Pirro Screws Over Trump's Plan with Accidental Admission

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2:50Michael Popok:We got less than 10 days to go on Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell's term as chair, and yet we still have to do reporting about the attempted criminal investigation and prosecution of him related to cost overruns for the redevelopment of the Federal Reserve complex. Because we've got new reporting and a new filing by Jeanine Pirro two months after Chief Judge Bozberg, in a scathing decision, effectively said that the Department of Justice, in bad faith, was criminally investigating Jay Powell and threw out the subpoenas issued by the grand jury in an extraordinary remedy after a judge found that the dominant reason for the investigation was to harass Jay Powell to get him to quit, to lower interest rates or both.

3:40Michael Popok:Now we've got Janine Pirro saying, it's all better now, right? Because I've announced that I'm going to not prosecute him and turn it over to the inspector general's office. We're all good now, aren't we? No, we're not all good. And no, Chief Judge Bozberg should not vacate on a motion for vacatur his original order in March or his subsequent follow-up order in April. It should remain law of the case to protect Jay Powell from future prosecutions. I'm Michael Popak. You're on the Midas Touch Network. Let's get to the reporting. We know the headline from mainstream media, Janine Pirro's office files motion to vacate judges' order concerning Jay Powell.

4:21Michael Popok:But what are they trying to do? What they're trying to do is take off the books so it has no precedential, that's P-R-E-C-E-D, precedential impact on future cases. In other words, it comes off the books and doesn't make them look bad. It's as if it never existed. You know, if an order on the docket falls in the woods and nobody's there to hear it, what happens? And so there is a rule, a technique you can use. If the parties have resolved the matter, for instance, and therefore making the appeal of the issue underlying it moot because the case is over, sometimes you go back and ask the judge to pull off the order.

5:01Michael Popok:That's not what happened here. What happened here is that they were compelled because Tom Tillis, the outgoing Republican from North Carolina in the Senate who sits on the banking committee, said he would not vote for Kevin Warsh, Trump's replacement of Jay Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve until the cloud of criminal investigation was off of J-PAL. That led, about a week ago, Janine Pirro in a social media post to say, I'm going to end the prosecution, end it, not close it out with a closeout memo, which is the right way to do it as a prosecutor that people can rely on. You can have some what's called estoppel value.

5:45Michael Popok:No, no, social media posts, not closeout official memo. but I'm closing it, but I'm keeping an eye on the inspector general who's going to do investigations about whether there's cost overruns and who's responsible and I may be back. In fact, Donald Trump said it should go all the way to its conclusion. Now, Jeanine Pirro then wants to say, see, I closed it. No closeout memo. And therefore, you should take off your order concerning it, right, Judge? I don't think that's how, in fact, I know that's not how that works. You're on Midas Touch and Legal AF. Take a minute, hit the free subscribe button, help Legal AF get to 1.2 million subscribers.

6:25Michael Popok:Now, what is the order that she hates? Here's the order that she hates. It's up on Legal AF Substack for you. Back on the 13th of March, in which the judge did an extraordinary thing. He intervened in a criminal investigation. Found on the record, there were no facts to support a criminal investigation. In fact, had Janine Pirro's number two in her office Admit to the judge they had no criminal facts against Jay Powell related to this project, and then quash the subpoenas, finding that the prosecution investigation was brought in bad faith. He leads off, Chief Judge Bozberg leads off his memorandum opinion on page one with just a list of social media attacks by Donald Trump on Jay Powell.

7:10Michael Popok:Jerome, too late Powell has done it again. He's too late. He's too angry. He's too stupid. He's too political to be Fed Reserve Chair. Put another way, he's a total loser, and the country pays the price. He's the dumbest, most destructive people in government, too late to an American disgrace. The judge concludes on page two by answering this question. Did prosecutors issue the subpoenas, the criminal subpoenas from the grand jury, for a proper purpose? The court finds they did not. There is abundant evidence that the subpoena's dominant, if not sole purpose, is to harass and pressure Powell, either to yield to the president or to resign and make way for a Fed chair.

7:49Michael Popok:Who will? On the other side of the scale, the government, this is on page three, has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the president. Jeff Boesberg goes on to say on page five back in March, Trump has specifically aimed his anger at Chair Powell. For years, he's berated Powell, threatened him, ordered him to lower rates, or done all three at once. He's truly one of the dumbest, most destructive people. And when the judge then turns to his interaction with the lawyers in Jeanine Pirro's office, including one that just signed the motion to vacate a guy by the name of G.A.

8:28Michael Popok:Mazuka Latayif, it's a complicated name, but Mr. Complicated Name, in interactions with the judge, provided no evidence, even in camera, away from the prying eyes of the media. just to the judge, just a love note to the judge. You could submit it after the hearing and still nothing. Here's how the judge summarized that. Indeed, many prosecutors want to hold their cards close to the vest. Respecting this prerogative, the court at the hearing invited the government to submit any additional justifications for the subpoenas. In fact, in other recent cases, they've done that. In our case, however, the government at the hearing declined to offer any other evidence, nor has it supplied any written submissions.

9:15Michael Popok:The court is thus left with no credible reason to think that the government is investigating suspicious facts as opposed to targeting a disfavored official. When the evidence of improper motive is so strong and the justifications for these subpoenas are so tenuous, it's hard to see the renovations and testimony as anything other than a convenient pretext for launching a criminal investigation that the government launched for another unstated purpose, pressuring Powell to knuckle under. That's the order and a subsequent one in April that's very similar that the Pirro group wants off the books. You can see why.

9:54Michael Popok:Here's Janine Pirro the night that order came out talking about a federal judge just bathed Powell in immunity. Let's play the clip and the imagery. Jerome Powell today is now bathed in immunity, preventing my office from investigating the Federal Reserve. This is wrong, and it is without legal authority. And so this decision today by Judge Boesberg runs directly afoul of our highest court's admonition that courts and judges must not and cannot saddle grand juries with many trials and preliminary showings that impede a prosecutor's investigation and thus frustrate the public's interest in the fair and expeditious administration of justice.

10:57No one, folks, is above the law. And this outrageous decision will be appealed by the United States Department of Justice. Hey, everybody. Ben Mycelis here from the Midas Touch Network. I wanted to let you know about my podcast partner, Michael Popak's new law firm. It's called the Popak Firm. Michael Popak's pursuing his dream of starting his own law firm, really based on the popular demand by all the Midas, Mighty and Legal AFers who were approaching Michael Popak with their cases and saying, can you help us? And at that time, Popak was not able to. So he went out on his own. He started the Popak firm where he is now handling catastrophic injury cases like car accident cases, trucking cases, malpractice cases, big negligence cases, wrongful death cases.

11:52So if you or someone you know have a case like this, the consultation with Popak's firm is free. Give him a call. See if you have a case. It's thepopakfirm.com, thepopakfirm.com, or you can call 877-POPAKAF, P-O-P-O-K-A-F. So 1-877-P-O-P-O-K-A-F. Give Michael Popak a call. And I'm really proud of you, Popak. Thanks for all the hard work you're putting in.

12:22Michael Popok:That brings us to the criminal investigation. Is it really over or is it closed but not closed? Well, Janine Pirro said, I'm going to close it, but there's no official closeout memo, which is what I would require as a defense lawyer in order to find that it really is closed. It said, she said, I'm leaving the lid open while the inspector general does his work and then come back to me. Even Donald Trump had this to say about the investigation. Play the clip. Mr. President, speaking of the Fed, would you like to see Janine Pirro drop the investigation and determine Powell to help? Senator Tillis has basically said that, you know, he's not going to really be working with the administration to offer a war.

13:04So would you like to see the investigation? No, I'm just going to take it to the end and see. Like you're doing a small renovation, and they've spent almost$4 billion doing a small renovation. I'm doing buildings. I built a hotel, the Waldorf it's called and uh I did it for around 200 million dollars is a much bigger job they're spending almost it could be four billion dollars I'll tell you what I don't even see an engine say I feel bad badly for the new Fed chairman because he may not have an office for four years I don't know what these people are doing so it's either gross incompetence or it's theft of some kind or kickbacks I don't know what it is but Janine Pirro is incredible and she'll figure it out.

13:47But no, you want to take it and just find out what happened because we can't go around doing a renovation of a small little complex, very small, a couple of little buildings and spend billions and billions of dollars on it. Something went wrong. We have to find out what it was.

14:03Michael Popok:Which is the reason that I'm sure the next piece of paper filed by the very competent lawyers for Jay Powell, the Federal Reserve, are going to say to the judge, look, this administration has a very long list of vindictive prosecutions they want to go after. They're still going after people from 2017 and 2018, for God's sakes. They're going after, they're starting an investigation against Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Infectious, the NIH, related to COVID. So no, it's not good enough that there was a social media post about a closed filing. In fact, you would think that to support the motion to vacate this memorandum, right, that was just filed, that I'm going to read to you from, that Janine Pirro herself or her assistant would file an affidavit or declaration under oath that they are dismissing and closing the indictment, never, this particular one, never to be resurrected.

15:05Michael Popok:But they don't even do that. And that speaks volumes. They want the judge to rely on a social media post of Janine Pirro that you just saw saying, yeah, for now, I'm not going to prosecute. Forget it. The thing should stay, the order should stay on the books. It should be law of the case. And it should be used and perhaps even an estoppel moment against any future prosecution of J-Pell. This is even, even in their motion that they just filed, they're still fighting with Judge Bozberg. It said on page one, the court concluded that the dominant purpose of the subpoenas was to harass and pressure Jerome Powell of the Federal Reserve.

15:45Michael Popok:On April 24th, the United States Attorney announced her intention by social media post to close the grand jury investigation. Her intention, by the way, even there, it doesn't say that it is closed. It just says she announced her intention. And then, oh, by the way, the grand jury went out of business, so don't worry. This is pretty weak tea. Here's where you would, if you really wanted to win this, you'd put in an affidavit from her sworn under oath by Jeanine Pirro. By not doing that, the reason they don't want to do it is they don't want to have an argument of what's called estoppel, where J-Powell's lawyers come back and wave it around in their face.

16:23Michael Popok:So they want their cake and eat it too. It says, you know, we don't agree. We would have moved to appeal because the judge did some extraordinary things. Here's what it says on page four. And this is now arguing on the merits. The court's decision to quash the subpoenas implicates important separation of powers concerns. Conducting federal criminal investigations is the special province of the executive. OK, accordingly, grand juries and federal prosecutors are entitled to strong presumptions of regularity. Not this one, not based on Donald Trump then going after Jay Powell. For that, they say, well, that violates the First Amendment of Donald Trump.

17:04Michael Popok:It says on page five, the court attributed President Trump's public statements to the United States Attorney's decision to open the grand jury investigation. In support, the court cited at least 100 statements over the many years criticizing Powell. They just write it off this way. Some presidents have a more acidic pen and pugnacious style than others. But it cannot be that the president effectively forfeits his constitutional authority to faithfully execute the criminal laws anymore if he's been especially critical of a target or a witness. Yeah, I don't think that's how that works. So here's what I think that the chief judge does after he sees the other side's brief.

17:50Michael Popok:He rejects it for the reasons that I'm outlining. The investigation is not properly closed. There's only an intention at best expressed in a social media post. If she really wanted to convince the court, they would have filed an affidavit, sworn testimony, and they didn't. And therefore, I'm not closing. I'm not granting the motion to vacate. Those orders stay on the books to protect the innocent, which is where we should be. 10 days left in Jay Powell's term as chair stays on until the end of 2028, which of course is burning up Donald Trump's backside. But that's the point. The independence of the Federal Reserve was what was at stake and judges like Chief Bozberg protected it.

18:33Michael Popok:I'm Michael Popok. You're on Legal AF and Midas Touch. Take a minute and hit the free subscribe button in both YouTube channels as we continue to grow our pro-democracy network. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popok.

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