Legal AF - 8/5/2026

27:11Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 hearing. 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. And so, but no, the nomination went forward. In the meantime, Trump's attorneys appealed that decision to the 11th Circuit.

27:48Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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.

28:42We don't know what matters.

28:45Karen Friedman Agnifilo:Todd Blanche gave advice to Donald Trump on whether they involved his desire, whether they ever discussed in the preceding two years his desire to sue the IRS. What we do know is that Todd Blanche spent 6 ,600 hours, 6 ,600 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 Blunch 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 capital 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 acts.

30:04Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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.

30:17Lisa Graves:Well, let's see. 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, 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?

31:07Lisa Graves:I mean, it's just fascinating to me.

31:11Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 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 E. Jean 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, how he defamed her in denying her allegations about that sexual abuse.

31:57Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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.

32:29Lisa Graves:You know, 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, you know, stormed at 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 get a fraud. And yet, you know, on the one hand, and he's pardoning all these people, you know, a massive Central American drug trafficker, you know, the former prime minister of, you know, was it Honduras?

33:30Lisa Graves:You know, like he, or the president of Honduras, like he's just, he, on the one hand, and then on the other hand, he is prosecuting Jim Comey for, for posting a picture of seashells, right? Or of Letitia James of checking the wrong box on her mortgage. I mean, it's just, it's just the hypocrisy and, And just inconsistency is so atrocious and the politicization of our justice system. And it's just unbelievable kind of what he's getting away with. And I just hope people, I hope the results of the midterm elections will account for all of what's happening because it's just appalling. But anyway, that's my rant.

34:19Lisa Graves:but we have to take a quick break. Um, and when we come back, we're going to talk about, uh, Janine Pirro and reflecting pool and what's going on there as well as several other topics that we have to talk about. Uh, but we're going to take a quick break. We love our sponsors. They support our show. They know what we're about and, but they're, they help us keep the lights on, um, because we don't have big, we, we, 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.

34:57Lisa Graves: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.

35:11Michael Popok:Look, magnesium is something most of us aren't getting enough of. And if you're just crab in the drugstore version, you may not be getting the full picture. Industrial farming, chronic stress, and everyday aging can all make it harder to get the magnesium your body needs. The thing is, magnesium comes in many forms, and each one supports your health in a different way. That's why you need to try Qualia Magnesium Plus. It combines 10 bioavailable forms of magnesium with more than 70 trace minerals that help fuel magnesium support. It's designed to help support deeper sleep, sharper thinking, faster recovery, muscle strength, mood, and energy metabolism.

35:52Michael Popok:It's not just a sleep supplement. It's a full body magnesium system built for modern living to help you feel your best every day. It's time to improve your sleep and enhance your recovery with Qualia Magnesium Plus. For me, Qualia Magnesium Plus has been a simple addition to my routine that I've genuinely enjoyed. Experience the most trusted magnesium for purity, potency, and performance. Plus it's non-GMO, vegan, and gluten-free, making it a choice you can feel good about. Go to qualialife.com slash legal AF for 50 % off. And here's a bonus. Use the code LEGALAF for an additional 15 % off your order.

36:35Michael Popok:That's Q-U-A-L-I-A life.com slash LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF. Thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. Can we talk about the most underrated organ in your body? Your liver. It's doing more than 500 functions every day, filtering unwanted elements, supporting digestion, and helping with energy. So giving it daily support, it just makes sense. Dose for your liver is a clinically backed liver health supplement. This isn't just another capsule or powder. Dose is a liquid supplement taken in a daily two ounce shot and it tastes like fresh squeezed orange juice. Dose cleanses the liver of unwanted stressors that's slowing your liver down and promotes daily liver function so your liver can do its job.

37:22Michael Popok:Zero sugar, zero junk, zero calories. Your liver is your body's filter, handling energy production, digestion, fat metabolism, and vitamin storage. When you drink Dose Daily, you're going to reduce sluggishness, get rid of those midday crashes, support your metabolism, and even aid your daily digestion. Plus, it's got real results with two double-blind, placebo-controlled studies showing its positive impact on liver enzyme levels. Ready to give your liver the support it deserves? Head to dosdaily.co.co.legalaf or enter Legal AF to get 35 % off your first subscription. Your body does so much for you.

38:03Michael Popok:Let's do something for it. That's D-O-S-E-D-A-I-L-Y.co.legalaf for 35 % off your first month subscription.

38:13Lisa Graves: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 a chance that this judge is going to dismiss this defamation lawsuit and hand Donald Trump yet another huge loss?

39:12Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 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 it's part of material that is preserved from that timeframe, as The Wall Street Journal reported. So I don't think that, 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.

40:11Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 gonna 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.

40:55Lisa Graves:So since you brought up the BBC, 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. So, and that's where we're, where, where we're getting to, but let me just tell the background really quick. So Trump sued the BBC and federal court in Miami, alleging, uh, that there was a document, a documentary that was deceptively edited. And it was about his Jan 6 speech on the ellipse and that he claims that it made it appear that he encouraged the Capitol attack.

41:52Lisa Graves:And so he alleged$10 billion in damages, basically saying, 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 right on the Capitol, but still, you know, they're British and they're very polite.

42:29Lisa Graves:And so they said, sorry, and apologized. And, 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 on like, okay, you say you were harmed for$10 billion. You got to show us, right? Give us your books and records of, of your finance. You know, basically you put the financial condition of your entities at issue saying they were allegedly harmed.

43:12Lisa Graves:So we get to look at that. We get to see the value of your business empire, whether any losses actually occurred.

43:20Karen Friedman Agnifilo:And of

43:20Lisa Graves:course, you know, Donald Trump does not want to do that. And he tried to walk that back, right? He tried to be like, OK, 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?

43:35Karen Friedman Agnifilo:Yeah, I really appreciate that. I agree with you. I would not have conceded that, you know, they're they're doing a documentary in which they're taking portions of the speech. You know, he spoke for over an hour. It was 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 in the prosecution that was brought by Jack Smith was that he he did do so.

44:12Karen Friedman Agnifilo:So I wouldn't have apologized for it. But as you point out, they they 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 are the damages? And as you point out, Trump put up front 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 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.

44:55Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 moneymaking operation. And what happened on January 6th, you know, has not in essence diminished his ability to attract wealth and people seeking to, you know, curry his favor. And so the BBC, you know, 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.

45:37Karen Friedman Agnifilo:And so what just happened is that Donald Trump's lawyers, in this case, Mr. Brito, who I mentioned before, filed an emergency motion in like italics, emergency motion to stay the enforcement of the judge's order from July 27th, which required 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.

46:46Now, they have not said that Trump was engaged in money

46:50Karen Friedman Agnifilo:laundering. That has not been alleged in 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 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 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.

47:33Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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.

47:51Lisa Graves: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 seeing patterns that look like money laundering. wondering. It just seems like such hypocrisy again, that he can do all this stuff and get away with it and sue people and, you know, use all the might and power of the federal government to go after people. And it's just shocking to me.

48:32Karen Friedman Agnifilo:Yeah, you know, 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 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 view and before our eyes. 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.

49:11Karen Friedman Agnifilo:So this is Donald Trump suing people, you know, left and right. And now he now the consequences are coming, the birds 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 made about what happened to America on January 6, 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.

49:55Lisa Graves: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. It doesn't, people aren't going to 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. They, you know, it's not the fact that he was adjudicated a rapist. You know, I could go on, 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.

50:31Karen Friedman Agnifilo:so it doesn't seem to matter to some people right of the adjudicated sex abuser matters to a lot of people but it didn't matter to enough people 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

50:50Lisa Graves:to do as a result and continue to grift and make money off of the backs of the 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.

51:29Lisa Graves:And the ones that won't, okay, I'll dismiss the case eventually, you know, whether it's bombing Iran, whether it's bombing boats in the Pacific. I mean, you know, 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 what it's whether it's whether it's certain um 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 Supreme Court.

52:26Lisa Graves:And, and 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, on, you know, lawyers and lawsuits and, and, and he, it just doesn't seem to have that much, do that much damage to him.

52:44Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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, you know, House and Senate were weaponized against people, you know, with these false claims of communism. And, you know, that that's the guy who really trained Trump in how to talk about these issues. When Donald Trump says people say, you know, 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 fourth term.

53:19Karen Friedman Agnifilo:You know, these, I think, are early tactics he learned 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 contrary to the law, like Rudy Giuliani, who faced bar sanctions, other people who faced bar sanctions, and Todd Blanche, who's facing this referral right now, the only thing in some ways that is holding part of this together 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 Todd Blanche being possibly held accountable by the New York Bar for his role in this so-called settlement.

54:16Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 6th, and in essence, paving his way for return to power with more power than any president has had, which includes this aggrandized power to pardon, which I think is illegitimate.

55:01Karen Friedman Agnifilo:I think we're going to have to claw back and put proper restraints on the pardon power because it's been used by Donald Trump to pardon basically his co-conspirators, the January 6th people who, you know, acted on his words in attacking the Capitol and trying to stop, um, stop that vote as he praised on the day, praised them for their supposed patriotism, for their actions. Um, and even this weekend was praising them and saying that they should get compensation. And so, um, there, there are some consequences that could be brought to bear. Um, even if Todd Blanch 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 bars 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 the rules of the bar that they're admitted to.

56:02Karen Friedman Agnifilo:So there's just a desperate effort by people around Trump to try to make sure that they are doing his bidding and or I think that the implication is that they'll get a pardon if they go along with what he says, which means I don't know 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 in safer 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.

56:42Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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? Yeah, no, it's

56:56Lisa Graves:bananas um so let's talk about speaking of uh defamation suits that we were just talking about let's talk about the uh the future defamation suit that we see coming out of the reflecting pool matter i know that was a secure i'm trying to link these things together yeah no no that was a little bit of a stretch that was a stretch i get it but um so let's talk about what's going on with the reflecting pool. So if you remember that several people are being prosecuted, were being prosecuted for... They were accused of vandalizing the reflecting pool that reflects the Lincoln Memorial, right? The peeling paint that was coming off.

57:42Lisa Graves: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 the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Janine Pirro, who is a super Trump loyalist, dismissed the case against Davey Hearn, as well as three others who were charged with misdemeanors.

58:32Lisa Graves: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 announced the grand jury indictment, she was saying, oh, the Park Service employees observed Davy Hearn violently pulling at the lining and that there was damage over$1 ,000. and 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.

59:28Lisa Graves:Basically saying he willfully and violently destroyed property deliberately to damage the reflecting pool. and she said, you know, 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.

1:00:19Lisa Graves: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.

1:00:59Lisa Graves: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 rushed job too, to indict the case. And I think, you know, there's going to be, I think he could potentially bring a defamation suit about, I mean, no offense, 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

1:01:40Karen Friedman Agnifilo:you what do you what do you think and about all this 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 So we'll see 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.

1:02:19Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 a, 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 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.

1:03:24Karen Friedman Agnifilo:Now, interestingly, in this filing where 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 or other government agents who supposedly saw him, you know, tearing the, you know, tearing and destroying the bottom of the pool, even though he says he just reached in to, to, you know, see this floating piece of, of the surf, of the resurfacing material. Um, and then she describes how, uh, she was repeatedly asking for information from the department interior.

1:04:09Karen Friedman Agnifilo:And finally, finally, finally, they gave her the material and it showed as you, 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 and 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.

1:04:45Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 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 it is not and is proven uh 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 um that has 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.

1:05:48Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 flicking 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.

1:06:26Karen Friedman Agnifilo:And instead what you had was Donald Trump acting like it was his personal pool, the reflection pool, this historic site, and trying to get it covered with some colored bottom, this flag blue that he wanted in time for his birthday. And so it really is a travesty. Now, the last thing I'll say on this before I go back to you is, you know, I have to give Janine Pirro credit for taking the lawyer's box, the black box and the banker's box to the White evidence that purportedly he's been lied to, that he's been misled by Doug Borgham 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.

1:07:16Karen Friedman Agnifilo:But instead, he continued to dress her down and criticize her saying she's wrong. Well, 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.

1:07:53Karen Friedman Agnifilo:It just sort of underscores how having someone like Trump at the top means that the law, you know, is meaningless to him. She's bound by it, though, or she could lose her law license.

1:08:03Lisa Graves:Yeah, I mean, look, that is very true. And she showed, at first blush, she would say, wow, she did exactly what you would want a prosecutor to do and showing integrity and saying, look, this guy is 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 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, A, shouldn't have rushed to the grand jury and upend these individuals' lives.

1:08:44Lisa Graves:And B, there's also, according to certain things I've read, there's not a lot of love between Janine Pirro and Doug Bergen, you know, the interior. so this this might be a little fight here that's happening um 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 but you're right as 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 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.

1:09:29Lisa Graves:You're just not supposed to.

1:09:30Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 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.

1:10:07Karen Friedman Agnifilo:And she's, you know, been party. Which is why, which is why,

1:10:09Lisa Graves: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. She's trying to throw him under the bus. 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 going to come back and we're going to 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.

1:10:48Michael Popok:I've got to tell you about my Lola blanket because I've become completely obsessed with it. I'm definitely a blanket person. And every night when I'm winding down, whether I'm watching TV or I'm just relaxing, this is the one I reach for. The first thing I noticed was how unbelievably soft it is. And I love that the design actually looks great in my house. It's honestly replaced every blanket I own. I totally get why they call it the world's number one blanket. It's made with ultra soft luxury faux fur and a signature four-way stretch. It's machine washable and it doesn't pill or shed even after repeated washes.

1:11:25Michael Popok:It also has over 20 ,000 five-star reviews and it makes an amazing gift because it's something people actually use every day. For a limited time, our listeners can get 40 % off select Lola Blankets products with code LEGALAF at checkout. Just head to LolaBlankets.com and use code LEGALAF to get 40 % off your order. Seriously, if you're looking to upgrade your cozy setup, don't miss this. For a limited time, our listeners can get 40 % off select Lola Blankets products with code LEGALAF at checkout. Just head to LolaBlankets.com and use code LEGALAF to get 40 % off your order. Now look, after you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them.

1:12:09Michael Popok:Please support our show and let them know we sent you. Wrap yourself in luxury with Lola blankets. Long summer days, they're great until you're trying to keep up with your crew while overheating and you're checking for sweat spots. As summer plans heat up, stay fresh from sunup to sundown with Mack Weldon's Air Knit X fabric. It all started with underwear designed to wick moisture, fight odor, and give you maximum airflow. Now they're expanding that bestseller to a full line of essentials, including undershirts, t-shirts, polos, and socks. I just added Air Knit X t-shirts and polos to my summer rotation.

1:12:46Michael Popok:Their lightest fabric is fused with nylon mesh from maximum airflow. The four-way stretch means no bunching or sagging, and the barely there feel helps keep you dry and fresh all day. They look like regular clothes, but feel like modern performance wear, making them an easy, confidence-boosting choice for summer. Browse the full Air Knit X collection at macweldon.com. Plus, get 20 % off your first order of$125 or more with code LEGALAF. Don't sweat the heat this summer. Feel as effortlessly cool as you look with Mack Weldon. Go to MackWeldon.com and get 20 % off your first order of$125 or more with promo code LEGALAF.

1:13:30Michael Popok:That's M-A-C-K-W-E-L-D-O-N.com, code LEGALAF.

1:13:37Lisa Graves:All 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, etc. And I'm just going to turn it over to you to frame the issue and tell us what's going on.

1:13:58Karen Friedman Agnifilo:Yes, well, this is a major issue that's going on where we have an executive order, and that's the technical term from what Donald Trump did earlier this spring in issuing an order that the Postal Service should not deliver any ballots from states to voters or return their ballots to the polling places 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 executive order, which 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.

1:14:43Karen Friedman Agnifilo:There was a suit filed against the implementation 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, you know, before the election. And so 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 states are empowered to set the time, place and manner of voting in congressional elections, not the federal government.

1:15:33Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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, and 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.

1:16:09Karen Friedman Agnifilo:There's no evidence whatsoever of any widespread fraud in voting in the United States. Every single investigation that has taken a look at 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 sort of trumped up false notion that there were people voting multiple times or that people were voting even though they had moved.

1:16:50Karen Friedman Agnifilo:But the fact is, and I 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 a real thing. How many Lisa Graveses are? And my name isn't even that common. And so there are other Lisa Graveses 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 Chris 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, even though they're registered in that state.

1:17:33And there's no indication that they've moved or that they are

1:17:36Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 supposed voter fraud over the course of 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 0.0000000000, and I think another 0 % of the votes cast could even be considered to have been a fraudulent or inappropriate vote.

1:18:22Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 U.S. in terms of the continuing squeeze on the American family for just the cost of goods and the groceries and health care costs 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.

1:19:11And so you have a president who's flailing, whose policies have proven to be very controversial,

1:19:17Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 people in the United States rely on mail-in voting. And we not only have this situation with this - Trump mails in his votes too, by the way. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Trump mails in his votes. He claims he gets to do that because he's president, but you don't. Like more of, you know, the law does not apply to me, but it applies to the sort of thing.

1:19:56Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 its 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.

1:20:33Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 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.

1:21:12Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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.

1:21:38Lisa Graves: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 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 Stuart Rhodes' case and the Jan 6 indictments that I think was remarkable, not because he dismissed the case 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 strongly disagreeing with it.

1:22:29Lisa Graves:And so the case is basically the last remaining Jan 6 prosecutions against members of the Oath Keepers, including Stuart Rhodes. So really the worst of the worst, right? Seditious conspiracy cases. And, you know, this was after Trump pardoned, you know, or commuted all the Jan 6 defendants, the Department of Justice still had to move to vacate the remaining convictions, right? Because procedurally, that's what had to happen because they were in front of, they were 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?

1:23:10He had to grant it because prosecutors have all the discretion whether

1:23:14Lisa Graves: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, you know, separation of powers, he had to do it. He had to grant it. And he wrote things like, I'm reluctantly doing that, you know, 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, you know? 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.

1:24:12Lisa Graves: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.

1:24:30Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 15 to 20 years in jail if convicted. The people who were subject to these charges were part of 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.

1:25:30Karen Friedman Agnifilo:Seditious conspiracy is a very serious charge. They were also charged, I think, and 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 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 And unfortunately, under Todd Blanch, 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.

1:26:27Karen Friedman Agnifilo:But Lisa,

1:26:29Lisa Graves:Jim Comey posted a picture of seashells.

1:26:32Karen Friedman Agnifilo:Yeah, well, there's that, you know, that that's a prepared purportedly a crime. But working with your 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, you know, 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.

1:27:19Karen Friedman Agnifilo:But because the Capitol police were so valiant in defending the Capitol and because the 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 look through the details of the January 6th 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.

1:27:56Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 being attacked, the National Guard could not assist. They did not have the gear. They didn't have the batons or 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 D.C.

1:28:38Karen Friedman Agnifilo:Armory over by RFK Stadium, get the 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.

1:29:20Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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. Yeah. Wow.

1:29:38Lisa Graves:All right. Well, we've reached the end of another midweek edition of Legal AF. Jeff, 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 Popok's going to kill me for not cutting this shorter, but there's just so much going on. Sorry, Popok. Sorry, everyone.

1:30:01Karen Friedman Agnifilo:No, it's just,

1:30:02Lisa Graves: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 want 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 sub stack who goes to the Legal AF YouTube channel and who wants to stay informed because we have to stay informed.

1:30:45Lisa Graves: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, you know, or try to win over the hearts and minds of people who are undecided or 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 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 so we're here. And just thank you so much, Lisa.

1:31:30Lisa Graves:I can't thank you enough for being here. It's such a pleasure to do this with you.

1:31:34Karen Friedman Agnifilo: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 Midas 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 with you and with Popak and with the whole team.

1:31:54Lisa Graves:So big, big shout out to the Legal AFers and the Midas Mighty and until next week.

1:32:06Thank you.