The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | Fox News Tells Tucker Carlson to Stop, Trump Headed to Court, China and Cuba’s Disturbing Partnership | June 12

Starting point is 00:00:01 I'm Virginia Allen. I'm Samantha Sherris. And this is the daily little top news for Monday, June 12th. Here are today's headlines. Former President Donald Trump arrived in Florida earlier today, ahead of his arraignment tomorrow. Trump left his Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey this morning and then boarded a plane at New York Liberty International Airport. Trump is appearing before a federal court tomorrow. Last week, we learned that special prosecutor Jack Smith had indicted the former president. Trump faces a 37-count indictment. This is the second time in just over two months that Trump has been indicted. What are the charges against Trump and what does this mean for his run for presidency?

Starting point is 00:01:00 Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow and author of the forthcoming book, Rogue Prosecutors, Cully Stimson joins us now to weigh in. Cully, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So what is contained within this indictment? What do we know about it? Well, in addition to the 38 charges, 31 are alleged violations of the Espionage Act. And they all relate to his retention of documents that the government claims he should have left at the White House when he left office.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Many of those documents were classified, some at the highest level, and according to the indictment, when the Justice Department, first the National Archives, and then later the Justice Department asked for those documents back. He didn't cooperate, and in fact, according to the indictment, he used his lawyers and then a valet, who was a former Navy enlisted man, to move those documents around his compound at Mara Lago, which, according to the government, constituted obstruction of justice. Okay. So what are the similarities? What are the differences between what we saw in New York City under Alvin Bragg and now what we're seeing in Miami? Are there any similarities? No, except the name of the defendant. The Alvin Bragg charges are state law charges, which my colleague John Malcolm and I wrote about. Those are somewhat flimsy and legally suspect. This is a federal indictment brought by the Department. of Justice under the special counsel statute, the special counsel reports directly to the attorney general. This is also what's called in the legal world a speaking indictment. So instead of saying you're charged with theft, you're charged with this, you're charged with that, it says, you're charged with theft, and then it lays out a narrative form page after page, the evidence they

Starting point is 00:02:57 have that they believe leads to him being guilty of that particular charge. And so contained within this indictment if people want to take the time to read it. And remember, these are just allegations. This is what the government believes they have. So every defendant, including the president, has the presumption of innocent unless until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by legal incompetent evidence at a trial. But they say they have video evidence of people in Mara Lago moving those boxes. They have emails. They have texts from various people who worked for. the former president. And they did something interesting, which you don't see very often, Virginia, and that is

Starting point is 00:03:43 Evan Corcoran and another lawyer who worked for the president testified before the grand jury. And you normally don't see that attorney-client privilege pierced in any case because it's an important privilege built into the law. And they litigated that. And a federal judge said no, because of this exception called the crime fraud exception, and allegedly President Trump was encouraging his lawyers to perpetrate a fraud or commit another crime by hiding the documents. What the lawyer wrote in his notes were included verbatim in the indictment. And you don't typically see that.

Starting point is 00:04:28 In fact, I've never seen it in my 30 years in and out of courtrooms. I've heard about it. I've read about it. I've certainly had it at my disposal, but I've never been able to use it, nor did I try, and most prosecutors don't. So where do we go from here? Obviously, there will be a flurry of pretrial motions. The arraignment tomorrow is just a formal but pro-former proceeding where the federal district court judge or magistrate informs the accused of the charges against him. he acknowledges who he is and he's gotten the charges, and then they'll set a trial and motion schedule.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Motions come before trials. And my guess is that there'll be a ton of motions filed by the president and his legal team, not only to try to dismiss the indictment outright, but try to narrow it down, if not chip away at it completely. Of course, Trump is running for president right now. How could this affect his campaign? Hard to tell. I'm going to leave the politics to the politicians. You know, John Malcolm and I wrote about this.

Starting point is 00:05:30 We'll be writing about it a lot in the coming weeks and months to come. The thing that obviously leaves a very bad taste in everyone's mouth is the hypocrisy in what appears to be the double standard, that Hillary Clinton, not that she was the president, but when she was the Secretary of State, established an unlawful, in my opinion, illegal server in her. her residence in Chappaqua on which numerous classified emails were sent and received. And then because of whatever reasons and people have their theories, the Justice Department decided not to go forward with that, even though she directed or was knowledgeable about the destruction of over 33,000 emails by her legal team. and then people, of course, know about Joe Biden having classified documents in his resident and former place of work after he was vice president. And so, you know, it's important as a legal matter, I think, right now, at least in terms of how we're reviewing this, to focus on the charges themselves in the legal process.

Starting point is 00:06:46 As we wrote, this is unheard of in the history of our country. the Justice Department crossed the Rubicon. Never before in the history of our country has a former president been charged with a crime, and I suspect there were things that presidents did that probably could have risen to the level of a criminal offense. And remember, also one of the other criticisms of this indictment is that there's an act called the Presidential Records Act, which governs and guides presidents and the country as to what presidents can and can't do with documents after they leave. office, and yet this indictment never even mentioned that. They focused almost solely on the Espionage Act, which is rarely used. And so I think there's a ton of green between the ball and the

Starting point is 00:07:33 cup here. So there's a long way to go in this legal saga. You have to ask yourself as a political matter whether the president would prefer to drag this out or he would prefer to go after every single legal avenue he can in terms of pretrial motions. I think everyone knows he's a fighter, so he probably will direct his lawyers to do that. And of course, we've seen that his poll numbers have remains the same or gone up. They certainly went up after the Bragg indictment, and I think that that's in large part reflective of not only a strong base that the former president has had even before these legal troubles began, but also the outcome of the Durham report, which shows that there was a Russia hoax, and it was entirely content.

Starting point is 00:08:22 cocked by Hillary Clinton and her apparatch checks and friends in the FBI. And so the everyone's out to get me meme that Trump talks about, people believe that because obviously they were out to get him on the flimsyest of evidence, if any, at all. So who knows how this will play out politically? I'm going to focus on the indictment. This indictment, though, does have very specific references to evidence that the government claims they have. And even if half of that plays out, that is difficult to get around. Now, whether that will convince a jury, if it even gets to a jury, or whether a judge dismisses some, most or all of the charges, remains to be seen.

Starting point is 00:09:15 Collie Stimson, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of the forthcoming book, Rogue Prosecutors, How Radical Soros Lurors Are Destroying America's Communities. You can pre-order that book now. It's out June 27th. Cully, thanks for your time today. Thanks, Virginia. As you recall from Thursday's show, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cuba and China had reached an agreement to allow China to build an eavesdropping station on the island. Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said the same day that I can tell you, based on the information that we have, that that is not accurate, that we are not aware of China and Cuba developing any type of spy station. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby labeled the reports inaccurate. But the White House confirmed over the weekend that the spy station already exists. Joining us to discuss the latest developments is Aaron Wall. a senior research fellow for international affairs in the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center. Erin, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. It's great to be here.

Starting point is 00:10:21 So I just want to dive right in. What can you tell us about the latest on this spy station in Cuba? Sure. Well, this spy station came to us. Obviously, as you just noted, it was the first time reported in the Wall Street Journal that this had been, you know, everybody was aware of this. And in fact, in Cuba, they have had spy stations there. Certainly Russia had one in Lourdes during the Cold War, and that was a significant problem. But now, with all this advanced technology, the China one is far more advanced. And obviously can pick up the signals intelligence, which would really impact the southern part of the United States,

Starting point is 00:11:02 which is where Southern Command is, several of our military stations. And so to be able to pick up all that kind of intelligence and monitor our ships is a real problem. And I've read some reports that the station has actually been in use since at least 2019. How did we miss this? Well, I think actually Senator Rubio had discussed this in 2016 and said that there was a Chinese spy station of sorts in Becule. And so perhaps there was some level of gathering. of intelligence from there, and that's really quite normal for countries to have that. We have that all over the world. The Chinese certainly have that all over the world. But this is

Starting point is 00:11:45 the first time, which it's 100 miles away with this new technology, that this is significant. And for the Biden administration to have come right out of the box and said that the reports were inaccurate, they need to start telling the American people the truth. And that's something they've been avoiding. We just had this with a balloon that traversed across the entire continental United States. And they said it's not a big deal and that they were able to then catch everything and retrieve it before it had gone back to Beijing. That's just not the truth. And they need to start telling the American people the truth because we're finding out in other ways. And I also wanted to ask, it sounds like this is the case, but do you anticipate that there

Starting point is 00:12:23 are more Chinese spy stations that we don't know about throughout the world? And if so, what can be done about them? What should the Biden administration be doing? The Chinese have stations, all over Latin America. Obviously in Cuba now, they're giving them billions more dollars to be able to launch even more sophisticated. They have a station in Argentina, which actually monitors all space activity and satellites and things like that, which is a real danger. So they're all over the world, and unfortunately, the Biden administration has just been acting as if they are just a, we're in competition with them. We're beyond competition. And as you know, heritage has just come out with a great new report called the New Cold War. And I think that's

Starting point is 00:13:09 what we're in right now. And if we don't start treating China as an adversary, then we're going to be behind the eight ball until another Republican administration gets in because they're dropping the ball. Well, Erin, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. And we'd love to have you back on. I'm sure we'll keep learning more about this Chinese spy station. So thanks so much. Great. Stay tuned. Thanks so much for having me. Bye-bye. A new Gallup poll is reporting a shift in America's view of men competing in women's sports. More Americans today believe that only women should be allowed to compete in women's sports than just two years ago. In May of 2021, 62 out of every 100 Americans said transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on teams that match their biological

Starting point is 00:14:01 sex. Now, 69 out of every 100 Americans believe that athletes should only be allowed to compete against athletes of the same biological sex. Even though 39% of Americans say that they know someone who identifies as transgender, according to Gallup, both Americans who know and don't know a transgender individual have become less supportive of allowing transgender athletes to play on the team of their choice. The Daily Signal has highlighted the stories of women like Selena Sol, Chelsea Mitchell, and Riley Gaines over the past several years, all women who have lost competitions and opportunities because they competed against biological men. Check out today's show notes to hear some of their stories. And finally today, Fox News has sent a cease and desist letter to Tucker Carlson.

Starting point is 00:14:57 Carlson has now released two episodes of his new show on Twitter. Tucker caused quite a stir last week when he released his first show. It was just over 10 minutes long. Fox News told Tucker's lawyers that he was in violation of his Fox News contract. Tucker's show was canceled, so he is technically still under contract with Fox News through December 31st of 2024. But Tucker's lawyers say the former Fox Prime Time, host is simply practicing his First Amendment right to free speech. After Tucker published his second

Starting point is 00:15:34 show on Twitter on Thursday, Fox sent a letter to Carlson reminding him that he is still under contract and demanding that he stop publishing shows on Twitter. But Tucker appears to have no plans of stopping his Twitter show. His third episode is scheduled to be released on Twitter tomorrow. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for doing us here on the Daily Signal's top news. And if you have never done so, be sure to check out our morning show right here in the same podcast feed, where we bring you interviews with lawmakers, experts, and so many leading conservative voices. Join us tomorrow morning for the Daily Signal interview edition. I'm going to be sitting down with Florida Senator Marco Rubio to discuss

Starting point is 00:16:20 the link between America's dependency on China and America's falling economic prosperity. Also, if you have not done so, please take a moment to leave us a rating and review. We love seeing your feedback come in. Thanks again for being with us today. We hope you all have a great night. We'll see you right back here tomorrow morning for my conversation with Senator Rubio. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Louis and Kate Trinko.

Starting point is 00:16:53 Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.

The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | Fox News Tells Tucker Carlson to Stop, Trump Headed to Court, China and Cuba’s Disturbing Partnership | June 12

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