The Chaser Report - The Trump Files | Chas Licciardello

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Chas Licciardello is in the studio to provide a complete analysis of the FBI's raid of Trump's home. Whether or not Trump's documents were classified or declassified, find out why Chas believes nothing will stop Donald's campaign to get back into the White House. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. It is Wednesday the 17th of August 22, Domite, Charles Firth and Chaslett-Chatello. Back with us once again. Now, Chaz, what's happening with Planet America? There were specials. Yes, yes. When does it come on with the full treatment?

The full shabang returns on the second week of September. So I don't know what date that is. Set your calendars. Oh, well, just in time for September 11. Yeah, well, that's true. I had, we should start preparing a special. Good point. Your first episode will be in memorandum.

Yeah, John will have prepared this big immemorialian. I'll be coming in with polls. What the hell are you doing? So we've had David Smeathon a couple of times in the past few weeks. The co-host of the PEP podcast with the Lord Longlist podcast. Which is returning very soon, possibly from the studio if I can get technically to work. I hear it. Oh, right.

Yeah. But we thought we'd get you to give your take on this bizarre, you know, revolving, crisis of the, of the raid. I mean, you would think that ordinarily the FBI would be able to just go and do a raid where they thought that a crime had been committed under ordinary circumstances, but this is not that, is it. No, no, this is definitely not ordinary circumstances. That is for sure.

I mean, the truth is that, I mean, we're going to do our best to muddle our way through this conversation, but there is just so, I mean, there's a little bit of information out there, but there is not as much concrete information as we would like, and there is so much bullshit. Right. Okay. Yeah, because I've seen all these theories and just going, how do they know? They haven't been widely, so they're just not true.

Well, we don't know. We don't know. There are plenty of leaks that have been published by newspapers. They're categorically contradicting other leaks that have been published by newspapers. So we just don't know. So what do we know that we know? Okay. Oh, this is getting beautiful.

This is Donald Rumsfeldian. It's very Rumsfeldian, yeah. What do we definitely, like, uncontrovertibly know? What are the known notes? We know there was a raid. No, okay. No, okay. What we, what, I'm pretty sure we know.

is that, number one, this does not come up overnight, that the agents, at least the FBI and possibly other agents, have been pursuing documents that have been at Marilago at least this year, possibly before this year. Oh, right. So this has been government. So even as president, he moved documents down. Oh, no, we don't know.

It might have been somewhere else in the interim. This is the second year of the Biden. in Presidency. Right. I was asleep. Where else may they have been? Yeah. Well, let's jump back a little bit.

According to Trump, because he's had, he's gone through many explanations. Like it started off with there are no documents. Surely whatever he says should just be discounted as, well, that's not what happened. Well, I think, I mean, that's normally the case. But in this case, you can wait until I tell you his explanation, and then you can discount it because it's really not what happened. Trump's last explanation is that, yes. Lots of classified documents out there in Marilago.

But what happens is when you're at work, sometimes you bring back your work with you, you know, that that happens, you know? And the stuff that I brought back was automatically declassified. There's a standing order out there that I made, that anything that I take out of the White House is immediately declassified. It's like there's like a machine near the door that when the documents pass through it, they're magically washed clean of any security clean.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, and that is news to the lawyers in the White House under Donald Trump. You all say, no, that's just not true. And that doesn't even make sense, because if that's the case, that Donald Trump can just declassify anything he wants by just thought, then that means presumably Joe Biden can reclassify anything he wants just by thought, which means that those documents that Donald Trump previously declassified have just been reclassified.

If you know what I mean, like it's just a ridiculous explanation. Anyway. And also, there's a whole lot of laws. Like, I've read some of the laws around the nuclear documents. And in the documents, it actually said the Energy Act says the president cannot declassified documents, these documents. Actually, to my honest, I'm going to just throw aside all the order here. We're just going to have just a general chat. This whole path, this whole Donnybrook about whether it's, whether Trump automatically declassified documents, it's relevant.

because the Justice Department, the three laws that they have held this raid under, none of them involved declassified documents. Oh, right. Or classified documents. They're all about national security documents, not classified documents, national security documents. So what's the difference? Well, the difference is, under the Espionage Act, you are not allowed to misappropriate a national security document. Regardless of it's classified or not.

Oh, okay. So Donald Trump can talk about his... It's just a red herring. He goes to his mystical powers as much as he likes, but he's only talking to his followers, as is often the case. Because the lawyers have tuned out. I feel very sorry for him, though, Chas, because you can't imagine he'd understand that distinction.

Sure. Well, the Department of Justice has been quite clever about this. Like, they obviously knew what he was going to say and what he was going to do. And, like, they've just avoided this issue before it even came up. Yeah. Okay, so that's the first thing. Back to what I was saying before about the,

that this has been going for a while. This is, the rate did not come out of nowhere. First of all, they've had a number. of meetings with Donald Trump or his associates about getting documents back, and Donald Trump gave them documents back. So this process has been going on for a while. Then back in, I think it was June, we know for a fact that agents, it's confirmed that agents visited his house, not as a raid, just a friendly chat, had a look at several boxes

of documents, left them there, and then asked him to put a padlock on that door. And Donald Trump is saying, well, there you go. They said it was fine. What's the problem? Why are they raiding me now? Now, of course, there may be other documents that they're raiding him about. Right. We don't know.

So, but why did they leave those documents there? Well, that's what Donald Trump's asking. You've become Trump. The answer is, the answer is that we don't know. I mean, maybe, like I said, maybe there are more documents than the ones that they saw in June. Maybe they saw documents A. And then they found out that Trump had documents B and they thought, well, how come, Because someone signed a...

The lawyer for Trump. Yes, yeah, signed a document. Saying that these were all the documents that Donald Trump had. And that they'd all been returned. Well, no, not that they were in return, but declaring that the documents that the April store in June were the only documents that Donald Trump had. So maybe they found out that that person was either not telling the truth or lying,

and then they got mad. I don't know. We're still speculating here. Yeah, right. What we really need is someone to just basically take some time to do a full inquiry into this. Let's say James Comey. Just come in and he just asks some questions, produce a report that everyone then believes

and follows and it all gets cleared up. That would be terrible for James Coney, but otherwise. The question that I have is, now that they've got their documents back, isn't it sort of no harm, no foul? Like, will the Justice Department now prosecute Trump, or is it politically more savvy for them to just go, well, we've got our documents back? that was our aim. We'll just leave it there because we don't want to, you know, provoke the beast of Trump.

Well, look, the thing is, and there's been a lot of people on Trump's side saying, oh, look at it. Thank you very much, FBI. You've given us the boost we need to drive towards the primary. It's going to help us win the election. The fact is whatever happens, Trump supporters say that. No matter what happens. It's like when Pepsi brings out a new flavor, they go, thank you very much, Pepsi.

You've given Trump the boost he needs. Like, they're always going to spin it as positive for Trump. right um i would suggest that the i mean and i should say by the way the polls i mean they're usually pretty still but the polls have shown a small bump amongst republicans wanting trump to be the 2024 nominees since the raid wow it's actually it's basically been 46% for the entire two years and it just went up to 48% so it's a tiny tiny tiny it's always about the movements yeah yeah yeah so so so so there are at least some people who thought that's great let's let's hope he's indicted Fantastic.

President indictment. But to answer your question, if they got documents, I mean, because, yeah, I'm not going to believe anything necessarily until I see confirmations, right? But if they got documents that were related to nuclear secrets or whatever, that were... Or info read the President of France, which I'm quite concerned about. You know what they were documents saying.

What's that? It was Donald Trump appointing himself Health Minister of Australia. Well, that's okay then. Because he can appoint himself AG and learn himself. That's fine. Maybe they're documents about whether you could nuclear bomb a hurricane because he was very interested in that. Maybe that was a nuclear secret.

But anyway, by the way, Trump's explanation about what went on about him bringing documents home from work. We just brushed past that. Do you think Donald Trump ever brought a document home from the office to help him work at the night? I don't believe we read them in the office. Yeah, it's just incredible. Anyway, in terms of prosecuting Trump, if Donald Trump, is actually responsible for holding these documents that were of a national security nature,

then he's broken the law. But isn't it also... Full stop. Full stop. It's prosecutable. He's broken the law. Like, that's the espionage act. It is done.

That's not me saying they're going to prosecute him, but it's me saying that that is... But say they do prosecute him, isn't there a sort of perfect get out of jail free card here, which is it'll go to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court will go, oh, well, it's not against the law anymore. Well, isn't that the nature of the Supreme Court for the last six months has been all these established laws of the land, just get to the Supreme Court and they go, oh no, it's not the law. Charles, how could you?

They go to the Supreme Court and they work out what the founding fathers intent was and apply that. Yeah, and they go, the founding fathers never mention anything about Donald Trump storing documents at Marilago, Ipsopecta, or whatever the term, ergo. Um, it's not against the law. I understand why you would think that and the, and it's not like you don't have reason to think that, but my personal view is that there are two justices who are exactly like that, who are Alito and Thomas.

In Thomas, yeah. The other ones I'm not convinced are exactly like that. I mean, they're conservative, they're conservative, they're conservative, they're conservative warriors, but I think each of them has their own little limits and like different limits. Like Gorsuch, for instance, is the person responsible for, for the, Supreme Court ruling a few years back, that was the pro-gay ruling. Yeah, like the pro-transgender ruling.

That was Gorsuch, who wrote that ruling. So they've got their own foibles. But they also ruled on the whole thing of presidential privilege and so on and whether he could, you know, when not president anymore, have the same executive privilege. And they said no. So they've already turned down some of this. But what I would say is they don't even need that.

From Trump's point of view, you do not require the Supreme Court to be in your pocket because it's not going to get the Supreme Court because there's only two years. It takes a long time to, if you want to drag your feet on the case, it takes a long time for that case to go through the whole process. Trump has elected president before it gets the Supreme Court. And they, like they will be out. And then he can pardon himself. Well, number one, he could pardon himself.

Number two, no one is going to, like it, the political pressure is going to build as Trump gets closer and closer to the election. And if he wins the election, the political pressure was going to be extreme. And then there was going to be a whole different situation. So that's the problem. But also his AG could drop it, couldn't they? They could as well. There's all kinds of reasons.

Basically, if he becomes president, there's no way. So therefore, the Saudis have got away with purchasing those nuclear documents for free. Isn't it also true chance? That is the message we're trying to get across here on this podcast. My favourite little aspect of this is that apparently, you might want to be able to clarify this, Donald Trump signed a law that made it a felony to do anything with documents.

Like he basically tightened the laws to try and catch Hillary. This is after Hillary. And he's potentially going to be hoisted by his own patah. Well, I mean, it's nice to think like that, but the SBAJAC, which is why he'd be charged under, has been around for over 100 years. No, but this is another statute. That's another one.

Which they haven't charged him under that. No, that's not the one that they had the raid under. Because that one was about classified documents. They've been very clever about just keeping classified documents completely out of the picture. So, Chaz, some cynics that I know, believe that this is all a Biden masterminded plot, the Democrats are trying to destroy Trump and making him unable to run, which, you know, would require a level of, I guess, competence and board planning that the Democrats don't generally show.

What do you think is going on? Do you think this is just Merrick Garland being a stickler for the rules and process, or do you think this is actually a leftist plot? Look, I think this is a bad leftist plot. I mean, if this was a leftist plot, it would be a terrible leftist plot. Number one, I should say, just to put some more meat on the bones of the leftist, of the leftist plot theory, these laws that Donald Trump, that came up in the search warrant also would disqualify him from running for president

if he was found guilty of them. But remember, he's not going to be found guilty. But wait a minute. Wait a minute, but will there be moments where he's found guilty? Like, it won't, what happens is, you'll go to court. But then he appeals immediately. It appeals immediately. And then, what happens at that point?

Well, no, you can still run until the final guilty verdict. You sure? Yes, absolutely sure. Yeah, right, okay. Yeah, so that's not going to work. But having said that, having said that, that is just to put more meat on the bones of the, oh, it's a leftist conspiracy. I don't think it is a leftist conspiracy for a number of reasons.

Number one, because despite the fact what I just said before about anything is going to be attributed to helping Trump over the next two years by his supporters, I think this genuinely would motivate his base if this became a serious court case, because, I mean, Trump's not going to hold back. We know that. And the America is a polity motivated by spite, especially the Republicans. They're really motivated by spite. And there's no way to motivate them more. I mean, basically, the person who wins the election is the person who's the most motivated base.

That's always the case. And there's nothing that's going to motivate his base more to turn out than him being the subject of what they see as a kangaroo court. Yeah. So the investigation. So the, yeah, so this is not going to help the Democrat. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. What if?

It goes to trial and all this evidence shows that he, he's done these incredibly dodgy things. Like, he has shown the documents to people. Are you suggesting facts that are negative towards Donald Trump would have consequences in the real world? Well, and just saying, does that not, like, is there not a future, a multiverse, if you will, in which, yeah.

Some Republicans go, that's too far. Yeah, like, in the same way that, isn't it true that, you know, the January 6th hearings have sort of eroded some of his soft, support and stuff like that. Well, remember what I just said before, in terms of polls of Republicans wanting Trump to be the primary nominee, they haven't changed at all. They're just steady at 46% to 48%, which, by the way, is enough.

Yeah. Like, you need it to be less than probably, I'd say, 35 to 40% max, I'd say, for him to really be under threat from DeSantis, which is obviously the person we're talking about here. You know, it would be a really interesting curveball in all this. which it would almost be worth doing would be Biden pardoning him for this and just going look it was probably an honest mistake

the FBI said that they checked it all out there's nothing to see here that's an interesting idea except for I think that would demotivate Democrats yeah I think that would piss off his side isn't that the point of the Biden presidency it's a fair call look I don't know what Merrick Gallin's playing at

basically I can maybe he is just a stickler for the look I mean, do you bother there must be something argument? There must be some giant revelation in all this, but we don't know. I think a law has been broken, whether it's a massive law that as soon as the details come out, we all go, oh my God, that's shocking. I just got no idea. It's funny because... Maybe he's just sick of Donald Trump's skating.

There's a few people who I've talked to who exist either in the US Public Service or the Australian Public Service about the... You know, I've talked to them about this. And all of them go, but you don't understand. they're documents. You can't just, they're not his documents. They're the government's documents. Like, there is, like, I don't think people appreciate how much public servants really think of documents as part of an official sort of record of government.

I reckon there's something to that. I reckon there's something to that. And I'll add to that as well, which is this is what the explanation I was about to give. And this is pure speculation, okay? pure mind reading, probably the perfect podcast for me to express this on rather than on the ABC. This is complete speculation. Just my experience of dealing with public servants is number one, what you just said at documents, I think is true. But number two, the people who are not the top level of the Department of Justice, but the third level and the fourth level, the guys who are doing all the work.

Those guys are true believers in the rule of law and documents, but also the rule of law. And those people would be more furious than anyone about the way Donald Trump has evaded legal responsibility for everything forever in an obvious way. And those guys, they're not, I think, Democrat flunkies. I think they're just rule of law flunkies who would be getting more and more pissed off by this. And they'd be going, we cannot have a system

where people blatantly break the law and just get away with it. And so they would be... Sorry, just to finish off the theory. And so they'll be hell bent on when there's an obvious breach of the law from someone who constantly breaks the law of holding them responsible. And then when they,

so they would try to put forth, they would try and put forth following up these investigations. That would then obviously get passed up to the higher ups, to the political higher ups. And then that would be placed in a situation where are they going to, are they going to shout down the professionals whose job it is to determine

whether they're going to have prosecutions and investigations for political reasons? Because that would be the obvious, And they be fearing a revolt. They'd be fearing a revolt from the Department of Justice because that kind of stuff happens. And they'd be fearing at some point in time there'll be mass resignations if we don't allow

some kind of investigation to take. So I think in a way, Merrick Garland might be just following the lead of those below him. Particularly when he was explicitly put in to do that. I mean, his whole argument was to restore an independent Department of Justice in that whole sort of... That's true. But also, can you imagine how cross the people you're mentioning,

those third and fourth tier managers. People who really believe that the National Archives should have all the documents so that future historians can go back and look at it all and get an impartial view for the judgment of history. How pissed off they would be

that Donald Trump tore up documents constantly in flushed him down in his toilet. You imagine? Every time, every time he ripped up a document, some little middle manager in the National Archives. Did you read, there was a great piece in the New York.

Times Magazine a few months ago, profiling the guy whose job it is to sticky tape, to sticky tape up all the documents that he... What a job. And, like, sometimes thousands of pieces. Yes. Like, instead of playing Wordle, instead of playing Wordle,

and the entire, you know, millions of people should have been doing that job online. I feel sorry for that, for that guy. They should have got, like, an eight-year-old girl or someone to do it, who does jigsaw puzzles. Yeah, who actually enjoy it.

But the other strange thing, about him is he had this sort of fairly important job of to keep the presidential record alive and he was on something like $47,000 like sort of going it's such a bizarre system where these crucial roles are given to really quite poor people well let's not forget the fact that their elections are essentially run by volunteers they are like you oh really yeah like one of the biggest issues we have and this was exposed by the not not exposed, but this was covered by the January 6th committee at one point in time, that one of the biggest problems that America has going forward

after all this January 6 stuff is that election, neutral election officials have been hounded out of their jobs by being doxed and having all these feralds on the internet chasing them down. And they've been replaced by basically the ferriles. And people who agree that they would overturn the election result. Yeah, totally. And the reason for that, and part of that, the people that you were referring to there are running for office, they get paid. Right.

But a lot of the people do not get paid. They're volunteers. Right. I didn't know that. Yeah. And that's part of the reason they're not going to put up with that shit. Because they're volunteers. They have no security.

They have no, they're low wage workers, you know, the American version of Coles, who then volunteer to work on election night. And they're all just bailing out because they're getting docks by the internet. and they've been replaced by hacks. Wow. So the kind of person who just got shot dead by the FBI was on truth social. That's your future election worker. Well, not here specifically, but other people like it.

Wow. Oh, man. So, Chaz, just finally, because we need to wrap. Is Trump getting elected? I mean, he's a likely frontrunner based on the polls. He's 48% of Republicans are on board. Whether he would win a general is another question. But how do you see it's playing out?

Is he going to be a nominee? Look, if I was betting right now, I would say he's going to be the Republican nominee again. But having said that, like, it's closer than I thought it would be at this point in time. So what's Ron DeSantis polling? Obviously, it depends on you're talking about, like which poll he's talking about. Essentially, Ron Sanders is in the kind of the 35 to 40 range. Oh, really? I thought it was more 2020.

It's not bad. It's not bad. Yeah, right. So they, so they, that's it, I'm talking about amongst Republicans and so. Yeah, yeah, that's all. But Trump is, Trump is comfortable, comfortable majority still of the Republican. So, look, that can be chipped away at. That can be, that can be, I think.

And if suddenly Ron DeSanders sees it in his interest to use this, you know, documents thing as a sort of tool to bash Trump with, which he hasn't done so far. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. He doesn't want to do that. He doesn't want to do that. Because if he does that, then people are going to start treating him like he's Liz Cheney. Yeah, right. He does not want to do that. And he's not doing that.

He's suggesting the fixes in, et cetera, like every other Republican is. Isn't Liz Cheney also likely to run and use the debates to just basically January 6th, Trump over and over again? Well, she's got nothing else to do. She's got a lot of free time coming up when she loses her job in this year. So I suspect that she probably will be running against Trump. I don't know if she would run in the primary. or if she runs as independent. I got no idea.

I suspect she'd run in the primary because, well, I think it depends how strong DeSantis is because she clearly, I mean, she doesn't like DeSantis either, but I'm sure she'd prefer dissandas than Trump.

So whoever, whichever election she runs in, she's going to be helping Trump in that election because she will take votes away from the alternative. Yeah. So I think she knows that. So I think she's unlikely to run

as an independent in the proper election. But whether she runs in the primary, I don't know. Well, so I think the major thing about whether Trump gets up becomes a nominee or not depends on how DeSantis goes in the Florida governor's race in 2020. If he just absolutely pisses it in. Which is what's going to happen, isn't it? Well, he's going to win.

He's going to win, but he's only in the mid-50s, low 50s in the polls. It is a swing state all the time, isn't it, Florida? Yeah, yeah, if he really pisses in, and then he just spends the next year after that just doing non-stop culture war legislation, which you would expect him to do, they'll probably help him with Republicans. And if Trump just becomes even more pathetic and doesn't have any more help,

then maybe, maybe, I mean, it's going to be, let's put this way, as soon as Trump decides he's going to run, then that freezes the poll numbers right then and there. Because soon he goes hard, he's going to turn this into a war against DeSantis, and that will freeze in his support right then and there because no one's going to want to be a traitor.

Yeah. Right. So what would it be, what's his moniker for Ron DeSanders going to be? It's going to be like wrong Ron? I don't know. As if I can read that mind. Lazy Ron Sanders?

He likes physical. He likes physical things. And Rund de Sands is quite short. So I think it will be, Little Ron. I think it will be Lil associated. Little Ron. But yeah.

But yeah. So, So, so yeah, Ron's going to have, run the stand's going to have about 12 months. We'll see how he goes. Right, okay. And now I'm betting Trump will be the nominee. Okay, and then one last question,

and I know we've got to go. The host is, uh, look, doing the wind-up. There's no time limit in podcasting. Check out PEP, which has a Dr. Dave. This is why they go for two hours.

Which is, what if it does come out that Trump has literally sold state secrets to the so, to the Saudis or the Russians or, or the French or wherever, you know, he's got a, like something so objectively treasonous that nobody can overlook it. I'm going to say something very dangerous here. I don't think America is so far gone that that will make him more popular.

I think that, yeah, I think that, that, I mean, if he does something that's overtly treasonous, I think that that that just can't be spun away. physical evidence of it, then, yeah, I think that will be the end of Trump. Woo-hoo! You heard it here first. But we've been saying that for a very long time. Was it Stephen Colbert or something?

We got it. No, John Oliver has a segment called, We got him! That's right. I'm tipping Azerbaijan, really? He sold the secret as Azerbaijan. He's going to build that hotel. By the way, do we tell you about my theory about just very quickly? About what he's doing?

Yeah, what is it? I think, I don't think he's selling state secrets. I think what he's doing is just being obstreperous. My theory of Trump is that think what an eight-year-old spoiled brat. Yes, and he wanted all these mementos. Yeah, he's wanted some cool shit. Yeah. Like he had some cool, like those nuclear documents are probably really cool.

Yeah, that would be. He wants some cool shit to show off to people when they came to visiting. Yeah. To be big dick Donnie. That could be, that could be runs a phrase for him. That's not what's Tommy Daniel said. I'm just putting it out. And then when the Department of Justice came for them,

he just said, oh, fuck you, I'm the ex-president. I can do whatever I like. And I didn't say that to him. That's what he's thinking. Yeah, yeah. And then they went a bit harder. And he's like, oh, hang on, what's going on here? This isn't fair.

This is, this is, I'm the most persecuted person ever. So no, no. I just dug in harder. And then they just said, well, fuck this. And they came over the top. That's why I think's going on. Literally him just being an eight-year-old kid. That is the best political analysis I've ever heard.

And particularly because the Kim Jong-un letter's there. That's the thing that, like, can you imagine him going, like, to his guests in the club? You know, come downstairs to the basement, check out my Kim Jong-un letter. I know crazy dictators. Our Guards from Road. We're part of the Acast, Creator Network. We'll catch you tomorrow.