Trump Revenge Plot against CIA Director hits Brick Wall

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3:28Michael Popok:Looks like it's a bad day for Donald Trump and his Department of Justice as they are scrambling to try to figure out a way to get John Brennan, former CIA director under Barack Obama indicted. We thought they were trying to do that as part of a grand conspiracy targeted investigation in Florida to try to use Judge Aileen Cannon and her grand jury there to do it. But now based on new reporting, it looks like they're trying to do it and they're going to have to do it in the District of Columbia because that is where if any purported crime was committed, it would have been committed when John Brennan testified before Congress that the CIA and the intelligence community believed that the Iranians and Russians were working behind the scenes to try to get Donald Trump elected.

4:12Michael Popok:By the way, Donald Trump got elected. But if it's in the District of Columbia grand jury, then Donald Trump and his Department of Justice have two problems. One, the grand jury, which has not been keen on indicting Donald Trump's political enemies recently or at all and have rejected indictments. And if that doesn't do it, There's a guy by the name of Chief Judge Jeb Bosberg, who's responsible for all things grand jury in the District of Columbia. He just killed and quashed a criminal investigation against Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, finding that the predominant reason for the prosecution was not a legitimate law enforcement goal, but rather to harass and to vindictively go after a political enemy of Donald Trump.

5:03Michael Popok:So if it's true based on the new reporting that at the last minute, in the last few hours, the Department of Justice in Washington has decided to withdraw subpoenas that had been issued over the weekend to drag witnesses before a D.C. grand jury, it looks like the Department of Justice, the gang that can't shoot straight, is scrambling here to try to figure it all out. They just brought in Joe DiGenova, an 81-year-old former Reagan U.S. attorney who was on Donald Trump's interference with the peaceful transfer of power team back in 2020 for about a minute and a half. They brought him in to be a special attorney to help run things, along with Jason Redding Quinones, the U.S.

5:48Michael Popok:attorney in Southern District of Florida based in Miami. And they added to the team, wait for it, yes, Aileen Cannon's former law clerk from 2024. Come on down. Christopher James DeLorenz. In fact, we have a photo that Todd Blanche just posted. Yes, I spotted you, Mr. DeLorenz, from your photo on LinkedIn. You're standing there all smiling and giddy with Mr. DeGeneva. I'm going to catch you up on everything, Brennan. But look, the takeaway here for this hot take is Jeb Bosberg is going to be opposed to the Trump administration once again. they already say he's a leftist, Marxist, radicalist, non-elected federal judge.

6:30Michael Popok:All I know is he's a federal judge that has the brass ones, the courage and the independence to take on the Trump administration. And I think he'll do it again when it comes to the John Brennan attempted indictment. While John Brennan's lawyers, who are already in place, are waiting to see, it's like dodgeball, waiting to see which grand jury is attempted to indict him. If he gets indicted, I think he goes into court with a motion to dismiss for a vindictive prosecution right away. And having DeGeneva on the team is only going to support their vindictive prosecution motion. I'll tell you why right here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF.

7:07Michael Popok:I'm Michael Popak. Thank you first for your support. We swept the awards at the Webby's. Legal AF, the podcast, won two Webby Awards. My podcast, The Intersection, won the People's Voice Award for Best New News Podcast, and it's all because of our fervent support by our community, which we appreciate. Let's get down to the top story. The top headline that I read in the last couple hours coming out of the New York Times and other places was the subpoenas rescinded, grand jury subpoenas rescinded against John Brennan. But there's a story beneath the story, and I think that's why you come here to Midas touch in legal AF.

7:46Michael Popok:Let me give it to you from my legal experience, having handled federal cases, including against the Department of Justice, for a lot of my career. Okay. The original reporting is that Maria Meditas Long, who was the assistant U.S. attorney, head of the National Security Division in Miami, was running this case until she told her bosses in Washington and Jason Redding Kenyotis in Miami that she was not going to bring an indictment against Sean Brennan. Now remember, she's the expert. She's the career prosecutor. And she, like many career prosecutors, said no. Now, she's been reassigned. You know what that means in Trump world.

8:27Michael Popok:She's not long for her career, no pun intended. So she gets moved out. She was in discussions, apparently, as she should have been, with witnesses to testify for or against John Brennan. It's hard to tell. You have to do your homework. You have to do your due diligence as a prosecutor working with the FBI. You bring in witnesses long before you consider bringing them into the grand jury. You have to know what they're going to say. You don't want it to backfire on you. You don't want it to blow up in your face. There's an old line about lawyering, never ask a question you don't know the answer to.

9:04Michael Popok:You don't want to find out for the first time their testimony is favorable to John Brennan because then you wouldn't use those witnesses. Plus, these intelligence community representatives have top secret and classified information and clearances. They can't just talk about things out loud about the Russia collusion or Iranian interference without violating the Espionage Act. So you get all that sorted out before you go into a grand jury. And she apparently was in those negotiations. And some of those people from the intelligence community, presumably that work with John Brennan were willing to come in.

9:39Michael Popok:She gets fired. Interviews get canceled. Okay. Now, John Brennan, the crime that he purportedly did is that in 2023, talking about a 2017 intelligence community assessment, he told Congress and the House Judiciary Committee or Oversight Committee, he told them that they had credible evidence to believe that the Russians, the Iranians and the Chinese were trying to influence our elections to get on behalf of Donald Trump. Now, there was also this thing called the Steele dossier. Michael Steele, now completely discredited a British journalist. I don't know what he was. Somehow the Steele dossier got created, said some pretty salacious things about Donald Trump, his bathroom habits and his sex appetite, which has been discredited.

10:26Michael Popok:But the intelligence community didn't need the Steele dossier. They already had all of the other background information intelligence information that they needed to make their assessment. That same assessment was backed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was headed at the time by Marco Rubio, the current Secretary of State. So what is the crime? He testified knowingly about the intelligence assessment. Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. It's honestly kind of scary how easy it is today to find someone's personal information online.

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11:51Michael Popok:The New York Times Wirecutter has named DeleteMe their top pick for data removal services. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete.me. Now at a special discount for our listeners, get 20 % off your Delete.me plan when you go to joindeliteme.com slash legal AF and use promo code legal AF at checkout. The only way to get 20 % off is to go to joindeliteme.com slash legal AF and enter code LEGALAF at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com slash LEGALAF, code LEGALAF. That's the basis. They got five years to bring some sort of criminal case against him. It started in Miami, in Florida, with the Southern District of Florida, headed by Jason Redding Quinones.

12:39Michael Popok:They added to the team this guy, Christopher James D. Lorenz, we've showed you the photo, who used to be Cannon, Judge Cannon's law clerk, during the Mar-a-Lago espionage case. Oh, I wonder why he was added to the team. Right. So he's added to the team. Then they bring in Joe DiGenova. Now, Joe DiGenova is MAGA MAGA to his core. He was added to the elite fighter squadron in 2020 by Donald Trump to what has been referred to as Team Crazy, which was headed by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. He didn't last long. My gut, he didn't get along with Rudy Giuliani. And he didn't really get out of the starting blocks.

13:17Michael Popok:But he went on on news shows and he, in fact, attacked John Brennan, the guy he's the special attorney prosecutor for now, as being a traitor in 2018. Here's the clip of him saying exactly that on Hannity. Play it. Now I look at a guy like Brennan happened on his watch. I think he probably knew all about the dossier. His involvement in this is going to be very interesting. Do we really want to live in a country where the Senate leader on the Democratic side says you better not ever say anything bad about the intel community? Because they'll get you. Sean, I want to talk about two people. We only have so much time.

13:57John Brennan and Leon Panetta. John Brennan is a traitor. And I'll tell you why. He's the real traitor. What he did and what he has said recently about the president of the United States is despicable. He is personally responsible for the leaking of unmasked information. He was responsible for the sharing of false information to U.S. intelligence sources to get FISA warrants. He is personally responsible for the sharing of false information with American intelligence agencies. And he, I challenge him to a debate at the National Press Club for one hour, two hour, three hours about his role in the entire pre-election.

14:35Michael Popok:So do you think this guy's independent, an independent special counsel going after John Brennan? Or has he got an axe to grind as a political hack? That's where we are there. Take him, take Cannon's law clerk, put him all together in a barrel of monkeys, and you've got the prosecution of John Brennan. Now, if I'm John Brennan's lawyers, I'm waiting patiently for them to try to get this indictment in the District of Columbia because it looks like it's now shifted there. Why is it shifted there? Because if there's a crime that's been committed, it got committed in the D.C., and that's the situs or the locus of the crime, that's where you have to bring the case.

15:11Michael Popok:So you can use grand juries in other places like in Miami if there's witnesses there to develop documents and other things, but the indictment has got to come out of the place where the person committed the purported crime. That's a big problem for Donald Trump because that grand jury is presided over by Chief Judge Jeb Bozberg. That's the judge three weeks ago that tossed the criminal investigation against Jay Powell on the Federal Reserve, finding that this was nothing more than Donald Trump trying to bash Jay Powell to resign, to lower interest rates, had nothing to do with a legitimate crime that was committed in the district.

15:51Michael Popok:And they have not appealed that as of now. I'm surprised they haven't, but they haven't. that's that's if the the chief judge steps in and intercedes as the gatekeeper and kills a criminal case which is very unusual but it did just happen before that about a month before that janine pirro who is the u.s attorney for the district of columbia she failed and she she's failed about a dozen times already to get a grand jury in the district of columbia to indict Donald Trump's political enemies in the most recent past, when she tried to indict six members of Congress, including two senators, because they made a 90-second instructional video to tell the troops not to comply with illegal, unconstitutional orders.

16:37Michael Popok:Donald Trump didn't like that, tried to bring indictments against them, and the grand jury said, you know, raspberries. No. Okay? That's a legal term. So the grand jury, which is about 22 or 23 people, you've got to get a majority to indict, is coming out of the community pool, if you will, of D.C., a city that has hated the Trump administration since before he tried to make it a militarized zone and send in the National Guard to do a wholesale takeover of the District of Columbia. These are the same voters, you know, academics, liberals, moderates, locals, public workers, home health care workers, nurses, doctors, students, and they don't like the Trump administration.

17:23Michael Popok:Good luck getting a majority of a grand jury in the District of Columbia to indict John Brennan. Now, I know people get indicted all the time. You know, we just had yesterday an indictment in Alabama of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a moderate to left wing organization that goes after hate and hate crimes. so that in particular you know going undercover to try to break up extremist groups that now just got them indicted in the Trump world but good luck in the District of Columbia you're gonna have to get through a grand jury you're gonna have to get through Jeb Bozberg and I'm sure at some point Trump's gonna try to take out Jeb Bozberg argue that he should be recused that he's always against the Trump administration, try to find them in contempt once.

18:13Michael Popok:They already tried to impeach him. They tried to file a judicial complaint against him, which failed. So this is coming to a head and it's going to come to a head over John Brennan, the CIA director. So we're going to continue to follow what's going on. We know there's 150 subpoenas that are out there for members of the intelligence community. We know that former FBI director James Comey is part of that, but hasn't gone in yet. And if I'm the lawyers for Brennan, I'm just waiting to see if the, I might even move now to quash subpoenas through Jeb Boesberg and try it one more time or wait for the indictment, move to dismiss it for vindictive prosecution.

18:57Michael Popok:I mean, that's not unusual. Letitia James raised vindictive prosecution about her attorney as Attorney General of New York in her mortgage fraud indictments that were brought against her. So did former FBI Director James Comey. And we're waiting for Judge Crenshaw to rule on Armando Abrego Garcia's vindictive prosecution motion to dismiss his indictment. That was the guy that was whisked off in the middle of the night to the torture prisons of El Salvador without due process. And he's got a very good case, you know, because when you think of the Department of Justice, you think vindictive prosecution almost automatically.

19:35Michael Popok:I'll continue to follow it all right here on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel. We have 12 new videos every day. Legal AF, the sub stack, where I do a live every day at 1230 along with other content you can't find anywhere else. And then of course I do my videos here on Midas Touch. So until my next report, this is Michael. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF.

20:16Michael 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. Where? Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

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