way street. In a lawsuit, especially when you're the plaintiff, you carry the burden of proving your case. You carry the burden of trying to get your complaint to survive a motion to dismiss, which is obviously coming from the Wall Street Journal because what they published about the birth, handmade birthday card pasted into a scrapbook. And they saw the scrapbook, they saw the, they talked. Apparently based on the reporting to the FBI and the Department of Justice officials that were involved with gaining this information g this evidence, who used it or going to use it in some way to prosecute Epstein and or Jelaine Maxwell, who got prosecuted for being a co conspirator in sex trafficking of girls and sentenced to 20 years. Now she's begging for a pardon from Donald Trump, hoping that he wants to make the whole crisis and the whole conspiracy go away. So they published the article about this X rated handmade card with a doodle of a woman, a naked woman where the pubic hair is the jagged sharpie signature of Donald Trump. And he said, oh, it's not my card. I don't know why that is the issue why that is his problem to file the lawsuit. I mean, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of pages and hours and videos and photos and evidence and testimony and interviews that link Donald Trump directly to Epstein, including Donald Trump's own interviews in magazines. You know that feeling after your morning coffee, that crash, the jitters, the bloating? Yeah, I was getting all that every single day. But coffee was part of my routine and I wasn't ready to give it up. Then I found Everyday Dose and it completely changed the game. This isn't a coffee alternative. It's coffee with benefits. I'm talking 100% Arabica coffee combined with functional mushrooms like lion's mane and chaga, plus collagen protein and nootropics. 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Information about people who connect the dots between Donald Trump and Epstein and his and Epstein's depraved activity, including now Ivanka. Yeah, and all of these people that were ignored or the pieces were not put together by anybody by but Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald who brought down Epstein with her dogged reporting. Nobody else is covered it the way that we did. So the birthday card is the thing that sets Donald Trump off to go after Rupert Murdoch. And Rupert Murdoch and the Murdoch family don't respond to anybody. They're not owned by outside investors. Right. I mean there are outside investors, but they control, they have the controlling stock in the company. They make all the decisions. So what's going to happen? Judge Gales, now that there's a complaint, there needs to be a response to the complaint filed within probably around 30 days. I'm sure it's going to be a motion to dismiss arguing that this is not defamatory on behalf of the Dow Jones company that owns the Wall Street Journal owned by the Murdoch family. It's not, it's not defamatory. It's true. Donald Trump can't allege actual malice, which is a requirement for a public figure and defamation, which means knowledge of truth or falsity about this card or reckless disregard for whether it's true or false. And then there's other privileges that may not be appropriate for motions to dismiss that but will be raised in short order in the case. And Gales will hold or his magistrate judge, Judge Goodman, who has been assigned to the case, will hold a preliminary. Usually the magistrate judge holds a preliminary hearing about discovery depositions. When are people going to be sitting down in a room with a court reporter? When are people going to be under oath? When are documents going to be exchanged? When is information going to be required to be provided by way of written answers to questions we call interrogatories. Usually the magistrate judge who's who sits under the federal judge reports the federal judge handles that kind of mundane day to day experience. In my experience in federal court, sometimes I don't talk to or get to see or have communication with the actual federal judge assigned to a case for a year or two while the magistrate judge handles everything. If I don't like what the magistrate judge does, I can appeal it to the trial court judge. This case Judge Gales Gales may take a more active role here. He doesn't have to use his magistrate. The first conference may well be Gales, the lawyers for Rupert Murdoch who have yet to appear and Donald Trump's lawyer Alexander Brito to talk about the case and to hear some preliminary comments and observations by Judge Gales. But Brito knows Gales well, the lawyer for Donald Trump, because he already lost in front of him, if you will, in the Cohen case. As soon as they called his bluff after he sued Michael Cohen for hundreds of millions of dollars and set him for deposition, Donald Trump dismissed the case. We'll have to see what's gonna happen here. But certainly Donald Trump has waived his immunity issues. He can't all if they countersue him, which they're allowed to do once he's been sued. Donald Trump can't use immunity as a sword and a shield. He can't say, oh, I can sue you, you, but you can't sue me. It doesn't work that way. He's effectively waived his Immunity defenses or any argument of presidential immunity or this immunity or that immunity, when they start asking him, well, who did you talk to about this card? I can't tell you. Executive privilege, that's not gonna work. We're gonna have to work our way and grind our way through that with Judge Gales. But Judge Gales is super smart. He's seen this kind of case before. I can't think of a better judge to be assigned than Judge Gales randomly to this case. It matters for those, I think, for those who have been students of Midas Touch and Legal A for the last five years, you know that the judges matter. They're all supposed to be independent, nonpartisan arbiters of the law and applying the facts to the law and just being, you know, independent umpires. But we know that where they come from and who appointed them and their backgrounds influence their jurisprudential approach. Now, Donald Trump already has his ready foil, right? He's got a black judge, a black gay judge appointed by Obama. We can write the social media posts now, can't we? And ignore them. Leftist Marxist this is that says although he didn't do a heavy amount of attacking against him during the Cohen days, but we'll have to see what happens here. I'm going to get Michael Cohen to join me on Legal A to talk about his experience in front of Judge Gales and, and that'll better, better inform my reporting here on Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. So look for that interview on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Thanks for being here on the Midas Touch Network. As you can see, now more than ever, we need you to protect us from Donald Trump. And we'll protect you the same way. Corporate media is lopping off heads to try to satisfy Donald Trump left and right. Stephen Colbert, maybe Jon Stewart next, maybe Jimmy Kimmel next. And then we start getting to the on air reporters. We've already seen it happen. There's a reason Katie Fang is now part of the Midas Touch Network and a sister channel to my Legal af. And so we need your support. It's easy. It's free. Hit the subscribe button on Midas Touch. Come over to Legal a f the YouTube channel. Hit the subscribe button there. No paywall, right? No censorship here. Completely independent thought, independent reporting, independent commentary, all for you. We appreciate you. Until my next Legal AF report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal af. Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument. Come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing in the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called Wait for it Morning af. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AOF are there as well. We got some new reporting, we got interviews, we got AD free versions of the podcast and hot takes where Legal AF on substack. Come over now to free subscribe.