Morning Wire - Trump’s Trials & Tribulations | 10.29.23

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

Several of the defendants in Donald Trump’s election interference case in Georgia have taken plea deals. What does this mean for the former president? And what’s the latest in his New York business fraud lawsuit? We speak to former US attorney Andy McCarthy about Trump’s perils. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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As of this past week, four of President Trump's former associates have pleaded guilty to offenses stemming from the 2020 election, including most recently his former attorney, Jenna Ellis. The growing list of potential state witnesses could prove to be a liability for Trump as he attempts to navigate multiple lawsuits while on the campaign trail. In this episode of Morning Wire, we speak with an expert about the various cases and how serious this legal trouble is for Trump. A portion of this interview aired on Friday. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Sunday, October 29th, and this is Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss is former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, Andy McCarthy. Andy, thanks so much for coming on.

Oh, it's my pleasure. So President Trump was back in the courtroom in New York this week. He was present while his former fixer, Michael Cohen, testified against him. What did we learn from this week's testimony? Really nothing that we didn't all. already know. In fact, it went on for a couple of days, but a lot of it was spent reading to Cohn, you know, a number of statements that he'd made over time, whether in, you know, recorded media or prior testimony. He's not a very good or credible witness, as you would

expect from somebody who's pled guilty to felony crimes involving dishonesty. But I think that the case really isn't about witness testimony. It's more. It's more. about documents. You know, in connection with all of these transactions, Trump has to file a certification of his financial condition. So what you do is you look at what he represented his assets to be worth, and then you look at objective appraisals of what they were actually worth. And what the testimony is from somebody like Cohn is of very little relevance, because the way that you've represented the assets on your statement of financial condition is either accurate or it's not. But I think that to broaden out the lens a little bit, this case is really over already in the sense

that the judge ruled prior to the trial that he had already found Trump liable for committing fraud. So it's got an Alice in Wonderland quality where, you know, we have the conviction first in the trial later. And the only intro. at this point is what the final dollar figure is going to be. And what the two to three month, what's been estimated as a two to three month trial, what that's about is computing how much of the revenues generated by the Trump organization, the state is going to get to disgorge. And they are basically going to put him out of business over that. Now, we know that Trump doesn't technically have to be present at this trial. Why do you think he keeps showing up? I think

and I don't know if the judge calculated this. If he didn't, it was very foolish on his part not to recognize this. But I think that once the judge on the eve of trial ruled against Trump and essentially told him he's already lost the case, now we're just talking about how much money. I think that at that point, Trump decided he was no longer in a legal battle. It's really a political battle that impacts the 2024 campaign. So even though it would be a terrible legal strategy, if you were the lawyer, the last thing you would want is the defendant making all kinds of statements. And you know, you wouldn't want your client to be disrespecting the fact finder who is ultimately going to rule in the case in an ordinary situation. But in this situation, I think Trump figures legally any recourse he has is going to depend on the appellate process down the road. and the judge has already told him legally how the case is coming out. So he's decided to fight it as a political case.

So Trump got there at the beginning to give his version of events, which is that he's being persecuted for political reasons. So it was a good soapbox for him. Trump being a kind of a showman slash politician thought that this was like a good time to make a big splash and he tried to make it. Now, this week, former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis became the fourth defendant to enter a guilty plea. We haven't spoken to you since Sidney Powell pleaded guilty. Do you think now Powell and Ellis are going to testify against former President Trump?

And if so, will that be damaging? I really don't think so. What I take from all this is that Fannie Willis doesn't have a RICO case, which is what I've been saying since she filed the charges. As a former prosecutor, was the first people who come in and. plead guilty and offer to cooperate in a big investigation, what most prosecutors do is they make you plead guilty to the whole scheme, including the most serious charges. And then you say, here's what I did, and here's how I did it with the major other defendants who've been charged in the case. And you do that in the guilty plea proceeding, which, number one, is very powerful in terms of

convincing the court that the government has a strong case and convincing the public that the government has a strong case. And number two, it puts a lot of pressure on other defendants to plead guilty and cooperate. You're not seeing anything like that in connection with Fannie Willis's case. She indicted 19 people and now they're pleading guilty to the kind of small, petty or offenses that if Willis actually wanted to bring a good faith case, these are the kind of charges that she should have brought in the first place. But I think these pleas just show that Willis never had this big, giant conspiracy case where Trump, as an organized crime figure, like a mafadon,

led a racketeering conspiracy that had the United States Constitution and our whole system of government hanging by a thread, which is what the narrative about this is. And I think if she had cooperators who had good information about Trump, what she would do is have them plead guilty to the RICO count and explain in court what Trump did. But you're not seeing that. So last question. What are your thoughts on Trump being fined for violating his gag order?

There have been efforts to keep that gag order in place. Do you think it's going to be lifted? Well, there's two gag orders, right? There's one in the New York State Civil case that we talked about earlier. And then there's one in the federal what's called the January 6th case, but the federal election interference case that's been brought by the special counsel Jack Smith in front of Judge Tanya Chutkin, who is the federal judge in Washington, D.C. So Chutkin issued a gag order or a limited gag order, which basically says that Trump can't say nasty things about the prosecutor. You know, she's regulating what he can say so he can, like he's allowed to say that he thinks it's an unfair. prosecution, but he can't personally attack Smith. And in the New York case, the civil case,

Judge Arthur Engeran has issued a gag order, which says that Trump can't say nasty things about his clerks, the judge's clerks. Trump early in the case posted something on social media that contended that the judge's principal law clerk was like the girlfriend of Chuck Schumer, the leading Democrat in the Senate. You know, there was a picture of the two of them together at some public event of which there must be like eight zillion pictures of Trump together with well-wishers and supporters at those kinds of events. You know, it's just, it was a bunch of nonsense to try to further say that the case against

him was a travesty. But the gag order is idiotic. I mean, you know, in this country, you're allowed to say stupid stuff, as long as you stay on the correct side of incite. and you don't do anything that can be objectively seen as calling for violence, which he clearly didn't do. So the state of play is Judge Engeron has enforced his gag order against Trump twice, including once this week. But in any event, that's the clown show that's going on in New York. And so far, it's cost Trump 15,000 in assessed fines. As far as the federal thing is concerned,

Judge Chutkin, after Trump said he was going to challenge the gag order on appeal, Judge Chutkin suspended it so that he can appeal to the D.C. Circuit. So we have yet to—no one has enforced that gag order against Trump, and it remains to be seen whether it will be upheld on appeal. All right. Well, Andy, thanks so much for coming on today. Appreciate it. Thank you. That was former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, Andy McCarthy. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.

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