Trump's Trials - Trump's legal and political strategy seems to be working...for now

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

This week on Trump's Trials, host Scott Detrow and Domenico Montanaro are joined by NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson.This week's focus: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has come under scrutiny after a codefendant in Trump's Georgia election case accused her, without evidence, of having an improper relationship with attorney Nathan Wade, whom she hired to prosecute the case. Wade is currently going through a divorce and documents from that proceeding show Wade bought airline tickets for himself and Willis for flights together. Willis has yet to fully address the allegations and the judge in this case has set a hearing on the matter. In the absence of a response from Willis to the allegations, Trump and his allies have seized the moment to discredit her. Topics include: - Georgia election interference case- Allegations of misconduct- Update on Florida classified documents case- Iowa caucuses resultsFollow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for new episodes each Saturday.Sign up for sponsor-free episodes and support NPR's political journalism at plus.npr.org/trumpstrials.Email the show at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Donald Trump's legal and political strategies seem to be paying off, at least in the short term. From NPR, this is Trump's Trials. I'm Scott Detrow. This is a persecution. He actually just stormed out of the courtroom. Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. It's been a week where Trump racked up a big political win in the Iowa caucuses. Clear evidence that Republican voters, at least, are buying his argument that the 91 criminal counts he's facing don't really matter. And the way that Trump politicizes his legal cases and goes on the attack seems to be paying off, too. One of Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case has made some serious allegations about Fulton County District Attorney

Fonny Willis and whether she had an improper relationship with a prosecutor, Nathan Wade, who she hired for the case. The co-defendant has not presented any evidence, but documents have now surfaced showing that Wade purchased airline tickets for a trip with Willis, and the charge has cast a huge shadow over the case, especially in the absence of a clear denial from Willis. Now, a Georgia judge has scheduled a February hearing on the matter. A lot to discuss, as always, it seems. And I'm joined again by my colleague, senior political editor and correspondent, Domenico Montanaro. Hey, Domenico. Hey, Scott. So, look, Trump is facing all of these really serious criminal charges. They aren't going away. And yet, this really feels like a week where he came out stronger than he entered it.

Yeah, I mean, no question he's stronger. You know, it was a big win in Iowa this week in the caucuses. There was more than $124 million spent to try to win there. Trump beat expectations, won with more than 50% of the vote. He won the endorsements of some of the other candidates who dropped out like Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott, the Senator of South Carolina. And the clock really does seem to be ticking here for anyone other than Trump.

You know, all eyes are on New Hampshire, which votes on Tuesday, but Trump still leads there by double digits in the polls. And a lot of people are feeling short of a win for Nikki Haley. It's gonna be almost impossible to derail Trump at this point, to be able to turn the narrative in favor of somebody who can be a viable Trump alternative. So we'll talk about this political situation. We'll talk about the latest updates

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show you immediate value by solving that problem and then grow with you over time? Visit Concur.com to learn more. We are back and along with Domenico Montanaro, we are joined by NPR Justice Correspondent, Visit Concur.com to learn more. conduct. This week, the judge in that case scheduled a hearing in February to hear evidence surrounding some pretty serious accusations. I mean, she's essentially being accused of giving her boyfriend a job. We don't know if they had a relationship at this point, but it's a serious accusation. And why does it carry so much weight? It carries so much weight because this is one of the potentially most damaging criminal cases against the former president of the United States, Donald Trump. This is squarely about whether he interfered with the last election and tried to overturn it, pressuring state officials in Georgia, allegedly conspiring with others in the state, and submitting fake slates of electors. these are very, very serious allegations against the former

president. And instead of talking about what Donald Trump allegedly did, we're now talking about what the district attorney and her special prosecutor may have done. And that's just bad news for the case, for sure. And the charges remain the charges. This doesn't change any of the facts that Trump would eventually face a trial for. But is it fair to say that this just cast an enormous pall over the prosecution's case at this point? An enormous shadow. You know, one of the co-defendants of Donald Trump, Mike Roman, has actually filed court papers trying to get this case tossed out altogether against Mike Roman and trying to disqualify Fannie Willis and Nathan Wade from participating in this prosecution, trying to get the entire Fulton County DA's office knocked off the case, in fact.

So this is really serious stuff. Trump's lawyer in Georgia has suggested he's reviewing the allegations and may potentially join in that motion. So this could be a cascading series of problems for the district attorney's office that would really benefit Donald Trump in the media atmosphere. And we know he's seizing on it already. Yeah. And Domenico, we had talked last week about how Trump and his allies were trying to use this to undermine the case. You were with me Monday night as we were covering caucus results. We were interviewing a spokesman for Trump's campaign. And he repeatedly, over and over and over, every question I had about the seriousness of the charges, he brought up these Willis allegations. That's certainly going to

continue from Trump and everybody else. Absolutely. Especially anybody who's supporting Trump, you know, looking to keep him where he is in the Republican primary, insulated from some of these charges, claiming that they're witch hunts, painting himself to be a victim. And this just further helps to muddy up what was and is a sprawling case that, you know, with some very serious charges against Trump for interfering in the Georgia election results, trying to overturn the results there. And Carrie, one of the things we've all been trying to make sense of is that Willis has not directly commented on these allegations for more than a week now, about a week and a half at this point, saying she's waiting until this February hearing.

And all of this comes down to a messy divorce between Wade and his wife. Is there any legal reason that Willis would wait to flat out deny these accusations? Well, you know, lawyers, careful lawyers want to make sure they have their ducks in a row before they speak or file court papers. But interestingly enough, Scott, you know, the district attorney did give a very public speech for Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Georgia. She didn't deny these allegations there, although she did talk very searingly about racist and misogynistic threats she's faced since deciding to prosecute the former President Donald Trump. And she also, through an attorney, filed court papers this week trying to get out of a deposition. Nathan Wade's estranged wife wants to depose the district attorney in this case. And the district attorney said in that court filing that she thought Nathan Wade's wife was allegedly conspiring with pro-Trump forces

in Georgia to jam up this prosecution, basically. But even in that court filing, she did not deny any improper relationships she may have had with Wade. And so the question is, if it's taking her this long to deny it, maybe there's a grain of truth there. We just don't know. But there's been some new evidence put forward that they may have traveled together at least a couple of times. And that, I think, requires an answer in this environment. And, Domenico, there's a lot of political fallout from this vacuum that's been created. I think one of the more interesting ones is that Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, who, despite his opposition to Trump, Trump's efforts to overturn the election, is a pretty conservative guy.

And he, up until this point, had mostly defended or at least not criticized Willis and her charges against Trump. And he is now raising some serious questions and saying what's going on here. So I think you're seeing her lose some of her at least subtle allies in Georgia who are pretty key here. at least subtle allies in Georgia who are pretty key here. Well, they want to see the prosecution go forward and not have there be some massive distraction where Trump gets off the hook because of something like this. You know, and Willis claiming, you know, racist or misogynistic attacks, those things may very well be true, but it sort of misreads the politics like you're talking about with somebody like Kemp, who she needs to keep on board,

you know, and not addressing the allegations head on really kind of mucks things up, allows Trump's team to muddy the waters, question Willis's character and ethics, just as she's trying to take on this sweeping case. You know, now, even if she is having a relationship with someone who works with her, as inappropriate as that might be, it really says nothing about whether Trump is guilty of the crimes he's being accused of trying to overturn the election results. But it's an unwelcome distraction for her. And the case could, you know, this could lead to delays in a case that Willis had wanted to begin a trial for on August 5th.

And before we shift gears, just one more contextual thing here, Kerry, I think we kind of mentioned in passing, but just to underscore, to remind people who aren't as up to speed, this matters because this was an outside lawyer brought in to handle this case who has been paid legal fees in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. An outside lawyer who's well known in Fulton County but hasn't done a lot of major league criminal cases like this one, this big racketeering case against the former president and many of his associates. And the guy's gotten $650,000 in payments. And the allegation from one of these defendants, co-defendants of Donald Trump, is that Fannie Willis may have taken steps in the investigation that benefited Nathan Wade financially and may have benefited her. And so there's a serious legal and ethical issue here. It may not result in the dismissal of any of these charges, but it certainly is going to require a response from both of these prosecutors sooner rather than later. Carrie, I want to quickly ask one question, get a bit of

an update on one of the cases that has kind of taken a backseat in recent weeks, and that's the Florida documents case. Trump is accused of not only taking classified documents with him when he left office, but then refusing to cooperate with attempts to get them back to the government. We saw Trump's legal team request just a ton of documents from various agencies and the Biden White House. What do we need to know about that move, what the context is of it? Donald Trump, who really mistrusted the intelligence community and the FBI while he was president, while he was in the White House,

now seems to want to turn the tables in this Mar-a-Lago documents prosecution and try to put the intelligence community on the defense and on trial. He's trying to argue that they've been biased against him for years and that he wants evidence that may exist inside the intelligence agencies and the FBI and the Justice Department to try to make that case and defend himself against these very serious obstruction of justice charges in Florida. Clearly, Trump is trying to defend himself by turning the tables on the federal government he once ran. This is just one more bit of evidence of how he's going to try to defend himself if and when this case ever gets to trial. Remember,

it's supposed to go to trial in May. I'm extremely dubious given the volume of classified information and how Judge Cannon has managed the docket, but Trump is fighting hard all the way. And of course, the January 6th federal case, which on paper remains an early March case, that's all hanging in the balance as we wait for these key rulings, right? Yeah, that's right, Scott. Remember, we're waiting for the three-judge panel to decide whether or not Donald Trump has immunity, blanket immunity. Remember that SEAL Team 6 argument his attorney was making, which really gobsmacked the Justice Department. maybe the Supreme Court. So my goodness, the clock has stopped on that one until we get these kinds of answers. And at this point, it doesn't seem like if that case does go alive, it's going to start before the summer. That's getting awfully close to the Republican convention and awfully close to the election itself. Dominico, let's go back to Monday and the fact that Trump just

steamrolled the Iowa caucuses in this context. I mean, again, like we said at the beginning of the podcast, like we've been saying for weeks and weeks, we have known in theory that Republican voters at least just don't care about these cases, don't think they're serious, think that Trump is the victim here. And then we just see a runaway win. We were sitting there talking live on the radio at 7.30 central time. While most people in Iowa were still actually caucusing the AP calls the race for Trump, it was that much of a blowout. Yeah, definitely.

And Trump won big. We knew that that was likely to be the case going in. And let's hear a little bit from voters who our colleague Don Gagne spoke to on the ground there in Iowa. You can hear how strongly they were behind Trump in spite of these charges, if not because of them. Well, I don't believe that Trump has lost. I think we have the evidence. I think it's going to come out. When you look at all of the court cases and all of the—a lot of that's unprecedented.

You know, it's just dirty politics. And it's, they're just trying to, is he the cleanest person ever to live? Probably not. None of us are. And if you dig deep enough, you're going to find stuff on anyone. I think a lot of this is just dirty politics. Yeah, clearly just dismissing this as dirty politics, a lot of people are, and that's been Trump's goal. And DeSantis said again, he said this a few times more recently, and again, now we've seen these results of just such an enormous gap between Trump and then DeSantis and Haley in Iowa, that these charges just sucked all the oxygen out of the room of

the primary, just made Republican voters who may have been open to considering new candidates just rally around Trump. I mean, it seems like that's the case so far. Oh, 100%. I mean, Trump's lead is only expanded with Republican voters during all of this. You know, back in January, in an average of the polls, it had him as the choice of 45% of Republicans. Now it's 66%. And by the way, entrance polls in Iowa bared that out because two-thirds said that they'd support Trump even if he's convicted of one of these crimes that he's charged with. Three out of 10 said that Biden was legitimately elected. Only three in 10 Republicans feel that. And, you know, this thing certainly looks like a runaway train at this point unless something else changes. You look at the makeup of

the voters in the states coming up, and you've said so many times that Trump could have the nomination sewn up in a matter of weeks, really, if you look at the delegates being awarded. It feels like New Hampshire is the best possible place for someone like Nikki Haley to really kind of coalesce Republican voters who do have concerns about these legal charges? Yeah, almost 40% of the state is made up of registered independents, and they are allowed to vote in the Republican primary, unlike in Iowa, which was just made up of registered Republicans. So Nikki Haley is not really going to get a more friendly, you know, voter profile than New Hampshire offers.

But I have to say, it's interesting. Marist came out with a poll this week looking at New Hampshire, and they asked New Hampshire adults if they think Trump should have immunity from things that he did as president. Two-thirds of New Hampshire adults said no, he should not have immunity. But when they asked Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, two-thirds of them said that yes, he should not have immunity. But when they asked Republicans and Republican leaning independents, two thirds of them said that, yes, he should have immunity. So even in New Hampshire, where Trump has been leading by double digits, it might be a tough hill to climb for Haley. All right. So in the coming week, we're going to have the New Hampshire primary, which will kind of being set up as Nikki Haley's last stand, like how viable a non-Trump candidate is. That's

probably Haley's best shot to compete and reset the race. Like I said before, we are waiting for this federal appeals court ruling. Carrie, anything else on your radar that you're keeping an eye on over the coming days in all of this? Well, you know, we are getting ready for the Supreme Court argument on February 8th, which is going to address whether the Colorado Supreme Court was accurate in kicking Donald Trump off the ballot in the primary there. And one of the big questions in my mind is, is the former president going to show up at the Supreme Court the way he did recently in New York and elsewhere in D.C.? That's going to really make an enormous splash at the court. And how quickly is the court going to rule on that issue? You know, election experts from both sides of the political house say there's going to be chaos if there isn't a ruling soon. So that's really what I'm getting

ready for in the next couple of weeks. And if you go back to some back episodes, we've talked at length about that key question in Colorado and Maine and other states. And we will, of course, be digging into that again as that Supreme Court date gets closer and closer. Carrie Johnson, National Justice Correspondent, thanks again for joining us. Oh, my pleasure. And Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks, as always, to our supporters who hear the show sponsor free. If that's not you, it could be. Sign up at plus.npr.org or subscribe on our show page in Apple Podcasts. The show is produced by Tyler Bartlum and edited by Adam Rainey and Steve Drummond.

Our technical director is Kwasi Lee. Our executive producers are Beth Donovan and Sammy Yenigan. Eric Maripoti is NPR's vice president of news programming. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to Trump's Trials from NPR. solutions. With SAP Concur Solutions, you'll be ready to take on whatever the market throws at you next. Learn more at Concur.com. You know the names of the primary players. Jimmy Carter. Our country's not strong anymore. Ronald Reagan. We have perverted our constitution. Gerald Ford. But how they acted, it's just about the opposite of their popular images.

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