Trump Suffers FATAL BLOW at Comey CRIMINAL Hearing

0:00This summer, FanDuel is the best place to bet on goals. Including equalizers? Uh-huh. Balls? Yep. Headers? Every goal is worth more on FanDuel. So, let there be goals. New customers get$350 in bonus bets guaranteed when you bet$5 for seven days. 21 plus in present and select states. First online real money wager only. Minimum$5 wager required for seven consecutive days. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets, which expires seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at fanduel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET.

0:30Choice Hotels gets you more of what you value. Here's a little tune to help you remember. Same drive, different day. Don't you wish you were getting away? Pack your bags and come on through. Texas, Ohio, Alaska, we're up there too. Comfort Inn, it's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song. Book direct at choicehotels.com. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for$15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today.

1:15I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three-month plan, equivalent to$15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at MintMobile.com.

1:30Michael Popok:Well, Donald Trump woke up from having been shellacked in election night in America to having a federal magistrate judge scold his Department of Justice for having the temerity to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey before they were done investigating him. And that doesn't fly in Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick's courtroom at all. Scolded the Department of Justice, told them they are not allowed to indict first and investigate later, and they are to turn over immediately all of the documents that they've been withholding from the defense. This case is going to trial the first week in January.

2:09Michael Popok:That was always an advantage to the defense because it left the Department of Justice scrambling because they had to provide all of the documents, we call it Brady material, to allow the defense to fashion a defense. And they picked on the wrong magistrate judge. See, there's an Article III judge, Judge Nakmanoff, who presides over the case. And then there's a magistrate judge. And magistrate judges, especially in criminal proceedings, do many of the activities that we associate with judges. They handle search warrants and subpoenas and a lot of times arraignments and bonds and bail. They take, as I said, they take arraignments, they take guilty pleas or not guilty pleas.

2:48Michael Popok:And they handle things like documents that need to be turned over. They answer to the federal judge, Judge Nakmanoff, but they are a judge in their own right. And Judge William Fitzpatrick is one you don't want to mess with. He's been on the bench about three years, but where did he come from? He came from the Eastern District of Virginia U.S. Attorney's Office, where he was the head of many divisions about complicated, complex criminal litigation. So he knows a thing or two about the Eastern District of Virginia now headed by Lindsey Halligan and a bunch of carpetbaggers from outside of the Eastern District of Virginia that she brought in to help her with the case.

3:25Michael Popok:And he is none too pleased. He's ordered that by tomorrow, all tens of thousands of pages of documents and the grand jury materials to find out exactly what Lindsay Halligan said or did to obtain that indictment, that strange, wacko, inferior, sloppy indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, where now one way or the other with two separate judges now ordering grand jury material to be turned over so early in a case. It's remarkable. I'm glad you're here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. I'm Michael Popak. Now, Judge Fitzpatrick is, for all intents and purposes, the one who's going to make all the decisions about documents in the case.

4:04Michael Popok:We call it Brady material when it's a criminal case. And the turnover of this material is very important to the Sixth Amendment rights of a defendant. Because without it, they can't fashion a defense. And the prosecutors, I mean, this isn't my cousin Vinny, that the prosecutors aren't allowed to hide the ball and hide the documents and turn them over late. And that's what got Judge Fitzpatrick so upset. Now, just to add to the confusion, the lawyer arguing for James Gomey is his lawyer, and his name is Patrick Fitzgerald. So you had Patrick Fitzgerald arguing to William Fitzpatrick and waiting for the bagpipes to start playing.

4:41Michael Popok:And it was entirely in favor of the Comey side during today's hearing. Now, Judge Nakmanoff, who presides over the case, he sent all these issues to have to be resolved by Judge Fitzpatrick, like the Department of Justice, because they don't like the fact that everybody's moving to dismiss Lindsey Halligan as illegally appointed as the Eastern District Virginia U.S. attorney. They were suggesting that they might move to disqualify Patrick Fitzgerald, the lawyer for James Comey, because he might have been exposed to some classified documents in the past related to Comey as an attorney for Comey.

5:17Michael Popok:Yeah. Fitzpatrick, the magistrate, is not buying that at all. Okay. And as to the grand jury, we now have two different federal judges ordering the turnover by tomorrow of the grand jury materials on Thursday. One, you've got Judge Curry, who sits in South Carolina, she presides over one major issue in both the Comey indictment and the Letitia James indictment, both by Halligan, which is, is Halligan properly appointed under Section 546 of the Vacancy Reform Act? Yes or no? And she wants the grand jury materials. Now, she already ordered them to be turned over to her in South Carolina, because she's only handling this one issue by Monday, and it didn't happen.

5:59Michael Popok:So she issued a second order, giving them until actually until today. I'm sorry, until Wednesday to issue, to give her every piece of paper about Lindsey Halligan's role, about the grand jury proceeding, a full transcripts. If there's an audio version, the full audio version to her today. By tomorrow, they got to do the exact same thing and turn that over to the defense in the Comey indictment because Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick has ordered that. See, these magistrate judges, it's sort of a training academy. They want to become Article 3 judges. I've never met a magistrate judge that just wanted to be a magistrate judge.

6:42Michael Popok:It's a stepping stone. A lot of magistrate judges get elevated to full judge, Article 3 judge, lifetime appointed judge at some point in their career. At least they hope for that. They try out for that. And this one is is Lindsey Halligan's worst nightmare because he's a real federal prosecutor and a deputy chief from within the office that she now heads in the last month. I'm sure that he's concerned with what he's observing with the destruction of the Department of Justice in a once proud office that he worked in. And I'm sure he's concerned about the weaponization of the Department of Justice and he's holding their feet to the fire.

7:17Michael Popok:Now, it's not because of that, because any magistrate judge would be pissed off and annoyed at the prosecutors who were dragging their feet, turning over documents.

7:47legal AF-ers 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. So 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.

8:37And I'm really proud of you, Popak. Thanks for all the hard work you're putting in.

8:41Michael Popok:Now, this was here to wind it back. This hearing was about a motion made by the Department of Justice. You wouldn't know it from the way the hearing went. They brought a motion to establish a filter protocol to make sure documents get delivered in a certain way to certain parties. And they raised the issue about maybe there's a conflict. The judge was like, yeah, OK, great. You're turning all this over. When you hear a magistrate judge say out loud, indict first and investigate later is not the way it's going to happen. And this gets fixed in my courtroom now. You're in trouble. I've been doing this for 35 years in federal courts.

9:19Michael Popok:And when you I mean, regardless of their title, full blown, you know, full blown Article three federal judge like Nakmanov or magistrate judge like Fitzpatrick, they get the same respect. They have similar powers. You can't say, well, you can't make me do that. You're not a real judge. You're a magistrate judge. I've had cases where I've never seen the real judge. I've only dealt with the magistrate judge for every major issue in the case. The only time I saw the judge is when I went to trial. And if I settled the case, I never saw the judge at all. You know, maybe at a cocktail reception, but not in the case.

9:55Michael Popok:So they are, for all intents and purposes, your judge. And you have to treat them with that respect. because they handle the lion's share, the bulk of the procedural issues, and about documents, about bond, about bail, about release, about all sorts of things are handled to magistrate judge level. So this, let me put it this way, this did not go well for Donald Trump. I mean, it didn't go well in the electorate. And it's not just, I have a friend of mine who's Republican who wrote me a text message interpreting the election results, you know, oh, the only one in blue states. I don't think that's the way you can interpret that.

10:30Michael Popok:The way to interpret the election results is not only did the Democrats overwhelm their Republican counterparts in Virginia governor race for New Jersey governor race, Prop 50. But if you look below that, the delegate race in Pennsylvania, they flipped 13 seats away from the Republicans. In New Jersey, she won Mikey Sherrill won counties that had gone Trump before. Same thing in Virginia with Spanberger, Governor Spanberger. So, you know, when you look at the details of how women and Hispanics and the young people and the elderly and all of that independence all voted, it was a terrible night for Donald Trump.

11:21Michael Popok:And it's just a shellacking of epic proportion that they can't wish away in the White House. And then you come into the courtrooms where they are also losing at a 93 % clip in the courts, even at the United States Supreme Court during oral argument of the tariffs. And I'll do a separate hot take on the tariffs that were before the Supreme Court today for Donald Trump, it's not looking good. For him to keep his signature linchpin of his entire presidency is being able to punish 138 countries and Americans with tariffs. I'm not so sure that survives. I'll do a deeper dive on that, along with bringing in some people who were in the room at the United States Supreme Court, like Attorney General Bonta.

12:07Michael Popok:So I'm glad you're here on Midas Touch. And maybe you were here from Midas Touch's coverage of election night in America, and saw my show, The Intersection, that preceded it. If not, I'm Michael Popak. Hit the free subscribe button here on Midas Touch. Come over to Legal AF YouTube and be a part of our March to 1 million subscribers. We're at 910 ,000 and rolling. We should hit that before, I think before Thanksgiving at the rate we're going. And then come over to Legal AF Substack and help us continue to grow that community with a paid membership. Less than$7 a month gets you so much content, including commercial-free versions of our podcasts.

12:42Michael Popok:So until my next report, I'm Michael Popak.

13:13Michael Popok:and hot takes where legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

13:23This episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you. Google Health offers a new kind of coach built with Gemini for effortless tracking, sleep insights, and holistic coaching tailored to you. Visit googlestore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet, and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy.

13:53Job site. Moved. Your crew needs four more rooms. Tomorrow. If you booked on your own, you could be left high and dry. But you booked with Engine. Found the right hotel. With one click. And avoided cancellation fees. Because Engine lets you do that, too. Yes change. no charge. Engine. Free to join. Flexible when plans change. Teams travel spend. Managed. Head to engine.com slash flex to get started. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people? Scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention to your ads than they do on social?

14:34Let me introduce you to fans. And they're here with me on Spotify. Trust me, I know fans. They don't skip, they stay for hours. They don't move on, they manifest. They're not a demographic group, they're fans. Spotify Advertising, you're among fans.