Trump Sends DOJ After His Victims

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2:53Michael Popok:Well, if you're wondering who could be more unethical and corrupt as a Department of Justice head than Pam Bondi, I think we now have our answer. It is Todd Blanche, who will stop at nothing but to appease Donald Trump and go after his perceived political enemies. He's doing it at a rapid pace in a way that would make even Pam Bondi blush. And now we've got the latest example. An investigation has been opened in Chicago by criminal prosecutors against E. Jean Carroll, who won, not one, but two sex abuse and defamation federal cases against Donald Trump, ones that the Supreme Court doesn't look like they want to touch with a 10-foot pole, proving that he not only sexually, Donald Trump not only sexually abused E.

3:41Michael Popok:Jean Carroll, but then defamed her. She's got$100 million worth of judgments in her back pocket. She's got two separate juries, 18-0, that believed her story over any cockamamie story of Donald Trump. A series of people who were sex abuse victims testified in those cases. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed it and found no reversible error. And on the issue that they are using to try to besmirch the reputation of E. Jean Carroll. And I think her lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, who I know well has been on the show with us a number of times, I think she should bring another defamation case. Because now they're claiming that E.

4:23Michael Popok:Jean Carroll didn't understand the economic finances around her lawsuit and who was paying for the costs, not the fees, who was paying for the costs in an indirect way. Are you kidding me? You can count on no hands and no fingers the amount of times that the Department of Justice sticks its nose in and does a criminal investigation or prosecution of somebody about an arcane issue of litigation finance that came up in a civil lawsuit. This isn't about the civil rights of Donald Trump. What's next? Todd Blanche, I'm asking you, are you now going to go after the Epstein survivors and victims and prosecute them?

5:09Michael Popok:This is just an elaborate tryout by Todd Blanche, who is bringing prosecutions against Donald Trump's perceived enemies at a record pace. even Pam Bondi wouldn't bring the seashell indictment against FBI Director James Comey even she wouldn't bring the indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center the leading anti-hate group in America but Todd Blanche has along with the 1776 fund to give money to people that beat up on police and now we're looking into E. Jean Carroll and if anybody out there actually believes, and you can put it in notes here, that Todd Blanche has recused himself from the investigation because he was one of Donald Trump's personal lawyers against E.

6:00Michael Popok:Jean Carroll in that very civil case about sex abuse. Tell me in comments that you really believe that story because that's what they've announced. Now, the issue, by the way, I'm Michael Popok, you're on Midas Touch and Legal AF. The issue that it's at the heart of the matter has already been fully vetted, litigated. Donald Trump got more than his day in court on it. He got multiple days in court on it. At some point during the original deposition of E. Jean Carroll in 2022 by Alina Habba, she was asked if anybody else was funding her lawsuit. Now, we all know from the trial and from reporting that Robbie Kaplan's law firm took the case on a contingency fee.

6:51Michael Popok:I take cases on contingency fee. That means only if there is a recovery does the lawyer get a fee, and it's a percentage of the total recovery. That's it. No recovery, no fee, despite how much money or time the lawyer may have invested. That's attorney's fees. Separately, there's something called costs, which is sort of what it sounds like. It's the cost. It's the court reporters. It's the copy services. It's the electronic data management people. It is experts, economic experts, or accident reconstruction experts, or psychological, emotional experts, whatever it is that relates to liability or damage in a case.

7:30Michael Popok:And they're expensive. You're talking about it could be a half a million to a million dollars in experts. Sometimes under the fee arrangement with a client, you'll have a deal where the lawyer says, you know what, I think this is a good case. I'm gonna lay out the money myself and I'll get the recovery on the cost upfront if we win. If we don't, I'm out of pocket. Sometimes, I've done this as well, you have the plaintiff participate in the cost, skid in the game. Maybe they're wealthy, maybe they have money. So you have them contribute. In the case of Robbie Kaplan, because her law firm did a lot of public interest work, a lot of free pro bono work or contingency fee work.

8:10Michael Popok:She needed a way to defray costs for her relatively small firm. Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn fame, he founded LinkedIn, contributed apparently, according to Robbie's office, contributed money to be used to defray costs for these cases that Robbie Kaplan would take on. So she wasn't underwater or upside down in the cases. That's between Robbie and Reid Hoffman. The fact that the, I mean, I'm sure Robbie told E. Jean Carroll somewhere in an agreement somewhere or in passing about the arrangement. But that doesn't mean that the, you know, this 82-year-old plaintiff would remember that necessarily. It's complicated.

8:53Michael Popok:So she was asked. She denied it. About a week or two later, right before the trial, Robbie Kaplan, as an officer of the court, informed Judge Kaplan, no relation, that E.G. Carroll didn't quite understand the economics, that there was a fund contributed by this guy's charity, Reid Hoffman out of Chicago, and that part of that cost defrayment came out of that fund for her case. Judge says, okay, great. I'll give one more deposition to Donald Trump. Bring it back to me. Let me see if you can convince me this is relevant to the trial or her credibility. They went through the deposition. Judge reviewed it and said, nope, not coming into the trial.

9:34Michael Popok:Doesn't do anything to undermine her credibility. It's a very arcane issue about economics of a law engagement not coming in. That actually got appealed by Donald Trump. He did multiple appeals in the two separate E. Gene Carroll cases, both of which he lost. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in fact, said the following in one of their rulings concerning the appeal. Here's what they said. Here's what the Second Circuit said. Let me get it up on the screen for you. Miss Carroll, this is from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. plausibly represented that she had forgotten about the limited outside funding counsel obtained in September 2020 when this question was first posed to her in 2022, and the additional discovery in the case did not indicate otherwise.

10:29Michael Popok:Rather, it showed that Ms. Carroll simply was not involved in the matter of who was or was not funding her litigation costs. Ms. Carroll testified that after her counsel informed her in September 2020 that she had received some outside funding. She did not speak with her counsel again until the spring of 2023 and didn't know who the funder was or the funder's political position or why they were partially funding her lawsuit. So when she gave her deposition, she had not spoken to her counsel in over two years about the issue. Now, MAGA MAGA, like podcaster Tim Poole, who never followed the trial like we did on Legal AF.

11:10Michael Popok:We followed every day, every minute of the trial, including having reporting from inside the trial, okay? And he, oh shit, she lied. No, Tim, welcome to planet Earth. I'm sorry you didn't follow any aspect of the trial. Judge Kaplan's evaluation of that specific issue about who paid the costs and the determination by multiple courts, including the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, that there's nothing there. And again, you can count on no fingers and no hands how many times the Department of Justice has ever prosecuted somebody forgetting how their case was financed wrong. All right, let's be real.

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14:25Michael Popok:I want to just give you a little bit of a flavor of E. Jean Carroll. I've had the honor of interviewing her on Legal AF, and we're going to try to get her and Robbie Kaplan back on the show as well about this new matter. Here's a clip of me with E. Jean Carroll. Where does the case stand right now at this point? Yeah, that's what I wanted to know. Well, Michael, what do you think? I think the two appeals that he's tried at the Second Circuit based on the panels, including Judge Chen, who I know pretty well, they've rejected him. He's not going to be able to assert immunity, which was waived by Alina Haba and others a long, long time ago.

15:06Michael Popok:And a long, long time ago, as referenced in the back-to-back oral arguments that Robbie so successfully argued in the last month or so. I don't see the United States Supreme Court, even this MAGA right wing court, being that interested in events that happened when he was citizen Trump, when he attacked you and defamed you at all. There's only one event or one series of events that happened when he was even president, which was the defamation after the fact. I just don't see this court in a civil matter having given him carte blanche in the criminal world, even they bailing him out and trying to do anything to undermine your judgments.

15:51Michael Popok:That's my opinion.

15:55Michael Popok:I concur. Looking good. Looking good. All right. Now, so fully vetted at the trial court level, at the appellate level. And now let's talk about the United States Supreme Court, because Donald Trump has been trying to get the United States Supreme Court to let him off the hook. Not because he claims he didn't do it. Not because he claims he's not a sexual abuser, which the jury 9-0 found that he was. And today, if that same grand jury was presented the evidence, they would have found that he was a rapist because of a change in the law. At the time, E. Jean Carroll couldn't testify about whether he put his penis inside of her or not.

16:33Michael Popok:and the jury was like, well, we're going to have to go with sexual abuse then because, you know, she wasn't clear on that part of the testimony. That's the only thing that she was unclear about. The appeal to the Supreme Court is arguing immunity, which the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled was waived by Alina Habba. Remember when she used to be his lawyer, along with Todd Blanche. You know how many times the Supreme Court has kicked the can down the road and decided they do not want to hear the case? 12, including last Wednesday. 12 times the Supreme Court has met in a conference to decide whether they're going to take up the case of immunity and E.

17:19Michael Popok:Jean Carroll and a sexual abuse proven by a jury and have decided, pass. Pass. But what has it accomplished? A couple of things. Let's pull back the curtain, right? Todd Blanche will do and say anything in order to get the top job. That's what he's doing. He's doing the things that even Pam Bondi wouldn't do. And that's saying a lot, including this, opening this prosecution. He should be ashamed of himself. As I said at the top of this hot take, what's next the Epstein survivors are going to be investigated and prosecuted does this surprise you you know two people are murdered on the streets of Minnesota in interactions with ICE while they were peacefully protesting Renee Good and Alex Preddy and they're investigating Renee Good we're still waiting on the federal criminal investigation of the federal officers that murdered people on the streets of America we're waiting on that but no let's open it up against E.

18:17Jean Carroll so that Donald Trump has a talking point.

18:21Michael Popok:See, my victim, and I have nothing to do with this, even though I've owned and controlled the Department of Justice, they're opening up an investigation about whether she lied about, and who cares whether she did or she didn't? Who cares whether Reid Hoffman deferred the copying costs for her case? What does that have to do with anything? It's not the reason she brought the case. Her courage is the reason she brought the case. Her wanting to do justice is the reason she brought the case. And you know who's got$100 million of judgment sitting in her back pocket? Her, not Donald Trump. Anyway, we'll continue to follow it right here.

18:59Michael Popok:And let's get the Democrats into power with the gavel so they can provide appropriate oversight over this out of control, rogue, corrupt Department of Justice led by Donald Trump and Todd Blanche. Till my next report, come over to Legal AF YouTube channel and hit the free subscribe button. I'm Michael Popak.

19:41Michael Popok: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.