The Daily Signal - Trump’s Legal Cases 101: Where They Stand

Starting point is 00:00:04 This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, February 23rd. I'm Virginia Allen. Former President Donald Trump is facing a litany of legal cases against him, including federal cases and criminal. And today, I am sitting down with Kyle Brosnan to dive into these cases and where they stand. Kyle serves as chief counsel for the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation. Stay tuned for my conversation with Kyle as we discuss all of Trump's leadership. legal cases after this. As conservatives, sometimes it feels like we're constantly on defense against bad ideas. Bad philosophy, revisionist history, junk science, and divisive politics.

Starting point is 00:00:46 But here's something I've come to understand. When faced with bad ideas, it's not enough to just defend. If we want to save this country, then it's time to go on offense. Conservative principles are ideas that work. Individual responsibility, strong local communities, and belief in the American dream. As a former college professor and current president of the Heritage Foundation, my life's mission is to learn, educate, and take action. My podcast, The Kevin Roberts Show, is my opportunity to share that journey with you. I'll be diving into the critical issues that plague our nation, having deep conversations with high-profile guests, some of whom may surprise you.

Starting point is 00:01:24 And I want to ensure freedom for the next generation. Find the Kevin Roberts Show wherever you get your podcast. I'm so pleased to welcome back to the Daily Signal podcast today, Chief Counsel for the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project, Kyle Bosn. Kyle, thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for having me on. So we are talking today about the cases that former President Donald Trump is facing. We're looking right now at about six cases that are still in the works, correct?

Starting point is 00:01:52 Yeah, give or take. Six legal actions involving the former president that are in the news and could have an effect on the election this year. And how many of these are federal cases? So there's two federal cases, both of which are stemming from the special counsel, Jack Smith, the Justice Department. One is in Washington, D.C., and another is based in Florida. Okay, okay, great. So we're going to talk through just big picture where these stand.

Starting point is 00:02:20 We're going to get to Jack Smith here in a second in those cases. I want to start, we'll start maybe with the northeast and we'll work our way down the coastline. So let's start in New York, where we have seen Trump face several cases out of the state of New York, out of Manhattan. A judge just ordered Trump to pay $354 million in a civil fraud case. This is a case that involves allegations that Trump inflated the value of his property holdings in order to receive more favorable loans. This case was brought by New York Attorney General, Letitia James. That fine, significant hefty fine over $350 million. Your reaction to that ruling that decision, that fine.

Starting point is 00:03:13 Yeah, so I think this is a really prime example of sort of how you could weaponize law enforcement, how the left has done that against President Trump. Lettisha James ran for Attorney General of New York basically on a platform that she was going to get Trump. and she acted upon a campaign promise. This $354 million fine is aggressive to put it mildly. Some legal scholars have said it's unconscionable, abusive. The judge found fraud in this case, but there were no victims here. All of the loans that the president took out were paid back in full.

Starting point is 00:03:49 There were no defaults. And the forms that the president had submitted to the bank cautioned the banks to do their own due diligence before giving him the loan. And so, you know, it's a cork in the New York fraud law that you don't actually need a victim that I think the Attorney General took advantage of. The judge has been alleged to be a partisan in this. Trump's team recently filed a motion to try and stay or prevent execution of the ruling because the Attorney General has threatened to seize Trump's assets, including Trump Tower, on this. So I expect this to be appealed. I don't think this is the end, but the fine is aggressive and an abuse of power, frankly. Well, we've seen that Trump says he will appeal it. So we'll be watching that to see what shakes out there ongoing.

Starting point is 00:04:33 Case that we have gotten some closure on, one of the cases out of Manhattan involved sexual assault and defamation suits brought by writer Eging Carroll against Trump. This case concluded in January when a judge ordered Trump to pay $80 million. So it's kind of the second decision in the process of that case. Then we have a second Manhattan case that involves allegations over hush money payments to Pornstar Stormy Daniels. This case, I believe, is set to go to trial at the end of March, March 25th. Do we know how long that trial might last what this case is going to look like as it progresses? Right. So the trial date has been set for March 25th.

Starting point is 00:05:13 This is a case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg against Donald Trump, stemming from about $130,000 in hush money payments he made to adult film, Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. So there are 34 felony counts here. This is the first case to go to trial where President Trump has been charged with the felony. But these charges are basically the same charge of falsifying business records 34 times. Bragg has an uphill, well, with the New York jury you never know. But from a legal standpoint, I think Brad has an uphill battle here, considering his star witness is going to be Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who has gone to federal prison for tax evasion.

Starting point is 00:05:53 and other crimes that reflect upon his character, to put him mildly. And, you know, the intricacies or the weakness of this case that Mr. Bragg is bringing is that this crime is typically charged as a misdemeanor. But it could only be elevated to a felony if it is done to conceal another crime. Okay. The interesting part of this indictment is that Bragg does not allege another crime in the indictment here. And so we assume that the crimes that they are alleging are campaign finance violations because he thinks, you know, he thinks. The theory is that President Trump generated a benefit for his 2016 presidential campaign by concealing the affair with Ms. Daniels.

Starting point is 00:06:31 But that's a federal crime. And so this is a really untested legal theory by a left-wing district attorney to sort of weaponize the justice system as we've seen, you know, the Attorney General of New York do. We see a local district attorney doing this here in New York. We'll get to the Georgian one later as well. But this is really the first time that the president now put on trial for felony charges here. and could of course have an impact on the 2024 election.

Starting point is 00:06:54 Any predictions in that case, just given what we've seen out of Manhattan in the past, is this going to be a court that looks on Trump favorably or not? Probably not. I think it's going to be difficult for the president to get a fair jury just based on, you know, the voting block of Manhattan, you know, voters and, you know, their political leanings. So that remains to be seen, you know, just. jury selection should be interesting to put it mildly. Sure.

Starting point is 00:07:25 All right, well, let's go ahead and hop down to Georgia as we continue to move down the East Coast. Well, we'll end with going west to Colorado, but let's stay on the coast right now. So in Georgia, you have an election interference case that has been brought against Trump. And then we also have one at the federal level. But explain what is happening in Georgia and what the differences are between the case in Georgia and then the federal election interference case? Sure. So the Georgia case is brought by the district attorney based in Atlanta, Fannie Willis. And she is alleging a violation of the Georgia

Starting point is 00:08:01 RICO statute, which is the racketeer, basically a racketeering statute. It's loosely based off the federal statute, which was written to basically go after the mob, you know, decades ago. There was some fireworks recently this week when revelations came to light about Ms. Willis is having a relationship with the special attorney she brought on to help prosecute this case, Nathan Wade. Mr. Wade was paid about $728,000 in taxpayer dollars to prosecute this case against President Trump, revealed they had a romantic relationship, the two of them. There was an evidentiary hearing as to whether or not there was a conflict of interest last week. Mr. Wade and district attorney Willis testified, and one witness in that hearing said that Wade and Willis had their

Starting point is 00:08:45 romantic relationship before he started working on the Trump case. Both Wade and Willis have testified that their relationship began after he started. So you have conflicting testimony about the nature of the relationship here. And if you have an elected official in Fannie Willis directing three-quarters of a million dollars to her paramour, that creates at least the illusion of a conflict of interest, if not an outright conflict of interest. And this is significant because they discussed ways that Ms. Willis reimbursed Mr. Wade for trips and vacation. they took over $10,000 worth of benefits, you know, vacations, dinners, stuff like that. And she said she paid him in cash out of a stash she had in her home.

Starting point is 00:09:24 So you couldn't even track those transactions to see if they were actually reimbursed or follow the money to actually dig down on the, you know, apparent conflict you have here. And this is significant because if Fannie Willis has found to, you know, have a conflict of interest here, her entire office can be disqualified from the case. Wow. And it can be transferred to a new office, a new district attorney. one that is not as rabidly partisan as her office is. And this can potentially lead to the whole case being thrown out if, you know, another office,

Starting point is 00:09:52 another team of lawyers in Georgia looks at the case and says, hey, this evidence is really weak here. We don't think we get a conviction. We have a different legal view than Willis's office. We're going to drop the case. You know, there's a whole litany of options here. But there were certainly a lot of fireworks this past week down in Atlanta. The judge has an important decision to make as to whether or not Ms. Willis and her team can continue prosecuting in this case. and whether the judge decides that there is a conflict, we'll kind of decide the next steps in where the Georgia case goes.

Starting point is 00:10:18 Has the judge said when he will make that decision? I don't believe so. I believe it's imminent. Could be, you know, this week or any day now, yeah. Okay, okay. And then on kind of shifting gears to a federal side, let's go ahead and talk about those federal cases Trump is facing. Sure. So Jack Smith is a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, and he's brought two cases against president.

Starting point is 00:10:42 in Trump. One in D.C. stemming from the January 6 riots and one in Florida stemming from allegations that the president mishandled classified information in his Mar-a-Lago home. So we'll start in D.C. Special counsel Smith has charged President Trump with a series of crimes, including some of which that were passed after the Civil War to basically go after members of the Ku Klux Klan for preventing African-Americans for voting during reconstruction. So it's a really kooky legal theory in my view. and you could tell that his goal in this entire procedure has been to put Trump on trial in front of a D.C. jury before the election. So a trial date was originally set for March 4th, which is the day before the Super Tuesday primaries. And it's been postponed because the president has basically brought two legal challenges, two legal issues that need to be resolved before he could be tried.

Starting point is 00:11:29 The first is that President Trump argues that he is immune from prosecution when he was acting on the perimeter of his official duty as president. and the second is that he can't be prosecuted. He's arguing that he can't be prosecuted for charges for events, stemming from events that he was already impeached by the House of Representatives and acquitted by the Senate form. So the trial judge, Judge Chuckkin, in this case, ruled against the president. He appealed to the D.C. Circuit, who have also rejected those claims. And so last week or about 10 days ago at this point,

Starting point is 00:12:00 President Trump filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to basically stay the ruling of the D.C. Circuit and let the appellate process play out while we figure out what the answer is to this immunity claim. Jacksmith has opposed that. So the Supreme Court can rule any day now, could rule today, basically, and what they will do will determine what the next steps are. So they can, you know, something as simple as just let the lower court ruling stand while the appeals process plays out. They could take the case in full where they have, you know, briefing and arguing and they'll write this opinion, you know, potentially by June, or they could take a number of issues. So the trial date for the D.C. special counsel case is very much in flux kind of depending on what the Supreme Court does and how they rule will kind of determine what the next steps are in that case.

Starting point is 00:12:48 Okay. Okay. Then you have the case involving the second case, which involves the classified documents, correct? Correct. So he's facing, President Trump's facing about 40 charges relating to his handling classified documents. documents in Moralago. A trial date has been set for that for May 20th, but there's been some motions practice and some hearings that are scheduled to take place in early March that may push that case back. Okay. And so there's currently a trial date on the books, but there are some legal maneuverings

Starting point is 00:13:18 that can happen to sort of delay that. Okay. Okay. Wow. Before we get to Colorado, from all these cases that we've just blazed through, there's a lot. Is there one in particular that you're watching most closely or that you're. think is the most significant for the American people to be watching? I think they all are because they really all together paint a picture of sort of how a weaponized

Starting point is 00:13:40 justice system where you have these rogue prosecutors in local jurisdictions in Atlanta and New York and the Attorney General of New York I'd throw in there to kind of allocating, you know, vast amounts of resources to go after President Trump when that's not really their job. You know, there's a massive crime problem in U.S. cities, particularly in New York City, where you see a rash of assaults on police officers. You know, we saw, you know, and they have a huge illegal migrant problem in the city, too, where you saw, you know, a gang of migrants beat up two police officers in Times Square in, you know, in public and they're released without bail. So I think Mr. Bragg and Ms. Willis have much more significant problems on their hands with crime in their cities that, you know, going after President Trump. I think, I think, you know, special counsel Smith has been very aggressive in his prosecutions of Trump. He's got a track record of this. You know, he sort of was the lead prosecutor. and former Virginia governor Bob McDonald on corruption cases where the Supreme Court overruled him nine nothing, you know, years after the case. But, you know, it ended Governor McDonald's political career because of that. There are, you know, questions about his legal theories in both cases. But I think, you know, we are in an election year now. There's polling about how, you know, these cases come out can, will dictate and influence how voters, you know, view this. But, you know, there's, it's sort of just a series of cases here that illustrate, you know, the weaponized nature of the judge. system in America. Let's go ahead and talk about Colorado. This is a case that stands to

Starting point is 00:15:07 affect literally millions of Americans because so many folks are getting ready on March 5th to go to the polls on Super Tuesday and vote. And the question is, will Trump's name be on the ballot in many states? So in Colorado, you had a group of voters that said under the Constitution, and we can talk about the article in the Constitution that they're pulling on in a moment here, they said that Trump's name can't be on the ballot because he allegedly took place in an insurrection on January 6th. And so now the Supreme Court is considering this. They've taken this up after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on the case. There's more than 30 other states that have raised similar issues.

Starting point is 00:15:47 So, I mean, this stands to affect more than half of the states across the United States. Explain if you would what this constitutional claim is that's being made. from Colorado that they say, no, Trump's name shouldn't be on the ballot, that now the Supreme Court's considering. So the 14th Amendment passed, you know, they called one of the reconstruction amendments after the Civil War. And it prohibited individuals who engaged in insurrection from holding public office. Basically, the idea was you didn't want a bunch of former Confederates after the Civil War

Starting point is 00:16:19 running for Congress and sort of bringing us back to where we were, you know, in 1860, you know, as the country ripped itself apart and we had the Civil War happen. And so 14th Amendment prohibits individuals who engage in insurrection from holding public office. And Colorado determined that President Trump engaged in insurrection on January 6th. And the Secretary of State there and folks within Colorado removed him from the ballot. And you've seen this with other partisan secretaries of states in blue states, most notably the main Secretary of State is trying to do the same thing. And so the Supreme Court heard oral argument a few weeks ago, and it's not dispositive based on how the argument goes, but you can kind of get a rub on how things are going to go

Starting point is 00:17:04 based on how the questioning from the justices comes. And the overwhelming consensus is that Colorado had a very bad day in front of the Supreme Court and reading the tea leaves. They are likely to lose this case, probably 9-0 or 8-1, and Trump's name will be on the ballot eventually. But the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on that. There is no sort of timetable. They could rule at any point on that.

Starting point is 00:17:27 But, you know, Supreme Court watchers and attorneys that kind of observe and watch all arguments kind of read the tea leaves there. And, you know, the justices were very skeptical of Colorado's legal claim here. Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong. But one of the points that the justices raised was how can one state determined for the whole nation because Colorado would set precedent who can and cannot be on a federal ballot can run for president, essentially.

Starting point is 00:17:58 That's right. And also, you know, it's who determines whether somebody engages in insurrection? President Trump's impeached for inciting insurrection and the Senate acquitted him. So he's not been found guilty by any tribunal, whether it be a judicial one or even an impeachment proceedings in Congress of anything to do with insurrection. And so, you know, I think these left-wing groups, these left-wing states have sort of taken the talking point that January 6th was an insurrection. and sort of have tried to give it legal weight when it doesn't.

Starting point is 00:18:28 And so I think that was one of the big reasons why the judges were so skeptical is that nobody has ruled that Trump engaged in an insurrection, except for these, you know, secretaries of state and individual state governments by Fiat, basically. And so, you know, there's a lot of due process violations there. And you're right. You know, it could affect the way, you know, millions of people exercise the right to vote. Well, like you said, the Supreme Court is considering this right now. they've heard the arguments. We could have a ruling on this literally any day. I think a lot of people, including myself, think, well, they'll likely rule before Super Tuesday, but that's not guaranteed. It could not happen, but obviously that is the date that will really impact this case and American voters.

Starting point is 00:19:11 So, Kyle, thank you for your time today. We really appreciate you being with us. Thank you so much for having me. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for being with us. If you want to keep up with the work of Kyle Brosnan and the work of the Heritage Foundation's oversight project, you can follow them on X at Oversight PR. That's Oversight PR on X. And you can also check out their work on the Heritage Foundation website, heritage.org. Thanks so much for being with us for this interview edition of the Daily Still podcast. Make sure that you check out our evening top news edition.

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The Daily Signal - Trump’s Legal Cases 101: Where They Stand

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