Front Burner - What’s next after Donald Trump’s indictment?

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Former U.S. President Donald Trump has faced multiple investigations, into claims of election interference in Georgia, his handling of classified material, and his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. But it’s the investigation into a hush money payment made to the porn star Stormy Daniels that has made him the first former President in U.S. history to face criminal charges. Today on Front Burner, CBC Washington correspondent Alex Panetta walks host Jayme Poisson through the potential implications of this extraordinary development. 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 Jamie Poisson. Of all the investigations into Donald Trump, like the one into claims of election interference in Georgia, where he pressed an official to find votes in his favor. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have.

Or the one into the classified material that was recovered by the FBI in a raid at his Mar-a-Lago home. This may be the most politically explosive raid ever undertaken by the FBI. The ex-president released this statement, quote, These are dark times for our nation. As my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago, is currently under siege, raided and occupied. Nothing like this has ever happened to a president of the United States before. We're the one into his role in the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol. The final report is out and it lays out in explicit detail how Donald Trump allegedly

engaged in a multi-part conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election. We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved. Of course, it was the investigation into alleged hush money paid to a porn star before the 2016 election that earned him his first criminal indictment. To refer to anything to do with Trump as unprecedented is really cliche at this point, but it is the first time in history that any ex-U.S. president has faced criminal charges.

And given Trump's track record, the fallout to come will be anything but predictable. Today, to talk us through the potential implications of this extraordinary development in the whole saga of Donald Trump, is my colleague in Washington, Alex Panetta. Alex, hey. Hi. Great to have you. Before we get into the details of what the potential fallout and implications of this news could look like, it's probably worth us just pausing for a second and saying that it feels like we're in pretty uncharted territory here, hey?

Well, absolutely. I mean, 234 years in the life of the American Republic, 46 presidents, nothing like this has ever happened here. You know, politicians and former politicians have been charged in lots of countries, including advanced democracies. So it's not uncharted territory for planet Earth, but certainly within the U.S. context, it's never happened. planet Earth. But certainly within the U.S. context, it's never happened. And depending on your perspective, the possibility of a U.S. president being charged is either a sign of a healthy democracy where no one's above the law or a sign of a democracy in severe trouble. So we'll see how this plays out. And tell me about how Trump has responded to this indictment so far.

What has he said since news broke late Thursday? He's responded about the same way you'd expect him to respond. He's not happy. Yeah, he's not chastened. Let's put it that way. No political persecution. He calls this just, you know, further case of the system being rigged against him. The former president, who, of course course is running to become the future president, releasing this statement saying in part,

quote, I believe this witch hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden. The American people realize exactly what the radical left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our move- As a matter of fact, he's going to have a public event Tuesday night.

He's planning a speech at Mar-a-Lago during prime time, right, because the indictment's supposed to happen in the afternoon. He's planning a speech at Mar-a-Lago during prime time, right? Because the indictment's supposed to happen in the afternoon. He's waiting a few hours because you've got to get in that crucial prime time slot. I mean, this is Donald Trump, right? So yeah, he's reacting exactly the way you'd predict. And he does seem to be going after the prosecutor and then this weekend a little bit more the judge, hey, in this case. And tell me a little bit more about what he's saying there. Well, yeah, he's saying the judge is biased against him because he he sentenced his former confidant, Ellen Weisselberg. He's saying that the district attorney is a progressive activist who's biased against him.

The former president continues to hammer away at the DA in increasingly personal terms. Just since we've been on the air, he posted on his social media platform calling DA Alvin Bragg a Soros-backed animal on Truth Social. Wow. You know, everyone's biased against him, right? That's his take here.

But Trump may be playing with fire. You know, a former district attorney in New York City, Cy Vance, was saying that he thinks that Trump is going down a dangerous road here in the way he's been railing against the justice system because, you know, he's talking about a potential additional charge, depending on what Trump does and what his lawyers do. I would be mindful of not committing some other criminal offense like obstruction of governmental administration, which is interfering with or by threat or otherwise the operation of government. I think that could take what perhaps we think is not the strongest case,

put it in front of a jury. It can change the jury's mind about the severity of the case that they're looking at. You see the way Trump's allies on Capitol Hill have been calling for the prosecutor to show up to testify in Congress. They are asking for all the government records related to the case. And basically what you have is this former prosecutor in New York saying, be careful. That's interesting. Just to clarify, this prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, Trump and his supporters are calling him Soros-backed. George Soros is a billionaire financier and the center of lots of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Soros did contribute to a group that supported Bragg and other liberal candidates seeking to

be prosecutors, but not him directly. And the Trump side has really seized on this because Soros is such a rallying point in their eyes. But obviously there's a lot of misinformation swirling around here. Part of what makes this news so extraordinary is the anxiety that the backlash could be really serious, even violent. This prosecutor, for example, has already received

death threats. Tell me a bit about what Trump was saying even before this indictment was official. Yeah, it's extraordinary. I mean, it sounds like he was trying to scare the prosecutor away from laying these charges. In a way, he's almost toned it down the last couple of days. He was actually more incendiary before the charges were laid. So it feels like a brushback pitch, but it was one that comes within a context, right? This is the man who inspired that mob on January 6th. So he's already played a role in an event where a mob attacked the first branch of government, the congressional or the legislative branch. And now you have him railing against the justice system, the legal branch of government. I mean, he's talked about this being the final battle. And 2024 is the final battle. That's

going to be the big one. If you put me back in the White House, their reign will be over and America will be a free nation once again. He held his first campaign rally of 2024 in Waco, Texas, the site of a standoff between a cult and federal agents. He began that rally with his hand on his heart, listening to a choir, the music of a choir of people who were convicted in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. He said he would pardon some of those people if he becomes president again. In 2016, I declared I am your voice. And now I say to you again tonight, I am your warrior. I am your justice.

For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. We will take care of it. We will take care of it. But there's a context here. He he posted a picture of himself holding a baseball bat next to the prosecutor's picture and said, you know, later it was accidental. Something about the formatting of an article, the way it showed up in his social media feed. That was a baseball bat to promote made in America. Companies make in America. Don't go to Japan to buy. But you know how it was interpreted. Well, because that's the fake news media show.

That's what they do. But, you know, all of this stuff is happening, again, within that context. If January 6th had never happened, maybe you'd see these things differently. But it did happen. And I know that I was talking to a police officer, not in New York, another U.S. city where Trump faces legal jeopardy. And a police officer I talked to months ago said he and his colleagues have been talking about this for over a year now. How will we protect the courthouse if he's charged in our city? Because they know there's a chance of something completely going off the rails.

New video into our newsroom this afternoon of NYPD officers beefing up security. They are setting up barricades near the downtown courthouse. On his social media platform, Truth Social, Mr. Trump has been urging his supporters to protest and, quote, take our nation back. The message has put New York City and federal law enforcement on alert. 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. empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. 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. You know, having said all that, despite these anxieties about a potentially violent backlash, despite Trump's antagonistic language, we learned of the indictment on Thursday. And so far, there's like been nothing like that. that January 6th changed the context. But, you know, it might have done so in a multitude of ways. One of the things that some of the more radical, you know, Trump supporters have been saying is don't go and protest. It's a Fed trap, right? Because the fact that so many people were arrested on January 6th or as a result of January 6th created this precedent that might give people pause before doing anything a little too crazy. But the thing that has people worried, I was talking to an expert on political violence at the University of Chicago, someone who studied violence around the world and lately has started to use the lessons of

his scholarship in his own country, the United States, Robert Pape. And he's been conducting surveys regularly over the last couple of years. And his latest one in January asked people, is the use of force, is violence justified if Donald Trump is charged with a crime? And he found that 6% of respondents said, yes, it is. You might say, well, it's only 6%, right? That's almost 20 million people. And he didn't ask how many of them own guns, but just statistically speaking, you're probably looking at weapons owners among that group saying violence is justified in the event of a Donald Trump arrest. So yeah, it's maybe heartening that there hasn't

been any civil unrest or violence in the last few days, but I wouldn't discount that possibly. And I know people who, you know, there's a reason that the New York courthouse is going to be heavily fortified. Okay. There's obviously huge political implications for this indictment as well. Is it clear to you whether this news is going to hurt Trump's run for president in 2024 or help it? Both. And I'll give you my sort of thinking on this. I don't think it does anything to hurt him in the primary, at least in the short term. It may actually help him win the Republican nomination in the short term. Why is that? I mean, he's easily the front runner. I mean, he's up. Most public opinion polls show him up by double digits nationally. Of course, the polling is a little wonky. I mean, I've seen surveys showing Ron DeSantis ahead nationally and then Trump ahead by like 25 points. So it's kind of strange. But

the vast majority of polling shows Trump ahead and shows him ahead easily. It showed him gaining the last few weeks and even the last few days. So does it help him? Yeah, I think so in the short run because it makes him the center of the political universe. So he'll block out the sunlight for other candidates, other people looking for some attention. They're not going to get any, at least in the short run. Why are his poll numbers up, you think? Well, because there's kind of almost like a knee-jerk backlash reaction, right? It's like, well, if the establishment wants to go after our guy, well, then he's our guy, right? And also, it makes it impossible to have a conversation

about Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, potentially Asa Hutchinson, former governor of Arkansas just announced he's running for president. Who's talking about that now, right? So, because Donald Trump's in the news, right? So it makes it really hard for other people to get any oxygen. But here's where I think there is potential for this to hurt him. I'll be looking very closely at general election surveys for the next little while, hypothetical matchups between him and Joe Biden. And if, and it's a big caveat here, I'll say, we don't know if this is going to happen, but if he starts to take a hit among swing voters, and we know that swing voters are less enamored with him. We know that they don't really like

him very much. And the early polling on charges against Trump show that swing voters are likelier to say that they're fine with this prosecution. Not overwhelmingly, but a small majority appear to be okay with it, or small plurality. So if swing voters say, you know what, I'm done with the drama. I'm going to vote for Biden against Trump. And if Trump takes a hit of three, four, five points in the general election matchups, then it can affect the primary process because you're going to start to hear people use the electability argument against Donald Trump. You'll start to hear people like DeSantis and others not criticize Trump on substance, right? And it's hard to criticize Trump on substance if you're a

Republican. You don't want to antagonize the MAGA types, right? You don't want to start an argument within your party. It's a heck of a lot easier to criticize your intra-party rival on the electability front, saying, look, I just think we're going to lose if we nominate this guy. And you saw after the last midterms, Trump took one of his most dramatic hits in support among Republicans after the Republicans did relatively poorly compared to their expectations in the midterms. The worst crime wave since the 1990s, the worst border crisis in U.S. history. We have Joe Biden, who is the least popular president since Harry Truman, since presidential polling happened, and there wasn't a red wave. That is a searing indictment of the Republican Party. Then you suddenly had people making this case against Trump, not that he's too right wing or not a real conservative or that he's unpredictable or that he's crazy or that he's, you know, corrupt. You know, forget all that stuff. That doesn't move the numbers among Republicans. They came after him saying he's a loser. Republicans are already

pointing fingers at one another with GOP lawmakers in both the House and the Senate criticizing their leadership for failing to meet expectations. Definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And Donald Trump kept saying, we're going to be winning so much, we'll get tired of winning. I'm tired of losing. I mean, that's all he's done. I think it's basically the third election in a row that Donald Trump has cost us the race. And it's like, you know, three strikes, you're out. Right. And that suddenly had an effect. So my thinking on this is the indictment doesn't do anything to hurt him in the short run, but it could potentially have a long-term effect that's negative if it shows that he takes a hit with the general election electorate.

electorate. Yeah, you mentioned Ron DeSantis. How is he handling this news so far? I mean, he's cowering. No Republican has come out to criticize Trump here. And there might be substantive reasons for that. There's some doubts about this case, which we can talk about in a sec. But the Republicans are circling the wagons around him. And just a few weeks ago, DeSantis tried to have it both ways, right? He tried to say, you know, Bragg is a Soros-funded prosecutor. And so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponized their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety. But, you know, I can't really say much about this because I don't know much about paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just I can't speak to that, but what I can speak to is that, right? So he took this little shot at Trump's joked about Trump and just the fact that he was

trying to have it both ways there, like Trump's people came down on him, you know, like a ton of bricks, Donald Trump posting to truth social quote, Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about false accusations and fake stories sometime in the future as he gets older, wiser and better known when he's unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are under age or possibly a man. I'm sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do. DeSantis hasn't declared for president yet. Sounds like he will. So what did he do this time? Like when the indictment actually came out, he was in line. He was basically singing from Trump's hymn

book. And that's what every other Republican is doing. The idea that the Republicans are circling the wagon here, I want to talk to you about more about this because, you know, everything I read is that the party establishment wants to rid themselves of this guy. And I do wonder if they're missing an opportunity here. But you mentioned before, maybe part of that is because there are problems with this case. So let's dig into that a little bit more, like why they're not taking a stronger stance or trying to use this unprecedented moment in American history to kind of push him further into the ethos, right? Well, there's two reasons, the law and politics we'll talk about the law in a second but politics right you remember jeff flake former senator from arizona

came out against trump his political career is over yeah remember uh let's see who else liz cheney career over adam kinsinger career over Yeah, some Republicans have survived taking a stand against Trump, but not too many. So anyone with survival instincts is going to have reason to fear speaking out against Trump. Heck, the people campaigning against Trump for the primary, like the Republican presidential nomination, won't even criticize him. They're scared of him, and they're scared of his supporters. So that's the issue. It's like for the last six years or seven years, there's a large tranche of Republicans. I wouldn't even posit to you that most Republicans in Washington wish Trump would disappear from the face of the earth, but they kind of just hope it happens by accident. They're

not going to do anything to accelerate that process because they're afraid that they'll be disappeared first from their political career. Yeah, they want to wait for like the data to come back on swing voters so then they can kind of use that as a bit of an argument, exactly what you were trying to say earlier, as opposed to just like coming out in front of this. And we haven't gotten to the point that you made earlier that there are sort of potential problems with this case too. Let's talk about those now. And maybe in the context of the fact that we actually don't have the indictment yet. We're expected to get it on Tuesday at the arraignment. And so what will you be watching for there? Okay. So Trump's going to be fingerprinted. He's going to be in court to hear the charges

against him. I look forward to seeing the charge sheet. I I'm looking to see whether we see a mug shot, uh, cause New York state doesn't make it automatic that you would release it. As a matter of fact, there's some strict rules against it, but there are some loopholes. Um, so anyway, I'm going to be looking to see whether we actually see a mugshot. But I also want to see what the case is built on, because I'll suggest to any listeners who want to understand the history of this case a little better, you can pick up a book by Mark Pomerantz, who was part of the prosecution team before Alvin Bragg took over in 2022. And he wrote a book about the effort to prosecute Trump. And he was regretting that it

hadn't happened. But he talked about different cases. And one of them was this, what he called it was this zombie case. It's about the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels in 2016. And he goes through basically the ups and downs in this case. And he calls it a zombie because it was dead and it came back and it died and it came back. So they looked at using state law eventually. And state law has this crime called falsifying business records. But for that thing to stick, you need an underlying crime. Like, for example, you can't falsify your business records and say the company Picnic we bought like 7-Up, but in reality you actually bought like Coca-Cola. There has to be a crime there, right?

you actually bought like coca-cola there has to be a crime there right and they were looking for across them to to serve as the underpinning of this this state case they looked at potential money laundering saying that stormy daniels was laundering money right because she falsified the sort of the origins of a payment to her but then they said well this won't work because the the laundering supposedly happened after the falsification, whereas the crime had to happen first. So they dropped that. Well, now apparently they're looking at possibly making the federal elections charge, saying he didn't disclose this as a campaign expense. But then they're going to say, okay, so then the underlying crime supposedly is a federal crime that Trump was never charged for acting as the underpinning of a state crime.

Now, apparently that's a novel legal approach. I don't know if it's ever been used, maybe in the long history of the United States it has, but it's being described as a pretty novel legal argument. And so what's the underlying crime going to be? I'm looking forward to seeing that on Tuesday. I've also heard, speaking to a former New York prosecutor who told me, don't discount the possibility that you'll see something completely different. People will remember his company, Trump Organization, was found guilty of submitting fraudulent claims a few months ago. said that Trump was aware of this. Now, what this prosecutor told me is it would have been possible for the prosecutors now to just read the transcript of that Trump organization case to this grand jury

and add that tax case to the Stormy Daniels case. So he's saying, don't be surprised if this thing is like this Tuesday surprise next week where you didn't expect this case. So just something to think about. Oh, that's so interesting. I hadn't heard that before. Definitely one of the few very important things for us to look out for in the coming days. Alex, thank you for this. Thanks so much. It's a pleasure to do 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.