The Chaser Report - Donald Trump The Mob Boss

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Dom Knight brings you up to speed on the great witch hunt of Donald Trump, and also which of his friends he is bringing down with him. Will Rudy Giuliani ever get paid? Find out on The Chaser Report! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Donald Trump. Donald Trump, yes. Look, we had an episode a few weeks ago, which proved very popular with listeners, running through the three indictments that Donald Trump at that point had accrued. Had he only had three? He only had three, yeah.

It was simple or more innocent days. Donald Trump, of course, the first U.S. President ever to be indicted on criminal charges in the history of the United States of America going back several centuries. But Donald Trump is the kind of guy. He doesn't like to stop at one. It's like owning skyscrapers or casinos. The more the merrier. And so it is that last week Donald Trump faced an indictment in Georgia. And there are lots of delicious ironies about this one.

And this is the one, Charles, where if he becomes president again, which seems entirely possible. If not probable at this stage, if somehow he manages to defeat Joe Biden, the awesome force of Joe Biden, he can't get out of this as far as we can tell. These are state charges. He can't pardon himself. Even the governor of Georgia can't pardon him. This one will roll and roll and roll on. It also involves our old friend Rudy Giuliani in the most ironic of circumstances. More in a moment.

So Charles, this is big. Donald Trump has to turn up in the next couple of days to Atlanta, Georgia. He's got to physically turn up. He's got to go down there. He's got to go down there. They're going to take photographs to him and do the whole thing. Oh, wow. And he has to pay $200 grand cash for bail.

Everywhere else, he's just been released on his own reconnaissance or whatever. They trust him. Georgia does not trust him. The judge has said, you've got to turn up and pay cash. And this, of all the things that he's been subjected to, this is going to be a thing he hates the most. Yes. Having to pay $200. grand, to guarantee he'll turn up.

But he is one of 19 people charged under Georgia law. And the amazing thing about this case in Georgia is that it's what is known as a RICO case. And this is amazing. RICO is the law. It was a federal law initially, but there's a Georgia version of it, which was designed to try and get mob bosses behind bars. So what used to happen, what used to happen was that the mob boss, you know, would sit a long way away from the people actually doing the crime. The ground level little dipshits who were out there doing the drug running, whatever it was, or doing the violence.

Those were the ones who got picked up by police. They went to prison and everything just went on. They just got more shit kickers to come in. And RICO was the law that enabled the bosses of these organisations to be charged with being part of a criminal conspiracy and of racketeering. And that's what RICO is all about. It's about basically having the people who give the orders being responsible for the scheme. Yes. So what this case does, Charles, is it essentially says,

Donald Trump is a mob boss, to which I imagine he'd be kind of going, well, you know, yeah, I'm kind of flattered by that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because mob bosses tend to be a lot more competent than Donald Trump. They're very good at conspiracies, that's right. So Rico is racketeering influenced and corrupt organizations act. And so what is being alleged by state of Georgia is that Trump and 18 of his team members, including Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff, and including Rudy Giuliani, we'll get back

to him were involved in a giant conspiracy to overturn the election in Georgia. This investigation has gone on for years, and there are a huge number of charges. Well, but we know that that's the case, because there's those phone calls that were recorded that you can actually listen to of him trying to rig the, like he rang up the... Yeah, just find me some more votes. And find me some more votes. Like, that's case closed. Why do you need to...

Why do you need to trial? If you're a Trump lawyer, do you know what you say to that? It was free speech. He was just saying what he wanted. He wasn't doing anything. So the charges, it's extraordinary. 22 counts of forgery or false documents and statements. Eight counts of soliciting or impersonating public offices

because they had this whole scheme to have the fake electors. We talked about this before. The electoral college, they were going to send a bunch of people who weren't actually, you know, who were Republican rather than Democratic, to go and go, but where the official, it was kind of like a weird. comedy setup. Where are the official electors? No, where are the official electors? And then Mike Pence would have gone, oh, let's choose the fake one. Yes, yes. And then perjury, computer

tampering, uh, racketeering, but also election fraud or defrauding the state. What is, what is racketeering? So racketeering is, is organizing as a criminal conspiracy. Right, right. That's, that's the mob boss, basically. So Trump was also told by the judge when he turned in, uh, that he's not allowed to intimidate or threaten witnesses or any of his co-defendants. And so he's not supposed to post anything on social media. He can't even repost. So for the whole time that this has been going on,

Trump has been going absolutely apeship on his true social and accusing all of the judges and prosecutors of being corrupt. But didn't he about a week ago say something like, we're going to come and get you or something? Yeah. If you come after me, I'll come after you. Yeah, that's right. And that the federal special prosecutor,

Jack Smith, went after him, reported to the Justice Department, by the way. So that may well have, consequences. And so what's the excuse for literally tweeting out a threat against, you know, the judge who's going to trade? Well, it's possible. It's possible here that if he does it again, he'll be in genuine trouble. So he's previously attacked the Fulton County District Attorney Fannie T. Fannie T. Willis. She's the person who's been putting this whole thing together. Now, she is a Democrat, and this is one of the funny things about the case. Being tried in Fulton County, right? Fulton County is in Atlanta. And this is what happens in U.S. politics and law.

It's kind of strange. You pick your jurisdiction. And so this is a very anti-Trump jurisdiction. So they'll be quite hard for them to find jurors who are all the way MAGA, who want Trump out of jail. Well, I've been to Atlanta. And Atlanta's like the heartland of Black America. Yeah. So that's...

Andrew and I went there and went to a blues bar. Did you? Yeah. And we were literally the only white people in the entire establishment. And then everyone started singing it. Like everyone in the crowd. would go, like, there was a proper band, and they go, oh, can I have a turn, right? No way.

And it wasn't like karaoke. It was like, like, every single fucking person was like a trained gospel singer. It was fucking incredible. Amazing. So that's what you can do. Or you can be part of a jury trying Donald Trump. So this is going to be extraordinary. And this is all to do with the scheme that, and there's a, there are federal charges

through with the same thing, but they're charging them with different things. So the double jeopardy rule doesn't apply. It doesn't matter that he's being charged over the same situation. And essentially this massive conspiracy to try and defraud the voters of Georgia. Yeah, because every state has their own specific allegations because he tried to do it in multiple states. Yeah. Well, there's a whole thing in Michigan going on as well. I think Trump hasn't been charged with that yet, but his team has been.

So how do you schedule in, like if you're the judge and you want to do your trial, you've got four concurrent trials, how do you have to ring up the other judges and go, well, I'll take him on this week. I think there'll be a WhatsApp. It'll be a WhatsApp. It'll be a chat. This is one of the things. This is why we're in such unprecedented territory.

So in each case, the prosecutors are saying we want this decided next year. Yes. So, and that's the year of the presidential primaries. So there's going to be an absolute shit time of legal. And the election. Yeah, and the election at the end of the year, November. That's right. And Donald Trump's lawyers came back and said, what about 2026?

That's a good time for me. We'll do 2026. And it's clear that that's going to be rejected. But, yeah. Yeah, so he's going to have to try and do all the primaries and move around and all this kind of stuff. But when he'll use them as grist for the mill. Like, he'll just hold a rally. Like if it's Georgia, he'll just, you know, go and have a rally in the stadium

and then head down to the courthouse and that'll be his day. That will be his day. It's probably exactly what I'll have to do in order to do both things at once. And then he'll sort of be able to claim that all these things are, you know, trumped up charges against him. He will be. Lawfare. persecution campaign, blah, blah, blah. But there's going to be so many of them that it's just going to have this inexorable perception.

So, but imagine as well the negotiations, when you mention the four judges, they've also got to arrange it with the Secret Service because he's got lifetime protection as a former president. Yeah. So Secret Service has to arrange him to turn up and get fingerprinted and do all the shit safely in the jailhouse. It's going to be surreal. So how does it work?

If Trump goes to jail, does he have to have a sort of secret service minder also? jailed alongside him? Would that be fascinating? We may get to find this out. So there's no way out of these Georgia charges. He'll have to face trial for them. Even if he's in the White House, you can't get out of it. Because it's sort of, you're in the territory of contested sovereignty then, aren't you?

Like if he gets elected president, the Secret Service aren't going to go, yes, we'll let our president go and face jail time in Georgia. It'll go to presumably the Supreme Court, which he's stacked. But the thing is, the strange thing. The greatest thing about it is, so this is the thing that's so bizarre about the presidency, it's certainly not true of Australia's prime minister. If you commit a, certainly a federal crime,

you just don't get tried with it. They don't have the capacity to try a president in the US system. The only thing you can do with the president is impeach and removed. Yeah, right. You can't actually charge him on any other charges or her theoretically because they sit outside the system and because they can just pardon themselves. There's nothing you can do.

But the state charge is going to be enormously interesting when they come through. Now, I mentioned Rudy Giuliani is of particular interest. Yes. And I'm really keen to talk about him. Because you know how he made his name? Well, he was the Attorney General or whatever it's called in New York. And he made his name prosecuting mob bosses. Yeah, he was a prosecutor before he was even the Attorney General.

He was a fast-charging, hard-talking prosecutor. Yeah. And he used the RICO laws to go after mob bosses. So he knows these laws intimately. He made his name. in these laws, with these laws. And for him to finally be pulled up in a RICO charge is quite amazing. Yeah, beautiful irony.

I wonder whether that may, will he be sort of good at therefore defending himself against them? Well, he'll know all the loopholes, right? He might well, but I don't know if it's going to work. But the sad thing is, Charles, for Rudy Giuliani, he's out of money. He's in a huge trouble. He's been disbarred in several jurisdictions. He can't practice law.

he's got this kind of weird online TV show that he does called America's Mayor. And looking back at the one moment where he was actually popular when he ran for president and, you know, completely... And he does he do it outside the Four Seasons Land? I hope so. I mean, so he's doing all this stuff. But he's spent so much on legal fees trying,

on his legal fees, trying to defend himself. Because he's up for other charges as well. He's mentioned as a co-conspirator in the federal charges as well, Giuliani. So he's in big trouble. So he's there any... indication that, because in these cases, it's always somebody will flip, won't they? Like, and

it's first to flip. That's the federal thing. That's why they didn't name the co-conspirators. We know who they are because it was made clear in the documents, but it's clear from that that the feds are trying to flip whoever they can. And is Mark Meadows, because Mark Meadows is a remarkable person to see

charged, right? Because he was the chief of staff to Trump. And he was a congressman before that. He left Congress to be Trump's guy. Like will he flip? Surely he'll flip, won't he? What possible interest does he have? Going to jail for Donald Trump? Yeah. Probably not very much, you'd imagine. But he was hugely involved in this. He actually turned up at a place where they were counting the votes in Georgia and put Trump on the phone with someone there. So he's been very much part of it. He's charged

with solicitation of violation of oath by public officer and violation of the Georgia RICO Act. Giuliani has many charges. He's got 13 separate charges. Conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer as well, which I think is the whole business with the fake slate. It's amazing. He's got a lot of stuff that he's up for. The thing is, though, Rudy could potentially afford to pay for his own legal bills

if a client of his paid his bills. Donald Trump. Oh, Donald Trump. He did all this work. All this work. Trump stiffed him on the bills. was on the clock. Well, there's the guy to flip then.

You'd think so, right? So let's not forget that after the election, Giuliani was Trump's personal lawyer. Yes, that's right. He was his lawyer trying to sort all this stuff out. Yes. And apparently Giuliani has been down to see Trump several times saying, can you pay the bill?

Can you please pay my bill? Yeah. And he came down to Mara Lago and he got to have dinner with Trump. But he didn't pay the bill. He sent his son along. Rudy Giuliani's son, and he's quite a prominent Republican, went down.

can you can you pay me dad's bill he's really struggling he's doing it tough he's you know he has money no if there's one thing we knew about don't trump he never pays his bills he always tiffs his contractors rudy you thought he was your friend he's not paying your bill the chaser report more news less often so dom what implications does this have for american democracy i love how serious this episode to be it's just the facts of this situation are so You just lay them out. You don't need to have jokes. There's, I think, plenty of jokes who've been charged.

Including some of the dodgy lawyers, by the way. We don't have trying to go through them all. But some of the co-conspirators, remember Sidney Powell. Yeah, I remember Sydney Powell. And John Eastman and Kenneth Cheesbrough, all the people. Kenneth Cheesbrough was the guy who wanted to have, who invented the fake elector scheme, right? And this guy's a lawyer. So you've got lawyers coming up with schemes to basically defraud the state of Georgia.

It's going to be very interesting when this whole thing goes to trial. Anyway, what does it mean for democracy? Well, I mean, I suppose look at, this is not dissimilar to the cap putch, is it? Of 21, like in Germany. No, that's true. Like, it's actually... We've never talked about that. We've got to do an episode on that.

People might not know about the extraordinary attempt in Germany to basically overthrow the German government. Yeah, and what happened during that period was they all just got slapped on the wrist, chucked in jail for 18 months, and then all came back and took over Germany. Well, they were the aristocracy. You couldn't put them in jail for too long. It would have upended the system.

So wouldn't, so do you think maybe it's sort of similar to that where what will happen is, yeah, sure, the Georgia, it sounds like this judge will be pretty strict to whatever. But then appeal, appeal, appeal, appeal, it'll be 2027 by the time it all goes through the courts. Yeah. You'll go to the Supreme Court. Oh, no, you can't go to the Supreme Court if it stayed or cannot go to the Supreme Court. I think can. Yeah, right.

And then. But there'd have to be some sort of jurisdiction. for the Supreme Court. I'm going to have to have some sort of constitutional issue. And then, well, you could just make one up. And then that's it. It's over. Like, it's just like, oh, well, it's been hellish,

but Trump's now been president for three years. I mean, people as rich as Donald Trump do tend never to go to jail. So it's absolutely true. But my point is, this is the best opportunity because he can't get his way out of it by winning the election. I'm just reminded of the John Oliver thing where every time they thought he'd got him, they'd go, we've got him. We've got him this time.

He would never for a moment. We've got him. Even if he's behind bars, you're just expecting that they'll turn out to be rubber and he'll just walk out of there or something. He is completely, he's a Teflon Don. But then what that does is that then the roads control,

that just sort of makes a mockery of American democracy. Well, this is the thing some commentators have been pointing out. He's already done that. He's already made a mockery of American democracy. What this does is makes a mockery of the American legal system. So we already have had the American

democratic system being completely turned on its head. This hasn't happened before. The idea that you simply claim that all of the judges and all of the lawyers were just all crooks are out to get you. I mean, basically what this does is massively erodes confidence in the system. Yes. Where Republicans who previously couldn't accept that Donald Trump would lose an election, they just couldn't cognitively process that he would lose,

they're now not going to be able to cognitively process that he's guilty. Right. And that's going to mean that they see the whole legal system as being corrupt and biased against their guy. Yes. Just like democracy. So it's a dangerous thing. We'll follow this one as it goes along.

There's a lot of juicy details. I mean, look, I don't know. Donald Trump probably won't go to jail, but if Rudy Giuliani does, that'll be, won't that be enough? Oh, like, it's just going to, it's popcorn time. Just get out the popcorn. Get out the popcorn and look back on the videos of the black die running down his face. As you stood outside all seats, and you're still next to a dildo shop.

Four seasons. Total landscaping. It's amazing stuff. But, yeah, the big question's going to be, will this turn moderate voters off Trump? The fact that he's basically constantly looking like he's going to go to jail. I think it will. No, probably not. Oh, yeah.

We've said it before. You're such an optimist. You're so naive. The rule of law, it's stupid, isn't it? No. Yeah. Poli-ahy. His figures just have never changed.

They never change. Our Gehrys from Road, we're part of the Iconiclass Network. You know what we're going to need? What? Fifth indictment. That'll do it. That'll hurt.