Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: In less than a week, Trump allied Tom Barrick was
Speaker 1: freed on two d fifty million dollars bail, and Nicola
Speaker 1: Corps founder Trevor Milton was released on one million, two
Speaker 1: of the highest US bail amounts in recent years. While
Speaker 1: two back to back nine figure bail packages are unusual,
Speaker 1: enormous bonds are not a new phenomenon. Joining me is
Speaker 1: Darryl Brown, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School,
Speaker 1: explain how bail is usually set. Generally, especially in the
Speaker 1: federal system, there's always a hearing before a judge who
Speaker 1: assesses whether the person should be released or should be detained.
Speaker 1: In the federal courts, there's a presumption that people should
Speaker 1: be released, even though most federal defendants are actually detained
Speaker 1: before trial. But that's because they meet specific criteria that
Speaker 1: they've been charged with violent crime or they have a
Speaker 1: violent criminal record. But basically, judges are weighing the likelihood
Speaker 1: that a person, if they're released, it's going to come
Speaker 1: back to court for trial, and whether they're going to
Speaker 1: pose any danger in the meantime to other people, or
Speaker 1: intimidating witnesses or destroying evidence and the like. So the
Speaker 1: vast majority of charged suspects in the state courts are
Speaker 1: eligible for release and are given bail, given some amount
Speaker 1: of bail, or are released without a cash bail amount.
Speaker 1: But in the federal system, the majority are detained either
Speaker 1: because there are a flight risk and might lead the
Speaker 1: country and not sure for court, or because they're a
Speaker 1: danger to someone. We've seen two back to back nine
Speaker 1: figure bail packages for Trump allied Tom Barrack that was
Speaker 1: two million dollars and Nicola founder Trevor Milton for one
Speaker 1: million dollars. Why do we see those huge bail amounts,
Speaker 1: So those are really unusual amount Even Alreadie made off
Speaker 1: back or fifteen years ago when pons ice Can fell apart,
Speaker 1: he was originally given a ten million dollar bail, I think,
Speaker 1: and couldn't make that because all his assets were lost
Speaker 1: or frozen by that time. So these hundred million, two
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar day annunts are really unusual. It's just
Speaker 1: because the defendants are so wealthy that the judges, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, sure we're both of these defendants, doesn't
Speaker 1: have any concern about them committing violent crimes while they're released.
Speaker 1: But I assume what this, what this bail is trying
Speaker 1: to do is they are a risk for fleeing the country,
Speaker 1: for not showing up back in back in court, and
Speaker 1: they held a lot of money and resources and sort
Speaker 1: of capacity to do that. So I think the judges
Speaker 1: just trying to make sure that even these defendants that
Speaker 1: are that wealthy have to put up enough money that
Speaker 1: they're unlikely to walk away from it. That this is
Speaker 1: probably a big money even for these defendants. If it
Speaker 1: was just a mere million dollars bail, right, they might
Speaker 1: be willing to walk away from that and just live
Speaker 1: somewhere where they can't be extradited back to a U. S. Court.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure the denovation is because the defendants are
Speaker 1: so wealthy at the judges trying to make sure that
Speaker 1: this is an amount that they will that they will
Speaker 1: pay attention to. I don't know the details of their
Speaker 1: bail conditions. I feel virtually certain there are other conditions,
Speaker 1: such as they probably had to give up their passports.
Speaker 1: There's limits on where they can travel. So the combination
Speaker 1: of the amount of money and taking their passport are
Speaker 1: tactics that are targeted to making sure that they show
Speaker 1: back up in court and don't and don't flee the
Speaker 1: country in the meantime. What I have always wondered, isn't
Speaker 1: there more security if you're worried about them jumping bail?
Speaker 1: Isn't there more security in the ankle bracelets and the
Speaker 1: GPS monitoring? Are those pretty fool proof? They are? I
Speaker 1: have not heard of any cases actually where people have
Speaker 1: beat those. Somehow you can cut them off or somehow
Speaker 1: remove them, but then there's immediately an alarm, So you
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of time if that's your plan.
Speaker 1: But it's just not It's not unusual for judges to
Speaker 1: impose our cash bail amounts and other conditions such as
Speaker 1: taking the passport and electronic monitoring of some kind than
Speaker 1: ankle bracelet or something else. And so for various reasons,
Speaker 1: just depending on the defendants, judges might not be willing
Speaker 1: to just trust the electronic monitoring to take a you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of worst case scenario from the judge's perspective,
Speaker 1: defendant as an ankle monitor can still flee, it's just
Speaker 1: that we'll be able to track him as he gets
Speaker 1: on the private jet and flies out of the country,
Speaker 1: and so the cash bail is a is another device
Speaker 1: to hopefully keep them in the country and showing up
Speaker 1: for trial. So now Barrick spent three nights in jail
Speaker 1: as his bail package was being negotiated. So explain what
Speaker 1: happens before they even get into court in these cases
Speaker 1: of prominent people or people who have money, their lawyers
Speaker 1: are negotiating with the prosecutors about a bail package. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would speculate that he was in jail for a
Speaker 1: couple of nights because the prosecutors wanted him to spend
Speaker 1: a night or two in jail. With a defendant like Barrick,
Speaker 1: his lawyers were almost certainly talking to the Test Department
Speaker 1: before he was arrested and could have negotiated on terms
Speaker 1: that he would be immediately bailed out. I suspect the
Speaker 1: prosecutors just didn't want to do that, and so they
Speaker 1: chose the time and date for arrest, and it took
Speaker 1: a couple of days to then arrange the bail terms.
Speaker 1: But that's really at the discretion, I guess, or the
Speaker 1: tactical choice. Maybe it's a better way to put it
Speaker 1: by the Justice Department, because I'm sure his lawyers were
Speaker 1: ready and willing and probably trying to negotiate bail conditions
Speaker 1: that he could meet immediately upon arrest and not have
Speaker 1: to do any any time in jail. The typical defendant,
Speaker 1: of course, doesn't have a lawyer, is sort of talking
Speaker 1: to prosecutors before they're arrested or before they're charged, and
Speaker 1: so it's fairly routine for defendants to spend one night
Speaker 1: or three or four or five nights in jail, either
Speaker 1: before their bail is set or before they can make
Speaker 1: their bail. What makes it a little unusual here is
Speaker 1: because the defendants are so rich that you sort of
Speaker 1: would expect them to be able to avoid that. Another
Speaker 1: high profile defending Trump organization, the chief financial officer, Alan Weisselberg.
Speaker 1: He was released without having to pay any bail, because
Speaker 1: it seems like in high profile cases they usually get
Speaker 1: some bail. Why would he be released without posting any
Speaker 1: kind of bail? Yeah, that's interesting. All that I can
Speaker 1: speculate is that the charges were sufficiently different and the
Speaker 1: judge made a different assessment of his likelihood to flee,
Speaker 1: such that the judge ended up being satisfied that Weislberg
Speaker 1: would not flee if he had merely other other conditions,
Speaker 1: probably restrictions on his travel, maybe he had to give
Speaker 1: up his passport. All these decisions or just individual decisions
Speaker 1: by the judge assessing the risk that the defendant is
Speaker 1: going to flee. Basically because all of these rich white
Speaker 1: collar defendants, the kind of risk of that they'll pose
Speaker 1: a risk of criminal violence to other people isn't really
Speaker 1: on the table, So the judges really just paying attention
Speaker 1: to whether they're going to show up or not. And
Speaker 1: I think the judge just must have found very different
Speaker 1: circumstances in Weiselberg's case versus Barrett. And I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: the nature of the charges sometimes keeps a person in prison,
Speaker 1: because Galaine max Well put up a twenty eight and
Speaker 1: a half million dollar package and she's trying multiple times,
Speaker 1: and she's awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges connected to
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein, and I wonder if sometimes it's the nature
Speaker 1: of the charges and the amount of publicity. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is absolutely the nature of the charges sometimes, especially in
Speaker 1: federal court where she is charged in there and a
Speaker 1: bifel Burger charge. So the federal bail statute very specifically
Speaker 1: gives judges authority to detain people in jail until their
Speaker 1: trial they without setting any amount of bail. The judges
Speaker 1: can just or entertained if they're charged with certain crimes,
Speaker 1: and those crimes are basically violent crimes, large scale drug crimes,
Speaker 1: and child abuses or human trafficking charges. And so I
Speaker 1: feel virtually certain you're right that the basis for her
Speaker 1: being detained and not getting bailed as the nature of
Speaker 1: the child sex trafficking charges as she's that she's charged with.
Speaker 1: There's a specific provision in the federal law that allows
Speaker 1: judges to detain people who are charged with those offenses
Speaker 1: and to deny them bail. I want to turn for
Speaker 1: a moment away from the wealthy people to the average
Speaker 1: or the poor. The vast majority of people are not
Speaker 1: making these deals with prosecutors, are they. They're just going
Speaker 1: before the judge, and the judge is setting the bail. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And even in these high profile cases like Barrett, where
Speaker 1: his lawyers are negotiating with the prosecutors, the judge still
Speaker 1: has to sign off on that. It's still the judge
Speaker 1: who issues the official bail order or or makes the
Speaker 1: official decision. It's sort of like a plea bargain for
Speaker 1: pre trial release. The prosecutor and the defense attorney get
Speaker 1: together and negotiates some terms, and then the judge typically
Speaker 1: approves it but to ride. And with the vast majority
Speaker 1: of defendants, the ordinary defendants and poor defendants, there's almost
Speaker 1: ever any of that negotiation between the prosecutor and defense
Speaker 1: attorney before the defendant has just brought to a hearing
Speaker 1: before a judge, and the judge will get some basic
Speaker 1: information about the defendant and about the charges. Sometimes they'll
Speaker 1: have a defense attorney at that first bail hearing, sometimes not,
Speaker 1: and the judge will make a decision often a much
Speaker 1: less information. If they can't come up with the bail.
Speaker 1: What happens when they go to a bondsman, Well, there's
Speaker 1: a fee. So if a judge imposes cash bail of
Speaker 1: say a thousand dollars and the defendant camp doesn't have
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars to hand over to the court, which
Speaker 1: you would get back when you showed up for court,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people don't have that kind of
Speaker 1: cash sitting around, so it defended would go to a
Speaker 1: bail bondsman. A bail bondsman would typically charge ten percent,
Speaker 1: maybe a little more as a fee for the bail.
Speaker 1: So the bail bondsman would put up a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to the court and would charge the defendant hundred dollars
Speaker 1: for that. If the defendant doesn't show up, then the
Speaker 1: bail bondsman loses that thousand dollars he gave to the court.
Speaker 1: So the bail bondsman has a real instead of to
Speaker 1: make sure that the defendant does show up. That's where
Speaker 1: bounty hunters come in. And when the defendants show up
Speaker 1: in court, then the bail bondsman makes that hundred dollars profit.
Speaker 1: There's been a movement to ban cash bail because of
Speaker 1: the inequities in the system. Do you agree that there
Speaker 1: are inequities in the system and the bail system between
Speaker 1: the rich and the poor. There absolutely is with cash bail.
Speaker 1: There's lots of god a lots of studies, lots of
Speaker 1: examples of people in the New York City jails and
Speaker 1: elsewhere in other states who have relatively low bail amounts
Speaker 1: set or what would seem like relatively low bail amounts
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, and they're too poor
Speaker 1: to make that amount and can't even pay the bail
Speaker 1: bondsman fee for the bail bondsman to make that amount,
Speaker 1: and so there's lots of defendants. I think in many jails,
Speaker 1: it's the majority of defendants who are awaiting trial. If
Speaker 1: they're still in jail, it's because they have the bail
Speaker 1: that they can't make they don't have enough money to
Speaker 1: post or to pay bail bondsmen, rather than the fact
Speaker 1: that they're that they've been ordered to stay in jail
Speaker 1: and don't even have the opportunity to make bail. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's lots of defendants who can't make even seemingly fairly
Speaker 1: low amounts of bail, and there's pretty clear evidence that
Speaker 1: that affects the outcomes of their cases when defendants are
Speaker 1: detained in jail for even several days. Right, there's lots
Speaker 1: of definity to have family obligations or have jobs, and
Speaker 1: they work about losing their jobs or they do lose
Speaker 1: their job or put a strain on their on their families,
Speaker 1: and so that makes defend it's much more eager to
Speaker 1: plead guilty, at least if it's at the sort of
Speaker 1: low end of the scale where it's just a misdemeanor,
Speaker 1: and so the inability to make bail sort of puts
Speaker 1: pressure on them to plea bargain. But if it's something
Speaker 1: that they're not going to plead guilty too, then they
Speaker 1: end up staying in jail for weeks or months if
Speaker 1: they can't make the bail. That's the real criticism of
Speaker 1: the cash bail system. That and the fact that there
Speaker 1: are other ways to make sure people show up to
Speaker 1: court without making them post money. Right, So, several states
Speaker 1: now have eliminated cash bail of their countries like England
Speaker 1: don't use cash bail anymore. There are various other ways
Speaker 1: to make sure people are good risk to be released
Speaker 1: before trial and that they're going to show back up
Speaker 1: Besides cash bail, What are the ways are there to
Speaker 1: make sure that people show up. One modern technology way,
Speaker 1: right is just electronic monitoring, although that costs somebody money.
Speaker 1: There's often a fee charge to the defendants for that
Speaker 1: electronic monitoring service, but really a lot of defendants don't
Speaker 1: need even that to show back up to court, or
Speaker 1: don't need that incentive or that or that restriction, as
Speaker 1: long as defendants have real ties to the community, if
Speaker 1: they have family and jobs, and a long history in
Speaker 1: a given community where they're arrested. The data is very
Speaker 1: clear that defendants who did that certain kind of profile
Speaker 1: are very likely to show back up the court, even
Speaker 1: if they're charged with a fairly serious crime. Just because
Speaker 1: you might decide to not show up for trial where
Speaker 1: you think you might be convicted, doesn't mean that you're
Speaker 1: then scott free, right and you just have a warrant
Speaker 1: out for your arrest, And it's not an easy avoid
Speaker 1: jail strategy. So just really screening defendants, and then there's
Speaker 1: really good evidence that just using mechanisms like making them
Speaker 1: check in with a probation officer and sending them reminders
Speaker 1: about when their court date is a lot of people
Speaker 1: fail a short for court just because they don't have transportation,
Speaker 1: or they just sort of lose track of their court
Speaker 1: date or just need a reminder. Are some very simple
Speaker 1: things like that, but actually improved the hudds people will
Speaker 1: show back up for court. And in places like Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Which hasn't imposted cash baill and people for
Speaker 1: almost thirty years, they released the defendants before trial and
Speaker 1: almost the show back up for trial. The criticism of
Speaker 1: cash bail is that for a lot of defendants who
Speaker 1: are given cash bail, that's an unnecessary condition as a
Speaker 1: safeguard to make sure that they're going to show back up.
Speaker 1: There are other, less restrictive, less costly ways to do it.
Speaker 1: That's Professor Darryl Brown of the University of Virginia Law School.
Speaker 1: After a two year fight, the Jostice Department has directed
Speaker 1: the Treasury Department to hand over former President Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: tax returns to Congress. The decision reverses a twenty nine
Speaker 1: opinion that the Treasury Department should not release the returns.
Speaker 1: But the fight isn't over. Joining me is William Banks,
Speaker 1: a professor at Syracuse University College of Law, tell us
Speaker 1: about the Justice Department's Office of Egal Council ruling on
Speaker 1: the Trump taxes. So the Justice Department is following up because,
Speaker 1: as many of your listeners will recall, the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: the United States ruled last summer the summer of that
Speaker 1: Trump had no legal basis for claiming either immunity or
Speaker 1: privilege as a broad based matter with regard to his
Speaker 1: taxes in response to several subpoenas. I believe there were
Speaker 1: four broad subpoenas came from different congressional committees seeking financial
Speaker 1: information about Donald Trump, about his children and other family members, businesses,
Speaker 1: all associated with the Trump organization, and the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: repudiated the president in a broad brushed opinion, but also
Speaker 1: said that the lower courts need to analyze each subpoena
Speaker 1: carefully to the m and whether or not Congress is
Speaker 1: properly respected the interests of the president, and whether Congress
Speaker 1: has a legitimate legislative purpose in requesting the information in
Speaker 1: pursuance of its committees or responsibilities. That took some time.
Speaker 1: Of course, lower courts rejected Trump's attempts to block the
Speaker 1: subpoenas after the Supreme Court ruling. And so here we
Speaker 1: are in the winter spring into the summer of one
Speaker 1: and the court contest was effectively over. Uh So the
Speaker 1: committee said, give us the stuff. And now is the
Speaker 1: Justice Department's turned to weigh in and say, indeed, the
Speaker 1: information which is in the hands, of course of the
Speaker 1: Department of Treasury, should be turned over to the congressional committees.
Speaker 1: So now I doubt that the legal battle is over,
Speaker 1: because we all know the former president Trump's proclivities to litigate,
Speaker 1: So now he can try to block Treasury from turning
Speaker 1: the materials over to Congress. What Treasury said, in a
Speaker 1: nutshell was that the committees had each demonstrated a legitimate
Speaker 1: legislative interest in the topics within the committee's authorized authority,
Speaker 1: money laundering and appropriate foreign financial relationships. Still some concern
Speaker 1: about Russian operations influencing US political processes. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: perhaps the most important one, whether the audit policies of
Speaker 1: the United States need to be revised to take into
Speaker 1: account another president like Donald Trump, who seeks to avoid
Speaker 1: disclosing his personal stuff. So could the Treasury Department just
Speaker 1: have handed over the tax returns to the committee? The
Speaker 1: Pressury Department notified a federal judge that it reached an
Speaker 1: agreement with the House to hand over the returns. Why
Speaker 1: couldn't they just have handed them over? You know, they
Speaker 1: could have. I think the reason for o l C,
Speaker 1: the Office of Legal Counsel, stepping in at this point
Speaker 1: is that the Trump o LC had offered an opinion
Speaker 1: in coming to the opposite conclusion that the committees had
Speaker 1: not demonstrated a legitimate legislative purpose and that the president's
Speaker 1: prerogatives came out on top. In a contest with Congress
Speaker 1: in any case, So this OLC opinion was in effect
Speaker 1: needed to I'm going to use the verb to trump
Speaker 1: the earlier one opinion. So I think because justice was
Speaker 1: involved in justice really needed to be involved this time.
Speaker 1: The Office of Legal Council is an independent part of
Speaker 1: the Justice Department that is supposed to represent the executive
Speaker 1: branch in its dealings with the remaining parts of government.
Speaker 1: So did the welsee have to say we were wrong
Speaker 1: before they they soft pedaled that argument. It's a thirty
Speaker 1: nine page opinion. It reads very carefully. I think Don Johnson,
Speaker 1: who's now that the acting head of OLC, was very
Speaker 1: careful not to harshly repudiate the opinion. But she said
Speaker 1: she thought that they undervalued some of the interests that
Speaker 1: were articulated by the congressional committees in seeking the information.
Speaker 1: But she also made a very important and certainly obvious
Speaker 1: point about what's different now from before. We're dealing with
Speaker 1: a former president, not a sitting president. So are we
Speaker 1: actually going to see Donald Trump's tax returns? It certainly
Speaker 1: looks that way. Neither you nor I are likely to
Speaker 1: see that. We certainly may not as a result of
Speaker 1: these subpoenas, because once they're turned over to the House committees,
Speaker 1: there are requirements inside the House to assure the privacy
Speaker 1: and requires an affirmative vote to the committee even to
Speaker 1: share the material with other members of the House representatives,
Speaker 1: much less to make them public. That could happen, but
Speaker 1: it would require affirmative votes in the House. Of course,
Speaker 1: there may be a leak, which the Trump lawyers usually
Speaker 1: pointed out in court arguments. In another move, the Justice
Speaker 1: Department has turned over to Congress handwritten notes of a
Speaker 1: December Trump held with Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and
Speaker 1: Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donohue. The notes by Donahue
Speaker 1: showed Trump pressuring the acting Attorney General to declare that
Speaker 1: election was corrupt in his ongoing attempt to overturn the results.
Speaker 1: Why did the Justice Department turn these notes over this too?
Speaker 1: You're correct to flag this June. This was an extraordinary
Speaker 1: development in the Justice Department. As as you and I know,
Speaker 1: and many of your listeners will know, that the Justice
Speaker 1: Department typically fights to keep secret private discussions between a
Speaker 1: president and a member of his cabinet to avoid setting
Speaker 1: a precedent that would prevent officials in the future from
Speaker 1: candidly advising presidents out of concern that the conversations might
Speaker 1: later be made public. This time, the OLC Justice Department
Speaker 1: said that handing the notes to Congress is part of
Speaker 1: a pattern of allowing scrutiny of Mr Trump's efforts to
Speaker 1: overturn the election. I think this was such an extraordinary
Speaker 1: series of developments between election day and in January six
Speaker 1: that they decided they had to provide unrestricted material and
Speaker 1: even testimony if those if Rosen or Donahue are so inclined,
Speaker 1: they could testify openly without restrictions to investing aids on
Speaker 1: the House Oversight and Reform and the Senate Judiciary committees,
Speaker 1: because the congressional investigators are examining wrongdoing by a sitting president,
Speaker 1: which is an extraordinary circumstance in and of itself. Executive
Speaker 1: privilege is meant to benefit the country, not the president
Speaker 1: as an individual, so invoking it over Trump's efforts to
Speaker 1: push his personal agenda would be inappropriate. That's what they concluded.
Speaker 1: Is it unusual for a deputy Attorney general to be
Speaker 1: taking notes about a conversation with the president or is
Speaker 1: that par for the course? I think that's par for
Speaker 1: the course. These these are handwritten notes. These are the
Speaker 1: kind of notes that any good lawyer would take in
Speaker 1: an important meeting at any time. We all do it.
Speaker 1: You want to have some kind of records so that
Speaker 1: you can memorialize the meeting, particularly if questions about it
Speaker 1: arise later on. That was good lawyer, and contemporaneous notes
Speaker 1: are considered strong evidence to support to stimony. Yes, that's correct,
Speaker 1: if it ever comes to testimony. Right. The tone was
Speaker 1: that he was asking for them to help him overturn
Speaker 1: the election results, and they said, we can't just snap
Speaker 1: our fingers, and he said, don't expect you to do that,
Speaker 1: just say that the election was corrupt and leave the
Speaker 1: rest to me and the Republican congressman. What does this indicate, Well,
Speaker 1: it indicates that he was directly asking the Justice Department
Speaker 1: to to come, you know, to come to back for him. Uh,
Speaker 1: in regard to overturning the election, had no basis for
Speaker 1: declaring that the election was was corrupt in some way
Speaker 1: requires you know, it requires evidence, and there was none. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had been saying that from the beginning. Even Bill
Speaker 1: Barr eventually said that. So that's why we're dealing with
Speaker 1: with Jeff Rosen instead of Bill Barr. By the middle
Speaker 1: of December, which is when leading apparently UH took place,
Speaker 1: when the notes were taken. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: wasn't surprised by this. It seemed to be along the
Speaker 1: lines of what he'd been doing with Georgia election officials,
Speaker 1: and you know, all along the way, were you surprised
Speaker 1: by this? No, I'm fraid I wasn't surprised. By the
Speaker 1: time that we got to the middle of December, I
Speaker 1: knew that I certainly suspected that he would do everything
Speaker 1: that he could think of to try to undo what
Speaker 1: had happened to him. You know, any other president would
Speaker 1: have stopped, would have drawn a line at the Justice
Speaker 1: Department because they're obedient to the rule of law. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's a cabinet department like the Treasury Department
Speaker 1: and the Department of Interior, but they have a different master.
Speaker 1: Their master's law, not the President of the United States.
Speaker 1: The president can hire and fire the senior officials, which
Speaker 1: does also the Justice Department has said and is this
Speaker 1: unusual as well? The Justice Department has said that former
Speaker 1: officials of the Just Department can provide unrestricted testimony to
Speaker 1: investigators with the House Oversight and Reform in the Senate
Speaker 1: Judiciary committees. Is that unusual as well? It is. It
Speaker 1: is quite unusual, and I think again, the the opinion
Speaker 1: of the Justice Department is that this is an extraordinary situation.
Speaker 1: Asking a sitting president instructing the nation's top law enforcement
Speaker 1: agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair
Speaker 1: election in the final days of his presidency, It's unheard of.
Speaker 1: But it seems as if the more time that goes on,
Speaker 1: Trump is not going to be held accountable for his
Speaker 1: actions that day or for his actions in trying to
Speaker 1: overturn the election, and still saying that the election was fraudulent. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid I agree with you. I think the best
Speaker 1: that can happen now is that some laws will be
Speaker 1: enacted and regulations put into place in Justice Department to
Speaker 1: make it less likely that another president could pull similar shenanigans,
Speaker 1: because if if you look at what happened, if there
Speaker 1: weren't certain people in certain positions, like Jeffrey Rosen in
Speaker 1: his position and the Vice president his position, you know,
Speaker 1: there could have been almost a coup attempt and That's
Speaker 1: what General Milley feared, And indeed is that at the
Speaker 1: very end there when they tried to get rid of
Speaker 1: Rosen replace him with some some guy who was familiar
Speaker 1: to Trump and promised to do Trump's bidding. If they
Speaker 1: had succeeded in forcing Rosen out, they might have even
Speaker 1: pulled that off. Thanks so much for being on the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Laws show. Bill. That's William Banks, the professor at
Speaker 1: Syracuse University College of Law. Remember you can always get
Speaker 1: the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law podcast. You
Speaker 1: can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www
Speaker 1: dot Bloomberg dot com, Slash podcast Last Law. I'm June
Speaker 1: Brosso and you're listening to ra