The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Charged In Georgia, Alongside Election Subversion Allies

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

The indictment alleges a sweeping scheme to overturn the state's election results. Unlike the federal charges brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, Trump — should he win reelection — would have no legal authority to pardon himself of any state-level convictions which could result from the latest charges. This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and Georgia Public Broadcasting reporter Stephen Fowler.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Dan here in Hobbiton, New Zealand. I am back again after our honeymoon 14 years ago with my wife and my daughter Arwen. This podcast was recorded at 1014 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, August 15th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will be exploring Hobbit holes. Okay, here's the show. New Zealand is definitely on my bucket list of places I'd like to travel to. I've never been. here's the show. Stephen Fowler of Georgia Public Broadcasting is here again. Hello, Stephen. Hello. And last night, a Georgia grand jury indicted Donald Trump and 18 others for a scheme to overturn the state's 2020 election results, implicating the former president as the head of a sweeping conspiracy. Here's Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis speaking late Monday night after the indictment was unsealed. Specifically, the participants in association took various actions in Georgia and elsewhere to block the counting of the votes of the presidential electors who were certified as the winners of Georgia's 2020 general election. Kerry, let's start with the charges. All 19 individuals were charged under the state's RICO statute. What is that and why is it significant in this case? This is a very broad state racketeering law that dates back more than 40 years. It makes it a crime to participate in

a criminal enterprise through a pattern of activity. And prosecutors generally prove that by mentioning a number of acts in furtherance of the conspiracy, as the lawyers say. So you don't have to be engaged in every single action as a defendant, but you do have to have some kind of common goal. And Fannie Willis and the grand jury in Fulton County say the common goal here was to try to keep Donald Trump in power and to disenfranchise voters in the state of Georgia. This is a very serious charge. It carries usually five to 20 years in prison. And former President Trump should do well to take this quite seriously. This is a big sweeping case.

Stephen, I have to admit that I was not fully aware of all of the 19 individuals named in the indictment. Can you speak broadly to who these people are and how they fit into this puzzle? Right. So there are broadly several buckets of instances and efforts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election that are mentioned in this indictment and that are wrapped up in this state RICO case. I mean, obviously defendant number one is Donald John Trump. The argument made over the course of this 98-page indictment is that he was the central figure in the effort to stay in power and to subvert his election defeat in Georgia. And one of the first real major efforts to do that played out in a series of legislative hearings in Georgia, where Rudy Giuliani,

Trump's personal attorney at the time, brought together a band of people to present to lawmakers this idea that, hey, you are the lawmakers, your state constitution and the U.S. constitution says you have the power to pick the presidential electors you want to pick. And the hearings that Giuliani participated in to try to get lawmakers to overturn the election took place over a broad span in December of 2020, both before, during, and after the official certification of Georgia's votes. So in this bucket, we've got Rudy Giuliani. We've got constitutional scholar John Eastman. We have local Georgia lawyer Ray Smith, who led his portion of the hearing by saying it's impossible to know who actually won Georgia's 2020 election. Jenna Ellis, a Trump attorney. And so you've got that bucket

of people that told lawmakers falsely, you're the ones who can decide. And Stephen, we've also got Sidney Powell, who's maybe most famous for saying release the Kraken and peddling all kinds of other bogus election fraud theories back in that era. Right, Carrie, that's a different bucket of people. Sidney Powell and her release of Kraken lawsuit isn't actually what she's facing RICO charges for. Sidney Powell is involved with a bucket of people that illegally copied election data from all of these voting machines and other equipment in rural Coffey County, Georgia. And that's the former Coffey County supervisor, Misty Hampton, an Atlanta bail bondsman, Scott Hall, Kathy Latham, who was the Republican Party chairwoman there, and also one of Georgia's sham electors, which brings me to another bucket where you had Latham, the former Georgia Republican Party chairman, David Schaefer, and Sean Still, who's a current state senator, but then was an elector who signed these documents falsely claiming that they were Georgia's official presidential

electors. So there's a lot of buckets. There's a lot of rabbit holes to go down with the different people here. And the final bucket of interest, in addition to the people that served as phony electors, in addition to these legislative hearings, is an effort by Trump and his allies to pressure a Fulton County election worker into falsely claiming that she committed election fraud and altered the election. And that wrapped up a couple different people, including somebody who was at one time a PR person for Kanye West, Treveon Cuddy. And Carrie, one of the people of note in this indictment is Mark Meadows, the former congressman and former White House chief of staff.

This is a big deal, Sue, because Mark Meadows has been a central figure. He was the right-hand man to former President Trump during a lot of this period of time. But Mark Meadows himself has not been charged with any wrongdoing. And Trump's own lawyers of time. But Mark Meadows himself has not been charged with any wrongdoing. And Trump's own lawyers have been wondering if Mark Meadows may be cooperating with the special counsel investigation or state probes. Mark Meadows is now a criminal defendant in Fulton County, Georgia. We know that he actually traveled to Georgia. He was on several phone calls with the former president and Georgia officials. And now he faces a RICO charge as well, which is notable because he hasn't popped up in any of these other cases so far. And if you look in the case here, even though he played all of those different roles, you know, helping organize calls,

coming down to try to observe an audit of absentee ballot signature envelopes in Georgia. Meadows was on the call between Trump and Georgia's Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, where Trump asked the Secretary of State to, quote, find 11,780 votes. And far from being just the conduit for the call, you actually can hear in the recording, in the transcripts, Meadows speaks up and is asking if there's a way they can resolve this without more litigation and if the Secretary of State's office can throw them a bone, so to speak, and find evidence of fraud and open investigation. So that's the brief mention of Meadows and his two criminal charges in this indictment.

But if you look at this narrative, because again, the Rico case is a narrative above all else. He did have an active role in guiding a lot of people is that you go after everyone in the hope that people at the bottom of the food chain are willing to turn on the people up the food chain? Because I don't imagine that Fannie Willis is equally interested in prosecuting Kanye West, former publicist, as much as she is former President Donald Trump. You know, I think there are a couple of things going on here. One is that the district attorney, Fannie Willis, seems, you know, deeply personally offended on behalf of Georgia voters and public servants that they were allegedly pressured in this manner. And the pressure campaign on that election worker, Ruby Freeman, was something that was vile and resulted in death threats against her and her daughter, Shay Moss. They both testified about that, of course, on Capitol Hill during the House

Select Committee hearings. So I think that certainly is something that registered with the grand jury and the district attorney. Is it possible that some of these defendants in this massive RICO case could try to turn on each other. It's absolutely possible. This is a really unwieldy case already with 19 people in it. Some are very close to Donald Trump. Others are in the outer circle, not the inner circle. And it may be that faced with this RICO charge and other alleged crimes that could send these people to prison, that they decide to change their tune and cooperate with prosecutors. It's a little too soon to say right now, but certainly not all these people are similarly

situated in terms of their legal trouble. We should note that former President Trump has denied any wrongdoing in this case and the other three cases he's been charged in, but he continues to falsely argue that the election was stolen. This morning, he announced he's going to hold a press conference and release a report next Monday at his Bedminster, New Jersey property. Kerry, Trump continues to ignore sort of classic legal advice that you should stop talking publicly about cases you're directly involved in. One of the judges in one of the cases has sort of admonished him already about this. Is he potentially causing himself more legal problems here? Yeah, I don't think any of these judges want to send the former president who's running again

for election to the White House in 2024 to jail pending trial. They just don't want to do it. They don't want to limit his free speech rights in a way that prevents him from campaigning. But Donald Trump is going to make it very difficult for the justice system in the federal justice system and the justice systems in Georgia, in New York, because he just won't stop talking. He's already gone after former Vice President Mike Pence. He's also gone after the former Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, both of whom could be witnesses against him at trial. Judges don't like that. Prosecutors don't like that.

I think we're going to have hearings coming up not too long from now where judges sternly warn Donald Trump and his lawyers to stop potentially intimidating witnesses and stop polluting the jury pool in states and federal jurisdictions. And Sue and Carrie, I would also add that some of the things under Georgia's RICO statute precisely deal with this type of thing. I mean, influencing witnesses is something that we see in the statute and that we see mentioned in these indictments. And in fact, I mean, Trump's message about the being exonerated from this report that he's going to release next week and demanding that his charges be dropped is very, very similar to a letter that

he sent to Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2021 that found its way in this indictment as more evidence and example and several of the counts that he faces. So if you're the prosecutors, there's just more day-to-day evidence that Trump is digging himself into this further hole by continuing to do the things that he's already been indicted for. But at the same time, like Kerry mentioned, there's going to have to be more hearings to try to urge Trump to not do those things. And I'm sure his lawyers are doing the same as well. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this when we get back.

Hey there, I'm Casey Murrell, a producer on the NPR Politics Podcast, with a quick plug for our most recent bonus episode that's available now. This one, it's a fun behind-the-scenes chat on how we check the facts each and every day on the show. And it's not just about getting names and numbers right. What was a goat doing at the rodeo in the first place? Apparently, like, goats are a pretty, like, standard part of a rodeo event. All that and more in our latest bonus episode for NPR Politics Plus listeners, whose support helps make this show possible. Subscribe now. Plus.npr.org slash politics.

And we're back. And a key figure now is Fulton County Prosecutor Fannie Willis, who Trump and his campaign are already attacking both professionally and personally. Stephen, she's not a household name in America, but she might well be by the time Election Day comes around. Can you tell us more about her? So Fannie Willis's fortune started long before investigating this election interference in Georgia, and she actually made her bones prosecuting novel cases of racketeering. The most famous case involves a scandal with Atlanta public school teachers and administrators that were caught cheating and changing test scores. And so, again, a racketeering case, you think the mafia, you think, you know, people with

nicknames and brass knuckles and this kind of organized crime. But Willis made the case that these teachers and principals and other education officials were in fact a criminal enterprise using their changing of test scores and things to break the law. She is a master of RICO. She said, I like using RICO because a jury's smart and I can tell a story and craft this narrative. And in fact, right now, in the courtroom right down the hallway from where we sat waiting for indictments yesterday, she's prosecuting another racketeering case against Atlanta rapper Young Thug and his YSL record label that she accuses is a racketeering organization and a criminal street gang.

So this is firmly in her wheelhouse, even though she's not a household name, she's not a big federal prosecutor or somebody that maybe has a little bit more gravitas in this legal sphere. But for what happened in Georgia, what happened in Atlanta, and for what happened to be a racketeering case, you probably couldn't find somebody more suited to take this case on. Carrie, she held a press conference last night, and a couple of things stuck out to me. First, she says she intends to try all 19 individuals at the same time. Doesn't sound like we're in for a speedy trial here. So I don't even know how you can put that many tables in a room and also fit the jury. Okay.

Moreover, she also said she intends to ask for a trial date within six months in a RICO case involving 19 defendants when Donald Trump already faces three other criminal trials next year. I don't see this going to trial in six months. And there may be some elbowing going on with the special counsel Jack Smith, who wants to try his own election fraud case against Donald Trump in January of 2024. We're going to have to see what happens. But I think there may be some delays here, as there were in that case Stephen mentioned that's ongoing still in Georgia involving

the musician. It was also noted to me, and I'm glad you brought up Jack Smith, because a reporter asked her explicitly last night, hey, have you talked to the special counsel's office to try to de-conflict your two cases because there is some overlap here? And she declined to comment on that. And it does seem to raise another very complicated legal problem in that Jack Smith's investigation is also investigating Donald Trump's role in attempting to overthrow the 2020 election. And there could be some wires crossed here. There absolutely could be. So, you know, Jack Smith decided to try to do a streamlined case against Donald Trump alone, thinking, reasoning that that case would be easier to go to trial before the election. But he named six people as co-conspirators.

He didn't provide their names in the indictment, but we know several of them are people like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, the law professor who was an architect of some of the bogus theories Trump was trying to use to overturn the election. These are all people who have now been charged by the district attorney's office in Fulton County. And so you really could get crosswise in terms of witnesses and evidence. So a deconfliction may be important here to protect both the federal

and the state case as they move forward next year. But Willis didn't want to talk about that yesterday and no word yet from Jack Smith's office about whether there's been any conversation about who should go first. I'm going to get a little ahead of myself here, but I think it's important for people to understand this distinction as these cases proceed and through the election year. In that, if Donald Trump is found guilty in any of these cases and he becomes president again, there is a probability that he would test the legal theory over whether a president could pardon himself. But that is a power that only applies to federal charges. So it seems to me that this Georgia case does also take on a particular political resonance. Because if he has found guilty in a state case, and he is the next president,

he has no legal authority to get rid of this case. He can't easily get rid of this case. He can't pardon his way out of it. In fact, the governor in Georgia doesn't even have that power. It's up to a pardon board. And moreover, Fannie Willis said last night that the state's role in this process is essential to the functioning of our democracy. States play a big role in elections. And she's arguing that the states should play a big role in accountability for tampering with elections too. So a couple of points of interest, not just politically, but also legally and in the broader sphere of accountability. Stephen, you've been covering this case for two years. You're going to cover it for at least another year more likely. I'll give you the final word on your thoughts on the

indictment last night. So the thing that I'm most interested in is how this plays out, obviously legally, but I'm also interested in seeing how this plays out politically because the 2022 midterms in Georgia saw Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, two Republicans who refused to overturn the election, win their elections in what's arguably a pretty purple state by blowout margins, in part because of their opposition to Trump and defense of the election, in spite of their very, very conservative ideologies. And so if we have a scenario where it's a rematch between Trump and President Biden in a state where Biden narrowly won and Trump tried to overturn the results and will likely be facing trial in the weeks or months leading up to the election, how that impacts not only the presidential race, but down ballot races in Georgia that could be competitive.

And also too, Sue, thinking about other states where Trump tried to overturn the election where he's not facing criminal charges, but he's facing those voters at the ballot box again. And so this case could have a lot of resonance far beyond whether somebody actually violated the Racketeering, Influenced, and Corrupt Organizations Act. All right, let's leave it there for today. Georgia Public Broadcasting, Stephen Fowler, as always, thank you for coming on and for your reporting. Always a pleasure. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.