Pod Save America - Third Crime's The Charm

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Donald Trump faces a third indictment—his most serious yet. Ron DeSantis’s reset isn’t off to a great start and other Republican candidates are climbing the polls in New Hampshire. Joe Biden’s campaign fires its first shots. And later, Mueller investigation prosecutor Andrew Weissmann joins to break down the week’s big legal news.Crooked Media Reads' first book, Mobility by Lydia Kiesling, is out now! Get your copy at www.crooked.com/mobility. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Ron DeSantis' reset isn't off to a great start. Republican candidates are climbing the polls in New Hampshire. Joe Biden's campaign fires its first shots. And later, Mueller investigation prosecutor Andrew Weissman joins to break down our top story. Third time's a charm, Dan. Donald Trump is likely to be indicted again at any moment by a grand jury in Washington, D.C.

for his most serious crime yet, a plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election that ended in a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump truthed the news that he received a letter from special counsel Jack Smith on Sunday night, informing him that he's a target of the January 6th investigation and has four days to decide whether he wants to testify before the grand jury, which Trump accurately said, quote, almost always means an arrest and indictment. The letter has been confirmed by multiple news outlets and reportedly mentions three federal statutes, quote, conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under color of law and tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant.

We also got a big hint about what's to come, thanks to some trenchant analysis of Jack Smith's lunch break from our friends at CNN. Let's listen. Jack Smith going to Subway today is a message to Donald Trump. Donald Trump tries to intimidate people. He tries to bully people. He tries to scare you away. That was Jack Smith with no words and a simple $5 sub in his hand saying, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere.

Yeah. The imagery was intentional and spoke volumes. He did go with the tuna, which was an odd choice, which makes us think that perhaps he is going to file a superseding indictment if he had gone with just a plain Italian sub. Maybe there would have been other charges that we haven't considered. Was it really the tuna? Have you confirmed that? Because if it was the tuna, you know what that tells me? He's about to reel in a big fish. Oh, Dan, you ruined everything. Here's the thing. John King and Dana Bash are two of the best political analysts on CNN and on cable television, which just goes to show you that it's cable news. Being on cable news for 24 hours a day, you just end up saying crazy shit like that. Well, there's not 24 hours of news, even when the former president of the United

States is about to be indicted for the third time in five months. Yeah. I mean, you put me on cable news all day. I probably start talking about Subway sandwiches too. All right, let's move quickly since Jack Smith is waiting for us to finish the pod before announcing the indictment, as he did last time and all the times before that. What does your calendar look like after this? Did you block it out? It is very open, I will tell you that. Yeah, I will be prepping for offline tomorrow,

but it is a big block that just says, here comes the indictment news. Because the last time this happened, I was getting in my car to drive to a meeting, and I turned right around. So this afternoon is free and clear. Okay, good. All right, so we're going to hear from a real lawyer shortly, but what else do we know about these potential charges that didn't just come from a guy's subway order? Well, a lot of this is very familiar because two of the three charges, the obstruction of an official proceeding and the conspiracy to defraud are the two that were recommended by the January 6th committee. The use of this civil rights charge that has gotten a lot of attention

from a lot of very real legal experts as this sort of novel legal theory, this law from the post-Reconstruction period, was not in the January 6th thing. But, and I learned this from reading tweets, but also from talking to Andrew Weissman, you heard it was, that's a very normal charge. That is, there is nothing unusual about that. It very much is completely in line

with what Donald Trump did. And we should not, as Weissman says to me, his friends in the legal community are overthinking this dramatically. And it is a very, there's nothing unusual about it. It makes complete sense. It's perfectly in line with the evidence that we have seen for this thing. So I think people are overreacting that they should not. evidence that we have seen for this thing. So I think people are overreacting that they should not. A few other things. We also know that in March of 22, federal judge found that both Trump and lawyer John Eastman had likely committed felonies that included obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States. So we have had a judge weigh in on what some of these charges may be already. And it does seem that the fake electors scheme is at the heart of what the charges may be.

Also pressuring Mike Pence to overturn the election, which are both connected, of course. Right. So if you try to get a bunch of people to sign documents that say that they're they're the rightful electors for the presidential election, even though they are not. And then you submit those to Congress and then you tell your vice president to obstruct the proceeding of what Congress was trying to do on January 6th. You can't do that. That's against the law. We've already had one judge say that. And we also have now testimony we know from reports from Mike Pence, Mark Meadows, who knows quite a bit. And Trump has been reportedly worried about has flipped Giuliani. Jack Smith has been calling secretaries of state and governors in the fake elector states, the states that submitted fake electors.

So it doesn't doesn't doesn't look too good. I mean, the fake electors thing is wild. We just kind of keep saying we've been saying it for two years now. It's just look too good. I mean, the fake electors thing is wild. We just kind of keep saying, we've been saying it for two years now. It's just fake electors. He had fake electors. And it's sort of been lost for obvious reasons compared to the images of people storming the Capitol.

And those are the prosecutions we've seen about the people who stormed the Capitol and committed violence. But the fact that we have a political process in this country where electors are chosen and the Republicans didn't like who they were going to vote for because of what the popular vote says. So they just went and got a bunch of people to pretend to be electors and then tried to submit that to the state legislature is a wild cockamamie, complete banana scheme. I mean, it's insane. cockamamie, complete bananas scheme. I mean, it's insane. And this was engineered based on what we know from January 6th committee from the White House, from the president and his advisors.

It's insane. And we don't, this is one of those things that we just don't focus enough on because it's so fucking crazy. I think we don't focus enough on it because, you know, Mike Pence ultimately refused. But if Mike Pence did have the courage to do the right thing, in Donald Trump's words, basically, Mike Pence would have sat there and said, hey, I know that the votes came in and there are electors for Joe Biden

because he won and all the lawsuits failed and all that kind of stuff. But you know what? We have a bunch of states that actually say Donald Trump won based on absolutely nothing. And here are the electors and

we're just going to swear in Donald Trump instead. That's what would have happened. Just like, and there was no judge in the country that said that that was correct. I mean, of course that's wrong. But I think, I also think the insurrection at the Capitol may have overshadowed that. Yeah. I mean, of course that's wrong. But I also think the insurrection at the Capitol

may have overshadowed that. Yeah, I mean, I understand why that is, but because of that fact, I think we've just been sleeping on this other insane crime that actually came closer to succeeding than the violence itself. Yeah, and I also think it's interesting

that the one law that was not mentioned is like incitement to insurrection. Some people, and that the one law that was not mentioned is like incitement to insurrection. Some people, and that was one charge that the January 6th committee, I believe, recommended. And some legal analysts thought that Jack Smith might, but he did not. Well, at least if the letter is correct and, you know, there's no surprises. If it ends up that Jack Smith does not charge him with incitement to insurrection, ends up that Jack Smith does not charge him with incitement to insurrection. I wonder if it's just because that is a more difficult charge to prove than this fake elector scheme, which does seem like a much easier charge to prove.

Yeah. Our friend Norm, I understand why people, we obviously want every book in the library thrown at Trump because he deserves it and that's how we feel. But our old friend Norm Eisen, the legal analyst who worked up in Congress for some of these, for one of the Trump impeachments, did this Twitter thread where he went through what Trump could be sentenced to if he was convicted under the charge charges in the letter. Yeah. And that's he will spend the rest of his life in jail. Yeah, it is a long time. And so whether we get all the charges we want or all the ones that have been talked about on legal Twitter or not, what matters is the charges that Jack Smith can prove and convict Trump of. So Trump's first televised response to the news

came during a withering line of hard-hitting questions from Sean Hannity during a Fox News town hall in Iowa Tuesday night. Let's listen. You look well, you look healthy. Feel good, feel good. Let me ask you just a basic fundamental question. You have all of these never-ending attacks. Yeah. And you released on Truth Social earlier today that they now, that you are a target of this January 6th grand jury. My first question to you is,

it doesn't seem to bother you like I think it would bother so many other people. What is it about you that it doesn't? No, it bothers me. It bothers me for everybody in this incredible sold out audience. And it's it bothers you. I got the letter on Sunday night. Think of it.

I don't think they've ever sent a letter on Sunday night. And they're in a rush because they want to interfere. It's interference with the election. It's election interference. Never been done like this in the history of our country. And it's a disgrace. What's happening to our country, whether it's the borders or the elections or kinds of things like this, where the DOJ has become a weapon for the Democrats, an absolute weapon.

And you know what? Until I got indicted, until I got indicted, I had such respect for the office of the president. Yeah, it showed. I just can't believe they would do that on a Sunday night when everyone knows that Donald Trump spends Sunday in church. And then after he leaves church, he spends the rest of the day in thoughtful prayer because it is the Lord's Day. And to interrupt that with a letter saying that he's the target of investigation, it's just beyond the pale. Yeah, it's never happened before for a good reason because we have norms in this society. Right at the Sunday scaries.

I love you. That is, that's a real Sunday scaries for Donald Trump. I will give him that. I just love sean hannity like uh you've been charged with a bunch of crimes uh including trying to steal an election and overthrow the government um how are you feeling you okay how are you doing i haven't gone back and researched this but you and i have been doing this podcast together for so long that we've done I mean we've podcasted about Trump Hannity Town Hall probably like 10 times and I'm pretty sure the first question is almost always the same how do you do it why are you so awesome how are you so strong

is it distracting to look in the mirror and see someone so handsome which by the way I don't know if too many clips to play here, but I don't know if you saw the Megyn Kelly thing from this week where she said that she ran into Trump after the Turning Points USA conference. And they made up because, of course, you know, they had a little they had a little t the first debate when donald trump uh started yelling at her and accusing her of being on her period um a thing that happened which is something that thing that happened a thing that is common with presidential candidates on stage uh engaging with the moderator that's usually uh that's usually an accusation that's thrown around and megan kelly was like you know what i saw him we decided it was water under the bridge and he looks great he eats cheeseburgers and fries and he just looks so great i want those jeans i want to know what he had what he's doing i want those jeans like you are so fucking gross

this man demeaned you on national television and now you're like god he looks good i'm on the trump train again i am there it is like so per usual trump gets a big round of applause for his crimes on on the hannity town hall hannity and the rest of the right-wing media megan kelly all of them they've been sticking with their talking points about you know know, two-tiered system of justice. Same with the Republicans in Congress. Kevin McCarthy was out there, you know, saying this is horrible. I can't believe this. This only happened because Donald Trump's poll numbers are up and he's beaten Joe Biden. And this is why this happened. This is the same Kevin McCarthy that after January 6th said that what Trump did was un-American, right? He's now changed his tune, of course. I don't think we need yet another conversation about how this third indictment will probably strengthen Trump's political standing with his biggest fans. But do you think

it could be more politically damaging than the last two indictments with the rest of the electorate or same? I think when it comes to Trump, everything is only operating on the margins. Are there some potential small handful of swingish voters who are going to be disturbed by the fact that the president is facing criminal charges for trying to violently overturn the election? Sure. I want to live in a world where that is the case. But we just sort of know that everything operates in this very narrow band. Where I think this indictment is more problematic is not necessarily for Trump himself. It's not good for him. I just want to stipulate it is not good for him. And it is not going to be helpful. But I think it's for the rest of the Republican Party.

How Trump handles his documents is not really going to affect other Republicans. What Trump did with Stormy Daniels eight years ago is not really going to affect other Republicans. January 6th and the big lie we know from 2022 is an anvil around the Republican Party's neck. There was a study. We've talked about this before. some researchers at Stanford that showed that candidates in 2022 who believed in the big lie and pushed the big lie did just about three points worse than other Republicans. And that's the difference. And so if Donald Trump, if let's say that Donald Trump is indicted, this trial either starts or is sort of running up to starting and it's dominating the news. And Donald Trump was once again centering January 6th, the 2020 election. He's forced to say that he's continuing to push

the big lie. That's going to hurt all Republicans. That's actually more damaging. And so I think it'll be probably incumbent upon all of us as we head into next year, and we're talking about this, is to hold all Republicans accountable to this, not just Donald Trump. about this is to hold all Republicans accountable to this, not just Donald Trump. Well, and that might be easier thanks to Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy. I don't know if you saw the news this morning that- Did I see the news in Playbook? Come on now. You know my morning routine. I guess I was speaking to the audience. We know their morning routine too. Yeah, we read Playbook so they don't have to. No, so this is what happened.

You remember a couple weeks ago we talked about Trump was pretty angry when Kevin McCarthy went on a television show and said that he didn't know if Trump was the strongest candidate. And then Trump demanded an endorsement from McCarthy. McCarthy said, I'll give you the endorsement at some point, but not now. Trump said, that's not good enough. So Kevin said, okay, well, what I'll do is I'll promise you that I will hold a vote before the August recess in the House to try to expunge both of your impeachments from the record, which is not really a thing you can do. He was already impeached. It's like in the congressional record it's happening. But anyway, but that's what Donald Trump wanted. So now Kevin is faced with a bit of a conundrum because he has told Donald Trump that he will bring this vote to the floor.

But all the Republican House members sitting in Biden districts do not want to be sitting there voting for to expunge Donald Trump's impeachment over January 6th, right at the time when Donald Trump is being charged with a conspiracy to defraud the United States over his behavior on January 6th and leading up to it. Yeah, and there's probably not a majority of Republicans who would vote for that, so he would fail. So he would fail, and then it would damage Republicans, just like you're saying. Yes. I will say there is a line that the Vin Diesel character, Dom Toretto, in the Fast and Furious movie says, which is,

I live my life a quarter mile at a time. And that's how Kevin McCarthy operates. That's a great line of movie. It's a terrible approach for a house speaker. It's just like, how can I get out of this conversation? I'm not going to think for one second about what happens after that. Obviously, if Kevin McCarthy had paused while Donald Trump was yelling at him and thought about it, he would have known that would be an abject fucking disaster. But that's just not how he thinks. It's just like, wake up the next day and deal with it then. And so he'll have yet another crisis that is going to make his life even harder. I'll say one more thing, which is, you know,

I think in 2022, big lie candidates didn't do well in large part because the Democrats made it an issue from Joe Biden on down, paid advertising, all the rest. I also think the January 6th committee did a fantastic job. And we all had questions at the beginning, having seen two impeachment hearings and the political effects of those hearings, which were minimal, whether the January 6th hearings would have any effect. And I don't think they sort of like changed public opinion in a huge way. But I do think you could say that the hearings worked. You know, in June of 2022, according to Quinnipiac, 46% of Americans

believe that Trump had committed a crime over the 2020 election. 47% disagreed. In July, after the hearings, 48% thought he committed a crime 44 percent didn't so again not a huge shift but a meaningful shift on the margins when the margins matter a lot so i do think that if if we are hearing news all about january 6th for the next several months and through the election it could damage him on the margins um any other takeaways from the hannity town hall sort of a mess it just know that you weren't able to join the Discord, but we had a great time on the Discord, crooked.com slash friends, everyone subscribe, but it was really fun. Yeah, I am sad I missed it. I had to watch the Town Hall later on YouTube at 1.5 speed.

And the real vibe- That was better. That was better. The real vibe that a Hannity Trump interview gives off is someone interviewing their boss. He seems just very worried about getting fired at any minute there. I was watching and I'm like, because I don't watch a ton of Fox, I watch the clips that we talk about on the show. But you watch that and you're like, oh, yeah, this is why Republican voters who only consume right wing media haven't turned on Trump. Like it's just stuff. It's just a feel good, safe space for Donald Trump and Republicans. And, you know, you get the you get Hannity's Town Hall and you get the commercial break and you get a few

you get ads for prostate medication, a couple of my pillow ads, a couple other ads for old people, some gold. And it is just conspiracy after conspiracy. The other thing I would say is like you really it was the kind of town hall where you had to have a Ph.D. in MAGA to understand all of the various conspiracies and references. And it made me think that Trump was actually, I thought Trump was more on his game in terms of like message discipline during the CNN town hall than he was with Hannity. Because when he's come, and one of the subscribers in the Discord made this point, that when he's combative with an interviewer, he can sometimes like go to, and you could tell because that was like his first big event after his launch his first televised event uh or first televised sit-down interview that his handlers were all

like okay you got to be on message bring it back to issues and stuff like that and this one with hannity he's talking about like peter struck and lisa page and the lovers and the and hunter and barisma and he's just doing all the all the MAGA conspiracies. And I don't think he like I think if a general electorate had watched the Hannity Town Hall, it would not be very good for Trump. Fox has become. Really, since they had their collapse after the 2020 election, it has become like more dangerous in terms of radicalizing its current viewers and I think somewhat less potent at infecting the larger conversation because they became so nervous about losing fans that it's become fan service.

Yeah. We're not trying to bring anyone to it. The town hall was Trump fan service. That's exactly right. Yeah. So Trump isn't the only one to get in trouble for his attempted coup this week. Michigan's attorney general charged 16 fake electors with signing fraudulent certificates that claim Trump won the state in 2020. The group includes an RNC member, a mayor, a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, all of whom face eight felony counts, each related to forgery and election fraud.

What do you make of these charges? Big deal? Do we think other states with Democratic AGs or non-MAGA AGs where there were fake electors will follow? They should. The history here is a little interesting, which is originally Dana Nessel, who's the Attorney General of Michigan, decided that she was not going to investigate this. She ended her investigation because she thought it was more of a matter for the federal government. But then the federal government didn't investigate, so she opened it up again. But when she announced she was stopping the investigation, sort of handing it to the feds, she said, these people have to be held accountable because if they are not, this is going

to happen again. It's basically an open invitation for a similar scheme. And so this is right. This is why the indictment we're all waiting for on Trump matters. It's why what's happening in Michigan matters is there has to be much. This is an, as we said earlier, this is an insane thing people tried to do. It is the, I know we joke about norms, but they try to steal an election. They try to do it brazenly and openly. They try to do it through loopholes and procedures. They try to do it through fraud. They try to do it through violence.

And people have to be held accountable because if they're not, we're just going to do this again and again and again. And sort of the things that hold our society together, especially when all of our elections are incredibly close, are going to fall apart in a way. We sort of have one shot to walk back from the brink and this is it. And the excuse from some of these electors and other Republicans is like, now you're criminalizing free speech. These are just people who thought the election went a different way and wanted to lodge a protest. And it's like, that's not what happened.

And then there was somebody who's like, I just signed a sheet in a meeting. I thought it was an attendance sheet. It's like, no, no, no, no. There's all these texts that they have where they were like, we got to keep quiet about this, where the law says that we're supposed to show up in the Michigan State Capitol, but we're going to show up in the Republican State Headquarters instead, but don't tell anyone,

and all these texts being like, keep quiet about this. They all knew what they were fucking doing. Yeah, no one's criminalizing. You know who criminalized these things? The people who wrote the laws you broke. Right? And there were a couple of fake electors who didn't show up who decided not to participate because they knew it was against the law. I guess that there's obviously there's an investigation in Georgia over this that we know. And there's also now an investigation in Arizona now that there's a new attorney general there. So I think those two states, the way the law is written in those two states, you can see similar charges in those two states as well. I think for some reason in Pennsylvania, I don't think they went as far as they did in Michigan.

They're fake electors and some of the other states. But I think Arizona and Georgia are the next ones to watch out for. And these are all on state level. We also know that Jack Smith in the special counsel's office has been talking to the people involved in fake elector schemes and others in some of these states, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia. So it could be wrapped up into the federal cases. And likely to be part of whatever charges, of the charges Trump is going to face. This will probably be a piece of supporting evidence for that, his role in that. Right. Yeah, which is why these are so important. So there's apparently a Republican presidential primary still happening, though the candidates are once again finding it impossible to break through with anything other than

whatever they're saying about the frontrunner's third indictment. And they can't seem to find anything to say about that the guy that's beating them has been indicted three times facing just dozens of felony charges and they are just their tongues are tied uh ron desantis certainly learned that lesson after cnn cut away from his first big boy interview with jake tapper after he answered a question about trump, let's listen. If Jack Smith has evidence of criminality, should Donald Trump be held accountable? So here's the problem. This country is going down the road of criminalizing political differences. And I think that's wrong.

Criminalizing political differences. He does later say in that clip that he wants to be focused on the future. And that's also part of the problem here. He wants to be focused on the future. And that's also that's also part of the problem here. He wants to be focused on the future. And his first reaction to the Trump target letter a couple of days ago, he was at some event and a reporter asked him. He said, well, he could have done more on that day to sort of stop what was going on on January 6th. But it wasn't criminal. It wasn't criminal. What do you think about that? It's really taking advantage of his opponent's imminent arrest. What do you think about that?

It's really taking advantage of his opponent's imminent arrest, huh? He just has no idea what he's doing. He just does. Look, to be fair, I'm not going to do this often, but to be fair, all these Republicans are in a terrible situation, which is the voters they need love Trump. They don't think he did anything wrong. The only way to get attention is to talk about Trump. And so you can either amplify his message and help Trump or to say something negative about him, which would be the morally correct thing to do, but then we'll just make the voters like you less. So, but you would have to be a very nimble, very talented communicator to navigate those straits. And that's not how my boy Tiny D is doing here. Well, on that note, in a clip that CNN aired much later in Jake's show,

because they had to cut in with all the indictment news and the Michigan fake electorate news, DeSantis was asked why his campaign sucks so badly. Here's what he said. Some of your supporters are disappointed that your campaign has yet to catch fire the way they would want in terms of polling. One Republican pollster, one who is sympathetic to you, I was asking her about your campaign, and she said she thought the issue was you bumped up at the beginning

because voters, Republican voters, saw you as a more electable conservative like Trump, like Trump without the baggage. But then they say as you go further and further to the right on some of these divisive social issues that could alienate moderates, suburban moms, etc., Republican voters see you as less and less electable. What do you say to that analysis? Well, I don't think it's true. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. Quick question. If your opponent recently ran an ad about your penchant for eating pudding with your fingers, might you try to avoid that word in an answer about why your campaign is failing?

I just think that this is sort of the example of why Ron DeSantis is not excelling, which is a truly talented politician would take a weakness to make it into a strength. Lean into the pudding thing. Do for pudding what Mitt Romney

has done for hot dogs. Americans love pudding. It's a popular thing. Be a normal American who loves pudding. Just go with it. Hang a lantern on your problems. Just say you're going to serve free pudding in the White House.

They're going to be your jelly beans. Just make it a thing. I just want to know, what do we think happened here? Do we think someone that online didn't know about the pudding finger stuff? Is it possible that his staff was too afraid to tell him, hey, there's an ad about pudding uh and in your fingers and pudding and maybe you should stay away from hey just reminder before you go on that doing this interview the series of interviews no pudding mentions you

don't want to you want to stay away from the pudding stuff i think you're over complicating this i think it's pretty simple he's hungry he loves pudding he's hungry what are you gonna do you think he had a pudding cup after the i think I think he was just- You think they said, good job on your first big boy interview with a real journalist. You get a pudding cup. No spoons, no spoons, just how you like it. I think that there is a eager, slightly fascistic Ron DeSantis staffer who waits outside the door with a pudding cup. That's all I could think about was just to get his pudding. Can we just make one point about this pollster who talked to Jake Tapper? That is nonsense. That is a non,

that is, there is, that is just absolute nonsense. Political argument. Do you think these people who all who love Donald, 70% of them love Donald Trump, 70% of them who want to cannot like Donald Trump are like, well,

I was for Rhonda's anticipations become too extreme on abortion. Yeah, no, that's, that is, that is bad. That is DC pundit brain analysis. It's certainly what happened with him in the general electorate. He's got like very high name ID now among all voters and is seen as almost as extreme as Trump among all voters. So that certainly hurt him with the general electorate, but you're right in the Republican primary.

There's zero evidence that it hurt him with all voters. So that certainly hurt him with the general electorate. But you're right, in the Republican primary, there's zero evidence that it hurt him with Republican voters. What happened in the Republican primary, what's happening in the Republican primary is people liked the idea of a potential Trump alternative who was Trump without the baggage. Instead, they got DeSantis. And there was a great line from Helen Lewis in The Atlantic. He promised to run as Trump without the baggage. Instead, he's running as Trump minus jokes. Which, I mean, it was interesting because I thought he would pick a fight with Jake.

He didn't pick a fight with Jake because I thought that, you know, he would, like, get the base riled up by picking a fight and then say, I took on the fake news media and my enemies are your enemies and that's sort of, like, what he does best. Use that word loosely but he was pretty he was boring and bullshitty at the same time during that interview and like you could tell that he's actually somewhat smart uh in in the sense that he was

smart enough not to say anything in that interview that might like piss off any republican voter and so he just danced around every answer and just used it was a lot of word salad. But it was just it came off as so boring. It seemed like the kind of interview you do when like a bunch of rich Republican donors who aren't super MAGA, who do like watch a lot of news and probably don't just watch Fox, but also watch CNN was like, oh, you know, he's got to see more electable again. He's got to seem more normal. Let's put him, you got to put him on CNN. You got to do some real interviews where he can show off his policy chops and show that he's a steadier than Donald Trump. And it seems like it was like that kind of idea, but it's, if it were Trump and Trump is in this position, Trump would have picked a fight with Jake. And then Trump would have gone out and said, I picked a fight with the fake news media, and he would have made it a whole thing. And he would have got the base revved up. And Ron DeSantis,

it totally seems like a rich donor, which is the only kind of donor Ron DeSantis has, if you look at the FEC reports, a rich donor kind of strategy. Yeah. He did an interview on the Third Place Network, which has a, a fraction of their smaller audience involves Republicans with no plan. I knew, I actually never thought he was going to pick a fight with Jake. Ron DeSantis is a coward and he knew he is, there's not a chance, but he,

the way he only fights when he already owns the power dynamic, like from the podium to yell at a reporter, there's no chance he's sitting across from Jake Tapper and going after him. It's just, like, maybe they had that idea, but he was never going to pull that off or even try. He was too scared. I think he's a coward. I just thought maybe he would be desperate enough

at this point because he's doing so poorly. Is he, like, you're ready to try anything? I guess we're not in the I'll try anything stage of the Ron DeSantis campaign, but I'm guessing we'll get there. He should be there. He just doesn't know that yet. Right. All right. So we got a debate qualifying poll out of New Hampshire this week from UNH. Trump is in the lead at 37%, which is down five points from their April poll. DeSantis has gained

one point. He's at 23%. Tim Scott has gained two points. He's at 8%. Chris Christie has gained five points. He's at 6%. My boy Doug Burgum's at 5%. Vivek Ramaswamy's at 5%. Nikki Haley's at 5%. And Mike Pence, finishing up a big week with one whole percent from Mike Pence, former vice president of the United States.

Plenty to talk about with this poll. What do you make of the overall trend, which has Trump down and a few other candidates up? It kind of speaks to exactly how Trump is going to win this, which is it's too big a field without a singular compelling alternative. So Trump goes down five points and that five points gets distributed pretty equally among five candidates. And that's just not a formula. There is not anyone there who as of yet has demonstrated the ability to be the vessel for some form of anti-Trump vote, which is, if that were to go to one person, there is theoretically in the math enough people to win. But right now, this is 2016 all over again with an even lesser group of candidates. How? How did it happen that we are reliving 2016 again?

I think I've actually been thinking about this because one of the numbers in those polls is basically that almost all of Trump's voters have fully committed and they're not going to change their mind. And I think we're- Like 75% of the voters in that poll have said that their minds are made up. They're definitely voting for Trump, which gives him around a base of 30%. Which is, that's a number he's going to win with in a field this size easily. I think we've been thinking about that, or maybe I have been thinking about this wrong. Let's say Donald Trump, let's say this is 2019 and all these people challenge Donald

Trump. We would see him as the overwhelming, almost certain favorite. He is not just a regular presidential candidate. He is the incumbent Republican president running in a primary. And so that is just like, we would just think about it different. I think we have to alter our minds that for these voters, he is their president. And to move away from their president for some other Republican is going to take something really, really compelling either about the other person or something devastating about Trump. And it's hard to imagine other things happening. Like what?

Like, like he incited an insurrection. It's got to be devastating. It's got to be devastating to them. Right. That's not devastating to them. Right. Yeah.

I mean, we are so close to the, I could shoot someone on fifth. Oh, we're so far past that. You know, what's worse than shooting someone on fifth Avenue, everything he's done. Yeah. I, we're so far past that. You know what's worse than shooting someone on Fifth Avenue? Everything he's done.

I mean, it's not even close. I know. I don't know. I had a little hope at the beginning of this process. Maybe one of these jokers is charismatic enough to knock him off. I just don't. I don't see it. I don't see it.

I'd love to be wrong, but I do not see it at this point. We should just stipulate that anything can happen. Like Trump could legitimately go to jail. He could drop dead. Yeah. He could go to jail and that, that might have a moderate impact on the race, but we have put the world, especially Republicans, they put their hopes into Ron DeSantis as this person. And I read about this in Message Box today. But if you kind of look at it, Ron DeSantis is probably toast. It's probably over already.

It's just he doesn't have it. You don't need a lot of it, but whatever it is, he doesn't have it. He does not have. He does not have. There have been candidates who have started with a ton of buzz. They've sparked in the polls like the big money donors love them. They have a great fundraising quarter and they fall flat on their face as soon as voters see them. Every once in a while, one of those candidates comes back.

But I sort of did in my message box post that I sort of looked at this there. The examples of the people who come back are particularly talented communicators, because once you fall flat in the polls, people stop giving you money. People stop giving you money. The only way you can communicate is in the free media, either on social, cable interviews, speeches. John McCain is the example. John McCain's campaign collapsed. He ran out of money. He had to fire all the staff.

And he bounced back because John McCain is a historically great communicator. Ron DeSantis, just look like that Jake Tapper interview. There's nothing there that would say he's good with, without a gazillion dollars in ads to tell his story. He's gonna be able to do it on his own. I mean, like I said, is a comeback in the possible range of outcomes for Ron DeSantis?

Sure. Yeah, but it's so, it's so much less likely than anyone is talking about. If you just look at the history of candidates and Ron DeSantis' performance to date. And I really think the field and the number of candidates in the field is an even bigger deal than each one of their abilities individually right now. Because if you got to Iowa and New Hampshire and there were only two or three people in the field and Donald Trump, I could see a scenario where Trump gets taken down. Because I do think there, I think there's enough, there are enough Republicans in the electorate and the Republican electorate who,

they all like Trump, but are willing to consider an alternative, right? So it's there. And I think we'll see Trump come down in some of these polls. We'll see some of these candidates rise just like we did in 2016. And we'll see all that. Someone will have a surge and all that stuff. But like at the end of the day, if you've got this base of 30% that are with you ride or die like Trump does, and you have a big field, they're just going to split the vote. That's the only, there's just the math is the math. And there's one other element to that that I think is important. It's not just that he has 30% ride or die. It's that 80% of all of the voters still like him. Right.

So it's easy if you like Donald Trump, but you have some concerns, it's easy to fall right back to the person you voted for in 2020 if there's not some incredibly compelling reason to walk away. And no one's offering that compelling reason to walk away, and there's no obvious vessel for that. You know who might be that vessel? Doug. Because Doug Burgum,

he is headed to the debate stage. He has bought his way onto the debate stage. Did he qualify on the donor thing? He announced on Hugh Hewitt's show that he qualified. So it's not official yet, but he thinks he qualified. Did you tune in specifically for Doug or was it part of your regular listening to Hugh Hewitt? As you know, Tommy and Ben are the big Hugh Hewitt fans. So I just I got the news from them.

Okay, good. So, yeah, no, he, you know, he just bought his way there. He handed out $20 gift cards to everyone in exchange for a $1 donation to get him on the stage. And now we're going to get Doug. And now he's at 5%. So he's spending a lot of money. And that's where the 5% comes from. Mike Pence. Let's talk about Mike Pence for a second.

Mike Pence has not had a week this bad since the first week of January in 2021. At least people cared about him back then. Now he can walk down the street in New Hampshire and no one will even wave at him. No one cares. He's at 1%. He has not qualified for the debate stage yet. He may not. Imagine that.

The former vice president of the United states may not qualify for the debate stage maybe he'll get there at the end but so far he hasn't like i don't know what do you do if you're mike pence i think he could be like the one of the first to drop out because usually the first to drop out is not some like no name no one cares about because they have nothing to lose and they're just sort of in it for fun but like mike pence is the type of candidate where the name id is is high enough and his position was high enough that if you're not gaining steam by the fall and you're at 1% and he raised $1.5 million less, what are you doing? Well, that would suggest a capacity for self-awareness and shame, which someone who took the job does not have. I'm not saying Ron DeSantis is going to drop out, but he is the sort of candidate who does

because they have a future, theoretically, in their own minds where it's like, I'm going to stop embarrassing myself. I'm going to get out. I'm going to endorse Trump now. And I'm going to live to fight again in 2028 or whatever. But Mike Pence, what does he have? Nothing.

He's just sitting there. He was at Dunkin' Donuts this morning or yesterday. There's a video on Twitter of him getting interviewed by his local Boston channel at Dunkin' Donuts. He's like, one look at me and you can tell I'm a fan of Dunkin' Donuts. It's not just the coffee. Ha ha ha. Yeah, man, you look like a fan of Dunkin' Donuts. First of all, people don't call it Dunkin' Donuts anymore.

Second of all, this is your second time there. He is wild. It's sad. It is sad. It's sad. Poor Mike Pence of Hang Mike Pence fame. Let's talk about Tim Scott. Tim Scott is now in third in New Hampshire,

just as the New York Times reported that he's got a super PAC reserving $40 million in advertising across New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina. The DeSantis campaign's leaked strategy memo from last week mentions Tim Scott as a potential threat. Do we owe an apology to Crooked's biggest Tim Scott fan, John Lovett? We could. We could. fan John Lovett we could we could every time I ever since 2016 every time I take a particularly strong position on something I just mentally prepare myself for having it rubbed in my face for the next seven to ten years and I had that thought I had that thought after you and I were

talking to Tim Miller and I just heckled all of you but particularly love it for the Tim Scott thing so I think the most likely scenario is he is a nominee at next president of the United States. I think this money and just his candidacy in general, like he'll have enough staying power to, you know, help throw the nomination to Donald Trump as the rest of them are and, you know, hope he gets VP. And I think that's like a, that's a possibility. Trump has said nice things about him. He hasn't attacked him. Now he keeps going up in the polls and starts nipping at Trump's heels. Maybe Trump will, you know, turn on him like he does everyone else. But you could see him as a VP pick. I could see that. You know, DeSantis wanted to be Trump without the baggage. And I think Tim Scott is DeSantis without the douchebaggery. That's Tim

Scott. People like him. You know, people like him. They think he's charismatic. He's got a good story. But like, he is not what the Republican Party wants. He is not what the Republican electorate wants. A small sliver of the Republican electorate that is like probably college educated. Again, some rich donors who aren't too MAGA. That's why he has all the money. They want to believe in a Tim Scott candidacy because they want to believe that they still exist in the Republican Party of 2008 or 2012. And that is not the Republican Party anymore. And so I could see Tim Scott taking some of the DeSantis vote. I could see him taking some of the other non-Trump vote, maybe even a few Trump voters, but he's just not going to get the

nomination. Okay. What do you think? No, even arguing that anyone other than Donald Trump has more than a 4% chance of getting the nomination is an absurd proposition at this point. Is there a world in which he could win? It seems hard to imagine, but sure. $40 million is a lot. It could be the world where Trump does go to jail or drop dead. I guess that is the thing. It would take an extreme change in circumstance.

If it is not Donald Trump, who is it going to be? And once you get to that part of the question, Tim Scott is not a crazy answer. Like Ron DeSantis doesn't seem that awesome. Look at the rest. Like what is Nikki Haley offering? You know, once you get to that second part, almost anything is possible. There are a few things that are not possible. But Tim Scott is at least, I think, a possibility

in a world where Donald Trump is not the nominee. Yeah, I just don't know if he's Trumpy enough for the base. They just want, you know, they love the fighting, and Tim Scott's not a fighter. We're having, and it's an absurd hypothetical because we're getting to the point where something has happened to Donald Trump in some way, shape, or form where he's not the nominee, And so who knows? That would

obviously change the entire political environment, right? Right, because then your favorite Glenn Youngkin gets in. Yeah, that's right. That's the other point, is that this is all in a world... There are three parts to this. Donald Trump's the nominee, Glenn Youngkin decides not to run, and then maybe it's Tim Scott. But yeah.

I will say, our friend Peter Hamby at Puck wrote a piece called The Tim Scott Fantasy about why the Tim Scott thing But yeah. I will say our friend Peter Hamby at Puck wrote a piece about, called like the Tim Scott fantasy about like why the Tim Scott thing's not going to happen. He sent it to me. He's like, wrote this one for Tim Scott fan, Dan Pfeiffer.

And I was like, did you not let it's love it. Yeah. Hamby had you pegged for the Tim Scott fan. It's a great piece. You should all read it. But yeah, no,

it's, I, it's, it's a tough one to see happening, but I do think he'll continue. I think he'll have staying power and I think he'll continue to like rise in the polls and like have his surge. I just, you know, like we've talked to him. He's one of those candidates who will be able to, he will have money to run ads, but he will also be able to get free media and communicate without just ads.

Yeah. Cause he's a good communicator. Uh Finally, one group of people happily watching this week's Republican shit show unfold are the folks on Joe Biden's campaign. They took their first official shot at Donald Trump with a statement from the campaign that they gave to Politico about his, quote, softball town hall with Hannity and his failure to create manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin, where the RNC will be held a year from now. They also responded to Ron DeSantis' CNN interview with a statement mocking him for admitting that not everyone really knows what wokeness is. And Joe Biden himself tweeted out a video made by the DNC of Marjorie Taylor Greene making a pretty great case for reelecting the president.

Let's listen. Joe Biden had the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on. And Joe Biden is attempting to complete programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, labor unions. And he still is working on it. That was not AI.

That was not a deepfake. That was Marjorie Taylor Greene just giving the Biden campaign content for one of the better ads that I've heard. The music behind it was just that that was the cherry on top. Good job, DNC, on that. That was very, very good. What do you make of the campaign strategy, the messages that they've chosen so far, and the timing of both the campaign putting out statements about Trump and DeSantis, and then, of course, the Biden retweeting the MTG ad?

I think let's have some fun here. Let's get punchy, get aggressive. It's all good. It'll fire up our people. It just made me cringe as a former political operative. When you said the safe took their first shot at Donald Trump by issuing a statement to Politico, like almost threw up in my mouth. And honestly, I should I just committed some plagiarism there. That was that was from the Politico story. I should have said that. I don't talk like that. That was a line from the Politico story. That stuff is, I think, like downstream from the larger strategy of what Joe Biden should exactly be doing,

which is using all the absurdities of the Republican Party to make his broader case against MAGA extremism, regardless of who the nominee is, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, et cetera. I think the video was worth focusing on because it is the, essentially the platonic ideal of what digital communication should be, where you are, it is very, very,

there's always this huge tension between the things you want to tell voters and the things that can actually break through in this media environment, right? It's why it's so hard for Joe Biden to tell voters about all the things he did to make the economy better, because no one ever covers that. They don't tweet about it. They don't write about it. It doesn't go viral. And so you can go viral by doing a bunch of things, but those things are usually at least, they're not counter to your strategy, but they're adjacent to it, right? It's sort of a reality for reality's sake. So if you can find a moment where you can get a video to go viral or a piece of content to go viral that has your exact message you want to tell voters, that's what you want. And so it's like, that should be, they should

hang that up on, they should show that on the first day of press secretary school, the democratic party. Like that's, that is how, that is how you do it. I think it had 40 million views as of like last night when I checked, probably has more now. Do you think, um, you do it. I think it had 40 million views as of last night when I checked. Probably has more now. Do you think it's worth putting money behind that, making it an ad? Not really. Maybe. I mean, it sort of depends on what you want to do with it.

Are you going to put it on actual television? Most people will look at that and not know who Marjorie Taylor Greene is. I was wondering what her name ID is nationally it's not just name ID like to be able to get it to fully get the impact of that you have to kind of recognize her because the idea that you don't know the ads coming if you're just watching TV so you may not see her name written there so now you just hear a blonde woman

talking about Joe Biden it's kind of a tricky ad to do as currently constructed, but you could boost it on YouTube or on some other social platforms. This is why it's perfect. You don't have to because everyone is sharing it on their own. So it's free. That's true.

I might take out an ad buy in Georgia and get another news cycle out of it. Yeah, I mean, if you want to do it. Or just run it in her district. Just her district. Yeah, I mean, there would be some small ad buys for the purposes of free press and additional virality you could do. But in terms of like as a pure, probably not where I would spend, I wouldn't spend millions of dollars on it. probably not where I would spend millions of dollars on it.

The long campaign tradition since we were kids of putting out statements, issuing statements from the campaign, I don't think that's going to get you very far. But I was interested in sort of the substance of both statements because I think it speaks to everything done in a campaign or a lot of things like that done intentionally in a campaign or strategic. And it was interesting. They chose Wisconsin. Interesting that they chose an economic message about Donald Trump's broken promises to Wisconsin, said he was going to create a bunch of manufacturing jobs, did not, hasn't gone to Wisconsin, was part of the statement about Donald Trump. This all happens when, you know, we saw a poll, a good, decent poll out of Wisconsin the other week that has Biden leading Trump in Wisconsin. And it just speaks to what I think is, you know, they're going to one of the messages that they are going to deploy against

Donald Trump is that, you know, he he promised you a great economy and he ended up screwing you. And and Joe Biden is working hard to make your life better which i think is interesting and then they hit on desantis is they're gonna they're not going to be afraid of calling out the extreme culture warship which i think is interesting and of course left unsaid during both in both of those statements was anything about the indictment which you know he's not commenting on and he can't and there's a new york times story about it yeah they cannot really yeah there was another time said it says like biden will poke fun at mega republicans but never mention documents like no shit of course he cannot do it he will not do it he cannot do it it would be just could you just

imagine the amount of pearl clutching that would happen in washington dc if like the deputy press secretary in the biden oklahoma office tweeted about it like people would freak the fuck out about it well i guess well we should all be ready because some field organizer somewhere is going to do it. Or someone who like once sat in a meeting at the DNC is going to do it and calls themselves like a Biden delegate for something that's good. You know, somebody who put Biden advisor in their threads profile or something. I don't know. Or just like a fake bot is going to do it. Who's like, it's going to happen. But, you know, it doesn't come from Joe Biden. Then that's that. But just like a fake bot is going to do it. It's going to happen,

but it doesn't come from Joe Biden. Then that's that. But yeah, you can't do that. One thing that I think is interesting is I have seen some research that was done by some pretty smart Democratic folks about the power of the broken promise message and that it actually does matter, that Trump promised all these specific things for specific communities and that did not deliver. There are some. So it is I take real note of the fact that that is showing up in Biden communications this stage. Two interesting pieces of data from this week. We got a Monmouth poll showing Biden's approval creeping up to 44 percent. Quinnipiac poll showing him beating Trump 49 to 44 percent.

Just noise. Or do you think there are potential reasons the president's prospects may be improving? It's not noise in the sense that it's just random statistical fluctuation, but any movement in the polls at this point is noise. Like if Biden could go up two this month, four months later, he could be up seven, two months after that, he could be back to up two. It doesn't really matter. What I think is notable, and you mentioned this in the Tuesday pod, is that how people are feeling about the economy is changing. Consumer confidence is at its highest level in a couple of years. That usually is a leading indicator of where the polling is going to go. It front runs the economic approval

in the polling, in the political polling. And so I think it's very possible that Biden's getting maybe getting a little bit of a boost because people are feeling better about the economy. And that kind of makes sense because he's had some low hanging fruit with Democrats to get back in some of these polls. Yeah, I think that's right. And I also think we're seeing a couple of these polls, Trump has his like lowest approval recorded in some of these polls. And so it's possible that these indictments are not helping him with the general electorate and that the more people see of Trump and are reminded of Trump because now he's in their faces a lot more, they're remembering why they did not like him very much in the first place. So that's something to watch. did not like him very much in the first place. So that's something to watch. Okay, before we had to break a few housekeeping notes. If you're in the LA area, Tommy will be joining Lydia Kiesling, the author of Crooked's first novel, Mobility, for a special launch at Dynasty Typewriter on July 27th. It's free and you can learn more at crooked.com slash events. Mobility

is a coming of age novel about navigating a world of corporate greed. That's both laugh out loud, funny, and politically insightful. If you listen to this pod, this book is in your wheelhouse. Mobility will be released August 1st. Pre-order now wherever books are sold. Also for a quick and punchy take on the state of our world, look no further than Crooked Media's What A Day podcast. In just a few minutes, you'll be up to speed on the day's top news stories, as well as stories that may have gone under your radar. New episodes are out every weekday. Subscribe to What A Day now, wherever you get your podcasts.

When we come back, Dan talks to Andrew Weissman. Well, everyone on Twitter is once again pretending to be a legal expert. We brought on an actual one to join us on today's pod. Joining us now is MSNBC legal analyst and a former member of Robert Mueller's team that investigated Donald Trump, Andrew Weissman. Andrew also co-hosts the MSNBC podcast, Prosecuting Donald Trump, Andrew Weissman. Andrew also co-hosts the MSNBC podcast Prosecuting Donald Trump, where he and veteran prosecutor Mary McCord discuss the cases against Donald Trump. Andrew, welcome back to the pod. Nice to be here. Okay. We've done this a couple of times now with Donald Trump's various indictments. On the last

one, his second indictment, the indictment came only a few days after Trump received his target letter. According to the former president after Trump received his target letter. According to the former president, he received that target letter on Sunday night. What's your best guess on if and when we will find out about an indictment on Trump? Sure. that I'm looking for is some reporting, some indication that his defense team has gone into the Department of Justice to be heard as to why he should not be charged. You know, we had that reporting in the Alvin Bragg Manhattan criminal case. We had that reporting in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. In fact, we saw the defense team go out, leave the Department of

Justice, if you remember those images. And we don't have any reporting of that having happened here. It is really standard practice for the department to give the defense an opportunity to be heard. You know, I don't think they'll probably say anything that that the prosecutors haven't thought of already. But you know, you never know. And you also just a matter of politeness, you give them that opportunity, because there may be something that they, they say that causes you to rethink something. So we don't have that yet. And to me, that is the piece that I'm waiting for. that is the piece that I'm waiting for. Other than that, if that were not the case, then all signs are that this could happen anytime after today, because the former president had said he was given until today to decide whether to go into the grand jury essentially or not. Obviously,

he's not going to go into the grand jury. He didn't testify to the E. Jean Carroll case. He didn't come in and talk to us in the Mueller investigation. There's no way that he is going to go into the grand jury and testify. And it would be malpractice for his defense counsel to not throw their bodies in front of that if he wanted to. In the classified documents case, did the meeting with Trump's attorneys happen before the target letter was sent? Did the meeting with Trump's attorneys happen before the target letter was sent? You know, we don't. I think the answer to that is no.

I think it happened afterwards. And I also think that there was a pretty significant gap between what we understand to be the time of the target letter and the time of the charges. I think by significant, I mean it was more than a few days. I think it was a couple of weeks where there was that gap. I'm not saying that that I'm not sure that's a data point to say that will happen here. You know, Jack Smith is obviously feeling the time clock pressure given the upcoming election, et cetera. So, you know, he very well could say, et cetera. So, you know, he very well could say, look, if you want to be heard on appeal, you need to come in by X date. Now, it's not leaving it open ended. So keeping this on a very short leash. So again, it won't happen today. But absent that reporting, I just don't think

it's going to happen imminently. Because I do think we're going to hear that they, they, you know, made some sort of appeal to main justice. Reportedly, the target letter to Trump mentioned several statutes, the former president may have violated. What, what is what are those statutes tell you about the sort of case that Jack Smith is putting together? Are you surprised by any of them? So the answer is no, I wasn't surprised by them. I do think this is one where my colleagues in the sort of legal analysts, you know, Twittersphere, I think are kind of overthinking this. When I'm a prosecutor, when I was doing this, I sort of thought about what are the facts that I have?

What can I prove beyond a reasonable doubt? And then you just think about all the different types of crimes that that triggers here. There's so many different types of crimes from obstruction of justice to civil rights violations to seditious conspiracy to false statements to the government. All of those could be applying here. And I think there's just a lot of overthinking. I mean, for instance, the civil rights case, people are sort of really overthinking this. Here's a really simple way to understand that. This was an effort to disenfranchise everyone who had voted for the current president by overturning the election. That is a civil rights violation.

And just in the same way that the statutes were created to prevent the disenfranchisement of black and brown communities. So I just think there's, that's not what I'm sort of focusing on. I'm kind of, I am confident that Jack will bring this case. It will come in D.C. It will be, I think, a broad case and that it's going to charge the conduct that we all saw and that the January 6th committee laid out in terms of all of the different aspects of the conspiracy, whether it's pressuring states, whether it's pressuring Mike Pence, pressuring the Department of Justice. it's pressuring states, whether it's pressuring Mike Pence, pressuring the Department of Justice, all of that, I think, is going to be part of the charge. Because if you're going to bring a case like this against a former president, it's going to encompass what he did. I don't think we're going to find ourselves thinking, gee, why didn't he charge a bigger case? I think we're probably will find that the thing that is unusual is that just like the documents case, we learn a lot of new facts that fill in gaps in terms of just how much the president was up to.

So that's sort of how I see it going forward. That's interesting about the evidence, because obviously, in the classified documents case, we learned a ton when the indictment came out. But what's different in this case is we had the January 6th committee hearings a couple years ago that laid out in great detail and made a referral to the Justice Department. Obviously, there could be additional evidence. There's likely to be additional evidence. But based on the evidence we saw there, how strong a case do you think this is against the president, given the charges that are likely to be brought? I think this is going to be as devastating as the Dawkins case. I mean, look, this is one where if you put politics aside and you're just looking at this objectively in terms of what we know from the January 6th committee, I don't think there's anyone who could look at what the January 6th committee turned up

and say, gee, I wonder if he did it. There's just so much proof from so many different angles as to what was going on. And there will be, I think, a lot of insiders, meaning people who were Trump loyalists who will be witnesses. I think they're going to be people in the White House Counsel's Office who are going to be witnesses. Remember, they don't represent Donald Trump personally. They represent the office of the presidency. And just like the Mar-a-Lago case, I think lawyers are actually going to play a pretty key role in helping establish his criminal intent. In other

words, that he was told what he could and could not do. So I think it's going to probably be very strong. But I do think that even with the January 6th committee, and you're right to point out that we know more here than we knew with respect to the Dawkins case. But just remember the Dawkins case, because we had information about the search warrant, we still knew a fair amount. I think there's a lot that the January 6th committee did, but I think there's a lot that they couldn't do because remember, they didn't have grand jury subpoena power. They couldn't get people to testify about specific conversations with the president.

But you could be sure that Pat Cipollone, for instance, who refused to give that information was in the grand jury telling the grand jury exactly what he recalls about his conversations with the president as one example. I mean, we sort of understand, non-lawyers like myself, understand broadly this seems like a big crime trying to overturn an election. And there's so much happened. January 6th has become this very big term that means the sort of the efforts to overturn the election starting after the election, the fake electors scam, the call to Brad Raffensperger and the similar call we now know about in Arizona, the efforts to encourage people, the use of the 25th Amendment,

the use of the vice president to try to have people march on the Capitol. What specifically do you think, what elements of that are part of a case they're going to bring? I would add to that also the pressure on the Department of Justice, where the acting attorney general said, we are not opening a fraud case so that you can then tout this as a reason not to count the votes. And then there was discussion that Donald Trump had about removing the acting attorney general and putting in an amanuensis to do his bidding to just like he did with or tried to do with Zelensky to say, look, just say that you're doing this investigation because that will be enough for me to use that. I think everything that you said is what I think

will be in this indictment. It is all part of a conspiracy. And I do think there's an unfortunate misnomer is that we call it the January 6th case, but that's just the culmination. I think that the the I really thought that the gift of the January six committee was broadening that out to say that this is really was a plan that actually hatched even before the election, and sort of plan B, if I lose, this is what I'm going to do, and then continued up through January six. So I think it's going to include all of that. I think January, I think that Jack is a very thorough prosecutor. I think that the documents case shows that. And I think that he's going to include all of that. I think that to me, the big piece that I'm thinking about is what judge in DC gets this, because that's going to be hugely important in the same

way that we're all very focused on Aileen Cannon and what she's going to do with the trial date. And also, is there going to be another defendant in the way that there was Walt Nauta in the documents case? Are there going to be other people charged, such as John Eastman, Chiasbro, even up to and including Meadows, Giuliani? But will there be those people? I think those are, to me, those are the issues where I don't know the answer to that, but that's the thing that's most interesting to me. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that because obviously Donald Trump did not do this on his own. I mean, the man can barely put his pants on on his own. And according to the reporting, and it's just reporting, the people who engaged with him in this effort, Eastman, Giuliani, others have not received target letters from Jack

Smith. Is the sequencing surprising there? Does it tell you anything? You know, it does. Because I have to say, I never in my entire career, 21 years in the department ever issued a target letter. It's not required. They used to be called heart attack letters because you get it and it's not something you wake up in the morning,

go, I can't wait to open the mail and find out I got this. And I've been a defense lawyer also, getting a target letter, not a good day. But there's no requirement in the Justice Manual that you do it. I do think in this case, one of the reasons for it is so that everything is extremely clear and there's a documented notice to the former president. So there can't be any questions that they followed every procedure and gave due process. So I do think that they, if it is true that they gave it to one, but not others, that would, I'd say, tend to support the idea that at least this indictment will be just against one person. Absent, of course, are not knowing about another person receiving a target letter, because it's hard to sort of canvas everyone.

And it is conceivable that people such as Rudy Giuliani don't really need a target letter because there's been so many communications with him and his counsel. So I wouldn't take that totally to the bank. It's just, if in a case where you've issued one, it would seem a little unusual not to

follow that procedure with respect to every proposed defendant. Any thoughts on what the timing in this case may be? Obviously, we're waiting for Judge Cannon's ruling on delay in the case. There's been a general view that the classified documents case could take after election, despite her ruling just because of the complicated logistics of a case dealing with highly classified information. Is there a shot this could kick off before the election, or are we looking for afterwards, do you think? So are you talking about just the upcoming indictment? Just the January 6th case. Yes. Presuming this indictment happens. If not, we've got bigger problems as a country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just so people don't worry, this indictment is happening. I mean,

look, this is one where a lot of people give me lots of credit for like, my predictions. This is not one where that takes a real like, it doesn't take a legal eagle to know that there's an indictment coming on the January 6 case, you don't have to know Jack Smith, you just have to have looked at the evidence, it's going to happen. And it will be in DC, the sort of issues that there were before about where things would happen with a documents case. That was brought in the district where it happened. The January 6th case is going to be brought in D.C. where it happens. When the January 6th case gets tried is going to be a real function of the judge that they get. that there are a number of judges who will feel if they can bring this case to fruition before the election, that it is something that the voters are entitled to know one way or the other. It's not, it's meaning whether there's, remember, it only takes one person to have a hung jury, and that

would be a very good thing for Donald Trump. He would tout that as a huge victory. So I think that there will be a lot of judges who this could end up in front of who will really feel like they, if they can do it consistent with due process to the defendant, which is, you know, that is the number one thing in this country is the rule of law is requires that defendant given adequate opportunity to prepare. But I do think that if it is, if this case is brought in the next couple of weeks, it is possible to bring the case, but it will be tight. You know, it is just not unusual for a case to take a year to come to fruition. I'll give you one example.

I did the Paul Manafort case, which had a lot of evidence in it. It had overseas evidence. There was a substantial amount of electronic evidence. And that took 11 months to go from indictment to the start of the trial date in DC. And that was a relatively fast schedule. Because again, I just want people to understand, defendants are entitled to have an opportunity to make sure they can review all of the discovery, make motions. And that that's that that delay, while it's frustrating, is actually part of what it means to be a country that abides by the rule of law. So, you know, that is going to be a tight time frame. I don't think I think Jack Smith cannot be faulted at all for that

delay. I think there's a very good argument that Merrick Garland can be in terms of the situation that we're in, but Jack Smith, by all accounts, has really acted quickly. Having been in that situation in various high-profile matters, I actually think it's kind of remarkable how much he has done and how quickly. Last question for you. If you were the one prosecuting this case, what's the one thing that would keep you up at night? Jury nullification. I think what I have experienced is the problem in a high profile case of jurors who want to get on the jury and who are less than candid, which is a nice way of saying lie in jury questionnaires and in being going through the voir dire process with the judge. Usually most jurors don't want to be on

a jury, but in high profile matters, you have that problem of somebody really trying to sneak on who is not intending to adhere to their oath of office as a juror. And again, remember, it only takes one juror to have a hung jury. There has to be a unanimous jury either to convict or to acquit. And so if you have 11 to 1, that's the kind of thing that Donald Trump will claim that is a huge victory, even if it's 11 to 1 for conviction. So that would be the thing that would worry me the most. The evidence seems incredibly strong. So that's the biggest thing that I would worry about. Andrew Weissman, thank you so much for joining us. And I'm sure we'll talk again as even more indictments may come

for this former president. Thanks so much. Nice to be here. Thank you to Andrew Weissman for joining us. Dan, this is like your last pod for a couple of weeks, right? You're going on vacation. Where are you going?

You're going camping? Two weeks, a couple of family trips, one with my family, one with Hallie's family. We're very? Two weeks, couple of family trips. One with my family, one with Hallie's family. We're very excited. Well, enjoy your time off. We will miss you.

I'm sure there'll be a couple more indictments for you to talk about. I know. I'm really hoping this indictment comes today or tomorrow because it's going to be

a real pain in my butt when it happens Monday when I'm on an airplane with no Wi-Fi. It's going to be tough. It's going to be tough. All right, everyone. Have a great weekend.

We'll talk to you soon. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer,

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