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Speaker 2: Cayley Lin's here joining the conversation with Wendy Benjaminson. Wendy,
Speaker 2: I know you've covered a lot of ground already, but
Speaker 2: we really need to dig into the legal troubles of
Speaker 2: the former president, because this obviously isn't something going away.
Speaker 2: I now on my computer every day, in addition to
Speaker 2: my newswire and my email, things I always keep track of,
Speaker 2: also have true social up well. Two former President Trump's page,
Speaker 2: for example, six hours ago he just posts in all
Speaker 2: caps election interference and of course that's likely a reference
Speaker 2: to the multiple indictments that this former president. Yes all
Speaker 2: caps though all caps, And of course we've had to
Speaker 2: pay a lot of attention to this, not just as
Speaker 2: he has been repeatedly indicted, but also as we get
Speaker 2: questions around when we're actually going to see him go
Speaker 2: to trial.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and the trial calendar is just insane. When you
Speaker 3: overlay it over the primary calendar, there will be the
Speaker 3: IOWA caucuses in January. In February, you will have New
Speaker 3: Hampshire and South Carolina, really critical state, South Carolina in
Speaker 3: particular this year because of the presence of its Senator
Speaker 3: Tim Scott, and it's former governor Nikki Haley. And then
Speaker 3: you have Nevada. And then Fannie Willis thinks she's going
Speaker 3: to trial with this massive Rico case, which I'm really
Speaker 3: eager to hear what Dave Erenberg has to say about
Speaker 3: this in March. I mean, forget the politics for a moment.
Speaker 3: It'll be interesting to hear how he's going to do this.
Speaker 3: And then Alvin Bragg gets his bite at then at
Speaker 3: the Big Apple, so to speak, on March twenty fifth,
Speaker 3: and then in.
Speaker 2: May May class documentum is well, and not to mention
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice in the Washington case here where
Speaker 2: we are requested January second.
Speaker 3: Right, which is also really interesting to see. And also
Speaker 3: in civil cases. Trump is really good at delay tactics.
Speaker 3: It may not work as well in criminal court, but
Speaker 3: he is. He has faced thirty five hundred lawsuits as
Speaker 3: a businessman. Wow, and then almost everyone delay has been
Speaker 3: his best friend.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we'll see if it works in the criminal cases.
Speaker 2: You mentioned him, Wendy, so let's get to him now.
Speaker 2: Dave Arenberg, state attorney for Palmyach County, is joining us.
Speaker 2: Dave great to get your perspective on this. Let's first
Speaker 2: just begin with that proposed start date in Georgia of
Speaker 2: March fourth, twenty twenty four. Do you think that is
Speaker 2: a realistic timeline for this trial in what, as Wendy
Speaker 2: rightly points out, is a very wide ranging case with
Speaker 2: lots of defendants, and by that I mean nineteen.
Speaker 4: I think Wendy is right, because Tom always a good
Speaker 4: way to start. You know, she charged forty one counts
Speaker 4: ninety eight pages of one hundred and sixty one over
Speaker 4: at acts of the alleged conspiracy. I mean she even
Speaker 4: cited conduct and states that are not her own. I
Speaker 4: was in awe of this indictment. It was a tour
Speaker 4: de force. But because of that, I don't think this
Speaker 4: is going before the twenty twenty four election. I think
Speaker 4: Fannie Willis's best chance is to get a bunch of
Speaker 4: the nineteen defendants to flip, to cut a deal, and
Speaker 4: then to have just a couple of these defendants left
Speaker 4: to try before the election. But even then, Rico is
Speaker 4: still such a complex charge that I don't see how
Speaker 4: this is going to get done, especially competing against all
Speaker 4: the other cases over Donald Trump's head. So I think
Speaker 4: the good news for people who want accountability is that
Speaker 4: she is the first prosecutor to try to hold accountable
Speaker 4: all the leaders of the attempted coup. But the downside
Speaker 4: is that I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.
Speaker 3: Well, let's go to that timeline. Then, if it happens
Speaker 3: after the twenty twenty four election, and let's just say
Speaker 3: for a moment that Donald Trump wins, he is the
Speaker 3: president elect. By January twentieth, twenty twenty five, he would
Speaker 3: be president of the United States. Again, I thought, sitting
Speaker 3: presidents can't be involved, can't be defendants in a criminal case,
Speaker 3: So how would that even work.
Speaker 4: One of the great well, one of the great things
Speaker 4: about our job as state attorneys or district attorneys is
Speaker 4: that the US Attorney General is not our boss. The
Speaker 4: president is not our boss. We don't have to subscribe
Speaker 4: to the Department of Justice guidelines which say that you
Speaker 4: cannot indict a sitting president. So she can indict him,
Speaker 4: and she can try to put him on trial. I
Speaker 4: suspect the courts would step in and say that as
Speaker 4: long as he's president, you can't put him on trial,
Speaker 4: and you can have to wait till after he leaves office. Now,
Speaker 4: if that's the case, and this is uncharted territory here,
Speaker 4: we've never had this before, but that's the case, I
Speaker 4: think that the state cases in Georgia and New York
Speaker 4: will be more powerful than the federal cases because Donald
Speaker 4: Trump will certainly try to pardon himself out of the
Speaker 4: federal cases if the trials have not happened yet, he'll
Speaker 4: order his Department of Justice to drop those cases against them.
Speaker 4: But he cannot order the DOJ to drop a state case,
Speaker 4: and he cannot pardon himself out of state cases. So
Speaker 4: it's great to be a state prosecutor.
Speaker 2: Well, there's also the question of whether or not he
Speaker 2: ever becomes president again. He still is a former president
Speaker 2: that we're talking about here, who has been charged with
Speaker 2: crimes that, if found guilty, could mean prison time in Georgia, specifically,
Speaker 2: as he's charged with violating the Rico Act that has
Speaker 2: a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. And it becomes
Speaker 2: a question as to whether or not we're actually going
Speaker 2: to see a former US president be sent to prison.
Speaker 2: I asked this of Nick Ackerman, a former Watergate prosecutor,
Speaker 2: on Balance of Power earlier this week. This is what
Speaker 2: he told me.
Speaker 5: Rico count itself carries with it twenty years or I
Speaker 5: think he's going to get twenty years. No, but he
Speaker 5: could definitely get some time under that ricer statute. If
Speaker 5: he's convicted, there's a minimum of at least a five
Speaker 5: year sentence. Now that doesn't mean five years in prison.
Speaker 5: It could be year, three years, probation, two years in prison.
Speaker 5: But yes, I think if he has found guilty, this
Speaker 5: is an extremely serious indictment. The allegations are serious, and
Speaker 5: if he's convicted, he's going to do time.
Speaker 2: So, Dave, as a prosecutor, would you push to send
Speaker 2: a former president to prison or would you be worried
Speaker 2: about the broader signal that would.
Speaker 4: Send Well, no one is above the law, and so
Speaker 4: I would push to treat him like others in the
Speaker 4: same situation. One thing that Trump has going for him
Speaker 4: is that he has no prior convictions, although that could
Speaker 4: change by the time this trial comes about. Fair Nick, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I do good. Nick Ackerman that although Fannie willis at
Speaker 4: a press conference, said there's a five year managed or
Speaker 4: a minimum prison sentence. The way I read the statute
Speaker 4: is that it does not require a judge to order
Speaker 4: prison time. He can give or she could give probation,
Speaker 4: a fine, a combination of prison and a fine. So
Speaker 4: we'll see. But I do think that if he's found
Speaker 4: guilty of these serious charges, that it is likely he
Speaker 4: will get some sort of incarceration. It could just be
Speaker 4: house arrest and that would be the lightest form, but
Speaker 4: he could be sentenced to a prison stay. I know
Speaker 4: it's hard to believe and imagine that would happen, but look,
Speaker 4: who could ever imagine that a more present would be
Speaker 4: indicted four times already? We've never been down this road before.
Speaker 3: Well, and Dave, that leads to sort of the question
Speaker 3: of the bigger picture that even state prosecutors would have
Speaker 3: to consider in this case, is what happens to the
Speaker 3: country at that point? And as if you recall your history,
Speaker 3: I guess it is now. Gerald Ford really wrestled with
Speaker 3: whether to pardon Nick's and for any possible crimes he
Speaker 3: might have committed, because he was he thought the country
Speaker 3: had been rending itself apart over Vietnam and civil rights
Speaker 3: and other things, and it was just too much for
Speaker 3: the country, so he pardoned him. Would prosecutors or judges
Speaker 3: take that sort of idea into account, because we're not
Speaker 3: at sixties level yet, but we're pretty close.
Speaker 4: As it's possible. But remember back in the day when
Speaker 4: Gerald Ford part and Richard Nixon, we were a different country.
Speaker 4: We were a country that watched Walter Cronkite all at
Speaker 4: the same time. We weren't as divided into our tribes.
Speaker 4: Now it's shirts versus skins these days. And there is
Speaker 4: nothing that at President Biden or any other future president
Speaker 4: can do when it comes to pardoning Donald Trump that
Speaker 4: would ever ingratiate themselves into the magabase. There's nothing that
Speaker 4: could convinced Donald Trump's core supporters that Donald Trump is
Speaker 4: guilty or that Biden or anyone else is less than evil.
Speaker 4: I mean, these people, a lot of them think that
Speaker 4: Democrats drink the blood of babies. So I just I
Speaker 4: know I'm being a little over the top here, but
Speaker 4: my point is that we're in a different society now.
Speaker 4: If you continue to try to appease the most radical
Speaker 4: elements in Trump's space, it's going to blow up in
Speaker 4: your face, and I just think you have to treat
Speaker 4: Trump like you would treat anyone else in the same situation,
Speaker 4: because that's the only way to show that no one
Speaker 4: is above the law and that we're not going to
Speaker 4: be intimidated by threats of violence or rhetoric coming from
Speaker 4: the other side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very good point, and I think that
Speaker 2: is the violence and questions around the security of the journey,
Speaker 2: for example, have arisen in recent weeks as a result
Speaker 2: of this indictment. You know, Wendy, you and I were
Speaker 2: discussing earlier that a number of members of the Grand
Speaker 2: Jury in Georgia were docked addresses posted online. So that's
Speaker 2: definitely something we're going to have to continue to talk about.
Speaker 2: But Dave, just to go back to the kind of
Speaker 2: timeline question. Wendy was talking about how in civil cases,
Speaker 2: former President Trump has been very successful at delay, delay, delay.
Speaker 2: In these criminal cases, not just in Georgia but also
Speaker 2: the one down in your state of Florida the others,
Speaker 2: how many levers realistically are there for him and his
Speaker 2: defense team to pull. Do you think we could see
Speaker 2: any of these cases realistically fully wrapped up in a
Speaker 2: bow before the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 4: I think the two cases most likely to be tried
Speaker 4: before the election would be Jack Smith's case on the
Speaker 4: election shenanigans in Washington, d C. Because you have judged Chuckin,
Speaker 4: who wants that case to move, and Jack Smith limited
Speaker 4: his indictment to what he thought he could prove and
Speaker 4: without dealing with complex First Amendment issues over charging seditious
Speaker 4: conspiracy or insurrection. So I think that case is going
Speaker 4: to go. I think the New York case, which is
Speaker 4: the weakest of the four cases about the hush money payments,
Speaker 4: I think since that was first, that could go too,
Speaker 4: And so those two the other two I think will
Speaker 4: happen after the election. I think the strongest case is
Speaker 4: the documents matter, but I think that case involves some
Speaker 4: complex issues over classified documents and a federal law called
Speaker 4: SIPA and the need to get clearances. So I think
Speaker 4: that's going to be delayed. Plus you have a judge
Speaker 4: and judge I think Cannon, who has seemed to make
Speaker 4: rulings that have benefited the former president. So I think
Speaker 4: he'll have two cases that will be tried. But here's
Speaker 4: the thing. He may be found guilty, but then I
Speaker 4: think he'll stay out of jail pending appeal, and so
Speaker 4: I don't think you'll see full justice until after the election.
Speaker 3: Well, and I wanted to ask you about the judge
Speaker 3: and the trial prosecutor in Fulton County. Apparently the judge
Speaker 3: is fairly new to the bench and the prosecutor comes
Speaker 3: up from sort of small crimes division of the District
Speaker 3: Attorney's office. And now these two are faced with a
Speaker 3: case involving the former president of the United States, in
Speaker 3: a case that really, if without putting too fine a
Speaker 3: point on it, is about whether US democracy still works.
Speaker 3: If you were them, would you be wretching in a
Speaker 3: waste basket as I would be having been given this assignment.
Speaker 4: I would relish it. I mean, this is a moment
Speaker 4: of a lifetime of generation. You know, you don't get
Speaker 4: situations like this in American history. And now if you're
Speaker 4: the judge who was just recently appointed in Georgia, I mean,
Speaker 4: and this is thrust in your lap. I mean, this
Speaker 4: is why you want to become a judge, is to
Speaker 4: deal with a case like this that is about preserving
Speaker 4: American democracy. And so I think that's okay. But as
Speaker 4: far as their lack of experience. Judge Cannon is inexperienced,
Speaker 4: and the judge in the Atlantic case is inexperienced, doesn't
Speaker 4: mean by that nature that they're bad judges. That's our system.
Speaker 4: We have a system where yeah, well we have a
Speaker 4: system where judges are assigned randomly these cases and sometimes
Speaker 4: they're going to get inexperienced judges, and that's what appellet
Speaker 4: courts are for to overrule their bad decisions. But I'm
Speaker 4: not as worried about that as I am the fact
Speaker 4: that there are going to be so many delays and
Speaker 4: they're not going to be cameras in the corum except
Speaker 4: maybe in Atlanta. If that stays in state court, that
Speaker 4: there's just a lack of transparency and you're going to
Speaker 4: have a whole segment of the population who will believe
Speaker 4: what they're told and won't be able to see it
Speaker 4: with their own eyes.
Speaker 2: All right, Dave Ehrenberg, it's really great as always to
Speaker 2: get your perspective. I'm sure we're going to be talking
Speaker 2: to you a lot in the coming months, the state
Speaker 2: attorney for Palm Beach County. We appreciate the time.
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Speaker 2: Thirty middle of August, Wendy supposed to be a quiet
Speaker 2: month here in Washington. It has been anything, but arguably.
Speaker 3: It's a myth. August is a myth, hasn't it. We
Speaker 3: haven't had one for years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'm learning this. The thing is as
Speaker 2: insane as August has been. I bet comes September, things
Speaker 2: are going to be a whole lot crazier really, just
Speaker 2: throughout the fall, because when we come back, when Congress
Speaker 2: comes back post Labor Day inter session, it's going to
Speaker 2: be all about avoiding a government shutdown, which theoretically could
Speaker 2: happen after September thirtieth, and then one day later when
Speaker 2: October starts, people are going to have to start paying
Speaker 2: their student loan debt again, something they haven't done for years.
Speaker 2: But that pandemic policy is coming to an end.
Speaker 3: It is, and right at the time, the President, Joe
Speaker 3: Biden is trying to sell his Bidenomics program and say
Speaker 3: that everything's great. Everybody will have a nice chunk of
Speaker 3: their paychecks dedicated to paying off their student loans again,
Speaker 3: and it's just, you know, bad luck. If sometimes I
Speaker 3: think if Biden didn't have bad luck, you have no
Speaker 3: like at all on the economy.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, well, this is something that not only you and
Speaker 2: I are paying attention to as journalists, but companies are
Speaker 2: paying attention to as well, because theoretically this is going
Speaker 2: to change people's budgets. They have to start repaying their loans.
Speaker 2: A couple hundred dollars a month, say, probably means they're
Speaker 2: going to spend less on other things. And this is
Speaker 2: something that came up on the call for Walmart, of course,
Speaker 2: the huge retailer reported earnings today, and actually on the
Speaker 2: conference call, the company's CEO, Doug McMillan said he sees
Speaker 2: a headwind coming from US student loan repayments. We want
Speaker 2: to get more on the Walmart story and Target as well,
Speaker 2: which reported yesterday. Brendan Case is joining us. He is
Speaker 2: a US retailer reporter for US here at Bloomberg. So
Speaker 2: Brendan overall, what picture of the consumer is both Walmart
Speaker 2: and Target painting here.
Speaker 6: They're both painting a picture of a consumer that is
Speaker 6: still spending, but is facing additional strains. And so, as
Speaker 6: you said, for Walmart, they're worried about the student loan repayments.
Speaker 6: That's actually the first time I've heard them talk about that.
Speaker 6: It's something that Target's been talking about for for a
Speaker 6: long time. Walmart also flagged rising borrowing costs in general. Uh,
Speaker 6: and and and and and and just sort of the
Speaker 6: weakness of of having that part of your household budget
Speaker 6: under pressure. It's not at all a totally gloomy picture.
Speaker 6: The companies say that the strong jobs market is still
Speaker 6: helping their customers, and so you know, they've still got
Speaker 6: uh they've still got a fair amount of of of
Speaker 6: of demand. Uh, but you know, there are some some
Speaker 6: cracks in the armor. The other big thing, of course,
Speaker 6: is just the continuation of the split between essentials and
Speaker 6: discretionary goods. So if you think about buying food versus
Speaker 6: buying you know, electronics or home goods, you know, a
Speaker 6: lot of people are having to spend more on food
Speaker 6: after the inflation we've had the last couple of years,
Speaker 6: and less on discretionary that's why you're seeing Walmart turn
Speaker 6: in pretty strong sales gains while Target sales are falling.
Speaker 3: Well, Brendan, you know, the President is campaigning on the
Speaker 3: idea that the Inflation Reduction Act did what its name
Speaker 3: suggested it is supposed to do. And we do know
Speaker 3: here at Bloomberg that inflation is down, but our consumers
Speaker 3: and our consumers feeling it or do they just feel
Speaker 3: less rise in prices.
Speaker 6: Based on what Walmart and Target said, it's much more
Speaker 6: towards the latter. And one thing that Walmart was it
Speaker 6: pains to point out is that, yes, inflation is coming down. Yes,
Speaker 6: it's much less of an issue in a lot of
Speaker 6: the basic categories that they're selling in than it was,
Speaker 6: you know, six or twelve months ago. However, it's not
Speaker 6: as if vices are going back to where they were
Speaker 6: before all of this happened. And Walmart was it pains
Speaker 6: to say, you know, shore inflation is down in terms
Speaker 6: of the monthly inflation rate, but if you look at
Speaker 6: the food that we're selling, you know, and you look
Speaker 6: at those underlying food costs from suppliers, they're still up
Speaker 6: twenty percent over the last two years. Wow. And that's
Speaker 6: not going to go away anytime soon, and in fact
Speaker 6: it's probably never gone away.
Speaker 2: Well, Brendan, This of course being Bloomberg, we do care
Speaker 2: very much about the fundamentals and the pricing power that
Speaker 2: companies have. But this is also Bloomberg's politics show. The
Speaker 2: fastest show in politics is what we like to call it.
Speaker 2: So there are political angle tier as well, not just
Speaker 2: on the inflation story in President Biden that Wendy was
Speaker 2: talking about, but specifically this pushback we are seeing around
Speaker 2: the idea of woke however you want to define it.
Speaker 2: It is a thing that has talked about frequently and
Speaker 2: we saw just two months ago back in June, Target
Speaker 2: specifically had a big issue with its Prime displays in
Speaker 2: its stores. This is something that Brian Cornell, the CEO,
Speaker 2: spoke about on the earnings call yesterday.
Speaker 7: We have featured a Prime assortment for more than a decade. However,
Speaker 7: after the launch the assortment this year, members are our
Speaker 7: team again experience in threats and aggressive actions that affected
Speaker 7: their sense of safety and wellbeing while at work. I
Speaker 7: want to make it clear we'd announced violence and hate
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Speaker 7: guest is our top priority, So to protect the team
Speaker 7: in the face of these sprending circumstances, we quickly may changes,
Speaker 7: including removable items or the center of the most significant
Speaker 7: confrontational behavior.
Speaker 2: So Brendan, is this just a convenient excuse for Target
Speaker 2: as it relates to some of what the company was
Speaker 2: actually seeing in terms of sales, or is this an
Speaker 2: issue that's going to be ongoing for them.
Speaker 6: It's definitely an issue for them, and it's going to
Speaker 6: come up next year. It'll be interesting to see how
Speaker 6: they hand in twenty twenty four. But if we just
Speaker 6: look back at what happened in June, they provided some
Speaker 6: interesting numbers, just kind of on a bottom line basis.
Speaker 6: What they said is that they're comparable sales, you know,
Speaker 6: to simplify, you're talking about sales at stores that have
Speaker 6: been open about thirteen months, and how that compares year
Speaker 6: to year. You know, they said that that metric fell
Speaker 6: three percent in May, seven percent in June, which was
Speaker 6: after the controversy first erupted at the end of May,
Speaker 6: and only five percent in July. So in other words,
Speaker 6: there was a bit of a recovery in July. They
Speaker 6: resolutely refused to quantify the effect of the controversy over
Speaker 6: their Pride collection. But those numbers give you a hint
Speaker 6: that there was a real impact in terms of their sales.
Speaker 6: And what you heard Cornell and the other executives trying
Speaker 6: to do is to sort of thread the needle. You know.
Speaker 6: What they know is that their customer base is something
Speaker 6: like a very broad swath of the American population, a
Speaker 6: lot of different opinions baked in there, a lot of
Speaker 6: different backgrounds, a lot of different consumer preferences. They said
Speaker 6: that they don't want to get too far away from
Speaker 6: what their customers want, and you could read that however
Speaker 6: you want. I mean, that's a pretty ambiguous statement. But
Speaker 6: I think it'll be interesting to see what they do
Speaker 6: next year, and especially I think the item I would
Speaker 6: watch is just how prominent those displays are. And you know,
Speaker 6: I think what you'll also see is that you'll see
Speaker 6: T shirts and mugs and and things like that. One
Speaker 6: of the items that was at the center of the
Speaker 6: controversy this year was a bathing suit design, and I'll
Speaker 6: bet you that you're not going to see, you know,
Speaker 6: a lot more things like that.
Speaker 3: Well, we have just a minute left here, Brendan, But
Speaker 3: what about the issue of rising thefts in these stores
Speaker 3: and shoplifting. What did they say about that and what
Speaker 3: would they like to see happen?
Speaker 6: So this is clearly a problem for them. They have
Speaker 6: different communications strategies about it. Hard to know exactly what
Speaker 6: the numbers are since they don't provide enormous amounts of detail,
Speaker 6: but Target said that it continues to be a very
Speaker 6: big problem. This is a company that said that shrink,
Speaker 6: which is the sort of the retail jargon for a
Speaker 6: number of costs that include fest is going to hit
Speaker 6: profits this year to the tune of half a billion
Speaker 6: dollars beyond what it did last year. And I said
Speaker 6: that that expectation still remains pretty much intact. What they
Speaker 6: did say is that it's become more predictable and that
Speaker 6: that that shrink at least was in line with their
Speaker 6: expectations the most recent quarter as opposed to being much worse.
Speaker 6: Walmart spoke even less about it. But the one mess
Speaker 6: that It's CEO Doug McMillan did send us that he
Speaker 6: thinks that some US jurisdictions need to do more to
Speaker 6: combat this type of crime.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's not just retail executives who have a
Speaker 2: message on crime. We're seeing it a lot in politics
Speaker 2: here in Washington as well. Brendan Case, Bloomberg US retail reporter,
Speaker 2: thank you so much.
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