The Bulwark Podcast - An Undue Risk of Conviction

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Jack Smith signaled he will be able to prove why Trump held onto the classified documents. Plus, Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, chaos in the House, and the pro-Hamas left’s justification of murder. Ben Wittes joins Charles Sykes for The Trump trials. show notes: https://www.dogshirtdaily.com/p/how-not-to-respond-to-a-terrorist

If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our Tread Experts. Ensure each winter trip is a safe one for your family. Enjoy them for years with the Michelin X-Ice Snow Tire. Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Welcome to the new edition of the Trump Trials. I'm Charlie Sykes. We're joined by Ben Wittes

of Lawfare. Boy, there is so much going on here. I mean, I need to have a scorecard. We have the document case down in Florida. We have the election subversion case in Washington, D.C. We have the racketeering case in Georgia. We have a fraud case in New York. And to forget, we also have the felony charges about paying hush money to a porn star also in New York. But before we get to that, Ben, there's just so many other things that we just have to get to. And I apologize in advance because I did not warn you that there would be math today. But I want to talk about the fact that at a moment of international crisis, the House of Representatives is absolutely paralyzed. No speaker can't get anything done. As you and I are talking, there's really no indication that anybody would want this. Hey, I'm sure there's cool things about being a speaker. I mean,

I've been in the office. They got a great porch, you know, get people call you Mr. Speaker, you get the gavel. Kevin McCarthy gets the portrait. You know, there's a certain amount of power and ego, but it is, I think, objectively speaking, the shittiest job in Washington, but Steve Scalise wants it. And here's the math. The Republicans get together to vote on a speaker and they vote 113 votes for Steve Scalise, 99 for Jim Jordan. Actually, it was closer than that. If you take out the members of Congress that don't actually get to vote, Scalise only gets about 110 votes, which means that he has to flip 107 votes in order to get, and here's the key number, 217 votes to be elected. As of this morning, Punchbowl is estimating that there are

20 to 30 hardcore never-Scalise votes. And so you remember, to use your memorable phrase, that the crazed, what was it? The crazed slathering jackal caucus. The crazed jackal caucus took out Kevin McCarthy. Now it's a whole new group of jackals, including George Santos, newly re-indicted, who basically has decided he's not going to vote for Scalise unless he gets some guarantee they won't expel him. But there's no indication that anyone, I mean, anyone in this caucus is going to get to 217 votes, which doesn't bother apparently some Republicans because they're not serious about governing. They've just sort of given it up. And as an indication, let me just get this off my chat, how deeply unserious all of this is, as the world becomes more dangerous. The fact that for a couple of days last week, people were actually talking about Donald Trump being elected

speaker, and that 99 members of the conference actually voted for Jim Jordan. I mean, Ben, in a rational world, no grown-up would even contemplate the possibility of putting Jim Jordan in that position. But here we are, absolute chaos in the House of Representatives. And it would be funny if the stakes were not so immensely serious. Well, so first of all, let me emphasize the stakes being serious issue. And particularly for, they're serious in a different way than they were before the attack in Israel last weekend. Right now, we have a ticking clock toward a government shutdown. We have a separate ticking clock toward Ukrainian insolvency that, by the way, as soon as European countries realize the U.S. is not good for its commitments to Ukraine, they will all start

falling off as well. Our example is the only thing that keeps the European countries honest here, at least the Western European countries. And of course, to anybody who thinks that the United States, Republicans purport to believe, should be leaping to create an aid package for the Israelis in response to what has happened there, that is not happening now either. None of that can happen until we get a speaker. So it almost doesn't matter what your politics are. There's something, whether it's that you believe we should have a government or that you believe that we should do what we can for the Ukrainians or that we should do what we can for the Israelis. I happen to believe all three, but most people believe at least one of those things. You can't

do any of them if you don't resolve the speaker issue. So let me just propose the following resolution to the speaker problem. You're right, it's the shittiest job in Washington. No sane person would want it. I certainly don't want it. But I am willing to be the temporary speaker, just to get us through the crisis, kind of like the I'll insist upon a dog shirt, of course, and the speaker's podium, but I'm willing to take it on for the country for a short period of time, sort of like the emergency Israeli government. And I think there should be 300 votes in Congress for that. No, this is not more bizarre than some of the fan fiction we're out there. Look, I mean, in case people are smoking the hopium, Republicans are not going to elect Kim

Jackfrey as speaker. But it's not inconceivable that you could have some sort of a centrist unity government, at least on a temporary basis. I mean, the math is there, right? If you had six or seven Republicans say, okay, elect a reasonable non-insane Republican as speaker, and then we will make certain concessions about how the floor operates, what is brought up for a vote. But hey, stop with the reasonableness. Or how about just a figure who's totally above politics, who nobody knows what they believe, like Taylor Swift. I was going to mention Taylor Swift. Yeah, you know, like I think Taylor, like just a temporary speaker.

We're not talking about long term or anything. Oprah. Oprah. It's a new thing. Tom Hanks. I mean, just somebody who would be a figure of unity. Right. Speaking of Donald Trump and the

total unseriousness of congressional politics, which leads us into the total unseriousness of American politics in general. I don't know that this has gotten as much attention as it deserves, mainly because there's just so much going on. The zone is so flooded. And a sound bite that shows that Donald Trump is completely deranged and narcissistic is not exactly breaking news. I get it. But Ben, I just have to play this clip. We'll do this as a palate cleanser. And I apologize for people who can't stand listening to his voice. This is Donald Trump once again in his warped world saying how smart Hezbollah was, how smart all of these butchers and terrorists are. Let's play it because it's not taken out of context. And then two nights ago, I read all of

Biden's security people. Can you imagine national defense people? And they said, gee, I hope Hezbollah doesn't attack from the north because that's the most vulnerable spot. I said, gee, I hope Hezbollah doesn't attack from the north, because that's the most vulnerable spot. I said, wait a minute. You know, Hezbollah is very smart. They're all very smart. The press doesn't like when they say it. You know, I said that presidency of China, 1.4 billion people. He controls it with an iron fist.

I said, he's a very smart man. They killed me the next day. I said he was smart. What am I going to say? But Hezbollah, they're very smart. And they have a national defense minister or somebody saying, I hope Hezbollah doesn't attack us from the north. So the following morning they attacked.

They might not have been doing it, but if you listen to this jerk, you would attack from the north because he said that's our weak spot. Okay, the stream of consciousness, the ignorance, the bullshit, the... Ben, really. So let's unpack it for a moment. Okay. Let's actually unpack it. So first of all, Hezbollah is in fact the most capable fighting force the Israelis face. One doesn't have to praise or secretly admire them as Trump evidently does, linking them in his mind to Xi Jinping and other dictators who are very smart to say that this is a very serious force. It is not true that the North is Israel's weak spot. The north is heavily, heavily garrisoned. And these are the two

most serious fighting forces in the Middle East that square off against each other. It's a heavily garrisoned part of Israel. It runs across the Lebanese border, along with the Syrian border, is one of the most guarded and seriously defended areas of the country, precisely because Israel knows that, knows that Hezbollah can strike at any time. Hezbollah's strikes were in no way brought on by the statement that was really a warning to Hezbollah, stay out of the conflict. And the type of communication that Israel and Hezbollah have, which is mostly done through public statements and occasional attacks. So Hezbollah sends a message by sending a few missiles across. The Israelis respond with a few

airstrikes, right? These are forms of communication. And they're very sophisticated, by the way. And so an Israeli or a US statement, stay out, is not a warning that this is, you know, the soft underbelly. It's a messaging thing. And whether Donald Trump knows that and is lying, or whether he's just stream of consciousness, but it's an absurd thing to say. And, you know, it does, as you point out, and as Liz Cheney pointed out, it does kind of play into his kind of weird, weird sort of fantasy love affairs with these highly authoritarian and brutal regimes. And it's also, you know, disgusting. It's also just a reminder that the thinking process that goes on in Donald Trump's mind is

convoluted at best. But this is an interesting point. I think this whole idea that we are projecting weakness, Biden projects weakness, and Donald Trump projects strength, right? He is strong. And somehow he thinks that his admiration and his willingness to suck up and praise people like Putin and Xi and the terrorists in the Middle East and Kim Jong-un somehow puts him in the category of being strong. What it does is basically says, this guy can be played by every strong man in the world. Every strong man in the world looks at Donald Trump and says, I know exactly how to manipulate this guy.

I'm not afraid of him. All I have to do is kiss his ass, say something nice about him. So Vladimir Putin does not think Donald Trump is strong like me when he sucks up. He thinks Donald Trump is sucking up to me. What a weakling. I can take this guy. And look, nothing about the behavior of any US politician, even Donald Trump, brought on what Hamas did. What Hamas did and what Hezbollah is doing now are conditions-based. They have to do with what they think they can get away with,

what they're operationally capable of pulling off. They have to do with their own interests. They may have something to do with Iran. They may not. They have to do with Israeli security failures. They have nothing to do with what U.S. politicians are saying. I don't think Hamas is sitting around going, hey, look, do you see what this American politician said on Twitter here? Let's launch the attack. Let's go. Did you see the latest speech from Joe Biden? Let's go. Let's do these things. But here's the thing that does matter about U.S. politicians. And by the way, you know, to everybody on the left and center left who wants to blame Donald Trump for what happened in Israel, it's nonsense. This was not Donald Trump's fault.

But what does matter when politicians say these things now is what message it sends to, for example, the U.S. Congress about whether to choose a speaker and get on with business. It matters to the image of unity that we can project to the world about how we are going to respond, how we are going to support an Israeli response, how we are going to put limits on an Israeli response. When half of the country turns around and blames Joe Biden for this, you know, and Trump is praising Hezbollah, and, you know, the left is glorifying Hamas, it really constrains the U.S. policy response in a way that is very unhelpful. Well, I think that one of the things that we've seen, though, is that Israel, which, you know, historically been so unified and so strong, was caught up in its culture wars, its division. And that kind of division, that kind of soft civil war, obviously invited something. And I think that should be a

lesson for the United States, that we assume that we are still, you know, the fortress of democracy, but we can. I mean, the whole world is watching as we tear each other apart, as we divide. You mentioned something, and I included in my newsletter, your really thoughtful piece that you wrote over the weekend, you know, in the hours after the attack by Hamas, all of the ways not to respond. And I wanted to ask you about one thing in particular, because one of your statements was essentially, and I'm going to paraphrase it, that very few problems are solved by the willful murder of civilians, right? It was something like that. It was a little stronger than that. It was, there are no problems, the solution to which are the intentional murder of civilians.

Okay. Now, what kind of reaction did you get to that? Because I saw that you commented on that. What was the response to what I think was a deeply moral statement that ought to have been agreed to by all people of goodwill? First of all, I made a point of not including ethnicities in this because I actually feel the same way about the intentional killing of Palestinians. And, you know, it was not in any sense meant as a chauvinistic Jewish statement. And to the extent that anybody in the IDF is engaged in the intentional targeting of Palestinian civilians, that person is a war criminal and should be put on trial for it. I posted it because I actually think that the rush to have a take rather than to state a moral idea is very destructive in a time like this. And everybody kind of wants to say either the Israelis are

entitled to respond, therefore, whatever they do is fine, you know, etc. Or free Palestine from the river to the sea, you know, people who know nothing about the conflict are sort of lining up to do these kind of sometimes neurotically detailed moral posturings about whether 40 or some lesser number of children were beheaded. And my point was simply, can we break through to higher ground and look at it from 40,000 feet? What's the moral principle? And the moral principle is whatever your grievance, whether it's right or wrong, however just or unjust your cause, however brutal you may perceive your oppression to be or it may in fact be, the willful murder of civilians is murder. And by the way, if you think about the movements, including the violent movements in history that we think of with approbation, they were not engaged in massacres of civilians, right? First of all, the vast majority of responses to this are people clicking like. And so I don't want to overstate the following, but there was a remarkable number of people who had to add comments to it that problematize

what I think is a very simple moral statement. So people saying, yes, but, or would you say this if, or what about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? There's a whole like, what about US strategic bombing in World War II? Or X, Y, and Z, all from like quite different perspectives, most of them hostile to Israel. But I was just surprised at how many people could not simply sign on to the basic proposition that political murder is bad. I was struck by that as well. And I think a lot of the reaction to all of this was shocking. And I do think that's a moment to step back and go, okay, how depraved do you have to be to minimize, ignore, or even justify some of the crimes? Now, I know that it's almost impossible. I use the word almost advisedly. Almost impossible to justify the murder and decapitation of babies. So instead, we had a lot of people who were saying, well, okay, was that confirmed?

Were they really decapitated? Weren't they just murdered? I mean, as if somehow that was going to change it. But there was this deep denial, like, let's not do... And also arguing over the number of babies, right? That it's outrageous that there were 40. You said there were 40 when really there's only X confirmed cases. Look, I don't know how many babies were decapitated.

And, you know, if the number is zero, that's good, I suppose, that they were merely murdered and not decapitated. It strikes me as a kind of weird moral fetish to fight over that sort of thing. We're dealing with a massacre of a thousand or more people. Innocent, unarmed people. Don't detain yourself morally with fighting over the details. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel,

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you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. In my newsletter this morning, I linked to something that I was kind of really struck to find it in writing. It's this group, Students for Justice in Palestine, and they're putting out a toolkit for protests. And they specifically say we need to normalize violence. And they actually have a little section where they talk about framework is more important than facts. Don't get bogged down in facts. Don't argue about facts. What you should be pushing is the ideological line. This is part of our lives that people will pick the narrative that they want, and then they will choose the facts that fit that particular narrative. But this group, so anxious to justify and rationalize the murders of Hamas, put it down in writing.

Like, no, we need to contextualize these atrocities. Do not allow the Zionists to bog you down in facts, because that will just lead to a back and forth about what is factual. We need to go to the framework by which they mean our ideological priors, which is whatever, that Hamas is right, that we need to destroy all of Israel, you know, from the river to the sea and all of Israel, you know, from the river to the sea and all of that. But it's interesting the way in which they have really embraced this idea that we can normalize exactly the kind of thing that we're talking about. And that's their word, normalize, contextualize it, and put the framework, our ideological agenda ahead of mere facts. And now this is not the whole left, but it is the pro-Hamas left, and we shouldn't take our eyes off this. The left, even the non-pro-Hamas left, but the left, the part of

the left that so hates Israel that it is willing to either justify or ignore or sort of bat away really horrific stuff in order to focus on Israel. This is a very old problem. It goes back to, you know, communist party days, and it's a very long standing problem. One of the challenges of the growth of the left as part of the Democratic coalition, which is something that I'm, you know, there are areas in which I have a lot in common with the left. There are areas that I really do not, but I observe sociologically that this is a more significant part of the Democratic coalition than it used to be. One problem with this is the importation of this, I'm just going to say it out loud, this anti-Semitic component of the left into the more mainstream components of the Democratic Party. I will say as a general matter, the

Democratic Party is right now handling this very well. Joe Biden is, yeah. Joe Biden is. Powerful stuff. A lot of the members of Congress have too. And I think the party apparatus has done a pretty good job. The problem is not in the party. The problem is in the cultural institutions. University is elite intellectual fora in which it is just acceptable to say things about Zionists when, of course, what you mean is Jews, and a synagogue in Portugal was defaced with the words free Palestine. This was not an Israeli institution, it's a Jewish institution, right? And the inability to distinguish between the political currents that you object to and the policies of the Israeli government that you object to, by the way, many of which are very objectionable, and the legitimacy of the Israeli state to begin with, and the inability to distinguish between the Israeli state and the Jews who live down the street from you. This is very dangerous stuff. And the left needs to

guard against it. It needs to be watchful about this stuff. And look, you know, Michael Harrington, the great American socialist founder of DSA. The Democratic Socialist of America. Democratic Socialist of America. He was an anti-authoritarian socialist, wrote the book that inspired the war on poverty. I mean, this is a great American figure. Would be appalled that the DSA is today justifying murder. And this is a watershed, I think, for some of these organizations. I mean,

the Democratic Socialists of America, you know, went so far that they had to be repudiated by members of Congress who had been aligned with them. There was one congressman, I think, from Minnesota who said, I'm out, I'm done. AOC has denounced them. Richie Torres, a Democratic congressman who's been very, very pro-Israel, very critical of DSA, says this is the beginning of the end for them, that they will lose their political influence and clout. It's also going to be a crisis moment for groups like Black Lives Matter. Now, I don't know whether or not some of these Black Lives Matter units speak for the general organization or who they are. But there was a rather strong and some really, really deeply offensive pro-Hamas propaganda coming out from

them. Now, BLM had widespread support. So for them to put out literature showing Hamas terrorists and hang gliders coming down was a, I mean, it was a disastrous miscalculation, but maybe it exposes rifts within that organization that they're going to have to deal with. They're going to have to deal with them, or they will be completely marginalized in American society. The region of Israel that was attacked most intensively, which is the, you know, a set of small towns, Moshevs and Kibbutzim, right along the Gaza fence, is an area that I've spent a lot of time in over the years.

And I just want people to understand the degree of proximity that these towns, the city of Sderot, which is the sort of biggest town right in the area, the downtown from the center of the city into Gaza is less than a mile. Less than a mile. It's less than a mile. It's about a kilometer and a half, maybe. It's really, it's nothing. One of the kibbutzim that was attacked, or moshav that was attacked, the lands literally go up to the wall. And there is a woman who lives in this town, I believe she is okay, I'm not sure. She is a potter, and she makes little pieces of painted pottery that she, when you visit this Moshav, she gives you one and

invites you to put it up on the wall in these sort of ceramic murals that are all peace signs. These are communities that have been there for a really long time. These aren't people who are like West Bank settlers who choose to live in conflict zones. These are towns that have been there for a long time. And I just want people to understand that on both sides of this conflict, there are millions of people who did not ask for this. Right. This is very important. This is very important. And unfortunately, they will be suffering. Okay, so Ben, let's switch gears to the main event today, which of course are the many, many, many Trump trials. Where should we filings by the special counsel's office earlier this week, government lawyers arguing, you know, against a motion to delay the trial until after the election.

Jack Smith's office is saying the defendants are making distorted and exaggerated claims in their request for delay. And here's the detail. They wrote, special counsel's office wrote, that the classified materials at issue in this case were taken from the White House and retained at Mar-a-Lago is not in dispute. What is in dispute is how that occurred, why it occurred, what Trump knew and what Trump intended in retaining them. All issues that the government will prove at trial primarily with unclassified evidence. Hmm. So what do you make of that? Look, the Mar-a-Lago case is, as an evidentiary matter, the most open and shut of these cases. There are no complicated legal issues. You're not allowed to have this classified information in your possession. When you notice it, you have to give it back. You're not allowed to drain your swimming pool to try to stop that.

You're just not allowed to do this stuff. They're also just signaling that it knows what Trump's intent was and plans to prove it. Now, do we know what they're talking about there? Yeah, I think we do. Well, there's no classified information involved in any of the obstruction stuff. Yeah, right. Remember also that they have a number of cooperating witnesses, some of whom are still in his employ, who he instructed to or asked or sort of, you know, to make things disappear, right? A folder of files disappear. So they are not going to have trouble establishing intent without reference to classified

information. The only thing you need the classified information for is proof that he had classified information. What it says doesn't really matter very much. The only relevant fact is that it was properly classified. Okay. So also Trump's lawyers are responding with some very, very strong language. They put out a reply memorandum saying that Jack Smith is trying to deprive Donald Trump of his due process rights by seeking to get a verdict against him for election day, no matter what the cost. This is from the New York Times account. New York Times calls the arguments lacerating, the language is lacerating, some of the strongest language yet used by attorney Christopher Keis.

This is from the memorandum. The fact they continue to contend that it is appropriate and not a violation of President Trump's due process rights to push forward with back-to-back multi-month trials in different districts with wholly different facts over a defendant's objections reveals a central truth about these cases. The special counsel's office is engaged in a reckless effort to obtain a conviction of President Trump prior to the 2024 election, no matter the cost. The court should not permit this abuse of the criminal justice system. So in other courtrooms, I would say that they're obviously appealing to the court of public opinion or they're setting up for appeal.

But this is an Eileen Cannon's court. So give me a sense about this very aggressive, very political argument that they're making. Donald Trump and his lawyers know that if this case goes to trial, he is going to be convicted, or there is an undue risk of conviction. This is an overpowering case as an evidentiary matter. He also knows that his best defense in all of these cases is to win the presidency and make them go away. He has clearly seen in the Washington case that Tanya

Chutkan is not amenable to this argument. And Eileen Cannon, who is a much more sympathetic judge, let's put it that way, and is also really slow. I don't mean that in the sense of stupid. I mean the sense of moving at the speed of a freight train on heroin. She took two months to issue a routine protective order, which was completely without explanation, by the way. She's ordered these briefings on SIPA that are like she wants a dissertation from each side, which they've now filed, by the way. She's taken her own sweet time about scheduling Garcia hearings, which are happening today. And so I think they see two factors that are very appealing to them. One is they know she's sympathetic and capable of issuing wildly inappropriate legal orders inflected by that sense of sympathy. And number two is she's

not fast and she doesn't seem to have a fire under her butt to move at a reasonable pace. So I think what you're seeing in this very aggressive is like, well, can we combine the sense of lack of urgency with the sense of sympathy and get what we really need, which is a delay? By the way, in Washington, they have another way to get a delay. And so if you can get a delay in South Florida, because you kind of bully the judge a little bit and she gives you what you want, you may be able to win on both fronts. Okay, well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about what's going on in Judge Shutkin's. What is the way they hope to delay the case in D.C.? Because Judge Shutkin does not appear

to be amenable to any sort of delay. Correct. So a few weeks ago, I wrote a piece with my colleague, Sarah Finn, about the executive immunity arguments that they had promised to file. And we argued, following the Washington Post columnistist Ruth Marcus, who I want to give her credit was the first person to notice this, we evaluated Ruth's claim, and she's right, that when Chutkin rejects this motion to dismiss on the grounds of executive immunity, this will be ripe for immediate appeal. And there are bizarre technical reasons for that that we can go into if you want, but I think everybody who's looked at it closely agrees with this. So there's no way, I don't think, that Judge Shutkin is going to grant

this motion. There is some chance that the Supreme Court could grant this motion in some respect. I don't think there are five votes for dismissing this case on this basis, but the idea of some degree of executive immunity is not completely crazy. And we've never had to figure out what the parameters of it are because, of course, no former president's ever been indicted before. Okay, so executive immunity just sounds like the doctrine that quite literally the president is above the law. Let's break it down a little bit. It's a complicated idea. A judge is immune from criminal prosecution for their judicial rulings, right? A prosecutor, if you are acting as a prosecutor and acting in good faith, you have immunity for doing your job, right? Yeah. But you're not immune if you go and you

knock over a liquor store. Correct. Or if you're stalking an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend or anything else that's outside of the scope of your official duties. Exactly. So here's now where it gets complicated. The president, we've never determined whether the president has criminal immunity at all, because again, we've never indicted one before. And so most people agree, I think, that there's some presidential immunity, but we don't really know. We do know the answer in the civil context, because Richard Nixon got sued, and the Supreme Court ruled that the president had absolute immunity in the civil context for anything within the outer perimeters of his role as president, which is a very expansive understanding.

So the first question is, is there the same immunity available as a criminal matter? We don't know. Number two, if there is, is the conduct within January 6th within or outside the outer perimeter of presidential conduct. I would hope the answer to that is that it's outside, but there are some really conservative people on the Supreme Court, really executive power-friendly people on the Supreme Court. And number three, if there's some other theory of presidential immunity, how does that interact with the facts alleged? Here is what we know.

We know that the government thinks, which is also, by the way, the guardian of executive prerogatives, right? So the Justice Department has thought this through and thinks that the president is not immune. The former president is not immune for these charges. What we don't know, and we're going to learn when they respond to this brief, is what their theory is. We pretty well can assume that Chania Chutkan will not go for this, but this is going to be a difficult issue at the appellate level. And all of that is going to be litigated before trial,

I think. And it could very well cause a delay. Okay, so one other development done last week there in this particular case, Jack Smith asking Judge Shutkin to protect the identities of prospective jurors in the case, arguing that that is needed, quote, in light of the public attention that is expected and the defendant, Donald Trump's record, of using public social media platforms in an intimidating manner. They're also revealing that 25 potential witnesses have cited attorney-client privileges. Leave that aside. But it is interesting that we're seeing more requests for protective orders acknowledging what Donald Trump and his supporters are prepared to do to witnesses and prospective jurors. Look, you're seeing this now in all of the cases, issues about security of the grand jurors in Fulton County who've been doxed and identified. You've seen issues about the clerk, the judicial clerk in

Judge Erdogan's courtroom in the civil case in New York. And you, of course, have a pending motion for a non-gag order in Judge Chutkin's courtroom. The only place where you're not seeing this happen is in South Florida, because of course, Trump actually knows better than to sock his gift horse, Judge Eileen Cannon, in the mouth. And so it's going to continue until, I mean, I think until some judge issues an order that he flagrantly violates, at which point you'll see what capacity any of these courts have to enforce anything on him. So DA Funny Willis is engaging in a war of words with the deeply deplorable Jim Jordan. Jordan has been requesting information about the district

attorney's office and about their prosecution. And she writes a letter to him saying, a charitable explanation of your correspondence is that you are ignorant of the United States and Georgia constitutions and codes. A more troubling explanation is that you are abusing your authority as chairman of the committee on the judiciary to attempt to obstruct and interfere with a Georgia criminal prosecution. Now, there are Republicans in the Georgia legislature that appear to be determined to use their power to go after Fannie Willis. How seriously should we take that threat? Are Republicans in Georgia actually going to try to kneecap her as a way of protecting Donald Trump

in that prosecution? So I think they are. And I think one reassuring thing was that the governor a few weeks ago, you know, my enthusiasm for Brian Kemp is under control, I assure you. But he did exactly the right thing in this instance. There's this new disciplinary committee that they are going to try to invoke. Fannie Willis honestly hasn't done anything that is disciplinable. She's made a political judgment that people can reasonably disagree with, which is a decision to invest an enormous amount of resources in this one case in a jurisdiction that has a very serious street crime problem. And I think, you know, that's the kind of thing that you run against somebody for doing or, you know, is ripe for political criticism. She has also engaged in a particularly grandiose formulation of this indictment. And I think it's fair to,

as many defense lawyers have, there was an excellent podcast by the Atlanta Journal Constitution in which they had a number of defense lawyers criticizing this decision. You know, she's taken on a very grand version of this. And, you know, you're going to start seeing at the end of this month when the first of these cases goes to trial, whether she's capable of actually litigating this case successfully. I'm remaining agnostic about that. So I don't want to say that Fannie Willis is above criticism by any means. That said, she has not done anything that the state legislature has an interest in reining in legitimately. And so I think the fact that Republican members of the Georgia State

Senate are agitating for this is really much more similar to members of Congress kind of going after Bob Mueller or Jack Smith than it is a legitimate criminal justice kind of concern. Okay, so next week we'll try to catch up on what's going on in the New York fraud case. We've had some interesting testimony. I think we know how that case is going to turn out. And as you point out, we're already starting to see the pretrial arguments from Kenneth Cheeseborough and Sidney Powell. That's going to be taking place this month. So we'll have that to talk about next week. Ben Wittes, once again, so much ground to cover.

Thanks for joining me. I appreciate it very much. We'll be back next week and we'll do this all over again. We will. And we will be back tomorrow and we'll also do this all over again. Thanks, Ben And we will be back tomorrow. And we'll also do this all over again. Thanks, Ben. Have a great day. Thank you. Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown. Bye.