Trump Indictment Instantly Crumbles Under Scrutiny

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1:56Michael Popok:In breaking news and an update, we've got the actual indictment against Letitia James, the New York Attorney General by Donald Trump's Department of Justice, particularly his hand-picked prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan. And it's worse than we thought. And the dirty little hands of Bill Pulte, the Nepo baby who heads up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for Donald Trump, is all over. It reeks of Bill Pulteism. And I'm going to tell you why that's a good thing for Letitia James, who's fighting back. She's not sitting around waiting. She's already issued her video and told the world, you know, these two counts of purported mortgage fraud where she's alleged to get ready for all this, people.

2:37Michael Popok:We're going to be spending tens of millions of dollars to prosecute Letitia James because she allegedly took$18 ,000 benefit over 30 years in a mortgage because she bought a home in Virginia and she declared it to be her second home when it's really her rental property. So she got a cut in the amount of the interest rate, which over time totals$18 ,000. Does it have to do with that? Or does it have to do with the fact that Letitia James was successful in bringing a$465 million judgment against Donald Trump civilly for fraud? You be the judge. But let's hear, you're here on the Midas Touch Network, I'm Michael Popak and Legal AF.

3:21Michael Popok:Let's hear from Letitia James. This is nothing more than a continuation of the president's desperate weaponization of our justice system. He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General. These charges are baseless, and the president's own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost. The president's actions are a grave violation of our constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of both parties. His decision to fire a United States attorney who refused to bring charges against me and replace them with someone who is blindly loyal not to the law but to the president is antithetical to the bedrock principles of our country.

4:20This is the time for leaders on both sides of the aisle to speak out against this blatant perversion of our system of justice. I stand strongly behind my office's litigation against the Trump Organization. We conducted a two-year investigation based on the facts and evidence not politics. Judges have upheld the trial court's finding that Donald Trump, his company, and his two sons are liable for fraud. I'm a proud woman of faith, and I know that faith and fear cannot share the same space. And so today I'm not fearful. I'm fearless. And as my faith teaches me, no weapon formed against me shall prosper.

5:17We will fight these baseless charges aggressively. And my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights. And I will continue to do my job.

5:30Michael Popok:All right. I've had time now to go through the indictment. But Lindsay Halligan is the only one to have signed it. There's her little, there it is. There's her John Hancock, Lindsay Halligan, United States Attorney. Are you? Because one of the first moves I'm sure Abby Lowell, the lawyer for Letitia James, is going to make is to move to dismiss and to disqualify Lindsay Halligan as an illegally appointed U.S. attorney. But that is for another hot take. Let's look at this first and why Bill Pulte, the Nepo baby billionaire who bought his position on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the son of the Pulte family, Mark Pulte, the Pulte construction fortune.

6:12Michael Popok:He's the one that's been sending out half-assed, half-baked, framed allegations of mortgage fraud. Adam Schiff, mortgage fraud. Lisa Cook, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, mortgage fraud. Letitia James, mortgage fraud. So you've got Donald Trump ordering Lindsay Allegan through Pam Bondi to bring this prosecution. We'll throw that up on the screen. And now you've got the indictment. Now, as I said earlier, Elizabeth Yussi, who was or is currently, at least the time of this recording, the major crimes unit prosecutor chief in the Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk, Virginia. she let it be known in the last 72 hours she's not prosecuting this case.

6:57Michael Popok:That there's no there there. That there's no crime here. There's no ability for a prosecutor on probable cause to sustain a conviction through appeal. And when I read to you from the indictment, you're going to know why. And I'm going to post the indictment on Legal AF Substack so you can read it for yourself. Letitia James was a resident of Brooklyn, New York, and a borrower on a mortgage for a property in Norfolk, Virginia. Okay? she borrowed from a bank called OVM, Old Virginia Mortgage. Okay. And then Old Virginia Mortgage sold her loan to another bank. So far, where's the fraud? The fraud is, they say, that when she bought the house, okay, she said to the bank, the original bank that doesn't own it anymore, that it was a second home for her, but she ended up renting it out to a family of three.

7:50Okay.

7:50Michael Popok:and that the bank gave her some low interest rate. They gave her 3 % instead of 3.83%. And the difference is 18 ,000 over 30 years. Like Letitia James was going to ruin her career and commit mortgage fraud to save 18 grand over 30. Who believes that? That's the Bill Pulte dirty fingerprints all over this with his language. I could just see it now. Paragraph eight, this misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms. This is not Lindsay Halligan's writing. Not available for investment properties, including a note rate of 3%, avoiding a 0.815 % higher comparable investment property rate of 3.815%, resulting in approximately$17 ,837 in rate savings over the life of the loan.

8:42Michael Popok:Thanks, Bill Pulte. Are you now the U.S. attorney for Eastern District of Virginia. Count one. By the way, that loan got sold off and they claim that the loan on paragraph 11, the loan was acquired by a bank that she had no relationship with called First Savings Bank so they couldn't have been defrauded, but they were exposed to risk associated with the misrepresented loan. What's the risk? They're holding a loan that is being paid by a borrower named the New York Attorney General, Letitia James. What's the risk? It's a rental property. See, the theory is that people won't default on their first homes or maybe their second homes, but they'll default on their rental properties.

9:26Michael Popok:I don't think that's true at all. I think if you have a rental property, you have money coming in, it's paying for the mortgage. You're less likely to default. I think that's what the studies show. Put that aside for a minute. So the bank that currently holds the loan, this first savings bank, didn't make the loan. So they couldn't have been defrauded by any misrepresentations by Letitia James. And now we know from reporting that's been an evidence that's already been sent out to the media by Abby Lowell, the lawyer for Letitia James. She didn't even sign the papers. They say in the indictment on paragraph 14 that on or about August 7th, 2020 through January 2024, she executed and attempted to execute a scheme to defraud OVM Financial and First Savings Bank.

10:16I thought they said at the beginning of the indictment that OVM sold the loan to another bank.

10:27Michael Popok:So if they sold the loan to another bank, how were they? How was she still defrauding them? And and the new evidence is she didn't execute the papers. She had a niece in Virginia with the power of attorney because I think her father lives there who executed the papers. So she didn't even execute the papers. And there's nobody at the bank, the first bank, that's going to declare that she committed fraud that they didn't know this was a rental property at the time. In order to commit a crime, not every bad act is a crime, by the way, even if you did it, even if she did it, you have to show criminal intent, mens rea, criminal mind.

11:08Michael Popok:What's the criminal mind? She intentionally checked the wrong box to save like$500 a year? I don't really understand how that's the crime. count one bank fraud count two false statements to a financial institution which is really just a redress of the other and then a forfeiture notice you'll have to forfeit the$18 ,000 now this the forfeiture notice that is a direct retaliation against Letitia James for the$468 million disgorgement order that she got from Judge Angora in New York against Donald Trump and all of his family, because she calculated with Judge Angor on how much they saved from cheating on their taxes and pumping up their net worth and lying on financial forms to banks.

12:01Michael Popok:And they calculated that at$468 million. And disgorgement is like forfeiture. So of course, they added a forfeiture. This indictment is not worth the paper it is written on. The judge has already been assigned to the case. That's the new reporting as well. We've got Jamar Walker. Let me tell you about Jamar Walker. Biden appointee, worked for Covington and Burling, a major firm, clerked federally, and for about eight years was a prosecutor, wait for it, in the Eastern District of Virginia, the same prosecutor's office that's turning its back on Lindsey Allegan. Jamar Walker is now is great. I won't even mention, although I will, that he's African-American.

12:43Michael Popok:It has nothing to do with it. I'm just telling you that if we're getting, as free-thinking people, crappy draws in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Trump cases about the National Guard, we're getting a lot of Trump. We're getting great judges picked in the Eastern District of Virginia. We got Judge Namikoff, who's the judge appointed by Biden for Comey. We got two Biden judges on top of these phony indictments. You couldn't ask for better. Chef's kiss to the random gods that selected these judges. What's going to happen? She already has counsel. You see, she's fired up piss and vinegar. And they're going to be filing, I think even faster than Comey, a motion to dismiss for prosecutorial abuse, for a vindictive prosecution, for retaliatory prosecution, for selective prosecution.

13:35Michael Popok:Nobody gets prosecuted for this in the Eastern District of Virginia because there's no crime there. That's why Liz Yussi let it leak out, I'm sure, that she was not recommending an indictment. She knew there was a grand jury coming up on Thursday and she wanted this out the door first. And this will be used by Abby Lowell for Letitia James to get this indictment dismissed. the vindictive prosecution is easy. There is nobody who Donald Trump has attacked more than Letitia James. He's even gone so far as I'll just I'm going to show you one clip of him attacking her. Let's play the clip. I can say unrelated to that.

14:19She's a disaster for New York. She's a horrible, horrible human being. And I think she's a total crook. There's no question about it. But that's just my opinion. Pam's going to have to do what she wants. She's a very bad person. She's a very, very, very bad person who campaigned solely on I'm going to get Donald Trump over and over again. She's a sick person. But that has nothing to do with what Pam does. Pam is going to do what's right. She always does. I've known her all along. He's even gone so

14:47Michael Popok:far as to call her a racial slur. No, it wasn't the N word, but it was close. He used to call her, he didn't call her Jigaboo, but he called her Peekaboo James, which is not even a thing, except if it's close relationship and sound alike to a terrible racist comment. So and his whole family got a judge to be fraudsters, courtesy of Letitia James. She worked hand in glove with the New York, the Manhattan DA's office that successfully prosecuted Donald Trump and his organizations, not once but twice, and got a 34 felony count conviction and a 19 felony count conviction against Donald Trump with Letitia James in the background.

15:32Michael Popok:This is vindictive prosecution writ large. I'm going to continue to follow it all right here as this story continues with the arraignment on Midas Touch and Legal AF. Take a moment, hit the subscribe button here, subscribe button on Legal AF YouTube, and come over to Legal AF, the sub stack where you will be able to read the indictment. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF sub stack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the sub stack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF.

16:12Michael Popok:What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Wear Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe. Hey, Chicagoland, the Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Eden's Plaza and Wilmette. Finally, you can feel the fabric, sit on the sectionals, and even open the refrigerators. Plus, our in-store designers will help you bring it all together with free one-on-one design support for any project on any budget. Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe? So what are you waiting for?

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