Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden fighting words from Steve Bannon in
Speaker 1: January after appearing before a judge to face criminal contempt
Speaker 1: charges for defying a subpoena from the January sixth Committee.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go on the offense. We're tired of playing defense.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go on the offense on this and stand by.
Speaker 1: Six months later, there's no offense and not much of
Speaker 1: a defense. Bannon is standing trial in a DC federal
Speaker 1: court on Monday after a judge eviscerated most of his defenses.
Speaker 1: Joining me as former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rogers and adjunct
Speaker 1: professor at n y U Law School, Jennifer, let's start
Speaker 1: with Bannon trying to get his trial postponed and volunteering
Speaker 1: on the eve of trial to now testify before the committee. Basically,
Speaker 1: the whole game plan for defending usually is delay until
Speaker 1: you can't delay anymore. So that's just kind of a
Speaker 1: typical thing, you know, always push it off, push it off.
Speaker 1: But he's just trying to play a game here. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's been charged with contempt for what he did in
Speaker 1: the past in stonewalling the committee, refusing to testify, refusing
Speaker 1: to hand over documents, And this is kind of a
Speaker 1: last effort to say, well, you're claiming that I did
Speaker 1: all this stuff, but you know I'll do it now,
Speaker 1: So let's put it off so that I can actually cooperate,
Speaker 1: which is what you want after all, Like what are
Speaker 1: we doing here sort of things. So really just the
Speaker 1: kind of last gasp for him of a way to
Speaker 1: try to put things off and delay things. And also,
Speaker 1: by the way, plant this kind of jury nullification seed
Speaker 1: in people's minds that why are we making a federal
Speaker 1: case of this if he's actually willing to do it now.
Speaker 1: So Bennon's defense wants to use this supposed new cooperation
Speaker 1: to argue at his trial that he wasn't remiss in
Speaker 1: defying a subpoena from the House Committee in the first place.
Speaker 1: The judge said he would decide lay later whether banning
Speaker 1: can use that as a defense. But how is that relevant?
Speaker 1: Even yeah, you're right, it's not, And that's what d
Speaker 1: o J has said in their response. I mean he
Speaker 1: was charged with what he did in a specific time
Speaker 1: period that has a long past. So even if this
Speaker 1: day after they charged him with an indictment he turned
Speaker 1: around and said, hey, okay, you know what, Now, I
Speaker 1: get that you're serious. Now I'm willing to do it,
Speaker 1: even then it would have been too late, because the
Speaker 1: point is you can't just swards a subpoena and ignore
Speaker 1: a subpoena and just get away with it and damage
Speaker 1: their investigation by doing so, and then say, okay, well
Speaker 1: I'll do it when I really get in trouble for it.
Speaker 1: So the point is it's too late to change his tune,
Speaker 1: and it's been too late for a long long time.
Speaker 1: So there's no legal way that this is a relevant
Speaker 1: argument for the jury. I think the judge is just
Speaker 1: going to reserve, because judges often do that. They don't
Speaker 1: want to decide everything in advance. Sometimes they want to
Speaker 1: see how you and it comes in and things play out.
Speaker 1: But I cannot imagine a scenario in which the judge
Speaker 1: allowed Bannon's lawyer to put in that argument, because it's
Speaker 1: just legally completely irrelevant. All it really is a play
Speaker 1: to the jury for nullification, which is not illegally justifiable
Speaker 1: arguments made. The judge denied Bannon's request to delay the
Speaker 1: trial because of publicity surrounding the January six Committee hearings,
Speaker 1: and he also shot down most of Bannon's other proposed defenses. Now,
Speaker 1: some of Bannon's defenses seem like they were out there,
Speaker 1: like saying the committee was improperly constituted. Were there any
Speaker 1: that seemed reasonable to you? Most of them did not.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been shocked to see a judge pushed
Speaker 1: the trial a little bit to get out of the
Speaker 1: active January six Committee hearings. You do want a fair jury.
Speaker 1: You want a jury that says it can be impartial.
Speaker 1: You want a jury that isn't too steep in what
Speaker 1: going on around Trump and Bannon and the January sticks Committee.
Speaker 1: And so I wouldn't have been shocked to see the
Speaker 1: judge say, you know what stuff is going on right now?
Speaker 1: The Committee is going to be done with their hearings
Speaker 1: in a matter of a couple of weeks. Let's push
Speaker 1: it a month so we kind of get out of
Speaker 1: that news cycle about the committee to give us a
Speaker 1: better chance of getting a jury that hasn't been watching
Speaker 1: the hearings and kind of hearing all this on a
Speaker 1: daily basis, so I wouldn't have been surprised at that.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's legal error not to do it
Speaker 1: by any stretch. So that argument could have had a
Speaker 1: little bit of traction with the right judge. So after
Speaker 1: Judge Nichols pretty much throughout all these defenses, one of
Speaker 1: Bannon's defense attorneys said, what's the point of going to
Speaker 1: trial if there are no defenses? And Judge Nichols said, agreed,
Speaker 1: I mean, what does that say? Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. He's just spending right, he's just a little frustrated.
Speaker 1: I think there's a sense for I don't know that
Speaker 1: he's really meant to to put that out there. But
Speaker 1: that's exactly the point. He doesn't have any valid defense
Speaker 1: this to this. I mean, he made a real strategic
Speaker 1: error to just completely stonewall the committee. You know, he
Speaker 1: could have done the Mark Meadows strategy, been a bit
Speaker 1: smarter about negotiating and maybe turning some things over, or
Speaker 1: at least agreeing to show up and claim his privileges
Speaker 1: in person or something. You know, there were lots of
Speaker 1: ways that he could have given a little bit and
Speaker 1: looked like he was at least somewhat cooperative. That would
Speaker 1: have made it much harder for do O J to
Speaker 1: charge him and given him more arguments if they did.
Speaker 1: He didn't do that. He wanted to take the hundred
Speaker 1: percent I'm not doing this. Look how loyal I am.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a stand up Trump guy. And that
Speaker 1: really is coming back to bite him now because he
Speaker 1: just doesn't have any defense at all to the way
Speaker 1: that he handled this whole subpoena inquiry. So he's got
Speaker 1: to live with that now. He doesn't have any defenses.
Speaker 1: So as lawyers kind of like, what am I going
Speaker 1: to do at trial? You know, the way that you
Speaker 1: would complain to a colleague or a friend. What the
Speaker 1: world am I going to do standing up trying to
Speaker 1: defend this guy? And the answer is, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, you're gonna have to see what you can
Speaker 1: come up with. I mean, really, what he's gonna do
Speaker 1: is make a play for jury nullification, which is not
Speaker 1: a legitimate thing to do, and the court will have
Speaker 1: to be careful in the way that it tries to
Speaker 1: kind of cabin those arguments and not letting him go
Speaker 1: too far with them. But he doesn't have any legitimate defense.
Speaker 1: But you know that happens. Actually, I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: that uncommon that you have a defendant who insists on
Speaker 1: going to trial, refuses to plead, doesn't really have a
Speaker 1: legitimate defense, and you go through the motions because that's
Speaker 1: the defendant's right, and you end up with a conviction
Speaker 1: in those cases. And that's what I expect to see here.
Speaker 1: What would an argument for jury nullification look like? There's
Speaker 1: a few things. I mean, he could try for nullification
Speaker 1: just on the fact that maybe you end up with
Speaker 1: some jurors who like Trump and like Bannon, and maybe
Speaker 1: you kind of appeal to them and you want them
Speaker 1: to hang up the jury right so that you can't
Speaker 1: get a conviction because just politically they're on one side,
Speaker 1: you know, ver is the other side. You might say,
Speaker 1: why make a federal case of this kind of just
Speaker 1: play to the whole what's the harm here? Really? You know,
Speaker 1: the committees talked to a lot of people. They don't
Speaker 1: really need to talk to everybody. They're just throwing their
Speaker 1: weight around. No harm, no foul. That's another nullification argument.
Speaker 1: I mean, the argument that you raised that he actually
Speaker 1: didn't understand that the subpoena had validity. That's really more
Speaker 1: of a legal argument. I mean that the court's going
Speaker 1: to say it's not a legitimate legal argument. But that's
Speaker 1: not as much a nullification argument as these other things,
Speaker 1: which just kind of, you know, it's almost like winking
Speaker 1: at the jury and saying, you know, okay, I get
Speaker 1: that it's you know, actually a violation, But what's the
Speaker 1: big deal. Why don't you just let me off the
Speaker 1: hook here for a reason that's not legitimate. That's really
Speaker 1: the nullification argument, and that happens. Juries do some strange things.
Speaker 1: Defense got one ruling Bannon may present evidence to show
Speaker 1: that his failure to comply with the subpoena wasn't intentional.
Speaker 1: For example, if he was unclear on the deadline for
Speaker 1: his response, I don't know what he could put forth here.
Speaker 1: The judge said that thinking one is legally excluded or
Speaker 1: thinking a subpoena is invalid is not the same as
Speaker 1: thinking a reply date was put on hold, So he'd
Speaker 1: have to show some basic misunderstanding. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: strange one. All this is saying is listen, if you
Speaker 1: have evidence like this, bring it. Of course, you know
Speaker 1: of course you're allowed to bring evidence that you know.
Speaker 1: Let's say he shows up with a letter that says this,
Speaker 1: I got this letter from the committee and it says
Speaker 1: I don't have to comply by that date. Don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. We're pushing it back. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: need to worry about this. The problem is that letter
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. So what the judge is saying is, if
Speaker 1: you actually have evidence that means you're not guilty because
Speaker 1: they gave you, you know, a longer time frame, or
Speaker 1: they narrowed what you have to bring, and then you
Speaker 1: were charged with not bringing something that the committee said
Speaker 1: you don't have to bring. Of course you can present
Speaker 1: that evidence anyone could, right that basically shows that you're
Speaker 1: not guilty of problem is, there is no such evidence.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of a false victory for Bannon here
Speaker 1: because he's not going to be able to show that
Speaker 1: the committee didn't try a million times over right to
Speaker 1: get the evidence from him on certain dates that they
Speaker 1: repeated over and over with a certain scope of documents
Speaker 1: and testimony they wanted that they were clear about, and
Speaker 1: that he just completely blew all of it off. So
Speaker 1: what does the government have to show to prove his guilt, Well,
Speaker 1: they'll show that he was very clearly subpoenaed for specific information,
Speaker 1: specific testimony, that all of this was very clear to Bannon.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just that it was sent once by certified
Speaker 1: mail and then they ignored it. I mean, they have
Speaker 1: evidence that he received the subpoena right through his counsel,
Speaker 1: that he was aware of these requirements, and that he
Speaker 1: willfully didn't comply. And so you know, there there was
Speaker 1: some discussion of this, for example on his podcast. You know,
Speaker 1: he made public statements that out it. So there's lots
Speaker 1: of ways that they can show that it was a
Speaker 1: bad faith non responsiveness, right, that this wasn't just oh,
Speaker 1: they slipped it through my mailbox and I never thought
Speaker 1: it or it was so confusing and I didn't understand it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was pretty clear from all of the
Speaker 1: surrounding evidence when you look at his public statements, Trump's
Speaker 1: public statements what was going on with other witnesses at
Speaker 1: the time that he knew exactly what he was doing,
Speaker 1: and what he was doing was trying to undercut their
Speaker 1: investigation by not providing them with the evidence that they
Speaker 1: were speaking from him. So Jennifer if he's convicted, he
Speaker 1: can do jail time. He can, he can, absolutely he
Speaker 1: there's actually a mandatory minimum here, so he will do
Speaker 1: jail time if he's convicted. That's the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: this particular misdemeanor. So you know, it's not a lot
Speaker 1: of jail time. It's it's thirty days for each count
Speaker 1: and up to a year for each count. So you
Speaker 1: know he would get on the low end of that,
Speaker 1: probably the in a mom of one month per count.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, Steve Bannon very well could go
Speaker 1: to prison here, and that's obviously what he's now kind
Speaker 1: of doing all these last minute maneuverings to try to
Speaker 1: avoid I want to turn now to another Trump ally
Speaker 1: defying a subpoena. A judge has ordered Republican Senator Lindsey
Speaker 1: Graham to appear before a special grand jury in Atlanta
Speaker 1: investigating interference in the presidential election on August two. He
Speaker 1: said that Graham was a necessary and material witness to
Speaker 1: the grand jury probe. This comes after Graham was subpoena
Speaker 1: and vowed to challenge the subpoena. What else can Graham
Speaker 1: do to fight this, Well, he's going to ultimately have
Speaker 1: to comply. I suspect he can get more time if
Speaker 1: he wants more time. August is pretty close to now,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure if you know, his lawyer contacts the
Speaker 1: D's office, they can work something out with the timing.
Speaker 1: But this is a legitimate subpoena at Georgia. Judge has
Speaker 1: signed off. They have ways of getting cooperation from other states,
Speaker 1: so that in the worst case scenario playing in now
Speaker 1: for Lindsay Graham, if he absolutely refused to comply, he
Speaker 1: could be arrested and brought to Georgia to testify. So
Speaker 1: he certainly doesn't want to trigger that happening, so he
Speaker 1: is going to have to show up. There Goold moved
Speaker 1: to quash the subpoena, but this judge has already said
Speaker 1: that he finds, you know, he's been necessary witnessed, so
Speaker 1: that's out. So he's going to have to comply. I
Speaker 1: think he can get more time and negotiate some sort
Speaker 1: of appearance that is more convenient for him if he
Speaker 1: wants two or three weeks or whatever it ends up being.
Speaker 1: But he's going to have to show up. Is it
Speaker 1: just political that he doesn't want to show up because
Speaker 1: you know, we all know about the two calls he
Speaker 1: made to the Georgia Secretary of State Raffensburger. Raefensburger has
Speaker 1: already testified to the grand jury, so the grand jury
Speaker 1: knows about it, and he's been told that he's a witness.
Speaker 1: He's not a subject or a target of the investigation.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's a couple of things going on.
Speaker 1: One thing is in your own self interest. You want
Speaker 1: to make sure that you're not in jeopardy, So being
Speaker 1: told you're not a target is one thing. He might
Speaker 1: also actually be seeking technical immunity. He may want an
Speaker 1: actual order of immunity UM, so his lawyer would be
Speaker 1: negotiating that UM. And then the political side, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's been a loyal Trump supporter. He doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be seen as going away from that right,
Speaker 1: and he still wants to be seen as a loyal
Speaker 1: Trump supporter. So I think that those things combined is
Speaker 1: why he's reluctant. But he probably knows he's going to
Speaker 1: have to do it. This is a little bit of
Speaker 1: show trial, right, I'm resisting, I'm not doing it. They
Speaker 1: have to come get me and then lo and behold
Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks the areas in Georgia, right,
Speaker 1: but he wants to give this kind of impression of
Speaker 1: still being on team Trump and he only has to
Speaker 1: go down there because he has absolutely no choice. Do
Speaker 1: you think it would look bad for a siting senator
Speaker 1: to ask for immunity? I don't know. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: it's funny. We've seen We're kind of in a different
Speaker 1: era now, right. I mean, I think it used to
Speaker 1: be that if you were a senator and you ask
Speaker 1: for immunity from criminal prosecution, everyone would be like, that's
Speaker 1: so outrageous, you know that you think you did something
Speaker 1: that you need immunity for. Nowadays we have people asking
Speaker 1: for pardons, right, So, um, I'm kind of in a
Speaker 1: different world. And you know, I got to tell you
Speaker 1: there are a lot of criminal defense lawyers who, if
Speaker 1: they were representing Lindsey Graham, would say, thank you for
Speaker 1: your statement that he's not a target, but we want immunity.
Speaker 1: You know, that is what really protects your clients. So
Speaker 1: you know, I think a lot of lawyers would be
Speaker 1: pushing for that just as the kind of firmest protection
Speaker 1: for their clients. Now, maybe Lindsay Brown does push back
Speaker 1: and say but I'm a senator. I can't ask for immunity.
Speaker 1: I suppose that's possible, But honestly, nowadays, in the world
Speaker 1: we live in now, with people asking for pardons, I
Speaker 1: think they're more interested in their own kind of self
Speaker 1: interest then and how it appears. So we'll see, we'll
Speaker 1: see if that's how it shakes out, if if that
Speaker 1: comes out publicly, but I think it's probably at least
Speaker 1: under discussion between Lindsey Graham and his lawyer and then
Speaker 1: perhaps with the Dass as well. Thanks so much, Jennifer.
Speaker 1: That's Jennifer Rogers of n y U Law School coming up.
Speaker 1: Brittney Grinder on trial. This is Bloomberg Family, friends and
Speaker 1: teammates have been mounting a full court press to bring
Speaker 1: w n B A star Brittney Grinder back home from Russia,
Speaker 1: where she's been detained since February when Hashee so Sooyle
Speaker 1: was found in her luggage. Her wife, Cheryl Grinder, has
Speaker 1: been speaking out were you sitting over there, Cutchy having
Speaker 1: having coming see your rescue yet there was even a
Speaker 1: phone call with President Joe Biden and a letter from him.
Speaker 1: National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says the White House is
Speaker 1: doing all it can to secure her release. We are
Speaker 1: working directly with the Russian government through appropriate chan was
Speaker 1: to try to bring a speedy resolution not just to
Speaker 1: her case, but to Paul Wheelan's case as well. Surprising many,
Speaker 1: Grinder pleaded guilty to the Russian drug charges last Thursday,
Speaker 1: saying she packed in a hurry and had no criminal intent.
Speaker 1: The guilty on the charges, but I had no intention
Speaker 1: on breaking any Russian law. Grinder's plea makes a conviction certain,
Speaker 1: but unlike in American courts, it doesn't automatically end her trial.
Speaker 1: Joining me as Jeffrey Kahn, a professor at s m
Speaker 1: used Deadman's School of Law, defendants in Russian courts are convicted.
Speaker 1: What do you think Grinder waited so long to plead guilty. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a complicated question, and there are two ways of
Speaker 1: answering it. One is she didn't have the opportunity. She
Speaker 1: was placed in a Russian jail and subjected to pre
Speaker 1: trial detention while the state began its investigation, and so
Speaker 1: she didn't have, under Russian law really any opportunity to
Speaker 1: do so, earliers. The larger answer is the Russian criminal
Speaker 1: justice system operates on very different principles than the US
Speaker 1: adversarial system. Growth lies on something called a case file,
Speaker 1: and this case file is completely in the control of
Speaker 1: the state. It is this binder that contains all the
Speaker 1: evidence that a court will consider. In an American court,
Speaker 1: nothing counts as evidence unless it's been provided through live
Speaker 1: witness testimony. In a Russian court, if it's not in
Speaker 1: the case file, it didn't happen. And although there are
Speaker 1: some opportunities for a defense attorney to ask for things
Speaker 1: to be included in the case file, everything, everything is
Speaker 1: in the control of the state's investigator, the sled the vattal.
Speaker 1: And although that official is supposed to be independent from
Speaker 1: the prosecutor, and that's supposed to preserve an equality of
Speaker 1: arments between the parties, there's always this anxiety that the
Speaker 1: state can put its thumb on the scale with as
Speaker 1: much pressure as it wants. So Grinder's trial is continuing.
Speaker 1: So far there's been what we call good character evidence
Speaker 1: from a Russian team, how long after the trial concludes
Speaker 1: before she sentenced. In the Russian system an imposition of punishment.
Speaker 1: The sentencing usually is done in very close proximity with
Speaker 1: the court's conclusion that the defendant is guilty of a crime.
Speaker 1: So conviction and sentence usually come very close together. That's
Speaker 1: another big difference between the US approach and the Russian approach.
Speaker 1: In the US approach, the individual can try to present
Speaker 1: reasons why lesser sentence should be imposed. There is very
Speaker 1: little time in the Russian system for contrition to happen.
Speaker 1: The judge is going to impose that sentence very quickly,
Speaker 1: and so it may be that Ms Grinder was given
Speaker 1: the advice that if she wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: influence the size of her sentence, now is the time.
Speaker 1: In the beginning of Grinder's detention, it seemed like her
Speaker 1: family and supporters kept a low profile, but recently it's
Speaker 1: been just the opposite. There have been press conferences, a
Speaker 1: lot of interviews with her wife, the pressure on President Biden,
Speaker 1: what do you think change the strategy? People who have
Speaker 1: been involved in this sort of circumstance, and it's a
Speaker 1: horrific thing to go through, and so our sympathies really
Speaker 1: have to be with Miss Grinder and her family and
Speaker 1: her supporters because it's very hard to know exactly what
Speaker 1: to do. On the one hand, people have been through
Speaker 1: this say that they're often given to the advice that
Speaker 1: the United States government could act in their interest best
Speaker 1: if there isn't a lot of attention. And since miss
Speaker 1: Grinder was arrested just a week before the Russian Federation
Speaker 1: engaged as a war of aggression against Ukraine, that may
Speaker 1: have been very good advice. Don't let her become a
Speaker 1: bargaining chip. Let's see if we can quietly figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on and if at all possible, get this
Speaker 1: resolved very very quickly. But when the Russian Federation started
Speaker 1: to ask for more and more extensions of time, there
Speaker 1: must have been two or three extensions of time granted,
Speaker 1: because normally the pre trial detention while the state is
Speaker 1: gathering evidence for the case file shouldn't take more than
Speaker 1: two months. But she'd been in pre trial detention for
Speaker 1: more than four and a half months, and I think
Speaker 1: at that point perhaps the family and her supporters decided
Speaker 1: the only way to do this is to make a
Speaker 1: very very loud noise and to bring this to the
Speaker 1: forefront of attention. If she wasn't a bargaining chip before,
Speaker 1: maybe the anxiety was she had become one, and and
Speaker 1: the way to try to influence the proceedings was to
Speaker 1: make a lot of noise and gather a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: In early May, the State Department declared that she had
Speaker 1: been wrongfully detained and didn't explain why they signated her
Speaker 1: as wrongly detained. What are the criteria that they normally use?
Speaker 1: The State Department didn't say, But that really does seem
Speaker 1: to have been the pivot point, doesn't it. Normally states
Speaker 1: will accord a degree of of appreciation to another state's
Speaker 1: criminal justice system, just as we expect that other states,
Speaker 1: when their nationals are charged and tried in our criminal
Speaker 1: justice system, should allow our process UH to UH to
Speaker 1: work its course. But we know from statements by the
Speaker 1: State Department after that designation was imposed that the United
Speaker 1: States had lost confidence that the the law on the books,
Speaker 1: so to speak, which to be frank, is a modern
Speaker 1: and progressive and advanced body of law that was composed
Speaker 1: not only with the help of members of the Council
Speaker 1: of Europe, but also with our own Justice Department's advice
Speaker 1: shortly after the collapse in the years following the collapse
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union. But the law on the book
Speaker 1: doesn't always translate into the law in action, and so
Speaker 1: I think the conclusion must have been reached that whatever
Speaker 1: the law says, Ms. Grinder's case was being dealt with
Speaker 1: in a more political fashion. And that's another big difference, UH,
Speaker 1: not a difference you'll find in the lawbooks, but a
Speaker 1: difference between our system and theirs. When heads of state
Speaker 1: might complain to President Biden that someone is in prison,
Speaker 1: or someone is under investigation or being charged with a
Speaker 1: crime and tried, UH, the president can say, I have
Speaker 1: no influence over what state prosecutors do, and certainly what
Speaker 1: state or federal judges would do. UM. But when a
Speaker 1: case becomes of interest to the Russian UH leadership, there
Speaker 1: isn't that separation of powers in practice, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of experts talk about the establishment of a dual
Speaker 1: state in Russia. For ordinary commercial cases, for ordinary crimes,
Speaker 1: for for issues of no interest to the state. The
Speaker 1: state allows the system to work independently, because every state
Speaker 1: wants to have a working system of justice in order
Speaker 1: to encourage commerce and fairness and and organized society. But
Speaker 1: in the Russian case, at some point it seems Ms.
Speaker 1: Griner's case was seen to be useful and so it
Speaker 1: shifted to a political side. Of the docket, where no
Speaker 1: amount of arguing the law seems to be very helpful.
Speaker 1: There are reports that former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson
Speaker 1: is going to travel to Russia to try to make
Speaker 1: a deal to free her. He's done this before. I mean,
Speaker 1: is that a good idea to have someone who's not
Speaker 1: connected to the State Department go and try to negotiate?
Speaker 1: I mean, how does he know what the parameters are? Well? Uh,
Speaker 1: former in New Mexico governor, former U N ambassador, Uh,
Speaker 1: Bill Richardson is not really a first timer at this.
Speaker 1: He has a center that focuses on high level UM
Speaker 1: hostage issues and and to some extent, I think that
Speaker 1: we could think of the State departments declaration that Ms.
Speaker 1: Grinder has been wrongfully detained as diplomatic talk for a
Speaker 1: hostage crisis. And UM, so he's going in with that
Speaker 1: degree of expertise. I I would expect that he and
Speaker 1: his center have high level contacts at the State Department
Speaker 1: and and would serve as an intermediary and experienced intermediary
Speaker 1: in in that sense. Um. But you're right that he
Speaker 1: has no formal authority uh and uh to to do
Speaker 1: anything other than really to convey information from one side
Speaker 1: to the other. UM. In the case of UM of
Speaker 1: releasing someone like Victor boot From from federal authority UH,
Speaker 1: that would require the United States to commute his federal
Speaker 1: sentence UH in order to release him. In Russia, it
Speaker 1: would probably occur through Article eight five of the Criminal Code,
Speaker 1: which gives the President of the Russian Federation the power
Speaker 1: to pardon an individual. And that might be why the
Speaker 1: Russian government is insisting that the UM criminal case be
Speaker 1: allowed to proceed all the way through to conviction and sentencing,
Speaker 1: because that would be the mechanism that would be used
Speaker 1: to to effectuate the trade. Do you think that this
Speaker 1: what I call the full court press before could backfire?
Speaker 1: One reason the State Department has generally advised families not
Speaker 1: to go to the press is because of a fear
Speaker 1: that this would actually increase the price, so to speak,
Speaker 1: of return of their family member. That as someone gets
Speaker 1: more and more attention, that person's value goes up. The
Speaker 1: State Department, I think, is also concerned that elevating this
Speaker 1: to such a high level of attention can encourage other
Speaker 1: states two sees and bring up on trial Americans who
Speaker 1: are traveling abroad on the other hand, the families of
Speaker 1: individuals who have been involved in this terrible sort of
Speaker 1: circumstance have sometimes said that they have felt that nothing
Speaker 1: was done until they spoke up and went to the press.
Speaker 1: So could it backfire? It seems that it certainly could,
Speaker 1: but that's not known to anyone, with the exception of
Speaker 1: the Russians. Thanks Jeffrey. That's Professor Jeffrey Kahn of s
Speaker 1: m u S Deadband School of Law. And that's it
Speaker 1: for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you
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Speaker 1: week night at ten b m. Wall Street Time. I'm
Speaker 1: June Grosso and your listening to Bloomberg