BREAKING: Federal Judge Delivers INSTANT SMACKDOWN to Trump
by Michael Popok
MeidasTouch
Aug 5, 2023
Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on a fast-moving breaking story in which Trump threatened the prosecutors by social media posting; they responded with a motion for protective order; the federal judge ordered trump to respond by Monday; trump asked to have until Thursday; the DOJ called him out for wasting time; and the federal judge denied Trump’s request for more time, all in less than 24 hours. Who says Justice doesn’t move swiftly?
Transcript
This is Michael Popock, Legal AF.
Helen of Troy was famously called the face that launched a thousand ships. Donald Trump, with one social media post attacking Jack Smith and the prosecutors, and all prosecutors in the case, launched at least five different federal filings to federal court orders ultimately against him on the issue of whether a protective order should immediately be issued in the new case that Jack Smith has brought, the Jan 6 interference case before judge Tanya Chutkan. One social media post is all it took. Now look: we predicted on legal AF, and otherwise, that procedurally, the government would soon after the arraignment be asking for a protective order to be put in place, just as they did in the Mar-A-Lago case, so they could start dumping all of the data information, witness transcripts, and other evidence that they've accumulated on Donald Trump's defense side ASAP, because the government will never be accused of dragging their feet when it comes to providing documents, and information, of Donald Trump, and the other side. Because they want to get this case to trial as soon as possible, and the only way you can do that if you're the government is that you come to the court with completely clean hands on the 28th of August when the judge is going to hear argument about setting a trial in the new case, Judge Tanya Chutkan. The only way you can do that is to bring a dump truck, bring sheds of information and documents, and give them to the other side, so they can't argue that they haven't had at least the first opportunity to look at information in this four different criminal count indictment against Donald Trump. So the government's ready every time. Remember, when Jack Smith brings an indictment, that's because he's ready, right behind it, to back up the truck, and dump Donald Trump with everything that he needs in order to defend himself in the case. The government is ready. Donald Trump, after he's done with the arraignment, mumbling his his name, and he's not on drugs, and how old he is, he then went about attacking prosecutors in a social media post we're going to put right up here on the screen in which he said, "YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU." You know, mob talk, organized crime talk. That's why prosecutors are using the RICO statute against him, because he operates like a mob boss. And to anybody that suggests, like his spokesperson, that he wasn't attacking the prosecutor, he made it clear right after, that in the same social media posting chain, when he put, "THE FRAUD SQUAD" [video], and put Jack Smith and Tish James. and Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg, all listed there as some sort of hit squad, right, that people can attack and go after. So it's clear what his messaging was.
"WELCOME TO THE FRAUD SQUAD" VIDEO
And the government said, "You know, we're about to file our motion for protective order anyway, so why don't we put in there, as one of the grounds why the the judge should not hesitate to enter a protective order, meaning that Donald Trump cannot tell the public in social media posts by his spokespeople indirectly, or directly, any of the confidential and sensitive information that's contained in the discovery, the Brady material," right? -- the material the government has to constitutionally turn over to a defendant.
TRUMP MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! 2024
August 5, 2023
Statement from Trump Spokesperson
“The Truth post cited is the definition of political speech, and was in response to the RINO, China-loving, dishonest special interest groups and Super PACs, like the ones funded by the Koch brothers and the Club for No Growth”
Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President 2024, Inc.
None of that should be posted in public, criticized, critiqued, right? Because the government told Judge Chutkan that we're ready to give him witness testimony, witness transcripts, sealed search warrant material, other transcripts, other documents, that have personal identifying information, including about who potential witnesses are, co-conspirators, other unindicted people that they're still going after, and we don't want him commenting on that in the public. Enter the protective order. And they gave a proposed protective order.
Now they say, when they filed that motion, which followed just hours after the social media posting I showed you, they also told the court, "Enter it now. We tried to negotiate with the other side. We tried to meet and confer, but they gave us some ridiculous protective order proposal which doesn't do it, right? -- would not limit Donald Trump appropriately given the circumstances -- we gave them," the government said, "a model of a protective order that Judge Nichols, in the same court, just recently used," I presume, for Steve Bannon and his trial, and said, "let's use this one this one that a federal judge already approved. Let's use this one. We can live with this one. And rather than continue to go back and forth, given that the defense, Trump's lawyers, took the position that, "We cannot meaningfully comment in the date for the trial because we don't know the volume of the material." Then Jack Smith's team said, "Fine. Enter the protective order, reach a deal with us, don't foot-drag, and we'll give you all the information." When it became apparent that they were foot-dragging, the government filed the motion for protective order directly, right off that tweet, right off that social media posting, in which they were threatened. And in it they say, "Here's the grounds, your honor, because this defendant has a history on social media of making statements regarding judges, attorneys, and witnesses, right?, and we know he's going to do it again. You got to stop him in this motion for protective order."
The judge immediately, because like I said at the top, "you know the face that launched a thousand ships," the social media posting that launched a flurry of activity all within a 24 and 36 hour period.
So we've got the social media posting; several hours later the motion for protective order is filed, several hours later the judge, Judge Tanya Chutkan, enters her minute order, which we have up here, which gives Trump only until Monday at 5 PM -- so basically one business day -- to get together and either look at the red line, look at the proposed protective order, and give a proposed set of edits -- we call it "a red- line" back to the judge, right?, so they can be heard before the Judge makes the ultimate decision.
Now rather than do that, and spend the several hours that it would take to do it, the Trump side decided to spend several hours preparing a five-page opposition paper, asking the court for a motion for extension of time, not to have the issue heard on Monday, but give them until Thursday. As noted by the Department of Justice in a filing just hours after that, the time it took them to write the five pages is probably more time than it would have been just to do the work, just to comment on the protective order and run this thing to the ground and be done with it. But no. Because Donald Trump's lawyers wanted to, you know, poke a stick at the Department of Justice and say, "Oh, they're big and bad; they're not conferring with us; they're filing protective order motions without really having meaningful discussion with us; and they did that before your honor; and with judge Cannon" -- you know this whining, whining, whining, -- "and judge Cannon didn't like it" -- as if Judge Chutkan cares what Judge Cannon did in Florida, of all people, of all fellow colleague judges, and "Oh, they did it there; they did it here, judge; they went off and did a Friday filing, and you know, we don't like to work past five o'clock on Fridays, it's the summer, Your Honor," -- you know, whatever else they argued. And then the the Department of Justice isn't having it either. The Department of Justice said, "Oh yeah?" Two hours later they filed a paper -- we have a copy of it here -- and they filed the paper and said exactly what I just laid out, "Judge, we don't get it! They spent an entire afternoon writing a five-page motion for extension of time to push the thing ahead 72 hours, why didn't they just do the work as you ordered it to be done by five o'clock on Monday? And they also for good measure, Trump's lawyers say, "Why don't we -- you know, Monday's not good for us judge, how about Thursday? How's your Thursday look? And why don't we have a hearing? Let's have a hearing." Because delay, delay, delay, delay.
And as I predicted on Legal AF, our podcast also on the MeidasTouch Network, it's exactly what happened. The judge says, "I'm the one wearing the black robe. I'm the one in charge of my courtroom. My order says what my order says, which is Monday by five o'clock." And the only modification she made in denying -- finally, we just got the denial a minute later, right? -- denying the motion for extension of time by Donald Trump, she said, "You know what? Here's the order. Denied. You spend the time, you want to spend the time between now and Monday at five o'clock, or even after Monday at five o'clock consulting with the government, and making comments on the protective order, go ahead. You want to file something else on Monday, you can do that too. You have till Monday at five o'clock. And I'll decide then -- me, federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan, -- not you -- lawyers for Donald Trump. I'll decide whether I need a hearing or not. I don't see it at the moment, but let's see what happens after I see whatever it is you're going to file on Monday. The ball is now in your court."
I'm summarizing the order, but that's what happened.
All of what I just described, right?, from the social media posting, to the government's motion for protective order, to the Court's ruling on the motion for protective order setting the Monday deadline, to Trump's five-page opposition and motion for extension of time till Thursday, to the Federal government's response to that, and the Judge's order denying the motion for extension of time and sticking to her guns on Monday's deadline, all those six things happened in a 24-hour period. Who says justice doesn't move swiftly? Who says the wheels of justice turn slowly? Not in Judge Tanya Chutkan's courtroom.
And as I said on Legal AF, the podcast that I co-anchor on the MeidasTouch Network, this was going to be a test for Tanya Chutkan, the Judge, about letting everybody know who's in charge. And letting us know that she's the anti-Aileen Cannon down in Florida -- that judge. She has a firm grasp on the tiller. She has a firm grasp, and control and command of her courtroom, her courtroom procedures, and what she wants. And she's not going to sit there idly by, to have a couple of lawyers for Donald Trump, being paid by the Save America Pac, tell her how to run her courtroom procedurally. She's going to make that ruling.
So I like it, because it draws that line in the sand early on about how she's going to run the rocket docket that is her courtroom. And I think that bodes terribly, terribly, for Donald Trump. Because when the next major event, after this protective order, gets issued -- and there will be a protective order issued, including with, I'm sure, edits and changes by the Federal Judge, which is going to effectively gag Donald Trump from commenting at all, and reviewing at all without having to be babysat by his lawyers, this discovery material produced by the government.
And it's going to be a lot. It's going to be a hundred terabytes of information, I'm sure. And they're going to go complaining about that, "Oh, we just got 100 terabytes of information, Judge. It's the equivalent of 16 tractor trailers. If you stacked it, you know, end to end, it would halfway reach to the moon!"
You can already anticipate the filing that's going to be made by John Lauro and Todd Blanche to say that they need 2-1/2 years before they can even try this case, while the judge nods her head patiently and says, "Yeah, we're not doing that. This case is going to trial under the Speedy Trial Act before the election. Because it's important to democracy that that happens."
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