Tangle - The new Trump charges.

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 00:00:19 Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place 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 the latest Trump charges. There are some new details in addition to the indictment in the charges against him for mishandling classified

Starting point is 00:01:06 documents and trying to allegedly obstruct the investigation. We're going to talk about what is in those charges and what they mean. Before we do, though, a quick heads up. The Tangle team has assembled here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On Thursday night, we're going to be taking the stage at Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia for a moderated discussion on this Supreme Court. We've got some incredible guests lined up. I'm super excited to bring together the Tango community in person. So if you've not gotten your ticket yet, you can still do that. There are tickets on sale and there is a link in today's episode description to buy those tickets. All right, with that out of the way, we're going to start off today's podcast, as always, with some quick hits. First up, in closed-door testimony

Starting point is 00:01:56 yesterday, former Hunter Biden business partner Devin Archer testified that then-Vice President regularly joined his son on speakerphone at business dinners, according to lawmakers present for the testimony. However, Archer said Vice President Biden did not discuss Hunter's businesses, only discussing the Biden brand and exchanging casual pleasantries. Number two, a two-day summit in Africa ended without Russian President Vladimir Putin agreeing to restart the Black Sea grain deal that helped feeds the continent. However, Putin pledged to ship free grain to six African nations. Number three, Georgia turned on the first U.S. nuclear reactor built

Starting point is 00:02:37 from scratch in the United States in decades. It will help power 500,000 homes and businesses when it is at full capacity. Number four, the United States agreed to send a $345 million weapons package to Taiwan, including MQ-9A Reaper drones and small arms ammunition. And number five, a new Siena College poll finds President Biden's approval rating is up from a year ago, but also shows him in a head-to-head tie with former President Donald Trump. Donald Trump is facing new federal charges in the case involving his alleged mishandling of classified documents. In an indictment released yesterday, the former president is accused of asking a Mar-a-Lago employee to delete security camera footage.

Starting point is 00:03:31 Special Counsel Jack Smith filing a superseding indictment yesterday, adding two new counts against Trump, including an additional count of willful retention of national defense information and another count of obstruction of justice. Trump had already been facing 37 counts of mishandling classified information and obstruction. The Trump campaign responding to the new superseding indictment tonight, calling the charges an attempt to harass the former president and his allies. All this coming after Trump's attorneys met with Smith and his team about another possible criminal indictment potentially connected to January 6th. On Thursday, special counsel Jack Smith filed additional charges against former President Trump

Starting point is 00:04:18 tied to his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Most significantly, the new indictment accuses Trump and his aides of obstruction by attempting to delete surveillance footage from his Mar-a-Lago club so it couldn't be turned over to a grand jury. The charges also include an additional count of willful retention of a classified national security document, which prosecutors allege he showed to guests at his New Jersey golf club. Further, the indictment charges Carlos de Oliveira, a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago, with lying to investigators. That makes him the third defendant in this case, along with Walter Nauta and Trump. In June, the Justice Department indicted Trump on 37 counts of different charges, including willful retention of national defense information, false statements, conspiracy to obstruct and withholding classified records.

Starting point is 00:05:07 Nauta, Trump's personal aide, was also charged in the original indictment. He and Trump have pleaded not guilty. According to the latest additions to the indictment, Trump had a 24-minute phone call with de Oliveira the day after a lawyer for the Trump organization was given a draft of a grand jury subpoena seeking Mar-a-Lago security footage from a staffer. A few days later, de la Vera allegedly confronted the staffer and informed him the boss wanted the footage deleted and asked him what are we going to do. The staffer said he didn't know how to delete the footage and didn't think he had the right to, according to the

Starting point is 00:05:40 indictment. There is no allegation the footage was ultimately deleted. Security footage is key to the indictment. There is no allegation the footage was ultimately deleted. Security footage is key to the prosecution's case against Trump as it is being used to buttress their claim that boxes of classified documents were held in insecure locations and moved between locations after subpoenas were issued in order to be kept from investigators. The additional charge on willful retention of documents was related to Trump's boast in July of 2021 to a writer, publisher, and two staff members about a document purporting to show a plan to attack a country, which journalists have since identified as Iran. An audio recording of Trump showing the group the document was published in CNN and other news outlets and is cited in the indictment.

Starting point is 00:06:21 Trump spokesperson Stephen Chung called the indictment nothing more than a continued desperate and failing attempt by the Justice Department to harass Trump. A federal judge in Florida who was appointed by Trump has scheduled his trial to begin on May 20th, 2024. Meanwhile, Trump is currently leading all Republican primary candidates by a wide margin in the race to become the Republican presidential nominee in 2024. He is also expected to face another indictment from the state of Georgia, where prosecutor Fannie Willis is expected to seek a grand jury indictment in the coming weeks after investigating Trump's attempt to overturn his 2020 presidential race loss in Georgia. The investigations into his conduct come as the Justice Department is attempting to sort

Starting point is 00:07:00 out a plea agreement for President Biden's son, Hunter, who is facing charges for tax crimes and illegally possessing a firearm. Today, we're going to explore some opinions from the left and the right, and then my take. Today's podcast is sponsored by Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy dedicated to improving the Thank you. among others. To learn more about their work, go to ArnoldVentures.org. That's ArnoldVentures.org. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. The right is mixed on the charges, with some saying they show the Justice Department's bias and others suggesting they look very bad for Trump. Some argue that the timing of the indictments is meant to distract from the president's son, Hunter's, own legal problems. Others suggest Trump's best strategy is to focus on kitchen table issues. In Newsweek, Stephen L. Miller wrote about the timing of the new indictments. Trump's conduct looks bad and avoidable, but how can you expect

Starting point is 00:08:21 the American people to take seriously these indictments against the current frontrunner to face Biden in 2024 from Biden's Department of Justice when they come on the heels of an unprecedentedly sweet deal for the president's son? One that had to be scuttled by a judge in the 11th hour thanks to how lenient it was, Miller asked. The truth is, the Biden administration is currently playing a shell game with the media as its winning accomplice. is currently playing a shell game with the media as its winning accomplice. To distract from these simple facts about the DOJ's favoritism towards the president's son, that same DOJ continues to act aggressively towards Biden's leading political opponent. Furthermore, it doesn't appear Garland will be seeking a special prosecutor to look further into the Bidens and the troubling whistleblower testimony that suggests obstruction in the Hunter Biden investigation. Because, as troubling as Hunter Biden's behavior has been, the worst is yet to be disclosed. How Hunter allegedly sold out the

Starting point is 00:09:10 United States by using his father's power and influence as a vessel, Miller said. If Garland refuses to act, then the Republican House must start an impeachment inquiry. The political favoritism of President Biden's DOJ can no longer be ignored. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the new evidence undercuts Trump's defense in the documents case. Does Donald Trump not understand the greatest truism in politics, i.e. that it's not the crime, it's the cover-up, the board asked? According to this week's indictment, the Fed subpoenaed Mar-a-Lago's surveillance footage on June 24, 2022. Within hours, Mr. Trump's valet, Walt Nauta, was planning to fly to the club while texting its IT director to ask if he was available.

Starting point is 00:09:51 On Saturday, June 25, Mr. Nauta and Carlos de la Vera, a club property manager, went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors, walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the storage room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras. On Monday morning, Mr. De La Vera found the IT director, took him to a small room known as an audio closet, and asked him how long the club's server kept footage. He then said that the boss wanted the server deleted, the board wrote. Mr. Trump is entitled to a defense and presumption of innocence, but this is a damning allegation. If Mr. Trump sought to destroy evidence, it undercuts his defense on the document charges. He contends to a defense and presumption of innocence, but this is a damning allegation. If Mr. Trump sought

Starting point is 00:10:25 to destroy evidence, it undercuts his defense on the document charges. He contends that the Presidential Records Act gives him the right to retain documents from his time in office, but if Mr. Trump believed that, he would have just played it straight. In the Daily Caller, Neil Banerjee said Trump can play these latest charges to his advantage. Rather than allowing the Democrats to succeed in taking control of the narrative by drawing unending attention to his legal problems, Trump can re-emphasize the issues that actually matter to the average voter and argue that Democrats in Washington are more focused on persecuting him than on addressing the concerns of Main Street, he wrote. While these new charges could galvanize the Republican base into backing

Starting point is 00:11:04 Trump for the nomination, focusing on them would likely harm his standing among swing voters, who will be pivotal to his victory in a general election. Voters of all political stripes care about the issues, not pointless legal drama, which seem even more suspicious when the party in power is pursuing charges against its chief opponent, he wrote. Therefore, Trump needs to constantly and consistently redirect public attention to the bread and butter issues that will be the foundational strength of his campaign, addressing sky-high inflation, securing energy independence, and preserving his tax cuts, which save the average American household thousands of dollars. All right, that is it for The Rightist Hang, which brings us to what the left is saying.

Starting point is 00:11:56 Many on the left argue that the latest indictments bolster the already strong case against Trump and might actually change some opinions. Some suggest the new evidence guts his best defense, which was already weak. Others say the charges are so powerful they were worth bringing, even if they delay the case. In MSNBC, Jessica Levinson said the new indictment guts Trump's best defense. If prosecutors can prove the allegations in the superseding indictment, they mostly gut Trump's best, albeit still bad, defenses that he could or thought he could lawfully possess the documents, Levinson wrote. People who lawfully possess documents, even those who claim to be subjects of political witch hunts, don't typically ask others to hide those documents prior to federal investigators going through them and then ask that video evidence of those documents be moved and deleted.

Starting point is 00:12:38 Reading the superseding indictment gives one the impression that Trump's next biggest alleged mistake was in trying to hide his attempts to hide the documents, she added. This bolsters a key part of Smith's case, that Trump obstructed a federal investigation and then tried to cover up that obstruction. Even if, and this is a huge and far-fetched if, Trump was entitled to retain some of these documents in the first place, he certainly wasn't entitled to hide them from federal investigators and then delete video footage of his employees moving boxes of those documents during an ongoing federal investigation. 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

Starting point is 00:13:20 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+. In CNN, Norman Eisen said the remarkable new charges paint an even more damning picture. Many experts agree that special counsel Jack Smith already had a strong case, so why would he bother to file a superseding indictment, adding a third defendant, Mar-a-Lago worker Carlos de la Vera, at the risk of further

Starting point is 00:13:56 delaying a trial that has already been pushed back by U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon? A close look at the new charging document shows that the benefits to the special counsel and his case are well worth the costs in delay and otherwise. Adding a charge on the Iran document allows prosecutors to center the case on this telling example of his alleged wrongdoing, making it more concrete and understandable. Prosecutors also now have a much stronger legal basis to play the audio tape of Trump talking to the group about the document and to show the jury Trump's Fox News appearance falsely denying that he had any such document, Eisen said. Regarding the obstruction charges, prosecutors have added the details of the alleged Trump-led attempt to delete security cameras footage at Mar-a-Lago. While the Justice Department already

Starting point is 00:14:39 had powerful evidence on obstruction, this is a leap forward because it hammers home the extent of the degree to which he and his co-defendants went to conceal potential evidence from a jury. In The New Yorker, John Cassidy said the indictments are finally having an impact on public opinion. A recent survey from Bright Line Watch confirmed the familiar picture that universally acknowledged truths hardly exist when it comes to Trump. Fewer than one in six Republican voters said they believed that Trump had committed crimes in trying to overturn the 2020 election and his actions before the January 6th riots or in making hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

Starting point is 00:15:14 A few more Republicans said they believed that he committed a crime in the classified documents case, but the total was still only one in four, Cassidy wrote. But the survey also found that the number of independents who believe that Trump has done something criminal is growing, especially in relation to the classified documents case. This suggests that, as prosecutors release more details of the charges and evidence against Trump, opinion is slowly shifting against him among less partisan voters, Cassidy said. The survey even showed evidence of movement among Republicans. Last week, a survey from NPR PBS News Aramaris College indicated that the percentage of Republicans who believe that

Starting point is 00:15:50 Trump has done nothing wrong has dropped from 50% to 41% since June. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. When I wrote about bad arguments a few weeks ago, one of the examples I used was whataboutism. To that end, I'm not going to make this issue a comparison between Hunter or Joe Biden's purported crimes versus Trump's. We have covered Hunter Biden extensively, including everything from his laptop to his plea agreement to the IRS whistleblowers. And while comparing the Justice Department's treatment of various actors can be useful, in this case, the alleged crime and evidence are both irrelevant and so different that I don't see much benefit in that exercise. This story is about former President Donald Trump.

Starting point is 00:16:43 As I said when the indictment was first released, the evidence looks damning. Indictments, of course, are not proof. They are only a statement of charges. But you can typically tell when reading an indictment whether prosecutors have a strong case or not. And Jack Smith clearly has a strong case. Smith has the hard evidence, the actual classified documents Trump took from the White House, security footage of the documents being moved, and audio recordings of Trump boasting about them. He has witnesses,

Starting point is 00:17:09 including two of Trump's employees, who allegedly participated in attempts to conceal the documents from prosecutors. And now he alleges to have evidence Trump went as far as instructing those employees to delete security footage to obscure how the documents were handled from prosecutors and a grand jury. It is, as I said in June, a worst-case scenario indictment for Trump. Not because the crime is so serious it would destroy him politically, it isn't and hasn't, clearly, but because, given the specificity of allegations, the Justice Department appears to have an overwhelming amount of evidence. Since this case began, I have also been saying that Trump's primary defense, one of the few consistent ones he has levied, is fanciful at best. He cannot simply speak classified documents into declassification, and he doesn't get to work

Starting point is 00:17:55 outside the processes of declassification by taking those documents to his home and keeping them with no oversight. As his former Attorney General Bill Barr put it, those documents don't belong to Trump, they belong to the government. This idea of presenting Trump as a victim of a witch hunt is ridiculous, Barr said in June. Yes, he's been a victim in the past. Yes, his adversaries have obsessively pursued him with phony claims. But this is much different. The latest indictment only bolsters how differently it really is. And this all sets up a rather unprecedented situation in American history. The first GOP primary debate is a few weeks away, slated for August 23rd. An indictment in the case involving Trump's attempts to change the outcome of the 2020

Starting point is 00:18:37 election in Georgia seems imminent. As Republican presidential nominee Chris Christie put it, that means by August 23rd, it's likely that the frontrunner will be out on bail in four different jurisdictions, Florida, Washington, Georgia, and New York. But will it matter? I was recently interviewed for a forthcoming news story about the work I do with Tangle. At the end of the interview, the reporter asked me if I had any political hot takes I wanted to share. Given our mission here, I hesitated, but one idea popped into my

Starting point is 00:19:05 head and I couldn't help but blurt it out. The GOP primary is over. Looking deep into every poll I find, there's simply no data to show that anyone other than Trump will be the Republican nominee in 2024, and the press seems largely unprepared and unwilling to accept this reality. This indictment matters because it includes more evidence that Trump is willing to obstruct legitimate investigations into his conduct, and it increases the odds he'll be convicted as charged. He'll get his day in court, of course, and I'll be watching closely, but it doesn't look good for the former president. Yet the political reality here looks like this. So many Americans have so little trust in our institutions, including the FBI and the Justice

Starting point is 00:19:45 Department, that these charges and even a potential conviction are not going to stop Trump. The allegations have been flattened to mere political fodder, mud for both sides to sling, rather than the serious disqualifying charges that they may have been 10 or 20 years ago. That reality speaks not just to the political unrest in our country, but to the strength of the partisan bases that are so intractable that they can't be moved even when new evidence comes to light. It's certainly possible the total mass of the allegations against Trump block his path to the presidency, but I don't see a world in which they stop him from becoming the Republican nominee. And surprisingly, that remains true even as the odds

Starting point is 00:20:25 of a conviction appear to keep rising. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Arthur in Asheville, North Carolina. Arthur said, I'm curious about the Florida law that started this, teachings that make students feel guilt over past actions by members of their racial group. How is it possible to regulate guilt? Can't any student simply claim that they're being made to feel guilty and shut down pretty much any lesson they want to get out of? This seems impossible to regulate in practice. How can it actually be legal? Okay, so this is a great question. The enforcement of this law is something I'm actually quite curious

Starting point is 00:21:05 about too, and there are already some legal challenges to it. But first, let me clarify that my quote describing the law was a summary that reworded it for some brevity. The actual full text states this, quote, a person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions in which he or she played no part committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. So right away, there's a big difference between a lesson that makes a student feel guilty and a lesson where the instructor tells the student that they must feel guilty. The real issue is where to draw the line between those two things, and that can be very ambiguous. I can imagine a lesson where a teacher says something

Starting point is 00:21:44 like, the discriminatory policy of redlining defined who could own a home along racial lines, and since homeownership is a large way that families pass down wealth, the impacts of this policy still exist today. In that lesson, I could also imagine a teacher saying that white students, by and large, inherited more privilege than their classmates. Does that tell a white student that they personally have something they should or must feel guilty over? This is hypothetical, so it's impossible to say, but depending on the wording, I think it's definitely possible. That is, in part, why so many teachers in Florida express concern about the law, fear that they might be prosecuted for how they taught something they viewed as innocuous. Is such a law legal? That's currently

Starting point is 00:22:25 in court as a case is underway that challenges that the law stops the free discussion of issues of race and gender in classrooms. I don't know how critical this one portion of the text is to the challenge, but we'll keep an eye on the story in Florida as it develops. All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under the radar section. Less than a week after CNN published a report about the weight loss drug Ozempic causing stomach paralyzation, European regulators announced plans to review safety data on the drug after patients reported suicidal or self-harming thoughts. The drug, which is a class of diabetes medicine, has been soaring in popularity in the United States for its ability to induce weight loss by limiting cravings for food. Questions

Starting point is 00:23:09 have swirled about its safety while some doctors expressed concern it was being prescribed too widely. Now, the European Medicines Agency announced a review of its safety data, as did a regulatory agency in the United Kingdom. Roughly 373,000 Ozzempic prescriptions were filled last year in the United States alone. Reuters has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. Next up is our numbers section. The percentage split of voters who said they would cast their ballots for Joe Biden or Donald Trump, according to the latest New York Times-Siena College poll, was 43 to 43. The percentage of voters who said the United States was on the right track was 23%. Donald Trump's net unfavorable rating, according to the poll, was 55%. Joe Biden's net unfavorable

Starting point is 00:23:56 rating was 54%. The percentage of voters who said they wouldn't vote if the race was between Biden and Trump was 6%. All right, that is it for our numbers section. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. Josephine Wright, a 93-year-old resident of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, is defending the right to land that's been in her family since the Civil War. Court documents show a Georgia-based land developer is suing Wright for encroachment and wants to build on and around the property. I've just never seen a multi-million dollar company handle themselves like this, said Cherise Graves, one of Wright's 40 grandchildren to her seven children.

Starting point is 00:24:34 But Wright is getting some help from powerful allies like Snoop Dogg, who donated $10,000 to help pay her legal fees, and Kyrie Irving, who pitched in $40,000 himself. I'm hoping that the outcome is this, that these people will leave us alone and let me keep my property for the sanctuary of my family, Wright said. USA Today has the David vs. Goliath story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As I said at the top of the show, we are in countdown mode, a little more than 48 hours until our event in Philadelphia.

Starting point is 00:25:10 If you've not gotten your tickets yet, please do. We're so close to selling it out. We want to see you guys there. Thursday night, Philadelphia, Brooklyn Bowl. Check out the episode description for a link to details and tickets. The whole Tangle team is now here in Philadelphia. We are very excited for this night and hope to see you soon in person. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John

Starting point is 00:25:37 Law. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Pikova, who's also our Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll be right back. 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,

Starting point is 00:26:30 and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.

Tangle - The new Trump charges.

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