The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's Ballot Battle

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Former president Donald Trump is waiting to learn if his name will be on presidential primary ballots nationwide as well as trial dates for his four criminal cases. We look at Trump's legal woes in 2024.This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This episode was edited by Erica Morrison. It was produced by Jeongyoon Han and Casey Morell. 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

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi, this is Natalie, and I'm home for the holidays with my siblings in Evansville, Indiana. As is our secret holiday tradition, we are on our way to the liquor store, unbeknownst to our disapproving parents. This podcast was recorded at 106 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but my siblings and I will be sneaking into my high school bedroom to pour ourselves some extra holiday cheer. Okay, here's the show. The secret to family gatherings. I have one of those parents, the disapproving on the, you know, but you know, you got to do what you got to do as long as you're above 21. Yeah, it's all about survival. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Keri Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

On today's show, we look at former President Donald Trump and his various legal woes and his campaign as we are less than two weeks away from the first presidential nominating contest in Iowa. I don't know about you guys, but that made my ears ring as soon as I said it. Carrie, states nationwide are debating whether to include the former president on primary ballots. So far, Trump has been banned in Colorado and Maine, and there are more than a dozen cases pending in other states. Let's start with what the latest is with Colorado and Maine. And there are more than a dozen cases pending in other states. Let's start with what the latest is with Colorado and Maine. Sure. So in Colorado, Trump has been booted off the primary ballot by the Supreme Court. He's expected any day now to file an appeal with the U.S.

Supreme Court. Voters in Colorado have also petitioned the high court, as has the Colorado Republican Party. And time really is of the essence here, because they've got to print those ballots pretty soon for absentee voters and military voters and overseas voters. Yeah, it's been a complete mess, potentially, to have, you know, these ballots out there and not have any clarity on who's actually going to be on these ballots, if Trump is going to be on them or not. You know, luckily, I guess, in some to some respects, Maine and Colorado are not exactly early, early primary states. So maybe there's a little bit of buffer, but you got to think that

the Supreme Court is going to weigh in sooner rather than later to, you know, give some clarity to all of this. Especially since really this is going to be a nationwide issue. And the idea that some states are going to move in one direction and others potentially in a different one is really a mess. And of course, the whole issue here is whether Trump should be disqualified from the ballot under that part of the 14th Amendment that was passed after the Civil War that was intended to boot Confederates from returning to office after the Civil War. And so Colorado has basically concluded that Trump did engage in an insurrection and that he should not appear on the ballot. Maine's Secretary of State went the same way. Trump has already

made an appeal in Maine through that state court process. Yeah. I mean, we should say that in a handful of other states, which include Minnesota, Michigan, just to name a couple. Judges heard those similar challenges to remove Trump from the ballot, but decided to keep him on. I wonder what the reasoning behind those decisions were, Carrie. Yeah, it's a little bit complicated because in some cases, judges made those decisions based on procedural issues, not the substance, whether Trump took an oath of office that applied under the 14th Amendment, whether a former president should be included in that category and whether he engaged in insurrection without being convicted of a crime related to January 6th, at least not yet. But in other cases, some courts and judges moved in that direction because of intricacies involving state law. So it's really all over the map. And that's why, actually, that's why the Supreme Court really needs to get involved here and get involved fast. Yeah. And Maine has this quirk in its state law that allows the Secretary of State,

in this case, Shanna Bellows, to hear arguments from people who brought complaints forward, including, by the way, two former Republican state officials who brought complaints forward saying that Trump should be disqualified from the ballot. She's empowered to be able to sort of act like a judge and be able to say, okay, I've heard your complaints, and I don't think that Trump should be on the ballot based on these reasons. She obviously had a hearing about it. She thought long and hard about it. And, you know, we heard a little bit of what her thinking was on this this week in an interview on All Things Considered.

Those events of January 6, 2021, and we all witnessed them, they were unprecedented. They were tragic. But they were an attack not only upon the Capitol and government officials, but also an attack on the rule of law, on the peaceful transfer of power. And the evidence presented at the hearing demonstrated that they occurred at the behest of and with the knowledge and support of the outgoing president. And the United States Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government. Yeah, I think it's tough because, you know, we all saw what happened on January 6th, played out on television. We know that Trump was the inspiration for January 6th at the very least.

You know, we've had more than 1,200 people charged for the events that happened that day. Many of those people have said that Trump is who inspired them to be there and called them to action, so to speak. But a lot of people, like Kerry was saying, were a little nervous or queasy about making this determination

that he was in violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment here because there hasn't been a conviction. Bellows' point is that there's nothing in the Constitution that says that somebody has to be convicted to have been guilty of participating or giving aid or comfort to an insurrection. Yeah, I mean, and Kerry, speaking of January 6th, I mean, what's going on with Trump's federal trial here? Because that's also in the mix with all this. What's going on is it's on pause. Remember, potential jurors were supposed to appear at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., just a short distance away from the U.S. Capitol starting February 9th. And the trial itself was

supposed to start in early March of 2024. But everything's on pause because Trump is arguing that he has blanket immunity, absolute immunity from federal criminal prosecution for actions he took while he was in the White House. And so that argument is a really sweeping one. The Supreme Court has never ruled on that issue. That issue may get to the high court pretty soon. But first, there's an argument in the Federal Appeals Court here in Washington about that starting next week. And so the special counsel, Jack Smith, who's been prosecuting Trump for engaging in a number of conspiracies, Jack Smith says, culminated in the violence at the U.S. Capitol nearly three years ago that injured something like 140 police officers. Jack Smith says, if you accept Donald

Trump's arguments, there's no way you can ever prosecute a former president for anything. In court papers just the other day, he talked about not being able to prosecute a president for selling nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, for accepting bribes, for telling the FBI director to cook up evidence about one of his political enemies. And so the federal courts here are going to have to make a first of its kind decision about the scope of power of a former president in this way. And Trump is pushing the pedal to the metal. He wants absolute absolution from prosecution, which would mean there'd be no trial at all. I mean, and that's just the federal trial, right? I guess

it's worth noting that states are also awaiting trial dates for Trump as well, right? So there's a case in New York brought by the District Attorney Alvin Bragg related to hush money payments to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election. Trump faces a number of charges there. That case was set for the spring, but it could move. We're waiting to hear more about that in the coming weeks. And then, of course, there's that big case in Fulton County, Georgia, where Trump is charged with a number of other people, including his former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and former White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, with election meddling, leaning on state officials in Georgia and elsewhere to cook

up votes in the last election. There is no trial date set. The DA in that case wants Trump to go to trial in August. That seems really, really unlikely given the sprawling racketeering case she's got cooking against Trump and others. Yeah, I mean, and if it feels like the Trump legal team is trying to do everything they can to delay these trials, they are, and with good reason, because he's running for president and he's hoping, frankly, and been almost overt about this, that if he's reelected president again, that at least the federal trials, he would certainly try to step in and have those quashed and not be dealing with these cases at all. And recently, his lawyer in Georgia told the

judge in Georgia that if Trump regains the White House in 2024, he may seek to push off these state trials until he leaves in 2029. So victory for Donald Trump in the legal sphere looks a lot like victory for Donald Trump at the ballot box. Yeah. Well, that's a good place to take a break. We'll be right back. And we're back. Domenico, obviously Trump is in the middle of all this campaigning for his 2024 presidential bid. I wonder what impact, I guess, if any, his legal troubles have had on his presidential campaign. Well, I mean, I think to a lot of people's surprise, it's only helped him. I mean, so far in the Republican primary, and there's data to back that up. I mean, if you look at an average of the polls, he's over 60% with Republican primary voters nationally, which is, you know, way above where he was when he started his presidential campaign bid. So it at least with Republican primary voters,

it certainly helped him. You know, there was a new Washington Post University of Maryland poll out this week that I think explained some of that because, you know, we're on the precipice here of the three-year anniversary of January 6th, 2021. On Saturday, it'll be January 6th. And that poll found that only 18 percent of Republicans believe that the protesters at the Capitol that day were, quote unquote, mostly violent compared to mostly peaceful. And when you look at independents and Democrats, far more independents, 50%, and three quarters of Democrats say that they were mostly violent. There's just been a complete divergence here of thought on January 6th. And it's why so many Republicans who may have even initially called for Trump to tamp down violence or to put an end to what was happening that day, and Trump was slow

to respond, that they've all rallied behind him because the base has such strong feelings toward Trump. And there's a legal implication here too, right? DOJ has prosecuted over a thousand people already. It's looking for hundreds more who were at the Capitol and may have broken into the Capitol that day nearly three years ago. But the former president, Donald Trump, has basically likened a lot of those people who have been convicted to hostages and has signaled he's quite likely to give them pardons if he wins the White House again. And the president's power on clemency is nearly absolute. So we might expect that to happen, even of some of the proud boys and oath keepers who were

convicted of seditious conspiracy in the federal courthouse here in D.C. And the other leading presidential candidates will say that they would pardon Trump if he's convicted of anything. We've heard both Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Nikki Haley, the former Trump U.N. ambassador, both saying that on the campaign trail this week. Yeah. And looking at the year ahead, I mean, I wonder what the timing is on these various cases, Carrie. I mean, do you expect that we'll see Trump in and out of courtrooms as well as on the trail? You know, he's not expected to be in the courtroom unless something fairly substantial is happening. But if and when one of these trials actually begins, he's going to have to be spending a lot of time in the

courthouse. And I wonder if those courthouses are equipped for the kind of campaign rally that might be happening outside. I'm sure that here in D.C. and a few other jurisdictions, court officials are already thinking about that prospect. Yeah, we've seen almost a great divergence of the political and legal calendars when we had been talking about this convergence of them. You know, I mean, Trump has only been helped, like we said, in the primary, but when it comes to a general election, remember, Trump is still very unpopular with independents, of course, with Democrats as well. And I wonder if there's a trial that's, you know, pushed off until the fall. And if something's happening in the fall with cameras in a courtroom, for example, in Georgia, which allows that, if we're going to see, you know, that kind of hot

spotlight, where Trump is, again, sort of the thing on the ballot more so than even the incumbent president, President Biden. And it's hard for me to think that that would help Trump to be in the full spotlight. But of course, he's somebody who thinks no press is bad press. Yeah. And don't forget that Donald Trump is actually operating under two gag orders now. One in the New York civil fraud trial involving the Trump organization, and another here in Washington, D.C., after prosecutors asserted his social media posts and statements on the campaign trail prompted death threats against the judge, clerk's office in New York, or a court clerk in New York, and a number of other people who might be witnesses against the former president of trial. So how he's able to manage and balance on that type rope is going to be interesting,

and how judges are able to manage him if he falls off and says something he's not supposed to say. Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, Trump kind of pushes the envelope with almost everything. And it could wind up that this is a gag with no tie because it's he's is there going to be a judge who's going to put Trump in jail for violating that right in the middle of a presidential campaign? Certainly, that takes a lot of guts to do as a judge. Yeah, I mean, and I wonder what the chances are, like, that he's offered a plea deal and avoids court altogether, Carrie.

I think slim to none. The DA in Georgia has already signaled she does not want to make any kind of plea offer to Trump or to Rudy Giuliani or to Mark Meadows or some of the other higher profile defendants in that election interference case. There's been no signal that the special counsel, Jack Smith, wants to enter into plea negotiations with Donald Trump, either over January 6th or over the classified documents the FBI found at Mar-a-Lago and that Trump allegedly refused to return for months and months and months. So I think plea negotiations would be more or less a last resort. And there's no signal that Donald Trump wants to go that road either. Carrie, what do you think is the biggest challenge that Trump's going to face in his presidential bid? For me, I'm looking at the role of the Supreme Court here, which is in a really awkward situation, right? Public confidence in the court is super low after a number of ethics scandals and financial scandals and after the Dobbs decision overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade precedent.

And now the court is being asked maybe as many as three times this year to wade into issues that could touch on Donald Trump and determine whether he appears on the ballot. You know, we've got this immunity argument from Trump in the federal case in D.C. that could make its way to the high court. We've got this issue of the 14th Amendment that's sort of already at the court's doorstep. And then finally, we've got this big question about whether the Justice Department has overused a tool to prosecute January 6th rioters. It's the law involving obstruction of an official proceeding. And Trump faces two charges in D.C. that stem from that count. And the high court is likely to hear that case and deliver a ruling by the summer.

So the court is going to have its hands all over the 2024 election, whether it likes it or not. Yeah, lots to watch this year. Well, that's all the time we have for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Monson, our senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.