Speaker 1: The attack on our nation's capital on January sixth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of
Speaker 1: American democracy. Is described in the indictment. It was fueled
Speaker 1: by lies, lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a
Speaker 1: bedrock function of the US government, the nation's process of collecting, counting,
Speaker 1: and certifying the results of the presidential election.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump appears again today in federal court, this time
Speaker 2: in Washington, d C. Where he faces criminal conspiracy charges.
Speaker 2: It's the third criminal case against the former president and
Speaker 2: possibly not the last. I'm west Kosova today on the
Speaker 2: Big Tag Bloomberg. Sarah Forden and Zoe Tillman tell us
Speaker 2: what we can expect today and in the months ahead
Speaker 2: as Trump shuttles between campaign and courtroom. Sarah, this one
Speaker 2: feels a little bit different. There's been a lot of
Speaker 2: conversation about how the New York case involving hush money
Speaker 2: is very specific, the Florida case against Trump involving his
Speaker 2: handling of classified documents very specific, and this case feels
Speaker 2: more sweeping and possibly more consequential. Why is this one different?
Speaker 3: So this really feels like the big indictment because it's
Speaker 3: looking at all the efforts that Trump went through to
Speaker 3: try to stay in office after he lost the election.
Speaker 3: This is taking all the events leading up to the
Speaker 3: January sixth insurrection and unpacking how that came into play
Speaker 3: and how that unfolded. And as we know, I mean,
Speaker 3: the investigation has been going on for several years and
Speaker 3: now we're looking to see how Jack Smith, the Special Council,
Speaker 3: is going to tell this story of what happened.
Speaker 2: And Zoe, let's talk about some of the specifics in
Speaker 2: the case, because there's a lot of details in here
Speaker 2: and they can be a little bit hard to sort out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, what's interesting is that they've charged this
Speaker 4: as a conspiracy case, but they've charged it as sort
Speaker 4: of a constellation of lots of little mini conspiracies making
Speaker 4: up this broad conspiracy to hold on to power as
Speaker 4: long as possible. And so it's not as if they've said,
Speaker 4: you know, trying to pressure the vice president, that's it,
Speaker 4: that's the offense. They're saying that, in totality, all of
Speaker 4: these things made up the conspiracy. So they included immediately
Speaker 4: after the election trying to go into battleground states when
Speaker 4: it was clear that Biden had won to try and
Speaker 4: pressure state officials to change vote totals, to perhaps delay
Speaker 4: certifying what they were sending in, you know, to Congress
Speaker 4: to certify from the state results, and then you know,
Speaker 4: trying to certify slates of fake electors to sign those
Speaker 4: certifications saying Trump won when he didn't. It was then
Speaker 4: you know, going to court and presenting election fraud claims
Speaker 4: to convince judges to step in, you know, and then
Speaker 4: back in Washington as it got closer to the date
Speaker 4: of certification, by Congress pressuring Vice President Mike Pence telling him,
Speaker 4: you know, you can step in here, and pen saying no,
Speaker 4: I can't. The indictment does not charge him, we should say,
Speaker 4: with inciting the riot at the Capitol. It does not
Speaker 4: charge him with that. It blames him for it. Certainly.
Speaker 5: Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious
Speaker 5: assault on our democracy. And after this, we're going to
Speaker 5: walk down and I'll be there with you. We're going
Speaker 5: to walk down anyone you want, but I think right
Speaker 5: here we're going to walk down to the capital. You'll
Speaker 5: never take back our country with weakness. You have to
Speaker 5: show strength, and you have to.
Speaker 4: And then it says even after that happened, that Trump
Speaker 4: exploited that event to try and call members of Congress
Speaker 4: afterwards to get them to at the last minute stop
Speaker 4: the certification, you know, and as we know, none of
Speaker 4: it worked. Congress certified the election president of.
Speaker 1: The United States.
Speaker 5: Are as follows.
Speaker 2: Joseph ar Biden Junior of the state of Delaware has
Speaker 2: received three hundred and six votes Donald J. Trump of
Speaker 2: the state of Florida.
Speaker 4: But what the Justice Department is alleging is that there
Speaker 4: were these, you know, an overarching conspiracy made up of
Speaker 4: all sorts of different efforts that have been reported by
Speaker 4: Trump and by his allies to ultimately stop this from happening.
Speaker 3: And then also his efforts to get his own Justice
Speaker 3: Department to play a role in that's right. So that's
Speaker 3: a huge piece of it, you know, as we look
Speaker 3: at the separation of powers and the independence, you know,
Speaker 3: of law enforcement, that was a real effort to have
Speaker 3: his way.
Speaker 4: The most serious charge against him, obstructing an official proceeding,
Speaker 4: carries up to twenty years in prison, but we would
Speaker 4: expect him to face nowhere near that if he's convicted.
Speaker 4: He's a first time offender, those maximums or can be
Speaker 4: sort of misleading in how we think about consequences. But
Speaker 4: you know, it is certainly accurate to say that given
Speaker 4: the totality of what he's charged with the twenty years,
Speaker 4: the other offenses carry between five and ten year maximums,
Speaker 4: he would certainly be very likely to face months or
Speaker 4: years in prison if he's convicted.
Speaker 2: Zoe, you mentioned that the Special Council Jack Smith, who's
Speaker 2: bringing this case, didn't charge Trump with inciting the mob
Speaker 2: that then went into the Capitol. There've been a whole
Speaker 2: lot of talk about whether Trump was responsible for that,
Speaker 2: Why didn't Smith make that part of a charge.
Speaker 4: You know, there had been a lot of speculation ahead
Speaker 4: of this that trying to charge him with something like
Speaker 4: seditious conspiracy or insurrection or incitement would be, you know,
Speaker 4: even harder than the case that they're making, which is
Speaker 4: by no means a simple or easy case. Unprecedented, its novel,
Speaker 4: it's extraordinary. But getting into sort of the political motivations
Speaker 4: is a different question from what he was trying to achieve,
Speaker 4: if that makes sense, you know, getting into what speech
Speaker 4: was protected under the First Amendment as just political speech
Speaker 4: versus what was seditious in what he was saying at
Speaker 4: the time, those are you know, far less tested theories
Speaker 4: that they would have to pursue in court, and you know,
Speaker 4: just more politically dicey, I think, and public perception wise,
Speaker 4: a harder case potentially to make.
Speaker 2: So, Sarah, it seems like Smith is focusing more on
Speaker 2: what Trump did, what actions he took, and not just
Speaker 2: on what he said.
Speaker 3: As Zoh, he said, he's going to have to prove
Speaker 3: all of this in court, so he's going to have
Speaker 3: to lay out facts. Obviously. The more that he can
Speaker 3: queue to those facts and lay out that story based
Speaker 3: on actions, the stronger his case is going to be.
Speaker 2: There's another big focus of the case, which seems to
Speaker 2: be that Smith is trying to prove that Trump knew
Speaker 2: that he had lost the election, and that the case
Speaker 2: really hinges on his ability to show that Trump was
Speaker 2: acting in bad faith when he was saying that he won.
Speaker 3: I mean, this case is really trying to settle once
Speaker 3: and for all the whole question around whether or not
Speaker 3: Trump knew and accepted the fact that he had lost
Speaker 3: the election, which has persisted notwithstanding it being debunked and
Speaker 3: denied up and down the chain. And so that is
Speaker 3: going to be absolutely crucial for him to present this case.
Speaker 4: You know, proving intent is always a very difficult task
Speaker 4: for prosecutors. You know, I think what's incredible here and
Speaker 4: that they're working with is a massive body of evidence
Speaker 4: of what Trump said, what other people said they told him,
Speaker 4: you know, from not just the criminal investigation, but also
Speaker 4: the Congressional committee that investigated this and air on national
Speaker 4: you know, primetime television, a lot of you know, key
Speaker 4: administration players and state officials who testified we told him
Speaker 4: this was false. So the public has seen some of
Speaker 4: this evidence already that they've now put in the indictment.
Speaker 4: But you know, the standard of proof in court is
Speaker 4: different than in the court of public opinion, and you know,
Speaker 4: the defense, we expect, will really dig into the difference
Speaker 4: between what people were telling Donald Trump versus what he
Speaker 4: truly believed at the time, because he certainly was being
Speaker 4: told by others around him that there was fraud, and
Speaker 4: there was support for that from you know, close advisors.
Speaker 4: So you know, I think that's going to be likely,
Speaker 4: you know, a focus for the defense in trying to
Speaker 4: pick apart the government's case.
Speaker 2: Sarah Zoe says that the public had heard some of
Speaker 2: this before, and a lot of that was from the
Speaker 2: Congressional January sixth hearings, and it seems like Jack Smith
Speaker 2: really relied a lot on the work that that committee
Speaker 2: had done.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: There was certainly a lot of evidence that had been
Speaker 3: you know, kind of tied up with the bow for him,
Speaker 3: So that was a great starting point. And then of course,
Speaker 3: during the months of the of the grand jury sitting,
Speaker 3: he brought in, you know, dozens of witnesses to drill
Speaker 3: down on each of those threads.
Speaker 4: And certainly a major piece of that is someone who
Speaker 4: did not testify before Congress was former Vice President Mike Pence,
Speaker 4: and someone who very much did testify before the Grand
Speaker 4: jury was former Vice President Mike Pence.
Speaker 3: In fact, one of our recent pieces focuses specifically on
Speaker 3: Mike Pence and the details about him that come out
Speaker 3: in the indictment, and we saw, you know, the indictment
Speaker 3: actually prompted the strongest rebuke from Mike Pence that we
Speaker 3: have seen to date about those events and what Trump
Speaker 3: had asked him to do. Pence actually said, no, one
Speaker 3: who violates the Constitution should be president. I think it's
Speaker 3: going to be very interesting to see what role Pence
Speaker 3: plays going forward.
Speaker 2: In this proceeding Zoe. Another interesting facet of the case
Speaker 2: is that there are several unindicted co conspirators. Can you
Speaker 2: tell us just first, what is an unindicted co conspirator,
Speaker 2: because it keeps coming up.
Speaker 4: So an unindicted co conspirator, just at a practical level,
Speaker 4: is someone that you know, we get a clue prosecutors
Speaker 4: are interested in that they are potentially building cases against.
Speaker 4: To charge a conspiracy, you have to have conspirators in
Speaker 4: the case, but you don't have to charge them, but
Speaker 4: you have to allege this conspiracy existed. Someone had to
Speaker 4: be in the indictment besides Trump to raise these charges.
Speaker 4: You know, it could mean that these are people who
Speaker 4: will ultimately be charged. It could mean these are people
Speaker 4: that prosecutors are hoping to cut a deal with, and
Speaker 4: you know, it puts them on notice. And you know,
Speaker 4: in conversations with the lawyers for some of the people
Speaker 4: who are you quite obviously referenced in the indictment as
Speaker 4: these unindicted co conspirators. For instance, Conservative attorney John Eastman,
Speaker 4: his attorneys said to me, you know, so it's obvious
Speaker 4: that's who they're referring to, even though they don't name him.
Speaker 4: But this lawyer told me they didn't get notice from
Speaker 4: the Justice Department that they were going to refer to
Speaker 4: John Eastman. And this lawyer said that they have not
Speaker 4: gotten a target letter saying he should expect charges. So,
Speaker 4: you know, it's not really clear what's going to happen
Speaker 4: to these people, but it does confirm what Jack Smith
Speaker 4: said in announcing the indictment, which is that their investigation continues.
Speaker 2: Zoey remind us of John Eastman's role in what happened
Speaker 2: after the election.
Speaker 4: John Eastman is a very prominent conservative legal thinker, and
Speaker 4: he was a close advisor to Donald Trump during this period.
Speaker 4: But you know, I think what the indictment focuses on
Speaker 4: especially is the role that he played in drafting what
Speaker 4: was considered sort of a plan for how to either
Speaker 4: stop or delay Congress from certifying the vote. Constitutional scholars
Speaker 4: widely panned the legal underpinnings of these memos that John
Speaker 4: Eastman wrote, but you know, he was considered at the
Speaker 4: time the architect of that plan.
Speaker 2: And as you say, there's enough information in the indictment
Speaker 2: to figure out who some of the other unindicted co
Speaker 2: conspirators are and who are they that's right.
Speaker 4: The most prominent unindicted alleged co conspirator is co conspirator one,
Speaker 4: which we've matched to Rudy Giuliani, the former New York
Speaker 4: City mayor and US attorney who was really directing the
Speaker 4: Trump campaigns legal efforts in battleground states to try and
Speaker 4: stop the states from certifying that President Joe Biden won.
Speaker 4: Rudy Giuliani really played such a prominent role publicly in
Speaker 4: so many battleground states that it makes sense that he
Speaker 4: would feature prominently in the indictment given the breadth of
Speaker 4: the conspiracy that's alleged. The other individuals that we've identified
Speaker 4: include Sidney Powell, another prominent conservative attorney who was also
Speaker 4: involved in a lot of the legal efforts and brought
Speaker 4: unsuccessful court challenges. There's also Jeffrey Clark, who was a
Speaker 4: senior Justice Department official at the time and an ally
Speaker 4: of Donald Trump, even as almost everyone else in the
Speaker 4: Justice Department was trying to stop what the president was
Speaker 4: trying to do at the time, at one point, Trump
Speaker 4: considered installing Jeffrey Clark as the acting Attorney General. There
Speaker 4: was also Kenneth Cheesebro, another attorney involved in sort of
Speaker 4: the state operations, and we always want to be careful
Speaker 4: in naming someone who has not been charged. And so
Speaker 4: what we did is the indictment features for the five
Speaker 4: individuals that we've confirmed, you know, quotes and other information
Speaker 4: that squarely matches what's already publicly known about what they
Speaker 4: did in the post election period. And we've also independently
Speaker 4: confirmed those names as being who those write ups in
Speaker 4: the indictment are meant to refer to. There's a sixth
Speaker 4: person who's mentioned that we have not confirmed yet.
Speaker 2: And what do the people we've been talking about say
Speaker 2: about all this?
Speaker 4: They say that this is, you know, a political witch hunt.
Speaker 4: They say that this is illegitimate. We've had, you know,
Speaker 4: a statement from Rudy Giuliani's spokesperson saying this is the
Speaker 4: Biden regime going after his enemies and protected speech. John Eastman,
Speaker 4: we know his lawyers have been drafting a memo to
Speaker 4: send to the Special Counsel's office arguing why he was
Speaker 4: just being a lawyer and that's not a crime. As
Speaker 4: of now, no one has indicated that they are turning
Speaker 4: on Donald Trump. Of the group that we've identified.
Speaker 2: Sarah and Donald Trump, of course, has been very vocal
Speaker 2: on social media. What is he saying about all this?
Speaker 3: Yes, so Donald Trump is continuing to denounce these actions
Speaker 3: as a witch hunt, you know, the corrupt Biden administration.
Speaker 3: He even managed to jump out ahead of the Special
Speaker 3: Council and announced once again that he was going to
Speaker 3: be indicted, you know, any day now. So he is
Speaker 3: using it to date very effectively to stoke his fundraising.
Speaker 3: Even before the indictment came, he was sending out ads
Speaker 3: flagging the indictment. He is, you know, using it as
Speaker 3: part of his political campaign speech.
Speaker 4: And you know, we should note that he's been sued
Speaker 4: civilly in connection with January sixth, and across all of
Speaker 4: those cases has denied wrongdoing, denied liability, and we fully
Speaker 4: expect him to plead not guilty and fight these charges
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 2: After the break, how Trump will defend himself against these
Speaker 2: charges from the Special Cantle Zoey, we talked about Jack
Speaker 2: Smith's case against Trump. What is the defense that Trump
Speaker 2: is expected to mount.
Speaker 4: A Few things that we can glean from what he
Speaker 4: said publicly and also you know, conversations with sources, the
Speaker 4: main one being that how do they prove that he
Speaker 4: knew that these were lies and what his intent was
Speaker 4: into taking all of the actions that he did. So
Speaker 4: we've seen him repeatedly say what I was doing was
Speaker 4: political activity. First Amendment protected speech. As both president and
Speaker 4: as a US citizen, he certainly has a sweeping right
Speaker 4: to speak and to say that he thinks something is
Speaker 4: fraudulent or not. So, you know, we expect defenses framed
Speaker 4: around you know, what he really believed at the time
Speaker 4: and when he was saying to someone, please do X
Speaker 4: because there has been fraud. Was that fraudulent in and
Speaker 4: of itself, or was that just him exercising his opinion
Speaker 4: and trying to encourage someone to take action based on that.
Speaker 4: It is wrapped up in the politics of what happened,
Speaker 4: which is going to be both complicated to prove and
Speaker 4: defend against. We might see some re litigation over how
Speaker 4: they gathered evidence in the case. Trump's lawyers had fought
Speaker 4: putting people like Mike Pence before the grand jury on
Speaker 4: executive privilege ground. The case could be another vehicle for
Speaker 4: them to try and get at least some pieces of
Speaker 4: evidence or testimony tossed out, so can they chip away
Speaker 4: at the indictment first before it goes to trial, they
Speaker 4: could argue that there is no way to get a
Speaker 4: fair trial in Washington, which is a heavily democratic city
Speaker 4: that overwhelmingly voted against him. That's a really hard argument
Speaker 4: to make and win, but they can try it. So
Speaker 4: you know, there are a couple ways for them to
Speaker 4: make early attacks on the indictment, and then we've started
Speaker 4: to see them lay the foundation for how they might
Speaker 4: try to attack it in a trial.
Speaker 3: The questions around the fraud claims are going to be
Speaker 3: very interesting, and it may be even that Jack Smith
Speaker 3: is trying to push them into attempting that kind of
Speaker 3: a defense, which could be good for the prosecutor because
Speaker 3: in all the sixty plus cases that they filed claiming
Speaker 3: that there was election fraud, they were all thrown out.
Speaker 3: There was no evidence that was actually ever stood up,
Speaker 3: and so they don't really have a basis for that
Speaker 3: kind of a defense.
Speaker 2: Trump once again is expected to appear in court today.
Speaker 2: What's going to happen there? What will we see?
Speaker 3: So we are expecting him to present himself. He will
Speaker 3: not be arrested, but he will be booked. He will
Speaker 3: have to give his personal information, He will be fingerprinted digitally,
Speaker 3: we are expecting that he will enter a plea, although
Speaker 3: that has not yet been confirmed. We are fully expecting
Speaker 3: yet another media circus around a Donald Trump or hearing.
Speaker 2: And then Zoe, what actually happens next when it comes
Speaker 2: to the calendar, how does this case proceed normally?
Speaker 4: And this is not normal? Normally, we would expect things
Speaker 4: to move fairly quickly. There would be a schedule set
Speaker 4: for the government to turn over all of their evidence
Speaker 4: to the lawyers, usually within a period of a couple
Speaker 4: weeks or a couple months. The judge would set a
Speaker 4: schedule for them. The defense then to file on emotions.
Speaker 4: If they want to contest the indictment or the evidence,
Speaker 4: they could do that. They would argue over that, and
Speaker 4: then we would have a trial date on the calendar,
Speaker 4: and things would move at a fairly steady clip. The
Speaker 4: complication here, of course, is that this is now the
Speaker 4: third criminal indictment against Donald Trump. They're already extensive schedules
Speaker 4: set in the first two cases, the first in New
Speaker 4: York in the hush money payment's case and the second
Speaker 4: in South Florida in the classified documents case. Even with
Speaker 4: just one trial on the calendar in New York, the
Speaker 4: judge in Florida had to mediate a fight between the
Speaker 4: government and Trump's lawyers over how far out to set
Speaker 4: a schedule. Trumps lawyers it argued for no schedule at
Speaker 4: all until after the twenty twenty four election next November,
Speaker 4: and we now have dates in both March and May
Speaker 4: for trials. It's very likely that they would argue that
Speaker 4: nothing can happen in Washington until after those trials take place.
Speaker 4: So you know, we're certainly anticipating another schedule fight. But
Speaker 4: judges will have to be mindful of his rights as
Speaker 4: a defendant, and that is a priority now for judges
Speaker 4: at this stage. He is innocent until proven guilty. He
Speaker 4: has a right to prepare his defense to be present.
Speaker 4: They cannot try him in his absence. He needs to
Speaker 4: be there unless he doesn't want to be, but that
Speaker 4: would be extraordinary. And then he's running for president and
Speaker 4: there are commitments to that that they're going to argue
Speaker 4: are important and that he needs to be there for.
Speaker 4: So you know, who knows what kind of date we're
Speaker 4: looking at and what kind of time frame for this third.
Speaker 2: Case, And Sir, to complicate things even further, there's the
Speaker 2: possibility even the likelihood of a fourth indictment in Georgia.
Speaker 2: Can you catch us up on that case?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? All eyes are now going to turn to Atlanta,
Speaker 3: where the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has already
Speaker 3: signaled that she is preparing to move on bringing charges
Speaker 3: in the first three weeks of August. She is also
Speaker 3: investigating efforts to overturn the election. So very similar fact
Speaker 3: patterns to what Jack Smith is alleging. We are racing
Speaker 3: for the possibility that she could charge under the Reicho,
Speaker 3: the Racketeering Act. So those could actually be very serious
Speaker 3: charges as well coming in Georgia.
Speaker 2: So Zoe, how do they actually schedule these different cases?
Speaker 2: If Donald Trump has the right to be there for
Speaker 2: his trials as a practical matter, how can he be
Speaker 2: in so many different places at once.
Speaker 4: They may not know coordinate in a direct sense, but
Speaker 4: we already saw an example of this in Florida, where
Speaker 4: as the judge with hearing arguments on the trial schedule,
Speaker 4: she asked the lawyers, you know, I tell me the
Speaker 4: date in New York and they said, the trial is
Speaker 4: set for I think it's March twenty fourth or something around.
Speaker 4: Then she said, how firm is that, you know, so
Speaker 4: you can already see the wheels turning in her head
Speaker 4: that if it's a you know, March twenty fourth date,
Speaker 4: she asked how much time is expected for that, If
Speaker 4: they're expecting eight weeks or six weeks, She's then building
Speaker 4: that out. A judge is not going to set a
Speaker 4: schedule in their court room that's going to interfere with
Speaker 4: another judges operation. So they might not be picking up
Speaker 4: the phone to call that other judge, but they're going
Speaker 4: to ask the lawyers to lay out all the dates
Speaker 4: when they need to be in court somewhere else, and
Speaker 4: they will then have to have their clerk look at
Speaker 4: their calendar and set dates that are somehow different, Zoe.
Speaker 2: Another thing that it appears at least that Jack Smith
Speaker 2: may have in his favor is the judge in.
Speaker 4: This case, the judge that it's been randomly assigned to,
Speaker 4: is Judge Tanya Chutkin. She has been on the bench
Speaker 4: for a number of years now. She was confirmed under
Speaker 4: former President Barack Obama. You know, it's important to say
Speaker 4: at the outset that judges receive lifetime appointments. They're not
Speaker 4: politically bound or required to be loyal to the president
Speaker 4: or the party that put them on the bench. I
Speaker 4: think what Donald Trump is really up against is that
Speaker 4: Judge Chutkin, along with most of the judges in Washington,
Speaker 4: have been hearing January sixth rioter cases for two years now,
Speaker 4: extremely familiar with the events of the day and what happened.
Speaker 4: And you know, Judge Chutkin is among those who have
Speaker 4: talked about the seriousness of what happened that day in
Speaker 4: presiding over these other cases, you know, and she does
Speaker 4: not have a reputation as someone who has questioned the
Speaker 4: government's narrative of what happened on January sixth. Only a
Speaker 4: handful of judges have really pushed back on how the
Speaker 4: government has prosecuted these cases so far, and she is
Speaker 4: not one of them.
Speaker 2: When we come back, can Trump delay his trials until
Speaker 2: after the election? Sarah? Of course, all of this is
Speaker 2: happening as the twenty twenty four presidential campaign is heating
Speaker 2: up and Donald Trump is surprisingly I suppose, use these
Speaker 2: indictments to his benefit.
Speaker 3: I mean, he has been very successful so far in
Speaker 3: using them to raise money, and his followers have been
Speaker 3: digging into their pockets and donating. We are watching to
Speaker 3: see if that trend continues, there is some indication that
Speaker 3: maybe the shiny indictment motivator is wearing off a little
Speaker 3: bit as the indictments pile up. So that is something
Speaker 3: that we're going to be reporting into in the next
Speaker 3: couple of days.
Speaker 2: Even and we know that one of the ways he's
Speaker 2: operated in the past is to try to delay trials
Speaker 2: as long as he can Zoe, as you mentioned, he
Speaker 2: has a big incentive to try to push these until
Speaker 2: after the election. Do you think that we're actually going
Speaker 2: to see trials occur during the presidential campaign?
Speaker 4: As of now, it certainly looks very likely. The trial
Speaker 4: in New York in the state hush money case is
Speaker 4: set for March, and there's been no indication that the
Speaker 4: judge is open to reconsidering that timeline. In the Florida
Speaker 4: classified documents case, the judge set her schedule after hearing
Speaker 4: arguments and considering, you know, objections from both sides, so
Speaker 4: this was not a temporary placeholder calendar that she set.
Speaker 4: I think one open question there is whether the expanded
Speaker 4: superseding indictment that we've now gotten in Florida, whether that
Speaker 4: will prompt the defense to ask for another delay of
Speaker 4: that May twentieth. Trial judges don't like being told what
Speaker 4: to do. They like to have a reputation for running
Speaker 4: their courtrooms with a firm hand and not being seen
Speaker 4: as easily swayed or you know, influenced by the attorneys.
Speaker 4: So you know, you tend to see judges say, once
Speaker 4: I've said my piece, that's the end of this.
Speaker 3: The Florida judge was very interesting and when she was
Speaker 3: getting all the back and forth about the campaign and
Speaker 3: the elections and they wanted to push it off and
Speaker 3: jax With wanted in December, and she said, let's just
Speaker 3: focus on the documents and the time that we're going
Speaker 3: to need to get all these documents entered into the
Speaker 3: record and you know, laid out in the proper way.
Speaker 3: So she was very careful to steer clear of the
Speaker 3: politics and the demands from both sides.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: She even told Trump's lawyers to basically move on from that,
Speaker 4: that that was not going to be a part of
Speaker 4: her decision in setting a schedule. So I would you know,
Speaker 4: we would expect in DC now a similar approach where
Speaker 4: the judge was going to ask for the you know,
Speaker 4: practical logistics of how long do you need how much
Speaker 4: evidence is there, but a sweeping argument that this should
Speaker 4: be indefinitely postponed after the election because of politics. It's
Speaker 4: going to be a very hard sell.
Speaker 3: And just to go back to the Florida schedule for
Speaker 3: a moment. If that may date is confirmed, conceivably we
Speaker 3: could see a resolution before the election.
Speaker 2: And of course that's an important point because if Trump
Speaker 2: is able to delay things, or if just these complicated
Speaker 2: trials take a long time to reach their conclusions and
Speaker 2: Trump is re elected president, it's been allowed to talk
Speaker 2: about how he might choose to either direct his Justice
Speaker 2: Department to drop the cases or to pardon himself.
Speaker 4: That's right. It's an open question whether he can pardon
Speaker 4: himself on federal charges. It is a closed question when
Speaker 4: it comes to state charges. So it's important to say
Speaker 4: that if he's convicted in New York, or if there's
Speaker 4: an indictment in Georgia and he's convicted there, as president,
Speaker 4: he does not have the power to tell anyone what
Speaker 4: to do, and he can't pardon himself on federal charges.
Speaker 4: You know, in theory, it's possible that he could pardon himself.
Speaker 4: The president has pretty much unfettered power to pardon anyone,
Speaker 4: but you know, it would certainly be extraordinary and legal
Speaker 4: scholars would have a lot to say about it. If
Speaker 4: if these cases are pending and he tried to direct
Speaker 4: the Justice Department to stop them, it would trigger all
Speaker 4: sorts of legal and political mayhem. So there are a
Speaker 4: lot of different uncertainties and possibilities of what happens if
Speaker 4: he wins.
Speaker 3: It just shows how how much we really are in
Speaker 3: uncharted territory with these cases and with this scenario.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Zoe, Obviously, there's just so much to keep track of,
Speaker 2: even just trying to put it all down on a calendar.
Speaker 2: As you continue to report on this what are the
Speaker 2: things you're most watching.
Speaker 4: For right now? It is It is the schedule. It
Speaker 4: is literally plotting dates on a calendar, or my case,
Speaker 4: on a very intense color coded spreadsheet, you know, knowing
Speaker 4: when different filings are due in court. You know, we
Speaker 4: want to make sure that we're covering in the totality
Speaker 4: what both sides are arguing in court, and then how
Speaker 4: that matches with what Donald Trump is saying publicly and
Speaker 4: on the campaign trail. It's you know, being in the courtroom,
Speaker 4: a downside of federal court proceedings is there are no
Speaker 4: cameras in the courtroom, and so making sure that we
Speaker 4: have eyes on not just what the lawyers are doing,
Speaker 4: but how the judges are handling these cases. So, you know,
Speaker 4: from the perspective of allegal reporter, really is just making
Speaker 4: sure we're reading everything, watching everything, just managing those logistics.
Speaker 2: On our end.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, once it's indicted, it's all on
Speaker 4: the public record. Now the question now is, you know,
Speaker 4: how do they prove it, and how do they defend it?
Speaker 4: And what does a judge and a jury do with
Speaker 4: all of it?
Speaker 2: Zoe Sarah, thanks so much for speaking with me, Thanks.
Speaker 3: For having us, Thanks for having.
Speaker 2: Us, Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
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Speaker 2: the producer of this episode is Vicky Bergolina. Our senior
Speaker 2: producer is Catherine Fink, with additional production support from Moberrow
Speaker 2: and Raphael I'm Silely. Our original music was composed by
Speaker 2: Leo Sidrin. I'm west Kasova. We'll be back tomorrow with
Speaker 2: another big take down the count turn the Down, Spoken b.