Trump Fumes as Prosecutor Abruptly Quits and Derails Investigation

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0:29Michael Popok:Well, there goes the grand conspiracy investigation that was being run out of Florida by the Department of Justice and Todd Blanche in front of Judge Aileen Cannon. You know, that grand jury that's been impattled for almost six months to eight months going after political critics of Donald Trump. Let's let's try to indict John O 'Brennan, the CIA director, or Barack Obama himself. Let's do it in front of Judge Aileen Cannon in a one-judge town in Fort Pierce, Florida. Why don't we? Why don't we use Joe DiGenova? Joe DiGenova was a lawyer who was handpicked by Todd Blanch and Pam Bondi to run the grand conspiracy investigation.

1:15Michael Popok:He's 81 years old. He used to be a U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia back in the Reagan era, And he's been a fierce critic of everybody on the left. In fact, he's about as far away from an independent-minded prosecutor as possible, spending the latter part of his career going on Fox News and Newsmax and Lara Trump show, going after the left. And now he's quit. And this is the second time that Joe DiGenova has quit on Donald Trump. He was originally in the first Trump administration, hired along with Rudy Giuliani to join the team. It ended up being referred to as Team Crazy in order to try to get Donald Trump back into power after he lost the 2020 election.

2:01Michael Popok:At some point, either Joe DiGenova thought Rudy Giuliani was too crazy or vice versa, but Joe DiGenova quit and was no longer on the team to try to run any of those 70 lawsuits alleging voter fraud in which Donald Trump won not one of them. So DeGeneva quits early on in the Trump era. They then resurface him. He gets picked, I think, through the Anti-Weaponization Committee and Ed Martin and Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche to go run up to Fort Pierce, Florida, and run a grand conspiracy investigation and a potential indictment out of a grand jury. but we're like six, eight months into that grand jury.

2:46Michael Popok:And we've heard dozens of people have testified or been subpoenaed and yet no indictment. Now, there's a lot of problems with the grand jury approach to this grand conspiracy. One of them being it's the wrong location. We know why they picked Aileen Cannon. She's running for the United States Supreme Court. She's one of Donald Trump's favorite judges. She bailed him out of Mar-a-Lago. She's the only judge in Fort Pierce, so she presides over that grand jury. I get that part. But what's the connection between Florida and the alleged crimes? There has to be, under the Supreme Court precedent, there has to be a connection between Florida and those crimes.

3:26Michael Popok:What is it? Donald Brennan didn't live there. Barack Obama didn't live there. The crimes alleged and weren't committed there. How do you get any of those people in this grand conspiracy approach? And maybe that's what Joe DiGenova thought. Now, Joe DiGenova was obviously picked because he's a partisan hack to go after these political critics of Donald Trump. Here's a clip of Joe DiGenova going after somebody like John O 'Brennan, who he was later prosecuting. Play the clip of Joe DiGenova. Joe, what does the impressive scope of this new probe initiated by Barr tell us tonight? James Comey, Brennan and Clapper have said to themselves, which one of us is going to pay the Barr bill?

4:18The Barr bill is coming due. And Durham's appointment means that the already occurred meetings between the attorney general, the CIA director and the director of national intelligence have now focused on a laser that the core of this conspiracy began with John Brennan and ends with John Brennan in London and D.C. and the Democratic National Committee. This is very serious business. Right.

4:47Michael Popok:And so Todd Blanche at a press conference after he picked Joe DiGenova was asked, what does that say about his independence? How could he possibly ethically cross over and be the prosecutor when he's got such strong opinions about John O 'Brennan? And here's Todd Blanche's response. And then I also wanted to ask a follow-up on Joe DiGenova. You know, looking back, he's been very vocal over the years about his thoughts about the 2016 investigation, about the intelligence assessment. One quote that he said in an article in 2020 was, There's no doubt John Brennan was the primogenitor of this entire counterintelligence investigation.

5:25It was John Brennan who went to James Comey and basically pummeled him into starting a counterintelligence investigation against Trump. Brennan's at the heart of this. Given those prior statements, isn't there possibly a conflict of interest or at the very least a perceived conflict of interest having him oversee this investigation? And has he been vetted for conflicts prior to being hired at the Justice Department? I don't know. I'm not sure what the conflict of interest would be because somebody has said something in the past about a particular matter. That doesn't create a conflict necessarily.

6:00That's not what the conflicts are designed to for just that. And I think... It creates a sense of bias, doesn't it? Like he's coming into the investigation with preconceived views about a target of your investigation. Isn't that a problem? I mean, I just completely disagree with the premise. I mean, look, if you look at what happened during the president's investigations, there were prosecutors that were actively involved in the 2016 information with Barr and what AG Barr was doing. They readily joined the case, and one of them was actually stood up in court. So I don't think it's unusual, and it's not something that, sure, he has to make sure that he's doing everything ethically.

6:40I'm sure that he would. He has to make sure that everything he's doing is not in conflict with whatever rules, the rules that we have in this building. But the mere fact that he has spoken about his perception, he didn't have access to grand jury information. He didn't have access to witnesses. And so, like any prosecutor, I expect that he will follow the facts, and those facts come from witnesses and grand jury information. All right. Thanks a lot, guys. I appreciate it.

7:08Michael Popok:Exactly. So, did it shock me that Joe DiGenova is out now? No. But it just shows you the crumbling of the Department of Justice. This grand conspiracy prosecution should never have been started, and investigation should never have been started. under the Department of Justice Emanuel, under the principles of federal prosecution. There is no merit to the prosecution. I think the grand jury up in Fort Pierce, Florida has figured that out as well. If weight loss has felt like a losing battle, skip the guesswork and try Weight Loss by HIMSS. HIMSS offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wagovi pill and the Wagovi pen.

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8:47Michael Popok:I mean, you've got Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., who has famously tried to get indictments against people like Donald Trump's critics in the House and the Senate, tried to indict members of the House and the Senate. And the grand jury in D.C. said no. And she had to eventually admit that she was going to dismiss all of that. He's not happy with her on the reflecting pool where she's dismissed the indictment against Davey Hearn. There's been talk that she's on the chopping block to be fired. At the same time, Ed Martin, who had run the Anti-Weaponization Committee, he quit in the last couple of weeks.

9:28Michael Popok:He resigned. And now you've got Joe DiGenova running as fast away from the wreckage of the Department of Justice as possible. So we're going to continue to follow it all. Here's what I think is going to happen next. Blanche is going to be forced to appoint somebody else. And I'm not sure who that somebody else is. But certainly there's somebody in the MAGA world who will try to satisfy Donald Trump's desire to use this Florida grand jury to try to seek these indictments. But look, we're two years into this administration. Donald Trump went after Senator Adam Schiff in California almost immediately for alleged mortgage fraud.

10:09Michael Popok:Not one indictment. He went after Letitia James, New York attorney general, twice. And she hasn't been successfully indicted. He went after James Comey, former FBI director. His first indictment was dismissed. His second indictment, because he posted an adoring social media post about seashells on the beach that they say was a threat against the president, that's about to get dismissed. So things have not been going well when Donald Trump has his Department of Justice go after his political enemies. And 81-year-old Joe DiGenova said, you know what? I don't need this. I'm going to go back to my private practice.

10:53Michael Popok:And I think it's also a reflection that even he doesn't believe that there is a grand conspiracy. So we're going to continue to follow it as these shoes drop in the Department of Justice, not letting them off the hook here on Midas Touch and on Legal AF. Take a minute, by the way, and come over to the YouTube channel for Legal AF. We are 1 ,230 ,000 strong. Our birthday, our actual birthday is in six days. Two years on planet Earth, 800 million views, 1.23 million subscribers strong. Join us today and help us continue to fight for democracy as we head into the midterms and beyond. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popak.

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