America's Talking - Trump Pleads Not Guilty to Georgia Election Charges

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Former President Donald Trump plead not guilty Thursday to charges he faces in Georgia that he worked to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, according to court filings. The Georgia indictment includes 41 charges against Trump and 18 of his alleged co-conspirators. Trump was processed in the local jail last week, and his mugshot quickly went viral online. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to American Focus. I'm Cole McNeely. Your guest host this week, filling in for the Center Squares executive editor, Dan McAid. Joining me as he does Dan every single week is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey, how are you doing, sir? Doing good. Doing good. I almost called you Dan. Doing good, Cole. Just want you to know that you should feel no insecurity and that you are almost as good as Dan. I appreciate that. And I want you to feel no insecurity and telling you that off there, Dan told me, there's about 50 employees here. Then I think there's about four dozen that you liked more than you. So I know you mentioned in previous podcast, favorite employee, all that. Dan doesn't see me as an employee. He sees me as a son, actually. So I'm family.

At a boy. But you want to get to the news here? We should get to the news. I know we should. Casey, you have been busy as can be. chasing down indictments and investigations into presidents and presidential candidates. And it goes on and on and on and it seems like these things will never end. But potentially they could end eventually.

There was a trial date set for Donald Trump. I believe this, and correct me if I'm wrong, this was for the Georgia case for March 4th, which is right in the middle of the Republican primary. Let's talk about the trial date being set. And of course, he pleaded not guilty to the Georgia election charges as well. what is the latest up-to-date information we have on everything surrounding the greater Trumposphere? Right. So this is actually the district, the DC case. So there's a lot of cases and it is confusing. And I have to constantly check to make sure I don't confuse them. But a few things

are happening across multiple indictments at the same time. And what the updates this week were that the trial date, as you said, was set for the election interference DC case. There's two election interference cases. One in DC, one in Georgia. And then there is a the Stormy Daniels payments in New York and classified documents case in Florida. Am I wrong in thinking that his attorney in Georgia was trying to, because wasn't there an idea that they were trying to push back the trial date? Well, so Trump has tried to push back all the trial dates. In Georgia, you know, he's trying to push him back into like 2026, basically, well beyond the election. And he's been unsuccessful in that. He just pled guilty, as you mentioned,

to his Georgia election charges this week. So he pled not guilty to those. He has a few court dates really in early next year. He's got, as you said, this one that was just set for the DC election interference case is the day before Super Tuesday, which is so interesting. The Super Tuesday is there's about 15 states that vote for their Republican primary candidate. And the day before Trump is going to be dominating the news in court, you know, I mean, we saw what that Moogside did to. I don't know. Did you see, what was your experience of the Mokshod release, Cole? I'd be interested to hear and how it played on Twitter in your mind because that's going to be the same kind of thing that happens the day before one of the biggest primary dates here in March.

Yeah. Well, I think from my perspective, you know, obviously in my role for context here, I'm not a journalist exactly. So I'm the general manager of America's talking network, which produces podcasts like this one. So deal with a lot of different sorts of content. So you hear a lot of different sort of commentary. I told my wife, I said, you know, this is, when I first saw it pop up, it was more of this, you know, living through history moment than necessarily any sort of political reaction. It was like, this was, this is a notable thing that for the rest of our lives, we will remember the day that that mugshot came out because it was, you know, obviously the, the indictments and the rest and, you know, all that was also historical. But, you know, there's

something about the visual representation of it that you just know that that's going to be featured in textbooks one day. So that was kind of my initial reaction. And then the obvious other reaction that came out was, well, this is certainly going to turn into a just political toy for both sides, right? So this is going to be for the Trump campaign. This is going to be a, you know, this, this visual representation of this system, quote unquote, going after him. And I'm putting all of that in quotes because that's what they're going to say. Then on the left, obviously, or even his Republican opponents that are challenging him in the primaries, that it's going to be this representation that he is unfit for the presidency

and that this is just once again, you know, the justice system showing that to be the case. So to me it was, here's history and live time. And then to, oh, man, we're going to see this picture for the next year and a half from everybody. some saying this is the best thing to happen for the campaign and others saying that this is the perfect representation as to why this campaign should be suspended. And I think you even had people in the Republican Party saying that. I forget which senator came out and said he should drop out. But I mean, it's just like, man, you just know that all of this drama, it's the justice system. So calling it drama may be downplaying it a little bit, but is going to, as far as I would call it,

heightened the annoyance of the general election, you know, time period in D.C. in the next couple months here. Yeah, it's been crazy how all of our recent major election, you know, presidential elections have had the legal system right interwoven with them in potential charges and investigations. And, you know, we've talked a lot in this podcast about how President Joe Biden seemingly has his own version of that, though there's been no formal charges against him, of course. So his son does face some. And it seems like his son is in more trouble than originally thought because his plea deal fell through and now potentially more charges are coming through. So there's going to be a lot of legalese, a lot of court talk, you know, and it's definitely going to impact both the primary and the general. As I said, day before Super Tuesday these charges, he's going to, Trump's going to be all over the news. And then, you know, he has, I think, nearly 100 charges total across four states.

And we don't know, you know, there could be other indictments. coming. There are other states where, you know, there are questions about the election. And Trump's team or Trump, you know, Trump himself was complaining of those results besides just Georgia, right? And so, you know, it's unclear whether that reached the level of Georgia. But it's possible more state indictments could come. I'm not sure what that will do at this point. I mean, what's another indictment, I guess. But it's going to be something we've fallen close at the center square.com for sure. Yeah, for sure. And I think it's notable, and I think you guys have talked about this to a degree, but Georgia case being a state case and not a federal case, state case. So if he is found guilty in that case, and it's been guilty, but if he has found guilty that that wouldn't be an offense that would be able to be pardoned from a federal level. So that would only be able to be pardoned from a state level, which is why I think the, you know, a lot of people are, you know, well, it's another set of indictments. Well, sure, but it, you know, now this is the government or pardon them too.

That's a question. Right. You are exactly right. What did you say? I said you're exactly right. Oh, that's what I thought you said. Okay. All right.

That seems like a great place to end this podcast. It does. It does. I thought, you know, I thought for a second there was a genuine internet connection issue, but obviously it's Casey Harper fishing for compliments. So if you want more of that exactly right sort of reporting, that only comes from the news desk of Casey Harper. You can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.

For Casey Harper, I'm Cole McNeely. Thanks for listening to American Focus. Please subscribe.