Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Former SDNY Federal Prosecutor Danya Perry EXPOSES the case against Trump - Legal AF midweek 8/3/2022
Episode Date: August 4, 2022On this special midweek edition of LegalAF x MeidasTouch, the top-rated podcast covering law and politics, anchor Karen Friedman Agnifilo is joined by nationally recognized former SDNY federal prosecu...tor Danya Perry to discuss and analyze the DOJ’s criminal investigation into Trump, the possible charges he is facing, including in the parallel Georgia state criminal investigation by Fulton County DA Fani Willis. Join us while we take a deep dive into the crimes, defenses and the evidence that supports them.  Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal AF. I'm Karen Friednick, Nifalo, the co-host of the
Midas Media Networks Show Legal AF. And as many of you know, I was a prosecutor for almost
three decades. However, all of my experience was in the New York State system. And since
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has put the kibosh on any New York prosecution of Donald Trump,
the most likely prosecution will come from York prosecution of Donald Trump. The most likely prosecution
will come from the Department of Justice or the state in Fulton County, Georgia, Fannie Willis,
who's the prosecutor there. So I have a friend of mine, Donia Perry, who is a nationally recognized
white collar criminal defense attorney and litigator. She previously worked at the US attorney's office.
Some would say the best US attorney's office in the country,
the Southern District of New York.
And she also has worked for the New York State AG's office
and has prosecuted many, many crimes.
And I thought when she said she was available to talk about
potential federal charges against Donald Trump,
she was the perfect person and lucky for me, as she agreed to be on our show this week,
she's also the co-author of the Brookings Institute report called Trump on trial.
It's a fascinating report that is just a roadmap to what is happening and what the evidence is and what the possible
charges are against Donald Trump. And although it's quite long, it's very in depth, it's easy to
read. It's in chronological order with the elements of the crime. And I highly recommend anybody
who wants a deep dive into what's happening at the Department of Justice right now and potentially
in Georgia. And what the charges could be and what the evidence for those charges could be
to read this brilliant report that has links to absolutely everything. They don't
just say this is what happened. They cite and cite and link to every single place
that you would find that evidence. So I'm thrilled to have Donia here
and welcome to our show.
It's great to have you.
Thank you so much, Karen.
Thrilled to be here.
Thank you so much for that plug.
I also commend anybody to read the Brookings report
that I was lucky enough to be one of the co-authors on.
We published it right before the hearing started,
and it does track, I think, a lot of what the evidence showed,
but of course it doesn't fill in the blanks of what,
you know, what the committee has actually put together
and what the Department of Justice is now
apparently looking at. So I assume that's that's part of what we'll discuss today is how we slot in
the evidence into onto the framework of the the legal elements that we all I think suspect,
those of us kind of in the know who've been watching it very closely suspect might be the
statutes that the Department of Justice is looking at.
So I'm thrilled to be here and thanks for having me.
So the report, before the hearing started in the report,
I think you said, and the report said,
our review of the Well-established Law
and Public Record Evidence leads us to believe
that there's substantial evidence of all the essential elements
of certain federal
crimes that are that form the basis for prosecutors to go forward. So did you look through what
tell us a little bit about what you guys looked through and what you were able to analyze?
So we come to public record. You know, of course we have, we have no inside scoop.
You know, we don't have access to anything that the committee has not put out publicly.
Certainly, we're not speaking off the record with the prosecutors.
So, so all we have really is what is been reported, and we tried to really limit ourselves to what has been incredibly reported.
And, of course, our experience and our knowledge of what, you know, what the facts as we understand them, you know, how they might likely be applied, both, you know, in the committee hearings,
and then more aspirationally at the time,
the way that state, local, and federal prosecutors
might look at the evidence.
So, you know, we really just did an exhaustive,
a thorough, comprehensive, deep dive into, you know into everything that was out there, going back as far as we could.
And there's a lot out there, of course. So it really, as you said, it's a lengthy report, heavily footnoted.
And so there's a second of summary for anyone who doesn't want to read the, I don't even
remember how many pages it is.
But we did want to make sure that we're Marshalled all of the facts that were available to us
and tried to organize them around a legal and statutory framework.
Has anything new come out in the hearings that have either added to some of your findings
or surprised you or different or tell us how because it was a you talked a lot about sort of what
is going to happen during the hearings and what the evidence is to support the various charges
that we're going to talk to talk about in in detail in a minute. But did anything, now that you've had the benefit of what eight or nine hearings,
is there anything different that you would say or add to the report in any way?
A couple of things for sure. I mean, maybe not different in kind, but certainly you know as a as a former prosecutor,
certainly, you know, as a former prosecutor, the devil's always in the details, and jurors or audiences of any kind.
Here it's obviously more of an audience of political audience and an audience of the
electorate at large, but they need something to wrap their arms and their brains around, and that usually
comes in kind of this narrative art, the story that the prosecutors are here, the committee
members are telling through their opening and closing statements and their questions.
And of course, through the testimony of the witnesses and the documents and the, you know,
they put together some great spreadsheets and some PowerPoints.
And so I think they did a great job actually of organizing that and putting it all together
in a really digestible way.
I'll say my own gloss is I think the committee and vice-chairwoman, Cheney in particular,
have done a masterful job of organizing
what really is a tremendous amount of evidence.
I mean, well over 1,000 witnesses,
and hundreds of thousands of documents,
as I understand it.
And they just, they gave it a framework
that I think is really understandable.
And then they hung each of their hearings
around a particular theory of fraud
or one of the prongs of the conspiracy as Cheney put it.
So there are a lot of details that I think nobody
knew and could not have predicted that
have really added, I think, to the drama and the intrigue.
And really that story for lack of a better term.
Some of the witnesses, Cassidy Hutchinson, was a former aide to Mark Meadows, who was
the chief of staff at the time.
I think her testimony definitely was a game changer and she threw some bombs.
And I think that, I mean, it's not just me saying, it seems like that was also a changing or turning point for the Department of Justice
who suddenly, after 18 months,
reportedly took notice.
I remember reading the headlines
and the New York Times that this jolted
the Department of Justice into action.
I just remember, because it jolted me,
that they hadn't before been jolted.
So I think her testimony, you know, she had a lot of ripping details, you know, just that
visual of a ketchup dripping down the wall, right, in the executive dining room.
You know, she gave it, it was gross, right?
But some of so provocative.
Pro-vogue it, and told the story.
It's, you know, the president in this fit of rage because his, and he really saw a
Attorney General Barr as his lawyer.
But when Barr, you know, went out publicly and said he did not see evidence of the kind
of fraud that would have changed the election, you know, he, he and said he did not see evidence of the kind of fraud that
would have changed the election.
You know, he, he, you know, I don't know if he literally turned the table top over, but
he, he, he had a temper tantrum.
And that, and that tells you a lot about these unhinged final days of the presidency and
the lengths to which the former president went,
you know, to kind of try and get his way. So I think details like that were new. You know,
I think there's been a lot of focus on the detail of that,
ride in the presidential motorcade and the fight, really, for lack of a better war between
the president and his secret service detail.
And, you know, a lot of people have focused on that. I think that's, I don't think that as a legal matter, I don't think that argument and just to remind, you know, anyone was sitting or
watching, it's the argument around the president who wanted to go to the Capitol by this account.
And the secret service who said that it was not secure enough
and they were not going to bring him there.
And Cassidy Hutchinson relays, there was secondhand account,
but now it's been corroborated reportedly,
that the president went into another fit of rage
and tried to kind of put his hands on the security service officer.
And I just think that, you know,
I don't know that that makes a difference
as a legal matter or other, you know,
it goes to his state of mind that he really wanted to go there.
And they're still some gaping holes.
What if he wanted to do at the Capitol?
But it is, it's just the kind of, you know,
detail that really reaches out and grabs, you know,
lay people who are listening to it, who are really trying to, maybe for the first time,
realizing how deeply deranged and completely unhinged the former president was in those
moments.
So, I don't want to, you know, I am now giving a bit of a saliliquate, an answer, you know, long-winded answer to your question.
But I do think there were a lot of those moments that had both legal impact, you know, that
really will have moved, will should have moved to the Department of Justice, but also just
I think, you know, more politically or in terms of grabbing a more general audience, you
know, really filled in some gaps and made this much more real
in a way that I think we had not imagined before.
I too was surprised.
You know, I too was very surprised
that Department of Justice hadn't been investigating.
You know, the fact that the Congress had interviewed
over a thousand witnesses before it appears
that the Department of Justice started investigating this.
How can you explain that?
I mean, they've prosecuted over 800 people,
these pathetic, I hate to say that,
but I felt so sorry for that gentleman
who testified Mr. Ayers, who was like,
oh, I wasn't planning on going to the capital on January
6th, but my president said, come to the capital. So I went and then he said, go to, you
know, at the, at the ellipse and then he said, go to the capital. So I marched. I wasn't
planning on going before, but I did. And we all did, went in because he told us to stop
the steel. And then when he told us to, to, to leave and go home peacefully, 187 minutes
later, I left.
You know, I was just doing what he said.
And I just in some ways felt so sorry for him
that he's just a normal, simple American
who has a job and a family
and he was just listening to his president.
And he's been prosecuted, he's a felon.
And Donald Trump and the people who have absolutely, I mean, this this report
that you wrote and what's coming out at the hearing at the hearings, I mean, it's absolutely
without a doubt a huge criminal conspiracy that that Trump Eastman meadows and others at
the top were responsible for.
It just why was it, I don't understand why the Department of Justice wasn't doing more
to investigate the people at the highest levels.
What do you, why is that?
Is it because it's unprecedented to prosecute a president?
Is it because Joe Biden is so conciliatory and he wants to move heal and reach across the
aisle and move the country forward? and he wants to move heel and reach across the aisle
and move the country forward.
Is it because we're worried about setting precedent
for future presidents where each side prosecutes the other
if we don't like them?
I mean, I honestly don't understand
because when I read these facts and I read
and I watch these hearings and you're just the more you learn
about what's coming out, I just scratch my head and I don't understand.
Yeah, I'm with you.
It's been a head scratcher.
I mean, I agree with so much of what you said.
I mean, you and I know as prosecutors, we would build cases and sometimes you do it.
You build up, you know, you start with low hanging fruit, and you flip some people and you go up the chain.
That's obviously not this case.
People like Stephen Ares and others, you know, weren't going leisurely pace was just not going to fly here.
So I think all of those theories that you just postulated are, you know, it's got to
be some of those things.
We all know that, I think, and A.G.
Garland has said when he came in that this is going to be a very different administration
than the last one.
I mean, the bar administration where he was,
as I said before, the president's lawyer.
He was willing to prosecute his enemies and protect his friends.
We saw the partings that were given out.
We saw some of these prosecutions.
I mean, I represented Michael Cohen
and successfully got him out of prison
when he was,
he was literally put in solitary confinement for the crime of saying that he was going to be
writing a tell-all book about President Trump. And we've seen plenty of other examples.
So I think Garland tried to, yeah, I think he overcorrected. He tried to bend over backwards
to be, you know, chronically apolitical, but, you know, you can bend so far over that you go the
other way and that then becomes political, that you're not prosecuting people who clearly,
you know, we've seen reams of evidence now. Clearly there was factual prication to have initiated an investigation a long time ago.
Anyone else would have been an investigation that would be well underway and matured by
now, not just starting to put people into the grand jury a year and a half later.
So yes, as you said, Karen, I a half later. So, you know, yes, as you as you said, Karen,
I agree with you. I this case is a unicorn. It's what we call in the law, a stewy generous.
It's its own thing that has has really never been seen before. And hopefully we all, you
know, pray, we will not see again. But and maybe that's what, you know, Garland is thinking
is, gosh, if I started
President here of prosecuting former President, what's going to happen after the
midterms, what's going to happen in 2024? Maybe, you know, he's got these
potential considerations that, honestly, if you look at the Department of Justice
Guidelines, there is a manual, it's called the Justice Manual, there's nothing in
there that says
that you may consider these kinds of political factors, you may not consider that as a prosecutor.
So it's, I agree with you, it's a head scratcher, but they're looking now and
you know, I think they're going to see what we've all seen over the past summer.
There's mountains of evidence.
That's not to say that there's certainly enough, I would say, to bring an indictment against Trump and plenty of other people.
What the Justice Department, I'm sure, is going to be thinking is not just, can we sustain indictment, but can we
sustain a conviction?
And the proof, of course, for that
is beyond reasonable doubt.
I'm sure they're imposing an even higher standard proof
on themselves, because there's really not
a lot of room for error here.
But we've seen some precedent now
with this Department of Justice where
there have been some very high-profile political people who it looks like from where we
said that there's plenty of evidence that Gates is one with that child sex trafficking
investigation where there was a cooperative witness and literal receipts.
And there've been searches, there've been witnesses in the grand jury, that has not come to fruition,
at least yet, Rudy Giuliani, there was a search
well over a year ago.
And nothing has come out of that.
So I don't know if they just simply didn't find
what they thought they were going to find
or what looking in from the outside
looks like they should find
or if they're just imposing a different standard of proof
or if they're just really deliberative and slow
and taking their time, we don't know,
but certainly we have not seen a lot of activity
from the Department of Justice at these higher levels against significant politicians
with where it could cause political consequences. We haven't seen that.
Yeah, so just to expand upon what you just said,
I mean, give a little more explanation for our listeners.
So there's different standards of proof in the law
and to make an arrest of somebody,
you can arrest someone on probable cause
which just means they probably committed the crime.
And most cases when you arrest someone,
it is onprobable cause,
but in very serious cases and very high profile cases.
So for example, at the Manhattan DA's office,
we used to get into arguments with the NYPD
because in every homicide case,
if they had probable cause to arrest someone,
that wasn't enough for us because
charging someone with murder was such an important thing
and such a big deal
that we held ourselves to a higher standard, even though you technically could arrest someone
on probable cause for a crime like that. We held ourselves to a much higher standard, which was
that you could prove the case beyond a reasonable debt, which is the absolute highest standard and
the standard that you have to prove in every criminal case, in every courtroom in this country, state, or federal
to convict someone of a crime. You have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. So it's not uncommon,
in very serious cases or high profile cases or a case like this where a prosecutor's office
would hold themselves to that absolute highest standard. To, you know, again, it's such a unique thing that you're doing to prosecute a
former president that I'm not surprised that they would do that. What does surprise me, though,
is they wouldn't have at least started the investigation earlier. That's just what I don't
understand. You don't have to bring a case. You don't have to, ultimately, even if you have enough,
you can use your discretion and say, you know what, I don't want to take this step of prosecuting a former president, but how they didn't investigate this from the very beginning,
I'm just hoping that they did and that we don't know about it because investigations by their very
by their very nature are secret and you know, I'm that's what I'm hoping because I otherwise, I
I just can't believe it. But so let's get down to the nitty gritty
that everyone wants to hear.
So what, now that you've sort of done your deep dive
and you've seen what's out there,
what do you think is the strongest charge
against Donald Trump?
And you can either federal or if you want to, or Georgia,
whatever, you know, whatever you think is the strongest charge,
whether it's because it's the easiest to prove
or the most evidence or whatever it is, which do you think we have if any, you know,
do you think we have to prosecute them at this point? So I think what we've seen so far,
I think we've got evidence of a conspiracy to defraud the United States, which will unpack in a moment, and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
I think there has been some evidence
that of a seditious conspiracy,
which we'll also talk about,
but I think that, yeah, that to me, I think,
is a little more tenuous.
So essentially, and I think the proof is the same, the elements are a little different
for these crimes, and I don't want to get two in the weeds.
But I will say the listeners of legal AF, they like the weeds.
So we have a very smart, it's almost like a law school class.
We have a very, very smart
listenership and they're really interested in the law. And so I think they would appreciate especially in this case to go a little bit into the weeds. Okay, so I'll start first with
obstructing an official proceeding. So that is for the aspiring law students out there.
It's in the United States Code section 18,
I'm sorry, it's 18 United States Code section 1512.
And that is actually pretty simple.
There are many different pieces of it.
There's one piece that makes it a crime
to tamper with or threaten a witness,
which maybe we'll talk about later
because I think we actually have seen some evidence.
So there's a bunch of different prongs,
but the one that seems to fit, I think,
most closely here is the code book says
that whoever corruptly attempts to or does,
interfere with impede or obstruct
in official proceeding is guilty of a crime.
Um, that's, it seems pretty straightforward,
but there's been a lot of legal precedent
and a lot of case law out there that kind of develops
what those terms are and what they mean.
And we've actually seen, we've gotten a lot of precedent
recently, um, out of the district of, uh, Columbia, what they mean. And we've actually seen, we've got a lot of precedent recently
out of the district of Columbia,
which is where I think any case would be brought,
that I think is would be very helpful,
it's going to be very helpful to the prosecutors
if they bring any additional cases.
So a number of individuals who attack the Capitol
that day
have been charged with this crime, 18 United States Code 1512.
And what, I think there's not a lot of question
that Trump himself has admitted
to a lot of the elements I think of this statute.
Clearly he made a lot of phone calls,
had a lot of conversations, made very clear that
he wanted to stop the count.
I mean, he said as much many, many times.
So the question I think is, did he do so corruptly and with criminal intent?
And I think to boil it all down is, did he know that he lost the election?
And did he know that there was no legal theory on which to hang his hat, to try in the many
different ways in which he's tried to stop the count and to stop the transition of power.
And I think, you know, we put this in our report that came out right before the hearings.
There was a lot that was already out there in the public record, but we've learned so much more
about, you know, both direct and a lot more circumstantial evidence of the presidents
that then presidents state of mind at the time.
What if he's delusional, though?
What if he despite what if he truly thought and I don't understand him or understand his
way of thinking, but what if he truly did think that despite all the other
evidence? I mean, at a certain point, are you allowed to act on your delusions? You know,
what I mean? I don't understand. It's a great question. I think then you've got a defense
of criminal insanity. That's it. Because it lasts your criminally insane and you really cannot appreciate all of the
indicators, all of the evidence that point in one direction, then you are, then you've
got criminal liability.
And here every credible advisor that he had, legal, political, familial and otherwise,
was telling him one thing.
You lost this election, and there is no legal path for you to stay in power.
And that, what I think has been so powerful in this set of hearings over the summer,
has been direct testimony from many of those, and they are die hard Trump supporters, or they were. They still believe in the policies,
and they believe in the agenda.
Some of them said they would actually vote for him again.
So these are people who had every motivation
to support him and to try and keep him in power.
And they witness after witness,
the lawyers, the campaign advisors, family members,
they got on the stand, they raised their hand
and swore to tell the truth.
And they said they understood at a certain point
once the legal cases were lost,
case after case dozens and dozens of them.
It was like 16, right?
Was it no path?
I think it was 61 maybe.
I think he won one.
I think there was C-Loss 60 and 11.
It's something like that.
You know, in change in actual vote count, but yes.
The near perfect record of losses for the Trump campaign
and for Trump.
And so they come up then with these ridiculous theories
that have no support for.
And even more than that, even the people who were making them,
wait for testimony, have said at times,
kind of off the record, but we now have the testimony,
even they didn't believe them. John Eastman, who was one of the president's, you know,
quote unquote legal advisors, but, you know, who we, we, there's now a ruling from a federal
district court judge that the prime court exception applies and we can unpack that too
because he knew that he was essentially committing a fraud. So he told President Trump,
well, here are some ideas that I have, including that we can try and persuade
Pence, your vice president, that he's got a legal path to stop the count and to return
the electors to the states.
Even he admitted in a moment of candor, I forget who one of the White House lawyers testified.
Perhaps I think it was Eric Eastman, Eric Gahorsman, that he said, look, I know we're gonna get, you know, unanimous rejection from the Supreme Court.
And I know this probably, right?
This probably violates some of the code, right?
Of the Electoral Count Act.
But let's just go along with it later
and let the chips fall with A. May.
You know, he admitted a Moiv candor. Giuliani, right? The most out there
of the, you know, quote, quote, quote, team crazy lawyers. That's not my, you know, it's not
my moniker. That's one of the insiders, monikers. You know, even he said also, you know, that
he didn't think this was going to fly. But again, let's just try it and see what happens.
So I think there's just witness after witness and documents after document that show that
everyone who had been, you know, a trusted advisor, everyone who was credible, was telling
Trump, there is no path forward.
You have lost this election. There is no evidence forward. You have lost this election.
There is no evidence fraud.
You've got to move on.
And he didn't.
So, in last he wants to go down the path of,
I'm criminally insane and that's a defense
in federal law. And, but I don't, that's a defense in federal law.
And, but I don't think that's,
I don't think he's gonna go there.
I think he's kind of lost.
I you can't just see, you know,
all the evidence around, you just choose not to believe it.
You know, you see these cases,
I mean, there's a case in the California right now
of a guy who, I mean, horrifically killed his
children and said, well, he thought the, you know, wizard people,
Illuminati were telling him to do it. That's not going to be a
defense, unless it's an insinant defense. So, so I think that's,
that's the, that's the kind of dividing line there is.
So the official proceeding is the vote count
on January 6th by Mike Pence.
And you think that that counts as an official proceeding, right?
And many courts have recently held that
in connection with these insurrectionists
who have many of them have tried to mount that as legal defense.
I think that's pretty well settled by now.
I think every judge, maybe one has questioned that, but I think pretty uniformly, yes, they
have found this as an official proceeding.
The evidence that you would need to prove against Trump is all the things he did to try
and disrupt the official proceeding. So let's just say you took us through the corrupt part and and that I think you've got that given all of what you said, but then what what do you think the evidence is that he intended that the preceding be disrupted is it all the is it the the Eastman plan to come up with the fake electors and the calling the 300 state,
the meeting with the 300 state electors?
What are the things that you think are proof of his trying to obstruct this official proceeding?
I mean, I think that's there is just an overwhelming amount of evidence that
that's what he was trying to do.
He had this meeting that's been described, you know, as heated, acrimonious, you know,
literally from Crazy Town.
The meeting, I think it was on December 19, or 20th, which was attended by, you know, the craziest of the crazy is right.
It's Giuliani and Sydney Powell. It's for some reason this overstock.com guy and Michael
Mike Flynn. And on the one hand, and then there's like team normal again with their quotes on the other. It's the White House lawyers.
Herschemann is there and Pat Zipeloni, White House counsel and they're going, you know,
toe to toe and Zipeloni is saying, where is your evidence of any fraud?
And they cannot come up with any.
We see this time again.
Even Giuliani said, you know, we have theories, we just don't have evidence.
I think he said that to Bauer's, the Arizona head of the Arizona legislature.
So, they don't have any evidence, and they are just trying to come up with some way to put this off. And after that meeting,
within hours, I think Trump sends the famous, the infamous tweet saying, come to the Capitol,
you're gonna march, will be wild.
And he gives the speech on the ellipse,
which I think there's been a lot of legal discussion
as to whether or not that's inciting a riot.
I think he was just careful enough
that I don't think there's that charge,
but he's still asking people to go there
and raise, you know, a ruckus and create mayhem.
And while this is- And see, they were armed at that point, that's
the thing that Cassidy Hutchinson, that's what I thought what she said was really powerful
was was at that point, he said, I don't get you know, take away the magnetometers and she
said, you know, but, but they're armed and they've got spears and weapons and he says,
I don't care, they're not here to hurt me. And so then he takes this armed group of people
and literally points them, it's like a point and shoot,
at the Capitol, like what you think was gonna happen.
I don't know, to me at that point that charge
maybe got a little stronger, but.
I agree with you, that you know, seditious.
Seditious conspiracy got, I think that that's the first really direct evidence
of, of his, of Trump's criminal intent to stop the proceedings by force. What we've been
talking about up until now is other ways to corruptly stop and by fraud and, you know,
trying to corruptly persuade Pence, all these other things. The other side of that coin is doing it by force.
That's vicious conspiracy.
And I think that is, I could not agree with you more.
I thought that was stunning testimony that maybe, you know, maybe can help build that charge.
But, you know, and then as you pointed out earlier, there's that 187 minutes where he does nothing.
So he points in shoots, as you just said.
And it doesn't call the Department of Defense, doesn't call the police, the Metro police,
the Capitol police, doesn't call national security, folks, doesn't do anything and does not call
them off. I think you pointed earlier to Stephen Harris' testimony, this guy who shows up and does what he's told
and would have left earlier if the president had told them to,
left once the president did tell them to.
So there was a lot he could have done that he didn't.
I think dereliction of duty is not a federal criminal fence,
but it certainly is evidence of criminal
intent of what he wanted. And he has said what he wanted he wanted pens to stop
the count. And then the fact that he does nothing while this is happening and could
have is evidence that he didn't want he wanted these people to be doing what
they were doing. He was he was that was his goal too. So I think that's really
powerful evidence that goes to criminal intent both for this conspiracy to the Friday
United States and this conspiracy to stop the electoral count to stop an official proceeding.
So if I, you know, I want you to take us through the other charge, the conspiracy to defraud the United States.
But before you do, I just want to say something about what you just said.
If I were prosecuting this case and I were trying this case and presenting it to a jury,
I would, in real time, recreate those 187 minutes.
What exactly was he doing?
What television show was he watching?
What was it showing?
Who was calling him?
Who was begging him?
Who was saying what to him?
What was he doing?
And I would try to recreate that because I think that is what's
going to sink him in this case.
Totally right.
So powerful.
And also powerful is the fact that we're hearing more and more every day, we get more information
about information that has been, what we call the law, spully it is, has been destroyed
or at least has not yet been turned over and might have to be, you know, you know, gathered through other ways. I mean,
we're hearing a lot now about government and security and and secret service, but you see this,
you know, this absence of call logs, you know, the White House photographer was was was was told to
stand down, you know, during these hundred and eighty seven minutes. And the committee has been able to put together, you know, recreate some of the timeline. And what they have gotten, again, not from official records, we don't know yet, which phone Trump was using at the time, but it's, it's really powerful what he did do. Instead of calling a Department of Defense or all these other agencies that could have
Department of Justice put a stop to this, who is he calling?
He's calling Rudy Giuliani, I think more than once.
And he's calling a couple of the senators.
He thinks they're on his side to tell them, hey, you gotta work with me here.
And they're saying to him, maybe we would, but we're actually being assured out for security reasons.
I mean, I couldn't agree with you more.
That is going to be so powerful.
We'll tell the story.
You know, they just got to put up a demonstrative, which has the timeline and little bullets of
what he was doing and what he was not doing.
And I just think that's going to be devastating.
Devastating.
I agree.
And although they do prosecute Rudy Giuliani, I do think he has an insanity
defense because he has gone insane.
You know, America's mayor who after 9-11, you know, he was, I hate to say it,
but he was the guy who brought us all comfort and, you know, brought us all
together and made us feel that we could move forward.
And you look at what he's turned into
and where he is now, I really do think he's lost it completely.
He lost it.
He was only the mayor, but he was the United States attorney
for the Southern District of Oregon.
When I worked there, his picture was up in the lobby
and he was well respected.
I was one of the people who signed on to the disciplinary committee
complaint to get him disbarred and frankly, it was, yeah, they did something unprecedented,
which was even before hearing it formally, they suspended him. I mean, that's almost never done.
It's just because you rarely see conduct like this. I mean, he's unfit.
Yeah, he's unfit.
There's something wrong with him.
So, I mean, he's obviously a big piece of this
and we've seen some of it, but there's a lot.
There's a big part of the story
that still has to be told.
And Department of Justice obviously has tools
and their toolkit that the committee to be told. And Department of Justice obviously has tools in their tool get that, that, you know, that the committee doesn't have.
And we've already seen this aid to Jeffrey Clark, who was the,
you know, who, I don't even know what to call him.
He was an environmental lawyer within the Department of Justice.
And Trump tried to install him as the acting attorney general. Thankfully,
we have a lot of dedicated, well-meaning people at the time within the Department of Justice,
the actual acting attorney general at the time.
And he's deputy, both.
Rosen and Roniqu.
Yeah.
Oh, so they said they're, yeah.
So they would step down and they said there'd be a mass
exodus of prosecutors at the Department of Justice.
I mean, I think a lot of these people, there's been a lot
of criticism of, do you call these people like, like,
Cheney and others, you know, Liz Cheney and some of these
others, you know, heroic. And, and then you hear people say heroic, you know, they were
just doing their job. And, and why didn't they do more? And look, I think there's, it's
hard to go against the president of the United States. I don't think you can, you can understate
the pressure they must have felt and the import of what was happening.
And the fact that they believed in this man for many, many years and then they see him
kind of going where he was going.
And I give them a lot of credit for standing up to him and stopping what could have been
much worse.
And Mike Pence is another one.
You know, I'm not necessarily calling these people national heroes,
but they should get credit for what they did.
They stood up for what's right.
And I'm a big fan of what Liz Cheney's doing.
I don't necessarily agree with all her policies,
but I agree with her ethics and her morals
and her feeling to do what's right.
And the fact that she's trying to save democracy
and our country.
And there are people who have done that and have shown that courage.
And I think that the Jeffrey Clark thing could have been such a fiaco.
And that we had Rosen and Donnie Hughes stand up to that.
I think they should get credit for that.
I mean, I could not go any more.
There are enough people who held
the line just like the Capitol Police held the line. You at great personal risk. Yes.
I mean, you know, they do deserve credit for having done that. You don't have to agree with
them ideologically or politically to say they did the right thing. You know, and it was not easy.
I mean, you hear these stories. He did arguments and everyone
knows the lengths to which the former president went, you know, I mean, he called people up
by name. He could ruin careers lives. You know, he's a bully. He's tampering with witnesses
during the hearing. I mean, the guy stops at nothing. He's the biggest bully there is.
And, you know, it's, I don't know,
I can't imagine the pressure, you know,
the people who resigned and the people
who stood up to him, I give them a lot of credit.
Yeah, I mean, from, yeah, from Rosen
on down to these election workers, you know,
who also were trying to do the right thing
at great personal risk.
I mean, you know, there are a lot,
I think a lot of good,
solid citizens who did the right thing here. And I mean, you know, our democracy held, but
it seems like a pretty thin line. And I think that's, you know, part of the work of this,
of this committee is putting that out there. How close we came. I mean, physically, 40 feet
from my pants. You know, you've got this murderous, you know,
Riders who are screaming hang my pants and so we came really close, but to go back to the thread because I know we want
There's so much to talk about here. I was what I was gonna say when I was talking about the DOJ investigation
That has you know finally sprung out of the committee investigation is the different
tools that they have. And I was going to use as an example, one of Clark's aides who
helped him write that letter to the Georgia legislature, right, which falsely claimed
that there was indisha abroad and they should fraud and they should pull back the electoral votes.
This guy was, I forget his name, Kold Kowsky, or something, maybe you remember,
but he's now, through his lawyer, has said that he is cooperating with the Department of Justice,
he's testified in the grand jury, and he does know where the skeletons are buried.
And he can talk about direct conversations that he had.
And so as Cheney said, the dam has begun to break.
It's breaking.
And witnesses are coming forward.
And the Department of Justice will have soon enough.
We can talk, it's a whole separate conversation why there's
been such a lack of coordination between the committee and the Department of Justice,
but they're now cooperating with each other and working together in some way and they're
getting, the DOJ is getting all the transcripts.
So it seems to be happening after very, very slow walk, it seems to be happening, you know, after, you know, very, very slow walk,
it seems to be happening pretty quickly.
And it's a domino effect, as you know, you know, once people start cooperating, other
people are saying, like, oh, you know, what if I'm next?
Let me get in on this and let me tell, you know, what I have.
So I'm not in the crosshairs.
Is that cooperation?
Is that common?
Uncommon?
What is the, how does that work?
Yeah, I think when, I mean, it's, it's, it depends, right? How, how strong the proof is that the
government has. And I think what's happened here is, you know, we're all seeing on our screens
that there's a lot of evidence out there. And we're all seeing that the
Department of Justice is now, you know, taking interest and is getting this
information. So I think there's going to be, you know, a lot of people like, you
know, like this, Jeff, Clark age, who's going to work and to come forward. And
whether it's to be on the right side of history
or whether it's to avoid criminal prosecution themselves
and get immunity or also get a cooperation agreement,
depending on their level of exposure,
I think people are going to be tripping over themselves
to get in the door and tell their story
and get in the right side of this.
So we'll see.
It seems to be starting to happen. and I think they'll be more.
Tell us a little bit about, so you mentioned there were two charges that you thought were
the strongest.
One was that we talked about, the obstruction of an official proceeding.
The second one you said was conspiracy to defraud the US.
Can you just take us a little quickly through that and what the elements are and how that works?
Yeah, so I think it's gonna be a lot of the same proof.
And you see this all the time, you have,
there are a number of different statutes
that you're prosecuting can charge
and use the same evidence, same facts.
But sometimes a jury will see something different or sometimes one of the charges is more
upper-po, than another, but they like to have different theories to give a jury, I think,
different ways of looking at it.
And maybe you never know how the proof is going to be induced at trial, and maybe sometimes it will actually end up fitting one
statutory framework better than another. You know this, and so I think so that
conspiracy to fraud the United States or conspiracy to commit a federal fence is like the bread and butter
of pretty much every criminal case that I ever investigated. It's pretty, it's very standard,
it's very simple. So it's 18 United States codes, section 371. And there are different kind of iterations of it.
But the one that I think would be applied here
is I'll just read the elements.
It's the government would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that at least two people entered into an agreement.
So Trump and Eastman are Trump and Metas? Right, or Trump and Clark, or you know, choose your
co-conspirator. I think we've heard a number, Giuliani. I mean, there could be others.
Entered into agreement with the other, with the specific intent to obstruct a lawful function of the government
to do so by dishonest or unlawful means or deceitful or dishonest
means. And then there has to be one over act in furtherance of the conspiracy. And that's
almost nothing, you know. So it just means they have to do something. Yeah. Well, you
had to do something. Right. So, I mean, and almost anything counts. What it's trying to
avoid is just two people sitting around draw bonings saying, oh, I wish
we could obstruct the electoral count.
And then not to worry about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Georgia, you know, Secretary of State, the writing of a legal memo, a fake legal memo.
You know, I mean, there's so many different little steps that were taken towards this
goal of stopping the count.
So the hardest element to prove here would be by deceitful or dishonest means.
And this is again, right, where you have to prove that he was being deceitful or dishonest.
Right, right?
And I think, you know, I think Liz Cheney did a great job of laying out at the outset.
I think it was in the first hearing, she called it a seven-pronged conspiracy.
Sometimes they say multi-pronged.
And they laid out a bunch of different methodologies, a bunch of iterations.
You know, they would try on one theory, right? One means to try and stop this.
And that's in work so they would try another one, right? First, the court cases, which were
perfectly lawful. No one said, you know, they have every right to try and bring cases, and they
brought whatever it was. We were not sure we lost count, 6661,
and lost to every one of them.
And so, or nearly everyone.
So then they tried on other ideas, right?
And some of them, I think, are a little more
kind of arcane, a little more, maybe difficult
to parse than others.
The one, and this is just purely my own personal gloss on this,
I think one that is very easy for a jury of lay people to wrap their arms around,
is that the slate of fake electors, or alternate electors as they're sometimes called,
but I mean, as a gift to prosecutors, some
of the state legislators actually went so far to call them literally, quote, fake electors.
So that's like solid gold as you know, to prosecute.
Exactly.
They were fake because the conspirators were calling them fake.
And that is just something, it's just so, and some of these fake electors
have talked about, public have talked about,
and now that will testify,
that they were lied to, right?
They were told, okay, put your names on the slate,
and if we win the court case,
then this will go forward.
But that's not what happened, right?
They were these fake electors, they were, you know, the co-conspirators, whoever they
shave out to be, you know, tried to submit them to Pence to use.
They submitted them to the National Archives.
So I think that's going to be pretty, pretty damning at the end of the day.
And you see them, like you see the real slate of electors.
You know, it's got the official seal.
And then you've got this, you know, kind of, like,
last search, you know, it doesn't have it, it doesn't have the,
but it doesn't have all that trappings, but they, they sure tried.
And so it's like a counterfeit, you know, $20 bill or something.
It just looks kind of funky, but you try to pass it off
and that's a legal problem for you.
So, and what we've heard is that is something that DOJ
has specifically asked some of the witnesses who've already
testified in the grand jury about.
So it may be that that's all we're hearing about.
As you pointed out, there's probably a lot going on that we haven't heard about.
These proceedings are, you know, there's a grand jury secrecy, a sacrosanct.
So prosecutors are not supposed to talk about it.
They're actually crimes do that.
Witnesses are allowed to though, and some have,
and that's how we have some information,
or reporters who are down at the courthouse,
or who see folks walking outside.
You're sitting outside, yeah.
Grand jury, like can draw inferences.
So I think it's been pretty well corroborated
at this point. But there
may be other things we don't know, but we do know from some of the witnesses that they
were asked specifically about the fake electors, which to me sounds like something that is
tangible and that, you know, a jury could understand, you know, it's like a counterfeit
bill. Like you try and, you know, pass something like that off. Like, that's a fraud. That's a garden variety fraud. And, you know,
we'll look at the elements that the judge charges us, the ones I just laid out,
and see if it ticks off every box. But I think we've seen evidence that would establish each of those
elements beyond a reasonable doubt. You know, for some reason, I worry though a little bit about it because you only need one
juror to hang on, you know, to hang, to hang a case. I just worry about if you have one juror who
just, who just focuses on the, well, I think he really believed it. And I think he really thought
it was true. And that's one of the reasons I really like the charge of aiding or inciting an
insurrection. And now that we have this new evidence, because even if
he believed it, even if he believed he won, you can't do it, right? You can't go take it over
by force. So, you know, and even if you can't, even if you have a hard time proving that he
intended it, even though Cassidy Hutchinson said, you know, he was told
they were armed and he pointed them at the Capitol. That's why those 187 minutes of his omissions
and of what he didn't do anything, that's where I think this charge is so powerful because
is so powerful because, you know, there's this kind of,
there's this body of law about, you know, you don't have to stop things, right?
You don't have, only certain people have a duty
to intervene when something's happening,
but he's in a position to help,
and he was the commander-in-chief of all the armed forces,
and he saw what was happening. I think you can make a pretty
strong case that he had a duty at that point to stop it and you would people begging him to do it
and to stop it and it took him that long to do this video where you know he barely could choke out
that video. They have many takes that he have to do And it was amazing until he could finally get those words out
because I don't know, to me,
I would just put that chart.
Now that we have this other evidence,
I just think it really,
it's sort of a little bit of a safety net charge
because in case you do get that one person at things well,
what if he actually believed it, you know?
I don't know, what do you think about that? person at things well, what if he actually believed it, you know, I don't know.
What do you think about that?
I agree with you 100%.
I think that will be the strongest charge and the easiest one.
If they, to me, I think they're going to need a little bit more because I think, I mean,
we're starting to see, you know, some evidence, but we've got what we don't have is a lot of the direct conversations
that that people had with the with the president because a lot of them are claiming executive
privilege and we don't have the the call logs. We don't have, you know, a lot of the records,
the White House, you know, records from the time period and secrets are going to be.
I can't the DIAJ compel the ones the ones if Biden says doesn't the current president hold the executive privilege.
Yeah, and so.
So it's a great it's a great point a great question.
So so my love from filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court when Trump tried to stop
the national archives from producing records on the claim
that there's executive privilege. And we wrote a brief on behalf of a number of former elected
officials saying exactly what you just said. And this report agreed with these arguments that
the president is not a king. We don't have a
medical system. It's not a king for life. He's gone that privilege, you know, this
Supreme Court agreed to the next, yeah, so that's why the National Archives had to, you know,
turn over the information. And what the DOG is doing now, which does give me some hope
But the DOJ is doing now, which does give me some hope
that they actually are now after some foot dragging, are trying to get out ahead of this.
They are now preentably taking this question to court
at very specifically, we've heard some of the witnesses
in the grand jury, I think some of Pence's aides are short and I maybe Greg Jacob.
I don't remember what the other one was, but and they invoked executive privilege about a very narrow scope of communications that they had with Trump. And deal J, you know, reportedly, you know, a couple of outlets have reported
this, is going to go ahead, preemptively, and make the argument that executive privilege
does not apply so that we can get the full scope, right? All of this stuff, I mean, it
should be an easy win, frankly, and it should be quick. The Supreme Court decided this case,
you know, went all the way up from the district court, it's pretty important three months. So it should
be even less time, hopefully now. And that will mean that we can get these, you know,
Pat Sibloni is another one who's involved with privilege, although he seems to want to
tell the story. And so I think if we, if we get that, I mean, if they can, if they can
get some of the, the tax that have been deleted,
figure out what phone the president was using, get those logs, they're going to have it
just a much more complete picture than the committee was able to get.
And we'll be able to fill in exactly those blanks you're talking about because I agree
with you 100% that those 180, 7 minutes minutes his inaction and what he did do instead of
doing what really any president or rational actor would have done is the story and it will be
an incredibly powerful one to a jury but we at least haven't heard yet, but we can hope that the Department of Justice
will be able to piece it together.
Speaking of deleted text messages,
do you think there's something nefarious going on
with the Secret Service when there happened
to be system migrating and lost the January 5th
and 6 text messages?
I mean, do you believe that,
or do you think something else is going on? I think look, you know, we're all aware, like you've probably represented clients. I have now,
I'm, you know, I'm a defense lawyer now, you know, organizations make mistakes or glitches,
you know, maybe there's an explanation. Government agencies are no exception. In fact, you know,
explanation, government agencies are no exception. In fact, they can be very slow technologically.
But the secret service is one of its charges.
A lot of people don't know this.
They're in charge, of course, of protection of President
and members of the administration.
Another, you know, real significant part of their mission
is cybersecurity and they have a whole headquarters
where they actually train other agencies in cybersecurity.
And the notion that they would have had a wholesale deletion
without backup,
or without any, you know, just, you know,
right after this, like, yes, coincidence has happened,
but this, you know, piled on top of a lot of other information
we've heard about some of the political leanings,
particularly some of the, you know, the president's detail,
you know, some of them, or at least one of them, went back and forth.
You know, between a political role and a protection role, which is, I think, unheard of.
Unheard of.
But others can, yeah, you know, and then you've got this inspector general who was sat on this information and other information for months.
You start to, you definitely start to wonder. And so if it has been wholesale deleted
and there was no backup and there's no way
to piece it back together,
that means it was purposeful almost.
And I mean, that were at least,
it makes me think that.
I agree with you.
Yeah.
It's not a mistake, it gets the product out.
I agree with you.
And so I think that there's definitely, I'd be shocked
if there's not a mini investigation of exactly that piece within this broader investigation,
and I hope they'll be able to get to the bottom of it. I don't know why the IG is still in his seat.
I don't know why he still has a job, but it's probably part of this overcorrection problem that
we were talking about the early part of this, you know, of like appearing not to be political, so they go so far over the other direction.
I mean, any other president would have, you know, I think, would have put in their own,
yeah.
Already, yeah, say goodbye to this IG, because he's shown that's a dereliction of duty, I think,
out of middle.
Hey, great.
So, okay, I want to ask you about two more things. Number one, I was listening to another podcast.
I think it was Preparara and Joyce Vance. They do this great podcast where they do deep dives
into things. And they talked about potentially manslaughter charge, which I thought was so interesting
potentially a manslaughter charge, which I thought was so interesting,
where there's a death on federal property,
and I haven't heard anyone else really sort of talk about that,
but I thought that was interesting,
and I didn't know if you had any thoughts on that,
or if you would thought about that charge.
Did you prosecute that federally?
And if it's on unfair property, yes.
And I usually listen religiously to that part.
It must have been today.
No, it wasn't.
It wasn't.
No.
It was this other one.
They have this new one that you have to subscribe.
The insider.
Yeah, the insider one.
I actually, and it was, and it was,
I don't think pre was on it. I think it was two I don't think, pre-t was on it.
I think it was two women who were on this one
that I was listening to.
It was just interesting to hear that as a potential.
Anyway, so I won't ask you about that one,
but I just thought that was interesting.
And the last one I'd love for you to talk about
is the Georgia prosecution.
Do you think that it's appropriate that that happens in Georgia?
Should we leave it to the DOJ to do the whole kit and caboodle? What do you think of a sort of companion
state prosecution going on? I sort of like it because Trump or who if there's a Republican president can't pardon, but then again, of course,
if there's the Georgia governor,
if there's a Republican can.
So, but what do you think about the kind of specific
Georgia piece of this where there was,
among other things, a call to a January 2nd
to Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger
saying, you know, find the 11,780 votes, one more than what Biden won for.
What do you think of that whole thing?
I think it's, look, it is a good kind of, to me, this is good to kind of hedge.
We don't know if DOJ is going to do anything, right?
Look, we don't know if Fannie Willis that the DA in Fulton County is going to make a case
either, but she certainly has cast a very wide net.
She sent out a blizzard of target letters and subpoenas
recently and recent weeks.
And what she has is kind of,
to what I was trying to make earlier about,
like a discreet, easily understandable, digestible piece
of evidence or of an allegation that I think is just, you know, pretty simple
to wrap your head around. And that is that call that you just mentioned. I mean, you know,
the DOJ by all accounts is looking at it, very, you know, broad conspiracy, who knows how
many actors, who knows, you know knows how many people are going to be
caught up in it. Here, there are a couple different pieces of it that was the letter that
that Clark wrote, falsely claiming that there was fraud, but I think it comes down to this
phone call. There were a couple other phone calls, but the one phone call that we've heard,
where Trump says, find me the votes, right?
There are a couple little discrete nuggets like that.
That is just very hard.
It just sounds incriminating on its face.
That's not to say there's no defense.
I don't creatively, I'm sure one could
come up with one, but it's, you know, on its face, it's pretty inculpatory. And, you know,
so, and she doesn't have the same kind of political pressures. She also, I hurdles, right? She's got DOJ, Santa
subpoena to anyone anywhere in the United States, and they have to
comply. She's got, we've already seen a judge push back on one
of the spinners that she issued. Others are going to be pushing
back and trying to avoid having to testify.
We'll see how that goes.
But it's another iteration of it and another smaller piece of it.
And she's going all in.
She doesn't have the resources, obviously the Department of Justice,
but she seems to be putting a lot into it.
And we'll see.
I mean, I don't know.
You know, it can take a while for some of these,
these little court battles, right?
The subpoenas that are being fought,
you know, it can take some time.
So, but Department of Justice is gonna take some time too, right? Nothing, could take, can take some time. So, but,
hope of justice is going to take some time too, right? Nothing, none of this is
going to happen anytime. Yeah.
Two-some.
Do you think there's any possibility that this happens before the midterms?
If by this, you mean an indictment of Trump, I would say no. I would be shocked.
But what, what, what, you know, even in Georgia.
Even in Georgia.
Oh, I don't know.
Georgia, I, that, you know, we've heard a lot less about that one.
And I, I frankly, I don't know that office.
You know, I know the way DOJ works.
I know, look, they just got, they did a couple of searches.
They did a search and seizure,
well, Eastman and Clark's devices were seized.
And I know from working at justice,
and I know from being a criminal defense lawyer
with some high profile
attorneys including politically
You know politically kind of acrimonious ones and I mentioned Michael Cohen was one and Michael Avonade is another one and
There is so much so many hoops that DOJ has to go through to get that those search warrants
And that's just one little piece, right?
And so I just think it's going to take a while to build a case where they feel it's so
bulletproof and so airtight that they're ready to bring it.
But I don't have that same sense about DA willis' investigation how long that will take.
It certainly seems to be very hot right now.
It sure does.
So there's one more legal concept that I'd love for you
to discuss, which is if Trump tries to say,
I was relying on my attorneys,
there's something called the advice of council doctrine.
Can you kind of just explain what that is
and whether you think that holds any water here?
Yeah. It's actually rarely used because once it can be a defense, right? If someone says,
oh, I don't know anything about this, you know, it's just what my lawyer told me. I thought it was
totally above board and totally lawful because my lawyer told me that. And if in fact the lawyer did provide that advice, even if it was wrong advice, that can
be a defense in certain circumstances, in many circumstances, but once you prefer that
defense, then there is no attorney-client privilege anymore.
That is broken.
And so any communications that you have with that attorney are then available to the government.
And so that means, you know, the government, we talked earlier about a search that they
did on Giuliani's home and his office, and they have a special monitor in place to make
sure that anything that's privileged does not get turned over to the government.
All that would be off the table. So any communications that any of his lawyers have where he's claiming that defense, you know, is going to have to be turned over.
So you think he's going to think long and hard before he asserts that defense because
it could show some pretty ugly communications. That's supposition, you know, but I'm willing to
bat that when they thought, you know, that their communications were cloaked in this privilege,
there may have been some pretty frank conversations that he that he made feel are not going to be favorable to him at the end.
Interesting. Interesting. So I do want to just give one more plug to the Brookings Institute report
that you co-authored because I just think the way you describe the facts and the way you sort of
build the case, you build the case the way a prosecutor would build it, you know, and you you really sort of talked about how there were three stages of his efforts to overturn the election.
There's the before election day, there's then January 6th kind of insurrection. And you really do such a great job of going in
chronological order of all the different pieces of what the
facts are that happen. So, you know, in before election day,
you know, what were all the things he did, you know, then you
say like on July 19th, 2020, there was a Fox News interview where
he said, I refused to accept the results. Then on July 19th, 2020. There was a Fox News interview where he said, I refused to accept the results.
Then on July 30th, there was a tweet where he said,
I'm gonna postpone the election.
And then September 23rd, there's a news conference saying,
I'm not gonna ever commit to the peaceful transfer of power.
I mean, and you go through this, you know,
I literally took notes where I just thought,
wow, it's like piece by piece by piece
in chronological order of all the things
that show before the election, what his plan was and what his intent was.
And then you talk about the time period from the election to January 6th and his campaign
to overturn the election.
And all of the false claims and frivolous litigations and the plot to seize, you know, vote
counting equipment.
And you, again, you go methodically date by date, you know,
where all the times where it shows that people were telling him
that he had no, had no leg stand on here, you know,
as campaign told him that there was no fraud.
The intelligence community told him there was no fraud.
DOJ told him there was no fraud, DOJ told them there was no fraud.
You know, Bill Barr said it was nonsense. And, you know, then you get to the state level
Republicans who told them no fraud, whether it was Georgia, you know, and then others, you know,
who, who, who, who kind of did this. And, and then you talk about his scheme to retain power, you know, and I just, it's,
it's, I've been watching this, I've been following this, but I sometimes get buried under
mountains of evidence. And it's like, now, what is this relate to? And what is this show?
But this report just did such a good job at the way you, the way you sort of did it in,
in this way that you can understand, and that you can sort of see the progression.
And I think that I think the committee, the select committee hearings did a very similar thing as well.
And so I just really think that it's worth the read for the legal A.F.ers out there. It's actually worth the time to do it
because it explains all of this in detail. But it also will make you scratch your head and say,
how is it that the Department of Justice isn't, you know, they better be doing something. I mean,
I get the, you don't want to prosecute a president, you don't want to start, kind
of set this precedent.
And I actually had that feeling during the whole Mueller Russia probe.
I thought that was really, had this feeling of political and why are we doing this?
But not this.
This to me is a whole other ball game and things like your report and the Jan 6 select committee hearings, I think are really are really spelling it out for for people for the general public, but you for the efforts that you've done and just how great it is.
And it means a lot coming from you, Karen.
I was so excited, because we talk about this all the time.
And they always, they always, Popak, my co-anchor or Ben Mycelis, they'll always say,
Karen, the former prosecutor, what do you think? What's the prosecutor's perspective?
And look, I've never prosecuted anything federally.
I just haven't.
And so although I can, I can surmise certain things,
I don't have the inside, the inside baseball kind of perspective
that you have.
And so just your perspective is invaluable in this.
And I'm so grateful.
Well, invite me back, please.
I'd love to.
It's done.
Absolutely.
This news is not going to go away anytime.
Yeah, yeah.
So are there any parting comments or thoughts, anything?
I didn't touch upon that you want to leave us with.
No, I just been out very, like I feel like we have so much to talk about that I kind of went us with? No, I, this has been out very, like I, I feel like we have so much to talk about
that I kind of went off on tangents more than once.
But no, I've just been so impressed with,
as I said before, it was kind of the masterful presentation.
I, Liz Cheney, I think she is actually a lawyer.
I don't think she was ever a prosecutor,
but she, she, she would have made a great one.
Maybe that's her next career. But yeah, it just was so well organized and so easy to understand,
not really. I'm just, you know, I thought every witness, I mean, you talked about Stephen Ares before. And at first I was like, why did I have mom?
And it was just so clear, really smacked me across the face.
Like this guy would have done anything that Trump told him.
And then we see that his inaction,
we're 187 of it's end up, mayhem and the brutality.
And the officers who held that line for three hours when he could have stopped it.
And this guy and all of his compatriots would have left. And so it actually every, I can't
think of any testimony that was too much for that was, frankly, it was boring
or that wasn't necessary.
I thought it all really felt together incredibly well
and told you know, just a mosaic that all came together
to tell a very, very powerful narrative.
I completely agree.
And there's more to come, so more to come, I know.
In September.
Well, thank you so much.
It's so such an honor and privilege
to have you on this show.
And I look forward to having you back.
Thank you.
See you then.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
you