Well, the revolution may not be televised, but the Georgia criminal cases against Donald Trump and all of his henchmen and co-conspirators will be. The question is when? I'm Michael Popok, Euron, Midas Touch Network and LegalAF. We got a new order that just came out kind of in the middle of the night. We weren't expecting it from the Court of Appeals in Georgia, which has indefinitely postponed the oral argument that was scheduled for December 5th.
about whether Fannie Willis should be the prosecutor of the case or not. And I'm going to cover it here on this hot take for legal AF and the minus touch network. Just to bring everybody up to speed, we've got an appeal that was filed by Donald Trump and about eight or nine other co-conspirators arguing the judge McAfee, the trial court judge below got it wrong.
when he ruled after another entry hearing that Fawney Willis can stay in the case as long as she fired the guy that she used to date who worked on the prosecution with her. She fired that guy, she stayed in the case, and this appeal ensued. Now we knew the appeal was coming because basically the trial judge invited it. He made comments, kind of gratuitous comments, negative criticisms of Fawney Willis, although he kept her in the case.
which he questioned her judgment. Question, he said there was an air of mendacity, which is another word for saying he thinks somebody's lying about the relationship in the case. Well, of course, the Trumpers picked it up and decided to file their appeal and we had full briefing. The oral argument is the last step usually in the process before the panel, the appellate panel in this case, a three judge panel makes their ruling.
The order of operation, I'll talk to you now as an appellate lawyer. The order of operation is the party taking the appeal, in this case the Trumpers, are the appellant. The party who's opposing the appeal is the apalee. The appellant gets two briefs, the apalee won.
There's the opening brief by the appellate, along with the record from below, with all the transcripts of the hearing and the evidence and all of that. There is the middle brief, which is the opposition brief by the apalee, and then the appellate who brought the appeal gets the final word in a reply. And that is full briefing.
And then the appeals court generally, generally 90% of the time or more takes an oral argument. They don't have to. You have to usually ask for oral argument. It has to be granted to you. Sometimes they just rule on the papers, literally just rule on the hard, cold record before them without the need for oral argument, the purpose of oral argument.
is generally for the three judge or five judge panel, whatever we're talking about or nine judges on the US Supreme Court to get some questions answered or to communicate with the other people on their panel through the questions they're asking of the advocate to try to get some consensus or coalesce around a certain position. So when they finally write their decision, they know what they're talking about, you know, a lot of these panels don't get assigned until a day or two or that day, usually a day or two before the case.
And the advocates don't know about it sometimes until the morning of who your three judge or five judge or whatever judge panel is going to be. You know, we're scrambling as advocates. Who's going to be on the panel? How do I orient my arguments based on what I know about these particular judges? The judges get the briefs in advance. Usually they've read them a couple of days in advance. And then they'll start asking questions and it could be a hot bench, which is what it sounds like. A lot of questions coming at the advocates one or both.
that you, you know, you get about a minute into your canned presentation and then you're bombarded with questions and you have to respond to them and then pivot and weave your argument into the questions that have been asked in your five or 10 or 20 or 30 minute allotment. You have lights in front of you, red lights and green lights to tell you where usually a timer in front of you. And when the red light comes on, you stop talking unless you're granted more time. That's the oral argument. It could be a quiet bench.
And they let you present fully your entire, you know, version of your brief and ask very few questions. And then you just sit down at that point. I've had hot benches. I thought were against me where I've gotten rulings in my favor. I've had cold benches where I thought, I got this and I came home and I didn't, I didn't win that appeal. So that it's very hard sometimes to tell based on the bench how you're doing, but that's supposed to happen. It's not going to happen now.
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Now we have no oral argument and no oral argument in sight. And the case is stay. There's a pin in it. It's on ice. It's trapped in amber, whatever you want to call it, until the appeal is concluded. Now, if they're just going to rule on the papers, frankly, they would have issued an order that said, we are dispensing with oral argument. We will rule on the papers and we will advise the parties. I mean, you would see an order like that. We didn't see an order like that.
If they were going to continue it to another date, they would say, we will be rescheduling it to another date or here's the date where we're scheduling it to. We didn't get that order either. We got this oracle of Delphi type order, like eight ball, magic eight ball. What do they, what do they mean? They're just going to postpone until further notice. So the case is effectively on, on ice until further notice.
Eventually, one of the parties can ask the clerk of the court, what is going on? Is this going to be rescheduled? I'm sure they're making those phone calls now and we'll report on it. Let's assume sometime in 2025 they hear the appeal. Then through 2025, we're going to have this appellate process because the loser, whatever finally gets ruled on by this three judge panel in Atlanta is going to go up to the Georgia Supreme Court.
Now one thing is for sure, every one of those co-defendants from Mark Meadows to Rudy Giuliani to Jeff Clark, they're not going anywhere. They've all tried one way or the other to take their case to federal court on the way to try to get it dismissed by the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court just recently ruled against Mark Meadows and said,
effectively sit down. You're going to stay in state court. You're not going to take your state prosecution to federal court. We don't want to hear from you on this issue. You are a defendant in a criminal case in state court. And that's it. Now, Donald Trump is, of course, a unique situation, having committed the crimes, alleged while he was still president and now having been reelected four years later.
And there is no, just to manage expectations, there's no judge, federal or state, appellate or trial that's gonna force Donald Trump to stand for a criminal trial while he is the president of the United States. Just not happening. Under various doctrines,
not so much immunity. It's not that not so much that he's immune, although I think immunity is going to be discussed at length in Georgia, you know, similarly to the federal side. But even if he got through immunity, the whole issue of dragging him back into the case
and making him defend himself is opposed by a series of doctrines about the office of the presidency not being impaired or impeded with while he's president. After he gets out, statute of limitations hasn't run. 2029, sure.
Sure. I'm sure a lot of prosecutors are biting their time. Bonnie Willis isn't going anywhere. She won re-election on election night as well. Another four-year term. So she's not going anywhere. The people in Atlanta appreciate her work. We appreciate her work or hard work and support her and rallied around her.
And, you know, she might be Donald Trump's job there chasing after him like Les Mis, but she's, except he's really guilty. But we'll continue to follow it. We got that new reporting about the order. I've explained it. I think to you what's happened and what should happen next. And then we'll follow it up right here on the Midas Touch Network on Legal AF. If you like this legal stuff,
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