Jack - Episode 34 - Full Legal Dance Card

Episode Date: July 23, 2023

This week: Trump gets a target letter for the January 6th investigation; more witness testimony from Trump allies including Will Russell; cooperation from former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey; a subpoena for State Farm Arena video footage; continued scrutiny of the Willard War Room; Bernie Kerik in talks with special counsel; Judge Aileen Cannon set a trial date for the documents case; Trump failed to get the Manhattan hush money case moved to federal court and lost his bid to re-try the E. Jean Carroll case, and more.Do you have questions about the cases and investigations? Email [e-mail] and put JACK in the subject line. Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AG on Twitter:Follow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://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

M.S.W. Media. I signed in order appointing Jack Smith. And nobody knows you. And those who say Jack is a finesse. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. Wait, 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 Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe, Allison, we may have a few news stories this week in the Special Counsel Investigations plural. So first, Trump has been sent a target letter for the January 6th investigation. So just let that sit in for a second. In addition, we have more witnesses appearing in front of the grand jury, Trump allies, including

none other than Will Russell. And we have some, what I would call, I guess, indications or maybe a willingness to cooperate from former Arizona governor Doug Ducey and a subpoena from the special council team for the state farm arena video footage. That's got to be huge and continued scrutiny of the Willard War room. Yeah. And every week, we wonder like what could possibly be next. We're on, I think we're a full on on indictment watch now with the reception of that target letter for the coup.

We also have Bernie Kerrick in talks with special counsel, but that's according to his lawyer who is parlatory. So, um, yeah, shaker of salt maybe. Maybe a full that tube of salt maybe other. I mean, but full that tube of mortons. All right. Of salt. And we just heard today, Judge Aileen Cannon has set a trial date for the documents case, the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

She has set that for May 2024, handing another loss to Donald, who wanted this to take place after the election. And it still might, we need to be clear on that. And he also recently failed to get the Manhattan Hush Money case, moved out of the Manhattan District Attorney's State Court and into federal court, he failed. And he also lost his bid to retry the E. Jean Carroll case, the one where he ended up, they determined he was a rapist and had to pay $5 million. And that was, by the way, the language that the judge used went denying him the ability to redo the whole trial. She's like, look, it is by definition rape. So there you go. You know, just what it is.

You know, tough week for for the Trump legal team. There's no no doubt about that. They looked good. I thought on Tuesday when they had the arguments in front of Judge Cannon and I know we're going to talk more about that later, but man, things, things took a nose dive for them as we finished out the week. But anyway, so should we move on to round one, which is of course the target letter. Yeah, I thought that was probably the breaking news of the week. I thought it was very pointed that we had one of the authors of the model prosecution memo on last week who really wanted to get that model prosecution

memo out and then low and behold 48 hours or so later. But actually, the target letter went out that Sunday, the same day that our episode aired. That's right. Norm Eisen sliding across the finish line there with incredible timing. I mean, nice. Yeah. Very nice.

Nicely done. And I want to talk a little bit about, I think, Rolling Stone was the first to break kind of what was in the target letter, ABC confirmed, CNN confirmed, NBC confirmed, and then oops, they all got it wrong. And I'm sitting there like 242, okay, I mean, I'll write an analysis on this, but that doesn't seem to fit. And I'm talking about title 18, US code 242, deprivation of the civil rights under the color of law, and it didn't really seem to quite fit based on what we spoke to Norm Eisen about. But let's talk real quick about first of all the other two things that they got 371. Well, they didn't give us numbers. I wish they would just give us the numbers instead of a

broadly worded definition like conspiracy to defraud the United States. But we know that to be 371. Of course. Yep. We were expecting that. That's one of the two crimes. Judge Carter found more than likely, more likely than not occurred with Donald Trump

and John Eastman and used that to pierce attorney client privilege with the crime fraud exception when the January 6th committee was trying to get Eastman and used that to pierce attorney client privilege with the crime fraud exception when the January 6th committee was trying to get Eastman's emails. So we're been familiar with 371, right? Yeah, it's been been used many times for it. Typically, in federal practice, you see it used against people who commit some sort of fraud, like stealing government funds, right? If you commit in like Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud or or let's say

you were accused of of receiving, you know, you remember the the COVID money that was coming out to help businesses keep their employees. If you filed a fraudulent request for those funds and received it, you could be charged with $3.71. Of course, you need a co-conspirator. So it's generally used in that way. I think it fits quite nicely with what we expect the factual allegations to be in the January 6 case. So 371, not a surprise. That was right down the middle. And then they said Rolling Stone said witness tampering.

And I immediately came out and said, this is what they said when they had the documents. Rolling Stone was the first to find out what was in the documents charges before we saw the indictments. They also called it witness tampering, but it was actually, 1512, there's broadly the witness tampering statute, right?

That's great. Yeah, that's actually the witness tampering statute, right? In the document case, the title of the statute, witness tampering. So I can't throw a rocket them for saying that, but our listeners know better because we've been talking about this for months. Month years, you know, since Liz Cheney started uttering the words way back in 2021,

as a matter of fact. But with the documents case, it wasn't witness tampering. Well, it was 1512k, 1512ab2, or 15c1. 1512c1. Now what we know, the witness tampering to be in this case, I'm almost 100 percent certain those 1512c2 obstructing an official proceeding. We've been talking, it's what they've charged most of the January 6 on the ground rioters with, that kind of helps with the conspiracy charge to put those two and two together.

So 1512C2, 371, that's also the second statute Judge Carter said was more likely than not committed by Trump and Eastman to appear-seaternity client privilege with crime fraud. So we have those two, not a surprise. Then we were expecting, you know, because we had just talked to Norm Eisen, right? Well, you know, Andy, I got to be honest with you. I thought it was just going to be 371 and 1512, C2. Until Garland hit the oath keepers with citizenship's conspiracy charges, got the convictions, until Garland came in and wanted to file a notice

for appeal to of the oath keeper sentences because they were too short. Garland came in with Drew, the certification or representation of Donald Trump and the EG and Carol case, like I'm like, all right, kind of a baller. Maybe he'll go with what Norm Eisen had recommended in the Eugene Carol case, like, I'm like, all right, kind of a baller. Yeah. Maybe he'll go with what Norm Eisen had recommended in the model prosecution memo, which was 2383 inciting an insurrection.

But we didn't see that. Instead we saw 241, which is a title 18 US code 241. Yeah. So, and that's what that was the one that kind of threw me the curve ball as well. You and I were texting over the news. I was like, jeez, I can't because of course they mistakenly reported it initially as 242, which is essentially the denial of constitutional rights under the color of law. That's the go-to statute that you use in any federal civil rights investigation of excessive use of force by the police. So that under color of law requires that you were in some position with legal authority and you essentially exceeded that legal authority in an effort to deprive someone of their constitutional

rights. So that just did not seem right. Right. It's used in Breonna Taylor case, the George Floyd case. And so then, yeah, Maggie Haberman, and then right following up very quickly was Hugo Lowell from the Guardian, reported that it's actually 241. And the concept is some, I mean, the way that we were trying to apply 242 to what happened on January 6th, that application is still the

same with 241. Correct. Correct. But now it's almost like we were trying, it's almost like I was trying to bend it into fitting 242 and then somebody's like, oh no, it's 241. I'm like, oh, well, this sounds like exactly what I was thinking it should be. Yeah. It's essentially you've removed that element of under color of law.

And it's a basic conspiracy. So again, at least two people have to have an agreement and commit an act and further in. So that's a conspiracy. Yeah, I have the verbiage right here, actually, if you want to. Let's go through that. Yeah, they do the first part. If two or more persons, as you said, Andrew, conspire to injure a press, threaten to intimidate any person in any state, territory, commonwealth

possession, or district of the free exercise of enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution. Basically, two or more persons conspire to injure any person in the free exercise of an enjoyment of a right or privilege that is secured to that person under the Constitution or the laws of the United States or because having so exercised the same right. The second part made me laugh. I'm not so sure they're going to use this part but. If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway. Disguise does what I wonder.

Okay, let's put that aside for a minute. It's really specific. One of them is wearing a sheet as a ghost costume or maybe not, I don't know. We would have gotten away with this conspiracy if it weren't for those meddling kids. Anyway, they should be fined under this title or in prison not more than 10 years So this is a max 10 year felony or both

But if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap Aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to kill They should be fined under this title or in prison for any term of years to life sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to kill, they should be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years to life or both, and maybe sentenced to death. So, yeah. So I think, I hope, to know, like, historically, both of these statutes date back to the post-Civil War period when the government was realizing they needed to do something to

protect the rights of black people in this country who were being oppressed, who were being kidnapped, who were being assaulted in an effort to deny them the exercise of their newly granted constitutional rights. And so that's where they come from, and that's why this second statute, 242, is really directed at police involved in that conduct. However, the court since about the 1950s have recognized the use of these statutes in the voting context, right?

Using these statutes to essentially go after politicians or others who are acting to deny people access to the right to vote or just some aspect of invalidating their franchise. Yeah, and early, early on in 2020, 2021, a folks like Joyce Svance and Andrew Weisman were saying 241 would probably fit here pretty well. There was a slate article written in 2020 about using potentially 241 and then we just all sort of collectively forgot about it. I mean, I don't want to speak for anybody else. But now it's come back up. And so it's also been used very recently. We have a very recent example of a successful 241 charge.

That was Doug Mackey, member Ricky Vaughn. That's right. That's the A.K.A. for Doug Mackey. He was convicted just a couple months ago, March 31st, by a federal jury in Brooklyn for this conspiracy against rights, which is what the name of the statute is 241. In this came from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.

A verdict followed a one-week trial before the United States District Judge, and Donnelly, and when sentenced, he faced a maximum of 10 years, which is what we said in the statute. the, in the, in the statute. And this is what this is from the Department of Justice as proven a trial between September 2016 and November 2016. Mackey conspired with other influential Twitter users and with members of private online groups to use social media, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages that encourage supporters of presidential

candidate Hillary Clinton to vote via text message or on social media, which in reality was illegally invalid. So he was charged and convicted of this particular crime for basically interfering with people's right to cast their votes. Now, how does that apply and to what part, you know, how we were talking about the multiple prongs of the attempted, you know, interference of the peaceful transfer of power? Is it, does this more of a fraudulent electors type thing where the 241 would apply in that by conspiring to have people sign fraudulent electric certificates that would somehow interimpeed with the person's right to vote in those swing states, or is it something else?

Like where would you, how would this specifically apply to what, to all the different things we saw Donald Trump doing? The interesting thing about this statute is you could really use many different facts that we are all very aware of now that took place over the timeline here leading up to January 6th, on January 6th, that sort of thing. You could use all those different facts as proof of this one charge, right? So it's not dependent on, you know, unlike wire fraud for, you know, you need like the specific facts to prove each element of scheme to defraud, use of the, you know, use of wire transmission, what have you. This is a little bit different. You could, you could go forward and we'll see how prosecutors end up doing this. I think the indictment when it finally arrives will be very specific

in this regard. But there's a lot of things that add to this general idea that Trump was involved in a scheme to interfere with people's right to vote and right to have their votes tallied and counted and applied in a free and fair way. So I think the fraudulent electric schemes fits into that theory very well, and it's a good tangible thing that you can kind of will have direct pieces of evidence about. You'll have numerous participants testifying about their role in those proceedings. We know that from the folks that have indicated they're cooperating recently. So that all works.

But even things like the pressure on Mike Pence kind of fits in here, right? If Trump is is pressuring Pence to exceed his authority and to basically delay or refuse to certify the election, that also fits this general theory of you Trump attempted in many different ways to essentially invalidate the votes of the American public, those people, those voters who voted for Joe Biden. So it's, it's really kind of a catch all that I think a lot of this evidence could fall into. Yeah. And I also heard a former Department of Justice official describe it to, I think it was Lawrence, Lawrence O'Donnell, who said, you know, it could also be interfering with

our right to a peaceful, peaceful transfer of power, as protected under a constitution, could also be interfering with Joe Biden's right to ascend to the presidency. I mean, there's a lot of different ways that I think this could be interpreted, which could attach itself to the insurrection, could attach itself to the pens pressure, could attach itself to the fraudulent electors, all kinds of ways that this could attach. It'll be interesting to see if it is, if the 241 charge is in the indictment, how it's applied and what the scheme is, I'm very interested to see that. It's also very consistent with the 371 charge, right?

The basic, you committed, you attempted to defraud the United States government of its free and fair election results. It's all the same proof. Yeah. And so for prosecutors, you're basically telling one coherent story. And then at the end, in the jury instruction phase, you are showing them how these two statutes fit in here like pieces of a puzzle. So I think it's kind of, it's clearly a well thought out strategy.

Now we should probably talk a little bit, maybe back up a little bit and talk about the target letter generally. And I'll get back around to what leads me to this point. So he, so we know that on Tuesday, Trump tweets out or truth, social, whatever you even call that. I don't know. He posts, I guess, that he'd receive the target letter on Sunday night. And the letter gave him supposedly until Thursday to show up and testify in the grand jury

if he wanted to do so. And now we also know that the letter included that he was being investigated for these potential violations of these three statutes. So important to know that target letters are not always used. You don't have to send them to the target of a grand jury investigation.

There's no requirement on prosecutors to use them. In my cases, very rarely ever use them. Organized crime cases, terrorism cases, you're usually trying to go use the grand jury investigation in a kind of quiet way that the target doesn't know about. So you don't usually use the target letter. They can be used early in the case to put the pressure on a target

to try to convince them to come in and cooperate. Most commonly they're used at the very end for this purpose to let the target know if you want to come in and you don't have to, but if you want to come in and explain yourself to the grand jury, now's the time. That being said, there's no hard and fast timing around them. You don't have to indict the case right after

the target letter comes out. I think in the documents case, he got one and then three weeks later, he was indicted. You could continue to use the grand jury after the target letter has gone out for any indefinite period of time and we'll have more reporting on what may be happening in this case on that grounds later.

So I think that there's a couple of interesting things here. The one of them is I think we're definitely on indictment watch, but we don't really know exactly when that's going to be. This could go on. We could be in this phase, you know, for the next several weeks. Also interestingly, these charges, which, or statutes, I should say, they're not charges yet, at least two of them, right,

if I'm counting correctly, require a conspiracy. And so you have to have a co-conspirator, but notably, no one else has received a target letter according to the reporting, and a lot of people have been asked and come out and said definitively that they absolutely have not. So could Trump be charged singularly in this case

and charged with an unindicted co-conspirator? Because that's legally possible, but highly unlikely in a case like this. Right out it, unless everyone's cooperating, like everybody's cooperating, and even then still, I think we're gonna see at least another one.

I know Normaism was like maybe three to five, depending on how much Rudy and Mark Meadows are cooperating, but it's also, somebody had mentioned to me, and I think I discussed this with you actually, that sometimes they don't send target letters to the lieutenants, target letters to the lieutenants So that all the lieutenants think that the other one the other lieutenants are cooperating and then that sort of

Maybe entices them to cooperate Against their you know, oh, he didn't get a target letter. Maybe he's cooper I better go in and you know that whole kind of Sort of turning everybody against each other or situation or it can also be like you said, they don't have to send target letters to people all the time and they just might not be sending them to the co-conspirators who know. Yeah, or they could still be making decisions like you said, like you got a couple of guys here who all who seem like they might be very strong co-conspirators or very strong cooperators and they may be still making decisions about like, who's in what column.

So we'll have to just kind of watch that over the next few weeks and see what happens. Yeah. And it's also worth noting that the statutes that are listed in a target letter are not an exhaustive list of statutes that could be charged. So there could still be an insurrection charge, but there might not be. There could still be, and we might not see it 241.

We might only see the three. These are just considerations, right? And it's definitely not an exhaustive list, but I will say that from my understanding and all the experts I've talked to, if you get a target letter, 999,9 times out of a thousand, it's going to be followed up with an indictment. Oh, absolutely. Even DOJ defines it like

they say that if you receive a target letter, you are what they call a punitive defendant, meaning you haven't been charged yet. So technically, you're not a defendant, but prosecutors have significant evidence of your guilt and they are already thinking of you as a defendant. They just have to get the ink dry on the indictment and have the grand jury vote on it. So you get one of these letters, unless you come in at the last second and work some sort of magical cooperation deal,

which sometimes happens, won't happen here, but sometimes happens, you're getting indicted. There's no question. All right, we have a lot more news to cover, including some more things going on happen here, but sometimes happens, you're getting indicted. There's no question. Mm hmm. All right. We have a lot more news to cover, including some more things going on with the January 6th investigation of the Special Counsel's office is underway. And, you know, like, like you said, we're getting toward the end, but there's still some activity.

We're going to talk about that, but we have to take a quick break. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. 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 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 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 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 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 as our friend, Asha Rangapa would say. Oh boy. All right. So we'll start out with Trump aid, William, aka Will Russell, is testifying to the federal grand jury investigating January 6th. Are we 100% sure that that's the grand jury he was testifying to? Because I've been hearing in the reporting, they're not 100% sure whether he was talking about document stuff or January 6th stuff.

But either way, he's in the federal courthouse in DC in front of the grand jury. Now, just to keep the names and faces straight. But it was, it was a windum in the room. Yeah. And since windum is the guy who's, the lead prosecutor for the January 6th stuff, that's kind of, I think, why I'm assuming it was the January 6th.

I think that's a fair assumption. I think that's a fair assumption. I feel like if it was documents, it would have been brat or yeah. And it also seems likely, like that seems to be where the lion's share, the action is happening right now. And just to remind people, Will Russell, of of course was a,

I guess a senior aide in the White House, he was like the deputy of the advanced team for a while, basically a body man for Trump, and has the distinction of having been around with Trump all day on January 6th. So he's an interesting guy. He's testified in front of the grand jury before back in September. And I think he also testified to the January 6th committee,

if I have that right. But in any case, Will Russell is in there back in the witness chair in front of the grand jury on Thursday. And what happens after that, Allison? Well, his lawyer, Will Russell's lawyer, does none other than Stanley Woodward. Of course it is. The Trump mafia consiglier. Right? And he was in the building, you know,

because his client, Will Russell was testifying to the federal grand jury. And because his other client, another one, of one of his many clients, former Trump State Department appointee in January 6th riot or Federico Klein, was getting his verdict in his bench trial from Trump appointed judge Trevor McFadden. Trevor McFadden sits at Prettyman, the courthouse in DC, the federal grand jury, the chief judge Bozberg, the other all there.

It's like the nerve center of everything. It's all the GNU-A6 case. It's absolutely. So here's Stanley Woodward spends a lot of time there. So he's there because he's got two clients. Again, Trevor McFadden is reading a verdict on his client, Frederico Klein, and his other client is testified to the grand jury at Will Russell in the January 6 case.

We assume. Now, because of the grand jury testimony with Will Russell, Stanley Woodward, the lawyer was late to McFadden's reading of the verdict for his client, Klein. Right. Now that made Trevor very mad. And he asked Woodward, Stanley Woodward, the lawyer, why he was late.

And Woodward said, I don't think I can talk about it because it was, you know, it was in the grand jury. It's grand jury stuff. It's grand jury secrecy. You don't, you're not, you're not clear for that information, judge. I'm sure that went over real well. Well, McFadden then waived the grand jury secrecy. I don't know that he can do that. And he even made a little joke. You being late to my verdict,

talk about obstructing an official proceeding. He even made that joke. Oh no. Oh my god. So then would we're told him, well okay, well if you're're waving grand jury secrecy, he told him in open court, in front of reporters, that his client, Will Russell was testifying to the grand jury

about matters of pertain to executive privilege. Now, that could be why we've seen high level prosecutors going in and out of pretty him in this week. Maybe they're fighting a privilege battle on a second or third round of testimony with this guy, Will Russell, or they've gotten additional information from other witnesses and need to bring him back into button up end of his testimony, which is a lot like what happened with Taylor Buddha, which down in the documents case in Miami, testifying the day before

they voted on a true bill, also represented by Stanley Woodward. Also, this plays why a windom is there, right? I mean, he's not gonna be, and he's not in every grand jury examination. This is a witness they've been in front of before. There's something important going on there, the privilege battle, I think, maybe explains that entirely,

but also the fact that they brought this guy back. Clearly, there's something they want from him that they didn't get the first time, and they believe it's important enough to drag them back in and fight it out. So I think that's how we see wind them there. Yeah. So there might have been some privilege litigated during that day, on that day, Thursday. And there were some things filed in the docket under seal, but there's a lot of that happening

right now. So, you can't really pair a sealed filing with something that you think is going on that might be a sealed filing. But it stands to reason that if there's a privilege battle, it might have been litigated and order might have been filed under seal. And I imagine like 100% of the other privilege battles that this would have been lost by anybody who was trying to fight it. Yeah, there's no reason to expect anyone to pull that off at this point. It's been a dead horse thoroughly beaten.

Yeah, no, and then if he played to fifth, then you probably get them saying he can't play the fifth because we're not trying to incriminate him. And then they say, we'll give him an immunity then, and they're like, oh, fine. You know, probably could that whole thing could have gone good now. We don't know. But it was interrupted here by Judge Trevor McFadden because McFadden then sent a clerk, a court clerk to fetch, wind him, and the other special counsel prosecutor out of the grand jury room, made them sit in the front row of his courtroom while he read his verdict. And then finally had a bench conference, come up to my approach to the bench, right,

with Woodward and the Jack Smith prosecutors. And that's when they, Ryan Riley was reporting on this NBC. That's when they enabled the court husher, and I'd never heard of this. And I was like, what the frick is a court husher? Is it what it sounds like? Because it sounds like somebody presses a button to make a bunch of noise.

So you can't hear what the judge said. That they're exactly what it is. It's a button that you press in the courtroom that fills the room with some white noise so that you can't over here with the judges discussing during the bench conference. So I thought that was pretty fun. Yeah, that's a good one.

You can hear in this case, McFadden, yelling at this special counsel team, which I'm sure it was going on counsel team, which I'm sure it was going on. Yeah, which I'm sure went real well. I'm sure Chief Judge Bozberg, who actually oversees grand jury proceedings, will be happy to know that McFadden waived some grand jury secrecy rules just across the hall. But regardless, he was satisfied with whatever happened and then sent Woodward and the other prosecutor back to the grand jury room on their merry way. They were there until just short of 5 p.m. questioning, I guess, their witness will

wrestle. There was another witness that was brought in that day, but we don't know who that is, or what case, or if it was with that same grand jury. We assumed that it was, that's what the reporting sort of indicates, but there was another witness that was there that day, finished up at five, went home. So I, you know, these appearances that we've seen, oh, windums at the courthouse, they're going to vote on a true bill. They're, oh, something's going on, no notable witnesses.

They could have been fighting a witness battle. And we also, nobody saw Will Russell or the other witness go in. So they must have entered through the basement. So it's quite possible that even though no notable witnesses were seen, the times that we saw a window at the courthouse doesn't mean that there weren't notable witnesses in the grand jury room. Yeah. I mean, at this point, anyone who's going in is someone who you're going to be familiar with when you find out, when you hear their name. We've said this many times. This is very clearly the end.

Did you get the target letter out? This is a target letter went out. Yeah, Trump's opportunity to come in and testify, you know, was the end of this week. We're at the end. They are perfecting testimony. They're bringing people into lockdown certain statements, either positive or negative. They are cleaning up some pieces of factual evidence that they think they might need to rebut different defenses, you know, to bolster different parts of the case. This is kind of the, you know, the out the trimmings on the house, right? You laid the foundation a long time ago. You built that thing,

it's beautiful, two-story, whatever. The roof is on, it holds water, it's got electric, all the important stuff is there. Now you're just kind of doing the finishing, making it look good, and you know, it's just a matter of how long that's going to take. We'll see. Yeah, and like you said, it was three weeks from Target Letter to Enditement in the documents case. That's when the Target Letter was dated when we finally all were able to see a copy of that, or when media was able to see a copy of that and tell us when it was sent. And yeah, for Trump to sit on that for that long and not say anything was interesting, I thought. not say anything was interesting, I thought. This time he came out earlier. He came out soon, like, he didn't wait a, like a week or two after he got the target letter before

he put it out on true social. He went two days in and I think that he learned from the last time that if he has more time to fundraise and spin- Totally. Totally. Between indictment and, you know, to get everybody riled up about the indictment, maybe hope get less than 14 people showing up to support him, you know, at Mar-a-Lago or at the courthouse in DC, which I'm sure they will be wholly prepared for. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. This is entirely a political calculation on his part, which is the calculations he's more comfortable with. He clearly, he and his team feel like this is a good new story for him

right now in the short term, getting indicted, which is amazing. I can't believe I'm hearing myself say that, but it is. His numbers are up. His fundraising is off the charts. So. Yeah. And DeSantis was announcing something that day and I think he was just trying to undercut that. So yeah, so we'll see. We'll see what happens. Yep, but it could be they could go this week. They could go two weeks from now, three weeks from now. We just, we

know, we'll keep an eye on the news and as we see more witnesses go in, we know it's kind of they're still working on tying up the loose ends for a minute, maybe finally waiting through the final last holdouts on privilege. And we do have some reporting from CNN that there are people who are going to come and talk next month to special counsel. So we'll see how that could impact when an indictment is handed down when it's voted on. All right, we're gonna take another quick break

and then we have some news about some other testimony going down and like I said, that very great reporting by your colleagues over at CNN on some of the things that are winding down and happening in the January 6th investigation. We'll talk about that. We're just gonna take a quick break first. Everybodyth investigation. We'll talk about that. We're just going to take a quick break first. Everybody stick around.

We'll be right back. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, welcome back. All right. So NBC News has confirmed that former Arizona governor, I like the sound of that, by the way, because I'm really digging Katie Hobbs right now. Former Arizona governor, Doug Ducey, is cooperating, is said to be cooperating with special counsel.

What are your thoughts on that? Because it seems like, in some cases, the Department of Justice wanted to leave the state and state officials and state officials and state elector stuff up to the states, but then in other cases, we've got, and we're gonna talk about something in Georgia as well. We've got where, we've got Jack Smith's investigatory tentacles all up in the program.

So what do you think about the Doug Ducey potential cooperation and how that fits in with perhaps the target letter that we saw? Yeah, So I think over the last few weeks, I've been feeling like the, the infamous pressure campaign on the States. So that's the call to Reffensberger. These calls to Doug Ducey, one of which he notoriously refused to take. As he was signing, as he was signing. That's his perfect answer. Biden, you know, good, good call there. I've, I've been thinking more and more that that stuff, the special counsel team might leave on the table or leave for the states to follow up with them with the course we know that Georgia is maybe Michigan as well now.

Now the fraudulent electors, the actual in paneling of fraudulent electors, their execution of paperwork and submitting it to the federal government. I thought that's something that they'll take because it's very tangible, very clearly fits into the federal fraud statutes. But I have to say that now seeing this the statute cited in the target letter, I think it it the contact with, of course, the interview of Raffensberger and now this contact with Doug Ducey, it does fit in a way. If you think about the testimony, those two might be able to offer that could support this theory that the former president engaged in an effort to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights to vote, right?

So, Ducey can get up there, likely give testimony about contacts that he had from Mike Pence and possibly direct from Trump, certainly Trump's attempts to contact him. What he knew, they wanted him to do with respect to certifying or not certifying the election. So I do think that there could be some very relevant testimony. Could be. Again, we don't know what the results of these interviews or appearances have been so far, but it's certainly a valid direction for the special counsel team to be looking right now. It's a little surprising that they left it to this late in the game. Maybe the selection of that 241

statue was a was kind of a late addition to the target letter. Maybe that's something they've just started thinking about differently in the last few months. I don't know. That's speculation. But now it seems to me that early on when they started looking at the fraudulent electric scheme, which started in November of 2021, by the way, not April or May of 2022, with Wyndham at the top of that. He's the guy who went out and used the inspector general and the postal inspector to get Eastman, Perry, Clark, search warrants for phones and emails and things like that. He started that fairly early on. And then I think what happened was the states started their investigations to, you know, Michigan did Arizona did not because

at the time they did, you know, they didn't have, they hadn't had their new, they didn't have their new attorney generally at the time. Georgia, everybody started looking. And then it got to a point where after the January 6th select committee was done and the government had all of its transcripts and could really begin its work of understanding what witnesses are good and which are compromised and stuff like that. That's when they maybe were in communication with some of these states and saying, you know, hey, Dana Nessel, we got the Trump stuff. We got the Trump Eastman cheese,

bro, meadows, Rudy stuff. You deal with your own electors on the crimes. And so maybe that then, and we know Fannie Willis' electors weren't given their immunity deals by their lawyer. And that sort of postponed everything for my goodness almost nine months, right? So there was probably a lot of that happening and maybe that's why finally that you know that there's gonna be a

situation where in order to decline to prosecute something you have to have all your reasons and your ducks in a row So it seems like if they're not going to go after the Raffensberger and the Ducey stuff on the federal level, but they've got it so that they know that it was more appropriate. They could put it in a report that it was more appropriate for the states to do those investigations or something, something to that effect. I could see that probably being a reason for doing this so late stage. That they weren't really going to go after the fraudulent electors. Didn't really need Doug Ducey, a Raffinsburger, but in order to get it in the report for a declination decision, you would have to definitely wrap up every loose end and every thread

that you were investigating in the first place. And I think that might be part of it. I'm just guessing, though, I'm really just bitballing on that. But I think it's, I find it very interesting that Doug Ducey who took the phone, looked at his phone, hailed to the chief, silenced the call, put it down and it's solidified and certified. That was too perfect. I mean, that was like a Hollywood moment. You couldn't recreate that in a believable way.

Yeah. I think, I just think whether they're taking the fraudulent electors thing as a federal crime or not, put that aside. Guys like Graffinsberger and Ducey have some potentially important testimony to add to this overarching idea of defrauding the government or depriving people of their rights. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Another bit of news in a grand jury subpoena dated May 31st,

Georgia Secretary of State's office was directed to hand over any and all security video or security footage or any other video of any kind depicting or taken at or near the state farm arena, and any associated data. This is the, this is Jack Smith's special counsel, subpoenaing video evidence from state farm arena. This is the video that Rudy Giuliani is being sued over for defamation by Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss. This is the lie, the big lie that Donald Trump fundraised off of

consistently sending the video out in fundraising emails, saying, look at the suitcase under the table, et cetera, et cetera. Look, she's handing off a thumb drive, which was actually a ginger mint we found out later. So it is, it comes to no surprise to me that Jack Smith would want this video footage, perhaps to look at defrauding funders and the wire fraud case, but certainly also election interference. Yeah, I think there's a lot of potentially interesting investigative avenues here.

You know, this is presumably security video footage I think there's a lot of potentially interesting investigative avenues here. This is presumably security video footage taken that's normal capture that's from cameras that are installed and run by the arena. Does the question of why they are going to the Secretary of State's office to get this footage. If they're really interested in the footage, why didn't they just go to the arena and say, we want your footage, maybe they didn't record it,

keep it, maybe they recorded over it or it's no longer available, something like that. But there's a bunch of things they could be looking for here. So that security footage could reveal the actions of other people who were engaged in trying to watch or tape or film what the election workers were doing, right? So it could be a way of identifying additional people

who are currently unknown to you but who are actually on the ground carrying out the orders of a Rudy Giuliani or whoever else. And that's a good point. You know, that if your theory is pointing to the what happened in the arena as evidence of fraud, knowing that it wasn't, you were defrauding the government or what have you. You would want everybody in that chain, not just Rudy who is yelling and screaming about it on television, but you want the guy, the operatives or the people who went there to capture

that video, to hand it up the chain as, quote unquote, evidence of fraud. Yeah, no, it makes total sense. Again, I think as we hear more about these subpoenas, it just sort of speaks to the breadth and depth of the investigation, the sprawling nature, and the enormity of the investigation into the disruption of the peaceful transfer power. All right, what did your colleagues over at CNN find out?

This is new reporting that came at the end of the week. Yeah. This is pretty amazing. So you have this really impressive team of Polaried, Caitlin Pollant, Carouss Canal, Hannah Rabinowitz, and Jeremy Erb that have stumbled across this information that prosecutors have been in talks with at least two witnesses to schedule interviews with investigators that won't be completed for at least another month. They also were able to uncover the fact that former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerrick, who is a very public Trump ally and

somebody who is working very closely with Giuliani during that period of, you know, let's find the evidence of fraud. Carrick was like, you know, the former law enforcement, you know, super cop who is actually going to go out there and find the evidence of fraud and deliver it to Giuliani and the other attorneys. Well, apparently Carrick is still in the process of scheduling his upcoming interview and a former Trump lawyer plans to talk to investigators next month as well. So it's just a really solid indication that no matter what happens with the indictment, which as I said, what I expect to see that pretty soon next couple of weeks can't be much more specific than that at this point, the work, the investigative work is going to continue

here. So I don't think we should be surprised to see additional people going in the grand jury, even after the indictment or other folks publicly acknowledging the fact that they're going in to talk to investigators, which is always, you know, well, typically the first step before you end up in front of the grand jury, you got to go in and get interviewed first. So the prosecutors know what you have to say. Yeah, I think that that's always, and I mean, this is when we were, you know, watching the Miller investigation, the first indictments, uh, first started coming out in November of 2017. And then the investigation continued and, and, and, and, you know, didn't end until, uh,

the spring of 2019. So we don't know how long we're in for. 2019 so we don't know how long we're in for We'll be in throwing jack 57 And I might watch Dude they just served a search warrant in the two-pot case 27 years old so So yeah It things things can take a while I mean they just saw the Gil go-go beach murders we think.

Yeah, and although I don't think that the Trump in Sir Action case is gonna go cold for. I don't know. I'm so sorry. There's so much information. We're all tripping over it everywhere in the country. Also, let's see from CNN, they say, for instance, the grand jury hearing evidence and

Smith investigation met for more than six hours, Thursday. This is what we were talking about with the Wyndham and the Will Russell judge McFadden Stanley Woodward, Judge McFadden, DRAMA. Before concluding shortly before 5 p.m., CNN spotted members of the grand jury leaving the courthouse Thursday afternoon and prosecutors with Smith's office returned to their office in the separate building. They go on to say in a sign that Smith's team could bring additional charges in the classified documents case, a Trump organization employee who works at Mar-a-Lago recently received a target letter.

And we remember that. We talked about that last week. That is probably employee number two. Also represented by Stanley Woodward. The law offices of Stanley Woodward is doing more work than 50 attorneys combined at this point. Yeah, we have you up and he's getting paid handsomely by the Trump Save America pack. I see yes. So we have some more news on the documents case two. We're going to pivot over the documents case

in some rulings that have come down from Judge Aileen Cannon, but we need to take one last quick break. So everybody stick around, we'll be right back. All right, welcome back. The ruling we've all been waiting for has come down. Judge Aileen Cannon has set the trial date for the documents case, the Mar-a-Lago documents case for May of 2024. And that is right in line with what our friend and guest Brian Greer had assumed we would eventually end up with a June trial date. But I think the problem here is that we wanted to December trial

date with the regular order of delays to kick it out until May or June. Now we're all the way out in May and any additional appeals for Canon rulings a week before then could push this out beyond the election against. So I'm glad she scheduled it for before the election, but that doesn't mean she's not done delaying this thing. That's right. And you know, I, it's really kind of an interesting decision on her part. I mean, I think on the surface, it looks kind of salamonic, right? Split the baby. Jack Smith wanted this December, which by really all observers like that's pretty aggressive, ask, but okay, good forum. And then of course the Trump team came back and said, we want it never,

or otherwise known as sometime after the election. So, giving them a date, which wasn't as quick as Jack wanted, but it's a date certain and it's before the election, it looked like kind of a clear split. But there's some... Well, it's also kind of, and I don't want to interrupt you, it looked like kind of a clear split. But there's some, it's also kind of, and I don't want to interrupt you, it's also kind of the next available date. His dance card for court is filling up pretty fast. January, February, we've got E. Jean Carroll,

March, April, we've got Manhattan District Attorney. Judge Cannon actually asked if Manhattan could change their trial date, because she had her eyes on March for this one. So, you know, giving a little extra time for each of those trials may as the next available time if you're not gonna put it in December. I think that's right.

There's also reporting that she was very engaged in figuring out what the process would be with now the necessary hearings that we'll see through SEPA and motion practice and all that kind of stuff. So she made some effort to really kind of base this on at least solid predictions of what the timing might look like, maybe optimistic predictions of what the timing could look like. Also with an awareness, as you just said,

of the other trials that Trump is facing, I take all those as good signs, right? She didn't just completely fold to this doom and gloom argument that the Trump attorney's made of, oh, he's so busy, he's not like anybody else, it's not fair. La, la, la, la. She kind of summarily dismissed all that and went with something that is at least a decision that's at least based on some sort of reasonable logic and fact and I don't know.

Maybe I have a very low bar here, but I'm taking that as a good sign. And consequently, coming out of the arguments on Tuesday, it looked like she was really very negative about the special prosecutors' asks. And I was afraid that she was going to go full-on in the tank with the Trump side on this one that has not happened. And I would assume that Trump's lawyers are a little bit stung by this one. I think they probably expected an order that was more in line with what they wanted. Yeah, it's a clear loss for team Trump, which makes me think it's a win for for the special council But yeah, all right, so we're looking at now. We've got a January. We've got March

We've got May. I would see what we can when we can line up a January 6 trial and then we'll see where the Fault and County trial comes into play. And then who knows what else will happen. There's a full dance card for that old man. I'm telling you. Yep. Every day is going to be the worst day of his life for the rest of his life. All right.

So do we have some listener questions? Everybody, we love our listener questions. If you have a question, you can send it to us at hello at mullersherote.com. Just put Jack. Make sure you put Jack in the subject line. Otherwise, it'll get lost in the shuffle. What do we have this week? So this week, A.G., we have a question from Christie, who hails from North Carolina. And Christie starts with a very cheery hello in an exclamation point. I love that. And then she asks, why might folks appear multiple times before a federal grand jury? And this is like a incredibly timely question

in light of our conversation about Sir William Russell, who was testifying on Thursday for the several of time, I don't know, a second or third time. So Christie, there's a lot of reasons why this might happen. The first one that we've seen a lot is you might have a witness come in and they might claim, they might refuse to answer questions under some sort of claim of privilege and then you would have to maybe litigate that claim of privilege. And then once it was, if it was litigated not in the defendant or the witness's favor,

then you would bring, you know, they lose their argument. In other words, you would then have to bring them back to actually get them to answer questions on the record. There's other pretty mundane reasons too. You might have a witness in early on in your investigation. And then over the course of your investigation, you learn more facts about things that other people did that you think that first witness could shed light on. Or maybe you learn things about what that witness actually did that they didn't tell you in their interview or their prior appearance.

And so you might call them back into confront them with things that they've been hiding from you, or maybe lying about. So you could bring people in because you've learned new information, and now you have a reason to ask that person additional questions. And then like the Wal-Nada is a great example of that.

There you go. And sometimes even if you have a witness who's like cooperating fully and truthfully and not is not a problem for you. So that's rare because they all cooperators usually call it. Some sort of problems. You might have them come in at one period when the grand jury is getting information

about one series of crimes or one event. And then you would bring them back later to talk about a totally different event or a different series of crimes, things like that. So you see that a lot in organized crime cases where you might have one cooperator who's like your star witness and they know everything. They were there for all the homicides or all the extortions or whatever. They might have to come in multiple times to talk about different stuff. So there's a lot of reasons why people might have to come in more than once.

Yeah, awesome question. Thank you for that. Again, if you have a question for us, you can send it into us by emailing us. Hello at mullershyrup.com. Just put Jack in the subject line. All right. Well, as we say every week, what could possibly happen this week? We'll find out. The Lord only knows. We might be talking indictments next week. More testimony. More target letters. Who knows? But whatever it is, you will hear it on Jack. The podcast about all things special counsel. Andy, it's been a great show. Thank you so much for spending time with me. I'm Allison Gil. And I am thankful to be here and I am Andy McCabe.

We'll see everybody next week on Jack. Bye bye.