Speaker 1: On Monday night, Fulton County District Attorney Fawnie Willis indicted
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and eighteen others for their efforts to overturn
Speaker 1: Trump's twenty twenty election loss in Georgia.
Speaker 2: The indictment alleges that, rather than abide by Georgia's legal
Speaker 2: process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal
Speaker 2: racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia's presidential election result.
Speaker 1: It's the fourth time Trump has been criminally charged since
Speaker 1: he left office. But Bloomberg, Zoe Tillman, and Eric Larsen
Speaker 1: report that the sweeping racketeering charges in Georgia pose legal
Speaker 1: perils for Trump that are different from the other cases
Speaker 1: brought against him in New York, Florida and Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And they carry potentially harsher penalties for Trump if he's convicted.
Speaker 1: I'm Wescasova today on the big take what Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is up against in Georgia. Eric, Zoe, good to see you.
Speaker 3: Again, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 4: Good to see you, Eric.
Speaker 1: So we have our fourth indictment. It was widely expected,
Speaker 1: and you right though, that unlike the other three, this
Speaker 1: one is different. Why is this case in Georgia different
Speaker 1: than the others.
Speaker 4: Well, there's a couple of reasons why this case is
Speaker 4: so different. I'd say that the biggest one is that
Speaker 4: it is such a big case. It's against Trump and
Speaker 4: eighteen alleged co conspirators, you know, including some of his
Speaker 4: top former officials and aides, like his former chief of
Speaker 4: staff Mark Meadows, one of his lawyers, Rody Giuliani. So
Speaker 4: it's a vast case that is also a racketeering case.
Speaker 4: So it's essentially alleging an organized crime. So it's a
Speaker 4: complex set of charges that the DA says, all combined
Speaker 4: and taken together, we're part of a big criminal conspiracy.
Speaker 4: So that's the biggest takeaway from how big this case is.
Speaker 1: And we'll really get into why this being a racketeering case,
Speaker 1: a rico case is so significant in a bit. But Zoe,
Speaker 1: there's some other things that also make this case different
Speaker 1: from the others.
Speaker 3: That's right, you know, at a really bird's eye view
Speaker 3: level of major difference is this is a state case.
Speaker 3: It's not a federal case, and there are certain implications
Speaker 3: that come with that, one being that if he's convicted
Speaker 3: of state crimes and ends up winning the White House
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four, he can't pardon himself, or at
Speaker 3: least there is debate over whether he could pardon himself
Speaker 3: for federal crimes, but it would not be even on
Speaker 3: the table for state crimes. And now there are two
Speaker 3: criminal indictments in state courts in New York and in Georgia.
Speaker 3: It's both more focused than some of the other cases.
Speaker 3: It really is centered on what happened in Georgia, which,
Speaker 3: you know, of the seven battleground states, became I think
Speaker 3: even more so of a focus for the Trump campaign
Speaker 3: after the twenty twenty election. It does also reference other
Speaker 3: battleground states, which is part of what makes it so
Speaker 3: sweeping and broad. But unlike the federal case, it doesn't
Speaker 3: really purport to be sort of a national indictment, so,
Speaker 3: you know, I think at the at a top line level,
Speaker 3: those are also two major differences.
Speaker 1: Eric. This being a state case is also important, you right,
Speaker 1: because it comes with penalties built in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of these charges in Georgia have required penalties.
Speaker 4: I believe that the Rico case carries a minimum of
Speaker 4: five years and a maximum of twenty. Of course, like
Speaker 4: in a lot of sentencings, after a conviction, it doesn't
Speaker 4: always end up being as close to the maximum, but
Speaker 4: still can be significant penalties. And as Zoe said, you know,
Speaker 4: there's no chance of him being able to pardon himself,
Speaker 4: so if he is convicted and sentenced, he really does
Speaker 4: have to serve time behind bars based on what he's
Speaker 4: being accused of. Here, it's also worth noting, you know
Speaker 4: that while he wouldn't be able to pardon himself, or
Speaker 4: another Republican president wouldn't be able to pardon him, it's
Speaker 4: also true that in Georgia, the governor can't automatically pardon Trump.
Speaker 4: I'd say the governor, Brian Kemp, isn't necessarily a big
Speaker 4: fan of Trump, but theoretically people might think that he
Speaker 4: would pardon a fellow Republican, but it doesn't. It's not
Speaker 4: that simple.
Speaker 3: In Georgia.
Speaker 4: They have a board setup that would have to make
Speaker 4: decisions on this, and some of the sentence has to
Speaker 4: be served, So big risk here for Trump if he
Speaker 4: is convicted.
Speaker 1: And Zoe still one more difference too is there's a
Speaker 1: lot of discussion about the New York case, but whether
Speaker 1: the public would be able to see that case, and
Speaker 1: they won't. But in Georgia, it will be televised, that's right.
Speaker 3: You know. One of the benefits for us in the
Speaker 3: media and also for the public in general, in state
Speaker 3: corp it is that there is a long history of
Speaker 3: cameras in the courtroom, whereas in federal courts they have
Speaker 3: been vehemently opposed to putting cameras in for a long time.
Speaker 3: So for the federal cases in Florida and DC, we've
Speaker 3: even had to fight for us to just bring in
Speaker 3: phones to text our editors what's happening live in the courtroom.
Speaker 3: There is no way, let alone, you know, to have
Speaker 3: public eyes on what's happening. But here in Georgia, you know,
Speaker 3: we would expect to have live feeds anyone could tune
Speaker 3: into watch. Judges have gone back and forth about the
Speaker 3: pros and cons of that, you know, does it encourage
Speaker 3: grandstanding or performing for the cameras, But you know, there's
Speaker 3: such a long history of doing it now in state courts,
Speaker 3: and I think the consensus seems to be that if
Speaker 3: the goal is to advocate for your clients, that's sort
Speaker 3: of the restriction on how much you can really perform
Speaker 3: for the cameras, and that the benefit of sunshine of
Speaker 3: daylight on the public seeing how not just the lawyers,
Speaker 3: that the judges run their court room, how they administer justice,
Speaker 3: that the benefits of that are vast.
Speaker 4: I would add one thing to that that would be
Speaker 4: so interesting about seeing a case like this televised if
Speaker 4: it went to trial, is that there's always been such
Speaker 4: a difference between what Trump and his lawyers say out
Speaker 4: in public on social media, on the street about these
Speaker 4: allegations against them versus what they say when their lawyers
Speaker 4: are actually in court. They're a lot more reserved. They
Speaker 4: don't necessarily make all of the same statements because you
Speaker 4: might have to back them up a little bit more.
Speaker 4: And election fraud was really one of those things that
Speaker 4: they would say. Trump and his supporters would allege, well.
Speaker 5: The two greatest scams in American history, the Russian hopes
Speaker 5: and now they are trying to steal an election from us.
Speaker 5: We won not by a little bit, We won in
Speaker 5: numbers like nobody's seen before.
Speaker 4: But then when it came to their court cases and
Speaker 4: they were in court, they didn't really allege the fraud
Speaker 4: like that because there frankly wasn't any evidence.
Speaker 3: That's such a good point and I'm so glad that
Speaker 3: you brought that up, because I was so struck in
Speaker 3: DC when Trump showed up for the arraignment. You know,
Speaker 3: I was in the media room watching a live video
Speaker 3: feed of him in the courtroom, and the difference between
Speaker 3: what he was like in that courtroom versus the sort
Speaker 3: of bomb, bass and big personality on the campaign trail
Speaker 3: was so striking. And I think you're right that watching
Speaker 3: that over the course of an entire trial and having
Speaker 3: the public see that would be just astonishing. As he
Speaker 3: is then, you know, going back out to rallies and
Speaker 3: being his normal sort of big personality.
Speaker 1: Self, Zoe. At the heart of this case, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned before, is this racketeering statue. Rico, can you tell
Speaker 1: us about this law and why it's so important here?
Speaker 3: Right? So, the sort of parent of the law that
Speaker 3: Trump and the other defendants have been charged under in Georgia,
Speaker 3: which is the Federal Racketeering Law, was passed in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy and it was designed to address problems that federal
Speaker 3: prosecutors were having going after the mafia, an organized crime
Speaker 3: where you know, to someone at the top would be
Speaker 3: you know, using coded language to explain what they wanted,
Speaker 3: and then it was lower level folks who were carrying out,
Speaker 3: you know, the indictable crimes on the ground, and how
Speaker 3: do you get at the entire enterprise? And so the
Speaker 3: idea was, if you make it so that you know,
Speaker 3: each person they have to prove only committed you know,
Speaker 3: a handful of individual offenses, but that they were part
Speaker 3: of the broader enterprise, that that was a way to
Speaker 3: take down the entire organization. And over time courts held
Speaker 3: that it didn't just have to be applied to the
Speaker 3: mob and to organized crime, that a criminal enterprise could
Speaker 3: encompass any number of things. And Georgia passed its version
Speaker 3: of the statute about a decade later, and there were
Speaker 3: actually a series of decisions on point to what we're
Speaker 3: talking about now, saying it can explicitly apply to a
Speaker 3: public official seeking to stay in office, and you know,
Speaker 3: early defendants saying I'm not a mob boss, this law
Speaker 3: is not meant for me, and the court saying, you know,
Speaker 3: it's racketeering activity aimed at holding on to this enterprise,
Speaker 3: to this office. So you know, there's a long history here,
Speaker 3: and there's a long history specifically in Georgia and Eric.
Speaker 1: I guess the key in this is that they don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to have Trump himself ordering something that's illegal
Speaker 1: in order to prove a criminal conspiracy.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's right. The Rico law here will allow the
Speaker 4: state to go after any criminal enterprise. In this case,
Speaker 4: the enterprise was to keep Donald Trump in office even
Speaker 4: though he had lost the election. That was the goal
Speaker 4: of this alleged scheme, this alleged enterprise. And so to
Speaker 4: use the mafia, you know, example, Trump would be sort
Speaker 4: of like the mob boss. Even though he's not specifically
Speaker 4: carrying out all of these crimes down the line, he's
Speaker 4: letting them know what he wants, what he expects, what
Speaker 4: he wants them to get done, and they're all working
Speaker 4: to make it happen, you know. And according to this indictment,
Speaker 4: some of these alleged crimes fluted things like presenting knowingly
Speaker 4: false evidence of voter fraud to state lawmakers in Georgia
Speaker 4: to try to get them to undermine Joe Biden's victory
Speaker 4: through the electoral College. Trump's own phone call with the
Speaker 4: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Rafensberger, pressuring him to find
Speaker 4: just enough votes to overturn his loss in the states.
Speaker 6: I want to do is this. I just want to
Speaker 6: find eleven seven hundred and eighty votes, which is one
Speaker 6: more that we have because we won the state. And
Speaker 6: flipping the state is a great testament to our country because.
Speaker 4: Even though they'd already conducted a recount and all of
Speaker 4: the Republican election officials in Georgia were telling him that
Speaker 4: there was no massive fraud. According to this indictment, there
Speaker 4: were one hundred and sixty one acts that were carried
Speaker 4: out by these nineteen defendants allegedly to carry out this
Speaker 4: alleged scheme to keep Trump in.
Speaker 1: Office after the break. The specific of the charges against
Speaker 1: Trump and the other defendants Zoe. Among the charges against
Speaker 1: Trump are some really specific things like conspiracy to commit forgery.
Speaker 3: Right, so you know, the task for prosecutors is to
Speaker 3: take you alleged criminal conduct that might not fit neatly
Speaker 3: into a particular bucket and find the matching state offense
Speaker 3: that goes with that. So there are a number of
Speaker 3: counts that relate to this broader scheme to line up
Speaker 3: so called fake electors in battleground states, including Georgia, to
Speaker 3: sign certifications that were then submitted to the National Archives saying, hey,
Speaker 3: actually Trump won Georgia, and Trump won Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,
Speaker 3: in Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada. So you know,
Speaker 3: forgery goes into this idea that there were false sign
Speaker 3: certifications submitted to an official body, the National Archives, that
Speaker 3: then feed into the other alleged conspiracies.
Speaker 1: Eric Along with Donald Trump, there are also eighteen others
Speaker 1: of his associates who are also charged with a number
Speaker 1: of crimes. Who are they and what are they charged with?
Speaker 4: Well Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, really stands out.
Speaker 4: He was at Trump's side during the entire effort to
Speaker 4: try to overturn the result of the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 4: and according to the indictment, was really helping Trump all
Speaker 4: along the way with communicating what he wanted to the
Speaker 4: other alleged co conspirators. Rudy Giuliani obviously a very outspoken
Speaker 4: lawyer for Trump throughout this whole time. He was obviously
Speaker 4: on the national level, he was making the case for
Speaker 4: vast election fraud all along, but in Georgia specifically, he
Speaker 4: participated in presenting this fake in information about voter fraud
Speaker 4: to state lawmakers here to try to get them to
Speaker 4: overturn Joe Biden's vote, you know, for example, saying that
Speaker 4: ten thousand you know, dead people had voted, even though
Speaker 4: everyone had debunked that. In Georgia, the Republican election officials
Speaker 4: who ran the election in the state confirmed that that
Speaker 4: just wasn't true. John Eastman is someone whose name has
Speaker 4: come up a lot ever since the election because he
Speaker 4: came up with this plan to keep Trump in office
Speaker 4: and this whole scheme to allegedly get Mike Pence, the
Speaker 4: former vice president, to ultimately overturn the election on January sixth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, I think Eric is right. Those
Speaker 3: are certainly the boldface names that would be most recognizable
Speaker 3: in this indictment. But there are other, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of categories of defendants that are really notable as well.
Speaker 3: You've got through the other the lawyers. They're Sidney Powell,
Speaker 3: who was bringing these so called you know, release the
Speaker 3: krack in lawsuits and battleground states, and she's also connected
Speaker 3: with several defendants who are charged with trying to access
Speaker 3: voter data in Coffee County, Georgia, and that sort of
Speaker 3: a separate bucket of folks. There are a few individuals
Speaker 3: who signed that false certification that we talked about that
Speaker 3: was submitted to the National Archives. They've got all these
Speaker 3: different spheres of actors.
Speaker 1: So as we can see, this is a huge, sprawling
Speaker 1: case and took a long time to come together. How
Speaker 1: did they know where to start?
Speaker 4: It's worth noting that Fannie Willis, who's a Democrat. She
Speaker 4: was elected and took office just a few days before
Speaker 4: the January sixth attack on the US Capitol, So she
Speaker 4: came into the job already knowing that Georgia had been
Speaker 4: sort of at the center of this election fight that
Speaker 4: culminated in this attack on the Capitol. And also there
Speaker 4: was a shocking piece of evidence that was really focusing
Speaker 4: a lot of attention around the election scandal on Georgia,
Speaker 4: that infamous phone call that we mentioned earlier, the recorded
Speaker 4: phone call in which Trump was pressuring George's Secretary of State,
Speaker 4: the man who runs the elections, to find eleven, seven
Speaker 4: hundred and eighty votes. So in the phone call, Trump
Speaker 4: was allegedly violating Georgia law by pressuring an elected official
Speaker 4: to violate his oath of office. And there were some
Speaker 4: suggestions that you know, he was even potentially threatening that
Speaker 4: it might be criminal for Raffensberger to not follow Trump's orders.
Speaker 4: So this call, the recording of this call came out.
Speaker 4: That's really what Fannie Willis came into when she took office,
Speaker 4: and the next month, in February twenty twenty one, she
Speaker 4: started her criminal investigation, and she already, i think it's
Speaker 4: safe to say, had quite a bit of evidence to
Speaker 4: start on there.
Speaker 3: And what's interesting about that timeline is that her investigation
Speaker 3: and her focus on then outgoing President Trump and these
Speaker 3: high level actors really was far ahead of the other
Speaker 3: investigations that would come. You know, after January sixth, the
Speaker 3: Justice Department was extremely focused on prosecuting the attack on
Speaker 3: the Capitol itself, and although at the time they had said,
Speaker 3: you know, we're open, we're looking at everyone responsible, the
Speaker 3: focus on Trump and the others who you know are
Speaker 3: indicted in Georgia now and who we've identified as the
Speaker 3: unindicted co conspirators in the federal indictment that really came
Speaker 3: a lot later on the federal side.
Speaker 1: You've reported before that several of the accused false electors
Speaker 1: have been cooperating with the prosecutors. How much of a
Speaker 1: role have they played in bringing the charges in this case.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it remains to be seen how big
Speaker 4: their role will be, but clearly it would have been
Speaker 4: helpful to the district attorney and her investigators to have
Speaker 4: this kind of inside look at what was going on
Speaker 4: behind the scenes, because we've heard from a lot of
Speaker 4: reports a lot of these you know, fake electors from
Speaker 4: Georgia and other swing states. They're sort of a similar
Speaker 4: story that was happening is that they were being told
Speaker 4: some of them at least say that they were being
Speaker 4: told that what they were doing was perfectly legal. They
Speaker 4: were just putting themselvesselves up as alternate electors in case
Speaker 4: Trump were to win some lawsuit and suddenly become president.
Speaker 4: They're saying that they needed to have these alternate slates
Speaker 4: of electors set aside, just in case that started in
Speaker 4: Wisconsin when there was actually still a live legal challenge
Speaker 4: that Trump theoretically could have won when they created an
Speaker 4: alternate slate of electors there, But then they were allegedly like, well,
Speaker 4: let's just do this in all the swing states, even
Speaker 4: though there's no chance of Trump winning any lawsuits there,
Speaker 4: and having those individuals, those Republicans Trump supporters who put
Speaker 4: themselves on these lists and participated in this effort. Having
Speaker 4: them be able to explain to investigators why they did that,
Speaker 4: what they were told, what guarantees they were given, would
Speaker 4: all help the DA build the case against the people
Speaker 4: at the top.
Speaker 1: Zoe, this is a state case, and yet the prosecutor,
Speaker 1: Funny will Is, didn't limit the scope of her investigation
Speaker 1: to Fulton County, Georgia, but in fact started to look
Speaker 1: beyond the state of Georgia to other states like Arizona, Michigan,
Speaker 1: and Nevada. How does that work?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, when any prosecutor is investigating a case,
Speaker 3: if they come across other crimes that you know, they're
Speaker 3: able to fit into a prosecution that they have jurisdiction
Speaker 3: to bring under state law, they're not barred from looking
Speaker 3: outside the borders of wherever they are. If she had
Speaker 3: just gone in saying I'm going to conduct a national
Speaker 3: investigation into Trump's activities, that would really be far outside
Speaker 3: her mandate and she can't just bring a federal case
Speaker 3: which would take that broader national scope. But you know,
Speaker 3: when you're charging a conspiracy or racketeering criminal enterprise, by
Speaker 3: nature of that offense, it's broad, it's sweeping. And so
Speaker 3: if the conversations that Donald Trump and Rudy Giliani and
Speaker 3: Don Eastman, et cetera and others are left having where
Speaker 3: they're not just saying the word Georgia, but Georgia is
Speaker 3: on a list of things that they're discussing or emails
Speaker 3: listing a number of states, there is certainly room for
Speaker 3: her to put that into the indictment.
Speaker 1: Eric, what has Donald Trump said about the charges?
Speaker 4: You know, long before these charges were even brought, Donald
Speaker 4: Trump has denied any wrongdoing in Georgia and in the
Speaker 4: related Washington case for that matter. He claims that these
Speaker 4: cases are all part of a political witch hunt, you know,
Speaker 4: where we've heard many times from him, but he claims
Speaker 4: that these prosecutors are bringing these coordinated attacks in order
Speaker 4: to undermine his campaign for office next year.
Speaker 1: And Zoe, what have the others who've been charged in
Speaker 1: the case said so far about the charges as of now?
Speaker 3: You know, they've either denied wrongdoing or have been mum.
Speaker 3: Since the indictment came down, Rudy Giuliani came out swinging,
Speaker 3: as he has repeatedly, calling this, you know, an attack
Speaker 3: on the justice system and part ofenship and denying any wrongdoing.
Speaker 3: You know, a few other players here in the past
Speaker 3: have talked about, you know, also not thinking, not believing
Speaker 3: that they committed any crimes in the course of what
Speaker 3: they were doing, and that they legitimately believed that there
Speaker 3: was fraud and they were pursuing that protected opinion in
Speaker 3: trying to uncover facts about what had happened. But for
Speaker 3: the most part, the majority of defendants so far have
Speaker 3: not commented on the indictment itself.
Speaker 1: When we come back the potential downsides of bringing such
Speaker 1: a big, sprawling case, Eric Fannie Willis has cast a
Speaker 1: very broad net with this RICO case, and you're right
Speaker 1: that she's had a lot of experience bringing these complicated,
Speaker 1: sprawling cases before.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, Fani Willis has a lot of experience with
Speaker 4: Georgia's RICO laws. Prior to her election as Fulton County
Speaker 4: District Attorney, she was the lead prosecutor on a sprawling
Speaker 4: RICO case that was brought against some Georgia teachers, accusing
Speaker 4: them of cheating on standardized tests, you know, helping their
Speaker 4: students look better than they actually were in order to
Speaker 4: help themselves and their funding for their schools. That ended
Speaker 4: up being a huge criminal trial for Georgia. She was
Speaker 4: the lead prosecutor and she won eleven racketeering convictions in
Speaker 4: that case. She also decided to pursue a racketeering and
Speaker 4: drug case against rapper Young thug in more than two
Speaker 4: dozen others. So this is clearly a law that she
Speaker 4: has a lot of interest in being able to apply
Speaker 4: to what they allege our vast criminal schemes and Zoe.
Speaker 1: That is one of the strengths of bringing a Rico case.
Speaker 1: But it comes with some downsides too, doesn't it.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: You know, complexity cuts both ways. It gives you room
Speaker 3: to bring in a lot of people and you know,
Speaker 3: weave together a story where with just one person that
Speaker 3: might be harder to make that case to a jury.
Speaker 3: But when you're putting nineteen people and forty one counts
Speaker 3: in a courtroom, you know before a single jury, you're
Speaker 3: going to have to prove all of those elements all
Speaker 3: at once against all of those people, and you know,
Speaker 3: make sure the jury is following along with you and
Speaker 3: making those same connections when they haven't been steeped in
Speaker 3: it for two years. Each defendant has a right to
Speaker 3: obviously defend themselves and raise all sorts of pre trial
Speaker 3: challenges to the indictment that might be specific to them
Speaker 3: or in conjunction with some of their co defendants. And
Speaker 3: then that gets into the other risk of bringing a
Speaker 3: sprawling racketeering case, which is time. It takes a long
Speaker 3: time to prosecute a case of this size and complexity,
Speaker 3: and when one of your defendants is the former president
Speaker 3: of the United States, there are additional you know, legal
Speaker 3: questions and challenges that he might pursue that are novel, untested,
Speaker 3: and you know, perhaps higher courts may want to dig
Speaker 3: in and resolve them. But well ahead of this getting
Speaker 3: to trial, I was talking with one expert who said
Speaker 3: that Trump may try to move this case out of
Speaker 3: state court into federal court, saying, I was, you know,
Speaker 3: the sitting president at the time, I was a federal official.
Speaker 3: This is properly in federal court. That is a fight
Speaker 3: that Fannie Willis is going to have to decide whether
Speaker 3: to pursue, and whoever loses could take that to the
Speaker 3: federal appeals court, and whoever loses there could ask the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court to weigh in. And all of that is
Speaker 3: just time. And when you're talking about Donald Trump and
Speaker 3: his modus operandi in court, it's delay, it's create time.
Speaker 4: And that really stands out from the case that Special
Speaker 4: Counsel Jack Smith brought against Trump and Washington, accusing him
Speaker 4: of trying to steal the twenty twenty election. He kept
Speaker 4: the case pretty simple. I don't think that he has
Speaker 4: necessarily publicly explained why, but certainly a lot of experts
Speaker 4: have said that this is the simplest way to bring
Speaker 4: a case against a former president who is also running
Speaker 4: to be president again.
Speaker 3: And you know what's interesting, the difference between the approach
Speaker 3: by Jack Smith and Fannie Willis is sort of two
Speaker 3: sides of the same coin when it comes to leverage
Speaker 3: and trying to convince possibly key witnesses to turn on
Speaker 3: other people, including Donald Trump and cooperate. So, you know,
Speaker 3: there's one approach that says, you know, don't charge them
Speaker 3: all right away, let them know that this is what
Speaker 3: you've got and that this is what's in store for
Speaker 3: them if they don't cooperate, and try to get that
Speaker 3: cooperation locked down before indicting them and sort of putting
Speaker 3: them on the defense and putting them on the attack. So,
Speaker 3: you know, the Jack Smith DC indictment has co conspirators
Speaker 3: who are quite easy to identify for the most part,
Speaker 3: so they know they're on notice that this is what
Speaker 3: DJ has against them, and this is what an indictment
Speaker 3: could look like. But the other approach, you know, when
Speaker 3: it comes to leverage, is to indict them and to
Speaker 3: really put them on the spot and say, this is
Speaker 3: real stakes for you right now. You know, we're making
Speaker 3: you show up to court to answer to these charges,
Speaker 3: and you know, isn't that really scary? And wouldn't you
Speaker 3: rather avoid all of this? So you know, the different
Speaker 3: approaches also set up different opportunities for the Special Council
Speaker 3: Office versus the DA's office to try and secure deals
Speaker 3: ahead of getting to trial.
Speaker 1: So, Zoe, where do things go from here? What can
Speaker 1: we expect in the kind of days and weeks ahead.
Speaker 3: Fannie Willis has said that all of the defendants need
Speaker 3: to turn themselves in and surrender by August twenty fifth,
Speaker 3: or potentially face you know, warrants going out for their
Speaker 3: arrests to come in. We don't really have reason to
Speaker 3: think at this point that anyone's going to try to
Speaker 3: flee or evade that, so we would expect sort of
Speaker 3: a normal course of arranging logistics for everyone to show
Speaker 3: up at the courthouse to be arraigned. As of now,
Speaker 3: we expect everyone to plead not guilty, at least initially,
Speaker 3: and then the next step, which has already been quite
Speaker 3: fraught in all the other criminal cases against Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: has been scheduling normally a very mundane thing that has
Speaker 3: become tied up in politics and partisanship. And you know,
Speaker 3: with Trump saying basically, I shouldn't be going before a
Speaker 3: jury and you shouldn't be trying to pick a jury
Speaker 3: until after the twenty twenty four election, and you know,
Speaker 3: you may try to make that case again in Fulton County.
Speaker 3: Whether the judge there will be open to that suggestion
Speaker 3: remains to be seen. So far, judges have not been
Speaker 3: open to that suggestion and have said, this is my courtroom.
Speaker 3: I believe an efficiency, and we're going to set a
Speaker 3: schedule and if we need to adjust it later, you
Speaker 3: know we can, but we're not going to put this off. Definitely,
Speaker 3: needs of the court do not seed to the needs
Speaker 3: of politics, essentially.
Speaker 1: Zoe Eric always great talking to you, Thanks for taking
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having us, thanks.
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