Jack - Episode 28 - Trump’s Federal Indictment

Episode Date: June 11, 2023

This week: Trump (and Walt Nauta) get indicted in the Mar-a-Lago documents case (this episode was recorded before the indictment became public); the transcript of Trump showing off a classified document is released; the January 6 investigation is still moving forward; plus a listener question and more.Allison and Andy go over the indictment in an episode later today!Do you have questions about the cases and investigations? Email [e-mail] and put Jack in the subject line.OrClick here: https://formfaca.de/sm/PTk_BSogJFollow the Podcast on Apple Podcasts:https://apple.co/3BoVRhNCheck out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AG on Twitter:Dr. Allison Gill https://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodAndrew McCabe isn’t on Twitter, but you can buy his book The Threathttps://www.amazon.com/Threat-Protects-America-Terror-Trump-ebook/dp/B07HFMYQPGWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyhttp://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P

Hey everyone, it's Allison Gill. This episode of Jack was recorded right before the charges against Donald Trump were unsealed So please enjoy this episode about the lead up to the charges and the announcement of the indictment But look for a second bonus episode of Jack later today where Andy and I will go over the charges. We'll see you then I signed an order appointing Jack Smith Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. What law have I grew? The events leading up to and on January 6th. Classified documents and other presidential records.

You understand what prison is? Send me to jail. Hey everybody, welcome to Jack, the podcast about all things special counsel. It is Sunday, June 11th. It's the week 28, okay, 28 weeks in and I'm Allison Gill, your co-host. And I'm Andy McCabe. Allison, a couple of things happened this week. In fact, a couple of things happened in the last hour. But of course, we're talking about the fact that special counsel, Jack Smith, has indicted

former President Donald Trump on seven federal charges in Miami on Thursday night. So, we're going to go over what we know about those charges. Plus, the absolute fire hose of news about the documents case that we've gotten since the last episode. Yeah, 100%. We learned there was just so much this week. Grand jury moving down to Miami, a flood in the server room where the Mara Lago surveillance footage was stored. Donald's lawyers having received a target letter for Donald last week, then meeting with Jack Smith in DC, then quitting, and then some more details about that audio recording of Donald waving the Iran document around during a meeting in 2021. And Andy,

I guess the best way to approach this news week is to kind of do it chronologically to what led us up to the charges. And then we can discuss the charges. And then we can talk about the other news that was happening in the January 6th investigation. And I mean, there's just so much. So why don't we kick it off with the target letter? Because that's a big deal. And I've been everywhere I've been doing appearances and hits.

Andy, I always say, look, 999 times out of a thousand, if you get a target letter, you're going to get indicted. I know one guy who got a target letter that didn't get indicted, but I only know the one guy. Well, you are correct about that. I think you've worked the math well. The target letter is a very sad day for anyone. And in this case, that consistency seems to be holding. I think it's, you know, we hear a lot about

these things in different investigations, you know, target letter. And then we hear sometimes people who are referred to as a subject of investigation. What's the difference? Basically, anyone can be a subject of a federal investigation if their behavior comes within the scope of the investigation. That's a very low standard. That's the official DOJ definition in the DOJ manual. But a target is defined as someone who the prosecutors already have significant evidence

of your guilt and you are essentially a presumptive defendant. You haven't been indicted yet, but everybody is basically presumed that you will get indicted. So that's why when that letter drops, it shows up at your house, you can pretty much count on the fact that you're going to be getting indicted. And not only that, you're probably going to be getting indicted pretty soon because they don't typically send those out until the very end. Yep.

And shortly after that, the Trump attorneys, the lawyer team, the Blunderdome down there, decided to get together and go and meet with the... Well, at first they demanded a meeting with the DAG, the deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco and the attorney general, Merrick Garland. And they're like, yeah, no, you can meet with Jack Smith and this other high-level official from the Deputy Attorney General's office. Yep.

And so they went and met. And during that meeting, from my understanding and from some reporting, additional reporting from Hugo Lowell and from sources at CNN, ABC, I mean, just reported everywhere, they asked not to indict their client, just generally what you do. But they also came up with a little bit of prosecutorial misconduct. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later in the show. But that meeting happened.

But then the New York Times reported that Trump's lawyers met with Jack Smith in a high-level official from the DAG office. Because, you know, like I said, they wanted to meet with Merrick Garland, no, but you're going to meet with the person who's actually running the investigation. And during that meeting, they raised prosecutorial misconduct, and then they also asked the Department of Justice to not indict their client. And this prosecutorial misconduct, Hugo Lowell teased this story out and got the exclusive,

basically what happened is, and I wanted to ask you about this, because this just sounds like a benign conversation to me. But Jay Bratt called Walt Nauta's lawyer in and said, we need to come and talk to you, can't be over the phone. They sat him down, Jay Bratt told him they were going to charge Walt Nauta, his client, with false statements, and said, we want your client to cooperate. And Nottas lawyer then denied the false statements vehemently. And then at some point in the conversation, Jay Bratt brought up the fact that Walt Nott as lawyer had recently applied for a federal judgeship. And what they're insinuating is that Bratt was somehow trying to coerce Nauta's lawyer

by saying, maybe hinting, like, I can give you a hand with your judgeship application, even though no one at the DOJ has anything, any sway or any way to do anything like that. I think this might have just been, and Hugo Lohl brought up this possibility, might have just been part of a conversation. Yeah, I mean, this is a really strange turn of events or maybe non events. So in that, in those facts, you just laid out for us all the way up to the mention of the lawyer applying for the federal judgehip, everything before that is totally normal, right? Prosecutors and defense attorneys have these conversations every day in cases where prosecutors are trying to convince defense attorneys to bring their clients in

and legitimately cooperate. So all that is totally normal, of course, a business. Now, if, if, and I say this because we don't have any proof of this whatsoever at this point, but if J. Bratt made this comment referring in some way to the defense attorneys existing consideration for a federal judgeship, in the most innocuous, meaningless way, you could imagine him saying something like, listen, you know, this is in the interest of justice. It's the right thing to do to bring your client in. He has important information that's important to a major case, you know, you appreciate how important this case is. I mean, you're somebody who's actually considering being a judge, full stop. Like, that's a reference to his

to his desire to be a judge, but in a, in basically the most innocuous way possible. The other end of the spectrum is he says, hey, look, I know you're applying for a federal judgeship, and if you don't bring your client in to cooperate, I'm gonna put a kibosh on that application, and you'll never be a judge. That's, of course, terrible. That sounds very coercive and improper.

Either way, this is an element, this is something for the department to investigate, right? They hand this over to the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Department of Justice, and they look into allegations of misconduct on the part of prosecutors. Depending on what they find,

maybe it's not the not so bad end, maybe it's closer to the really bad end, they would then take action against J. Brat. My point in this long explanation is none of that would result in eliminating or dismissing or ending this case. Because what do we know? We know that this was a conversation with the attorney,

not with the actual witness or the attorney's client. We also know that the client is actually not cooperating at this point. So there's nothing really happened here except a comment and a alleged comment by Jay Brack, which honestly, if he said that, it was an important thing to bring up. It was a mistake he should not have. Whether or not he'll be disciplined for it in any way, who's to say that needs to be investigated. But I think the Trump team throwing this out there as like their first line of defense in this unbelievably significant and serious case

is really just a bunch of hot air. It's not gonna get them anywhere, even if it is as bad as they say, it's not really gonna have that much of an impact on the case. But it's a convenient thing for them to talk about because honestly, they don't have anything else to talk about here. Right? That's what I was exactly what I was going to say.

His defense has been blown even the defense of, you know, clad to classified with my mind or didn't know I had them, even though those were blown wide open by the, the battle with the 11th circuit, you know, because none of that actually matters. The declassification status of these documents is a red hailing as both the Department of Justice and the 11th Circuit said that was that was their terminology. And it's such a flimsy defense that he wouldn't officially state it to the court as being a defense. Because, you know, the DOJ asked, tell us here in court right now in writing, are

you saying that these are declassified? Well, we're not going to use that defense at this time. But his public defense, which I'm sure he's just trying to get this tried in the public here before it goes to court, was that he declassified everything was mine. That got blown apart by this audio tape we're going to talk about in a little bit. He's got nothing left other than prosecutorial misconduct. He's going to pound on for days. That fits right into his main approach on everything.

To demonize the prosecutors, demonize the FBI. Try to point the finger, oh, look how it's, they're not fair. It's not fair to me. Honestly, it's working. It's working with the people that like him and who follow him and support him. Those people, his supporters on the hill are all kind of aping that same language today.

They're drawing these connections. I guess it's not actually a connection, but they're comparing the announcement of this indictment or the revelation of this indictment yesterday to the handing over of the FBI of some piece of informant information, unvetted informant information that were unconfirmed informant information about an allegation against Joe Biden years ago. You know, of course, that happened on the same day they must be connected.

It's just nonsense. It's absolute nonsense. And I have to say that in this, all the crazy and defamatory and slanderous things that are being said about the FBI, with everything that we know in this case so far, which is a fair amount, right? We've been 20 or 28 episodes in here. There's not a single piece of information, not one that actually points to misconduct or, you know, bad conduct or political motivation behind this investigation. Okay, I get it. If you're a hardcore Trump supporter, you don't like this investigation because it makes your guy look bad and it's disappointing. Sorry about that. But there's actually

not any facts that support any of these allegations. The idea and the idea that the FBI is some hotbed of left-leaning activists who are out to get Republicans, it's just, it's absurd. It is some, it is such a conservative place, the FBI. Generally, the culture is very conservative. I don't know how people in the FBI vote because you don't really talk about that, but I would strongly guess that many of the vote for Republican candidates, I mean, it's just nonsense. And it's getting hard to listen to, but I guess we have to be prepared to hear a lot more of it. Yeah, well, we went through it in the Mueller investigation.

We went through it with the Russia, you know, with Crossfire Hurricane and all of the attacks from the person in the White House at the time against the intelligence community. It was difficult to watch when all that happened. So it's going to happen again. I know they're better prepared for it. We know for a fact that Jim Jordan and Donald Trump and Trump's lawyers were trying to get the names of all of the people on Jack Smith's team. They were trying to get their, you know, identify them. And Jack Smith was like, no, you may not.

And they keep trying. And it's just because they want to publicly attack these folks. I mean, we saw it, you know, you know better than anybody. What happens to people who investigate the former president of the United States? Yeah, I know, I know. And that's what we're gonna see happen here. So don't get caught up in the hype, I guess.

And our listeners know that, always ask yourself, like, what do we actually know? What are the facts that we have that you could base that opinion or that allegation on? And in terms of this misconduct stuff, other than what we've talked about about this allegation about Jay Bratt and Walt Not as lawyer, we haven't heard anything. Nothing. Zero. So anyway. Yeah, no, agreed. And, you know, from people I've spoken to who know and have worked with Jay Bratt, that's not the kind of person that he is.

He's a very cool headed, even tempered guy. So anyway, we'll see, we'll see what ends up happening. Hugo Lowell has said that the National Security Division knows about this prosecutorial misconduct allegation and they take it very seriously as they as anyone should so it will be investigated It will not kill the case. I personally don't think so and and I'm glad to hear that you agree You have a lot more experience on this on these things than I do all right We have so much more to get we haven't even gotten to the charges my friend So a little bit more to get to I want to talk about this this pool party this potential pool party conspiracy that might have happened, but we have to take a quick break. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. All right, Allison. Here we go. We're going to roll on to the pool party. And here we go. We're going to roll on to the pool party. And this is, you know, we're, we're, I'm sure we're going to make a lot of jokes about this as it goes on, but the, but the story is really kind of, kind of amazing. CNN had exclusive reporting that Jack Smith was asking witnesses in the grand jury about a pool draining incident. So apparently, the maintenance man that helped Walton ought to move boxes accidentally flooded the server room where the Marlago surveillance video was being stored. Okay, just

step back to steps here. So maintenance guy who is involved in moving the boxes, shifting the boxes, the game that was being played with where the boxes are located. Also was in charge of draining the pool and just happened to do so in a way that took the water from the pool and put it into the server room. So let's keep in mind, the Washington Post also reported that the same maintenance worker called the Marlago IT guy in July and asked questions about how long the surveillance footage was stored and whether or not it was waterproof.

No, I had a dead last part. That's not true. I just had a bad. Well, apparently the servers were not damaged. But I mean, there are entire industries dedicated to saving data on servers that have gotten water on them. So I'm very surprised that this is, if this was not, like, we have to say, this could have just been an accident.

It could have literally been the same guy who talked to the IT guy about the surveillance tapes that was happening during the pool a few months later and happened to the water, happened to be accidentally sent to that server room. Could be coincidence. We just have to say that that's a possibility. But to think that you would be able to destroy this information, it's, I mean, it's totally consistent with their basic gang that couldn't shoot straight approach to this entire investigation. Right. So it could have been an accident. It seems not to have been significant because no one is actually saying that, oh, yeah, this is where this data was. Now it's no longer accessible because of the flood in the server room.

In fact, they're saying, you said that the servers weren't even damaged. I love talking about it because it's hilarious, but it's probably not really a thing in the overall kind of, you know, spectrum of this case and so many significant developments that we have seen and heard about at the end of the day, this is, I see it as more of just kind of like, can you believe it sort of anecdote? Yeah, and by the way, we should talk about kind of,

what went on during that, you know, that whole moving of the boxes situation because we just found out, Andy, that Waltona has been indicted alongside Donald Trump. This news is breaking pretty much right this second as we are recording this. And so now, you know, that we know that the maintenance guy, because here's my thought, right? Maintenance guy has his own lawyer, John Irving. Walt Nauda and Taylor Boudewitch and Cosh Patel and a few other people, some oath keepers, Kelly Megs,

all share a same lawyer. And now both of these lawyers, John Irving and Stanley Woodward, I think his name is, I can't remember, are both paid for by the Trump, save America pack. But it's of note, I think that we have a Walton Outta indictment and not a maintenance man indictment that we know of because they don't have the same law.

You can't really share a same lawyer if one person is cooperating against the other. So this kind of tells me that we might have a cooperator in this maintenance man. But again, this is all speculation. We don't really know. It's not like he switched lawyers at the last minute. That's usually an indication that somebody is cooperating if they're if they're sharing a lawyer with somebody they're about to flip on. We saw it happen in Fannie Willis' case with the fraudulent electors. But, you know, well, Nada is caught on that surveillance footage, moving boxes. At least we know back into that storage room the day before they have, Corcoran go and search through it, or excuse me,

the day before they have the FBI come down, to retrieve the documents Corcoran go and search through it and or excuse me, the day before they have the FBI come down to retrieve the documents Corcoran had searched for in that room. Yeah. Not as on the video moving the boxes around. He's also the guy who knew exactly the time and place that Corcoran was going to search. He's the guy who gave Corcoran access to the boxes. He had allegedly, he had the key to the room

and Corcoran had to go to him before he could get in. So he's in a very curious spot there. Now you layer on top of that what we know about his efforts to cooperate. So he did come in. It was interviewed under the pretence of cooperating with the government, but we know that that ended when the government determined that he had misled them. So he has, you know, he tried to cooperate, didn't really work out, sounds like the government put more pressure on him, more maybe even including this alleged conversation about the judgeship, and ultimately he decided not to cooperate. We had heard through a lot of reporting the last few weeks that his attorney had basically

cut off all contact with DOJ. So that's a good sign that this thing has not worked out. Now I will. That sounds like the dumbest thing to do, though. I mean, you know, which makes me really question the, not just because he's being paid by the Trump save America pack, but the integrity of this lawyer or his knowledge. It's really, this is like co-operator 101. When you bring someone in who's facing exposure in the case you're investigating, you're

trying to get them to cooperate on some more significant target and they decide, okay, I'm going to come in. That's called a proffer session. The subject of investigation comes in with his or her lawyer, and he sits down with two, typically two FBI agents and the line prosecutor. And at the very beginning of that meeting, the terms of this agreement are very clear. It is, you have to tell the government everything you know about, not just the questions they have for you about this case, but any other criminal activity you might have been involved in.

And if we determine you are both useful and truthful, then you can get what's known as a cooperation agreement, which would basically say you agree to plead guilty to some one of the crimes that you've admitted you were involved in, in return for the prosecutors requesting at the end of the whole procedure when you're ultimately sentenced on the one thing you pled guilty to, prosecutors will ask the judge to downwardly depart on your sentence, so sentence you to less than what you deserve. The problem is, if at any point in that process, the prosecutors and the agents figure out that you're lying and you haven't gone all the way in and fully committed to telling the truth, you're

a host. You get no deal, you get no agreement, there's no easy plea, and there's certainly no sentence reduction later. And the prosecutors can then use everything that you said in the proper sessions against you if you ever take the stand. So to come in and not go and to do it, but not to do it all the way, or not do it well enough to actually get

a cooperation agreement is the dumbest thing you can possibly do. And the prosecutors will tell you that at the first meeting, like, if you're not gonna really do this, if you think you can lie to us, just get up and walk out right now because it's really going to hurt you in the long run. And that may be what happened here to Walton Adub.

Yeah, maybe because we know he came in and said, I didn't do anything. And then they confronted him with some video footage and said, yeah, you did. And then he told him, Trump told me to move those. And then he clams up, you know. And if it weren't for the clam up and full on investigation where he, you know, maybe becomes a target now instead of a subject or a witness, now we find the text messages, his text messages, we get all this other information. We find out about the conversations that he had with Donald Trump perhaps. So now we're in, had he cooperated,

perhaps. So now we're in, had he cooperated, the case might not be as strong as it is, but you never know. It might be, it might be stronger. He could have given some information that they had no idea about. That's just how, you know, that's just how the cookie crumbles. Who knows? And had he cooperated, maybe we never get to the maintenance worker, but the problem for him is he didn't cooperate. He's not cooperating. You just got indicted. And now they have maybe, we don't know this for a fact, but maybe that maintenance worker is cooperating and you're getting, you know, 80, 90% of what you needed from Nauta, you're now getting from this maintenance worker who's even less culpable. He's even lower on the food chain. So that's a good thing for the prosecutors. Now, I will say it's always possible to cooperate after

you've been indicted. It's a little harder. The benefit to you as a defendant is not quite as rich, but nevertheless, sometimes it takes an indictment for some defendants to wake up and realize, uh-oh, I really need to get on the government side here if I'm going to have the best result for myself. That could still happen. Naut has been indicted. He may decide to change his mind about cooperating. But if he does, then the government is stuck with a problem because he's lied to them in the past, which means if you use him as a witness, you have to expose to the jury that he's all he's lied to the government before, which raises the question of, he might be lying to the jury now. So it's hard to rehabilitate a cooperator

who you have already proven lied to you in the past. It's not impossible, but it is tough, and it requires a jury that's gonna be very forgiving. But looking at these charges, I don't know that the DOJ necessarily even needs this guy as a cooperator anymore, not at least not Walton Outa, because these are some very, this conspiracy to obstruct as under 1512, and we'll talk about that in the next segment. But these are serious charges.

We're talking about 20-year maximum sentence charges, false statements, carry a five-year maximum sentence. We're going to talk about all of these individual title and codes that were reported by ABC News. But before we get to that, I wanted to talk a little bit more about, you know, I had mentioned the same lawyers for, you know, that Stanley Woodward guy. I hope I'm getting that name right. I'm sorry. I'm doing it off the top of my head. that Stanley Woodward guy, I hope I can get in that name right, I'm sorry, I'm doing it off the top of my head. Somebody I'm sure will send in a correcting email if I if I'm getting it wrong, but that you know, this lawyer was shared by Cosh Patel Walton out of, and of course Taylor Budewitch. Now Taylor, Taylor Budewitch testified in Florida this week. He talked about a letter that Trump wanted to release in 2022 saying, I've given everything back to the archives. But apparently Taylor Butuich didn't feel

comfortable releasing that statement. And there were many several Trump aides who weren't comfortable releasing that statement because they didn't believe it was true. So they asked him about that. And that's interesting because I thought for a second that maybe it wasn't, you know, maybe they were just questioning Taylor Boodoo, which and, uh, you know, Walton out on everybody because these lawyers are paid by the Save America Pack and maybe this was probably part of Jack Smith's probe into Trump's super PACs because that's a separate investigation that's going on right now. I mean, it's tied up. It's tied to all of them, but it's another track that he's looking at.

But then he was asked about that document. And then Andy, we learned that Jay Bratt and a guy named Harbock were down there in Miami on Thursday, on Wednesday, and then on Thursday, it was the prosecutor, it was harbock, but no witnesses were going in and out of the grand jury room. And that led us to sort of wonder, are they voting on a true bill today? Because the independent UK paper said that they were going to be voting on a true bill on Thursday, but that we were going to be doing it in DC. And no other US outlet was picking up that story. So either they just accidentally got the Thursday right or they had the Thursday right It was just a wrong venue and nobody else could cooperate

The crossfire of media sources. It's like never ends but Right. Yeah, I that that was really fascinating watching that all day yesterday We're all trying to decode you know I don't I think most of us didn't really understand the the significance of a grand jury in Miami until we heard about the appearance by Taylor Buddha which the day before. So it raised this question of like, wow, what are they going to, what's going to happen here? Who's going to indict the case? Trying to figure that out in my calculation, I thought, you know, it may end up going in Miami, but probably not for a while because you think about all of the witnesses that we have seen appear in DC with no testified here in

DC based on the privilege litigation and everything else. That's a ton of information that has to be basically put in front of the Miami grand jury. You can do that. Because we learn this week that just this week from the New York Times, it was kind of buried in the story that 20 secret service agents, maybe a little more than 20 secret service agents had testified to the DC Grand Jury in the documents case.

In recent months, I mean, there's just a lot that you have to bring in all the staff members and all the secret service folks and everybody. So it's a lot of info. It's a ton, and all the transcripts of all that testimony has to be given to the new grand jury. A lot of it is read to them. So these are processes that take time.

And I think we were assuming, because we just learned about the Miami grand jury, it must be fairly new. I think actually what happened is they've probably been doing that for weeks, very quietly off the radar, so to speak. And so they were actually, they were in a position to get a vote yesterday, and one that really surprised us in terms of timing. Yeah, it was. It was because I was in the car driving home.

It was about 7.30 p.m. on Thursday night, and I get the ding ding on the phone and it's it's Donald posting to true social that he has been indicted in the box his hopes. Which is his new name for this documents case. And so then I start looking around. Okay, because an all NBC reporting Donald says he's being indicted. Donald says he's being indicted. And I remember what happened when Donald said he was being indicted the last time. He said, Tuesday, I'm going to be and it was wrong. So I was trying to be skeptical about what Donald posts on truth social. But then the reporting started to come in closer to 8 p.m. and that's when, you know, we all put out our official reports that Donald had been indicted. Now, I've finished up, I hit at CNN, I'm trying to remember how this actually worked.

I think I was on the six. I had a couple of blocks in the front of Wolf's show at six. I probably got out of there about 6.30. I had to, you know, I was going to stay if the indictment happened, but it hadn't happened by then. Nobody thought it would. So I drove all the way home, which is, there's a bit of a haul from me. And I wasn't a house, maybe 10 minutes.

And I look up at the TV, it's like, I was kind of, I was kind of tight and sure enough, phone rang. And I'm like, can you please get in your car immediately and come back in? So I just turned around, went back in and stayed till midnight. But yeah, it's been kind of a, well, it's been a crazy week on a lot of ground. So that resolves the whole Miami versus DC venue issue as well, which I think is really fascinating. I think this is another example of an issue that the prosecutors have probably really been suffering over for months, probably a lot of research, a lot of conversations, a lot of high level

meetings to determine where to bring this case. And just to go through the math of it a little bit, obviously in terms of jury pool, if you're a prosecutor, you want the case in DC. I mean, DC voted overwhelmingly for Biden. So just that indicator alone says, you're more likely to get jurors who are, who have a negative, you know, opinion about Donald Trump. So that's a positive of DC. There are in terms of where venue is,

of course, I'm sure everyone knows the constitution requires when you're charged with a federal crime, you have to be charged in the place where the crime happened. Now that's a little bit vague, right? If it's a crime that occurred over a long period of time and multiple acts, there are questions about where it happened, mean where it started or where it finished. And there's no really clear answer to that.

You just kind of have to feel through each case on the facts. There is a good argument to say that the crime of taking the documents knowingly and intentionally taking documents you shouldn't have taken started here in DC and taking being moving them to Florida. That is made a little bit more complicated by the fact that Trump left DC early. If you remember, on the day of Biden's inauguration,

rather than sticking around and knowing the handoff that every other president has ever done, Trump just got out of town. He gave that little speech at the airport out at Andrews and got on the Air Force one and left. So technically, by leaving before Biden was sworn in, Trump was still president, which could have raised an issue in this criminal litigation about, well, he was actually still president at that moment when he left. So it wasn't an

unlawful taking because as president, he still had lawful access to all those documents. So there is that. The other problem of DC is the DC district has some legacy cases that have had not great rulings on this issue of venue, venue choice by prosecutors. And finally, there is a current Supreme Court case that really changes, court case that really changes the outlook on this. Yeah, I want to ask you about that. Yeah, so if prosecutors bring a case somewhere on a theory of venue that is later proven wrong, typically, the remedy for that is the case gets dismissed, but then the prosecutors can re-indite the case in the correct venue. So this is a little bit complicated because you could lose the venue motion

as a prosecutor, either during the trial on a jury determination because it is actually a question for the jury, or you could lose it on a motion hearing, right? The defendant files a motion and then the judge decides whether or not you're in the right venue. Well, this Supreme Court case may just change the remedy in a fundamental way.

The case was argued a few weeks ago. It has not been decided yet, but it is possible that this Supreme Court will decide that the proper remedy when a prosecutor brings a case in the wrong venue is complete dismissal with prejudice, which means you can never re-indite that case. So that's another thing that the Jack Smith team has been thinking about. And I think when you stack all those risks up

on top of each other in like a big risk sandwich, it just becomes too big to swallow. Even though you're likely to get a less favorable jury in like a big risk sandwich, it just becomes too big to swallow. Even though you're likely to get a less favorable jury in Florida, and even though you probably have not as good a judges to pick from in Florida, and we'll talk more about that in a minute. The prosecutors are probably like, you know what?

That's the really the proper venue. That's where the most of these actions took place. Certainly where the obstruction took place, There's no venue challenge there whatsoever. Let's just bring it in Florida and that's what they did. Yeah, I agree. And we'll take a look at these charges. We're going to take a quick break and I want to talk about the venue and the judge as soon as we take this break. We'll be right back everybody. Stick around. ["Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-um-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum that the summons has Judge Eileen Cannon's name on it, along with Judge- I cannot make this stuff up. Holy cow!

With Judge Ryan Hart. Judge Ryan Hart is the one who issued the search warrant on Mars. So this is where the original case came from. And I want to talk briefly about, Miami is like two and a half at two hours away from Palm Beach. Yes. But from what my understanding, I talk to Dave Ehrenberg, who's the DA down there in Palm Beach.

I think what's happening, and he hasn't got confirmation on this yet, but I think what's happening is, the granaries are only meeting in Miami in the Southern District right now, not in Palm Beach. Right. Because of COVID, now, not in Palm Beach. Because of COVID, still, there's still restrictions. So, that is why the grand jury would be in Miami because that's the only place in the Southern District

of Florida where grand juries are meeting. But the proper venue would be Palm Beach because that is where Mar-a-Lago is and that's where the subscription happened. And so, Eileen Cannon, now we don't know if it's just the arrangement, the summons, because Donald Trump also put on true social,

he has to appear Tuesday at 3 p.m. Eastern Time in the court down there. So we don't know if it's just for this, or if she is the judge on this case, but her name is on this summons. Yeah, that's right. So we should learn more about this on Tuesday. As I understand it, Palm Beach is a very small federal courthouse. It's kind of like a satellite office of the real federal courthouse in Miami. And there's a very limited number of judges there.

I'm not sure that she's the only full bird federal judge, so, you know. Yeah, there's also Judge Middlebrook, who found that Trump was judge-shopping when he went to look for Eileen Cannon. And I think dismissed that whole case against his lawsuit and he was the one who put sanctions down for the Trump lawsuit of you and 30 other people.

That's right. I think that was middle Brooks as well. I knew I had some connection to that place. Yeah, so there's not a lot of judges there. There's probably a couple of federal magistrate judges which are lower level judges that usually handle things like arrangements and pretrial motions and stuff like that. So it's a limited pool once you figure that that's where you're pulling from. Now, when it comes to like polling for a jury, the jury pool for that district is not just West Palm, right? It's kind of, you know, they, the jury, you know,

jury duty notices go out by the entirety of the district. So I think the pool is probably, I don't know, probably more diverse than the pool that you would get from West Palm. Hard to make any clear confident assumptions about whether they're Trump leaning or not Trump leaning. I mean, that's beyond me. But that's how I actually got it. Well, let's see. Yeah, the Southern District skews damn. It skews damn a little bit, but it's certainly not a DC grand jury as you brought it before.

But as, and if you remember, Eileen Cannon, that was the one who had appointed a special master, got her ass handed to her by the DOJ and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, very, kind of embarrassing, that vacate her like twice on things that she decided. So Joyce Vance is seeing on Twitter that there's a possibility that there could be a motion for her to recuse if she doesn't automatically. She says that the 11th Circuit probably is not going to want to go through this again. The District Court there is not going to want this to be done wrongly. So there might be a chance for that if she is the judge that's assigned to this case. a chance for that if she is the judge that's assigned to this case. We'll see.

We'll see what ends up happening, but that's for now. All we know is her name and Ryan Hart's name have appeared on the summons for Trump to come back in on Tuesday at three. That's really all we have for now. Yeah. Quite frankly, my biggest concern about Canon, if she stays on the case, is not this question of bias so much as it is a question of competence, her ruling in that in the special master, special master lawsuit actually is what it was was just so preposterously wrong. So

obviously wrong on so many counts. It was contrary to the current state of the law. It was poorly reasoned. And that's why she got shelled by the Peel's Court. And if I'm correct, a majority of the three judges, at least two of those three judges, were also Trump appointees, pretty conservative judges who just kind of shut her down. So it's really hard for prosecutors and for defense attorneys to have to try a big important case in front of a judge who's not one of the better judges on the bench, because you lose the ability to predict where the judge would rule on any given motion that you're thinking about, someone who's just kind of, you know, Alps Air, loose cannon, exactly. Unpredictable, not really very closely tied to the law,

not known for really well-reasoned arguments and things like that. It just kind of throws the whole thing into chaos, and that ultimately has an impact on how the lawyers make decisions about what sort of issues to bring and what's positions to take. And so it can really throw a lot of Uncertainty into the process which is not good for anyone. No 100% But we'll keep you posted on on what we learn I like you said we'll probably learn more Tuesday during that or a rain meant summons whatever it is

So let's talk about these charges. Let's talk about the indictment of Donald Trump and Walt Nauda, as we've just learned ABC news lists seven crimes. Now I want to kind of be clear here. Crimes are not the same as counts. The first reporting we were getting was this was a seven count indictment. Now we're learning it's actually seven statutes that were violated and some of these statutes like 793E while go over this list here in a second You can usually get one count per document in some of these instances so there could be multiple counts On any of these instances of the crimes that are listed So I think we're looking at probably more than a seven count indictment

I don't think that there's going to just be one count for each of these crimes, but who knows? Who knows? We'll see. My guess is it's probably around, if they're bringing in every single document they found, I mean, there could be 300 counts in here, unless they, you know, but they group them together so that they're not, it's not so bulky, especially under 7.93 E. Aside from, we'll talk about that in a second, but aside from 7.93 E, willful retention and national defense information. There's 15.12 K. Now, I've been harping on 15.19. There's witness tampering obstruction in here.

15.12 K is conspiracy to obstruct justice. And you'll, I tweeted out last night, friendly reminder, it takes two to conspire. And then we get the wall, we get the Walton Aada. It takes two and one of them can't be a government agent. Ah, yes, very good. 1512b2a with holding a document or record, 1512 C1, corruptly concealing a document or record. And then 1519 is on here too. That's the concealing a document from a federal investigation. That's the one that we were all thinking of for obstruction in this case. And then 1,0001 A1 and A2, those are false statements and schemes to conceal. Now, I wanted to ask you about this because this I was kind of surprised when Jim trusty, who by the way, just resigned

from the legal team. The latest along history and tradition of rotating legal councils on this case and every other Trump kids. Yeah. And he was taught, he told, he told the, someone on the news that there was a 1512 charge in here as somebody's defense attorney. That just blows my mind. But you know, we could talk about the lawyer rotating door blender domain a second, but 1512's about witness tampering. Here's what it says. Causing another person to withhold testimony or a document.

That's B2A, that's 1512 B2A. So it's not, you know, the way that ABC listed is withholding a document. No, it's actually causing another person to withhold a document or record or testimony. Then C1, 1512 C1, is altering, destroying, mutilating, concealing a record, document, or other object, or an attempt to do so, specifically pool water. No, they don't, it's a list pool water.

With the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding. And maybe I'm reading into the pool story a little too much, but that fits really well. If they conspired to drain that server room to destroy surveillance tapes and somebody can attestify to that that's cooperating, like the guy who did it, because remember, it wasn't Nauta. Yeah. That would be very interesting, but it could also be something as simple as concealing these classified records so that they can be used against you in a court of law. That's right.

Alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record document or other object or attempts to do so with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in official proceeding. I mean, that could be just as simple as the documents moving around that we have on the video surveillance. Could be the Iran document.

They said that they couldn't find it. Maybe they know that they haven't. Or they're hiding it or they destroyed it. Maybe it could be, it could be so many things and we're not gonna know, it's fun to speculate, but we are not gonna know until they unseal that indictment. Let's talk about Jim trustee is out now and so's the other guy.

They're replacing him with, you know, we went over this a little earlier in the week on the Daily Beans this guy named Todd Blanch. But what do you think, they say they resigned? I'm wondering because now, I mean, we've been seeing after parliamentary resigned, he's been on cable news, blabbing his mouth about this case all the time. And now we've got, like you said, and I know George Conway tweeted about this, how, like, I don't know if people understand how

Bonkers it is that a defense attorney who is still on a case as he was last night would go on TV and talk about Crimes in an indictment that he hasn't seen yet. It's bizarre. It's so crazy when you're under investigation You know, of course your attorney, any decent attorney would advise you. Keep your mouth shut and the attorney would do the same. I get it. This is like the worst client of all time to have to represent Donald Trump. He doesn't ever keep quiet about anything. But that desire to really maintain messaging discipline is amplified 100 fold when you know you're going to get indicted. And here we are in the eve of the indictment. They don't know what's in it.

They don't know what facts are going to be alleged. They don't know what actions are going to be called out as criminal. And you've got the president's prime attorney, Jim trusty, on the networks, mine included, making these just like incredibly detailed comments about what DITTER didn't happen and what DOJ DITTER didn't do. It's just, it's totally unnecessary and it's taking all kinds of risks, you're creating risk for your client rather than mitigating risk. And it's just, it's crazy to see. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. How does it create risk instead of mitigating risk. And it's crazy to see. Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.

How does it create risk instead of mitigating it? Because it seems to me, kind of like when Mike Sherwin went out and started talking about conspiracy, a seditious conspiracy charges for oath keepers, it seemed like they were honestly just trying to tank the case or give it a really good appeal,

appealable thing by going out and talking about charges ahead of time. You know, and I see, I could see some sort of you're tainting the jury pool, but it's his lawyers that are doing it. So, you know, I don't, how does it, how does it, how's it worse for Trump than it is better that these guys are out here blabbing? Well, in the least case, you're going to get, you're, you, you're not going to go out and talk in any way other than in defense of the client, right?

So you're going to say things that are going to either explicitly announce or maybe just kind of refer to or echo the actual defenses you're going to use a trial. You are potentially previewing your defenses for the prosecution. And that is not a good idea. That's strategically just a terrible thing to do. You also, you know, there was, there was a moment in his CNN interview last night

when trustee was asked by Caitlin Collins, you know, what did Trump say when you got the target letter? What did Trump say when he realized he's gonna be indicted? And trustee then explained kind of what Trump said about it. You could imagine a scenario in which the lawyer relating what the client said in his presence could potentially violate attorney client privilege. I mean, if that interaction becomes material in some way, if there later is information

developed that like, you know, Trump made some sort of admission or some factual statement that's relevant to the case, you could go in and argue like, well, that's not privilege because trusty sat on national television and related the conversation. I know that seems a little bit far-fetched, but my point is, you don't create any of these risks if you just shut your mouth and say no comment. So I don't know why you wouldn't do that, but there you go.

You know, it's a different problem that they are dealing with. And their problem is they have an erasible, demanding, self-absorbed, imperious client. And I am quite confident that their marching orders were, you know, get out there and defend me. Because that's the only thing that matters to Trump is how things appear on television, vis-a-vis him. The only thing that matters to Trump is how things appear on television vis-a-vis him and I would expect that that order also went to his former Attorney, part of the Torrey who is technically doesn't even work for him anymore

But he's out there doing the he was on the panel Yeah, yeah, that's what I said and now I'm sure that that's what Jim trustee will be doing as well But now he they've got Todd Blanche And and that's all for both cases, by the way. Or I should say all, because we know there's like four or five different arms of this investigation. But it's going to be Todd Blanche. And we talked about him earlier on the beans.

I guess he's pretty, like probably the most reasonable lawyer that I've, he's credentials I've looked at that has worked for this team outside of Chris Kies. Yeah. So, Blanche is a real deal. And he's got great experience. He has a, from what I understand, a terrific reputation. I think he's also known as a guy who's not going to get on TV,

which is a good thing for that team. I mean, Trump needs a really good lawyer. Experience, integrity, good, good lawyer, experienced integrity, good trial chops, and someone who's gonna conduct himself in a way that's only for Trump's benefit. And he might have found that guy in Todd Blanche. Now, on the downside, Blanche also has them in Hatten DA case, which is coming up, I think it's set for trial and March,

right, next March. So these things are gonna be in prep, really intense trial prep,, right? Next March. So these things are gonna be in prep, really intense trial prep. Basically at the same time, we don't have a trial schedule for this and the federal indictment yet, but we'll be hearing about that in the next few weeks. So that's a lot for one more.

Yeah, and Florida goes a lot faster than DC too, because we don't have the thousand cases of additional thousand cases for January 6th, going through the same docket down in Miami. All right, we're going to be right, but we still have more stuff to talk about. So we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. Welcome back. One last story on the documents case. And then another

quick one, six story will be done. But CNN today got read the transcript of the audio of Donald waving the millie document around. Remember the 2021 meeting with the book reporters and the the aid that was recording, well, they got the transcript and I just wanna read some of this to you and I wanna get your top line thoughts Andrew because here's what, here, and this is, this is what he says, okay,

I'm reading what his words are. And quote, well, with Millie, let me see that. I'll show you an example. He said, I wanted to attack Iran. Isn't that amazing? I have a big pile of papers. This thing just came up. Look, this was him.

This is in the transcript. He goes on to say, they presented me this. This is off the record, but they presented me this. This was him. This was Millie. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn't done by me. This was him. This was Millie. This was the defense department and him. We looked at some, this was him.

This wasn't done by me. This was him. And then he went on to say, all sorts of stuff. Pages long. Look, wait a minute. Let's see here. I just found this. Isn't this amazing? This totally wins my case, you know, except it's like highly confidential secret. This is a secret information. Look at this. And then he went on to say, I didn't classify this when I was president. I can't declassify it now. And that's, that is what went in. So it's everything we thought, everything we assumed it went on in that conversation. Now we have the transcript of it. Yeah, it's, it's remarkable. And he reading the transcript, it's so much more impactful than it was just talking about it a week ago.

Now imagine hearing the tape, which is what the jury's going to get. They're going to get to hear that conversation. That is going to be really a key moment in the trial of this case eventually. But I think it's really important context to know that he's talking to these reporters and he's basically trying to respond to these comments about Millie that came out of a New Yorker article in which Millie allegedly told the author or somebody on Millie's behalf told the author that Millie had had to kind of pull Trump back from the edge of wanting to bomb Iran. And so this whole exchange from Trump is him showing

or referring to this document, which in his mind proves the opposite. Like, Millie gave me this document. This document is like the war plan or options for bombing Iran. So therefore, he's a liar, right? He was the one that was pushing me to go against Iran, not me against him, whatever.

The whole thing is crazy. But while he's making these statements, this stuff that you just read, like they presented me this. This is off the record, but they presented me this. He can be heard on the tape to be like waving or brandishing showing papers, like a stack of papers in his hand. So that raises

the specter that the actual document was there in his hand while he was talking to these people without security clearances at Bedminster. And then of course, at the very end, he says, look, look at this. So did he show them what was in his hand? Was it the actual document? Because taking that step of actually displaying it elevates this to a much more serious criminal charge. So if this episode becomes the source of one of the criminal charges in the indictment, this is very, very damning evidence against the former president. Yeah, I agree.

And it's just, it's always interesting that these transcripts eventually get to us and we get to see them. All right, I want to combine listener question with our last story. How about that? So if you have a listener question, you can send it to us at helloatmullerciroot.com, put Jack in the subject line. And this is from Nancy. And Nancy wants to know about the

higher ups in sedition cases. I would like to know when they're going to be getting the actual plotters and planners, e.g. the Willard Hotel War Room guys, the House members and Ted Cruz. So I wanted to ask this question because our last story is that now Steve Bannon has been subpoenaed in the Jack Smith January 6th investigation. He was there at the Willard War Room. So he's looking into this. But what my question is, is why now? It seems like it's been a really long time.

Why are they just now subpoenaing Bannon? What are your thoughts, Andy? You know, there's the kind of typical, the reflexive answer to that question is they've been working their way up and now they're finally, they've put, you know, they have the Lincoln logs in place, the pieces they needed to kind of build

toward this moment with banan. Other maybe other witnesses have told them more about what banan did or what he said or where he was. You don't just bring him in. You have to get all the evidence for every question that you're going to ask him before you subpoena. That's exactly right. You, you know, for that moment of finally sitting down and talking to banan, who's never going to cooperate? Right. He's going to be a very wily, problematic witness.

You wanna know everything you can possibly know before you sit down with him on the record, so that when he starts lying to you, you can confront him with facts and expose the fact that he's lying. So that would be my guess. It's taken them a while to get to a place where they're really ready to sit down

and have a kind of a confrontational interview with him. Well, at some point he'll be in prison. They he's waiting a four month prison sentence for his criminal contempt of Congress once his appeal is decided. And you know, it'll be much easier to schedule because you want to make it well. That's what I'm saying. We know exactly where he's going to be at least for four months.

Do you think they'll give him three prison jumpsuits so he can continue to wear his layers? I don't. The layers of jumps, I hadn't thought about that, but they should. Maybe he'll file a motion that they violated his constitutional right to multiple layered clothing. Yeah. He would. That's something I think.

Yeah. I can't go to jail. There's only one jumpsuit. All right. Everybody. There's going to be a lot more news coming out this week. Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. Again, if you have a question, you can send it to us at helloatmullersherote.com. Just put Jack in the subject line. Do you have any final thoughts before we get out of here on this weekend, Andy? I mean, my mind is a blur. It's been a lot in

the last two last day or so, and I've got a long way to go today, but yeah, I think if this is, you know, this is really the sort of developments that we've been thinking about for a while, so it's exciting stuff and we have a lot to talk about, so I'm looking forward to doing it again. Yes, always happy when justice happens. Thank you so much, my friend. We'll see you next week on Jack. you next week on Jack.