Speaker 1: The mom that stormed the capital, carried Confederate flags and
Speaker 1: white supremacist banners, wore clothing with racist language and neo
Speaker 1: Nazi symbols, and hum the noose on a makeshift gallows.
Speaker 1: So the N Double a CP looked back in history
Speaker 1: one fifty years ago too, when the Ku Klux Klan
Speaker 1: was terrorizing blacks in the South. And this week the
Speaker 1: N Double a CP filed a suit against former President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, the Proud Boys, and the Oath
Speaker 1: Keepers for conspiring to incite the January sixth Capital riot
Speaker 1: in violation of the eighteen seventy one Ku Klux Klan
Speaker 1: Act enacted to combat the KKK. The suit was filed
Speaker 1: on behalf of Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who
Speaker 1: spoke to MSNBC that Ku Klux Klan UH law was
Speaker 1: basically put on the books to protect Southerners, that other
Speaker 1: people from the clan who didn't want this great country
Speaker 1: of ours to survive, but thank goodness and did. And
Speaker 1: now here we come full circle, uh with this plan
Speaker 1: like activity. Joining me is Harold Crant, professor at the
Speaker 1: Chicago Kent College of Law. I'll tell us about the
Speaker 1: history of this law. The Kukus Plan Acts were passed
Speaker 1: in the wake of the reconstruction as a means of
Speaker 1: trying to ensure the newly freed slaves their ability to
Speaker 1: enjoy the protection rights, and particularly the right to vote.
Speaker 1: Individuals are being intimidated from voting, and indeed federal officials
Speaker 1: are being intimidated from trying to ensure the vote to
Speaker 1: the newly freed slaves. So Congress stepped in to impose
Speaker 1: both criminal penalties on those who interfere with the right
Speaker 1: to vote, as well as a civil right of action.
Speaker 1: So now this has been used rarely, so rarely litigated.
Speaker 1: Are there open questions about it? They're very open questions.
Speaker 1: I mean to look at it. Historically, the discipline of
Speaker 1: the act was the criminal penalties, and the criminal penalties
Speaker 1: were used thousands of times by the Grant administration in
Speaker 1: order to break the back of the k k K
Speaker 1: and it was remarkably successful in doing so. But the
Speaker 1: civil aspects of the statutes lay dormant for hundred years
Speaker 1: until they were used very successfully in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: when the clan was accused of trying to disrupt an
Speaker 1: individual's ability to vote. So the key question is can
Speaker 1: a public official use it as a civil means to
Speaker 1: get remedies for injuries he sustained, And that's the claim
Speaker 1: by Representative Thompson, to my knowledge, has never been used
Speaker 1: by a public official. Certainly, the actions are prohibited by
Speaker 1: the statute, but the question is whether that's nearly left
Speaker 1: over from a criminal penalty, or whether it gives a
Speaker 1: right to a public official to sue for injuries that
Speaker 1: he or she received. And what about the hurdle of
Speaker 1: a president being immune from civil laws suits for acts
Speaker 1: in his official capacity. The Supreme Court in Nixon versus
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald held that the president is absolutely immune from civil
Speaker 1: suits for any actions during his administration. So this lawsuit
Speaker 1: will have to prove that Trump was acting not in
Speaker 1: his official capacity but in his personal capacity when he
Speaker 1: allegedly conspired in the events of January six. The plaintiest
Speaker 1: anticipated that hurdle and alleged that Trump acted beyond the
Speaker 1: outer perimeter of his official duties and therefore is susceptible
Speaker 1: to suit in his personal capacity. It's going to be
Speaker 1: extremely difficult for the lawsuit to prevail against President Trump
Speaker 1: on that ground. A very similar argument was made in
Speaker 1: Fitzgerald versus Nixon itself. The allegation there was that Nixon
Speaker 1: had Fitzgerald fired. He was a management analyst for the
Speaker 1: Air Force and he had reported on cost overruns which
Speaker 1: embarrassed the administration. He was fired and then sued Nixon
Speaker 1: after Nixon's term in office was over, and as in
Speaker 1: this case, he said, look, you took personal vendet against me,
Speaker 1: and by firing me, you acted outside your official responsibilities.
Speaker 1: I should be able to sue you. And the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court brushed that aside and said, if we took any
Speaker 1: kind of allegations of unlawful behavior against the president, his
Speaker 1: official community would be chipped away too extensively. And so
Speaker 1: I think they'll be very demanding in terms of the
Speaker 1: showing required to remove a president's absolute immunity from civil suits.
Speaker 1: In the defamation lawsuit by a New York advice columnist
Speaker 1: e Jene Carroll against Trump, the judge said that this
Speaker 1: wasn't part of his official duty, so the lawsuit could
Speaker 1: go on. Do you think that that was an incorrect decision? Then?
Speaker 1: I think that is a tough decision, and I think
Speaker 1: it may not hold up on appeal. Particularly lawsuit. The
Speaker 1: response was an official if I read McCall correctly, at
Speaker 1: an official press conference, and he was responding to questions
Speaker 1: about the lawsuit and the situation. So to be difficult,
Speaker 1: I think, to show that when you're responding to a
Speaker 1: question at a White House press conference that you're not
Speaker 1: acting within the outer perimeter of your job. Now, the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court made up these rules in terms of absolute community,
Speaker 1: so it is theoretically possible that the Supreme Court will
Speaker 1: we consider the scope of Fitzgerald case and decide to
Speaker 1: limit the kinds of immunities that a president may enjoy.
Speaker 1: But I'm skeptical and I think that both of these
Speaker 1: lawsuits will have a hard time against President Trump himself. Now,
Speaker 1: President Trump is not immune from criminal conduct, speaking of
Speaker 1: tough evidentially burdens. This lawsuit alleges a conspiracy that Trump
Speaker 1: and Juliani and the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers acted in
Speaker 1: concert to incite and then carry out the Capital insurrection.
Speaker 1: So not only are there issues about who can be
Speaker 1: sued and who can sue under the Ku klux Clian Act,
Speaker 1: but the very conspiracy itself will be difficult to prove.
Speaker 1: To show that there was an active agreement amongst the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers, Giuliani and Trump somewhat defied I
Speaker 1: think credibility. But I think that one of the points
Speaker 1: here in the lawsuit, besides the symbolism of using the
Speaker 1: ku klux Clian Act, is to put the Proud Boys
Speaker 1: in the Oathkeepers on the defensive. They will have to
Speaker 1: spend money, and if this case continues, they'll be subject
Speaker 1: to depositions and discovery, and so a great deal of
Speaker 1: information may being covered, even if ultimately will prove too
Speaker 1: difficult to show a conspiracy. So there's a political aspect
Speaker 1: to this lawsuit as well as illegal. It's a very
Speaker 1: important critical aspect. Right, we have the symbolism of using
Speaker 1: the Act, we have the threat of financial harm imposed
Speaker 1: upon the oath Keepers and probablys were probably not flush
Speaker 1: with cash. Um. The same thing is true with the lawsuits.
Speaker 1: Will be many lawsuits against Giuliani and how much money
Speaker 1: does does he have? And at the same time we
Speaker 1: may find out that there were discussions and maybe there
Speaker 1: was a conspiracy, right, we don't know, um. And but
Speaker 1: the idea of discovery is to get at phone calls, emails,
Speaker 1: Facebook messages that may suggest that there was more co
Speaker 1: ordination than we've been led to believe. I haven't scoured
Speaker 1: the books, but I would think that this is really
Speaker 1: Possibly it's to get into federal court, but possibly the
Speaker 1: use of the Klux clan statue is really symbolic, and
Speaker 1: that if Congressman Thompson had simply sued for toward injury
Speaker 1: that he received, it would not be the same kind
Speaker 1: of press not be the same kind of overarching inquiry
Speaker 1: into what happened that day. So I think this raises
Speaker 1: the stakes, that raises the visibility of the lawsuit as
Speaker 1: opposed to a personal injury suit. I should say, the
Speaker 1: leader of the Proud Boys has said that there was
Speaker 1: no plan to go to the capital, that though there
Speaker 1: were Proud Boys there, there was no actual plan to
Speaker 1: go to the capital. So Trump, so when his his
Speaker 1: spokesman responded, did not mention the immunity from civil suit. Instead,
Speaker 1: he said that Trump did not incite or conspire to
Speaker 1: incite any violence at the Capitol. Seems odd that they
Speaker 1: didn't mention immunity from lawsuits. Well, I read that, and
Speaker 1: and my take on it is simply that he wants
Speaker 1: to repeat what the defense was before the Senate and
Speaker 1: the impeachment trial, that he he was exercising his First
Speaker 1: Amendment rights, was proud of the support he was receiving
Speaker 1: from the crowd in front of the White House, and
Speaker 1: in no way inside it any kind of violence. Um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: when it comes down to responding to this lawsuit, I
Speaker 1: have a strong suspicion that he will rely upon presidential
Speaker 1: community as well. An advantage of this suit that you
Speaker 1: don't have in a criminal case is that there's a
Speaker 1: lower burden for the plaintiffs, So explain the burden in
Speaker 1: a civil suit. In a civil suit, the burden is
Speaker 1: only a little over for the plaintiff to prevail, unlike
Speaker 1: in a criminal suit when the state has to prove
Speaker 1: beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual committed the covered offense.
Speaker 1: And so it may be that in a close case,
Speaker 1: and I would think that the Georgia cases you even
Speaker 1: more difficult or Trump than the insurrection case. But then
Speaker 1: in a close case, uh, Trump may lose in the
Speaker 1: civil case even if you would prevail in a criminal case.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if there are any jurisdictional problems. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I mean, I think the only I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I just find it odd that
Speaker 1: the statute that criminalizes interference with government officials allows the
Speaker 1: government officials to sue for your individual damages. It just
Speaker 1: seems that that was intended for a criminal prohibition as
Speaker 1: opposed to for giving the governmental official a right to
Speaker 1: sue for personal damages. But maybe it is, and that's
Speaker 1: going to be a very difficult historical argument. But I
Speaker 1: think the other kinds of jurisdictional issues should be relatively clear.
Speaker 1: There were proud boys there, there were the oath keepers,
Speaker 1: both in the in d C. And there's no question
Speaker 1: that at least some of them wanted to interfere with
Speaker 1: the official tabulation of the of the votes. And that
Speaker 1: does lie at the heart of the civil rights statute,
Speaker 1: which are known as the Kukus clan at And so
Speaker 1: it seems, as you refer to a big point of
Speaker 1: this lawsuit, maybe to get more information, you know, the
Speaker 1: house managers stopped short of having any witnesses or secupoenaing
Speaker 1: any documents. So this might allow some discovery into what
Speaker 1: really happened. Absolutely, even if President Trump is removed from
Speaker 1: this case because of immunity, the case can continue and
Speaker 1: with depositions, with discovery subpoenas of the planets may find
Speaker 1: out a great deal more about who knew what, who
Speaker 1: planned to do what on January six. And it seems
Speaker 1: like the house managers have basically laid out the case
Speaker 1: four of them. They can use all the different video
Speaker 1: and audio and information that the house managers presented. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a great deal of video and audio information that
Speaker 1: are already in the public consciousness and public record because
Speaker 1: we saw it during the impeachment trial. But we have
Speaker 1: not seen again in terms of emails, we haven't seen
Speaker 1: all the Facebook messages. We haven't seen um, we haven't
Speaker 1: had depositions of some of the leaders of the both
Speaker 1: Keepers and the Cowboys, and that information they supplement the
Speaker 1: record and give us a different picture of what really
Speaker 1: happened on January six. Some civil attorneys have been using
Speaker 1: the KKK statute in recent years for defending people who
Speaker 1: have been injured by hate groups, at least in the
Speaker 1: lawsuit phase. So what does it say that basically the
Speaker 1: statute that's been forgotten for so many years that it's
Speaker 1: having to be used again. There are different avenues that
Speaker 1: individuals can use who are injured in the riots at
Speaker 1: the Capitol on January six. They don't have to just
Speaker 1: rely upon the k K statute. There can be assault
Speaker 1: and other kinds of claims for people who were um injured. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a powerful statute because it has attorney's feece
Speaker 1: and other costs can be associated with it to be recovered. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think it's again mostly being used because it
Speaker 1: gives a federal right of action as opposed to a
Speaker 1: state action that would otherwise be required for just a
Speaker 1: a tort injury for instance, that happened due to the
Speaker 1: rioters and lit the mayhem they caught. Thanks for being
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg Law Show. How that's Professor Harold Trent
Speaker 1: of Chicago Kent College of Law. Former President Donald m
Speaker 1: faces a new legal threat from a prosecutor who was
Speaker 1: just sworn into office. Last month. Fulton County District Attorney
Speaker 1: Fannie Willis sent a letter to Tom Georgia state officials
Speaker 1: informing them that her office is investigating whether illegal attempts
Speaker 1: were made to influence the state's elections. This includes Trump's
Speaker 1: now infamous January second call to Georgia's Secretary of State
Speaker 1: asking him to change the States certified results of the
Speaker 1: presidential election. So look, all I want to do is this,
Speaker 1: I just want to find uh thousand seven eight votes,
Speaker 1: which is one more that we have. You know what
Speaker 1: they did and you're not reporting it. That's a you know,
Speaker 1: that's a criminal that's a criminal offense, and you know
Speaker 1: you can't let that happen. That's that's a big risk
Speaker 1: to you and to Ryan. Joining me is Clark Cunningham,
Speaker 1: a law professor at Georgia State University. Clark, in her
Speaker 1: letter Willis says she's focused on a wide range of charges,
Speaker 1: including solicitation of election fraud, false statements, conspiracy, and racketeering.
Speaker 1: How would you characterize her investigation. I would say it's
Speaker 1: a sweeping investigation at this stage, and what I've seen,
Speaker 1: she's looking at more charges than the people involved in
Speaker 1: the phone call. What I understand is she's looking at
Speaker 1: Trump's phone call to Governor Kemp attempting to interfere with
Speaker 1: the election through that phone call. She's looking at the
Speaker 1: phone call the Trump made to the Attorney General Chris Carr,
Speaker 1: attempting to interfere with him. Defending the State of Georgia
Speaker 1: against the completely spurious lawsuits of the State of Texas
Speaker 1: filed in the Supreme Court. She's looking at this phone
Speaker 1: call to the Secretary of State that I imagine She's
Speaker 1: also looking at other attempts that Trump made to pressure
Speaker 1: or attimidate Sector of State Rassenberger. For example, he helped
Speaker 1: the press conference on Thanksgiving and said that the Secretary
Speaker 1: of State was the enemy of the people. I believe
Speaker 1: she's looking at a phone call that Trump made directly
Speaker 1: to an official of the Georgia of your investigation, who
Speaker 1: was conduct seem an election audit. And I believe she's
Speaker 1: also and this is why she has sent a letter
Speaker 1: to the Lieutenant Governor, because the Lieutenant Governor is the
Speaker 1: presiding officer of the Georgia Senate. And she's looking at
Speaker 1: statements that Giuliani made on behalf of Trump to this
Speaker 1: Georgia legislature, particularly to the Senate, which have been described
Speaker 1: as false and fraudulent statement. One charge mentioned is criminal
Speaker 1: solicitation to commit election fraud. Describe what's required there and
Speaker 1: how Trump's phone call might fit in. You know, Frankly,
Speaker 1: that looks like it open and shut case to me.
Speaker 1: We have the transcript, we have the actual recording of
Speaker 1: the phone call. Trump has admitted that it's genuine, So
Speaker 1: the facts are very clear. And so the crime is
Speaker 1: that a person commits the offense when with intent that
Speaker 1: another person engage in conduct constituting a felony under this article,
Speaker 1: he or she solicits request commands, import tunes are otherwise
Speaker 1: attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.
Speaker 1: So the question it is during that phone call, was
Speaker 1: Trump trying soliciting, requesting, commanding, import tuning, or otherwise attempting
Speaker 1: to cause the Secretary of State and his staff to
Speaker 1: engage an election fraud? And then there are lots of
Speaker 1: things that constitute election fraud, but altering certified vote results
Speaker 1: would clearly be one of them. Let's discuss possible racketeering charges.
Speaker 1: In her most famous case, Willis used Georgia's Rico law
Speaker 1: to prosecute teachers and officials in a cheating scandal in
Speaker 1: the Atlanta public school system, a place where you don't
Speaker 1: usually expect racketeering charges. Yes, and I was living in
Speaker 1: Atlanta at the time, and she secured a lot of
Speaker 1: convictions under that theory that there was a criminal enterprise
Speaker 1: to bribe teachers or threatened teachers to change and great.
Speaker 1: So she's very familiar with the Georgia recetarian statutes. She
Speaker 1: secured a lot of convictions. It was controversial. Some people
Speaker 1: thought that the prosecution was overzealous, but that has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with as far as I know, whether or
Speaker 1: not racketeering was appropriate. How would Georgia's racketeering law fit
Speaker 1: in with this case. So the key to to the
Speaker 1: statute are the definition sections, because the elements of a
Speaker 1: racketeering prosecution is that there has to be an enterprise,
Speaker 1: and an enterprise can be pretty much anything that is engaged,
Speaker 1: can be a person, a partnership, trust, the union. Certainly,
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign is an enterprise that engages in at
Speaker 1: least two acts of what's called racketeering activity. And if
Speaker 1: the enterprises engages in at least two acts of racketeering
Speaker 1: activity within the time frame, then you have a racketariing game.
Speaker 1: So they need at least two events, not just one.
Speaker 1: And then the definition of racketeering activity includes committing or
Speaker 1: attempts to commit a violation of a number of Georgia statutes.
Speaker 1: And the one that I assume that she's particularly interested
Speaker 1: in is the false statement statute that I refer to
Speaker 1: a moment ago um that it's a fility for person
Speaker 1: knowingly and willfully to make a false, ffication, fictitious or
Speaker 1: a fraudulan statement within the jurisdiction of any department, agency,
Speaker 1: and state government. So that would apply to any false
Speaker 1: statements at Trump or anybody who was an effect part
Speaker 1: of his campaign at enterprise made to the governor. That's
Speaker 1: Attorney General Lindy Graham in effect could be part of
Speaker 1: that enterprise. So it can include any of any of
Speaker 1: any of the statements that were made by them to
Speaker 1: achieve the purpose of the of the rack of the enterprise,
Speaker 1: and the purpose of the enterprise was too keith Donald
Speaker 1: Trump in office without it. That was a possible defense
Speaker 1: of Trump's could be I didn't have the intent to
Speaker 1: commit a crime. Here, he could say, I didn't want
Speaker 1: the records to be falsified. I wanted them to be corrected. Well,
Speaker 1: you could say whatever he wants to say, but I've
Speaker 1: read through this transcript the number of times his intent
Speaker 1: is crystal clear, and his intent is to solicit the
Speaker 1: Secretary of State to change the certified election results by
Speaker 1: enough votes so the margin of victory shifts to him,
Speaker 1: and he says that over and over and over again
Speaker 1: in that meeting. But that's what he wants to achieve, um.
Speaker 1: And there's no good defense for that statement that he
Speaker 1: makes over and over and over again. First of all,
Speaker 1: of course, the president the United States should not be
Speaker 1: getting on the phone with the state election officials anyway. Right.
Speaker 1: But if he got on the phone with the Secretary
Speaker 1: of State and said, I understand you did an audit
Speaker 1: of signature matching on absidentee ballots in Cobb County, I'm
Speaker 1: calling to ask you to also do that in Fulton County,
Speaker 1: all right, that would be something different, and of course
Speaker 1: the president would have to live with whatever the result
Speaker 1: of that audit was just like a recounts. Nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with asking for a recount, but you can't ask for
Speaker 1: recount and say recount until you get eleven votes from
Speaker 1: me and then stop the recount. Um. And so that
Speaker 1: was that was the entire strategy of this phone call.
Speaker 1: And I've looked at it now again he's simply dealing
Speaker 1: with it, apparently the way he deals to almost everything
Speaker 1: UM as a kind of transactional negotiations. Right. So he
Speaker 1: starts off with Folston inflated statements that he had hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousand, he went by hundreds of thousands of votes,
Speaker 1: And he makes a number of very factual statements, right. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he says, Um, there were four thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred and two voters who weren't on the voter registration role.
Speaker 1: There were eighteen thousand and three hundred voters where their
Speaker 1: addressed was a vacant house. There were nine hundred four
Speaker 1: voters who only had a post office box. Um, there
Speaker 1: were four thousand, nine hundred twenty five ballots from out
Speaker 1: of state voters. There were two thousand, three and twenty
Speaker 1: six ballots absently, ballots that stake of Christ. Those are
Speaker 1: very very precise numbers. So those are factual statements. And
Speaker 1: if they're false, then there's a statute that says that
Speaker 1: it is a crime to willingly knowingly make a false
Speaker 1: statement to the government agency. Now it would probably it
Speaker 1: would be for the jury to determine whether he knew
Speaker 1: that those statements were false. But factually, I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any questions but their faults and he wasn't saying,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, you know, the election was not handled well.
Speaker 1: He's making very very specific factual statements. And then he says,
Speaker 1: add all these facts up, add all these different facts
Speaker 1: which I asserved to be true, and you've gotten a
Speaker 1: lot more than eleven thousand votes that should have been
Speaker 1: cast for me. And then it's perfectly clear. He says, Okay,
Speaker 1: now that I've made the case that actually factually there
Speaker 1: there are in his hundreds of thousands of votes for him.
Speaker 1: Then he basically says, but let's make a deal, right, Um, okay,
Speaker 1: and he says that over and over again. UM. So
Speaker 1: he begins, here's the line that's the clearest solicitation. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting how he he blends threats with this.
Speaker 1: So he says, we have won this election in Georgia
Speaker 1: based on all of this, and there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: saying that. Brady's referring to the Secretary of States, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean having the correct and then he stops and
Speaker 1: he makes a threat. The people of Georgia are angry,
Speaker 1: and these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night.
Speaker 1: That's when he was coming into for big rally along
Speaker 1: with others that we're going to have by that time,
Speaker 1: which you're much more substantial even and the people of
Speaker 1: Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry.
Speaker 1: So makes the threat. And then here's the solicitation for fraud.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know that you've recalculate, okay.
Speaker 1: And then he said, even if you cut him in half,
Speaker 1: cut him in half, and cut him in half again,
Speaker 1: it's more votes than we need. So and then over
Speaker 1: and over again he says, take my deal. All I
Speaker 1: need is eleven thousand votes, right, And he says that
Speaker 1: over and over again. The enterprise and the purpose of
Speaker 1: the enterprise was too keith Donald Trump in office without
Speaker 1: it that she's going to look into apparently, also the
Speaker 1: abrupt resignation of the U. S. Attorney for Northern Georgia.
Speaker 1: How does that fit within her her view? It seems
Speaker 1: to me that certainly if I were and I'm not
Speaker 1: prosecuting the case, I'm just an academic. But it's if
Speaker 1: I were prosecuting the case, I would layout what seems
Speaker 1: to be a pretty clear narrative um and it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a plan that apparently Rudy Giulietti developed for
Speaker 1: Trump for how to uh get packed the fact that
Speaker 1: Trump lost the popular vote um, and so plan one,
Speaker 1: right um, was to sort directly try to change the
Speaker 1: vote through this these kinds of political pressure. Plan two
Speaker 1: was to prevent in in the swing states the votes
Speaker 1: from being certified by the safe Harvard date in early December,
Speaker 1: so that an argument could be made that because the
Speaker 1: votes were not certified by that date, it's then reverted
Speaker 1: to the state legislature to step in and appoint display
Speaker 1: of elector. And of course he targeted states with Republican
Speaker 1: dominated legislatures. So the plan was up to that point
Speaker 1: was to try to block the certification by lawsuits by
Speaker 1: political pressure. Whatever that failed, Okay, then the next step
Speaker 1: in the plan was to prevent the votes from being
Speaker 1: certified in Congress so that Biden failed to receive a
Speaker 1: majority of the of the electoral votes in Congress, because
Speaker 1: under the constitution, if nobody gets the majority of electoral votes,
Speaker 1: the decision goes to the House of Representatives voting by
Speaker 1: state delegations, which would mean that the Republicans would choose
Speaker 1: the next president and that would be Trump. So that
Speaker 1: was the plan, and each of these acts fits perfectly
Speaker 1: as steps towards achieving those goals. This has gotten a
Speaker 1: lot more attention. But the Secretary of State is also investigating.
Speaker 1: Do you expect that to go anywhere? I think it
Speaker 1: probably will, at a minimum take a back seat. The
Speaker 1: Bolton County District Attorney doesn't have to wait for that process,
Speaker 1: as I understand that there is a process where the
Speaker 1: state Election Board can investigate violations as the Election Code,
Speaker 1: and if they decide there is a violation that they
Speaker 1: can request either a local district attorney or the Attorney
Speaker 1: General too to pursue it. But District Attorney Wills doesn't
Speaker 1: theology to wait for that process. And I think she's right.
Speaker 1: These are crimes, they were committed in her jurisdiction. She
Speaker 1: can proceive and I think that I think I think
Speaker 1: that's what's going to happen. In her letters, she also
Speaker 1: mentions that the next grand jury will be convening in
Speaker 1: March and they'll begin requesting grand jury subpoenas if necessary
Speaker 1: at that time. What kind of information might she be
Speaker 1: looking for that's not already in the public record. We
Speaker 1: don't know what we don't know doing so. Part of
Speaker 1: the frustration about the recently completed second impeachment trial is
Speaker 1: there were no witnesses, There was no discovery of evidence.
Speaker 1: Everything was based on a public record, which was pretty
Speaker 1: much true of the first impeachment, And you don't know
Speaker 1: what kind of evidence of conspiracy you're going to find,
Speaker 1: particularly if she served subpoenas on Giuliani and there is
Speaker 1: a crime fraud exception to attorney client privilege that she
Speaker 1: might succeed on that and forced Giuliani to turn over
Speaker 1: all the information about his work on behalf of President
Speaker 1: Trump and Georgia. That would be a treasured drove of information.
Speaker 1: Thanks Clark. That's Clark Cunningham, a professor at the Georgia
Speaker 1: State University. And that's it for the sedition of the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Law Show. I'm June Grosso. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Remember you can always get the latest legal news on
Speaker 1: our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast, Slash Law,
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Speaker 1: then at ten pm Eastern right here on Bloomberg Radio