The Chaser Report - Trump's UNFAIR Witch-Hunt Continues

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

Dom Knight brings you up to speed on Trump's FOURTH set of incoming charges. Charles shows you that he has read a law book before. 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 Charles. And Dom, we've got some news. Breaking, outrage, lawfare, the Democrats are weaponising the Department of Justice. Charles, they're weaponising it. They're turning into a weapon against Donald Trump just because he has allegedly committed many crimes.

and they're prosecuting these crimes, allegedly. And in picking on a truth teller, and as Donald Trump puts it, the only reason they're going after him is because they'd rather go after ordinary Americans and Donald Trump's getting in their way. He's the one thing standing between Americans and tyranny. Yes.

Or is he the tyrant? It's so hard it tells on times. Anyway, let's run through a few of the charges against him because there's about to be a fourth outrageous set of charges about to drop in Georgia of locked down the courtroom. We'll get to that in just a moment. Before we get into Donald Trump's legal woes, though,

the outrage of these charges against him. We've got a whole bunch of emails from you about a fairly self-indolgent episode yesterday where we pondered the state of the world, Charles. We were a little bit down on it. Yes. And there were lots of people who said we should be optimistic about the world. Yeah, and another person who basically very politely told us to fuck off.

We'll get to that in tomorrow's episode, but there's just so much going on in Trump land. We need to start with this. Where to begin, Charles, which set of outrage is? charges. Let me give you the breaking news though from Atlanta, Georgia. They've locked down the courthouse. They've locked it down. The Lewis R. Slayton

courthouse has basically crash barriers in front of it. But wouldn't wouldn't a courthouse normally be fairly locked down? Not like this. When I did jury duty, we had to go through metal detectors. Yeah, that's true. But Charles, what if a surge of thousands of

angry patriots rightfully fighting to take back their country? Storm the court. Yes. Because they believe in the American way so much that they want to stop American courts from trying people. No, because they are not acting on Donald Trump's instructions. Oh, that's right, of course. Acting independently. Despite him.

The total coincidence around those things. Yeah, you've got to understand. Just like on January 6th where there's no connection between Donald Trump's actions and the coup against the capital. Yeah. So, look, we'll go through all four indictments. Shall we start with that? Because that's the most serious, the most outrageous one. Where you've got a president, a former president,

who had the election stolen from him, stolen, Charles, stolen. Yeah, he's stolen. And said that it was stolen exercising his First Amendment rights. Right? Just said to a mob, as they've been termed by prosecutors, or a passionate crowd of devoted Americans, as they're more correctly termed, at the rotunda in Washington, D.C. They then went and stormed the Capitol building.

I mean, some people have said that police officers, for instance, were killed. But were they really killed? the angry mob? Yeah, well, that's clearly some sort of false flag operation. Definitely a false flag operation. By people who pretend to be killed. Democrats. Democrats were in there. With all the farce of all those

details. Police officers. The funerals and everything. And they weren't really police officers. There were other Democrats. They were suicide bombers. False flag funerals. I think there were multiple levels of false flag. I think maybe even it was a false flag, but a false false flag. So they were real police officers, but then they weren't.

It's very complicated to understand. No, but it's all true. It is all true. Yeah. So. Or is it? I mean, I think that that's what they want you to believe. The only place to know the answer to that is truth social.

Yes. The truth social is a place to go. Okay, so this is the indictment that happened, you know, last week. Donald Trump faced many counts, four different charges. Is this the one that Jack Smith is bringing? He's brought two of them. But this is the most recent one. This is the January 6th one, okay?

So Donald Trump has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. That's the tallying of the votes in the Congress. Obstruction of an attempt to obstruction official proceeding. He wasn't there, Charles. He was back at the White House watching on TV and eating popcorn as they stormed the government. He wasn't. Does Donald Trump strike you as the kind of person that leads a vanguard into a battle?

Yes, I think it is. I mean, didn't he want to, like, didn't he ask the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol? And they said, no, it's far too dangerous. You've just incited. Yeah, well, you can't take you there because that's why we're about to kill Mike Pence. Yeah, that's right. Didn't he, like, didn't he actually have an argument with them in the car? Allegedly, yes.

I was sorry, allegedly. Allegedly. I mean, who knows who to believe? We're treading on eggshells here. We can't, like, imagine if the Chase Report podcast said something that was prejudicial to the trial. Do you mind? But I say allegedly, because do you believe, Charles? Do you believe the person who gave sworn testimony to the January 6th committee?

Or do you believe Donald Trump when he said he didn't do it? I believe Donald Trump. Okay. Yeah. And the fourth one is consistent. Spiriously against rights. So against what? Against the right to have your vote counted.

So there's a quiet notion in America that if you cast a vote, they should actually count it in a democracy. And that's old thinking. We wouldn't have that in Australia. No, that's old thinking. So that's charge four. So can I, like, I do know a little bit about this topic. And one headline that I read, didn't read the article, but the headline said that the defence that Donald Trump's lawyers were making against those charges was that it's not actually criminal to do something unconstitutional.

And that strikes me as a very legalistic idea. But isn't that actually true? Like, it's not actually, like, if something's unconstitutional, it's not criminal. Like, you need legislation. You need a law to make it criminal. So, you know, to take away somebody's right to vote, might be unconstitutional. But it's not, it's not a criminal offence. Well, I'm pretty sure there's a law that's you can't deprive someone of, for instance, the right to vote. I think that's the voting rights. Yeah, well, you know, but, you know, the vibe. But Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to all these charges.

So then we've got to take him as well. Well, then, you know. That should be enough in court. Yes. A former president saying, I'm not guilty. Yes. Just take him at his word. He ran the country for four years.

Can we not take him at his word? No. But if you can't take him his word, then what does it mean about all the people who voted for him? That they're patriots? That they're wrong? I mean, there were fewer people who voted for him than voted for Clinton. No, no, but counterfactually, if you take it that Donald Trump shouldn't be taking these words, then you're basically invalidating the opinion of all the people who voted for him.

Yeah, yeah, which would be a terrible shame, wouldn't it, if that would have that would happen. Okay, these are very serious charges. I thought you were going to be the one taking Trump's side in this Dom. I'm on Trump's side. I'm on Trump's side, absolutely. I want to be the seventh. I want to be the, have I dropped the facade. I don't want you to, like, you're sort of.

not, you're, you sound like one of his lawyers that he sacked, you know, what a job that would be, who sort of interacts with the truth in a way. Yeah, you don't want to do that. Yeah, yeah. So he's pleaded not guilty. And his argument is, his argument is that it was all under the First Amendment. He just said stuff. He said stuff. Yes. And then things happen. And just because he said the stuff, it doesn't mean that the people who went and storm the capital. Just because, well, this is what you get taught in first year law, isn't it? Which is, you know, just because a theatre is on fire, you can't yell. No, no, hang on.

If a theatre is on fire, no, if a theatre is not on fire, this is what you get taught. I love that the person who didn't have the law degree is explaining this. Well, this is why I'm trying to remember it, because I've got a, you know, like, it's deep thinking. No, no, I'm pretty sure you get taught in first year law. I did enough essays of girlfriends to know my first year law, which is if you, if a theatre is not on fire, and you yell fire And you cause a panic Then that's illegal, right?

Yeah Yeah, right So, like, he turned up to this rally Said, let's go to the Capitol Let's go to the Capitol They're all lies and they're evil Yeah

But it wasn't on fire And he didn't This is the most torturous Exclamation of causality I've ever heard And he didn't say It's on fire So therefore he's clear Isn't it?

I mean, the special counsel, that's my, I think that's a law. The special counsel actually anticipated this brilliant legal argument from Donald Trump. He responded in exactly the way that Jack Smith expected the prosecutor. Oh, yeah. Because the indictment says it's not illegal to lie. It's not illegal to, even if you know that you lost the election, it's not illegal to come out and say that you won the election. Oh, really? It's not illegal to come out and say it was stolen if you thought that it wasn't.

Isn't that fraudulent or something? Well, it becomes fraudulent, depending on what actions you take. And so Special Counsel's argument, you can say that stuff. But you can't then act on it. You're not allowed to actively try and stop the election results from being tallied. And that's what all of these charges are to do with. So he's anticipated what Donald Trump immediately said on true social, which is I was exercising my First Amendment rise to free speech.

Because the January 6th committee wanted Jack Smith to charge Trump with trees. with insurrection. And he didn't do that. No. What he's done with, he's charged him only with actively trying to stop the election results being tallied. Very different from winging. Yes. But a lot more specific. Yes. And he claims that Trump and a bunch of co-conspirators, five of six have already been identified who they are, had a plan to try and protect America from Joe Biden. But that is demonstrably true. Like, there's all those.

those video, like, not audio recordings of phone conversations with the people then in Georgia saying, we just need 20 more votes or 20,000 more votes to go missing or, you know, like, yeah, look, this is literally, this is what Jack Smith is citing as a main bit of evidence. Incredibly true. Like, that is, you know, undisputably true. But wasn't Donald Trump exercising his first amendment rights to call up the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, and say, find me more votes? Isn't that just speech, Charles?

Is that speech? That's just speech. It's not a conspiracy. It's not an active fraud. It's just a guy asking guy to find him a few votes, which would have overturned the election and deprive people in Georgia of their franchise. But it didn't just stop there.

That is very clever. Because I've been a bit cynical about this Jack Smith guy. Yeah. Generic name, clearly does. It's not his real name. I'm sure it's not his real name. Oh, I suspect it's a pseudonym. I bet that we really use that point.

So that's... Because it sounds like some sort of, you know, made up name from a novel. John Grisham presents Jack Smith, Attorney at Law Jack rival He probably has Jack Ryan

Pretty generic Okay, so that was part of it The phone call was part of it But it went further than that Because in their attempt To defend the Republic from Joe Biden A cause for which I think you can break any law Frankly, look at what Biden's done

Look at Biden's done Look at Bidenomics Look at the jobs he's provided to people Those people were supposed to not have jobs So they'd be angry in re-elect Donald Trump It's bullshit Anyway, what they had was the so-called fake elector scheme or what I would call the correct elector scheme where what they tried to do in their defense of the United States of America

was to come up with a separate slate of electors. Now, people might know in America, the Electoral College decides who wins a presidential race. It's kind of a quaint system. Each state actually nominates a bunch of people who go to Washington and gather in a room and vote for whoever they're meant to vote for, right? So if you're, you know, they say, you know, in New York and it's whatever electoral votes, they're actually people who then get to go and vote, right? And they're supposed to vote in accordance with whatever the voters of that state chose, right?

So New York is going to be Democrat automatically, whatever. There's actual people who go and do that. And what Trump's people tried to do was in collusion with the Republicans in the statehouse, in particular states. They put together alternate slates of electors. So other electors who were supposed to go to Washington and vote for Trump rather than Biden. Really? In states where Biden, yes.

I didn't know this. In states where Biden had won. They actually nominated people. And a lot of these people are facing charges. The people who actually signed up to be the fake electors. The fake electives. Yeah. And this is what Ginny Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas,

has been alleged to have helped organize, is actually recruiting people to go and participate in this scheme. And this is why Mike Pence was so important. Mike Pence, as vice president, it's a bit of a shit system, one might say, when the person who's ran in the election gets to certify it. But that's the system. Mike Pence, as the president of the Senate, is in charge of certifying the votes for his own election. Gosh, what might as agenda be?

So the theory was Mike Pence would reject the real electors, the ones who'd been appointed. Because Trump would be analyzing it in terms of his own self-interest. He'd just go, well, Pence will do this because he'll then get to keep. his job for the next four years. That's right. And so Pence. And that's what I would do. In cahoots with people in the Senate.

So in cahoots with actual Republican senators who are in on the deal as well. Yeah, right. We're going to, and this is not a conspiracy theory. This is all in the January 6th commission and indeed in the indictment. Yeah. They were going to try and put in the bogus electors so that in the electoral college vote, it would actually go, oh, Donald Trump won the election. Imagine the outrage if they'd actually succeeded.

If they'd actually put in fake electors who were team Trump in a state that Biden had clearly won. Anyway, so that was part of the scheme, and that's one of the things that they've been charged with. Well, isn't the point that there wouldn't be outrage, the Democrats would have just gone, oh, well, that was the legal process. What a pity. What a pity? It just reminds me of when George Bush and Al Gore went and... Did he, well, Al Gore had to preside over.

He had to certify the results himself in the election that he lost with the butterfly ballots. Bearing in mind that all these elections, the popular vote was won by Democrats, right? The only time in the past couple of decades, the Democrats haven't won more votes in an American presidential election was Bush's second term. Every other time, the Democrats, I think since George H.W. Bush became president. The Democrats have won the popular vote every time, except for George W. Bush, the second time. Anyway, so you can see why Donald Trump, having lost the election, knowing he'd lost the election, and there's, in the indictment, there's a lot of quotes of Trump having, telling people that he knew he'd lost the election and so on, why he needed to come up with this scheme to save America from, Joe Biden, you know. I mean, he justifies the means, don't they?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. He actually at one point, and this is one of the new revelations in this indictment, he actually said to Mike Pence, you're just too honest. You're just too honest, Donald Trump said, to Mike Pence. But that's free speech. You're allowed to tell somebody that they're too honest. That's right. And he was.

So Rudy Julie Arnie's on the hook. John Eastman, John Eastman who cart with the bogus elector scheme, was part of it as well. Sidney Powell, who was going on about the election machines. I've actually often said that to my accountant. You're too honest. You're too honest. Yeah, that's right. So this is the most important one.

This is the election interference charge that's there. Then you mentioned Georgia and the voters in Georgia. Well, there are charges in Georgia. Yeah, so what's going on in Georgia? Because that's like today or something, isn't it? I'll tell you after this. The Chaser report. Less news more often.

So they've locked down the courthouse in Georgia, Fulton County Courthouse, presumably because they're going to indict Trump. The district attorney of Fulton County, Fannie Willis, has been running a bunch of probes. They impaneled a grand jury, the chair of which, I don't know if you remember that young woman, but she basically went in front of the meeting and was like,

yeah, we've, we've got to charge some big names. Can't say who. But yeah, so it's very likely to be Donald Trump. So they've asked all the other judges to just not charge anybody for the next month or so because this is going to be. huge. So it is pretty clear that this is going to be number four pretty soon. I don't want to jump the gun, but the gun's basically being jumped. So that's, that will be the fourth one.

How does it work? Because I browsed a few more books. Yeah, I remember your amazing attempt to explain what happens if you yell fire at a crowded theater. If you ever do that, Charles, if you ever yell fire in a crowd of theater, we can submit this podcast as you don't understand how that works. But if you get charged. criminally in four different jurisdictions. Yeah. How do they share you around? Like, do you just keep on having to go, well, I'm in court on this date and then I've got to go up to, or is it done sequentially?

It's an unusual problem. No, no, no, they all have their own timetables. And this is why it's going to be so interesting because Donald Trump is. So do they all get on like a Zoom call? They may have to do that. And it's one of those hellish things where you're trying to work out between four different important people. Yeah, you know those websites where you put different dates and you've got to try.

Meantly. Yeah. So they're probably to do that. So Trump is going to be trying to run for re-election. They'd probably run a little poll. Yeah. He'll be doing rallies all over the country. Yeah. But he'll also have to potentially front four different judicial processes. When you've got to hand it to him, first person ever to be charged with criminal charges.

How much money? How he's on four? How much money? Do you reckon he has one lawyer who's just very overworked or? No, he's got giant teams. And what he's doing, he's raising money to fight the election. He's spending it on his legal bills. Isn't he notorious for stumping his lawyers on their legal bills?

Well, that's why they kept resigning. So he's had trouble finding lawyers to fight this for him. It's going to be genuinely interesting to know because... So how much would that cost? Four separate legal cases. I don't have the information to front of me, but it's many millions. It would be tens of millions. It would be millions of dollars per week.

And he's raising this stuff off, you know, sort of broke-ass fans. Go-fund. Yeah, basically. All it's done is, and the money's going straight into the lawsuits. He's not going to have much money to buy ads. and stuff, if this keeps up, because he doesn't want to pay his own legal bill. But isn't it, like, any publicity is good publicity. That's his view.

His view is every indictment gets him more popularity with the Republicans. Like four separate, you basically go, like, what he wants to have is a legal case in every media market. And he doesn't have to buy every, because this is. No, this is the fascinating thing. As the lawsuits mount and we haven't been through them all, his challenges fade away. Like, he's getting more and more popular with Republicans. You have to imagine that the undecided voters who are actually going to

going to decide the next presidential election are going off him even more. Well, this is, no, no, this is my point, which is, I think the thing is that the more suits they bring against him, the more evidence it is, that there's a conspiracy against him. Well, look, the House Republicans, because the Republicans control the House of the House of Representatives, they have a commission of inquiry into the weaponisation of the Justice Department, so they're going to go in and prove all this. In some ways, what it is is it's an argument for not being held accountable for your actions. Absolutely. Well, the whole thing is. So just to briefly cover the other two indictments. The indictment number three, we've talked about them before. There's episodes about

them elsewhere. Number three is also the one in Florida for the documents at Maralago, much more minor, but potentially quite a big deal. I think he's facing something like 38 or 38 counts down. And that's genuinely criminal, isn't it? Because that's like you literally, stole secret documents. Well, there's evidence now of him actively concealing things and telling his underlings to delete the camera records and so on.

It's always the cover up that gets you. So there you go. So there's that. The point is never cover anything up, which I thought was always Trump's brilliance, was he never tried to cover anything up. Yeah. So this is happening in front of a Republican pro-Trump judge who previously ruled in his favour in the case. So I'll be interesting to see how that one goes. Then the other one is to do

with the payments to Stormy Daniel. So that's going to be very tasty when that one comes up. That's Alvin Bragg, who's the District Attorney for the Southern District of New York. But haven't they, I think they've made it the most boring sort of porn scandal involving a porn say you could ever do. Because I think that the law that they're getting him on is like campaign finance law. So it's basically saying the donation to Stormy Daniels was essentially a campaign expense. Yes.

And should have been accounted for as such. It was literally an Al Capone thing. Yeah, it was an accounting error on your... You should have declared this as an election existence. On your porn star payoffs. So these are state charges. So the DA for Manhattan in New York State is running their charges. And this and the Georgia ones don't go away even if Trump wins because these are state charges.

Yeah. So the point being that, you know, like our pollster friend who we know and love in the US, who's now quite a good pollster who's saying that the most likely is, from here is that Trump just gets elected and pardons himself. But the pardons don't extend to state criminal charges. Yeah. Although it might be very hard to get him to come. I mean, who's going to make him go to Georgia to face charges in Georgia?

Yeah. And presumably the state of Georgia cannot take on the secret service. Secret service of America. So it's really, it's going to be a fascinating business. So he's got these four separate sets of charges. One of the most outrageous things, Charles, and one of the things that's made Donald Trump, the most upset, by the way, about these new federal.

charges for election interference is that he's had to have two judges who are women of colour. What? Yeah, the judge he had to face to go in and plead not guilty. Not only was she a woman of colour born in India, which is obviously very off-putting for Donald Trump and biased. She should have recused herself because she wasn't a white man. Yes.

But she called him Mr. Trump. He was absolutely livid. The lawyers were saying, President Trump, this, President Trump, that. And she said, Mr. Trump, you know, and swore him in and all that kind of stuff. Bias, Democrat bias. Clearly. Go woke, you go broke. And then the second?

I mean, calling Trump, look, I'm going to go out there on Limbom and I'm going to say, calling Trump, Mr Trump rather than President Trump. You've already decided he's guilty. Well, it's akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater. That's right. She should be charged. Charged? Actually, you know what, if Donald Trump wins the election.

If Donald Trump wins the election, she will be charged. I guarantee that. So then this is the really fascinating one. But this judge wasn't actually going to try the case. The woman who is is called Tanya Chutkan. She's been randomly selected, apparently. And she's an Obama appointee, therefore, already, you know, anti-Trump. She's African-American, so she recuse it.

I mean, Trump is planned that she should recuse herself. Just for being black. Just for being African-American. I think that's why. And for being an Obama appointee, whereas Trump appointees are called. Having rhythm. That's right. She trades as a classical dancer, actually.

I see him. This is the only judge who's tried any of the January 6th insurrection participants, right? Because there have been more than 100 cases where people have been sent to jail for their role on January the 6th. Everyone's kind of going, what about the guy, you know, told them to do it? She is the only judge who has given sentences that are more harsh than that demanded by prosecutors. So the prosecutors went up and said, you know, give this person a week or whatever. And she's like, no, 30 days. This is very serious.

So Donald Trump is going to have a hard time in this courtroom. so she should recuse herself. Yes. Because she's already shown that she thinks people who storm the capital and burn it down and kill people should face custodial sentences.

Yes. Which is just totally biased in favour of the law. Yep. Yeah, she's got to go. So just briefly, this has been a long one, Charles, but Donald Trump has already started to plan for his next term as president.

And he's put together a special unit for the Justice Department, which will go through and not only probably pardon everyone, who was involved in January 6th, every single person will be pardoned. But he will, he's going to fire everyone who worked there, put in loyalists, pardon himself, of course, but then go after everyone involved in this. So Jack Smith might want to leave the country the moment before Donald Trump is sworn.

If that is his name. Well, that's right. Maybe that's why he's using this union. Well, that can be the next book in the series, Jack Smith, on the run. On the run. So, but this is a very real thing. They've already, they're already planning to take names and puny. anyone involved in this.

I mean, I kind of want him to win based on how extraordinary it's going to be. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're talking a few days ago about, you know, should we be optimistic or not? But, I mean, it'll be terrific television at least. It will, and that's what the long of times always deliver. Whether it's the apprentice or storming the capitol.

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