Tangle - SCOTUS will hear Trump's immunity case.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to

Starting point is 00:01:05 your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about former President Donald Trump's immunity.

Starting point is 00:02:05 We're going to be talking about former President Donald Trump's immunity as we were recording this podcast and writing it up. We got some big news about Trump and Colorado and the 14th Amendment and his removal from the ballot. We're going to talk a little bit about that in the quick hit section here in a second. Before we jump into today's podcast, though, there are a few things we got to get out of the way. into today's podcast, though, there are a few things we got to get out of the way. First of all, on Thursday, February 29th, we wrote in our extra section, this is a correction, this is one of the dumbest corrections ever, that there is a leap day every four years except on years divisible by 400.

Starting point is 00:02:39 Actually, there is a leap day every four years, but there is not one every 100th year, except for every 400th year when there is one. That's really complicated, but in an effort to be succinct, we leapt over an important qualifier and we were inaccurate. This is our 101st correction in our 239-week history and our first correction since February 14th. We track corrections and place them at the top of the podcast in an effort to maximize transparency with readers. Again, a very silly one, nothing to do with politics, just one of our fun little fun facts we have in the extra section in our newsletter. We don't actually read that section of the podcast, so I was not sure whether to include it here, but

Starting point is 00:03:25 it's a correction, so we had to. Also, as you can imagine, if you listen to Friday's podcast, The Zionist Case for a Ceasefire, we generated quite a bit of response and conversation. The article we put up on our website got hundreds and hundreds of comments, the most we've ever seen. My inbox basically exploded with emails from people. We got some traction on Twitter, on Medium. There's been a huge outpouring of response. There's a lot of different ways I like to deal with this. One of them is that I just publish people's responses. So this Friday in our newsletter, in our members-only newsletter, I'm going to publish some of the responses to this piece I got from readers. And then also for our Sunday podcast I do with Ari, I'm going to talk about those responses and respond to some of them. So for

Starting point is 00:04:17 those of you that are podcast listeners, you'll get that later this week. I think there are some valid criticisms. I think there were some less valid criticisms, but tons of stuff worth talking about. And I know he's done a lot of stuff on the Israel topic, but given the response to this piece, it's clear to me this is something readers and listeners really want to hear more about. So I'm going to follow a little bit of that and follow some of your responses and respond to them in a way that I feel is appropriate. And I think there's a lot to address there. All right.

Starting point is 00:04:50 That's a lot of throat clearing. But the last thing I want to say is we're coming to New York City, April 17th. We're booking guests right now for our live event in New York City at City Winery. I don't care where you live. You don't have to live in New York to come to this event. We had an event in Philly. People flew in from California, from Texas, from Virginia, looking for an excuse to come to New York in spring when it's beautiful in the middle of April. Consider coming to our event April 17th. Tickets are on sale now. We're trying to sell this baby

Starting point is 00:05:20 out. Please go check out the link in today's episode description, and you can buy your ticket there. Okay, with that out of the way, we're going to jump in with some quick hits. First up, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court reinstated former President Donald Trump onto Colorado's ballot after he had been removed under the 14th Amendment. Number two, Vice President Kamala Harris urged Hamas to accept a six-week ceasefire, saying that people in Gaza are starving. She also criticized the Israeli government for needing to do more to facilitate the flow of aid. Separately, the United States began airdropping aid into Gaza. Number three, Alabama's House and Senate passed a set of bills to protect patients

Starting point is 00:06:08 and medical professionals from civil and criminal liability for in vitro fertilization treatments. Number four, thousands of people defied the Kremlin and attended the funeral of Alexei Navalny in Moscow. And number five, in Oregon, a bill to reinstate criminal penalties for hard drugs is headed to the governor's desk. The bill would reverse a 2020 voter initiative to decriminalize possession of fentanyl, heroin, meth, and other drugs. But we do begin tonight with the breaking news from the Supreme Court, the nation's highest court late today, agreeing to hear former President Donald Trump's claim of absolute immunity from prosecution for actions he took while in office. The move comes after a lower court, a federal appeals court, had unanimously rejected Donald Trump's claim. Tonight, the Supreme Court says it will take up

Starting point is 00:07:05 former President Donald Trump's claim of absolute presidential immunity as he faces criminal charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The court now taking on a monumental unanswered question. Can a former president be criminally prosecuted

Starting point is 00:07:23 for actions taken while in office Can a former president be criminally prosecuted for actions taken while in office? The former president has claimed that he's entitled to absolute immunity because he was president at the time. A lower court has rejected that. And today we learned that the highest court in the land acknowledging the historic importance of this case will hear arguments the week of April 22nd. That's a little less than two months from now. And this sets the stage for a landmark ruling on presidential power. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether former President Donald Trump can be tried on criminal charges that he conspired to overturn the 2020 election. The case is related to charges

Starting point is 00:08:01 brought by special counsel Jack Smith that are being heard in a Washington, D.C. federal court. Before they hear the case, the justices released a one-page unsigned order asking a federal appeals court to hold its ruling, rejecting Trump's immunity claim and pausing all proceedings in the trial. Oral arguments are now scheduled for late April, a timeline which is called into question whether the federal election interference trial could resume or conclude. The court is not likely to give its decision until June, which would mean that were the court to rule against Trump, the federal trial would probably not conclude before election day. Initially, Trump's trial was set to begin on March 4, 2024, but was delayed indefinitely by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkin after she threw out his motion to dismiss the case, and he challenged it to the U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkin after she threw out his motion to dismiss

Starting point is 00:08:45 the case, and he challenged it to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. His team has argued that his actions leading up to the January 6th riots at the Capitol on January 6th were official acts of the presidency and thus left him immune from criminal prosecution unless he first was impeached and convicted by Congress, which he was not. The appeals court then unanimously rejected Trump's argument, and Trump appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has now agreed to decide whether, and if so, to what extent a former president is immune from prosecution for conduct their counsel claims involves official acts of the presidency. In its order, the court said its decision would not be viewed as any sign of how the justices view the merits of his claim. This is the second case related to Trump that the

Starting point is 00:09:30 justices have on their docket for this year. In February, they heard Orr arguments in his challenge to the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling that he could be excluded from the state's ballot and ruled unanimously to reinstate him on Monday morning. Separately, the Florida judge overseeing the federal case charging Trump with mishandling classified documents also expressed skepticism on Friday that the case could be brought to trial by July. We've covered arguments about Trump's immunity previously, and there are links to that coverage in today's episode description. Today, we're going to take a look at some arguments from the left and the right about the decision to take up Trump's immunity claim. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying.

Starting point is 00:10:23 The left criticizes the court's decision, suggesting it could prevent the January 6th trial from ever taking place. Some say it will be important for the court to rule decisively on the immunity question. Others lambast the court for a series of decisions that seem calculated to benefit Republicans and conservatives. The Los Angeles Times editorial board argued that the Supreme Court was wrong to put off the Trump immunity decision. It's in the national interest that Trump face a jury as soon as possible. Special Counsel Jack Smith recognized the urgency of the situation when he asked the justices on December 11th to rule in the immunity case quickly and before the appeals court weighed in. The justices unwisely rejected that request on December 22nd, the board said.

Starting point is 00:11:06 It's understandable that the justices would want to weigh in themselves, but they should have agreed to Smith's request for expedited consideration. Having failed to do so, they should resolve to hand down their decision as soon as possible after the oral argument in April. It would be a deeply unsatisfactory outcome if the court ruled against Trump's immunity claim but did so too late to ensure that a trial would proceed and a jury would have its say before the November election. Further delay by the court would give a new and ominous meaning to the axiom that justice delayed is justice denied, though in this case it would be the nation that would be denied justice. In the New York Times, Lee Kovarsky said Trump should lose,

Starting point is 00:11:46 but the Supreme Court should still clarify immunity. All short-term politics aside, the Supreme Court confronts an extraordinary question of American governance. Are ex-presidents immune from prosecution for interim conduct? And if so, how much immunity do they have, Kovarsky wrote. Mr. Trump lost badly in the D.C. Circuit, and the margin of that defeat reflects the underlying weakness of his immunity arguments. That very weakness that might tempt the Supreme Court to say too little about the existence and scope of presidential immunity. That temptation is unfortunate because American democracy is entering a perilous period of extreme polarization. In a case less entwined with an upcoming presidential election

Starting point is 00:12:25 and at a moment of less national precarity, the Supreme Court might just call it a day after affirming that official acts immunity doesn't shield Mr. Trump from criminal punishment. Instead, the Supreme Court should seize this opportunity to develop a narrow presidential immunity in criminal cases. That would prevent frivolous federal prosecutions from becoming a standard political tactic and give the judges tools they need to manage any reprisal to come. In the Daily Beast, David Rothkopf wrote that the Supreme Court picks up where the January 6th mob left off. The court reminded us that throughout this century, the right wing on the court has done grave damage to our country and the judicial system,

Starting point is 00:13:10 whose oversight has been entrusted to them, Rothkopf wrote. The court's decision to hear the Trump immunity case was outrageous, legally indefensible, and handled procedurally in a way that made it clear they were no longer acting as a court, but rather as the judicial arm of the Republican Party. Time and again, the Supreme Court has been at the vanguard of the right-wing's movement to reverse social progress while also increasing the wealth and power of the movement's patrons. And repeatedly, the court has been brazen in its willingness to play politics, the letter of the law, legal tradition, and any semblance of legal logic or ethics be damned, Rothkopf added. The Trump immunity claims are so laughable that few expect even this Supreme Court to uphold them. This may be why, in lieu of helping Trump with the decision, they decided to throw him the

Starting point is 00:13:50 one lifeline upon which he most depended, a delay that would push a verdict in the trial to the other side of election day. All right, that is it for the leftist saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right is supportive of the decision and says the court is properly fulfilling its role in the judicial system. Some say the court should rule against Trump's immunity claim but question the prosecution's intent with their timing. Others mock the left for their concern that the January 6th trial won't happen before the election. National Review's editors said the court was right to take the case. Let's remember how we got here. Federal District Court Judge Tanya Chutkin, who is presiding over Special Counsel Jack Smith's Election Day interference case against Trump,

Starting point is 00:14:40 rejected the immunity claim. Trump promptly appealed to the D.C. Circuit. That's the normal process, the editors wrote. The appeals court then rejected Trump's immunity claim. Now, his pursuers are denouncing the Supreme Court for reviewing a ruling that they didn't want to let the appeals court make in the first place. The most fevered critics imagine a MAGA court that is moving to delay the case for Trump's benefit. If they were right, however, the conservative justices would have taken their initial request to cut out the D.C. Circuit and quickly granted Trump immunity. In the real world, however, several of the conservative justices have already shown that they are willing to brush off Trump's claims of immunity, as they did in two cases in June 2020,

Starting point is 00:15:19 the editor said. All indications are that the Supreme Court is performing its crucial constitutional role conscientiously. In The Federalist, David Arsani criticized the Democrats' furious that due process is ruining their lawfare schedule. It seems that the justices forgot to ask Rachel Maddow to plan their schedules. Though the court expedited the case, arguments won't be heard until April, with a decision likely to come in late June, making it unlikely, though not impossible, that there will be a trial before the 2024 election, Arsani said. A MAGA majority court can only be legitimate if it rules in favor of the left. Like every institution, the contemporary left's consequentialist outlook demands partisan outcomes.

Starting point is 00:16:01 The self-styled guardians of democracy have spent years delegitimizing members of the court with a slew of smears and ginned-up controversies. The panic over timing reads like an explicit admission that the Trump prosecution is integral to the president's re-election hopes. Biden basically admitted as much when he grumbled and telegraphed to Merrick Garland that the AG wasn't acting in an aggressive enough partisan manner. More importantly, though, this might be tough for progressives to accept. Trump has every right to contest the prosecution's charges, to appeal to higher courts, and to utilize any arguments that delay the trial

Starting point is 00:16:35 for his own benefit. In the Washington Post, Jason Willick argued that Trump's immunity claim deserves to fail. So does his January 6th prosecution. And we decided to bring Jason on to talk a little bit about his piece. Jason Willick, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Good to be here. Thanks. So let's just start with like a basic overview of your piece you wrote here. Could you just explain maybe in like two minutes your position on the Supreme Court deciding to take up this immunity challenge from former President Donald Trump? Sure. So the Supreme Court agreed that it would hear this immunity

Starting point is 00:17:19 appeal before the Trump case goes to trial instead of, you know, lots of people thought they would just let the D.C. Circuit ruling, the appellate court ruling stand that said there's no immunity, he can go to trial right away. The justices basically said, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's like actually a question here about what's the scope of presidential immunity? And just for reference, immunity means that you can't be tried for something, or you can't. So a president already has immunity from civil suits for actions that he took in his official capacity. So the question now is basically, as the court puts it, whether and if so to what extent, that also extends to criminal prosecutions for acts he took in his official capacity. And so they said, we want to hear this. I don't know

Starting point is 00:18:13 what the outcome's going to be. I kind of think that, you know, he's certainly going to be able to be tried for some of his conduct around January 6th. It's possible that some of that conduct, they will say, was in his official capacity. The most official-y of the things he's charged with is probably when he tells the Department of Justice to do things, because the president can sort of tell his cabinet departments what to do generally. So, in any case, they said, we want to hear this. And there's two issues around this. There's one that's the merits of immunity. You know, should the president have immunity for official acts? And the other is timing. People are upset about the timing because this makes it a lot less likely that it can go to trial before the election. before the election. And my view on that is basically that's not the Supreme Court's problem. You know, the timing of the trial is something that the prosecutors want, but the Supreme Court is a separate branch of government. The question for them is, is this a question worth deciding

Starting point is 00:19:14 by us? And previously, Jack Smith himself had told the Supreme Court, only you guys can resolve this. It's a fundamental question that the Supreme Court has to resolve. So the timing issue, It's a fundamental question that the Supreme Court has to resolve. So the timing issue, I think, is, you know, that's just the way it goes. And on the merits, you know, I don't think the president should have, well, you know, I'm going to keep an open mind as the briefing comes, but my general view is that we shouldn't be making a new immunity, but we should be making sure the criminal laws are interpreted really narrowly because we definitely don't want a situation where the president or any other government official or politicians are charged in partisan lawfare under broad criminal statutes that enable you to sort of get them if you want to get them. to sort of get them if you want to get them. So my view is that the solution to that, more than immunity, the solution to that problem of partisan prosecution is to interpret the criminal laws really narrowly. And that's where, you know, I think Trump's better case is against this indictment,

Starting point is 00:20:16 which is that he's indicted under these vague, broad laws that don't really apply to what he did, as horrible as it was for the country after the 2020 election. Yeah, I know opinion writers don't typically write their own headlines, but I was, you know, my eye was caught when I saw the headline in this Washington Post piece that was basically a split, which, you know, you said you didn't think the immunity argument that Trump's making should be accepted, but you also thought that the January 6th prosecution should fail. I'm curious if maybe you could just talk a little bit about those two things living in tension in your mind at the same time that, you know, you want this to go to trial, but based on what you've seen, or maybe you don't think this immunity challenge should be accepted, but based on what you've seen, you also don't think that the J6 prosecution should land. Yeah. I mean, immunity is sort of the reason that Trump is investing so much in immunity is to postpone. It's the one appeal he can bring before the trial happens. Usually. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime.

Starting point is 00:21:26 Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News.

Starting point is 00:21:52 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Starting point is 00:22:12 Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. You know, if you're prosecuted under a law that, you can't appeal that until you're tried and convicted. Then you can appeal it and take it to the appellate court and say, you know, this law is being unconstitutionally applied or something. But immunity is what Trump can bring now before the trial. So that's, you know, why we're hearing so much about immunity now. But I think, you know, in the event Trump is convicted, his argument after the trial, which would be these laws, you know, fraud against the United States, that wasn't meant to apply to elections.

Starting point is 00:22:51 That was meant to apply primarily to financial sort of bilking of the government or obstruction of an official proceeding. of an official proceeding. That was meant to apply to, you know, destroying documents or, you know, the Supreme Court is going to hear, actually, a week before they hear this immunity case, they're going to hear an appeal about the obstruction of an official proceeding law that Trump is charged with in two out of the four counts of his indictment. And in my view, they're probably going to narrow that law in a way that makes it a lot harder to convict him. Basically, you know, I think what he did is a political abuse, trying, you know, refusing to accept the election results and trying to get Congress to deny the election results. You know, that's an impeachable offense. That's a really bad thing. But it's not a crime, you know, in my view. I think that the crimes that, you know, they've sort of looked at the conduct and tried to find what crimes could possibly cover it, but they've come up with really broad, you know, laws that were meant to cover other stuff and tried to apply it to this.

Starting point is 00:24:08 other stuff and tried to apply it to this. And if that stands, then it's going to be easy to apply that to other political figures that, you know, Trump doesn't like if he's elected. So, you know, it's all tangled up and everyone, you know, wants to be pro or anti-Trump. So you have to be pro or anti-immunity or anti the Trump, you know, but they're all separate issues. And I think it's important. So I'm curious, you know, you sort of just touched on this and it was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. You talked about this Fisher v. United States case in your opinion piece, and it involves the obstruction of an official proceeding law. And you said that these two cases are kind of intertwined in a way that a lot of people are not really talking about to the degree maybe they should.

Starting point is 00:24:51 So could you explain a little bit about the significance of this Fisher v. United States case and why you think it's so closely tied into what we're watching here? Yeah, so that is the appeal from somebody in the January 6th, a January 6th defendant. The government has prosecuted or charged, I think, over 1,000 people involved in the January 6th riot. And one of the counts that they've used for some of the rioters, a few hundred of them, this obstruction of an official proceeding count is what's at issue in the Fisher case. Because basically, this is a count that comes from the Enron scandal. After the corporate accounting scandal around Enron in the early 2000s, Congress passed a law basically intended to prohibit document shredding to prevent you

Starting point is 00:25:46 from destroying documents in order to prevent them from being available for an investigation. But it's kind of broadly worded, or it has a clause in it that's broadly worded about otherwise obstructs an official proceeding. So whoever destroys documents, records, blah, blah, blah, or otherwise obstructs the proceeding. So the way they're using it for the first time ever, right, it's only ever really been used for stuff like that. Like, you know, it's actually used against Trump in the Mar-a-Lago case when he allegedly deleted or asked somebody to delete video footage. You know, that's a classic use of the law, but they've tried to use it for the rioters. And it's never been used that way before for somebody who like, you know, physically blocks a proceeding. So that, the Supreme Court is hearing that,

Starting point is 00:26:37 and that's two out of the four counts charged against Trump. So it will have an effect on his case. And the way I think that they're linked is because, you know, if you took this very broad interpretation that anyone who tries to influence a proceeding, you know, if you take the very broad language of this law totally literally and out of context, that could arguably get to behavior of presidents. I mean, presidents try to influence Congress all the time or, you know, they try to get senators to, you know, block something they don't want, or, you know, they may even encourage protests against Congress. So, if it were the case that this really broad interpretation of the law is accepted,

Starting point is 00:27:18 then you can see why presidents would want immunity, and the Supreme Court might think, hey, maybe the president should have immunity. Otherwise, every president can be prosecuted for trying to influence proceedings while he was president. But if the law is interpreted really narrowly, then I think there's less of a need for immunity because, you know, it'll be harder to prosecute a president for things he didn't office. So I think, you know, my general view is that instead of, you know, we have this problem in the country of partisans trying to prosecute each other when they get into office. It's going to be a problem. There's no denying that that's going to be a problem. The better solution to it is to make these laws, interpret these laws in a narrow

Starting point is 00:28:00 way to prevent prosecutors from just reaching their opponents, you know, sort of gratuitously. That's a better solution than creating immunity, than saying, well, these laws are really broad, they mean whatever you want them to mean, but also the president's immune from that, but not anyone else is. So that's why I think that there's a link, because I think we have a problem, but that goes to how are we going to address it? Is it with immunity, or is it with a close and narrowly tailored interpretation of these laws that affect the political system? All right, so I guess I'm curious, one last thing before I let you go. For me, I suppose one of the outcomes out of here that I worry about from the Supreme Court's decision to take the case up, hear arguments in April, probably we get a decision in June, is Trump wins the November election, the case is still ongoing, and then he comes into the White House and just puts in his own Justice Department and effectively kills the case.

Starting point is 00:29:04 Which, obviously, he's going to bring in his own justice department and effectively kills the case, which obviously he's going to, you know, bring in his own attorney general and all this stuff. To me, that seems like a potential worst case scenario. You know, we're sort of like on this precipice of all this, you know, political lawfare happening. I personally view that as a potential worst case scenario. And I think what I'm hearing from you a little bit at the beginning was, you know, that might be so, but that's not the Supreme Court's problem. That's the Justice Department's problem. I'm curious maybe just to hear you talk a little bit about that fear that I have is, you know, personally, I just want the trial to happen before the election. You know,

Starting point is 00:29:46 I don't whether Trump is guilty or innocent, whatever. I just think the voters should get a chance to see how that plays out. But I think a very bad outcome would be that Trump sort of kills the case as president and everybody just goes completely nuts when that happens. So I'd be interested to hear kind of your thoughts about that potential outcome. I think in retrospect, it's going to seem like if we wanted the trial to happen before the election, the Department of Justice would have just had to bring the case sooner. They couldn't have brought it in 2023 and then hope to just, you know, go at lightning speed through all the appeals. And I think, you know, the reason that didn't happen was, I think Garland came in and had a lot of these worries that I was just saying about the statutes. Well, do we really have a crime here?

Starting point is 00:30:39 I don't, I'm not sure that's a crime, you know, we don't have an obvious crime here. And so I think that's why it took, you know, two and a half years before the mood kind of changed. And then they decided, oh, what the heck, let's do it. But then it by then it may well have been too late. You know, I think you're right. If the voters elect Trump, despite all these indictments, they will effectively be voting to set them aside because the sitting president at least can't be prosecuted. That's been the consensus for a while. So I agree the whole thing is terrible for the country, a bad situation for the country. It's a bad situation that Trump, despite all this behavior, is still very close to being president potentially and that we have this new precedent of this lawfare. And if he wins, you're exactly right. The case will at least be paused. But I

Starting point is 00:31:33 think that will be what the voters are choosing. And yeah, and I would just emphasize again, like you said, I don't think you can blame the Supreme Court. It's a different branch of government. Their job is to get right the constitutional question, not to, you know, change their decision based on the election schedule. They wouldn't do that in any other case, you know, where it's not like an emergency. So it's a bad situation overall when you mix law with politics to this extent. All right, Jason Willick, I appreciate you giving us some of your time. If people want to keep up with your work, where's the best place to do that? Well, you can sign up for my newsletter on the Washington Post, which gets, you know, we'll send you my columns when they come

Starting point is 00:32:16 out. And I also share most of them on Twitter at J.A. Willick. Thanks so much, Jason. I appreciate it. Thanks, Jason. I appreciate it. Thanks, Isaac. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. All right, so I'm going to reiterate again what I've said many times before. I don't think any president should be immune from criminal prosecution for actions taken during their time in office, whether they escaped an impeachment or not. Deciding when those actions fall under their quote-unquote official duties can be complicated, but that is something for criminal courts to sort out. Could a president be tried for murder for ordering an airstrike? Most people probably agree, no. But

Starting point is 00:33:06 it isn't hard to imagine a situation where that line is a lot less clear. In fact, former President Trump has given us plenty of them. I imagine the Supreme Court will try to address these questions, and I think they should. What is clear to me, though, is that even if some of Trump's actions potentially qualify as official duties, most of what he was accused of does not. For instance, as president, Trump has wide latitude to give instructions to the Justice Department, given that they are made up of his political appointees. His actions directing the DOJ may fall into official duties, and I doubt they'll be proven criminal. But it is not an official duty for a president to call state election officials and tell them to find votes when they are losing an election. And that kind of action may well end up being criminal.

Starting point is 00:33:51 My best guess here is that the Supreme Court will rule in near unanimous fashion on when and in what cases a former president is immune from criminal prosecution and decide that Trump's actions will ultimately fall outside the lines they draw. In the end, I suspect the case will be able to move forward. The question now is timing. A very unsatisfactory and potentially dangerous outcome would be if the Supreme Court effectively greenlights Trump's trial, then Trump gets elected, replaces the Justice Department officials overseeing his case, and kills it. Everything about that outcome would be politically explosive and legally tenuous, and if things already feel like they're on the precipice, I imagine that would only worsen it. If I have one criticism of what the Supreme Court just did, that'd be it. They should have agreed

Starting point is 00:34:36 to hear this case more quickly, even if it was just a few weeks. It seems clear to me that they could have reasonably handed down this one-page ruling much sooner, and very possible that oral arguments would have been scheduled earlier. That being said, I also think it's fair to note, as Jason Willick did, that most of that responsibility falls on the Justice Department. If they wanted a trial before November, it was their job to bring a case far enough ahead of time and try to account for all the predictable appeals we've seen. Now we'll have to see how long it takes for a decision to come down. In the end, my interest is really singular. I think voters should get a trial before election

Starting point is 00:35:13 day to avoid the prospect of President Trump killing his own case. But with the court taking this up in April, the average time it takes for a decision to come down, and the Justice Department's typical desire to avoid meddling in an election, it seems very likely that we head into November without a conclusion to the most consequential Trump trial there is. We'll be right back after this quick quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Mark in Massena, New York. Mark said, you say that other real estate developers do the same as Trump, inflating and devaluing the value of their properties. If it's illegal, why is prosecuting Trump a bad thing? I get the angle on his bid for president, but surely we need to send a message to all these people that what

Starting point is 00:36:10 they're doing is both unethical and illegal. Okay, so I think that's a very fair question. Actually, the prosecute all crimes position is pretty consistent with how I feel about investigating claims of corruption or criminal activity for any former or current politician. Just as the politically powerful shouldn't be above the law, neither should the financially powerful. That said, there are three things about this prosecution that make me uncomfortable. First, New York District Attorney Letitia James campaigned for her office on the position of going after Donald Trump. She clearly had a belief that her office should prosecute the former president before ever using the powers of the district attorney to

Starting point is 00:36:49 investigate him. To me, that's an obvious political bias, and I also think it's a good illustration of why district attorneys shouldn't be elected, but that's another story. Second, because there was no aggrieved party here, it would be illegal for Trump to devalue his properties on tax reports, but the key elements of James' case were about Trump overvaluing his properties on loan applications. If a company is deceived by value inflation, that's fraudulent. But as we emphasize in our coverage, Deutsche Bank, which granted Trump favorable interest rates, never claimed to be deceived. In fact, representatives for the bank testified on his behalf. Third, and relatedly, the $354 million that Judge Engeron ruled Trump has to pay won't go to any aggrieved party, but instead to the state of New York. And if he doesn't pay, James said

Starting point is 00:37:38 she's prepared to seize some of Trump's properties. You don't have to think that what Trump did was scrupulous or even legal to be uncomfortable with the idea that the government can seize your property due to a guilty verdict in a fraud trial where the party you defrauded testified for your defense. All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under the radar section. The U.S. immigration system is understaffed and underfunded, and now it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under the radar section. The U.S. immigration system is understaffed and underfunded, and now it's struggling to keep up with a surge of asylum seekers at the southern border. An Axios report on internal government projections shows that more than 8 million asylum seekers and other migrants will be living inside

Starting point is 00:38:19 the U.S. in legal limbo by the end of September. That represents a 167% increase in five years, according to the government documents. In 2019, the number was roughly 3 million. That includes those that have been ordered to be deported and those that haven't had final decisions rendered by U.S. officials on their asylum or other immigration cases. Axios has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. Axios has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of days until the 2024 election is now 246. The average number of days between oral arguments and rulings in Supreme Court cases is 84, according to an analysis of 7,219 cases from 1946 to 2012. At minimum, the number of days since

Starting point is 00:39:09 Donald Trump filed his appeal before the Supreme Court hears arguments on his immunity claim is 70. The number of days it took the Supreme Court to hear arguments on Colorado's decision to bar Trump from the state's ballot after Trump filed his appeal was 36. The number of days it took to the Supreme Court to deny special counsel Jack Smith's petition to rule on Trump's immunity claim in December 2023 was 11. The percentage of Americans who think Donald Trump should have immunity for actions taken while president is 36%, according to a January 2024 CBS News poll. The percentage of Republicans who think Trump should have immunity for actions

Starting point is 00:39:45 taken while president is 69%. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day section. An anonymous customer stopped for breakfast at the Mason Jar Cafe in Benton Harbor, Michigan after attending a memorial service for a close friend. He paid his $32 check, a memorial service for a close friend. He paid his $32 check, then left a more-than-generous tip of $10,000 for waitress Lindsay Boyd. I just gave him a hug. He then told me that he had left a memorial of someone very dear to him, and he just wanted to do something really kind and generous in her name, Boyd said. The man wanted his generosity to be shared further, requesting Boyd to share the money with her co-workers. I know it's hard sometimes, but you never know what or who is going to bless you,

Starting point is 00:40:31 said Ava White, one of the servers who got a portion from the tip. Sunny Skies has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, you can go to RootTangled.com and consider becoming a member. And don't forget to check out our event coming to New York City, April 17th. We'll be back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace.

Starting point is 00:40:58 Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. Thank you. Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. winning book. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Starting point is 00:42:31 Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Tangle - SCOTUS will hear Trump's immunity case.

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