Trump's Trials - Trump's trials are about to collide with the political calendar

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

This week on Trump's Trials, guest host Miles Parks and Domenico Montanaro look at how one judge, Aileen Cannon, could be slow-walking the federal classified documents case in Florida. Delays in that case could impact the three other criminal trials Trump is facing — and put legal and political calendars ahead of the 2024 race on a collision course. Plus an update from the Georgia election case and the gag order from the New York civil fraud case. Our guest is NYU law professor Melissa Murray.Topics include: - Judge Aileen Cannon's background & experience and questions about possible bias- Why there've been delays in the Florida classified documents case- Consequences if the Florida classified documents case is postponed - The New York civil fraud gag order being reinstated- Georgia prosecutors not offering plea deals to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Trump attorney Rudy GiulianiFollow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for new episodes each Saturday.Sign up for sponsor-free episodes and support NPR's political journalism at plus.npr.org/trumpstrials.Email the show at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Just 44 days till the Iowa caucuses, one slow-moving case against Trump could impact the entire legal and political calendars. From NPR, this is Trump's Trials. I'm Miles Parks, in for Scott Detrow. This is a persecution. Felony violations. For national security laws. We need one more indictment. Criminal conspiracy. To close out this election.

He actually just stormed out of the courtroom. Innocent until proven guilty in a case involving classified documents found in Trump's bathroom, among other places, at a sprawling seaside residence, Mar-a-Lago. in Trump's bathroom, among other places, at his sprawling seaside residence, Mar-a-Lago. The case is set to go to trial in May, but many legal experts believe moves by the judge there will lead to the trial being delayed, which could have broad ramifications for the three other criminal cases and his campaign. Plus, we have an update on those gag orders and a development out of Georgia. And I'm joined now by my colleague, senior political editor and correspondent, Domenico Montanaro. Hi, Domenico. Hey, Miles.

So I feel like we're in this constant battle. I feel like being from Florida, you being from New York, I want the Florida trial to matter more than the New York trial. And I feel like I'm kind of winning right now, if we're being honest. You get your win this time for Florida mattering more than New York for once. Oh, that's brutal. Well, you set yourself up for it. Yeah. Well, where are people moving? You know, they've lived in New York forever and then where do they end up? Save that for the DeSantis Newsom debate. We're not going to do that right now. I'm not going there. But I do think you're right that the Florida case may matter a little bit more because the Trump people have been trying to say over and over again, New York cases are – it's something that he can't get a fair trial in because it's, quote unquote, liberal New York, even though it's where Trump grew up. Yeah. So let's go to Florida. What is going on with the judge there? I know a lot of people in the legal world have been talking about what's happening.

judge there. I know a lot of people in the legal world have been talking about what's happening. Yeah, I mean, the judge in the case, Eileen Cannon, was appointed to the federal court in 2020 by then President Trump. She has little experience as a courtroom judge, let alone overseeing a case of this magnitude. She's been accused of bias in favor of Trump. And now legal experts say, despite her rejection of the Trump team's motion to postpone the start date, that there's little to no chance that the case will go to trial in May. According to them, she's handling the pretrial motions at such a slow pace, it's inevitable that the trial is going to be pushed back. Okay, and so why does that matter?

Why does it matter when this trial starts exactly? Well, because we're walking into, and you're going to hear this a lot, the most unprecedented year in maybe all of political history. Unprecedented, unprecedented. Everything's unprecedented these days. It is. With the lead Republican candidate running for president at the same time he's fighting for criminal cases. All these cases are running on their own schedules.

Plus, if it gets delayed past the November election and Trump wins, it could mean the trial never takes place at all. Yeah, it seems like that's going to be a big storyline next year. Just this intersection between politics and the legal world. Lots to discuss here, and we'll get to all of this when we come right back. This message comes from NPR sponsor SAP Concur. Stuart McLean, CFO of Brother UK, shares how SAP Concur's audit and expense tool supports their work across multiple offices. Across Europe, we have a presence in 17 countries, which obviously involves 17 different tax regulations, 17 different fiscal authorities, and this makes life complicated for us. But actually with SAP Concur, we're able to configure the system correctly for each of those

countries. We're able to configure the audit rules correctly for each of those countries. So actually it gives us a lot of efficiency and good governance as well. So actually for us, a solution like SAP Concur makes life so much easier. Otherwise we'd be forever checking back to regulations, checking back to documentation. those are automatically updated in the system for us. So that's, you know, it's a big tick in the box from a governance perspective and an efficiency perspective as well. Visit Concur.com to learn more. And we are once again joined by Melissa Murray. She's a lawyer and law professor at NYU and co-author of the upcoming book, The Trump Indictments. Thanks for being here, Melissa. Thanks for having me.

So this week, we're digging into the classified documents case in Florida, where a delay right now in this trial seems pretty inevitable. Melissa, I want to start by talking about the judge in Florida. Can you tell us a little bit about how long she's been a judge, her history as a judge, and how that plays into this case? Well, Eileen Cannon is sort of a classic Trump appointee. So if you'll remember from 2016 until he left office, Donald Trump really transformed the federal judiciary. He had the Senate on his side, and he was able to push through a lot of his judicial picks. And they were all very, very young. Judge Cannon is no

exception. She's 42 years old. She's a graduate of the University of Michigan's law school where she was a member of the Federalist Society that also is par for the course for many of these Trump appointees. Prior to her appointment, she really had no other judicial experience. She had been working as a litigator at a law firm, Gibson Dunn, and then later she served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Florida, where she worked primarily on appellate matters, although she did have a couple of trials, but they were mostly pretty anodyne federal trials. So felons in possession of a gun charges, things of that nature. And she only tried four of them to verdict. So it's not surprising that happens a lot in the

federal system where 98% of criminal cases are resolved via a guilty plea. But it does suggest that when she took the bench in November, 2020, she didn't have a lot of criminal trial experience. took the bench in November 2020, she didn't have a lot of criminal trial experience. And since taking the bench, she's only had about 14 days of trial in her courtroom. But she hasn't had anything nearly as complex or presented the kinds of unprecedented issues that this classified documents case is going to present. I mean, I can't imagine presiding over a tiny handful of cases and then being thrust into the national spotlight with a case of this magnitude that even the most experienced judges have never had to deal with. Yeah, to be very clear, this is something that has never happened really in American history. And now you're in charge of presiding over this trial.

Absolutely. Melissa, can you walk through exactly why some legal experts now are looking at how Judge Cannon is operating in this case and saying that the things she's doing are going to lead to a delayed trial? What is actually happening here? Well, there's been a lot of slow walking here. The Mar-a-Lago case is one, I think, that presents some pretty straightforward issues. I mean, there are a lot of complexities involving how classified information will be used as evidence. But for the most part, there's an obstruction charge, there's the question of the improper retention of the documents, and it should proceed in a pretty timely fashion. But what we've seen from Judge Cannon in some of these initial motions that have to be dealt with is that she seems to want to kind

of slow walk things. For example, there is a very big question about what kind of information can be admitted into evidence given that so much of this information is classified. There's a question about the trial date. She's really delayed a lot of those decisions that could be decided right now. She said that she's not going to rule on Donald Trump's motion to further delay this trial until later when more information comes out. But that in and of itself sets up all of this to be delayed at the last minute. And the question here isn't just about this particular trial, but the sequencing of all four of these criminal trials. And Donald Trump knows this, his lawyers know this, and we've seen the effort to delay these trials from the January 6th

D.C. trial to this trial in the Southern District of Florida. And it's going to continue down the line. And if Judge Cannon doesn't hold the line on this, it is going to have a ripple effect. I mean, I think there's a valid concern that if Judge Cannon pushes this off beyond the 2024 election into 2025 and former President Trump becomes President Trump again, that he would make efforts to interfere with the Justice Department and quash this in some way, which he's almost promised to do in saying that he would go after people who've tried to come after him. So I think that there are some really valid concerns there. Melissa, I do want to zero in on something you kind of touched on,

which is the interplay between all of these different trials. It's something that, honestly, I'm still really confused about in terms of how the jurisdiction in Florida and the jurisdiction in D.C. and Georgia and New York, how they all decide their schedules and work around each other. Is this can you explain this a little bit more? Like, are people in communication to try to work out, you know, when Trump is going to appear, where or how how actually when you are in the middle of so many legal issues, do these things actually get worked out? Just as a practical matter, no judge in the United States, whether it's at the state level or the federal level, is going to make Trump's defense team

turn around from having just tried one case to verdict to then immediately turning to another trial. They're going to give them a little bit of a breather. And so you've got to kind of work in a little bit of that cushion between these trials, which is why when Judge Cannon doesn't really issue a ruling on the question of when the timetable is going to be set for this particular trial, it kind of leaves everything up in the air. Because if she goes second, if she goes third, we don't know. And that leads to a lot of lag time for the other trials. We have Fannie Willis down in Georgia arguing that she wants to get started in August. That's probably timed to allow for the Jack Smith trial in DC to happen and to allow for Mar-a-Lago to happen because it's sort of clear that those two cases

are ready to go. Judge Cannon is kind of the fulcrum around a lot of this because if she keeps delaying and delaying and delaying, we go past the May 2024 deadline that Jack Smith has articulated, and now we're into 2025, then we've blown out Georgia entirely. Domenico, can you overlay the political calendar onto what we're talking about with all these different trials next year in terms of like, how does all of this affect whether voters are going to take into what they hear at these trials when they actually go to the ballot box? Well, I think we're on a collision course that I don't think a lot of people see just how quickly it's coming up because, you know, we mentioned that it's 44 days until the Iowa caucuses. And what we just found out this week, we just got the Republican National Committee calendar for their delegates and how they're apportioned. And that's how a nominee is selected. They have to win a majority of the delegates. And half of the delegates, almost half of the delegates are going to be decided already, apportioned by March 5th. And what is on March 4th but the supposed beginning trial date in New York. By the end of March, 70 percent of the delegates will have already been decided. So this idea that somehow a conviction of Trump will

change the course of the Republican primary just isn't going to happen. We're existing in two different universes because the primary is largely going to be over before there's even a chance for a conviction. I want to talk about gag orders, switch gears a little bit here. The one in the New York civil fraud trial was reinstated this week after an appeals court sided with the trial judge. Melissa, can you talk a little bit about what happened there and why this gag order was reinstated? These rulings, and I think the New York appellate ruling that reinstated the gag order, really trying to strike a balance. Like, yes, he can speak. Yes, he can criticize these processes.

No, he cannot specifically criticize any of the individuals who are involved as staff to the courthouse, who are involved in the trials themselves, witnesses, things of that nature, that's verboten because that can then tip over and perhaps encourage other people to make threats that are not idle or not mere political speech, but actually threaten public safety. Yeah. And this is a thing we've seen throughout Trump's time in the public spotlight, where a lot of people are concerned about his rhetoric, the things that he says. He's never specific, right, with a direct direction to make, you know, a violent threat. Right. Attack or break into the Capitol. Right. Go do this.

But a lot of people feel like they hear dog whistles, if not bullhorns in some of the things that he says. a few people who are radicalized by what Trump winds up saying and takes his words literally and seriously and then tries to, you know, avenge the person that they think who's their hero. And, you know, the Trump team amazingly, you know, argued in court that they just don't think that he's responsible for these threats. And that's a really fascinating thing because most politicians throughout history, they'll walk back some of the things that they say when they realize that maybe the words that they say can wind up having some consequences because they didn't really mean that or want that to happen. That's just not the case for Donald Trump. Yeah, we see that, right? I mean,

there have been January 6th defendants who, when you actually ask them the question of why did you do this, it's multiple people. Many people have actually just said because the former president told me to. Right. Yeah. Last thing, Melissa, I want to turn to Georgia. Prosecutors there are reportedly not planning to offer former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani plea deals. Does that give us any indication about how this case is taking shape? Well, it does seem to suggest that Fannie Willis is intent on holding those who are really at the

center of this alleged conspiracy to overthrow the results of Georgia's election to account. And so, you know, Meadows, Giuliani, those are really near the top of this alleged conspiracy that she sketched out in that sprawling indictment. But she's unwilling to have those plead out. And they would be very meaty pleas with a lot of information you could imagine going to the government. that she wants those guys to be held to account, to be tried for these alleged crimes, suggests that, you know, she's really serious about the accountability aspect of this, the deterrence aspect of this, that this is not going to happen in Georgia again. Shows you who she thinks is the cherry on top of the pie, right? It's not just one cherry. It's not just Trump, but a couple of these other folks as well. Okay, last word. I mean, what from this week do you think is the biggest takeaway from all of these developments?

Melissa, you want to go first? I think Donald Trump back on the stand in this New York civil trial is really interesting. Again, not because we don't know what the outcome is going to be. We already know what the judgment is. I think we're just waiting to understand how the judge will determine the penalties. But I think it speaks to the fact that Donald Trump is actually trying cases in two very different courts. And this goes across the board to all of the different litigation in which he is involved. So he's obviously speaking to the judge in New York and trying to mitigate the penalties that are going to be levied for

this fraud. But he's also speaking to his followers in the court of public opinion, and he's really trying to kind of clean up a lot of the damage that had been done when he first took the stand and kind of admitted that he was actively involved in reviewing some of these statements that had been filed that were subsequently found to be fraudulent. So a lot of cleanup that had to be done there, but not just for the judge, but also his followers. I think we're going to see that same dynamic play out as all of this litigation takes shape. He is going to be speaking to juries. He's going to be speaking to judges. But he's also going to be speaking to the judge and jury that lie beyond the courthouse

steps, and those are the voters. I mean, for me, what stood out is the gag order being put back in place because we know that Trump likes to lash out at these folks. And this is, again, going to sort of restrain him. But will it? Right. My question is, what's the enforcement? What's the accountability going to be? We've seen him fined, but he it doesn't seem to really bother him all that much. Is a judge really going to pull him into court and potentially threaten him with jail time? You know, do you do that to a former president? Maybe, but it depends on the judge and how they're going to do that. And that's something I'm really interested in watching at what happens going forward.

That was NPR's senior editor and correspondent, Domenico Montanaro, and NYU law professor, Melissa Murray. Thanks to you both. You're welcome. Thank you. We'll be back next week with another episode of Trump's Trials. Be sure to follow more of NPR's political coverage from Domenico, me, and the rest of the NPR politics team in daily episodes of the NPR Politics Podcast. But before we go, a quick but very sincere thank you to our Trump's Trials Plus supporters and anyone listening who donates to public media. After all, public media means you, the public, support it. Everything you hear from the NPR network really cannot exist without your contributions. And for anyone listening who isn't a supporter yet,

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The show is produced by Tyler Bartlam and edited by Adam Rainey and Steve Drummond. Our technical director is Kweisi Lee. Our executive producers are Beth Donovan and Sammy Yenigan. Eric Maripoti is NPR's vice president of news programming. I'm Miles Parks. Thanks for listening to Trump's Trials is NPR's Vice President of News Programming. I'm Miles Parks. Thanks for listening to Trump's Trials from NPR. The following message come from SAP Concur, a leading brand for integrated travel expense and invoice management solutions. With SAP Concur solutions, you'll be ready to take on whatever the market throws at you next.

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