The NPR Politics Podcast - What Now For Trump's Court Cases?

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Federal investigations into Donald Trump's actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection & allegations of improper retention of classified documents are essentially dead ahead of his inauguration, as is sentencing in a New York state business fraud case in which Trump was found guilty. What happens now? This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han and Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Holiday travel is stressful, especially if you're dealing with family baggage on top of your actual baggage. I'm going home. I'm going to revert back to old family roles that are stressful. And so this traffic jam is the straw that's breaking the camel's back. But don't worry, we're here to bring you some relief. Listen to the Life Kit Podcast. We'll help you out this holiday season. Hi, this is Maddie from Providence, Rhode Island, the Calamari comeback state.

I just landed back in New England after a whirlwind day in Washington, DC, where I got to see President Biden pardon the turkeys. This podcast was recorded at 12, 23 p.m. on Wednesday, November 27th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully Peach and Blossom are gobbling their lives away back in Minnesota.

Okay, here's the show! Oh, Domenico, this was clearly a timestamp for you. Terrible fact about me, I'm allergic to shellfish, so I don't eat calamari. I'm thinking more to the point of turkey pardons, which I think you have written more about than anyone in NPR history. I was trying to avoid that, but yes. You can read my last 15 years worth of Turkey Barton stories if you'd like. You can Google it.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Keri Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and correspondent. And today on the show, Donald Trump's legal troubles are going, going, gone. The case related to Trump's actions on January 6th, as well as the case into improperly keeping

classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, are closed. And sentencing in his New York business fraud case where Trump was found guilty is on hold indefinitely. Carrie, just walk us through these federal cases. Why exactly are they dead in the water? Well, this was clear really the morning after the presidential election, but because it's the legal system, it takes a little bit of time to work through the process. And the reason why the Justice Department has abandoned both of these

federal cases against President-elect Donald Trump is because there's a long-standing, like decades-old view within the Justice Department that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime or on trial for criminal charges. And because Donald Trump is now the president-elect and he needs to get ready for the transition and to assume power early next year, the thinking is it places too much of a burden on him constitutionally to have to deal with these cases. And so Jack Smith, the special counsel who's been investigating Trump and indicted him two times in Florida and in DC, moved to dismiss the case in DC

without prejudice. Jack Smith importantly said that it doesn't matter the gravity of these crimes or the strength of the government's case. And he said the government stands fully behind this prosecution. But because of this longstanding interpretation of the Constitution by the Justice Department, this case just cannot proceed.

And even in the New York case, where I think opponents of Donald Trump get excited by the thought of it being delayed, but practically speaking, this case also seems dead in the water. You know, the New York case has bogged down in immunity questions, just like the other cases against Trump were. The issue is whether the judge wants to kind of hold that case hanging over Trump's head until four years from now, when he's out of the White House. But practically speaking, it's hard to imagine that that case will amount to anything.

And then the final case against Trump in Georgia is also bogged down amid questions about conflicts of interest by the prosecutor there, DA Fonny Wallace. You know, it's quite remarkable what the Trump legal team has been able to do. I mean, being able to sort of delay, delay, delay throughout this entire process. I mean, this is not like they brought these charges in the middle of the presidential election. You know, these charges were brought some time ago, but the Trump team was able to get these charges pushed off, pushed off, pushed off.

The trials pushed off, the sentencing really delayed, and then through the campaign. So they did a good job in being able to do that and being able to win re-election has essentially made these cases go away. They did such a good job that a lot of the lawyers who helped defend Trump in these cases are getting prime jobs in the Justice Department if the Senate confirms them. You know, Todd Blanche, his top defense lawyer, is in line to become the number two in the Trump Justice Department. And other lawyers like John Sauer is in line to become the Solicitor General.

So this really paid off for them. Domenico, in terms of political victories, and I guess, frankly, legal victories, these are unambiguous, big wins for Donald Trump as he approaches his second term in office. Yeah, I mean, no doubt about it. I mean, his supporters are definitely going to say that this is a victory, it's vindication. You know, Trump himself insulated himself really well by being able to claim that these were witch hunts,

politically motivated, even though there was, it wasn't the himself insulated himself really well by being able to claim that these were witch hunts, politically motivated, even though it wasn't the case, it was totally baseless that Biden himself was directing prosecutions of him in all these different places. You could argue, obviously, if Donald Trump hadn't put documents in Mar-a-Lago or hadn't inspired an insurrection on January 6th, he wouldn't be in any of these different problems. He is responsible for this stuff getting to where it was, but he was able to convince his base that these were just politically motivated witch hunts. And they'll continue to say that no matter what the outcome is now or four years or five years

or six years from now. Yeah, history is written by the winners. Carrie, in some of these cases, I'm thinking specifically Mar-a-Lago, it wasn't just Donald Trump who was facing charges. I wonder if those folks are also off the hook or if those cases go forward. You know, there's a question about whether that case goes forward. Remember Judge Eileen Cannon dismissed the case on the ground that Jack Smith was appointed in an unconstitutional way, but DOJ has been appealing. It dropped the appeal this week as to Trump, but the case against the two others, defendants, this is Walt Nauta, Trump's valet, and Carlos de

Oliveira, who had been the property manager at Mar-a-Lago. They're still on the hook potentially. The catch is this, when Trump is inaugurated next year, he could decide to pardon those guys or he could tell his new DOJ leaders to just drop that case. So for now, the case continues as to those two. It doesn't look good going forward for the Justice Department in terms of bringing that case forward against those two other defendants. All right, let's take a quick break and more on this in a moment. Hey there, it's Deepa Sivaram. Before we get back to the show, I want to take a moment to talk about what makes the NPR Politics Podcast and NPR different. NPR is public media,

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And Carrie, I understand that the case against Donald Trump in the January 6th case is essentially closed, but the special counsel in that investigation, Jack Smith, as is typical with special counsel investigations will work on a report that sort of includes all the details of the case. Is it possible that that is ever something that's released to the public or is that gone now too? No, I think it's more than likely that that will be done. We know that Jack Smith knows how to meet a deadline. In fact, he's usually early in his filings and we know that it's a requirement of special counsels that they file a report with the attorney general. In fact, AG Merrick Garland has made other reports public,

the Rob Hur report on Biden and his classified documents, the John Durham report on investigating the investigators in 2016. All of those materials made their way to the public and Jack Smith's report is likely to become public too. The big question for me is how much new information is there going to be in that report about what Jack Smith found against Trump and any other details about anybody else?

To medical, I can't think of a single as ludicrous of scenario that you could come up with as something that Donald Trump did that could ever possibly change the way that people look at him or these cases? Certainly not something that's not going to actually be prosecuted in a court of law with a jury who, you know, Trump's campaign and Trump's base believes is unbiased, but probably not a, you know, a report from someone who Trump has called deranged, you know, and you'll remember with the Mueller investigation and that report on Russian interference that came out, it certainly did not exonerate Trump, but he and his

supporters certainly claimed vindication anyway, and they'll look for any little piece in this report to show that he didn't do as much as the government of saying that he did. And, you know, at the end of the day, Sue, he's not running again. So if he's not running again, then the politics kind of don't matter. And this means you have Donald Trump, who's unshackled, really being able to do kind of whatever he wants in office, because essentially what the Supreme Court has essentially said is that a president is above the law.

They have absolute or presumed immunity when it comes to their official duties. So that's going to mean that you have a Donald Trump who doesn't really care about the politics. Carrie, do you have a sense of what's next for Jack Smith? And I wonder this in part because Donald Trump doesn't easily let go his vengences against people he thinks is wronged him. So I imagine it's not the last we hear his name. Yeah, Trump has promised to fire Jack Smith. but what I'm hearing is that Smith is going to leave the Justice Department before the inauguration, so Trump won't get a chance

to fire him. You know, Smith has had a lot of jobs inside the DOJ. I first ran into him when he joined the DOJ in Washington after the institution was reeling from the botched prosecution of the late Senator Ted Stevens in Alaska. And Smith then went on to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tennessee. He had a job in the private sector. He wound up as a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague, and then Attorney General Merrick Garland basically asked him to come back home to the U.S. and investigate Donald Trump,

which he's been doing for a couple of years. I think Smith has a lot of career options, but it's certain that Trump and the Trump administration is not done with him. We know that Trump's pick to be the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has talked on Fox News about wanting to prosecute the prosecutors, and Trump may be wanting to put some pressure next year on his new DOJ leadership to do investigations of some of these men and women who investigated him. Kari, I'm curious for your take on something that Domenico just referenced about how Trump is entering power at a unique time is when you consider the Supreme Court rulings that

really expanded our understanding of presidential power. It seems like there is a new chapter in how we should look at this and how we should look at the power of the presidency. There's been a lot of talk as the Supreme Court turned rightward to this six justice kind of conservative supermajority, a lot of talk in the civil rights community and some other communities in particular about needing to play defense. In other words, trying to prevent important cases from getting to the Supreme Court at all for fear that the court would issue some kind of precedent in that particular case, but one that would apply even more broadly and be damaging to civil rights advocates and others. And I think,

you know, this Trump immunity ruling has really erased the guardrails that people operated under since Watergate at the Justice Department and in the White House. And so that precedent is going to be on the books for heaven knows how long. And it's hard to imagine another case involving presidential misconduct making its way to the court again quickly, because the Supreme Court has now said that a president can talk to the Justice Department about ongoing criminal investigations, about starting investigations, and a president has immunity for those kinds of actions.

The pressure is really going to be on people inside the Justice Department to resist what they consider illegal or improper pressure. All right. We're going to leave it there for today. But before we go, I want to say happy Thanksgiving to you both and also happy Thanksgiving to all of our listeners who have ridden this wild and unforgettable political year with us. Hope you enjoy all your turkey and extra pie. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Kerry Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.