Jack - Episode 35 - Obstruction Inception (feat. Brian Greer)

Episode Date: July 30, 2023

This week: Allison and Andy discuss the superseding indictments that came down on Trump and Nauta; the head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago gets a charge; CIPA expert Brian Greer joins for the “Under Seal” segment to talk about the Iran document and CIPA schedule; prosecutors in the coup plot investigation met with Bernie Kerik, Brian Kemp, and Trump’s lawyer; plus a listener question and more! Three new charges for Donald Trump and Walt Nauta Conspiracy to obstruct justice: 1512(k) Altering, destroying or concealing an object: 1512(b)(2)(B)Corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing a document, record or other object: 1512(c)(1)One shiny new charge for TrumpIran/Milley document he waved around at Bedminster 18 U.S. Code § 793 - Gathering, transmitting or losing defense informationA charge for the Head of Maintenance at Mar-a-Lago, Carlos de OlivieraMaking a false statement 18 U.S. Code § 1001(a)(2)Our guest:Brian Greer, former CIA attorneyhttps://twitter.com/secretsandlawsCheck out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AG:Follow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, 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 to jail. July 30th, 2023, I'm Allison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. We all had our eyes this week, Allison on DC and Georgia, right? So we're looking at DC, we're looking at Georgia, what's going to happen? And all of a sudden, special counsel hits Donald Trump and Walton Aura with superseding charges in Miami in the classified docs case. And he adds a third defendant to that case, the former or maybe still head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago, gentleman named Carlos Dele Vera. Yeah, the pool guy. You'll know him as the guy who drained the pool.

We talked about him a lot. Trump is in legal jeopardy in so many jurisdictions. We really need to keep our heads on a swivel. It could come up. Michigan. Totally. Miami, I'm expecting something from Arizona. Oh, wait, New York. Okay. Yeah. We should do a roulette wheel. All the different locations, like spin it once every every park. It's seven different states around there. Yeah. Where will he be in Ditednext Bingo? But yeah, we really got to keep our heads on this. Well, something cool.

We're going to be joined later today by Brian Greer. He's a former associate general counsel at the CIA. He's the SEAPA expert for his segment under SEAL. And we're going to discuss these new charges and how they might impact the trial schedule, right, set for May of 2024, along with some new information on the current SEAPA schedule and filings from both parties, including Donald wanting to be able to discuss classified documents outside of a skiff, which just...

I can't wait till we get into this one. My jaw is still on the floor from reading that. Yeah. But once we cover all that, we'll go over to the investigation into the disruption of the peaceful transfer of power in 2020. We did not get an indictment in that case this week, which I think some people thought we would get. But it is looming large. It truly is. Trump's attorneys met with Jack Smith in DC on Thursday to advocate for their client.

Yeah, we were waiting for that one. We were waiting for that's one of the signs, right? That's right. That's right. Of the forthcoming indictment. We also have some details about prosecutors examining a meeting that occurred in February of 2020, way before the election, about election security, and we have a tranche of documents that Jack Smith has been able to obtain recently from the architects of the fraudulent electroskeam.

And a few new witness meetings with prosecutors including Trump lawyer Bernie Kerrick and Governor Brian Camp. But Andy, let's begin with the big news that took us all by surprise. Big news. That's right. Out of Miami, the superseding indictments in the classified documents case. If you want to read a really succinct three page, two and a half page description of what's different from the original indictment versus the new superseding indictment.

There is a filing I have posted on Twitter. It is basically the DOJ saying that we aren't going to need any, we aren't going to have to push the trial date back for these reasons because we can keep the same schedule that we've already got. But he goes through and in less than a page and a half, he's just so talented at being succinct. And he bottom lines it. And he says, basically here are the differences.

But we can talk about them now. The new charges, there's new charges. The headline that grabbed us all was that a defendant has been added. Somebody knew who's been indicted in the documents case. When real headline here is, Trump has been hit with in the documents case. When real headline here is, Trump has been hit with superseding indictments.

Yeah, I mean, the headline should be how you go from bad to much, much worse, because what he got hit with, and how he got hit with them, really changes the texture of his position in this case. He was already looking at a formidable, serious case with a lot of significant inculpatory evidence. And now, oh my gosh, when you add what he's now looking at, it's gone from bad to worse.

Yeah, we've got four charges for Trump, four new charges for Trump. We have four charges for the new defendant, Doliverra. And I believe we've got three new charges for Walt Nada. So let's talk about this, because now Trump is up to 40 felony counts. That's a tight mess. 40 in Ryzen. We have conspiracy to obstruct justice, which is 1512 section K. And this is for Trump, Nada and Delavera.

They attempted to delete security camera footage. Oof. We also have Nauta, not a good idea. Not a good idea. We have altering, destroying, or concealing an object, which is 1512 B2B. And that is for Trump, Nauta, and D'Alavera. They knowingly and corruptly persuaded and attempted to persuade employee number four to delete security footage.

So not only do we have the conspiracy to delete it, we have them attempting to alter and destroy it by persuading this guy, this IT guy named Tavares, to delete the security footage, to prevent it from being provided to the grand jury. And then we have corruptly altering, destroying mutilating or concealing a document record or other object, 1512C1. This is also for Trump, Nada and Delavera, requested employee number four to Varis to delete security camera footage to prevent it from being provided to a grand jury. Right.

Those are the three biggies they all have to do with that sort of conspiracy to alter delete, destroy, maim, flood, whatever, the security footage. And then we have a separate false statement charge, 1,0001 for Dio Lavera, for lying to the FBI, baldface lying about moving the boxes with Wal-Nada. He was the guy who helped Walt move the boxes back and forth and he'll be arraigned tomorrow, Monday morning. And that's kind of a companion charge

to the one Nada took, right, for the same thing. Light in the interview, got it on tape, and now he's facing another serious charge. So Delvera's got the same thing. He's looking to the same thing as Nauta on that. Yeah, exactly. And then we have a whole new separate charge, the fourth charge for Trump, taking 31 documents to 32. He's being charged for 32 documents under 793 E. Under the SB&AJ Act, Jack Smith has added the Iran document, the milled document, the one that he waived around at Bedminster night. He didn't charge him with dissemination. He just charged him with 793 E, right? Retention. Is dissemination included? Could it be retention or dissemination under 793? Or is that another provision of 799? I'd have to look back at the language of the statute.

I think probably for, well, I think he's at least referring to them all as willful retention. It's just a little bit easier to keep them in the same bucket. But there's no question that this charge, unlike the other 31, there is clearly an evidentiary element of dissemination here because he's in the act of talking about it, describing it, waving it around, and potentially showing it physically to the folks who were in the room for that meeting. So it's a very, you know, again, already a big problem on his shoulders, but now that they've closed the circle, gotten the document itself and charged it as its own separate count, they've made this, I think

this goes to number one on the list of serious counts of, uh, willful retention. It's a real problem for him now. Yeah. And I'm looking up a section E right now, and it is as I thought it was. It's either retention or willful communication, delivery, transmittal, or cause to be communicated, deliver to transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit, or cause to be communicated, deliver to transmitted to the same, to any person not entitled to receive it, or will fully retain the same and fails to deliver it. So we don't know, I can't tell from this whether it's the transmittal, the showing it, the

waving it around to a person who doesn't have the ability to see it, or if it's the retention here. But the language of transmittal I don't think is appears. Well, you can understand how the law would kind of cover both of those eventualities, right? It's the espionage act after all. So the kind of primary thought here is people who take classified and then hand it off to a foreign government or to someone who is paying them for it or trying to possess it illegally. That's very different than someone who just takes the stuff and keeps it and refuses to give it back.

That's like more of a straight up retention issue. Just from the evidence, what the evidence is gonna be able to show, you had 31 counts of retention, right? He had all the stuff and they asked for it back here. Fused to give it back, he kept it, he tried to hide it, so it wouldn't get returned and then they found it at his house.

This is the one charge where you have really solid evidence of dissemination, which is what makes it more serious for him. Totally. And it's also just sort of, I mean, to have, you know, and I'm going to ask Brian about this too, but, you know, just to have it on tape. I mean, that's like a prosecutor's dream just to have just a totally, totally, on tape saying, but you know, we joke about how hard it is to get like a bribery charge for, for instance, right? We have use, you have to basically say, here, so and so, Senator, so and so, this money I'm handing you is in exchange for this particular

legislation that I would like for you to vote yes on tomorrow at 3.30 p.m. Eastern time, you know, right. And we actually, we'd that's a joke, but we we have it in with this particular document. Yeah. He's like, look at this. Isn't it cool? Oh, this is really, I would like to show it to you, but it's really sensitive, confidential, it's secret. I don't have the ability to declassify this. I was still president, I could do it, but no, I can't. I mean, it's just crazy to have the defendant saying that in his own voice, and you're going to play that for the jury, we talked when this originally came up about how the defense could potentially file a motion to exclude the recording to just keep it out.

This makes that not possible. Yeah, I think it was a long shot to begin with. Now, it's absolutely impossible. And originally without the document, you weren't charging that specific event, essentially, that act of dissemination. So the defense could have come in and said, like, look, to play this recording, even though it is relevant in other ways, it's too inflammatory. It's more inflammatory than it is prejudicial

and therefore you should keep it out. I don't think they'd have a lot of success with that, but they could have made that argument. Now, no, it's directly relevant. It's the actual thing that they charged. There's no way that that tape doesn't get played for the jury and you're probably gonna have multiple witnesses who take the stand and describe exactly what they saw,

which may include the identifying the document itself. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that too, because a couple of things here, first of all, going back with the trying to destroy and delete the security footage, that to me seems to bolster the entirety of the original indictment as far as corrupt intent goes.

I mean, he might have been able to have a little bit some sort of maybe peripheral defense. I mean, it was a pretty ironclad case, but now to say, to have evidence, developed evidence that, and witnesses to those conversations conversations saying that we all tried to delete that security footage, it brings the whole corrupt intent to a whole new level, doesn't it? It really does, and that's why I made those comments at the beginning of today's episode about going from bad to worse. What the new charge is, particularly those involving the allegations of trying to destroy evidence. So we'll walk through the timeline in a minute, but he gets the subpoena for the surveillance video, and immediately this effort is underway to get rid of it instead of turning it over as you're

obligated to do. That introduces the specter of what we like to call guilty knowledge. People don't engage in the willful destruction of evidence unless they are afraid that that evidence is going to prove them guilty of having committed another crime. So it's where he could maybe have made claims about I didn't know what was there, it was a mistake, it was an avert and I wasn't paying attention to it. I know it seems hard for any of those defenses to be successful, but now having actively engaged in trying to destroy the evidence to obstruct the discovery of the obstruction essentially. It's just terrible for him. It makes him look horrible to the judge. I think it makes him a much less sympathetic defendant to the judge because judges do not look favorably on

people who destroy evidence and obstruct proceedings. So yeah, it's bad on many, many, many levels. Yeah, and I think it's worth noting here that he's just being charged, they're just being charged collectively, the three of them, with the attempt to destroy. Right. They don't have, they don't go here if they don't talk about in this indictment that they actually did destroy any of the surveillance footage or held it back or anything like that. And that could be saved for future superseding indictments or they might just not be able to develop the evidence to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt.

But a lot of, I see a lot of cable news people talking about how well they must not have destroyed it because Jack Smith got it or Marick Garland got it and that's how they got the search warrant. But I think it's important to note that there's been public reporting that there were gaps or glitches in the footage that caused subsequent subpoenas for the surveillance footage from the software company, not from the Trump organization, but the software, the third party software company,

the parent company of this surveillance that have all of the surveillance footage. So I think possibly getting the footage from other properties would be fruit of the Poison Tree, but if you're specifically looking for gaps in tapes down at Mar-a-Lago, I think that that would help. And also to that point, Trump said to a radio show earlier today, and I'm reading the quote, they went after two fine employees yesterday, fine people. I don't think that the tapes were even, these were my tapes. We gave them to them. And they basically then said, that's not enough.

I don't think we would have had to give it over. What stands out to me, Andy, is then they basically said that's not enough. That sounds like he didn't fully comply with the subpoena. You know, there's, I think this is a great point because there have been, as you said, a lot of signals over the last couple of months that the special counsel team was not comfortable or satisfied with whatever they got. Now, I would, I'm guessing that the Trump team turned over something, but it also seems like when they reviewed what they received in response to the subpoena, there were some, for some collection of reasons,

they felt like they hadn't been given the entire pot, right? So that's when you see these reach out to the company that makes the software. There's all kinds of questions about the crazy draining of the pool, which I still think is a red herring, but nevertheless. So this has clearly been a persistent issue for them, and they've now resolved it by claiming that there was at least an attempt to destroy the evidence or eliminate its availability to be turned over as the law requires under this being. Yep, yeah, agreed. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back.

We have the timeline plot, the plot to the scheme to delete the security footage. The lies that Olivares, Dale Olivares told the FBI and the loyalty conversation, which I think is also very important. So everybody, stick around. We'll be right back. BAM're going to launch into that timeline of events that really kind of fleshes out this attempt to the allegation anyway, that they attempted

to destroy the surveillance footage. Okay, so on page 27 of the indictment, for those of you who are reading along at home, feel free. It's this new section called the attempt to delete security camera footage. So on June 22nd, DOJ emailed a draft subpoena to the two Trumps lawyers. And that's a peanut, of course, requested the camera footage. I'm not sure why they would have sent a draft subpoena. I've never heard of that

before. They were real careful. Remember the FBI didn't even want to do a search warrant. Yeah. I mean, I don't know why you wouldn't just wait until this pin was final and send that, but it may have been they wanted to put them on notice as early as possible, so they would not go out and destroy evidence that they knew was about to be officially speeded, but put that aside. So June 23rd, the next day, Trump calls Dale Lavera and they speak for 24 minutes. I like what Lisa Rubin said. She's like, he's the maintenance guy. They're not talking about the road of dandrin. Yeah. No, I bet they haven't had 24 minutes of phone calls in the last 20 years.

But nevertheless, they have a record of telephone contact, which is interesting from two non cooperators. Yeah, two non-cooperators. So it's possible they have phone records from Mar-a-Lago, or possible they have phone records from Trumps in his individual cell phone. It's also possible they have phone records from the other side of the call, the Dail of Aera phone, or they have the phone itself. Remember if it was a call on signal or WhatsApp or something like that, you'd actually have to have the phone to have a record of it. But either way, they have a record that they're going to use in court. The next day, Friday, June 24, DOJ sends the subpoena officially signed and all that stuff

to a Trump lawyer. Here's where the fun begins. At 125, Trump talks to his lawyers about the subpoena. At 344, our man Walt Nodda gets a text from Trump employee number three that Trump wants him to return, wants Nodda to go back to Mar-a-Lago immediate mentee. No, no, without delay. Now it's interesting because Nodda was supposed to travel with Trump the next day to go to Illinois, I, without delay. Now it's interesting because Nautilus was supposed to travel with Trump the next day

to go to Illinois, I think I heard, and that is quickly canceled for him. So at five o'clock that day, this is again Friday, June 24th, Nautilus changes his travel plan. He immediately texts the head of IT from Marlago. As a guy named, you seal Tavaris. We've talked about him before in previous shows.

So he texts Tavaris to see if he's gonna be around that weekend. Minute or two later, he texts Dale Rivera to see if he's around that weekend. And then they speak on the phone for a few minutes. Later that night, just before 7 p.m., Dale Rivera texts Tavaris and says they will need he and Nato will need to talk to him tomorrow. And so the whole thing is lining up, right? The final text that night is Nata telling a friend that he won't be traveling to Illinois

because he had a family emergency. And then he has these little emojis that say like, you know, shush, don't talk about it. So Saturday, now we're into the next day, not a probably first flight down there. He arrives at Mar-a-Lago from Bedminster and he goes straight from the airport, meets with Dale Rivera on Saturday. Now, Dale Rivera also tells Mar-a-Lago employee number five, who apparently is a valet, that Nauta is coming,

but he wants to keep it secret. And he also, Deo Lavera tells this employee that Noda is going to need to talk to, or I'm sorry, that Noda wants Deo Lavera to talk to Tavaris. Okay, so that's Saturday. On Monday, so nothing happens on Sunday, everybody takes the day off, I presume. Monday, June 27th, 2022, Dale Rivera goes to the IT office where Tavarice is working. He asks him to step out to have a conversation. We hear about this conversation, which is interesting because we would only know about it

from a live witness. There's no record of it, right? There's no indication of electronic surveillance or anything like that here. So this I think is a straw or a wire. Yeah, which I would love. I mean, please. That would be so sick. Yeah, I mean, you know, oh, that's taking me back. But, um, nevertheless, we know this probably because we know that Tavaris has been interviewed. He's probably been interviewed a lot. And I think one of the assumptions we can make at the end of this is that Tveris is probably probably cooperating with the prosecutors, which will make his association with Stanley Woodward, his attorney a little bit awkward. So, Woodward still represents, you know, every other Trump-ish defendant who's not Trump, I guess, is

how I would explain it. Well, and now to, now they have conflicting things, but we'll see if they address that. But yeah, and also I have a feeling that Tavara is cooperating based on what he tells De La Vera during this conversation, right? Yeah. He is on the side of the righteous, which is always a strong suggestion that the person you're hearing from is cooperating.

But in any case, they step out, they have this conversation. De Lavera says the conversation's just between them, keep it secret. He asks Tavaris, how many days the security footage was retained? So from the cameras, how long do you keep those recordings? Tavaris replies, he believes it's about 45 days.

Daila Vera then says, quote, the boss wanted the server deleted. Tavaris replies to that that he does not know how to delete the server. And even if he did, he doesn't think you would have the rights. Now rights, I think in this context, he means like access, right? Administrative rights. Exactly. Tavara says Dale Lavera would have to reach out to the security supervisor at the Trump organization. Now, so I don't know who that would be. Maybe a calamari. I don't know. What do you think? Calamari, a or calamari, b. That's right. Big calamari or little calamari.

One of the, yeah, one of the calamarari's. They were both questioned by a special counsel. We know that they at least were spoken to. So, Tavaris kind of gives them the brush off with this answer. Then, Dale Lavera comes back and says, well, the boss wants the server deleted. And then he says, what are we gonna do? And then we don't know what. There's a lot of that conversation and I wish I knew what it was.

Yeah, it's like, I hear you. You don't know how to do it. I hear you. You don't think you have the rights to do it. What I'm saying to you is the boss wants it done. I have listened to hundreds upon maybe thousands of hours of organized crime figures talking on audio and telephones and all kinds of other things. That is exactly what you hear. Oh yeah, I get it. You don't want to do it. I get it. You're not

available. Now go do it. When your response is basically, I don't care that you can't, don't know how, don't know where it is, go get it done because the boss wants it done. There's a pretty clear message being delivered there. Yeah, so then it makes me wonder, were they able to somehow do something, you know, just oliverus and nada, deliverus and nada, were they able to do something to wreck the security footage because this is all in June, end of June, right? And the pool incident doesn't happen until October. But here's something that I want to think about. I have to think about this because there is stuff in this super seating indictment where Jack Smith says that they went with a flashlight down a hall and that they went here

and that they went to these bushes to an adjacent property and then back through the shrubbery up to the thing, it's all like dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun and I just picture them in like ski masks with shoe polish under their eyes. But like that seemingly has to come from security camera footage. And so if you wanna get like inception here

because we know that destroying the tapes is covering up the cover up, but what if the draining of the pool into the server room was to destroy the tapes of Oliverus and Nata trying to destroy the tapes of the consumer. It's impossible that three times they realized, oh my gosh, there's tapes. It's doing all these bad things. Like, dude, they're your cameras.

I mean, it's not like you found the government's camera hidden in the picture frame. I mean, and the secrecy around it is fascinating to me. So we had that note early on when he's coming down and Dale Rivera tells some other Marilago employee, the valet, hey, not as coming, but don't tell anyone it's a secret. So later on Monday, this is after the Dale Rivera conversations with Tavares where we're trying to twist disarm into deleting the server about 106 that day. Dayle of Era walks, as it says in the indictment, through the bushes to meet with NADA

on a quote, adjacent property. Like, it's so secret that NADA won't even come on the ground. Is that because he doesn't want to come through the gate. He doesn't want to get on the security camera. He doesn't want any record of him being on the property when this, this stuff is taking place. So, so Dale Rivera goes through the bushes meets with Nata, leaves back through the bushes, goes back to the IT office does something then walks back Along the northern side of the property through the bushes and meets with Noda again That's where like why is that in there? What was he doing Jack knows he does what's in there?

And is there something more to come the syrup ticious? Noda day-o-le deal of error meetings through the bushes. That's why I like, is that the drowning the server room? Because they were trying to get rid of that footage, and but he mentions it, so it's relevant to something. It's relevant. It's a great scene-setter, because it really shows these guys going to exorbitant lengths to hide themselves and particularly not at.

So if this is the length that Nauta is going to to avoid even stepping on the property of the place where he works, right? It's simply because it's consciousness of guilt. It's knowing you're involved in something. You can't have a record of it. You don't ever want anyone to know you're doing this stuff. And that simply might be it. That just might be to show that he's sneaking around because he's totally innocent. Like, that's what it was. And of course, the crowning moment, I guess,

in this Monday of nonsense, is at 355, Trump calls Dale Lavera and they talk for three and a half minutes. I want to thank you. I know you're loyal. Not me. I made that up. But you can imagine that's that's some sort of adaboy conversation because Dale Rivera has really put himself right in this mix with all of his nonsense on Monday.

Yeah. Yeah. And then we have the loyalty conversation. And this is interesting because of the timing, right? This is right around the time Judge Aileen Cannon starts to get a hold on this case and puts a big pause on it for a couple of months, but on August 26th, and now, you know, we're talking about like a full two months later. A week or two after the search warrant, right?

Was the search warrant like August 8th or something? Yeah, August 8th. Yeah. So it's like three weeks, two weeks after the search warrant. Not a calls Trump employee five and says words to the effect of someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good, which also makes me think employee five is a cooperating witness because of the words said words to the effect of employee five told Nauticals that Dio Levera was loyal and wouldn't do anything to affect his relationship with Trump.

And then that same day employee five just chatted them all up on the signal chat group with Nada and a pack representative that D'Ola Vera was loyal. So I guess there was maybe some sort of test between those two points. Or other people who were worried about D'Ola Vera's loyalty, this pack representative being one of them, which that's weird. So then the employee, employee five went on to hop down to a signal chat group. So they've got these signal chats, the DOJ does. And then that same day, the very same day, once the signal chat goes out from employee five that he's cool, he's loyal, Trump calls him personally and tells him he'd get him a lawyer.

Yes, there you go. Sealing the loyalty for all time. So Dale Vera, as we know, participated in a voluntary interview on January 13, 2023 at his home with FBI agents. He was asked if he knew anything about moving boxes or if he saw any boxes or helped move them within Marilago or from the White House. And you know, Dale Lavera, not a patient man, apparently, he doesn't even let the investigators finish the question until he launches into nope, nope, never, never saw nothing. Nope, nope, nope, just totally shut him down. Of course, we know at that point,

Shut him down. Of course, we know at that point, whatever portion of the surveillance they have shows Dale Rivera, Cardin Boxes, so they know literally in the interview, they're like, all right, we got this guy because he's lying about a material fact, which puts you right in the crosshairs of 18 USC, one thousand and one and moment behold, he's charged with that in this new super seating indictment. Yeah, and you might have even had NADA in one of his two or three moments of truth talking

to the FBI, you know, how he said, oh, Trump told me to move those boxes. And he, you know, might have had testimony that his buddy was there helping him. His lawyer, John Irving, told everybody, oh, he just was walking by and saw his friend, well, not a moving heavy boxes and just offered to help. It was out of the kindness of his heart and we were all like, so his kindness is kind of what blew up this whole case. Like, okay.

Interesting. Kindness at Mar-a-Lago. No, I so far, the only little hero here is Tavara. He was like, I'm not gonna erase your tapes, bro. You fuck out of here. Call the call the calamaries. For sure. Yeah. For sure. So, and you know, we can also discuss the impact of the attempt to delete the security footage that, you know, that it has on the case as a whole. I sort of talked about that and you sort of talked about that, but I just, I can't reiterate enough.

Like, we thought this indictment was like a nine out of 10 or a 10 out of 10, but now it's just shot. I didn't even think there was room for improvement, but here we are. It's an 11 out of 10 now. I mean, like, think about it in comparison to the other. They love to make these comparisons like, oh, what about Joe Biden? What about Mike Pence?

Okay, and the answer to that is, of course, well, Joe Biden found some documents. Shouldn't have had them. They're in the wrong place. Immediately called up the government, gave them back. And then when they was asked if they could search his house and all these other places, they said, sure, come on over. So that's where the distinctions begin between Biden and Trump who fought with Nara for a year, gave back some but not all, and then went into all these other machinations to hide what he still had.

Well, now you take it up an entire level, right? So not only, I mean, in this false equivalence between Biden and Trump, Trump has now taken it to another level. He's not only kept the documents, refused to give them back, lied about having them, hid them from his attorney and from the DOJ, now he's actively involved in destroying evidence of his own malfeasance. Like, it ratchets the guilty knowledge to an astronomical level. There is not a chance on earth that if anyone else

was charged under these facts, plead guilty. Case never goes, it doesn't go another day. They plead guilty immediately. You do not go to trial on a case like this. Of course, that's not going to happen here because Donald Trump is who he is and he's running for president and all those other things. He feels like there's a chance of dodging this if he can just win the White House again. But it's just hard to explain how overwhelming this case is from having looked at many of these over many years doing national security investigations. This thing is a bear.

Yeah, it's going to be impossible. All right, we have to take a quick break, and we're going to be right back with our friend, Brian Greer, and our new segment under seal. Stick around, we'll be right back. Boom, boom joined today for our new segment under seal. File to under seal. The former Associate General Counsel for the C see by expert our friend Brian Greer Brian. Hello. How are you? Great. Hey, Brian. How are you? Thanks for having me back. Yeah, it's really really great to see you again. I'm very excited to talk to you because we've had a little bit of movement in the

Mar-a-Lago documents case the classified documents case this week. First of all, we've we've gone over the indictment, what's happened, the superseding stuff and the first two segments here, but I really wanted, I couldn't wait to get your top-line thoughts on the superseding indictments just off, just, you know, to start with, and then we'll get into the seepacate considerations. Yeah, one thought I had was, one annoying thing, Twitter commentators do, myself included, is they always pat themselves on the back when they get a prediction right,

and they never mention when they get a prediction wrong. Why? If it is soon as she set the trial schedule, things would get very boring in this case, and it would all go under seal, and we wouldn't be talking, and have that much to talk about. Obviously, immediately proven totally wrong by that

with this really jaw- news on the on the tape's destruction front. The wrong document part, not that surprising, I think. But on the tape's piece, with the tape's destruction, you know, obviously there's the saying the cover up is worse than the crime. Here, we have a cover up of the cover up. Right? Like the cover instruction of the obstruction, the construction square, being the boxes, and then they tried to cover that up. So thinking, when my lens of how does this actually affect the classified part of the case, you know, you think of that,

what we talked about last time, Bob, the education of Eileen Cannon, a lean cannon, you know, here again, right? This isn't about classified information, but she is seeing that, look, I put my neck out for this person back in August and September, embarrassed myself for him. And now I am learning the true, just totally, you know, jaw dropping extent of the subtractive behavior, clearly showing evidence of guilt on his own part. And is that going to impact her rulings on this other stuff? Is she going to be less ruling on this other stuff?

Is she going to be less willing to go out and stick his neck out for him? So I think that's a big part of this potentially. On the run document side, again, not that surprising, giving what we knew from the tape recording, I think the only question is why wasn't discharged initially, right? Like what new evidence and information did they get?

There was some reporting that they couldn't really identify the document with certainty that something happened where they got more certainty about that. As Andy knows, sometimes these indictments bring people out of the woodwork to say, oh, I want to come cooperate or tell you about this that I forgot about or or have come to Jesus about. Now, I want to tell you about. So maybe that happened. Yeah. Do you think it's possible, Brian, because I know a lot of commentators are speculating about this, that they had it,

but they didn't have the Intel community's authorization to use it. I don't think so. Looking at the description of the document, it's only top secret. There's not additional SCI markings about it, that would indicate that it came from human sources or sensitive collection platforms.

It was probably high level summary of what you might do to invade Iran, which is obviously tremendously sensitive. Sure. Probably a little out of date at this point, three years later. So I doubt that was the reason, I don't know why it was really. What is interesting

is we now have sort of another what I would call like a fallback category of documents. There was the, whatever one thought he would be charged with, which is the, the documents they loaded, catered during the search warrant. We all knew that would be the focus. I was surprised though that they had an indictment, ten documents that he returned to the Grand Jury Sapena. I was a little surprised at first, but then I thought, oh, that's really smart. These people are smarter than all of us. If she, for some reason, holds that there was no probable cause for the search warrant and excludes all that, they have a fallback set of documents. Now they have another

fallback set of documents. The problem with the grand jury documents is the evidence of intent of his willfulness may be lower with those. He returned them. Maybe he didn't know they were there. This document, because they have the recording, even though he returned it to the NARA, they have that recording showing that he knew he wasn't supposed to have that document. So that's right. Another category of sort of backup documents that's going to be really strong for DOJ. It's so interesting. And also that Iran document, which I'm assuming is the third set, that was returned in January of 2022. That was returned to the National Archives, pursuant to them spending 18 months trying to get some

stuff back. So talk a little bit about, because you had mentioned that it might be a little bit weaker in that third group. Talk about that because I know also it can also be stronger because we just have a tape recording of him saying, I have this classified document and presumably a witness or two who can confirm or evidence that has been developed that that was the document he had in his hand during that tape recording. Yeah, it's exactly what you said. I always expected there to be no charges for the documents that he returned to NAR initially, even though I think they could have, right?

But he did the right thing, sort of eventually return them. He kept them too long, but he still returned them voluntarily. So the evidence there of willfulness may be normally lower, because again, he might say, which Joe Biden will say and what Mike Pence will say, which is, I didn't know I had these documents, right? So that would be a defense DOJ would be worried about, but this document, because they have the recording and showing it to other people, admitting that it's classified and that he doesn't have the authority to classify it, it is the exception to that rule of not charging those neurodocumentants. And I think it does make a lot of sense to charge it.

I totally agree with that. And I think it gives them the added dimension of dissemination. Right? He's clearly communicating the sum and substance of that of that document to the people in the room. You have the icing on the cake with potentially a witness who's there who would recognize it. It would say, oh, yeah, that's the one I saw him wave around or put down on his desk or whatever he did with it.

So it really kind of closes the circle on that episode. You've got the audio recording, which is amazing. If you guys comments about not having the authority to be able to declassify the admitting, it's still classified. And now you have all tied back to the document itself. It kind of eliminates its attorney's ability to challenge the entry of the audio recording as evidence, which could you could have made the argument that that's overly prejudicial. If you weren't charging that event, that episode, now they're charging it, they have the evidence. There's

absolutely no way the recording stays out or the witnesses don't testify about it. Yeah, I think this might actually trigger additional motions in lemonade. You know, after this really, it has a matter of law. This is not a thing anymore and you can't use that as a defense. That's right. Based on that. So I think that that, again, would increase the stuff that has to be done between now and the trial date. And that's what I wanted to also ask you about Brian is we haven't talked since it got scheduled in May. The last time we talked is like he went for December, probably shooting for the spring,

hoping that she'll split the baby and she did. She, in fact, she actually, I even asked if she could bring it into March of Alvin Bragg would be willing to move his trial, but she ended up with May. And then of course, their can and probably likely will be more delay after that. But we have 10 months now, which is quite a bit of breathing room. And I was wondering your thoughts on that and also your thoughts on the government's filing as to why these super-seating indictments will not have any bearing on the new trial date of May 2024. Yeah, well, I think on the trial date itself not being moved by the super-seating indictment,

that makes total sense to me. I don't think on the tape's destruction element or attempted destruction, classified information isn't really relevant to that charge, so that's pretty easy. On the run document, that was a document that was probably gonna be turned over in classified discovery already, right? So I don't think that sets it back.

And again, under her schedule, classified discovery doesn't actually start till September 7th. So I don't think anything is gonna be, we have over a month until we get to that point. So I don't think it is going to be, we have over a month until that happened until we get to that point. So I don't think it'll set back anything at all. As for the trial date overall, it's, I think, very sensible to set a trial date for me. That's, I think, enough time.

If DOJ has everything in order, which they say they do, which would be the normal, the biggest delay is just DOJ being able to push out its discovery and meet all its obligations there. It appears to be ready there. So if it can meet those obligations, may seem sensible. Some people pointed out and I agree that she allowed way too much time to litigate the CEPA Section 3 protective order. She allowed over a month to litigate that.

Part of that's DOJ's fault. They should have proposed it earlier. I don't know why they waited so long. They didn't give enough time to Trump's team to review it. She called them out on that. I think, you know, somewhat defensively. But that said, under her schedule, again, discovery is not starting till September. But putting that aside, the full SEI clearances aren't going to be ready until about 40, 45 days from now. Most of the discovery is SCI, so most of it wouldn't go out to those clearances

or done anyway. So I don't think the super protective order thing is gonna set things back that much. The lay in mind though, which I tweeted about is the very end of her order, which is called the SEPA Section 6C litigation. So in Section 6, the SEPA is, when you get ready for trial, Under 6a, which is a

separate element, you litigate the use relevance and the missibility of classified information or trial. Normally what you would do in emotion eliminate, you figure out, okay, this is admissible, this is relevant, all that kind of stuff. Then you say, okay, here's our universe of trial evidence. We are going to under section 6c decide the government is going to propose certain protective measures. We're going to redact this thing. We're going to do this substitution. We're going to have a witness use the silent witness rule and testify in generalities

about the document. That's all done under section 6c. Well she put has that concluding about three weeks before trial, which I don't blame her under DOJ schedule for December. That's where it was. Now, the truth is they had no choice, given that kind of crazy fast schedule that they proposed, they had no choice but to put it there. But I'm sure they would love to go back to her and say, now that we have so much time before trial, thank you for that time. Now that we have so much time, trial, thank you for that time. Now that we have so much time, we really need to conclude that early

because that's not enough time because it could be two weeks before trial before she makes her rulings. And then DOJ has two weeks to get ready. If they want to appeal anything, there's not enough time to appeal before trial. So it's gonna automatically set the trial date back. It's just not at all what DOJ would want.

They would love to have that conclude about two months before trial. And you know what, if you look at the schedule, there is time. The 6A litigation ends in January. And then there's this gap of like two, a little over two months before the 6C litigation starts. So I would expect, I wouldn't be surprised if they go back to her and say, we know we proposed something like this, but now that we have more time, let's move that 6C litigation up to February so we can be ready for trial. They absolutely should do that. I don't know if they will,

but that's the biggest sort of land my lurking in her schedule. That's fascinating. I mean, you could definitely see that 6C portion as being generating the most decisions that are likely to be appealed. And that's where the delay starts to turn from days or weeks into months.

I mean, you know, when you throw things into the appellate court process, you really lose all control. And again, not her fault. I think she's ignorant on this stuff and she just looked at this schedule and said, okay, I'll follow that. And she just didn't know better to not do fault. I think she's ignorant on this stuff. And she just looked at this schedule and said, okay, I'll follow that. And she just didn't know better to not do that. Right. Because the alternate would be she's so shrewd in her protection of Trump that she kept,

she knew she could keep that and put it there. And there would be delay. Yeah, I don't know that she's competent enough to be that shrewd. But let's go back to see, section three in a protective order, because Trump had made a motion. He actually literally asked the court to be able to talk about classified material outside of a skiff. He wants to talk about it at Mar-a-Laga. Mar-a-Laga.

I cannot believe that he made this motion with a straight face. You've already talked a little bit, Brian, about how the impact of the new charges is really a bad look for the judge. And that is a factor in every trial, right? You want to keep your side and the way you're litigating the case and the way you conduct yourself in court on the judge's good side. Man, he, so he lost some points being very credibly alleged to have engaged in blatant evidence destruction.

Now he comes in and says, excuse me, can I just have all that stuff back? I promise I'll keep it in the ballroom or in the shower like I used to. I mean, what, what on earth were they thinking? I mean, this has got to be one of those moments where the judge is just like, are you kidding? This is exactly why you're here because you can't have that stuff outside of a skift. Did this not occur to you at this point?

That might be his defense. Yeah, it is mind-boggling. It shows, I think Trump now has probably the best that a lawyer has he's had, which is a low bar, admittedly, in a relative statement. But you have to know that they did not want to make this argument that he is forcing them to make this argument. So that's a bad sign for his defense in this case that he is basically overruling his attorneys on these calls and doing exactly what Andy said, which is making arguments in front of the judge,

who should be sympathetic towards them that are probably going to upset her and make her much less sympathetic. So it's a really bad move to get off on this foot with her. Yeah, and I mean, obviously, I think she was going to reject it. They might try to narrow their argument a little bit when they fully litigated to say, you know, oh, we could have the secret service come in and make a little bit when they fully litigated to say, oh, we could have the secret service come in and make a little skip just like we had when he was president, right? But he's not president anymore. He doesn't have a full secret service contingent anymore. He still has one, but not to the same extent.

So I think that'll be rejected. And it does remind me, Andy, I'm sure you heard when you were in government, I know I did at CIA. He did have briefings, classified briefings at Bed Mr. and Mar-a-Lago quite frequently. And you would hear stories coming out of those that would really make you shudder of just normal safety considerations not being followed,

him bringing people into the room to order diet cooks or milkshakes in the middle of a very sensitive briefing. So it's not surprising at all that he's continuing to do this. Yeah, you look at the lengths that the other, and they're admittedly, these people weren't the president, but the head of the CIA, the head of the FBI, other principles had to go to to be able to work with T.S. material in their homes. They literally build skiffs in those people's homes. They improve the structure. They deploy all the countermeasures

and everything else that's required for that. And then you have to sit in that little tiny phone booth of a room that they've built in your basement or someplace else for hours on end, working on the computer, doing whatever you do. So those stories out of Mar-a-Lago about like showing, you know, the North Korean intelligence

to the Japanese Prime Minister on the Veranda as other diners took photographs with cell phones. It's just, it's hair raising. If you've worked in the intelligence community, saw that stuff, you're just like, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. Yeah. Actual pro clutching.

Finally, Brian, there was some reporting this week from Zoe Tillman, Bloomberg. And she picked up on comments, the Department of Justice has made about whether it will invoke SEPA section four at all in its schedule. And it said, if necessary, right? And at the hearing, Jay Bratt said it would, its use would be fairly minimal, I believe, with the words that he used. And we'll cover C-Pasexion 4 in more detail in a future segment. But first, can you just give a brief, like, overview, refresher of C-Pasexion 4? And second, what do you think the DOJ is up to by using this qualified language?

Yeah, so CPIS-4 just very briefly is where the government has identified a universe of discoverable classified material that they would normally just hand over to the defense, but some of it for various reasons is too sensitive to handover or is maybe not relevant and helpful to their preparation of a defense. And so the government, which is sort of the legal standard for discovery of classified information. And so the government would go to the court and propose, hey, there's certain things we want to withhold, they're not relevant and helpful to the defense, or there's certain redactions we want to make, or summaries or substitutions of sensitive things. We're still going to give him a substitution that will allow him to prepare a defense

because we have to do that. But we wanna get your blessing to do that. And so that's what that process would entail. It normally is a little boring process. You've gotta work very closely with intelligence community to do that. It can slow things down quite a bit. So it is interesting that they've said,

look, we're gonna take a minimal approach to this. I'm not that surprised that there's a big picture strategic question here, which is, there's a playbook for these cases, seepa cases, to what extent do you follow it and to what extent do you throw it out? And I think a lot of times it's going to make sense to throw it out a little bit.

The department just manual on seepa says, you should use section four to the maximum extent possible. The reason DOJ normally does that is because if you shrink the universe of classified information that's at issue in the case, even in discovery, there's less opportunity for great mail, right? So they're not following that here. So the question is why. I think one is just speed. That makes good sense. You normally wouldn't start turning everything that has to be redacted. You wouldn't turn it over until the court has blessed your section for motion, right? Because you don't want to give them a redacted version of a document and then have to come back

after the judges will differently and give them a less redacted version, right? Then you've just signaled this thing where you're adapted before is super sensitive. So they know it is zero in on that. So you normally wait until the judge rules intersection four until you turn it over. So I think it shows that they want to move quickly, and that makes a lot of sense. It also shows, I think, that the universe of discoverable material may be pretty small. And we can talk real quickly about what that would normally be. Obviously, the charge documents would be provided in discovery.

I think most of even the uncharged documents that were at Mara Loga would be provided in discovery. Any classification reviews that the intelligence community did of those documents are going to be provided in discovery. And then I don't think they did a formal damage assessment. And we can talk about why that is. But we did. We did.

And the last time you were talking to talk about that already. Yeah. So that to the extent, and there was any damage of mitigation efforts, that might be, they said in one filing that there's classified information about other declassification efforts that Trump made. So I think they're going to show there that he did follow a process sometimes. That's going to be provided in discovery. They'll probably search that any of this stuff ever leaked to the press where their crime reports about it.

So they'll search for that. And if they're aware, they'll produce that. So that's sort of the universe. There are theories that will take you beyond that in terms of discovery, but I think they're clearly signaling they have a pretty narrow universe in there with theory of what's discovered in this case. No, I think they said it was roughly 1400 pages of classified documents.

Yeah, and I think part of that is they knew from the beginning of the semesters occasion this was gonna be a high profile case and they probably put the word out even for things like the classification reviews don't create a lot of unnecessary paper or a lot of unnecessary emails. What I bet they did even was made in office at the DNI, kept the documents there,

and if you were a classification expert from the CIA, you probably had to go there, look at them. And do you? For sure. To sort of limit the amount of paper created. So it's pretty smart. The last thing I would add is not totally out of the woodwork, though, with section 4, because Trump is also going to make His own discover requests. They're going to say thanks for all the discover you gave us We think there's additional things that are relevant. They're going to issue document requests to the government Those will probably be litigated and if can and grants those There may be additional more sensitive information that DOJ does have to apply section four to later down the road

Understood well, thank you so much for explaining that to us it does have to apply Section 4 to later down the road. Understood. Well, thank you so much for explaining that to us. I know we're gonna have a deeper dive into the CPC Section 4 as time goes on and I look forward to having you back. Andy, did you have any final questions that you wanted to get out before? No, I think we've covered it well for today.

I think this whole process is just really starting to ramp up. So we're gonna have to, unfortunately Brian we're going to have to drag you in any more times as we go along. But you've given us a lot to think about today. So thanks very much for coming on. Thank you. Always happy to help. Everybody, stick around.

We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. All right. All eyes. We're on the Prettyman Federal Court House. All right. We're on the Prettyman Federal Court House.

We're on the Prettyman Federal Court House. We're on the Prettyman Federal Court House. We're on the Prettyman Federal Court House. We're on the Prettyman Federal Court House. We're on the Prettyman Federal Court House. Hey everybody, welcome back. All right, all eyes were on the Prettyman Federal Court House in DC this week since Donald got the target letter we covered last week. But then we got those superseding charges in Florida. But a couple of things happened. Trump's lawyers met with the DOJ on Thursday. We'd been waiting for that meeting as it's one of the steps that we saw in the espionage obstruction case, right right before an indictment

Sources say that Trump's lawyers were told to expect an indictment during that meeting The grand jury met after that all day. I don't know what they were doing but they were meeting until five and They may have voted something under seal. We haven't heard about it. Trump hasn't truth about it And we don't have oppressed our next steps our Trump haven't heard about it. Trump hasn't truth about it. And we don't have a press. Our next steps, our Trump will rant about it on true social. And then the special counsel will announce a press conference. That's kind of the two next two things we're looking for. They meet again on Tuesday. I'm expecting probably next

week. We'll see some movement on this. I'm not sure how it will look, but law enforcement has been told to prepare for possible violence in DC and again, you know, I know that everyone's talking about this, but the significance of this particular indictment cannot be overstated. This was the this was a coup. So I think yeah, I think they're you're absolutely right. I think I'm kind of surprised it didn't happen yesterday to be perfectly honest because they had a bunch of prosecutors in the courthouse and no obvious witnesses. And that's usually the day, you know, the last day when they're wrapping things up

and reading the draft and diamond, that sort of stuff. So it doesn't, it may have, but apparently there was a, I heard report to somewhere there was the clerk of the court said that no indictments had been turned in yesterday. A distraction. So everyone could get out of the building safe and no indictments had been turned in yesterday. A distraction. So everyone could get out of the building safe and go home and file. Yeah, it's Pahoon knows.

Like I thought that was an odd thing for the clerk to be answering questions at all. Well, it was a odd that they kept meeting for another two hours after the somebody after Gerstein reported the clerk told him that. Yeah. Yeah. So the whole thing is a little bit weird, but they are officially back on Tuesday. I don't think they're going to be brought back in on off days. That's very hard to do with a grand jury because grand jurors unlike a trial jury,

which sits constantly until the trial is over. Grand jurors, once they're in panel of a grand jury, they sit on the grand jury for months, like couple of months. And so they only do it like one or two days a week. And that's because those folks have jobs and lives. And they need to be able to schedule their lives around the two days a week that they're in the grand jury room. So I don't, it's hard to bring them back on an off day.

And I don't think they'll do that. But I think we're looking at days. It could very well come this week. Could come Tuesday. If not Thursday, I think it's probably likely. Yeah. I agree. I concur.

Also, prosecutors are scrutinizing a February 2020, Oval Office meeting. That's when then President Trump praised improvements to the US security apparatus for elections. He was so encouraged by federal efforts to protect election systems in February of 2020. He suggested that the FBI and the DHS Department of Homeland Security hold a press conference to take credit for how awesome they are. And it was only a couple of weeks later that he started saying the mail in ballots and

that this if I lose it's only because it's rigged. But during that meeting, Trump also learned that Russia preferred him in the 2020 election to Joe Biden and that led to the firing of the ODNI McGuire and the appointment of Rick Grinnell. And then also it makes sense to me that they're scrutinizing this meeting because this is right around the time our friend, Johnny McIntee, who has testified before the grand jury, started weeding out non-loyal Trump, you know, appointees that were non-loyal to Trump. And it kind of sets up the firing of Krebs because they were asked Chris Krebs would be an excellent witness for

for the prosecution. And it's like, oh, why did they fire you if you did so well in February that they wanted to have a, you know, a press conference touting your amazing election security, what change. So I think it's, it's makes sense that they're scrutinizing this meeting. That's right. It's interesting. I don't think it substantively changes the proof against Trump in this case. I think it's yet another data point that the government will point to show that he actually knew the difference between real election fraud and security problems and none. But it's also so far in time before the events around January 6th that Trump could say, oh, well, I changed my mind after that.

Or I was told many things about fraud that had happened in the election. And so therefore, I just didn't know at that time. So the meeting is interesting and it's ironic, but I don't think it's hugely relevant. No, I think it's just like you said, another data point to counter the defense that he really, truly thought the election was stolen and doesn't understand election security. And also we've got news at least two more witnesses are scheduled to speak with special counsel, prosecutors in early August,

including fraudulent electors, Bernie Kerrick, and another unnamed Trump lawyer who worked with the fraudulent electors scheme. We also have reports that Brian Kemp has met with Jack Smith, so he's just covering every single base that he possibly can. And back to Bernie Kerrick, hundreds of documents that Bernie Kerrick had been withholding a due to attorney client privilege have been handed over to Jack Smith's team.

Apparently, this is from Kerrick's lawyer, a parliamentary, said that the Trump campaign waived privilege on these. And I was like, well, that's weird. Why is he just waving privilege left and right? It did for the Rudy Giuliani discovery in the Shay Moss of Ruby Freeman case too. But Lisa Rubin, again, she makes these great points. She says that this is possible

because he might plan to use an advice of counsel defense. And if you use an advice of counsel defense for why you thought you could overturn the election or have fraudulent electors or throw out the real electors, you wave attorney client privilege. Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's another angle to this too.

Bernie Kerrick was Rudy Giuliani's kind of chief investigator in Rudy's efforts to drum up nonsensical fraud. And so what those papers are gonna be are the results of people who made complaints about election fraud, none of which, of course, turned out to be true, but these are like results of interviews and things like that. It is possible in his defense, which will likely be,

I really thought there was fraud, they may drag some of these people into testify, just as examples of the information that was coming into him, via Bernie Kerrick, to Rudy Giuliani, to him, substantiating or kind of bolstering his view that there was real fraud. So there's probably not a lot in these documents for prosecutors, except if these people come in and testify, they're going to be cross-examined. And so the prosecutors will have had the paperwork behind those people, basically the results of the interviews, transcripts, whatever they have, and they'll be ready to kind of tear

them apart and show that there wasn't really any fraud there. So this will be Trump's efforts to kind of put something on the other side of the scale. Remember on the prosecutor's side of the scale, you have the dozens of people who told them there were no fraud, his own attorneys who told him, his campaign people who told him the companies that he hired to find fraud who came back and said there was none. So you got to expect you'll see the Trump team put up some witnesses who will say, no, no, I really thought there was fraud. And that's probably some of this pool. Yeah, makes sense.

Because you do have to have that, you do have to produce that, and you have to tie up every loose end. All right, let's pivot to listener questions. Do we have any listener questions this week? We do. We have a couple of them. And I'm going to Scotland for a listener question from Sue. It's kind of interesting. We had a couple of a couple of people who rode in from outside the US. And Sue says, could you please explain why if Judge Eileen Cannon is so inexperienced in

trials of this nature and importance? Another more experienced judge is not automatically drafted to take the case. In addition, after being overruled on appeal for her last judgment on Trump, what Jack Smith have been able to protest and request a different judge if he had so wanted. So thank you, Sue, very much for your question and thanks for listening. For your first question, so in this country, the way we select judges is really random. So the judges in a particular federal district, they all work in the courthouse. They all have the same powers.

They all are appointed for life. They're all very, they're considered to be equals, even the newest with the most senior. Except for one judge, the chief judge. That's a judge that kind of runs the whole judge scene in the courthouse. And the chief judge is responsible for coming up with the assignment process. And the one that they use pretty much every courthouse is just a random, like a roll of the dice. That's how judges get assigned cases. So we

don't actually assign cases based on experience. Oh, you know, this judge had a case like this before. That would be a good one for her, nothing like that. It would make a lot of sense, but that's not the way we do it. And then finally, your second question about whether or not Jack Smith could have protested, the fact that Judge Ken and got overruled on appeal simply means that the appellate court did not agree with her interpretation of the law. And it doesn't mean it's not considered any kind of a statement that she has, you know,

bad judgment or that she is anyway biased for Donald Trump as opposed to the prosecutors. It's simply a thought of as a disagreement on the interpretation of law. And since they are the higher court, they're their interpretation rules the day. So the only way Jack Smith could have protested the judges, if he had had some really, really strong evidence that that the judge had a conflict or was inst for some obvious reason biased that the judge had a conflict or was for some obvious reason, biased in favor of the defendant against the prosecution. That doesn't really exist in this case, so that's why, likely why he didn't make any sort of objections. Yeah, agreed. And then also, there's appeals take time, and he wanted to get this done as quickly as possible. Yeah, good point. Good point. All right. Thank you so

much for your questions. If you have questions from me or Andy or Brian Greer, if you have a question, we can put it in the SEPA hopper. You can send it to us at helloatmullersherote.com. Just make sure to put Jack in the subject line so that we don't lose it with all of our other emails. That's how we find these and gather them is by searching for Jack in the subject line. Again, that's helloatmullershearote.com. This was a long show we had a lot to talk about.

Gosh, huge, huge show. Like we do every week, what are we gonna talk about next week? I'm not worried about it anymore. There's always plenty. And we're only going, we're still going up the mountain here, right? Like there's every week more volume.

So this week will be really interesting when see what comes out of that DC grand jury if anything, and either way, Allison, we will be here to talk about it all. Yep, we'll be here to talk about it all. I've been Allison Gill. And I am Andy McKay. And you're listening to Jack.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. 아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아아