Jack - Episode 28.5 - Unsealed: Trump's Federal Indictment

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

This week: Trump (and Walt Nauta) get indicted in the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the indictment has been unsealed.Do you have questions about the cases and investigations? Email hello@muellershewr...ote.com and put Jack in the subject line.OrClick here: https://formfaca.de/sm/PTk_BSogJFollow the Podcast on Apple Podcasts:https://apple.co/3BoVRhNCheck out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AG on Twitter:Dr. Allison Gill https://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodAndrew McCabe isn’t on Twitter, but you can buy his book The Threathttps://www.amazon.com/Threat-Protects-America-Terror-Trump-ebook/dp/B07HFMYQPGWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyhttp://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 I signed in order appointing Jack Smith. And those who say Jack is a finesse. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. What law have I written? The events leading up to and on January 6. Classified documents and other presidential records. You understand what prison is? Send me to jail.
Starting point is 00:00:34 Today, an indictment was unsealed, charging Donald J. Trump with felony violations of our national security laws, as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the southern district of Florida. Now I invite everyone to read it in full, to understand the scope, and the gravity of the crimes charged. The men and women of the United States Intelligence Community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced.
Starting point is 00:01:16 Violations of those laws put our country at risk. Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice, and our nation's commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone. Applying those laws, collecting facts, that's what determines the outcome of an investigation. Nothing more, and nothing less. The prosecutors in my office are among the most talented and experienced in the Department of Justice.
Starting point is 00:01:56 They have investigated this case human to the highest ethical standards and they will continue to do so as this case proceeds. It's very important for me to note that the defendants in this case must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. To that end, my office will seek a speedy trial in this matter consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused. We very much look forward to presenting our case
Starting point is 00:02:29 to a jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida. In conclusion, I would like to thank the dedicated public servants of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with whom my office is conducting this investigation, and who worked tirelessly every day upholding the rule of law in our country. I'm deeply proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. Thank you very much. Hey, everybody.
Starting point is 00:02:58 Minutes after we finished recording the latest episode of Jack, there was an alert that Jack Smith was going to be making a statement to the press, and then about an hour before his statement, which you just heard in its entirety, the indictment was unsealed. So we decided to record a bonus episode going over the charges. I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe, Allison Holy Cow.
Starting point is 00:03:23 What a day. I feel like we've kind of been running since we last sat down and recorded the previous episode. But here we are, the indictments landed, and we've got a lot to talk about. Yeah, I haven't slept much. But I have to tell you, Andy, I thought I would be all celebratory and party and woohoo, you know, because you know, I've been waiting for this for a while. But once I read, once I got into this indictment, once I got into these charges, I have to tell you, I was like honestly just disturbed at the complete and total disregard for any Any thoughtfulness, I guess about our national security secrets. You know, I was only in the military for a short time
Starting point is 00:04:23 You know, I worked with some classified and top secret information, but only for a brief period. But the the the salinity with which you take the seriousness with which you take your job when it comes to this stuff. When I saw the box knocked over and I saw the maintenance man, you know, talking to the Diet Coke guy about, oh, you know, it was just it was really disturbing. So let's go over these charges really quickly. It's 38 counts, right? Cause we talked about this in the episode we recorded yesterday.
Starting point is 00:04:53 Early reporting was seven counts, but it was seven crimes and there were more counts. And you and I were like, how many counts for seven, 93 E. Do you think there are? There are 31 way more than I imagined. Yeah, and as we thought, they would be predicated one count per document. That's kind of the most logical way to do it. And yeah, 31 separate documents, I think 28 of which are top secret. of which are top secret. And now that, you know, I think 28 or 27 of those
Starting point is 00:05:29 are described as referencing foreign government information or information about foreign governments are really unbelievably broad and sensitive and concerning scope of across those documents, the 31 documents. Yeah, and that's what really, truly bothered me. It's like because of the amount and the scope and the nature of these documents, they're all, they all, like most of them at least, are top secret, SCI, and most of them have to
Starting point is 00:05:57 do with military secrets for our country or other countries, and five eyes only, which, you know, the five countries, everybody who listens to this show, I imagine, knows what the five eyes are. But why does, why those? Why does you have those? But anyway, we can speculate all we want. Here are the charges. Title 18, US Code Section 793E, just like we said, those are the 31 documents, 31 counts for Trump only. Then we have the witness tampering stuff, 1512k, 1512b2a, 1512c1, 1519, and those are Trump and NADA. That's the conspiracy, right? That's right. Then we have a couple of thousand and one charges, right? That's right. Then we have a couple of thousand and one charges, a couple for Donald, one for Walt. And here's how the whole thing goes down. I'm just looking at it right now. It's
Starting point is 00:06:54 first of all, it is a speaking indictment as we thought it would be. It's very detailed. But it's also succinct. And I will say I absolutely love this about Jack Smith. When we listen to his opening statement at the top of the program, the thing that I think of the most when I hear him talk or when I hear him write a letter, like that letter he wrote in November is, if I had more time, I'd have written a shorter letter.
Starting point is 00:07:20 But he's exactly, he's so very good. There's nothing extra. It's just right to the point direct. There's no kind of playing around with the words or the meaning, you know, exactly where he's coming from. And I agree with you. I think the indictment reads exactly that way. It's logically laid out, but the thing that really knocks you back into your chairs, the details, not, you know, there's a lot of detail in this indictment. It is the, you know, as you mentioned, the kind of archetypical speaking indictment, but it's also the seriousness, the severity of those details,
Starting point is 00:07:52 when it, whether it's the description of how sensitive these documents are, or it's the just, the down and dirty putting you inside the conversations between Evan Corcoran and Donald Trump, right? Like the pick out motion. Yeah. How blatant the obstruction of justice is here that, you know, we always talk about how hard it is sometimes to prove intent in these cases. And there's just like, there's tons of evidence of corrupt intent here. So yeah, it's a remarkable document. Yeah, and much like Don McGann's notes, which we did end up winning that battle. Well, we won the battle,
Starting point is 00:08:34 we lost the war there in the Mueller investigation, but much like McGann's notes, these cork-ren notes, I think, have a lot to do with what we're about to talk about. So, the first thing that jumps out to me, Trump showed classified documents to people in two occasions. First of all, it's the audio of him at Bedminster, meeting with the authors and aides and whatever, talking about the mille Iran document. We've heard about this on audio because we, you know, the audio tape didn't necessarily leak, but a lot of newspapers and other folks got a hold of that and reported it.
Starting point is 00:09:16 And then another instance, which we didn't hear about, this was new to us, where he showed a representative of the Save America Pack, I guess, military information, like war, time, stuff. And in both, he acknowledges, and I think these are why the reason why these are used is because he acknowledges in both that they're classified, don't come too close and he's waving them around. You can't see this because I don't come too close and he's waving them around. You can't see this because I don't think either of these documents, first of all, are charged in this case.
Starting point is 00:09:51 I don't think the 31 documents for 793E are these two documents. And number two, I don't think we know where these documents are anymore. And that's scary. So I just wanted to sort of put that out there, but those two instances are the first thing described. Yeah, it's from the second one you mentioned there. It was a
Starting point is 00:10:12 shocker, I think, to everyone because we had, you know, we'd seen, I think, a day or two before the transcript of the previous The Meeting at Bedminster where he allegedly shows and discusses the Iranian document. But that second one, it's a map that allegedly includes information about like US positions, military positions, and an ongoing conflict. Hard to imagine anything that would better qualify as national defense information. That's just a nine iron. You get that one for free. But the idea that these documents of this nature were not just stored at Mar-a-Lago or at Bedminster, but were being referenced, discussed,
Starting point is 00:10:57 and at least these two cases potentially shown to people. It's just unbelievable. And I have to say to the danger to national security is obvious and offensive. But having served in the intelligence community for many years, it's such an offense. It's such an active disrespect to the people, all the men and women, hundreds of thousands of men and women who do this work every day, who risk their own lives, put themselves in their families in great, sometimes in great danger, but just the work and the commitment that goes into establishing these
Starting point is 00:11:37 opportunities to collect information that's essential to our security, to just treat that work product. So disrespectfully, so recklessly, it's just sends a loud and clear message to that community that this person does not care about what they do, doesn't take what they do seriously. And I just find that kind of personally offensive. But anyway, that's my so far. Yeah. Well, that's what I was kind of saying at the beginning where I, you know, I was ready to have some kickoff knock options, you know, have some champagne and celebrate the indictment, but after reading this, it's just, it's sickening. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:18 With the family military history that I have, they're, you know, people put their lives on the line to protect this kind of information. It just shows the absolute blatant disrespect for people in the military, which we know he has. I mean, he called war dead suckers and veterans losers. And he didn't want to have any amputees in his parade because they look sad, you know, it's just it goes on and on with this particular person and and it's And we knew this from the beginning when he met with rap rock and in the Oval Office and gave away some
Starting point is 00:12:58 Israeli secrets the first day on the job. We were all kind of like, oh shit You know, we're all we're in for it now. Yeah, for sure. But here it is. It's the presence of come home to roost in a very impactful and effective way. So it's very true. Very true.
Starting point is 00:13:16 It's going to be really interesting to see how this develops. So I think the indictment also lays out a very clear kind of chronology or a story really a narrative of obstruction. And there's a couple of pieces of evidence, a couple of sources of evidence, I should say, that are ab, that are just essential core to this ability to tell the story. The first that occurred to me was the video surveillance is unbelievable because you think a video surveillance
Starting point is 00:13:50 is giving you a picture of what happened, which is amazing, and it certainly does that. But it also, in this case, enables them to lay out literally by the hour and minute who is coming and going in and out of the storage room. And so in the run-up to Corcoran's search, in minute who is coming and going in and out of the storage room. And so in the run up to Corcoran's search, I hesitate to even call it that because it was so woefully ineffective, but his-
Starting point is 00:14:15 But he didn't know, right? Like at first I was like, he's in on it, what a rat. But now that I read this whole indictment, I'm like, dude was completely left in the dark at the behest of a diet coke valet. That's how, and by the way, a former Navy veteran, like a Navy person, who like, that's again, shows the disregard for the service.
Starting point is 00:14:37 So let's talk about these obstruction because he lays them out in bullet points, obstruction of justice. Yeah, so it starts with, you know, the entire Dartmouth indictment really focuses on the period after the original subpoena is served. They don't get into the year and a half of arguing with NARA.
Starting point is 00:14:55 I think that was a great move, practically. Just a, just a tad, right? Like, you know, they talk about the more movement of boxes and all that sort of, you know, Trump going through some things. But briefly, but the charges and the charges are really based on that pending indictment period or pending subpoena period. So immediately after service of the subpoena's issued on May 11th, it goes through conversations that Trump had with his attorneys, referred to as, I guess,
Starting point is 00:15:25 attorney one in the indictment seven, Corcoran. Why do lawyers take notes? You shouldn't take so many notes done, McGand. Well, now, Evan Corcoran is the guy who took a bunch of notes. And these are the ones that were retrieved by Jack Smith and the Department of Justice, piercing attorney client privilege
Starting point is 00:15:43 through the crime fraud exception. That's where we get these notes. Yeah, we also know that Korkin essentially created these notes in a long car ride that he took after, after these events, I think probably right after the meeting where they turn over the red weld of documents to DOJ, Korkan then is over the course of a weekend in the car for a long time. So he takes out his phone and he creates, he dictates what ends up being 50 pages worth of narrative
Starting point is 00:16:16 laying out the specifics of the conversations he had with Trump in the lead up to the meeting. So it's reminiscent to me of John Dean, in Watergate, and were it not for that long, long car ride. I don't know if too many people know this story, but we're at not for that very long car ride where he had time. He was like, Hey, you know what? I'll put this all down and riding. We're organized trying to get on top of the game. You know, multitasking a little bit getting in front of his work for the next week. Yeah. We're at not for that. We might not have this case.
Starting point is 00:16:46 Yeah, so because he did that, we now know that Trump initially went told about the subpoena. Trump responded by suggesting that a quarker and lied at the FBI about having the documents. I mean, just comes right out and says, wouldn't it be better if we didn't have any? Do we have to do this?
Starting point is 00:17:03 You know, there's comments like to, like essentially, do I have to do this? You know, it's kind of like to like essentially, do I have to comply with this? If you know, is it, you know, why don't we just tell them to go to hell? I mean, not, not, I'm, isn't it better if we have none? It's great if we have none.
Starting point is 00:17:14 It's better if we have none. I guess that is true. So you get those details in the indictment. And then of course he, and there's a whole series of interactions between Trump and Walt Naughta about moving the boxes around before the day, June 2nd or 3rd, I think. When Corcoran is returning, is coming to Marla, he set up an appointment with Trump, I'm going to come in on the 3rd to do the search. So in the lead-up to that day, you have this Benny Hill-esque
Starting point is 00:17:46 interactions between Trump and Nautilus, and we know this from the surveillance. Ultimately, what, 60 boxes or 60-something boxes. 64. Come out of the storage facility, the storage room, and then just prior, the day or so before Corcoran comes to do the search, 30 boxes are returned. So it's lays out a very clear process by which Trump is asking for boxes. The boxes are brought to him and something less than what he requested goes back into the area to be searched. Yeah, and that's one of the things that left me with a pit in my stomach.
Starting point is 00:18:44 Where's these other 30 boxes of documents? And it's not addressed. And I think it's left open. And I think we all understand that we still don't know where a lot of this, where a lot of our national defense information is. That's terrifying. That's absolutely right. And it also goes to explain why the Jaxmiths team has had this consistent or I should say persistent concern that they
Starting point is 00:19:08 don't have all the documents. I think that's a pretty fair assumption. We don't have all the documents that left the White House. Some specific documents like the Iran document that was discussed at Bedminster from the reporting we have so far, it seems that that document has never been recovered. There's been some other reporting that says that Jackson Smith has a copy of what they believe that document was, and that could be helpful to trial.
Starting point is 00:19:32 But no, my thought is those two documents that we talk about, the one where he shows the PAC representative about some war movements, and the other one, I think these are two different documents. They aren't charged in this case. I don't think that's part of any of the other one. I think these are two different documents. They aren't charged in this case. I don't think that's part of any of the 31 documents. All right, so back to the instruction. The third bit, you know, because first of all,
Starting point is 00:19:54 told us attorney to lie to the FBI about the documents. Then he instructed Walt Nott and O'Moo boxes to hide them from his lawyers, his lawyers. Then he suggested his attorney, he actually told his attorney, can we hide or destroy some of these documents that were asked for in the subpoena? And that's one of the causes of action in this indictment. Then he provided some documents while claiming to cooperate.
Starting point is 00:20:20 And I've never heard of this because Mark Meadows did this, right, with the January 6th committee, where he's like, yeah, sure, here's some text message. Oh, no, never mind. I'm not cooperating anymore. So it appears to me that what the DOJ is saying here is that if you give some documents and you talk to Ted Bitt about this in the previous episode about, you know, kind of half-ass cooperation, like don't go halfway, which is what seems like what Walt Nauta did.
Starting point is 00:20:49 And then you clam up. But if you provide some documents and then claim your cooperating on a portion of documents that we're asked for, apparently, that's a crime. Yeah. I mean, we've been, we've been kind of in a snarky way, making fun of Mr. Nauta as well, not a good witness. I think that's pretty clear.
Starting point is 00:21:11 We were actually right about that. Snarkiness aside, not a good decision there by Nauta and his attorney, you know, to come in and to answer questions. And he could have had a much better deal. He could have had a few months, maybe, atops, if no jail time at all. And he could have had a much better deal. He could have had a few months maybe, at tops, if no jail time at all, if he would have just fully cooperated. And now he's looking at, man, like a decade, at least.
Starting point is 00:21:33 Yeah, he's got six of these counts standing against him. And some of them are very serious, 20, you know, potential 20-year sentences here on the obstruction stuff. So he's in a very bad spot. And yet they have all of his text messages. So you have numerous places here where one of the ways we know what's happening is because NADA is texting other people at Mar-a-Lago and seeing things like, you know, discussing what
Starting point is 00:22:01 the former president did with the boxes the day before. Like, here's one where he tells a colleague, he has one, he's working on in Pine Hall. So that's a room in the residence at Mar- We talked about Pine Hall, bro. We talked about it. Like, when I put out that speculative thread, I'm like, here's what I think happened. They moved, Trump tapped on, now to shoulder,
Starting point is 00:22:24 said, take these 60s or so boxes up to Pine Hall. I'm gonna go through them. Then you and your buddy, the pool maintenance guy, move them back down to the room, then we'll let Corcoran in to search and find the 38 documents or so that I don't care so much about.
Starting point is 00:22:41 And then of course, when Corcoran is done searching and goes back up to Trump with the 38 documents Trump's like, oh no, are they bad? What'd you find? It's like you left them there for him to find anyway The text goes on Not a tells his colleague knocked out two boxes yesterday. So yeah any chance that Trump might have wanted to put on a defense about I didn't know what was in the boxes. I never looked in the boxes. That's done here. Well, not a destroyed that. He in the next day, November 29th, he says, next you, next you are on property. Could you help me bring four more boxes up? This is a employee asking NADA for that assistant. So there's a constant flow from the storage room into the residence for the purpose of Trump
Starting point is 00:23:33 looking at what's in their contents. Do you get the idea here that Carlos, who is the maintenance man who's helping NADA do all this, suppose, you know, as far as I know, that he sounds like he's fully cooperating. He has a different lawyer than Nauta and Budawitch and all these other Kelly Megs and even Cache Patel. He sounds like he's got a different lawyer and it sounds like he's cooperating. He certainly seems like that's the case.
Starting point is 00:24:05 It's not you can't confirm that from the way that he's referred to here or they refer to employee two and the names are obviously not in there. So we can't say for sure, but that makes a lot of sense. And in many ways that person, you know, a lower level, as we discussed yesterday, a lower level employee at Mar-a-Lago
Starting point is 00:24:24 is in some ways a better witness, right? Because they have less culpability. There's no... They're lower on the ladder. That's right. And they're more chill. They're just more chill, right?
Starting point is 00:24:35 It's not like Steve Bannon or something. So we were in the middle of going over Trump's obstruction. We went over. He told Corcoran to lie. He told Nautilus a hide stuff. He suggested his attorney destroy stuff. He provided some documents, like I said, partial cooperation, which I didn't know could be considered a crime.
Starting point is 00:24:53 And then he caused that certification, that attestation letter that we've all been talking about written by Corcoran and Christina Bob, signed by Christina Bob. He caused that letter to be submitted to the FBI and Grand Jury, falsely claiming that all documents had been handed over when he knew they hadn't been. And what we didn't see in this indictment or in these charges is the other letter that came to light the other day from Budavitch, right? And which I wasn't expecting because I don't think they were asking, I don't think they were down there talking to Budavitch about this stuff. I think they were talking to him about wire fraud, but
Starting point is 00:25:27 that's a story for another day. And so then we get to, once we get all these obstructs, like ways of being obstructed, which are just, I mean, you know, Trump is very good at that. We get into what happened before Trump handed the boxes back to the National Archives, which is very short, but he liked within the, for the subpoena, because it's like NARA and then the subpoena that did so. Dealing with NARA, dealing with the DOJ. Back with dealing with NARA, same kind of stuff. Coordinated looking through all the boxes, moving them and looking through them.
Starting point is 00:26:02 This is where he had them on stage at a ballroom and just out in the open, that's frightening. And how to eventually moved and he went through them. He has text messages with photos of spilled top secret documents. Yeah. And some of them five eyes documents. Right.
Starting point is 00:26:20 Then we also learned Trump went through those boxes personally. And then once they had been gone through, once Trump went through those boxes personally and then once they were had been gone through once Trump went through them There were and this is the dress rehearsal we kept hearing about right We have Walt Nada moving boxes to the residents Trump going through them picking out what he wants to keep and then saying Okay, these 15 you can send back to the government That's the dress rehearsal we're talking about and not a put them in his car and sent send back to the government. That's the dress rehearsal we're talking about, and Nada put them in his car and sent them back
Starting point is 00:26:47 to the archives. So that was the dress rehearsal. That's just with the national archives. That is before the subpoena happens. But then we get into, first of all, they, at this point in the, in the document for the indictments, we get to what they're charging while not a with.
Starting point is 00:27:07 Besides the six counts of conspiracy to hide this stuff with Donald Trump, we get into the lies that he told the FBI. You can't get around these, right? He said he was not aware of Trump going through boxes in his residence before they sent them to the National Archives. He said he did not know how the boxes got up to the residence when he's the one who moved them. And he said he didn't know where the boxes were before they were removed or before they were moved back to the storage room.
Starting point is 00:27:37 All lies, right? So those are his three one thousand one charges. Yeah, it's amazing to me that Nauta would have would have made these misrepresentations if he had knowledge of the subpoena for the surveillance video. Right. If is if is attorney knew that the surveillance footage had already been, you know, delivered to the government, how do you let your client make these claims without at least looking at, I mean, just would take five minutes to look at the video and realize, okay, we got a problem here.
Starting point is 00:28:12 He's called over with the lawyers and who they're paid for all day, who they're paid for by all day. Yeah. It's just remarkable. It's, I said to someone I was on with last night, it's an embarrassment of riches for the prosecution. In terms of the amount of evidence, the clarity of what it represents, the reliability of a neutral, unimpeachable surveillance tape.
Starting point is 00:28:36 I mean, it's just what it is. There's no, it's tough to defend against this stuff. Yeah. All right. Then we get into the beef of this, which is, you know, I put out a speculative thread, you know, this is speculation based on all the reporting we have so far. Here's the timeline of events, I think, happened. And this is exactly laid out in this indictment, just as I thought it would be, and which is kind of, I'm honestly stunning to me, that it made it into the indictment.
Starting point is 00:29:07 But this is like one of the, this is like the bulk of the obstruction. Now we're not talking about the national archives anymore. We're talking about the DOJ subpoena, right? The thing that differentiates Pence and Biden from what Trump did. And here's the timeline we pieced you and I, we talked about this. And you're like, yeah, I don't, that's, yeah. And you thought the same thing. May 23rd, Trump met with lawyers. And during that meeting, Corcoran took all the notes and on a long car ride, dictated them. Here's some things that Trump said during that meeting.
Starting point is 00:29:37 I don't want anybody looking through my boxes. I don't want you looking through my boxes. My box is mine, mine. Also, well, what happens if we just don't respond to the subpoena? What if we just don't play a ball? The third thing, wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything?
Starting point is 00:29:56 The fourth thing, well look, isn't it better if there's just no documents? Like, you can tell what he's getting at here. Yeah, and let's not forget. He knows the place is filled with boxes of documents. As he's getting at here. Yeah, and let's not, let's not forget. He knows the place is filled with boxes of documents. As he's saying this, it's like, wouldn't it be better if there were no documents site?
Starting point is 00:30:11 Well, there are documents are all around you. There in your bathroom in the shower in the ballroom. Yes, it is. It was Donald Trump in the ballroom with the documents. Totally it was. You know, even reading this, the comments Even reading the comments out of the indictment, in the abstract by themselves, you might think, well, he's not actually saying,
Starting point is 00:30:34 hey, Evan, go destroy the documents, but he is actually saying that in an explicit way when you realize that he's sitting in a room among the documents saying, we just destroy them? Would you be better if there are no documents? Well, then he tells the Hillary story. And apparently he told it multiple times that day.
Starting point is 00:30:50 And I think it's funny that they made mention of that. He says, Hillary's attorney, whoever it was, I don't know his name, that attorney was great. He did a great job. He said it was his off, he said it was him, that he was the one that deleted all of her emails, the 30,000 emails, because they basically dealt with her scheduling and going to the gym and beauty appointments. But he said he was great. So she didn't get any trouble because he said he was the one who deleted them, basically insinuating
Starting point is 00:31:18 that whoever Hillary's lawyer was. He's the one who deleted her innocuous email. He admits in this indictment, which I love, got stuck in there that her emails were innocuous about going to the gym and stuff. But he said, he deleted them. Can't we just have you do that? Like, this is the Roy Cohn moment, right? Where is it? It totally is. It's please get me the delete guy. Oh, yeah. The guy who so effectively destroyed the evidence for Hillary, he's got experience that is valuable to me. I need him. And it's funny because in classic kind of Trumpian way, the story is, is in coherent. Like I lived through that case. I can't know. I have a perfect
Starting point is 00:31:59 recollection of everything that happened, but I do still carry the scars of it. And I have no idea who he's talking about here. It doesn't actually fit the description of any of the major players that know, but it is a little bit of a little bit look into his mind. Like he really thinks that Hillary stole a bunch of stuff and got rid of it. She was really crafty about the way she had something that the delete guy take care of the delete guy. Fixed it all.
Starting point is 00:32:25 All right. So back, back to my main point, this is the timeline we put together. So they have that meeting on May 23rd where he says all of those things. Then Trump tells Corcoran, hey, it's May 23rd today, you search the storage room on June 2nd, okay? And Corcoran's like cool.
Starting point is 00:32:42 Then Trump gets with Nata, not a good witness. And NADA between May 23rd of that meeting in June 2nd moves 64 boxes out of the storage room to the Trump residence, the Pine Hall, like near his residence. And between that lawyer meeting and June 2nd, Trump goes through all these boxes and then had Nauta move about half of them back down to the storage room. That's right. Once they're back in there, Trump tells Nauta, go open the door for Corcoran and let him search.
Starting point is 00:33:17 Corcoran goes down to search on June 2nd. Corcoran finds 38 classified documents clearly meant to be found. These are the 38 that Trump doesn't care about. And then met with the DOJ the next day on June 3rd. They came down to get them back. He put them in a red well-done envelope, double taped. During that June 3rd meeting or before that June 3rd meeting, Nauta actually packed multiple boxes into Trump's SUV headed to Bedminster. And then once the DOJ was down there with Brat Corcoran had Bob signed that attestation, even though Bob had nothing to do with any of the searches or any of the movements, but Trump completely and totally bamboozled Corcoran in this situation
Starting point is 00:33:58 by telling him, oh yeah, all these boxes, that's everything. You just searched there. He was waved off searching anywhere else. And not only was he waved off, but he had his diet, coke, valet, moved boxes out of that storage room so they would not be searched. And we still don't know where half of those boxes are, which is frightening to me. But it is. But apparently those are hand-picked boxes with stuff and things in them that he went through. So that, even though the little details here tell a story, right?
Starting point is 00:34:34 Yeah, that's the timeline. Where, you know, Trump is organizing with Quarker and when the search is going to take place, they agree on the second, and Trump's like, I'm going to cancel my summer vacation plans, essentially, to make sure I'm here for that. So it's, you know, it just seems like a throwaway detail, but a great indicator of how focused Trump was on this, on this series of events.
Starting point is 00:35:01 It's a, it's a, a theme that you see throughout the document. This is not some esoteric kind of, you know, agency theory here. This is Trump deeply, personally involved in every step of this conspiracy. Little hands on. He's doing it. He's calling the shots. He's directing NADA. He's scheduling with a cork ran. And he's throwing a Navy veteran under the bus, ruining his life, totally fine with that, just so that he can keep his, you know, what a document. And we don't have intent here. And let's, let's talk for a second about stuff that's not in this indictment. There's some glaring things. But the careless, these are just things that stand
Starting point is 00:35:45 out to me and things that are also not in the indictment. The careless storage of these materials is infuriating. There's no mention of the pool, you know, what we talked about on the main episode. Floodgate? Yeah, it's not in there. Nothing for about Watergate, too. No mention of the live golf tournament documents or the foreign real estate deals with the seven countries that were subpoenaed in the documents case, no mention. No charge for dissemination here. The 793E charge under the SPNAA Act is simply for retention of documents, of national defense information, not dissemination, even though there's two instances where he showed them to people or mentioned, they're, I don't think they're part of the charges. No gaps in tapes mentioned,
Starting point is 00:36:30 no incomplete surveillance footage. We don't know why he went to the, ultimately, to the software company. Again, like I said, in the beginning, the sheer number of classified documents in this case, 31, Brandon Van Grack, who ran the fair unit for a long time, worked with these kind of cases a lot at the Department of Justice, said, you know, we all, you need like two or three, four or five documents. Then we have 31 and the bulk of them are top secret, which means the intelligence community have to sign off on that, which stood out. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:01 Trump's own statements used against him. Again, we saw that a lot in the Mueller investigation. And then the Hillary story that he told multiple times that day, those are the things that stand out to me, Andy. So we've only got a couple minutes left, but I'm interested in what in this indictment. Besides just the sheer, it's just disturbing nature and the total disregard for military veterans and national security and the list I just mentioned. What stands out to you in this?
Starting point is 00:37:37 Well, a lot of things, we've covered a lot of it already. I will just to say on some of the points that you raised, I'm not surprised they didn't bring in the foreign real estate stuff or the subpoena over the live information. None of that really fit for me in thinking about the narrative going forward on this issue. It's hard to understand exactly
Starting point is 00:37:58 what they were shooting out there. Anybody come up? Anybody come up? Anybody come up? It may get handed off, or it could come up someplace else, so you could see references to that information in the in the January six case. If that comes to an indictment.
Starting point is 00:38:11 So I think that's still out there. As far as this, the video survey, that was the time it was like getting hit on the head repeatedly with a shoe, the video, it's about the video. The video surveillance is so important to this indictment. And although it doesn't speak specifically to which version of the video or where they got the video that they relied on. So I think we might hear more about that at trial. I think those subpoenas and those inquiries to the tech companies and things like that that we know they had to go to the concern about gaps in the tape. You might hear more about that when they actually
Starting point is 00:38:50 have to use the surveillance video as evidence, they're going to have to establish a foundation for that, which will mean, wherever they received it from, they'll have to bring in custodians of records, people who are responsible for that stuff stuff to testify exactly where it came from and how it was maintained and all that stuff. So you're going to get a lot more detail in that as we go forward. The number of classified documents you write, you don't need more than one. You wouldn't ever get sentenced consecutively, you know, more time for more documents. It doesn't work that way. No, they group them together and it's a 10-year max
Starting point is 00:39:27 for this kind of, this particular charge. It's not 10 years per document. It's grouped into one thing. So if they've sentenced you to two to three years for these documents, that's for all of them. So what you see in these cases typically is they try to represent in the charge the quantity and quality of the documents
Starting point is 00:39:51 that were stolen or retained or what have you. And I think that's why you see multiple documents being used here. It's not because it makes the charge stronger, the sentence longer, but they're trying to be representative of what was there. Yeah, hundred. It's also true that very challenging coordination goes into deciding which ones you'll use.
Starting point is 00:40:13 Many, many espionage cases never go to court because the entity, the intelligence agency that owns the information or the document or whatever was withheld. Yeah, they don't sign off. They don't want it exposed in court. They'd rather see an offender go free than lose the collection, the technique, the human source, whatever it is. We talked about this a lot during the Mueller investigation about the counter intelligence piece of the, there's just things we're never going to know on the counterintelligence piece of the, like there's just things we're never gonna know. That's right.
Starting point is 00:40:45 So the counterintelligence side. You know, they've worked through that already. They already have the agreement of the respective intelligence agencies, the owners of these documents to go forward with these. There may have been other, more sensitive, arguably more important documents that they couldn't include in the indictment.
Starting point is 00:41:05 There are also undoubtedly ones that are less significant. But that's, yeah, that's the thing, right? You're like, it was probably worse than the evidence. Oh, yeah. We'll see in the evidence. No doubt it's always going to be a little bit worse than what you can talk about in court. And that's frightening, yeah.
Starting point is 00:41:19 Yeah, totally. Remarkable. Really? They're off with a bang here. They made a resounding statement. I still question a little bit. I'm surprised I got it in 50 pages. This this amount of information and I think that that is a testament to how good jox myth is it packing information into a small amount of words. He's a word economist this guy
Starting point is 00:41:40 But it really hits it really drives every at the point home But there's so much. You know, everyone's like, oh, it's only 50 pages. Just read it. hits, it really drives every at the point home. But there's so much, you know, everyone's like, oh, it's only 50 pages, just read it. Yes, true, I recommend everybody read this indictment. It won't take you very long, but it's a non-stop hit after hit, after hit, after hit. Everything is packed in such a short little bit of time. Yeah, before we go, let me just mention one thing. There's already been a really vocal and outraged response from the former president's supporters,
Starting point is 00:42:15 particularly the Republicans on the Hill. And the themes are totally foreseeable and very easy to identify. It's basically complaints about two-tiered system of justice not fair. You went after our guy and you let all the Democrats go free. That's just, of course, not the way it works. I tried to explain to someone yesterday, the justice system doesn't work according to organized crime rules. It's not about you took out one of my guys, so I take out one of your
Starting point is 00:42:45 guys and then we're even Stephen. It doesn't work like that. Every case is an individual issue that has to be evaluated according to its own facts and according to the law that applies to it. Right. And not based on anything else. That's right. A lot of really stupid false equivalents arguments now comparing this indictment to the way the Hillary Clinton case was. I talked, I talked to her. I saw Harry done last night and Harry was like, I was talking to this guy and I was like, what do you think about this indictment?
Starting point is 00:43:15 And they said, well, what about the Hillary's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, we'll talk about Hillary in a minute. What do you think about Trump right now? Yeah. Yeah, but Hillary, no, no, no, no, no. We'll talk about Hillary in a minute. Tell me what you think about Trump right now. It's just on and on and on. Yeah, I can't believe that we're relitigating this again,
Starting point is 00:43:32 but I shouldn't be surprised by it at all because I feel like this stuff is gonna be a little bit more. She lost the election. Like, what else do you, there wasn't a crime found and she lost the election. What else would you like for her to go through? And so let's just throw it out there for our listeners to remember at the end of that case, 30,000, well, 30,000 emails that she gave back to the state department,
Starting point is 00:43:54 they were evaluated, plus thousands of other emails that we found from the, quote unquote, missing 30,000. In all of that, we came up with 52 email strings that contained confident or classified information post the time the emails were sent. Post the fact, right? They weren't modern up. This is not the up classified stuff. This was legitimately classified, when sent 52 emails out of what? Over 30,000, you know, thousands and thousands of documents. Of those, I think, eight were top secret, 30 something were secret, and another small number were confidential. We also, more importantly, found no evidence of intentionality, right? There was no facts to clearly indicate that Clinton or any of her- She was a little slow-handed.
Starting point is 00:44:45 So you let him over, but she handed him over. Poor email discipline by any measure, no question. Sure. But how do you, this is not about that, it's about how do you prove a criminal case? Do you have enough evidence to proceed to a prosecution? And of course, in that case, we didn't believe we did just as agreed with that assessment and no indictment was sought. No, it was one person. It was one person who decided that there wasn't enough to charge, and that was you, and that's why you were fired forever.
Starting point is 00:45:14 Oh, right, right. Sure. Or you can go with that if that's what helps you sleep through the night. But that's what people don't understand. There are hundreds of people who make these decisions that go into these charging decisions, not just like one person. This case, this case, the thing that that beams from the mountaintops about the Trump case is the overwhelming mountain of evidence of intentionality. And you see it at a hundred different points in this indictment. It's well laid down. It's from the right,, right, it's the selection by him of what would be returned to NARA and what would be kept. It's the avoidance of even having his lawyer search
Starting point is 00:45:53 his own stuff, the selection of what they wouldn't give back to DOJ. So it's just dripping with intent to retain and obstruct. And that's why it's different from anything we've ever seen before. Yeah, totally. And we'll probably be talking more about this on next week's episode.
Starting point is 00:46:12 And this is just one aspect of the multiple prongs of investigations that Jack Smith is doing. So there's much more to talk about January 6th, the wire fraud, the big fraud attached to the big lie, we have so much more that we'll be going over. So thank you everybody for listening. Thanks for listening and understanding that we had to put out this bonus episode.
Starting point is 00:46:34 We've been, I've been watching you Andy on TV, evaluate this indictment for the last 24, 48 hours. So thank you so much. Everybody, we will see you next week. I've been Allison Gil. And I'm Andy McCabe. And this is the Jackpot guest.

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