The Crazed Slavering Jackal Caucus

[0] Donald Trump faces four different indictments in more than 91 felony cases, but I think it's pretty obvious by now that it is the New York civil case that is causing the former president to lose his shit.

[1] Welcome to a new episode of the Trump trials with Ben Wittes, editor -in -chief of lawfare.

[2] Look, we have to talk about what's going on with Donald Trump, the attacks on the attorney general, the gag rule from the judge.

[3] I mean, that's pretty amazing.

[4] But can we just start with something a little bit different?

[5] By the way, first of all, Good morning, Ben.

[6] How are you?

[7] I am thriving.

[8] It's a great day in Washington.

[9] Okay, well, thriving is pretty good.

[10] What is the opposite of thriving?

[11] I need a segue into the Rudy Giuliani development.

[12] Oh, well, you know, I was going to contrast it with Kevin McCarthy, who is not thriving.

[13] I think you could even say the opposite of thriving is Rudying.

[14] Yeah, okay, so let's talk about Rudy.

[15] Okay, so there's a justification for talking about this.

[16] It turns out that the special counsel, Jack Smith, is actually looking into Rudy Giuliani's drinking, which apparently is notorious.

[17] Apparently, it's the worst kept secret in the world, in New York, and Mago World.

[18] The guy drinks at parties.

[19] He drinks at 9 -11 commemorations.

[20] He drinks before he goes on TV.

[21] He drinks before he has press conferences.

[22] He drinks before he sexually harasses his aides.

[23] And apparently, what Jack Smith wants to know is, was he drinking before he gave the president of the United States his considered legal advice?

[24] because, of course, Trump might say, well, I was just relying on advice of counsel, even though counsel was falling down drunk.

[25] Well, Rudy is very upset about this, particularly this New York Times deep dive that talks about all of the times that he was falling down drunk.

[26] In fact, it got so bad, apparently, that his friends would kind of warn people.

[27] I would tip their hands up and go kind of like this, like, hey, you know, I want to steer clear of America's mayor right now because he's had a couple of two.

[28] Yeah, he's been overserved.

[29] So, Here's Rudy.

[30] Rudy is absolutely incensed, says, who would possibly think that I have a drinking problem?

[31] Here's Rudy.

[32] Do you have a possible problem with alcohol?

[33] Maybe I should sue him for that.

[34] Yeah, I will comment that if I have an alcohol problem, I should be in the Guinness Book of World Records.

[35] 79 years old, and I'm an alcoholic.

[36] You know how much I've accomplished?

[37] If I had an alcohol problem and I could do all of that, I should be in the Guinness Book.

[38] Book of Records.

[39] Okay, so, Ben, I'm thinking that he might make the Guinness Book of World Records, but maybe not for the reasons that he thinks.

[40] Yeah, so I want to tell a sad story about Rudy Giuliani.

[41] And there are so many.

[42] Yeah, well, this one's going to make you sad, Charlie.

[43] So I, the other day, was at Ground Zero.

[44] I was at the museum for the swearing in of a bunch of intelligence officers.

[45] the agency in question does these swearing in at ground zero.

[46] And as part of the program, they showed this movie they had made of a whole bunch of leaders, including George W. Bush and Condi Rice and Andy Cardi and Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki sharing their memories of that day.

[47] It was not made super recently, but, you know, judging from the appearance of George W. Bush, it's relatively recent, right?

[48] And Giuliani was articulate and thoughtful and interesting, and he, you know, remembered individual officers who were killed by name.

[49] It was like this throwback to who he was when we remembered him.

[50] It was made, I want to say, between five and 10 years ago, but not between 10 and 15.

[51] You know, what's happened to Rudy Giuliani is relatively recent, and our sense that he used to be somebody substantial is right.

[52] He used to be somebody substantial, and he has self -consciously destroyed himself.

[53] And what percentage of that problem is an alcohol problem versus a moral problem versus a cognitive decline problem?

[54] I really don't know, and I'm not qualified to say.

[55] But I was really struck by how different the person that was on this video was from the Guinness Book of World Records asshole who you just played.

[56] That is a sad story.

[57] But obviously, this is going to play a role in the various Trump trials.

[58] I can't imagine that anybody at this point is going to call him as a witness because America's mayor now, maybe America's most unreliable.

[59] liable witness.

[60] And who's going to put them on the stand at this point?

[61] And I do think the New York Times, what he calls hit job, is homing in on a very interesting point, which is that Trump's defense, to the extent he relies on an advice of counsel defense, which is complicated defense to begin with.

[62] But, you know, the government is going to respond to that by saying, okay, well, which counsel, Right.

[63] And you have, on the one hand, you have all the respectable lawyers of the Justice Department, no, all the respectable lawyers of the White House counsel's office, all the respectable lawyers of the Trump campaign, all saying the same thing, which is you can't do this.

[64] And then you have these individual cherry -picked lawyers, one of whom there's testimony was evidently inebriated at the time he's giving the legal advice.

[65] one of whom Sidney Powell, Trump himself, describes as a bit crazy.

[66] And so I think part of what the prosecution is doing here is being able to have a response to the advice of counsel, which is, yeah, but which counsel?

[67] Was it the person you described as nuts?

[68] Was it the person your campaign manager said was evidently inebriated the night he gave you that legal advice?

[69] Was it John Eastman, who's facing disciplinary proceedings right now?

[70] There's a choice of counsel issue here that I think they're trying to set up that says, okay, you don't listen to the crazy, the drunk and the disbarred or the soon -to -be disbarred over the respectable lawyers because you're persuaded by their legal advice.

[71] You do it because of motivated reasoning.

[72] So I want to get to what's going on in New York in just a moment, but since you mentioned the crazy and the drunk, this inevitably brings us back to the House GOP.

[73] And what you very colorfully called in your wonderful newsletter this morning, the crazed slavering jackal caucus of the House Republicans.

[74] Now, the crazed slavering jackal caucus, of course, is at least eight members led by Matt Gates.

[75] I mean, it changes in its composition.

[76] It may not be huge, but they're big enough to stop the majority of Republicans from doing anything remotely rational, right?

[77] I mean, so that's kind of, that's kind of their thing.

[78] So the total size seems to vary from three or four to about 20.

[79] If you look at the votes back in January, the number of people who make threats, the number of people who, but it, you know, it grows and shrinks depending on the specific vote.

[80] It does tend to be always led by Matt Gates, although sometimes it's led by Jim Jordan in certain contexts.

[81] So, you know, exactly who is the, what the composition of it is.

[82] I think it's a little bit, it's not like, you know, the Congressional Black Caucus, which has a membership.

[83] Right.

[84] It's, you know, there's a pack of jackals, and sometimes they're feeding on the carcass of a wildebeest, and sometimes they're not, and sometimes they go off to get a drink of water or something, and they seem a little bit less slavering because they wash the blood off of their muzzles.

[85] Right.

[86] But there's some group of them, and the key definitional aspect of this is, number one, their demands are irrational, and the Republican caucus cannot meet them.

[87] And they don't give a shit, whether it says everything on fire.

[88] And number two, and this is the only reason they're important and that we don't think of them in the same way that we think of the.

[89] criminal caucus, right, which is also a feature in the House of Representatives.

[90] The reason is is because without them, the Republicans don't have a majority.

[91] Right.

[92] And so what's going on now is the mainstream Republican caucus.

[93] The mainstream caucus here includes some crazy people.

[94] Right.

[95] But what defines them as the mainstream is that they will vote as required by the party for party functionality.

[96] Right.

[97] So for this purpose, Jim Comer, I think, is that.

[98] is part of the mainstream.

[99] Marjorie Taylor Green is part of the mainstream.

[100] We've dumbed down the standards for mainstream.

[101] Dumbed down, just defining deviancy down rate.

[102] But we're being political scientists here.

[103] We're not passing judgment on anybody's beliefs.

[104] Some crazy people can be part of the mainstream if they vote with the mainstream caucus.

[105] The mainstream caucus now has to decide, do you continue doing business with the jackals or do you now do business with the Democrats?

[106] And that's what's fundamentally at issue in the current shenanigans.

[107] You gained it out.

[108] I mean, here's the dilemma that Republicans have, is in order for any successor speaker to get 218 votes, you either have to have the support of the craze -slaubbering jackal caucus or you need Democratic votes.

[109] And either one is pretty difficult because in order to get the Jackal Caucus, obviously you have to continue to make concessions and surrenders to the same lunatics that just blew the place up.

[110] right?

[111] Right.

[112] So that's kind of a non -serder.

[113] Or you have to kind of deal with Democrats, which would require you to make also lots of concessions that would be unacceptable to the base and, of course, to the Orange Caligula down in Mara Lago.

[114] So they are really in a tough situation.

[115] You are gaming all of this out in your newsletter.

[116] I don't know what's going to happen.

[117] Nobody knows what's going to happen.

[118] It seems reasonable to think that this might drag on past next Wednesday.

[119] So at the end of the day, let's set aside the fan fiction.

[120] It's not going to be Donald Trump, even though Marjorie Taylor Green wants it to be Donald Trump.

[121] It's not going to be him, but also it's not going to be Hakeem Jeffries.

[122] There's not going to be a scenario in which five Republicans say, hey, you know what, we're so sick of these people.

[123] We're going to vote with the Democrats and elect the Democratic leader is speaker.

[124] So those two things are not going to happen.

[125] Do you agree?

[126] I agree.

[127] I think the range of possibility is either the Republicans unite behind a single.

[128] candidate, probably Steve Scalise, and that would happen because the Cray's Jackal Caucus decides that if we force them into the hands of the Democrats, we're going to lose all our power.

[129] Right.

[130] So, you know, extort what you can from Steve Scalise and then get behind him, much as they did for nine months with Kevin McCarthy.

[131] That's possibility number one.

[132] Possibility number two is we have a protracted period of testing, whether there's anybody they will get behind.

[133] We find out the answer is no. And then two things happen roughly at the same time.

[134] One is that the Democrats start to get anxious because they actually care whether we shut down the government.

[135] They actually care whether we pass a Ukraine supplemental.

[136] By the way, taking off my political science hat and as an advocate of Ukraine funding, it's a disaster if we don't pass a Ukraine supplemental.

[137] And so I think there would be a lot of Democrats who will react the same way and say, we actually have to have a leadership.

[138] We actually have to have a speaker so we can do some of these things.

[139] And around the same time that they're having that realization, the Republicans are having the realization that there is literally nobody in the caucus who can get 218 votes.

[140] And at that point, you would have to have a negotiation about which moderate Republican making what promises to the Democrats could enough Democrats get behind to be plausible.

[141] And that's a very tough and negotiation that I don't think any of us really knows what it looks like.

[142] No, nobody knows what it looks like.

[143] And this is why part of me thinks that this guy Patrick McKenry is going to stick around for a lot longer.

[144] You know, he is the interim speaker.

[145] In theory, he doesn't have any power to do anything, even though he's been, you know, actively kicking Democrats out of their offices.

[146] But at some point, just the status quo, the guy that happens to be sitting there maybe the easiest option for them.

[147] But again, I don't know.

[148] What I do know is that when we're talking about the crazed slavering jackal caucus, we know who the cheap jackal is at least this week.

[149] And it is Matt Gates.

[150] To give you just a sense, I mean, we've talked about this before that Matt Gates is the most hated man in Congress, the most hated man in Washington.

[151] So the question is, so Charlie and Ben, how much do they hate this guy?

[152] Okay, this is a Republican U .S. Senator talking to CNN's Manu Raju.

[153] It is Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma, and he's talking about Matt Gates.

[154] I mean, think about this is the way a Republican senator is talking about a Republican congressman.

[155] Listen to this little tidbit.

[156] And again, for those of you, the thing, hey, Rudy Giuliani's drinking problem is really serious.

[157] Trust me, this one actually may be worse.

[158] We had all seen the videos he was showing on the house floor that all of us had walked away of the girls that he had slept with.

[159] He'd brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.

[160] I am sorry.

[161] I apologize for putting that image in your minds.

[162] Matt Gates crushing Viagra mixing it with energy drinks so he could go all night.

[163] So that is, I actually didn't need that, Charlie.

[164] No, we did.

[165] No one.

[166] America does not need this.

[167] But it's just a reminder that these are the people we have empowered.

[168] These are the people who are influencing our government.

[169] These are the people who are raising the question about whether or not America is an ungovernable republic anymore.

[170] Because apparently when he's not going after interns, popping blue pills.

[171] mainlining Red Bull, he's deposing speakers of the House of Representatives.

[172] And we live in such a serious country, don't we, Ben?

[173] It's a serious country.

[174] It's a morally serious place.

[175] And this is what the decadence before the fall looks like.

[176] I mean, you know, the visigoths are coming down the Appian way and we're partying.

[177] Okay.

[178] When you listen to my podcast with Tim O 'Brien from Bloomberg yesterday, because he made the same analogy.

[179] He said, this kind of feels, you know, decline of fall of Roman Empire -ish.

[180] Well, I did listen to that.

[181] I wasn't self -consciously referring to it.

[182] But I was, I liked Tim, and I think it does have that feel of Alaric the first.

[183] Could be 10 miles away, but we've got our little scores to settle here.

[184] Yeah.

[185] It's either the fall of Rome or it's the Weimar Republic, you know, because at some point it's the decadence and there's the comedy and there's the beavis and butthead stuff.

[186] And then, of course, we go off to the beer garden and somebody stands up and sings the future belongs to me. And the truth is that...

[187] To reference to cabaret, great scene.

[188] Look it up.

[189] Google it.

[190] Cabaret, the future belongs to me. I'm sorry.

[191] All right.

[192] Look, you know, Babylon, Berlin, there's a reason that show is...

[193] Oh, it's so wonderful.

[194] So poignant to us right now.

[195] It's the opposite of the French.

[196] The French village.

[197] The French village is what happens after the Nazis come in.

[198] This is what happens before the Nazis come in, right?

[199] What Berlin was like.

[200] And it's a wonderful piece of work.

[201] Okay, so let's go back to New York and Donald Trump losing his shit.

[202] We know a lot of things that happened.

[203] That's a technical term, by the way.

[204] This is, I believe, the technical term.

[205] I believe that's taken from an opinion by Justice Scalia.

[206] No, I'm just making that up.

[207] So can I just do a little bit of a reading from the various rants because a dramatic reading yeah yeah so you saw this morning he actually put out all in caps help exclamation point which is like kind of pathetic and angry at the same time he writes the ridiculous ag case against me in new york brought by the racist and incompetent peekaboo james that's kind of in caps is being studied and mocked all over the world companies are fleeing exclamation point it and the highly political trump hating judge are destroying all in caps The image and reputation of the New York state legal system in courts, I don't even get a jury, which is kind of...

[208] Amazing what happens if you don't ask for one.

[209] Yeah, exactly.

[210] All the while, murders and violent crime, all in caps, hit unimaginable records.

[211] This is so bad for New York.

[212] Help.

[213] I am in a rat's nest of New York Democrat corruption.

[214] That's all in caps, too.

[215] A reason so many companies are leaving are racist attorney general.

[216] By the way, racist because Leticia James is black.

[217] That's a term he always used.

[218] All black law enforcement officials are racist in Trump lingo.

[219] Yeah.

[220] This case is a political sham.

[221] Sham is all in caps.

[222] I don't even get a jury.

[223] All in caps.

[224] He's kind of obsessed with that.

[225] Apparently, his attorney Alina.

[226] Alina Haba.

[227] Yeah.

[228] Has not explained to him that, yes, sorry, Mr. Trump with chairs in her eyes.

[229] I just didn't see that box that asked for.

[230] It's also not clear that they were entitled to a jury trial for other reasons.

[231] reasons.

[232] But he didn't, wasn't complaining about that, you know, three months ago when he could have filed a motion for one.

[233] Yeah.

[234] Okay.

[235] So Trump is obviously not having a good time in New York.

[236] And he's already lost this fraud trial.

[237] The judge in Guren, is that how we could pronounce it?

[238] And Gurn, you know, has made it very clear that he's not buying a lot of the bullshit that the Trump and his lawyers are spreading, including this, I think, was significant.

[239] This was the first real gag order slapped on him.

[240] So talk to me a little bit of a little bit of.

[241] about this.

[242] Trump had been attacking and mocking and doxing one of the court clerks.

[243] Right.

[244] Because, of course, he always punches down as far as he possibly can.

[245] And the judge told him stop it.

[246] He didn't stop it.

[247] And now he's threatening him with possible jail.

[248] So let's talk about that for a moment.

[249] I mean, first of all, this is an issue that is going to come up in every case.

[250] It's maybe not in South Florida, where Trump is counting on that judge to cut him every break.

[251] But it's a big issue in Washington where there's a pending motion for, as you correctly point out, not a gag order.

[252] You've seen similar attacks on the criminal judge in New York, as well as on Alvin Bragg and Letitia James.

[253] He has not interestingly attacked the white Republican appointed judge in Fulton County, Judge McAfee, who, by the way, is doing a superb job.

[254] Judge McAfee has been very impressive.

[255] But look, in each of these cases, Trump is going to push and push and push until somebody makes him stop.

[256] And Judge Chuck in in Washington is contemplating what to do.

[257] There's a motion that Trump has responded to very belligerently.

[258] But this judge has had enough.

[259] And, you know, it's not typical that you see this kind of thing in civil cases.

[260] But then again, it's not typical that you see this kind of behavior in criminal or civil cases, normally attacking the judicial system that could sentence you to prison or, in this case, deprive you of your ability to do business in the state of New York and take away a lot of property is a dumb move.

[261] but Trump's goal here is win the election and then make all of this stuff go away.

[262] You know, it's not to win by winning the litigation.

[263] And one reason he may be so frustrated in this case, and I'm speculating here, is that winning the election wouldn't make this go away.

[264] Well, and also it's about his money, and he is about his money.

[265] And, I mean, this is real stuff.

[266] Donald Trump can go to prison and be a martyr, but Donald Trump, who has to watch as they pull the law, letters off Trump Tower.

[267] Exactly.

[268] That's a whole different level for him.

[269] But also think about it from a winning the election standpoint.

[270] If you win the election, the federal cases one way or another go away.

[271] The Georgia case, well, it doesn't go away, but it gets probably almost certainly put on hold, right, because of the Supremacy Clause.

[272] Ditto the New York criminal case.

[273] But this civil case, if you lose Trump Tower, if Mara Lago gets, you know, seized by Letitia James, that's it.

[274] The president doesn't have a mechanism to undo that.

[275] Yeah.

[276] And so I think one of his sources of frustration may be just seeing the empire slip away in a fashion that there's no obvious way to undo.

[277] Yeah, there is no obvious way to undo it.

[278] Okay, so it seems that one of the themes, that's developing, though, in the litigation, which I think he's already lost, is his argument that this wasn't fraud.

[279] It was just embellishment.

[280] So let's talk about that a little bit, because the whole question of valuing real estate is a little bit tricky, right?

[281] I mean, it's not a science.

[282] It is an art. There are a lot of suggestions that a lot of New York real estate folks probably either had inflated the value of their property when they wanted to get loans.

[283] deflated the property when they wanted to avoid paying taxes.

[284] So talk to me a little bit about embellishment versus fraud and how this is going to play out in this particular case.

[285] Okay, so I want to make two distinctions here.

[286] The first is the embellishment versus fraud distinction, but the second is the everyone does it distinction.

[287] Yes.

[288] Those are slightly different things.

[289] Right.

[290] And the everyone does it is, I think, about the New York real estate market, it probably true to a point, or at least a lot of people do it.

[291] But there's a difference between doing it a bit and doing it pervasively and in a sort of grotesque, fuck you, I can do this kind of way.

[292] And when you triple the size and value of the Trump Tower apartment, and you literally triple the square footage, that's not embellishment, that's lying.

[293] Yeah.

[294] And when you say that Mara Lago is worth $1 .2 billion, that's not embellishment.

[295] That's lying.

[296] And so there's a pervasiveness and an extremity to the way he did it that is kind of outside the margin of what I think everybody does.

[297] Now, separately from that, embellishment is I'm looking at this.

[298] lamp that there are 300 of them in the world and one of them sold for $100 ,000.

[299] So I'm going to value this lamp at $100 ,000.

[300] The other one sold at $10 ,000, but because one of them is, it's defensible, but it's kind of nonsense, right?

[301] And there's a lot of that.

[302] And, you know, there are a lot of appraisers in the world whose job it is is to, you know, sort of appraise high when the client's interest is for a high valuation and low when it's a tax thing.

[303] The individual decisions have to be defensible.

[304] And if they're not defensible, if you can't explain why you did it, it's fraud.

[305] Now, when I get the city real estate tax assessment for my house, that assessment is significantly lower in terms of the value of the house.

[306] And then when a real estate agent wants to sell my house and they're trying to get me to sell it and they'll say, oh, I can get you blah, blah, blah.

[307] And you say, and all of that is kind of within the reasonable margin of error, right?

[308] Yeah.

[309] But there's a difference between that and lying.

[310] And when you say that you're valuing this property that's rent controlled at X and such value, because if it weren't rent -controlled, that's what you could sell it for.

[311] That's just lying.

[312] It is rent -controlled.

[313] You can't rent it for that, right?

[314] And so I do think there is embellishment that routinely goes on.

[315] There is also a bit of everyone does it, and that's not what's going on here.

[316] We could spend the whole show on this, but let's talk about some of these other cases because down in Georgia, since you and I spoke last, there was a rather significant development.

[317] I want to get some sense of how big a deal it was.

[318] Scott Hall, a name that was, is not a household name, but he's a Georgia bail bondsman.

[319] That's because you're not a, you've never had to get a bail bond in Georgia, Charlie.

[320] See, that's my disadvantage here.

[321] I imagine that among the criminal class in Georgia, he is a household name.

[322] He's the guy you go.

[323] That's right.

[324] You have him on speed dial.

[325] There are a lot of people who have a bail bondsman on speed dial.

[326] Anyway, he was one of the defendants.

[327] He's charged alongside Trump.

[328] He pled guilty and he agreed to cooperate with the prosecutors.

[329] He was the first person to reach a plea deal in the case, you know, the whole racketeering conspiracy case.

[330] He was involved in this breach of election equipment.

[331] And he pleaded guilty last Friday to five counts of conspiring to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.

[332] And, you know, he got a sentence of five years of probation.

[333] But he also, this is the reason we're talking about it, he agreed to testify against any co -defendants in the racketeering case, the felony charges were dropped as part of the agreement.

[334] What's interesting is that he seems like a fringe character, at least on the outside, but as you drill down into it, he clearly had worked very closely with Sidney Powell.

[335] He had a 63 -minute phone call with Jeffrey Clark on January 2nd, 2021.

[336] He was described as our man in Georgia by some of these players in the White House.

[337] Jeffrey Clark being the guy that Donald Trump wanted to install as acting attorney general.

[338] So he was more wired in than I had realized before this plea.

[339] So your sense about the significance of Scott Hall flipping in Georgia?

[340] It's significant in three different senses.

[341] The first is that, as you say, Scott Hall is not a central player in this scheme, but he was around everybody.

[342] Right, right.

[343] And, and And if you read my colleague Anna Bauer's magisterial tome about Coffey County, the name Scott Hall comes up quite a bit because he's there.

[344] And being there makes you an important witness.

[345] As you say, he does have this phone call with Mr. Clark.

[346] He's present for the removal of material from the Coffee County Election Bureau.

[347] He's involved.

[348] And so his testimony is a significant thing.

[349] The second importance of it, which I think may be greater, is that the more people plead, the more other people will plead.

[350] There's a cascading effect when you have 17 defendants, or 18 defendants, which is that the deal is the best for the people who plead earlier.

[351] And the more they need you, the more they need your testimony, the more more generous the deal you're going to get.

[352] And Scott Hall got a pretty good deal.

[353] He got some misdemeanors.

[354] He's going to have some probation.

[355] He's going to have to write a letter of apology, but he's not going to prison.

[356] But the 11th person to plead doesn't get that good to deal because they don't need him as much.

[357] And so the first person who pleads sets off a little bit of a race.

[358] Who are the people who were going to get the better deals?

[359] And I would be surprised if you did not see some additional pleas over the next couple weeks before the case against Sidney Powell and Ken Chesboro goes to trial.

[360] So that's the second reason it's important.

[361] The third reason is important is that it shows that Fonnie Willis is capable of getting convictions.

[362] You know, when you bring a big case like this, you know, and it's really unclear whether you've shot the moon or whether you really engaged in a significant overreach.

[363] This is not a huge office with a lot of prosecutorial muscle to take on a big case like this.

[364] We've talked about this, whether it was a good move for her to be this grand about it.

[365] Well, one of these 17 -18 cases is now resolved and she got a conviction.

[366] And that, I think, is an important thing.

[367] Imagine now if four or five or six additional people plead out, you start to look like she knows, really knows what she's doing, and she's been a responsible actor.

[368] So I think the Scott Hall thing is a big deal.

[369] It's not a big deal by itself, but what it could lead to is important.

[370] You see, this is what's interesting, because I was among those who was concerned that perhaps she had bitten off too much.

[371] I mean, 19 indictments, but then again, you and others made the point.

[372] This Georgia RICO statute is pretty powerful.

[373] I mean, this conspiracy statute has been news in the past, she's been successful in the past.

[374] And when you indict that many people, you've also created that many potential people to flip, right?

[375] I mean, you indict people in order to put pressure on them.

[376] So as this plays out, that sense of like, wow, there are just way too many cases, way too many defendants.

[377] To your point, if you have a half dozen of them who decide to flip and become state's evidence, well, then that really does validate the whole strategy and reminds us this powerful legal weapon that she is deploying.

[378] Right.

[379] Look, the case looks very different.

[380] So Anna and I did an interview on the Lawfare podcast with Ken Chesbrough's lawyers, who, by the way, are an impressive group of people, and, you know, they made a very good case for their client.

[381] I thought it was a very good conversation.

[382] They are absent some plea going to trial on the 23rd of this month.

[383] So let's imagine two scenarios.

[384] One is that four or five, six people plead out between now and then, and Chesboro and Sidney Powell go to trial and get convicted.

[385] Fonnie Willis looks really different at the end of that than she does if nobody additional pleads out and Chesboro, I don't think Powell's going to get acquitted, but Chesboro, I think could get acquitted.

[386] So you have one plea and you take two people to trial and you lose one of them, right?

[387] That's a very different scenario than four or five, six pleas and you've got two convictions at trial.

[388] So I think people should really keep an open mind about Fannie Willis, but if you'd said to me last week, what would be a really good thing for her if we saw it happen?

[389] And I would say the big thing is, do people start pleading out?

[390] And somebody pleaded out.

[391] And it's not a trivial person.

[392] So my hat is off to her, not that I wear a hat, and we'll continue to see how it goes.

[393] Okay, so the next big development, feel free to disagree with me here, will be when Judge Chutkin decides what kind of a protective order, how hard to go with all of that.

[394] Do you agree with that, first of all?

[395] I agree that's one of the next big developments.

[396] I think the other one is whether Trump can either from her or from Eileen Cannon get a substantial delay either because of SEPA or some other motions practice.

[397] But the world is a different world if we have a trial in March and a trial in May than if we don't.

[398] Well, and obviously, Judge Chutkin is very aware of that.

[399] I don't know about Eileen Cannon.

[400] And, of course, that's one of her weapons to use against Trump that, okay, he doesn't care about being fun.

[401] He would play the martyr if you put him in jail, but if you hurry up the trial, that gets his attention.

[402] As you point out, that's very, very different.

[403] I thought it was interesting that how aggressive Jack Smith is being in these motions was a week ago, it was less than a week ago, I think it was on Friday, that he filed a motion specifically citing Donald Trump's suggestion that Mark Millie be put to death.

[404] Mark Millie is a potential witness in this case.

[405] So once again, Jack Smith is signaling as dramatically as possible.

[406] We are following everything you are saying, which you're putting out on social media, the comments you are making, and reminding the judge that the threat of violence and intimidation is very, very real.

[407] And so if you're Judge Chutkin, you have to be looking around at this entire situation and ask yourself, how great is the threat that he is posing?

[408] And the reality is that it doesn't take a massive amount of individuals to behave badly to put the court at risk, to port witnesses at risk, prosecutors at risk, and taint the jury pool.

[409] And in fact, the judge Shetkin has to walk around that courtroom with security, certainly is a pretty dramatic instance of the fact that this thing is real.

[410] This is a real threat.

[411] It's a very real threat.

[412] And as I said last week, all you have to do to understand it is to go to that courthouse.

[413] The security there is a very real thing.

[414] This is not the first time this court has had security issues.

[415] It's, you know, obviously a lot of high -profile cases in that court.

[416] But Tanya Chetkin, you know, is somebody who's going to require Marshall's protection for a good long time.

[417] And by the way, jurors and witnesses in that case are going to have security issues too.

[418] General Millie was very candid about that, that he would, you know, spend whatever money he has to spend to protect himself and his family.

[419] It's not cheap.

[420] And, And, you know, this is a tax that Donald Trump is capable of imposing on people by talking about them.

[421] And look, I mean, I'm sure you've had some security issues at times.

[422] I certainly have.

[423] You know, my car was defaced.

[424] And I've had interesting postcards show up at my house with pictures of Guantanamo Bay and stuff.

[425] You know, nothing terribly serious, but it's not a joke.

[426] And when Judge Chuck, and reads this briefing, she reads it with an awareness that this is about her and about the court personnel and about the safety of the witnesses and jurors that have to serve in her court.

[427] And that's a heavy responsibility.

[428] And I don't know how she's going to handle it.

[429] She has been a picture of thoughtfulness and care about it so far.

[430] And I, I do think it'll be very interesting to see what she does with it.

[431] All right.

[432] So what else are you watching this week, Ben?

[433] What else should we have our eyes on?

[434] I am looking for more pleas in Fulton County.

[435] I am looking for a ruling from Judge Chutkin on this question is now fully briefed.

[436] I'm also looking for a ruling from the 11th Circuit on these removal questions in the Mark Meadows case, which are under appeal.

[437] other than that, the big thing that's coming up, and, you know, we've got to get ready for this, is that there's actually going to be a trial in Fulton County starting at the end of this month.

[438] And, you know, jury selection in Fulton County can take a while, but the judge is saying he's going to get it done by November 7th.

[439] So, you know, we're going to have some trial coming up.

[440] There's a status conference, I think, before Judge Chutkin, I believe, next week.

[441] Oh, and the other thing that we're still waiting on is Trump's motions in the Chutkin matter.

[442] You know, he promised a big motion on executive immunity.

[443] That has not materialized.

[444] His lawyers were all over the television talking about the First Amendment and the advice of counsel defense.

[445] There's been no presentation of motions on those.

[446] And so I am still looking for the big.

[447] motion to dismiss from Donald Trump that explains why this indictment in Washington is legally defective.

[448] So I think there's a lot coming.

[449] I think October and November are going to be big months.

[450] And we will be here every week to talk about it.

[451] Ben, thank you so much for joining me on the latest episode of Trump trials.

[452] It's an honor and a pleasure, as always.

[453] And thank you all for listening to today's bulwark podcast.

[454] I'm Charlie Sykes.

[455] We will be back tomorrow.

[456] And next week.

[457] And we'll do this all over again.

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