The MAGA Pathology

[0] Welcome to a new episode of the Trump trials.

[1] I'm Charlie Sykes.

[2] One of the extraordinary things about 2024, and there are so many, is that the former president of the United States, the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination will spend much of his time in courtrooms, state courtrooms and federal courtrooms facing not only 91 felony counts, but serious allegations of fraud.

[3] And this week, once again, has been an extraordinary one.

[4] So we are very fortunate.

[5] to once again be joined by our partners from Lawfare.

[6] Ben Wittes, editor -in -chief of Lawfare, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and the author of The Dog Shirt Daily newsletter on Substack.

[7] Ben, welcome back on the podcast.

[8] Hey, thanks, Charlie.

[9] It's great to see you.

[10] And, you know, another week, another bout of insanity.

[11] And looking forward to chewing it all over with you.

[12] Okay, the pattern is absolutely full, but we have to start with this.

[13] First of all, congratulations, Ben.

[14] Something rather extraordinary happened.

[15] You were awarded the Golden Heart Award by the President of Ukraine for, I quote, significant contribution to the strengthening of interstate cooperation, support of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and the popularization of the Ukrainian state in the world.

[16] This, of course, is in recognition of your special military operations.

[17] But congratulations.

[18] Ben.

[19] I have to say, I'm very rarely impressed these days, but this one, this one had to be pretty sweet.

[20] Tell us the story of how you got this email that President Zelensky is going to give you this award.

[21] So it wasn't an email.

[22] It was a phone call.

[23] And it was from a friend at the embassy here in Washington, the Ukrainian embassy here in Washington.

[24] And he called me and I picked up the phone and he said, congratulations.

[25] And I said, for what?

[26] And then he informed me. Now, I had known that the embassy had nominated me for this, Ambassador Makarva.

[27] And it just never occurred to me, really, that the president of Ukraine would...

[28] Who's busy?

[29] Well, would...

[30] I mean, he was issuing a set of awards.

[31] That was one among a number in that decree.

[32] It just never occurred to me that they would actually grant an award for essentially being annoying to the other side.

[33] which is really what the special military operations are.

[34] They're, you know, just effort to annoy the Russians and thereby amuse Ukrainians and remind Americans, most importantly, and Europeans to continue support for Ukraine.

[35] So for the two or three listeners and viewers who are not familiar with what you're doing, you actually project laser images of, say, the Ukrainian flag on the Russian embassy, which thoroughly annoys the Russians, right?

[36] Is that a fair way of describing it?

[37] In 12 different countries so far, Washington mostly, but also, you know, we've done a lot of other countries now, too.

[38] And I, there are things you do for professional honor and advancement, and, and this is just not one of them.

[39] It's a highly eccentric activity that I engage in, really because it pisses off the Russians.

[40] So I couldn't have been more surprised.

[41] and immediately started getting texts.

[42] One friend texted me, I can't believe the Ukrainians just gave you an award for annoying the Russians to distraction.

[43] And so I'm deeply, deeply touched by the whole thing.

[44] I never really imagined the thing would be noticed in Kyiv.

[45] I was hoping it would be noticed in Moscow.

[46] But I have not yet been able to get myself on the sanctions list for Moscow, but I did seem to get a decree from the president of Ukraine.

[47] So, you know, what I am looking forward to is doing one of our podcasts and one of our YouTube podcast where you are actually wearing the medal.

[48] Hopefully, you'll get it directly from the president, but who knows, you know?

[49] I can do you one better than that, Charlie.

[50] When the, I don't know what form, whether it's a metal or I don't know what it is physically, actually, but when it is presented to me, and I'm told that may take months.

[51] We should do a bulwark podcast actually projecting, I can join Riverside from in front of the embassy, and we can have occasional YouTube chat, and we can just have a conversation and in celebration.

[52] Well, that would be on brand because we aim to annoy on a regular basis.

[53] I want to get to what's happening in Fulton County.

[54] I want to talk about what happened in the D .C. circuit, in the New York fraud trial.

[55] But let's pull back to, like, above 35 ,000 feet.

[56] Chris Christie pulled out of the presidential race last night, and we're going to leave the punditry to other folks, although we may engage in a little bit here.

[57] But Chris Christie pulled out.

[58] The most interesting part of his comments last night were about the red line that he's drawing about Donald Trump's fitness to be president.

[59] And he highlighted, and he did not endorse Nikki Haley, and he's not going to, I don't think, based on this.

[60] He highlighted that moment in the debate here in Milwaukee, my hometown, where the other candidates, all the candidates were asked, would you support Donald Trump, because the Republican nominee if he was a convicted felon?

[61] And everybody else raised their hand.

[62] And he said, you know, I'm never going to do that.

[63] I just don't think that it's possible to support someone who is a convicted felon.

[64] But what I wanted to ask you, Ben, is he goes off under this riff about the founders.

[65] And I want to talk about this.

[66] Let's listen to what Chris Christie said last night.

[67] I want you to imagine for a second that Jefferson and Hamilton and Adams and Washington and Franklin were sitting here tonight.

[68] Do you think they could imagine that the country they risked their lives to create would actually be having a conversation about whether a convicted criminal should be president of the United States?

[69] I can't tell you how many people in New Hampshire have asked me, why isn't there a law against that?

[70] The answer is because nobody ever thought that someone would have the audacity to run for president as a criminal.

[71] And they never thought that any American electorate would actually support it.

[72] It's not their fault that they didn't put it in the Constitution, along with 35 years old.

[73] and a natural -born American citizen.

[74] They didn't think, let's throw in here, and not a criminal.

[75] They thought maybe we'd get that part.

[76] We're gonna show them now whether we do or we don't in the next 10 months.

[77] Do we get it or don't we?

[78] Do we get it or don't we?

[79] Say, Ben, I think that is very interesting that people are saying, well, hold it.

[80] The Constitution has all sorts of limitations on who could be president and who can't be president.

[81] But he's right.

[82] I mean, they never actually thought, and a convicted criminal.

[83] They just didn't think that that was relevant.

[84] Is he right about this?

[85] That they just didn't conceive of this as a possibility?

[86] So he is and he's not.

[87] Let me say he's right in a big sense, which is that they were an honor culture, and they actually believed that oaths matter.

[88] One of the great constraints on the presidency is that he swears an oath, right, to faithfully execute.

[89] And that oath is binding on his soul.

[90] And that is something that the founders really believed that we're a little bit, let's just say, more tenuous in our belief about.

[91] I do think they probably thought it was unthinkable that somebody who was not at least a person of public honor could get elected.

[92] This is why, of course, Hamilton is so offended by Burr.

[93] And why Hamilton ultimately prefers Jefferson's election to burn.

[94] Yeah, even though he hated Jefferson.

[95] And it was opposing parties.

[96] And all that said, Christy is incorrect to say that the founders could not imagine a highly unprincipled person, you know, of a criminal bent with a megal maniacal streak becoming president.

[97] And I just want to read you one, since he invoked Hamilton in that list.

[98] I want to read you one quotation from one of Hamilton's letters.

[99] When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits, despotic in his ordinary demeanor, known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty, when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity, to join in the cry of danger to liberty, to take every opportunity of embarrassing the general government and bringing it under suspicion, to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day.

[100] It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct.

[101] the whirlwind.

[102] So I don't want to accuse the founders of naivete about people like Donald Trump.

[103] They knew exactly what kind of person they were trying to keep out of the halls of power.

[104] And it was him, and they could describe him with remarkable precision, at least Hamilton could.

[105] I think the sense in which Christie is right is that they didn't imagine that open felonies would be part of that despicable character.

[106] But they were very afraid of the demagogue.

[107] It was one of their main anxieties about in designing a government.

[108] Fair point.

[109] Okay.

[110] So I did think it was interesting that Chris Christie, again, made it clear that he was not to endorse Nikki Haley, who did raise her hand there, and who has been really unwilling to go after this question of character, unwilling to say that, you know, a criminal, someone like Donald Trump, you know, an inveterate liar, should not be president.

[111] What do you mean, Charlie?

[112] She's said very clearly that chaos follows him wherever he goes and that, you know, and she just follows him.

[113] She just, he's the object of the sentence, not the subject.

[114] It's as though it's just something that happens to him.

[115] I don't see why you don't think that's adequate.

[116] Well, okay, let's play what happened last night during this sort of, you know, fake debate, this faux debate that took place last night on CNN between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.

[117] This was the first chance they had to speak after Chris Christie pulled out of the race and kind of threw down the gauntlet about Trump's fitness.

[118] And Jake Tapper posed this question directly.

[119] So listen to the way Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis answer the question about Trump's character.

[120] A Governor Christie dropped out of the race just a few hours ago.

[121] He said the most important issue is, quote, the character of the candidate.

[122] Governor Christie also said he ran because he knew he would be the only Republican candidate to speak the truth about former President Donald Trump.

[123] Do you believe Donald Trump has the character to be president again?

[124] Well, I think the next president needs to have moral clarity.

[125] I think you need to have moral clarity to understand that it's taxpayer money, not your own money.

[126] I think you need to have moral clarity to understand that when you're dealing with, dictators in the world that we always have to fight for democracies and human rights and protecting Americans and preventing war.

[127] And so when you look at Donald Trump, I have said, I think he was the right president at the right time.

[128] I agree with a lot of his policies, but his way is not my way.

[129] I don't have vengeance.

[130] I don't have vendettas.

[131] I don't take things personally.

[132] For me, it's very much about no drama, no whining, and getting results and getting them done.

[133] So I don't think that President Trump is the right president to go forward.

[134] I think it's time for a new generational leader that's going to go and make America proud again.

[135] That's what I'm going to try and do.

[136] Governor DeSantis, what is your response to Chris Christie?

[137] Do you believe Donald Trump has the character to be president again?

[138] Well, I'm running because I'm the guy that's going to be able to engineer a comeback for this country.

[139] I appreciated what President Trump did.

[140] But let's just be honest.

[141] He said he was going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it.

[142] He did not deliver that.

[143] He said he was going to drain the swamp.

[144] He did not deliver that.

[145] He said he was going to hold Hillary accountable.

[146] And he let her off the hook.

[147] He said he was going to eliminate the debt and he added $7 .8 trillion to the debt.

[148] So we need to deliver and get this stuff done.

[149] Okay.

[150] So it's like both of them were up there and they press the button of their usual recycled talking points.

[151] But there is exactly what Chris Christie is talking about.

[152] Nobody else is actually willing to even come close to addressing the question of Donald Trump's character.

[153] Dan, your thoughts.

[154] And it is notable that Chris Christie was pulling so low that he had to drop out.

[155] This started as a pathology of Donald Trump and has been exported to be a policy of MAGA.

[156] And then MAGA has exported it to be a pathology of the Republican electorate.

[157] And I really don't know what you do about that.

[158] That's kind of Sarah Longwell's job.

[159] But I remain shocked by it.

[160] And I remain shocked by, you guys ran a piece, I'm not going to name names in this, but about an old friend of mine, an old and close friend of mine, wondering about what had happened to him.

[161] And I have wondered about the same thing, about the same person.

[162] And there are a lot of people who should know better, who are incapable of saying the words, or even feeling the feeling the feeling that would lead you to speak the words, this is unacceptable.

[163] And it is unacceptable for any political party in a two -party system.

[164] It's a little bit more acceptable in, you know, parties that have a more diversity of, it's a little more harmless.

[165] But in a country with a two -party system, you cannot have one of those two parties be at war with the idea of democratic self -government and it is unacceptable that neither Nikki Haley nor Ron DeSantis can bring themselves to say, I will not be part of a party that does not embrace the ground rules of life in a democratic society.

[166] And by the way, that would be true if Donald Trump were not there at this point.

[167] This has been going on now for nearly eight years.

[168] And it's interesting you would say that your disillusionment about your friend because it's been happening for so long.

[169] And yet it's still, I have to say, still shocking when we see this kind of invasion of the body snatchers, you know, one person after another who knows better.

[170] Who knows better?

[171] It feels like five minutes ago, the question, would you support a convicted felon to be president of the United States would be laughably easy to answer?

[172] It would not be controversial.

[173] There would be no chance that a serious political party or even any member of that party would say, yes, absolutely, I am comfortable.

[174] with, you know, running under the banner of somebody who is literally a convicted felon.

[175] And now it is boilerplate.

[176] It is required now.

[177] Even Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, who has endorsed, been very critical of Trump, endorsed Nikki Haley, last night tells Caitlin Collins, yes, I will support him even if he is a convicted felon.

[178] I mean, Ben, this is still, even after all these years, it's still shocking.

[179] It is the Eugene Ayanesco play Rhinoceros, which was written a long time ago about a different political ecosystem in which people turned into rhinoceroses.

[180] And it is notable that the Eugene Aienesco play Rhinoceros was considered absurdist theater, right?

[181] And now we are watching it in a very literal sense.

[182] Yes.

[183] And we're watching it, and have been for eight years, seven years, we're watching it happen to our friends.

[184] We're watching it happen to people we knew and respected.

[185] We are watching it happen to an entire political party.

[186] And we need to remember that the Eanesco play is absurdism, that this isn't the normal progression of events, right?

[187] And that we need to retain our ability to be shocked by it.

[188] Because the moment you accept it as not shocking, you've accepted that it has a legitimate place in the political system.

[189] We have to get to the cases, but I want to stick with UNESCO for a moment, because this is part of what contributes to that feeling you've taken crazy pills in the morning.

[190] Because, you know, you get up in the morning and you see the really the smart kids, the pundits saying, okay, well, let's now talk about, you know, Nikki Haley versus.

[191] Ron DeSantis in Iowa and what the implications are for the South Carolina primary and the New Hampshire primary.

[192] And I'm sitting there going, wait, wait, wait.

[193] Has anybody noticed that Fred over there has turned into a fucking rhinoceros?

[194] Right, exactly.

[195] There is a rhinoceros running through the halls of the hospital, people.

[196] No, as if somehow we are still in this normal world and nobody notices that the person sitting across the table from you has a fucking horn coming out of their forehead.

[197] Right.

[198] And it's like, excuse me, can I mention this?

[199] Well, you suffer from rhinoceros derangement syndrome.

[200] Right.

[201] Oh, God damn right, we do.

[202] Because you're a fucking rhinoceros.

[203] Right.

[204] No, that's what we need to do.

[205] We need to stage a Zoom reading of rhinoceros.

[206] Oh, my God.

[207] The bulwark community, and we can all get rhinoceros now.

[208] for the scenes where people turn into rhinoceros.

[209] Oh, God.

[210] Okay.

[211] Okay.

[212] Now, I'm looking at this piece from Adam Liptack in the New York Times, who wrote a great second -day take on Tuesday's extraordinary oral arguments for the D .C. Court of Appeals.

[213] And he starts the piece by noting that eight years ago, you know, even before the Iowa caucuses in 2016, Trump delivered one of his most famous lines, which has now become this kind of tired cliche.

[214] but he said, you know, I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and I wouldn't lose any voters.

[215] Well, what Liptack is pointing out is that his lawyer, John Sauer, basically made the same argument on Tuesday that the Constitution says the same thing.

[216] And so I played this yesterday for General Mark Hurtling, but I wanted to get your take on this, this amazing back and forth between Judge Florence Pan and the lawyer for the former president of the United States on this question about whether or not, this hypothetical, whether or not the president could order the murder of one of his political rivals.

[217] Let's play this again.

[218] And then on the other side, I won't get your reaction.

[219] Could a president order seal team six to assassinate a political rival?

[220] That's an official act in order to seal team six.

[221] He would have to be and would speedily be, you know, impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution.

[222] But if he weren't, there would be no criminal prosecution, no criminal liability for that.

[223] Chief Justice's opinion on murder against Madison.

[224] and our constitution tradition and the plain language of the impeachment judgment clause all clearly presuppose that what the founders were concerned about was not I asked you a yes nor yes or no question could a president who ordered seal team six to assassinate a political rival who was not impeached would he be subject to criminal prosecution if he were impeached and convicted first and so your answer is my answer is qualified yes there is a political process that have to occur under our or Constitution, which require impeachment and conviction by the Senate in these exceptional cases.

[225] Man, what just happened there?

[226] What did we just hear?

[227] Well, we heard a very capable appellate judge asking Donald Trump's very capable counsel, by the way.

[228] I thought Sauro did a fairly good job in this oral argument for the logical conclusion of his argument.

[229] And Sauerow being a good lawyer did not want to just say the word, yeah, he could do that without being prosecuted.

[230] And so he twisted himself into a little bit of a pretzel to try to obfuscate that that was exactly what he was saying, because that is, in fact, the logical implication of what the argument that Trump is making, that if any official act, and by the way, the special counsel's brief, written by the superb criminal appellate lawyer, Michael Dreuben, has a series of these hypotheticals, including using the State of the Union address to order the killing of members of Congress, because the State of the Union address is, of course, as an official act, right?

[231] Yeah.

[232] You know, they go through and they highlight the absurdity of these positions or this idea of absolute immunity for official acts, As I've said, in prior podcasts, I don't think the idea of some kind of qualified immunity for certain types of official acts is that crazy.

[233] And by the way, neither did Jack Smith's counsel in this same argument specifically reserved that question and said it's not present here and there are some really hard hypotheticals you could come up with.

[234] But the version of official immunity that Trump is proposing here is genuinely crazy.

[235] And dangerous.

[236] One reason that it's crazy is that it seems to be the position of the former president that the current president could have him killed with impunity as long as he lined up 34 senators, Democratic senators, to backstop him in the impeachment process.

[237] Now, I am not urging by any means Joe Biden to do that.

[238] But it is interesting that Donald Trump's view of the law is that he could do that without facing legal consequences for it.

[239] Okay.

[240] So there's zero chance that this appellate court is going to buy this argument.

[241] That is fair.

[242] But but Trump's main goal here, of course, I actually don't even think he thinks he's going to win this.

[243] But, you know, delay is central to his entire strategy.

[244] So here's the question about the timing.

[245] And I know you've talked about this.

[246] He's going to lose this ruling by the three.

[247] judge panel.

[248] He's going to appeal to the full court, you know, for an on -bound ruling.

[249] And then, and that will take a little bit of time.

[250] And then he will appeal to the Supreme Court, which that could take weeks.

[251] So time is Donald Trump's friend.

[252] Delay is his friend.

[253] Give me your sense of what the timetable might be here and whether he's going to be able to succeed in pushing off the one trial that I think poses the greatest existential danger to him in 2024.

[254] What do you think?

[255] I am optimistic on this score, but let me give you three different timeframes that are dependent on different factors.

[256] The one I think is most likely is that the D .C. Circuit rules within the next couple of few days and says no way, no how.

[257] And they might do that on jurisdictional grounds or they might do that on substantive grounds.

[258] those would produce a slightly different timelines, I think.

[259] And then they have the option, and the special counsel has asked them to accelerate the delivery of the mandate.

[260] And just for those who are not appellate law folks, when an appeals court rules, the opinion actually doesn't do anything.

[261] What does something is a document called the mandate, which is delivered to the district.

[262] court from which the appeal went and directs them to do whatever the opinion says it's going to do.

[263] Usually the mandate waits for, you know, like a month or two to give time for another appeal.

[264] The special counsel has said, can you please issue the mandate in five days?

[265] And so that would force if the D .C. Circuit did that.

[266] And I think it's likely because they know they're being taken advantage of here.

[267] That would force Trump to ask for an en banc review, the full court.

[268] or a Supreme Court review very quickly.

[269] The D .C. Circuit, full court, is not going to hear this case.

[270] That's just a stalling tactic.

[271] There's no chance of unbound review.

[272] No, because this is not a hard question.

[273] As long as the panel doesn't do anything wacky.

[274] And as you could tell from Florence Pan's question, the panel is not heading in a wacky direction here.

[275] So as long as that's the case, there's no chance of full court review.

[276] So then the question becomes, what are the chances that the Supreme Court is going to get involved here?

[277] And nobody knows the answer to that question.

[278] And so one time frame is they get involved and they take their time on it.

[279] And in that case, you could really push this thing off by a few months.

[280] The other possibility is they get involved and they deal with it on a highly expedited basis, the way they're dealing with, for example, the Colorado matter, which they granted cert in between the last time we talked and now.

[281] And the third possibility is that they don't hear it at all.

[282] They also know they're being taken advantage of for stalling for time, and I am much less confident that they will not play ball with being taken advantage of than I am about the full D .C. Circuit.

[283] And so I think you have three different time frames, and they largely depend on, you know, whether the Supreme Court wants to not get involved at all, wants to get involved very quickly, or wants to get involved and slow the whole thing down.

[284] I think the most likely possibility is possibility, too, that we're looking kind of like at a month of Supreme Court review maybe max and then tanya chuckkin will be able to hold her trial that's my my best guess briefly uh the new york fraud trial we know how this is going to turn out really more or less closing arguments in the case yeah the suspense is killing me on this one jar yeah there's no suspense here but but i mean the closing arguments are today and when are we going to hear from the judge there about how large the damage award will be i don't think we know how long it's going to take, you know, district judges are the most powerful people in the world in the context of their specific cases, right?

[285] And so, you know, if he wants to deal with this quickly, he will deal with it very quickly.

[286] And by the way, needlessly pissing off your district judge by, say, going after his clerks, it's not going to affect the opinion, but it might light a fire under his ass to deal with it really fast, right?

[287] And also, we got to mention that there was a bomb threat at the court this morning before we began recording all of this.

[288] So Tanya Chutkin was, there was an attempted swatting of her the other day.

[289] And kudos to the law enforcement in Washington for, it sounds like, handling that very well and with a lot of sophistication, a bomb threat to Judge Angoren, you know, it is a bad environment and it's going to get worse and we all need to be savvy to that and very respectful, I think, of what these judges are doing.

[290] You know, it reminds me a little bit of Columbia in the 90s when it's a little bit of a precursor to the sort of campaign of terror that Pablo Escobar ran against the Colombian judiciary.

[291] Eventually, judges started sitting anonymous.

[292] with masks, you know, not rhinoceros masks.

[293] This kind of behavior leads to very, very bad places.

[294] Including for Pablo Escobar, by the way.

[295] Worth mentioning that.

[296] I will assume that Donald Trump's incitement of this stuff is something short of what Pablo Escobar was doing, which was ordering it.

[297] And it was actually the murder of murder and bombing of judges and stuff.

[298] So I don't want to draw a moral equivalence.

[299] want to do.

[300] But that said, incitement against judges and their staff is really, really, really fucking bad.

[301] And it does have consequences.

[302] And so, look, I assume Judge Engoren is pissed off and righteously so and will want to say whatever he has to say in a timely fashion.

[303] Okay, so let's get to the, I don't know, how you even describe what's happening down in Georgia.

[304] I have not commented on this.

[305] I have not written about all of this.

[306] There have been serious.

[307] actually salacious allegations filed involving the most famous district attorney in the country right now.

[308] This is from the Atlanta Journal Constitution reporting that Fannie Willis allegedly hired her romantic partner to help prosecute the former president and then profited from the arrangement, her lover.

[309] Now, this is all contained in a motion filed by one of the MAGA defendants in the Fulton County racketeering case.

[310] His name is Michael Roman, former White House aide who worked as director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign.

[311] His alleged involvement is through helping Trump electors in battleground states.

[312] So this is a public filing, and it alleged, without offering any proof that special prosecutor Nathan Wade, a private attorney who was brought in to lead the racketeering case, that he, Nathan Wade, paid for lavish vacations that he took with Fannie Willis using the Fulton County funds his law firm received.

[313] New York Times reported Other private attorneys have been brought in for the racketeering case.

[314] So Trump, of course, is making a big deal of this.

[315] He's crowing about the allegations on social media.

[316] Fox is heavily promoting this story on Tuesday.

[317] Trump sent out a fundraising email claiming the case must be thrown out all in caps and saying that Fannie Willis had reportedly used the phony scheme against me to hire her lover in A, all caps, self -enrichment scheme of more than half a million caps dollars.

[318] So, Ben, what do we make of all of this?

[319] If true, big, how should we regard this?

[320] What does this mean for the case?

[321] If anything?

[322] I have only two things to say about it at this stage.

[323] The first is that I am refraining from discussing it until Fonnie Willis has a chance to file a brief in response to this motion.

[324] These are unconfirmed allegations made by a defendant in a case that she's prosecuting.

[325] I have no basis in which to evaluate them, and I don't think it is responsible to speculate about whether they're true or anything like that.

[326] If they are true, they are serious, not because you're not allowed to have an affair with a special prosecutors, but because, you know, you are the custodian, among other things, of public funds, and routing public funds to your significant other is a real no -no.

[327] And there are allegations in here that would be quite serious, if true.

[328] They are not allegations, by the way, that obviously affect the integrity of her case.

[329] That's the key question for the rest of us, I think.

[330] And so I will content myself with saying, I don't want to discuss the allegations until she's had a chance to address them.

[331] They're potentially serious misconduct, but she should address them in a timely fashion.

[332] And so that's the first thing.

[333] The second thing is, this is the Pete Struck Lisa Page playbook all over again, irrespective of whether the allegations are true.

[334] Remind people what that is.

[335] Disclosure, both Pete and Lisa are dear friends of mine.

[336] Pete was working on the Russian investigation.

[337] Lisa was a staff member to the deputy director, and they were sending text messages to one another, during some of which were ill -advised.

[338] The revelation of those text messages by the Justice Department, which gave them out to the press in a shocking set of acts of official misconduct, frankly.

[339] Was that Bill Barr or Jeff Sessions?

[340] did that.

[341] Actually, it was under Rod Rosenstein, who was acting attorney general for purposes of the Russia investigation.

[342] It had no bearing on the integrity of the Russia investigation.

[343] But Trump made so much of this.

[344] He made this into this just massive global story.

[345] They had live readings at various maga events of the text messages.

[346] He was obsessed with it.

[347] And they managed to change the subject.

[348] Which is always the point.

[349] Instead of talking about what was at issue in the Russia investigation, they managed to talk about Pete and Lisa and their text messages.

[350] And Trump read their text messages or pretended to read their text messages out loud while pretending to have an orgasm at a rally.

[351] Great moment in presidential rhetoric.

[352] Absolutely.

[353] Yes.

[354] I mean.

[355] The only thing I'm really willing to say about it at this time is do know.

[356] let the misconduct, if there was misconduct by Fannie Willis and or Nathan Wade, distract you from the allegations in the indictment unless and until somebody shows you how the alleged misconduct materially affects or undermines the allegations in the indictment.

[357] We're going to have to see how this plays out.

[358] You know, Donald Trump's campaign, the larger campaign, to discredit all of the prosecutions, in fact, to discredit the entire judicial process, that's going to be a theme of the entire year.

[359] And I think we're going to have a hangover for a long time.

[360] And unfortunately, these allegations, if they are proven to be true in part or in whole, will, of course, you know, help him do that.

[361] The damage, the blast radius of this is far more than Fulton County because what he's kind of hoping is that the voters will look at all of the charges and allegations against him and say, well, it's all political, it's all, you know, brought by, you know, corrupt individuals from the deep state.

[362] And if he succeeds in order to save his own ass in convincing people that we don't believe prosecutors, juries, judges, any of this, then the damage is going to be.

[363] be significant and it's going to be long -lasting.

[364] And that is his project.

[365] And that's why your point about distraction, you know, central to his strategy is not just delay, but it is also this massive distraction and then the delegitimization of the entire criminal justice system.

[366] And that is why it is really important not to let the struck page playbook prevail.

[367] I will not engage over Fannie Willis's sex life until there is a reason to either because of the integrity of that office and there's some reason to think she did something wrong in her public function or because it affects this case somehow.

[368] Otherwise, let's wait until she has a chance to respond.

[369] Fair enough.

[370] Let's leave it there.

[371] Ben Wittis is editor and chief of Lawfare Senior Fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and the recent recipient of the Golden Heart Award from the President of Ukraine.

[372] Ben, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today.

[373] Hey, man. It's great to see you, and we will be back next week, and we will do this all over again, by which time I think we will have some Supreme Court briefs to talk about in the Colorado Section 3 case.

[374] Extraordinary.

[375] Thank you all for listening to today's Bullwork podcast.

[376] I'm Charlie Sykes.

[377] We'll be back tomorrow and do this all over again.

[378] The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.