Front Burner - The Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Did Donald Trump break the law in his attempt to stay in power after 2020? That's what the Jan. 6 House committee is trying to prove — with lots of evidence and dozens of witnesses, including some of Trump's closest allies and even family. This week, Republican state representatives from Arizona and Georgia testified that Trump tried to pressure them to find votes and overturn the election. This week, on the fourth official day of public hearings, more evidence was presented showing the lengths Trump, and some in his inner circle, went through to push the "big lie" that the 2020 election was rigged. Today on Front Burner, the Washington Post's Aaron Blake — on the evidence, the unanswered questions and what it would take for a criminal indictment against the former president.

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. Hey, I'm Jamie Poisson. Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them, that the election was stolen and that he was the rightful president. President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the

mob, and lit the flame of this attack. That is Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6th. Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. We're going to walk down and I'll be there with you to the Capitol because you'll never take back our country with weakness. Yeah, just for awareness, be advised, there's probably about 300 proud boys. They're marching eastbound in this 400 block of kind of independence actually on the mall towards the United States Capitol. The committee has been building this case about whether or not Trump is criminally responsible for the events of that day. And many of the results of their investigation are finally public.

Do you swear and affirm on the penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God. This week on the fourth official day of public hearings, more evidence of the lengths Trump and some in his inner circle went to to push the big lie that they won the 2020 election and to stay in power. Today, I'm joined by Aaron Blake at The Washington Post. We're going to talk about what we've learned so far

and what needs to happen now for a criminal indictment against Trump. Hey, Aaron. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for having me. of his inner circle were putting pressure on state and local officials to overturn the election results and basically put the states back in Trump's column. For example, Rusty Bowers, a Republican Arizona House speaker who faced weeks of pressure and even harassment outside his home from Trump supporters. They have had video panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician and blaring loudspeakers in my neighborhood and leaving literature both on my property but arguing and threatening with neighbors and with myself. And Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who we previously heard a phone call in which Trump directly pressured him

to essentially find votes in his state. So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state. People might remember that. And what were some of the key takeaways for you from Tuesday? Well, the big one is that the committee continues to build out its case, which is focused on not just that the president tried to overturn the election, or that all these awful things happened on January 6th, but that the president and his team, number one, knew that their voter fraud claims were not true and that they were aware that the things that they were doing were illegal.

That has been the through line of all of these hearings so far. The other significant thing here is the amount of pressure that was brought to bear on officials like Bowers and Raffensperger. We'd known some of this beforehand, but we didn't really know the extent of it, the number of calls that these people received, the protests outside of their houses, sometimes when their families were at home, protesters and people who were protesting at their homes invoking their family members. It really drives home how much this kind of fever overtook the Republican Party and caused a lot of Republicans to either stay out of it or to try and tow the Trump line.

The counterpoint to that is that there are certain officials who were forced to make a decision because they had jobs that required it. And in a lot of cases, they were in line with Brad Raffensperger and Rusty Bowers and decided that they couldn't do that because it wasn't what the law would allow. Yeah, that personal tool really struck me as well. The committee put up Georgia election worker Shay Moss. And can you tell me a little bit about what she had to say too? Because I thought this was really like a powerful moment as well. Yeah, this was this was an interesting decision by the committee because this was not somebody who wielded great power over how things were handled before January 6th or on Election Day. But it is something that drives home

the pressure campaign and how much these false allegations really hit home for some people. I went to the Facebook app and I'm just kind of panicky at this point because this has never happened to me. And my mom is involved. I'm like her only child. And it was just a lot of horrible things there. And those horrible things, did they include threats? Yes, a lot of threats, wishing death upon me, telling me that, you know, I'll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, be glad it's 2020 and not 1920. Basically, these are two mother and daughter election workers who were accused of illegally smuggling in votes for Joe Biden.

Tape earlier in the day of Ruby Freeman and Shea Freeman-Mars and one other gentleman quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine. passing around USB ports as if they're vials of heroin or cocaine. I mean, it's obvious to anyone who's a criminal investigator or prosecutor, they're engaged in surreptitious illegal activity. Again, that day. And that's a week ago, and they're still walking around Georgia lying. And there was no substance to this, which was pointed out immediately. President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and others claimed on the basis of this video that you and your mother were somehow involved in a plot to kick out observers, bring suitcases of false ballots for Biden into the arena,

and then run them through the machines multiple times. None of that was true, was it? None of it. But they were singled out very specifically, and that has given them the ability to sue various conservative outlets. The Trump campaign invoked them personally. It really shows how this effort had no regard for the actual facts and how much that put certain people in the crosshairs as a result. There is nowhere I feel safe. people in the crosshairs as a result. There is nowhere I feel safe. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States to target you? The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not to target one.

I also wonder if you could tell me a bit more about what we heard about this through line of Trump and his inner circle, knowing that what they were doing was illegal. Like what evidence did we hear Tuesday that would have backed up that attempt at building out that case? Yeah, so Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bauer's detailed conversations that he had with two lawyers who worked for Trump. One was John Eastman. The other one is Rudy Giuliani. And basically, he was saying they pressured him to try and decertify Georgia's electors to the Electoral College. And he explained that he didn't have any way of doing that even. But I said, what would you have me do?

didn't have any way of doing that even. But I said, what would you have me do? And he said, just do it and let the court sort it out. And I said, you're asking me to do something that's never been done in history, the history of the United States, without sufficient proof, and that's going to be good enough with me, that I would put us through that, my state, that I swore to uphold both in constitution and in law? No, sir. And he said that they kept pushing forward. He talked about as late as the morning of January 6th

when a Republican member of Congress kept pushing him to sign a statement endorsing the decertification of those electors. So on top of some other testimony, it just reinforces that this continued despite the Trump team being told that there just was no legal avenue to do these things. And that's been what several witnesses now have told the committee. It felt to me, I don't know if you would agree, like kind of a key quote of the day was when Bowers recalled this conversation he was having with Rudy Giuliani. And what exactly did he say and how that come up? My recollection, he said, we've got lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence. Yeah, and that's, there was also the moment where Rusty Bowers talked about his conversation with Giuliani,

in which Giuliani talked about all these undocumented immigrants who allegedly voted, all the dead people who allegedly voted. And Bowers said, OK, well, can you provide me with the names of these people? You know, if you know that these votes were illegal, you should be able to provide that for me. And basically, the Trump team said, OK, we'll provide those. And then they ultimately never did. The reason, of course, is because those names don't exist. There's never been any proof at that level of fraud or even close to it. But I think both of those anecdotes

really drove home how the Trump team was beginning with a conclusion and then working backwards, or at least attempting to. Another anecdote, I wonder if you might just explain for our listeners that I had not heard was the one about the suitcases full of ballots in Georgia. Yeah, I saw four suitcases come out from underneath the table. Supporters of the president are calling it suitcase gate, but those are not suitcases. Eleven Alive has confirmed they're the standard ballot containers used by Fulton County. Yeah, so basically the idea is that there's a video, and this is involving that Georgia election worker we were talking about, Che Moss,

where they were supposedly being shown with a suitcase of ballots that were being surreptitiously added to the totals. This was debunked very early on. We've now seen testimony from multiple witnesses, including former Attorney General William Barr, who basically conceded that they looked into these things and that there was absolutely nothing to it. I told him that the stuff that his people were shuttling out to the public was bullshit. I mean, that the claims of fraud were bullshit. And yet this was something that persisted for the Trump campaign. They kept talking about this all the way through January 6th.

And that really drives home that there was no regard for the truth here at the very least. And that's if you accept that they weren't just repeatedly lying about these things. if you accept that they weren't just repeatedly lying about these things. There was much talk Tuesday about the alleged scheme to submit a, quote, fake slate of electors. And I wonder for us here in Canada who may not really understand how the system works, if you could just like explain that alleged scheme to me and what we heard about it on Tuesday. scheme to me and what we heard about it on Tuesday? Sure. So it's very complicated, but essentially, in order for the election to be overturned, there is a December 14th deadline by which electors need to be submitted to be valid in any way. And by that point, many states had not done anything to overturn their results. And so what the Trump campaign did was they pushed for people, their supporters, to declare themselves to be alternate electors in these given states.

just in case the courts ultimately did overturn the election results or the state legislatures wanted to choose the Trump electors instead. There was never any reason for those electors to be considered potentially valid even. But as we got closer to January 6th, those weren't a contingency anymore. Those were the ones that the Trump campaign was telling Vice President Pence to accept in place of the Biden electors on January 6th. So they really formed the basis of this plot. And the fake electors in and of themselves appear to have possibly been illegal because they declared that they were duly elected when in fact that they were not. So it's really in the weeds part of this, but it also is a it's a it's a very important part of it as well. And something that we're going to hear about more moving forward. And I guess, moving backwards a little bit to we heard was it the last hearing,

we heard about the pressure put on Pence to like, essentially, accept this scheme. That's right. And you know, this was the moment where the whole scheme died the morning of January 6th, when Vice President Pence said that he did not agree with this idea that he had even the power to do that if he believed it was warranted. President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. And that's what the fake electors is all about. It was a necessary piece of the puzzle. And it just reinforced, at the very least, the far-fetched nature of this plot.

Very fair. I think, you know, it epitomizes how much this effort was just a series of kind of poorly thrown together ideas. And by January 6th, they worked with what they had. This, you know, completely novel and very likely illegal idea for the vice president to essentially pick the new president, which if you use that in American elections moving forward, there would potentially never be another change of power because the vice president could just keep it on his side. 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.

Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not 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. Am I correct to say that on Tuesday, we heard about Trump's direct involvement in that alleged scheme from, I think it's Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee? That's right. It was very brief.

And it was the first, I believe, the first glimpse that we've seen of McDaniel's testimony. And she said that the president was on a call in which he introduced John Eastman to talk about this idea. What did the president say when he called you? this idea. What did the president say when he called you? Essentially, he turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing, changed the result of any updates. My understanding is the campaign did take the lead and we just were helping them in that role.

Now, again, at the time, this was a contingent, supposedly contingency, and it's not clear how much the president himself talked about this, but it is the first time that we have seen the president linked to that effort that he would have knowledge of this taking place at the time. And you mentioned that it's likely against the law. Can you tell me more about that? Yeah. So basically, these are legal documents that are submitted to the National Archives. They have to be in place for the Congress to consider them on January 6th. And in five of the seven states where Trump supporters submitted these, they declared themselves to be the duly elected electors for

those states in the 2020 election. That was not true. And saying so in a legal document could be fraudulent. There's questions about wire fraud. So basically, there is a question of whether that in and of itself, even making that claim would be illegal. And it's worth noting that in two of these states, the alternate electors or the would-be alternate electors specifically wrote that they weren't claiming to be the electors. They just would be if the states were to overturn their own election results. So I think that kind of reinforces how these other states were getting into dicey legal territory at the very best. So there's that that's potentially illegal. And then we talked before about how the through line through these hearings is that the committee wants to show that Donald Trump knew what he was saying

was a lie. And so why is that illegal? Well, that in and of itself would not necessarily be illegal. You know, politicians, you know, politicians lying is not illegal. But proving that Trump was told that his allegations were false feeds into the idea that this would be a corrupt plot and corrupt, you know, being corrupt is a necessary part of the specific law that the committee has said Donald Trump has violated. And by the way, that a judge has said that Donald Trump and John Eastman both likely violated. So it's really a necessary piece of proving Trump broke the law rather than evidence that he necessarily broke the law just by lying about

the election results. And this is a federal judge in California. Yeah, this was a couple months ago. Judge David Carter ruled he was basically deciding whether John Eastman's emails and documents had to be turned over to the January 6th committee. The judge today writing that Trump and attorney John Eastman may have been planning a crime. Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, wrote, quote, based on the evidence, the court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6th, 2021. The judge also writing, quote, the illegality of the plan was obvious.

And, you know, John Eastman is arguing that these documents are protected because they're privileged between an attorney and its client. But that protection goes away if the documents pertain to a likely illegal act. And so the judge was deciding based upon what he knew, whether these emails were part of an illegal act, and he declared that they were likely part of one. And so that was the first significant evidence that the legal system might regard what the president and his lawyers did as being illegal. And now we're just trying to find out if the Justice Department is ultimately going to agree with that and actually bring charges

against the former president. Right. And the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland have said that they're watching these hearings closely. And what exactly do they have to consider here in order to decide whether or not to indict Trump? Well, it should be a decision that has no regard for Donald Trump's former position as the president. It's supposed to be equal justice under law for everybody, regardless of who they are. At the same time, there are unquestionably political finer points here that anybody is going to be considering because you know that much of the country would be aghast at the idea that the former president was being charged criminally. And so I think that the conventional wisdom is that this ultimately won't lead to criminal charges just because presidents, you know, misdeeds are generally handled through the ballot box. And the president may run again for president in 2024, which was where people could potentially punish him for this.

But it's going to be a difficult decision because there is plenty of evidence that the Trump team knew that these were going to be illegal actions and that they were lying about voter fraud. And so if you're the Justice Department, I'm not sure how you look at that and you don't do anything about it. One question I have is like, why does the Justice Department have to prove intent here? Like if I'm driving recklessly and hit someone with my car, and I didn't mean to, I can still be charged with something, right? Yeah, that's right. Most violations of the law do not require knowledge of the law. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense in most cases. In this particular case, this particular statute does require a corrupt intent. And so, you know, this is the one that the January 6th committee has highlighted as being what the president actually violated.

And so that does require in some measure, either proving that he knew better, or it could prove that he was trying to be willfully blind to the truth. He was not entertaining his theories about voter fraud and this plot being wrong. And so that's the big hurdle for the committee. And that's why they've been focused so much on proving that. And just going back to the possible indictment here, I know it was reported that Biden himself has said that the Attorney General Garland is moving slow here. And so do you think that that's made things more complicated for the Justice Department and the Attorney General? Yeah, I mean, certainly, this is something that should be handled outside of politics. We had a number of instances during Trump's four years in

office where he leaned on the Justice Department to do things that he wanted them to do. So I think anytime a president is talking about these things, they need to be careful. I do think that that is reflective of kind of a broad disenchantment with how aggressive the Justice Department has been. There's a lot of people who want them to be the ones to finally go after Donald Trump and bring him down, which so many have tried to do in the past and have failed, at least politically. So I would imagine that will take off once these hearings close. There's going to be a tremendous amount of pressure on the Justice Department to do

something about that. Whether they ultimately will is another question entirely. You talked about how tricky it is to charge a former president, because this should be maybe something handled at the ballot box. And I guess before we go today, is there a sense that these hearings are punching through here? That if there is no indictment, that they were still worth something? Donald Trump had committed a crime with regard to January 6th. That's higher than it has been in previous polls, where that number was usually about 50 percent or even just shy of 50 percent. So the question is whether that's reflective of people just suddenly paying attention to this. But I do think there has been a lot of compelling evidence. And crucially, that compelling evidence has been coming from Republicans. Most of the witnesses here have been Republicans who supported Donald Trump in the past.

And when they've been put under oath, they've been forced to say things that they wouldn't want to say otherwise if they didn't have to. And so we'll see how compelling that is to the electorate. But making a presentation that people are going to remember, not just in 2024, but even in the November midterm elections, is a difficult thing to do because we've seen through Trump's past controversies that people do generally have a pretty short attention span. I do think the other thing to remember here is even if the vast majority of Americans don't turn against Donald Trump, even if one or two percent do, that makes his math for assuming the presidency again very difficult. And so even if the impact is on the margins, that could certainly matter. Aaron, thank you. Thank you very much for this. Thank you.

All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.