Front Burner - Donald Trump pleads not guilty, again

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Former U.S. president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to 37 federal criminal charges that he unlawfully kept national-security documents when he left office and lied to officials who sought to recover them. CBC’s Washington Correspondent Alex Panetta explains the evidence against him and the ramifications of this case for the next presidential election. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Saroja Coelho. Yesterday, for the second time since he left office, Donald Trump faced a judge and pled not guilty, this time in a Miami courtroom to 37 federal criminal charges. The former president stands accused of improperly stashing classified documents, showing them off, and then lying to authorities about them.

It's remarkable not only because it's the first time a former president has been accused of federal crimes, but because Trump wants to run again. He's leading the race to become the Republican nominee in November 2024's presidential election. Alex Panetta is CBC's Washington correspondent and, of course, sometimes host of FrontBurner. Alex, what a day.

It's been something, let me tell you. Let's just, like, catch our breath for a moment. Could you describe the scene when Donald Trump, former president of the United States, showed up for his arraignment today in Miami? Yeah, it was a relatively quick arrival. Came in in a motorcade. And outside in the street, there were dozens, scores of Trump supporters, a few Trump nemeses, critics of the former president, but mostly supporters out there screaming, chanting. They didn't really get a look at him as he entered. But on his way out, he did wave at the crowd from his motorcade. Yeah, there he is waving. He's waving. There he is. Thumbs up, Caitlin.

There was actually a bit of a disturbance. At one point, someone who dislikes the president was dressed in a jail uniform and wandered apparently too close to the motorcade. The Secret Service pulled him away. The Secret Service now pulling someone. The Secret Service after someone ran. And obviously now the Secret Service. It was a bit of a disturbance there. But that was, yeah, that was the extent of it.

It was not a crowd bath out there. It that was, yeah, that was the extent of it. It was not a crowd bath out there. It happened relatively quickly. But local authorities in Miami had prepared for thousands of protesters. Make no mistake about it. We're taking this event extremely serious. We know that there is a potential of things taking a turn for the worst, but that's not the Miami way. Anywhere between 5,000 and as many as 50,000, but that's not exactly what happened, is it? Not quite, but I guess, you know, once bitten, twice shy. I was here in Washington on January 6th, 2021, and people were not prepared for the intrusion into the Capitol. So I guess, you know, given the extremely inflammatory language from Trump, from his supporters and his history of whipping up a mob, it probably wasn't a bad idea to prepare for a larger crowd than it turned out to be.

Now, after his court appearance, he then made a bit of a pit stop. Yeah, that that's something I've got some insight into. So he stopped at Cafe Versailles. Are you ready? Food for everyone. Food for everyone. Okay, this is the cultural epicenter of Cuban Miami. It's not quite in the middle of Little Havana, but it's an important place. It's where Cuban expats gather for coffee, and they have been for decades for desserts, and they also make pretty good sandwiches. I've been there a few times,

and I've got to tell you, some of the wildest interviews I've ever conducted in the United States have been in that place. Just about everyone there has a story to tell about how they or one of their relatives, their parents, escaped the socialists in Cuba. And there tends to be a lot of conflation in that place between the socialists in Cuba and progressive politicians or left of center politicians in the United States. I've heard people comparing just about every Democrat in America to Fidel Castro. And so you can imagine the politics at play when a president who argues he's being persecuted by socialists uh and seeking to politicize the case and and goes to cafe versailles

and people started praying for him they sang happy birthday it's about to be his birthday and the the the scene there was was quite something. And just, you know, you can't separate that from the politics of it. You know, the judge in charge of the case, potentially Eileen Cannon, is the daughter of a Cuban expat. Miami, people have very strong feelings about some of the themes that Trump's been tapping into as he defends himself and tries to delegitimize the case. So the fact that he chose that spot to me was very striking. Meanwhile, there were no cameras or recording devices in the courtroom, but reporters have been describing a pretty standard scene inside. So Trump wearing his red tie, twiddling his thumbs from time to time, except, of course, this is Donald Trump facing charges. So maybe that is a real blow your mind moment. But some Republicans and prominent right wing commentators have been calling for violence.

We're talking now at 5 p.m. Eastern. Are you seeing any signs of that? Well, no, it seemed at one point it sounded like Trump supporters and Trump anti-Trump protesters were actually talking in front of the courthouse and having relatively civil conversations. I mean, this was not January 6th, at least so far. But, yeah, you're absolutely right. There's been extremely inflammatory language from some people. I'm pointing to three people with some public profile in particular. Carrie Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, she lost, talking about how... We're at war, people. If you want to get to President Trump,

you're going to have to go through me and you're going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I'm going to tell you, yep, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA. You had one member of Congress talking about this being a declaration of war, another member of Congress using military, like martial language, talking about defending bridges and basically using the language of militias. You know, given the history of this country, the recent history of this country, you know, you can't preclude the possibility of violence in a case like this. But fortunately, there's been no violence so far. Later in the evening, Trump gave a public address from New Jersey. This day will go down in infamy and Joe Biden will forever be remembered

as not only the most corrupt president in the history of our country, but perhaps even more importantly, the president who together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy. Broadly, can you tell me

how Trump has been framing the case against him? That he's being persecuted. A boxes hoax, just like the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and all of the others. This has been going on for seven years because now we're leading in the polls again by a lot against Biden and against the Republicans by a lot. And we went up to a level that they figured the way they're going to stop us is by using what's called warfare. And that's what it is. This is warfare for the law. And he's looking to rally all Republicans around him. You know, he could be running for reelection as a guy who lost and who wants to lower taxes, but that's not very exciting. Instead, he's running as

the enemy of the quote-unquote deep state this is the final battle with you at my side we will demolish the deep state we will expel as the avatar of the common man and woman you know he he talks about being your voice your retribution i. I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. This is when the federal government attacks me, they're not coming after me. Because in the end, they're not coming after me. They're coming after you. And I'm just standing in their way.

Here I am. I'm standing in their way and I always will be. It's an amazing way of establishing rapport with the Republican electorate. He's turning his re-election fight into one of principle, as opposed to some, you know, former loser who's running to cut your taxes. There are, meanwhile, 37 charges here. So why don't we break that down a little bit? What is Trump charged with? He's charged with mishandling classified documents, a number of extremely serious classified documents. He's accused not only of taking them illegally to his residence and storing them improperly, he's then accused of showing them to people. In addition to that, he's accused of lying or requiring his aides to lie to federal authorities when the government came asking for these documents back.

So what you've got then is willful retention of classified documents, mishandling documents, and obstruction of justice and concealment. All of which, by the way, are extremely serious charges. Some of them carry potential penalties of 20 years in prison. You could be looking at a massive prison sentence because these kind of pile on top of each other. He's 76 years old. There is a chance he dies in prison if he loses any of these fights on any of these counts. But he's not on his own here. Who else is charged? Yeah, his personal aide, valet Walt Nauta. Nauta is accused of helping him conceal these documents and lying to the federal government. He's an extremely important and interesting person in this case. I think the federal government would love to have

Nauta testify against Trump. Now, according to Trump's entourage, the federal government has done improper things to try to get Nauta to testify. We weren't advised of anyone else being indicted. I have a theory that maybe some of the outrageous misconduct has affected the equation in some other case, a potential target. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump's team asks for the case to be dismissed and they're going to allege prosecutorial misconduct. They allege that the federal government essentially threatened, that prosecutors threatened, and now does lawyer, told them you're not going to be given a judgeship if you don't get your client to flip against Trump. What's your theory?

Well, over the last 24 hours, it's become public that members of the Department of Justice, led by Jay Brat, extorted a very well-respected, very intelligent lawyer from Washington, D.C., saying essentially, if you want this judgeship that's on Joe Biden's desk, you have to flip your guy to cooperate against the president of the United States. That should be a headline. No, this hasn't been proven in court, but this is what I'd expect based on their public comments to try. I think it's very telling that Nauta appeared with Trump in court. They made their first appearance together and then left the courthouse and went to this Cuban coffee shop together. Nauta was right by his side, not acting like someone who's flipped against his What do we know about the documents themselves? Why are they so sensitive? Nuclear secrets, attack plans, defensive plans.

Apparently showed a member of a super PAC at Mar-a-Lago a document, and we don't know what country is being described here, but apparently showedago, a document, and we don't know what country is being described here, but apparently showed this person a document revealing that a certain military operation was not going very well. He showed allegedly the authors of a book, a document revealing plans for a United States strike against Iran. Now, he did this because he was trying to prove a point.

He was angry at the chairman of the Joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley. And Milley had, uh, had, had basically intimated that Trump was, um, kind of a loose cannon, uh, at the end of his time in office. And, you know, he didn't want him to do something crazy like attack Iran. Well, allegedly Trump did like, like wave this document in front of a couple of authors working on a book and saying i'm not the crazy one look this is the guy who had the plan to attack iran and very very crucially according to federal authorities who say that this has been recorded this conversation with the authors told these authors yeah yeah this thing is is a secret document i could have classified it when i was president i didn't but here you go. And then a Trump aide is alleged to have said, and this is in a transcript in the indictment, oh, we're in trouble now or something

to that effect. So that's extremely damning, right? I mean, here he is admitting that he's got extremely serious and classified material and he's just kind of waving it around. The indictment also shows a lot of how the documents were stored in Trump's resort in Mar-a-Lago. There's this photograph of the bathroom and you see the marble surfaces and the ornate chandelier and the low toilet and all that dark brown, you know, sort of a very 80s hotel high class kind of scene. And then a couple dozen boxes, these document boxes, all piled on top of each other. They don't even appear to be particularly well sealed. And there's also the picture from the ballroom. Can you tell me about

that one? Everyone talks about the bathroom and the ballroom because it's so freaking gaudy. The part that I focused on as a Canadian correspondent in Washington was this storage closet where there had been some boxes piled in there and and they some of them opened up and they're like some some documents newspaper clippings mixed with classified documents had spilled out onto the ground and one of those documents according to federal authorities was um a five eyes document of some sort no idea what it was. Now, Five Eyes, needless to say, is the intelligence alliance that Canada belongs to. So there's a Canadian angle in that heap of trash mixed in with the top secrets of the U.S. government. I love you. empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. know their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing.

In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. What's really becoming clear here is that this isn't just a storage issue. So of course, those pictures of boxes, they're very easy to circulate online, get really interested in and wonder about how safe anything is there. But actually, there's a bigger thing about the cavalier attitude or alleged cavalier attitude towards security and keeping national security top of mind and keeping secrets secret. And we see some of that also in the amount of traffic there was in and out of Mar-a-Lago while those documents were there. Yeah, no, it's important to remember, this is not just a house. It's not his personal residence. It's a country club,

and he charges people access. I mean, according to the indictment, tens of thousands of people visited Mar-a-Lago during the months where those documents were there. You know, we know that this place was considered a very coveted target by foreign nationals, right? Two Chinese nationals were arrested for trespassing last year at the resort. You know, one former FBI agent described Mar-a-Lago as incredibly vulnerable and called it the worst counterintelligence nightmare the country's faced since the Cold War. Meanwhile, we have this big conversation happening around the word plucking, the plucking gesture, the indictment alleges that Trump made a plucking gesture and that his lawyer took it as direction to pluck out anything that might be incriminating from a dossier. Why is that an important piece

of evidence? It's extraordinarily important because it speaks not only to obstruction of justice, it also, that sort of behavior gave the federal government the pretext it needed to go to court and then convince a court to allow it access to Trump's lawyers' notes. And those notes could become one of the most important bits of evidence the government raises in a trial, proving that Trump intentionally sought to direct his aides, his staff, his lawyers, his personal aides, to obstruct justice, to lie to the federal government, to conceal classified records. And that plucking gesture could take on very meaning. So it's a very telling and significant bit of nonverbal communication. But there are Trump supporters who have been pointing out that Trump is not the only politician who has handled important government documents inappropriately. You've got Hillary Clinton, President Biden, Trump's vice president, and now his opponent

in the Republican race, Mike Pence. They have all faced allegations of mishandling important government records, but they have not been charged. And I'm wondering what the difference is there. Well, we don't know the difference yet with respect to Biden, because there actually is a special counsel looking into the Biden case as well. For months now, the president has vowed to cooperate fully and completely with this review into his handling of the classified documents found at his former private office here in Washington and then also at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. And that could entail through that cooperation an interview with the special counsel. But assuming he doesn't get charged for the purposes of this conversation,

the difference is everyone else seems to be at least a little contrite when the federal government says, hey, there are classified documents or in the case of biden and pence actually volunteered to turn these documents over after conducting searches you know trump behaved in a way that's completely at odds with everyone else's behavior like he is alleged to have fought for months efforts to turn these documents over now he'll say my case is different because I was president. I didn't have to turn them over. But, you know, that I think is going to be a very significant difference in all these incidents. And Mike Pence hinted at it as well. He said, look, you know, when I found out I had these documents, I turned them back.

Why did Trump even want to have these documents in the first place? That is the $64,000 question. The indictment doesn't answer that question. There's no reference to him doing anything as crazy as selling these secrets. It talks about him pulling them out to impress people. And without having the full picture, because I don't think prosecutors have said everything they know in that indictment, what I see are two different things at play, an indifference to norms and rules and saying, you know, I'm going to stick some classified documents in a box full of newspaper clippings, you know, and, you know, to heck with the federal government if they want my

stuff, tell them to take a hike. And in addition to that indifference, there's a desire to retain knowledge and information to pull out when suitable, to prove a point, to win an argument. So ego and indifference, essentially. And I think those are probably the two best explanations based on the facts we have at the present moment. If we just take a moment and look at the wider legal landscape here, you've got special counsel Jack Smith who filed this in Florida. The judge, Eileen Cannon, is a Trump nominee. How does that little constellation there affect the case? does that little constellation there affect the case? It's an extremely important, potentially extremely important development. The fact that she was randomly assigned to the case. She was appointed by Trump. She's a member of the Federalist Society. And more importantly, she sided with Trump in an earlier, you know, pre-trial procedural battle in a decision she made that was later rebuked, practically ridiculed by a higher court. And there's a lot she can do. She holds tremendous power over this case if she winds up being the judge throughout the proceedings. At the very beginning, she can block certain jurors from the jury pool. Once the arguments

are underway, she can then prevent the jurors from seeing certain information. She might say those lawyers notes were obtained in a way that was improper. You can't hear that. So then she decides what the jurors hear. And once the case is over and the defense rests, the jurors start start to deliberate if those deliberations don't result in a verdict immediately she's capable of declaring more quickly than other judges would a mistrial whereas other judges could say you know just keep keep deliberating get to get to a verdict please and then finally and this is the the mother load the nuclear weapon sitting in her pocket. It's what's called a rule 29 motion to dismiss. It's rarely used, but a judge can actually bypass a jury and say,

look, the evidence presented by the government was not strong enough. I'm declaring him acquitted. They can do this at various points in the trial. And depending on when it happens, if it happens before the jury renders its verdict, it's unappealable for reasons of double jeopardy. You can't try someone twice for the same. Oh, that counts as having been tried one time. Exactly. But if she does it after the verdict, then the feds could appeal. So basically, she has three or four tools at her disposal that could really swing the case in Trump's favor. And that's why a lot of people hoping to see Trump convicted are a little nervous that she might be presiding over this case. How long do you think all of this is going to take? I mean, the timing here is really interesting because Donald Trump is running to be

the Republican nominee in the November 2024 presidential election. So I'm just wondering how these two things are going to run into each other. Will this still be going on? election. So I'm just wondering how these two things are going to run into each other. Will this still be going on? That's a great question. And the answer to that question is it depends. Now, I'll start off with a factoid, and I think it's a relevant factoid. The federal government chose to proceed in the Southern District of Florida for a variety of reasons. But one, I think, important motivating factor was that this place is known for being really quick in conducting a trial. I was just looking at some federal case management statistics. It takes about nine months to conduct the average trial in Florida from the charge to the verdict. It's doubled that amount

of time in Washington, D.C. So it's about 18 months in D.C. If you'd done this in D.C., there's no way it would have been done by Election Day. In Florida, you've got a chance. There is a chance it could happen. Unless Trump decides it's in his interest to slow it down. The feds really want to go quickly on this. They want it done before the primaries. And it could happen before the primaries if it's made a priority on the docket.

Primaries are early next year. But if Trump slows it down with procedural motions, he might succeed in kicking it past the next election. So that's why I say it depends. Florida is well equipped to do this quickly if both sides agree to. If we look at the rest of the political landscape here, Donald Trump is running to become a Republican nominee for 2024 presidential election. And there are about a dozen people who are running against him to be the Republican nominee. And you might expect that they would use this legal trouble as a center point in their campaign against Trump. But most of them are not doing that.

What is the political calculation there? Look, it's a very simple fact that I'm not sure a lot of them really truly appreciate or happy about. But the fact is, Republican voters love Donald Trump and they don't love the others that much. It's as simple as that. I saw one of the saddest things I've ever seen in politics the other day. Mike Pence giving a speech in New Hampshire where he's trying to produce applause lines. First, let me be clear. No one is above the law. And his own applause lines are not getting cheered.

But then when he talks about the persecution of Donald Trump, people are clapping. And as Americans, it's essential to remember that you are innocent until proven guilty. This is at his own rally. They're cheering for the other guy. So that's why they kind of suck up to Trump because the path to being the Republican nominee by taking on Donald Trump is not exactly, you know, one without bumps and bruises. I don't know that there's an easy solution for any of these candidates. The simple fact is other other, you know, most Republicans prefer Trump. So at this point, despite all the legal trouble that Trump is facing,

it's looking like Trump will have another shot at running for president, if I'm hearing you correctly. Barring a shocking turn of events, even more shocking than him being charged federally and with state crimes. He faces two sets of charges in New York and at the federal level in Florida. That hasn't shaken up this race. Maybe a conviction would, but it's unclear what would change anything at this point. And then you get into a general election matchup against Joe Biden, which is frankly a coin toss at this point. Polls show them pretty much tied. Well, it certainly won't be the last time we're hearing from you on this.

This has been fascinating, Alex. Thank you so much. Thank you. And, you know, I'd leave you with one thought. You know, if this case is not determined by January 20th, 2025, and Donald Trump is president of the United States, we'll probably do an episode about whether or not the president January 20th, 2025, and Donald Trump is president of the United States, we'll probably do an episode about whether or not the president can pardon himself, because I think that's what he's trying to accomplish here.

Very interesting times. Thanks so much, Alex. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Saroja Coelho. Thanks so much for listening. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.