Judge Turns the Tables on Trump in His Own $10b Lawsuit

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1:26Michael Popok:We got our second devastating ruling against Donald Trump in Miami federal court, this time in his case against the British Broadcasting Corporation. See, when you want to chase headlines and put a$10 billion defamation number in your complaint against the BBC because they ran your words out of context, using your own words in a short clip on a channel, a streaming channel nobody ever watches called panorama and then you sue for defamation, you just opened the door to discovery about all of your finances because they now need to defend themselves and show that you, Donald Trump, did not lose$10 billion because they ran that clip on a little watch channel.

2:11Michael Popok:This president has made hundreds of billions of dollars while he's been president for more than 500 days. How is he possibly going to show that he has actual damage to the tune of$10 billion because of a little watch streaming service for the BBC played his own words. But Judge Lett, the magistrate judge, has sided with the BBC. And by the way, they are coming out no holds barred, swinging haymakers against Donald Trump and good on them. I guess Donald Trump thought because in the beginning, when Donald Trump, you know, didn't like, it was sort of catty about, oh, I don't like the fact that they clipped my speech and maybe they'll give me billions of dollars or millions of dollars I can use for my library or something if I really squeeze them.

3:04Michael Popok:I guess because they apologized, which is a very British thing to do. They apologized for the clip. They said, yeah, we probably should have played a longer version of it. Aha, a confession, a concession. They're going to bend the knee. I don't think so. So BBC has sent out almost 100 subpoenas on the liability side of the case to prove that what they said and what they showed about the fight, fight, fight is actually true, which is the primary defense to defamation. You can't sue somebody for defamation if it's true. So they're going to prove that Donald Trump led the insurrection, which means they've subpoenaed family members like Don Jr., Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, to prove their case.

3:57Michael Popok:And they're fighting it out right now in the District of Columbia in front of Chief Judge Jeb Bosberg, because Trump, of course, he likes to be, oh, I'm just a private citizen doing my defamation case over here while he's the president manipulating the Department of Justice over there. And that already got called out once by Judge Williams, another judge in the Southern District of Florida, which ends up being used by the BBC in their current case. I'm going to unpack this all on Michael Popock, you're on the Midas Touch Network, and on Legal AF. How do we get here? Let's start before I start reading from filings and orders in the case and Judge Lett's new order on discovery.

4:40Michael Popok:Let's just get fundamentally how we got here. Let me show you the clip that Donald Trump is suing over. Okay. His words, but he didn't like the fact they edited them. He's got a big thing about editing. Oh, Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes. They edited her word salad. Okay. Well, they edited his word salad when they showed the clip. I think the premise of it is the same. I think the gravamen of it is the same. I think the spirit of it is the same. And those are the factors when you determine whether your own words can be defamatory. Play the clip. We're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you.

5:17And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. We're going to walk down to the Capitol. And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. But I said something's wrong here. Something's really wrong. Can't have happened. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

5:46Michael Popok:All right. You just saw it side by side. That's the case, everybody. That's the$10 billion headline case. Be careful what you ask for. The law of unintended consequences are going to bite you in the butt. And I don't know. Time out here for one minute. I don't know for the life of me, having practiced for almost, God, 36 years, including down in Florida, Southern District of Florida. I don't know why Donald Trump keeps filing his cases in the Miami division. You know, he's got the person he likes in Aileen Cannon. She's in a one-judge courthouse up in Fort Pierce, also in the Southern District of Florida.

6:22Michael Popok:Why doesn't he file it there? He keeps filing them here. Here he's got Judge Altman, a serious guy, and he's got Judge Lett, a magistrate. Now, they tried to get rid of Judge Lett already once. See, Judge Lett was in private practice before she was appointed by the Southern District of Florida judges to be a magistrate judge. That's one rung below a federal judge, an Article III judge. A lot of people see it as a stepping stone, training academy. A lot of people get elevated from magistrate judge to federal judge when the president of their party is in power. or they just stay lifetime appointed or they just stay in that career as a magistrate judge until they retire.

7:04Michael Popok:And they're responsible in civil cases for a lot of discovery issues. That's depositions, which is questions and answers under oath in person before a court reporter, maybe a videographer, or interrogatories, which are questions and answers on paper under oath, or, you know, subpoenas, which are issued to third parties or entities to get documents relevant to the case. Sometimes they do summary judgment motions and they write the first order related to it or motions to dismiss. Sometimes they try cases. It all depends on what the judge assigns to them and what the parties agree to. And if the parties don't like the magistrate judge's rulings, like Judge Lett's rulings about the Donald J.

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9:13Michael Popok:Look, after you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that our show sent you. Now, they tried to get rid of Judge Lep because when she was in private practice, she represented, I think, an entity related to the Steele dossier, which Donald Trump sued in the Southern District of Florida two and a half, three years ago with Alina Habba. He got sanctioned a million dollars along with Alina Habba by Judge Middlebrooks because that was a bad faith filing. She represented a party in there. She made an appearance or two. She was involved in the appeal.

9:52Michael Popok:And Donald Trump jumped up and down and said, oh, Judge Lett. Judge Lett was involved in that case where I got sanctioned, you know, peripherally. And there's nothing that bars her from handling a case. Even if she was involved with a case involving the same parties in the past, she was on the opposite side. She never engaged with President, then or former President Trump at the time. And that's not a ground to disqualify. So she didn't. And so the issues that were before Judge Lett were all of these subpoenas that are out there for the BBC to prove that Donald Trump, when he said fight, fight, fight, that caused the insurrection, making their clip genuine, making it truthful.

10:31Michael Popok:And they don't like that. So the Department of Justice and the U.S. government tried to intervene in the case, saying they have an interest to try to quash these subpoenas and exert executive privilege, because Trump was president at the time. That's being litigated up in the District of Columbia in front of Judge Bozberg. But they tried to intervene down in Miami as well. And they got called out by the BBC. Here's what the BBC said, using Judge Williams' recent ruling against Donald Trump once again. This is under section four, page five and six of their filing. The government's statement to try to intervene in the case creates a conflict of interest.

11:13Michael Popok:The government's decision to file this statement raises grave ethical concerns on par with those that Judge Williams addressed earlier this week in Trump versus IRS. Defendant and this court have to presume in the absence of any representation by the Department of Justice that the statement was not made independent of the plaintiff in this case, the president, rather than assuming the statement represents the considered views of the federal agencies. After all, the president has forbidden federal agencies from, and this is quoting from Judge Williams, advancing any legal position or interpretation, however legitimate or well-reasoned, contrary to that held by the plaintiff in this matter, President Trump.

11:52Michael Popok:The government cannot brush those concerns away merely by asserting that plaintiff filed this lawsuit in his full, in his personal capacity, because to do so is to insist that this court accept the credulous exercise of divorcing President Trump's current job title from an understanding of what happened here, citing to Judge Williams and Trump versus the Internal Revenue Service. And here the BBC says it's even more obvious because in the caption of the complaint itself, the style at the top, it says President Trump as plaintiff. And they continue, in the face of this conflict of interest where plaintiff is arguing against defendant's discovery, both through his own personal lawyers and through government counsel, The only course that preserves fundamental fairness will be to give the government statement no weight in this discovery dispute, a dispute in which, after all, the government need not have involved itself in the first place.

12:49Michael Popok:Signed, the lawyers for the BBC at Ballard Spar out of Washington. So well put. What's going to happen next? If they don't like the ruling on the Trump side about having to turn over all their documents, good luck. They can take an appeal to Judge Altman. Judge Altman, I don't think is going to side with them. I think he's going to back Judge Lett. Doesn't have to, but I think he will because the door has been completely opened by Donald Trump. That's a concept in the law, door opening. And they can't ask for$10 billion and then not let the BBC defend against it. So you can pick your own courthouse, Miami, Florida.

13:30Michael Popok:You can try to get a judge of your choice. you can pick a defendant who you're going to sue. The BBC, you can pick what claims you're going to bring against them, but you can't tell them how to defend the case. And that's the unintentional consequences that are backfiring and biting Donald Trump on the ass. And kudos to the BBC for, A, not backing down, throwing haymakers, and using Judge Williams' own ruling in the Trump versus IRS case against Trump here. We're going to continue to follow it all right here. And thank Thank you to our audience. We just crossed on the Legal AF YouTube channel 1.17 million subscribers, over 700 million views.

14:11Michael Popok:That's all because of you. With your help, check today if you're subscribed. With your help with free subscription, we'll get to 2 million by the midterms, which is our goal. I thank you very much for that and your generosity. I'm Michael Popok. You're here on Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. 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 and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF.

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