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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
“This is The Big One”: The Third Trump Indictment
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“This is The Big One”: The Third Trump Indictment
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:15]
B
I know we have a big week here, but did you guys see that Mike Pence is now selling new hats and T shirts for his struggling presidential campaign and they say too honest.
- [01:29]
C
Oh, that is, that's, that's. I gotta say, that's pretty good swag.
- [01:34]
D
So cheesy. I mean, Honest Abe didn't have to sell hats that said Honest Abe. Okay. I mean, it's just like monetizing everything.
- [01:44]
B
Well, by the way, like Mike Pence has learned, you know, from his boss for years, what I want to know is, do you think that this is the new kind of even more sanctimonious, Mike Pence is here to stay. Is he actually going to keep wailing away on Donald Trump? Will he retreat to sycophantism?
- [02:02]
D
Might be just as accurate to have a hat that said too spineless. Some of the details from this indictment, which we'll get into, among them that were incredible to me were that he took notes that nobody, none of us knew about it before and that.
- [02:17]
C
But didn't, didn't call anybody, didn't dial nine One, one didn't do anything.
- [02:21]
D
Exactly.
- [02:22]
C
Took notes quietly and showed them to mother.
- [02:24]
B
Just to have the counterpoint here, Evan, like, okay, so you're the vice president. You've been sucking up to the president for four years. You're in the Oval Office. He's putting the squeeze on you to do something really, really illegal. Who are you supposed to call?
- [02:39]
D
Well, I tell you who they did call, which was amazing to me. They called security, Called security for themselves.
- [02:52]
B
Welcome to the Political Scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. For the New Yorker. I'm Susan Glaser and I'm joined by my colleagues Evan Osnos and Jane Mayer. Hi, Evan.
- [03:03]
C
Hey, Susan.
- [03:04]
B
Hi, Jane.
- [03:05]
D
Hey, Susan.
- [03:10]
B
Finally, on Tuesday, Donald John Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and remain in power. Just before we tape this, on Thursday, he pleaded not guilty to the charges in a Washington federal court. This is the third time that Donald Trump has been indicted. But I should underscore that this case against him is perhaps the most serious and far reaching yet, the first attempt, if you will, to get to the heart of the matter. So if you've been confused or overwhelmed by the seemingly endless parade of legal trouble that Donald Trump has faced in the last few years, now really is the time to pay attention. This is the big one. I thought I'd go ahead and start with a quote, actually a quote from a really remarkable document that I hope that everyone who's listening to this has taken some time to sit down and read. The 45 page indictment of Donald Trump. It's about as crisp of a summary of the remarkable events that unfolded after the election of 2020 that you can imagine. Here's sort of the key words in the preamble. The defendant spread lies. These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false. But the defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election. So we've all read this document. Evan, what are the key charges against Trump in this indictment, and how serious is this?
- [04:49]
C
Well, I think after all of these months of us wondering, how could you take something so vast, something that feels as grave to the republic as you can possibly conceive, how would you boil it down into a piece of paper? What we have is this extraordinary narrative, and that's really almost all it is. It's a narrative document that describes what happened over the course of this period, which is, of course, a conspiracy. That is what the indictment is about. There are four charges. The first count is conspiracy to defraud the United States, which is really about the effort to overturn the results of the election. That's the big and overwhelming piece of it and encompasses multiple elements. It's him trying to pressure Mike Pence to use powers that the Constitution doesn't give him in order to change and delay the counting of the votes. Then there's two counts related to efforts to obstruct the vote certification proceedings. That's really about January 6th. One is the actual effort of obstructing that vote certification, and the other one is a conspiracy to do so. And then the fourth count is conspiracy to violate civil rights. And in some ways, I think, Susan, that was the one that was a bit of a surprise to some of us. There was a hint that this was gonna happen. You know, this is a statute that go back all the way to the Civil War. It was created so that white Southerners, including members of the Klan, it was to prevent them from using terrorism to try to prevent formerly enslaved people from voting. But you saw over the course of the 20th century that that law became more broadly applied to cases of things like ballot box stuffing. So in this case, what it's being used to do is to say that by trying to, in a sense, create a false result in the election, that that is violating the civil rights of Americans. And I'll just add one other piece on this because this is sort of looming over all. Question is, how serious is it? Meaning what are the actual chances of this guy going to prison for these? Well, the four counts carry potential jail terms between five and 20 years. The conspiracy charges actually carry the longer terms. And the judge in this case, Tanya Chutkin, has already sentenced at least 38 people for crimes related to what happened on January 6th. And in all 38 cases, they received prison terms ranging from 10 days to over five years. That's according to the AP's accounting. So the idea that somebody is gonna get charged with these things and if he is found guilty of some of them, simply walk away, that seems less and less likely.
- [07:20]
B
This crime, if it's judged ultimately by a jury and by a judge to be a crime, that this crime took place in many ways in full view. Right. These are allegations that, by and large, we've known about, if not for the full two and a half years, for a lot of time. But. But there are new things that I gleaned and I Wrote a book about this and still found some new details here. But Jane, what do you make of it? I mean, what did you find that surprised you or that was new?
- [07:49]
D
I mean, for me, one of the most startling, it's a small bit, but I think an incredibly important bit is a little piece of dialogue that appears in it between Jeffrey Clark, who Trump tried to put in as acting Attorney General, and the Deputy White House Counsel, Patrick Philbin. And in this little snippet of conversation, Philbin says to Clark, if Trump persists in clinging to power and there's really no evidence of any kind of voter fraud, that would have changed the outcome, if you're gang tries to stay in this White House, there are going to be riots in every major city in America. And Jeffrey Clark responds, well, that's what the Insurrection act is for, meaning we can just roll the troops into the streets. There he basically is describing that they are anticipating a civil war. I mean, that they were talking about and thinking about using the military to support an illusion legal coup to keep Trump in power. That is about as dangerous as things get.
- [09:06]
B
Well, it really is. It also is very much in line with the evidence that is already on the public record, although not in this court case, as far as we know yet, but of the actual contemplation by Donald Trump of martial law in a five hour long meeting in the Oval Office, which was a remarkable event, I think, in the history of the republic that occurred in December of 2020. And Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell, among others were in this meeting at which they urged Donald Trump to declare martial law and seize voting machines in key battleground states and somehow rerun the vote, rerun the count. And what's amazing is that Donald Trump didn't do what any other president I think in our lifetime would have done, which is to say, get the hell out of my office. What are you talking about? I'm not gonna be contemplating Marshall. Instead, he seriously considered it. Evan, were there things that stood out as new to you in it?
- [10:03]
C
Yeah, I think the overall effect for me that was really striking was the effort fundamentally was to try to will this thing into reality. That's what was ultimately going on. If you see at one point on January 5, for instance, this is the same day that people are warning that there's gonna be riots in the streets. And yet Trump, there he is on Twitter at 11:06am saying the Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors. He had been told every which way that that wasn't true. And there is a point in here in the indictment where they just list every single relevant authority that told him that these things were false. The vice president, senior Justice Department officials, the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland securities, cybersecurity, chief White House attorneys, senior campaign attorneys. Over and over he was told. And of course, he went ahead with it anyway.
- [11:00]
D
I was going to say, in terms of whether, you know, whether he accepted that judgment or not from outsiders, one of the things that was interesting was there's a moment in the indictment where it describes a meeting with his national security advisers where he says, at some point, well, you're right, we won't have time to get to something towards the end of the administration. I'll leave it to the next guy. This is after the election. And so on some level, he. He obviously knew and accepted and even voiced acceptance that he realized he'd been defeated in the election.
- [11:33]
C
Oh, he'd said that a few times, too. I mean, at one point he said to his communications director, watching Biden on television, he said, I can't believe I lost to this guy. At another point, I mean, there's like these little moments of him uttering the truth almost inadvertently.
- [11:46]
B
Well, again, this is going to become, I think, in an actual trial proving that Donald Trump knowingly executed this fraud on the American people and this conspiracy. It rests on the idea of a. What's the testimony and evidence we have that Donald Trump told others that he knew, that he acknowledged his loss in some way. Right. Because that would be a key piece of evidence to show that he was then undertaking a fraud. And then the other way to do it, of course, is to show that he should have reasonably known that he was defeated. And that's where that long list of people, I think it's right there in the beginning of the indictment. Right, Evan, is a long list of, by name and title, the officials who told him this wasn't true, this wasn't true, this wasn't true, the rigged election didn't happen, and he seems to have simply gone shopping for this kind of rogues gallery of conspirators. Ultimately, who would tell him what he wanted to hear, who would tell him that he could keep fighting, who would offer him a legal theory when there wasn't one? In fact, there was a ruling in one of the many, many legal actions that January 6th has spun off. There was a ruling in one case in which one federal judge called what Donald Trump was doing a coup in search of a legal theory. So that brings us to the very fascinating element in this indictment. That there are six unnamed and so far unindicted co conspirators. Five of the six of them are lawyers. And so let's talk a little bit about that. Certainly everybody has been trying to figure out frantically who is conspirator number six. But let's talk about the first five for a second. Jane, do you want to give us the rundown on who numbers one through five are?
- [13:35]
D
Well, sure. Number one is Rudolph Giuliani.
- [13:39]
B
Appropriate, right, that he gets the top billing?
- [13:42]
C
You know, America, on some level somewhere, Rudy Giuliani's kind of, kind of satisfied by that, let's be honest.
- [13:50]
D
So we have Giuliani, we've got John Easterman, who is a very far right lawyer, who actually is tremendously credentialed in many ways. He was a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas and he has been at the Claremont Institute, which has really become kind of a fascinating hub. It's spitting out all sorts of pro Trump theories and evidently was very useful in coming up with these legal theories that would have justified Trump somehow staying in office and defying the election.
- [14:27]
B
Okay, that's one, that's two. What's three?
- [14:29]
D
Sidney Powell is number three. She is defined elsewhere in this indictment as part of a group of quote unquote crackpot lawyers, which that might be immortal words.
- [14:43]
C
Yes, that's him getting very sporty.
- [14:46]
D
He's getting sporty and actually maybe right on the nose here. She spun all sorts of completely untethered conspiracy theories about how the election had been stolen and the vote equipment had been rigged and whatever else, none of which has stood up to any testing. So that's Sidney Powell. Then we have Jeffrey Clark, number four, who is a fascinating sort of non entity of a lawyer for many years, a sort of a, you know, kind of a standard issue Federalist Society conservative in Washington, Washington law firm, who goes into the Trump Justice Department, eventually becomes head of the civil division. And he is the one who is the fan of the Insurrection act, saying, oh, well, if there are riots in the streets, that's what the Insurrection act is for.
- [15:34]
B
So, Evan, before we get to the mystery of number six, tell us about number five. Cuz I feel like this is actually one of the things that I did learn more about was the fake elector's plot. And that is the guy who's number five unindicted co conspirator.
- [15:49]
C
Yeah, a man named Kenneth Cheesebrough, who may not be a kind of household name in the way that some of these others have become, but he was an appellate lawyer who had studied, in fact, under Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Tribe. I mean, like some of these others he comes from has a kind of sterling pedigree, but he was the first person to suggest the idea that you could come up with these slates of fake pro Trump electors in the states that are very closely fought, and that you would seek to have them recognized by Congress on January 6th. Or short of that, that you would create enough confusion that you could justify the invention of a kind of forensic audit. We can't certify. We need to go back to the states. All of this in service of eventually having it resolved by pro Trump legislators. But to remind people, fake elector scheme was so crazy that it was literally, in some cases, people printing up election certificates on their home printers and purporting to be electors. That's the point in the process where Donald Trump is essentially asserting, to use an analogy here, that he's like, I am a guy who deserves to have all of the money in that bank. And you can say that your First Amendment allows you to say that as much as you want, but the point at which you then say to your friends, and now you should dress up as guards and go into the bank and obtain my money, that's the point when it's a crime. And that's why the fake electors are so important.
- [17:21]
B
Well, that's right. I think this is really important, Evan, that this is an action. These are not just words. Right. And to me, it's gone way beyond kind of crazy tweets or weird videos that you're posting on Facebook, all of which Donald Trump also did in the period after the 2020 election. How much do you think that that has assumed more prominence, though? You know, I have noticed, like, I think people dismissed it at the time, like, obviously, this is crazy. And yet here we are two and a half years later, and that's the action that prosecutors could put in this indictment. Right. To show that it wasn't just about criminalizing free speech, which is something, of course, we're already hearing, is going to be the main Trump defense from these charges.
- [18:05]
D
I mean, I think this is the important thing, that it's not just a matter of free speech. These are actual acts that were taken. And I think. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I actually found it very helpful to look at this indictment to see how coordinated the fake elector project was over. You know, the news of it broke sort of piecemeal. It was hard to follow all these different states. But you see here how it was Sort of centrally organized and how Trump.
- [18:33]
C
Was on board and that, I mean, in the language of the indictment, by the way, for what it's worth, that's what they call the manner and the means of the conspiracy. Those are the actions. That's the sausage in the casing. Otherwise, you don't actually have anything beyond speech. And that's what's such a crucial element of this case.
- [18:50]
B
All right, so then there's the mystery of unindicted co conspirator number six. Jane, what do we know about that unindicted co conspirator, and what do we think in terms of possible candidates? There have been a number of names circulating. Do you have a dark horse in this one?
- [19:10]
D
Well, I need to hear what you guys think. But the names that I have seen are Boris Epstein, who is a lawyer and advisor to Trump, and political operative, and the person is described as a political operative. Another possibility that I've seen floated is someone named Mike Roman, who also was a political operative involved in the Trump campaign. But Epstein seems to be the frontrunner.
- [19:37]
B
And by the way, he was accompanying Donald Trump to federal court today for his arraignment.
- [19:42]
C
And you know who was also there was Walt Nada holding the umbrella for Trump. It's just an impossible detail not to.
- [19:47]
B
Ask the actual indicted conspirator in the other Mar A Lago document case.
- [19:52]
D
Oh, my God.
- [19:53]
B
So, Evan, do you also think that the Epstein scenario is the likely one?
- [19:59]
C
Well, it does seem to be that if you're somebody who has done all the diagramming of different emails and who lines up with whom and where they are in the indictment and so on, that there are a couple of different trails that lead to him. We'll have to see if that's the case. But that is one name that you may be hearing more from.
- [20:15]
D
I mean, it's interesting as a strategy that you've got these unindicted co conspirators, including someone who's maybe even a mystery man. I mean, and evidently it's a legal strategy on the part of the prosecutors to try to streamline the case to make it move faster so that it doesn't get bogged down with too many people, too many defendants, too many lawyers, this is really an effort to try to, you know, get this thing rolling.
- [20:43]
C
And I think there's another element, too. Just one of the things they've said is that, you know, one of the reasons that you may put people in here is without naming them yet and without going forward is that that puts pressure on people to potentially become of use to the prosecution. And so this is, in some ways also can be. I'm not saying this is necessarily the strategy, but it is one of the things that a prosecutor can do is to give you essentially final warning. Hey, this is your chance. If you're trying to avoid prosecution, you now know that you're on our radar screen.
- [21:11]
B
Well, so that brings up Jack Smith and the special prosecutor who has made all these decisions. We're seeing him reveal some, but clearly not all, of his hand. He's now leading not one, but two federal prosecutions against Donald Trump. So what do you think, Jane, about Jack Smith and what we've learned about him so far?
- [21:31]
D
Well, one of the things I want to say about that is about these cases is obviously time is of the essence. I think it's highly possible that these trials won't take place until after the election, or at least the January 6th one. I mean, these are, you know, you can see that they're delaying tactics have always been Trump's first step whenever he's in trouble, and particularly in legal trouble. And I can imagine that this is, you know, you can see that this is going to be an issue already. But what have we seen of Jack Smith? I mean, obviously, he's not exactly a jokester. He's incredibly solemn. He is very terse in his delivery. Personally, I would be terrified to be prosecuted by him. This is someone who knows his business of prosecuting people. I have heard that he has, you know, in the past that he has overcharged people in the view of defense lawyers and overstepped, and that it actually weakened his case. So that's the wrap on him in some places that he's almost too tough.
- [22:42]
B
Evan, when he announced the charges, he certainly was terse. I think his statement to reporters lasted about all of a minute. He did call the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th one of the worst things that had happened in this country's history. And he said it was an attack. This stood out to me. That was fueled by lies. Do you think he's being controversial in the way that he's approaching this indictment? You listed the charges, one of the ones that wasn't on there was incitement to an insurrection.
- [23:13]
C
Yeah, that's a fascinating point, Susan. I think you hit on something that caught people's attention, which is that in his statement, he did, did, in a sense, invoke the full horror of January 6th and what it meant to us as Americans. But when you look at the indictment itself, the decision about what to charge somebody with is as important as what you don't charge somebody with. And in this case, I think we can't know, because one thing prosecutors never tell you about is why they didn't use a certain charge in this case, but they didn't charge him with incitement, which is a very specific set of cause and effects. They'd have to establish between what he did, what he said when he was giving his speech at the Ellipse. What else could he have reasonably expected his words to produce? And instead, what they did is they charged him with these two other things. One is the obstruction of the government process, which there's no question that happened because the vote was not certified until later that evening. It took hours and, of course, the conspiracy to bring all of that about. What we're witnessing here is, in a sense, an attempt to try to thread the needle, to try to achieve as much as you possibly can without running into what we know is going to be the defense's objection, which is this is all free speech.
- [24:32]
B
Well, that's a good note, I think, to take a quick break and to come back, because we should talk about the defense and talk about all of the overheated defenses of Donald Trump that have already been aired and what Donald Trump himself is doing in response to this third and most historic of the indictments against him. The Political Scene from the New Yorker will be back in just a moment. If you've been enjoying the show, as I hope you have been, please leave us a rating and a review on the podcast platform of your choice. And while you're there, don't forget to hit the follow button so you'll never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening.
- [25:19]
E
What the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun. I want a shark that, that eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [25:51]
C
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.
- [26:00]
E
Week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and Context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the big interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [26:31]
B
Jane let's talk about Donald Trump and what is his response to this unprecedented and really historic case that is now being launched against him, a former president essentially accused of trying to attempt a coup against his own democracy?
- [26:49]
D
I mean, I don't know that it's surprising because we've seen many other such responses from Trump, but he's gone to sort of DEFCON 10 at this point, where he literally invoked the Nazis and said that this prosecution was like something out of Nazi Germany. And he has, of course, cast himself as the victim, and he has tried to draw in his supporters by saying, if they take my freedom away, they are taking your freedom away, so that he can sort of keep them rallying with him to this cause. And he's basically doing what he always does, which is inverting reality and projecting onto the other side what his actions are actually part of, which is in this case, he keeps talking about weaponizing the Department of Justice. But the person who weaponized the Department of Justice, obviously was Donald Trump. When he promised Jeffrey Clark he was going to make him acting Attorney General to the White House. Jeffrey Clark described himself as acting Attorney General, but in fact, the top brass in the Justice Department said they would resign if it ever happened. But just the same, it was an effort by President Trump at the time to completely weaponize the Justice Department in service of his illegal coup.
- [28:18]
B
I think it's really notable, isn't it, Evan, that what we're talking about here is Donald Trump once again mounting a defense essentially in the court of public opinion. He is always aiming for the kind of litigate this in public, litigated on television. And that's the thing about him escaping accountability again and again and again. Like, finally, at a certain point, he's gonna have to amount an actual legal defense in the courtroom. So what do you think is gonna be his legal defense versus the flood of words that we're gonna experience in terms of his political defense?
- [28:55]
C
There are two strands of his likely strategy that we're beginning to see. One is this idea, and it's been pretty roundly disputed already, even in the indictment, that he was exercising free speech, that this was somehow his First Amendment right to go out and say that he won the election. But of course, as they say over and over. In fact, they say it explicitly in the indictment. They say that Trump does have a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim falsely that there was fraud. He's also entitled to mount the legitimate challenges, you know, go through the courts and so on. And then what you cannot do is what this cascade of events that we're seeing described, that's what you're not allowed to do. The other angle here, which I think is pretty provocative and interesting, is the idea that he's gonna say, I was just following the advice of counsel, you know, that these are. The lawyers told me to do this. John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani. You're gonna hear a lot of efforts to try to elevate those figures into rabbinical legal sages by Donald Trump and his defense lawyers. And I will say, from what you hear a little bit among other legal analysts, is that that is an angle that may hold some water. And the degree to which he can say, look, I thought I had legal counsel is gonna be a key question here. Even though, of course, we know that he was ignoring the real legal counsel of all the people in government who he'd appointed.
- [30:25]
B
On the lawyers, what do you think about this? Because one thing about Donald Trump is that he has so very many lawyers. And one of the amazing things that we learned this week, in fact, is that he spent tens of millions of dollars out of his Save America pack this year. So much money, in fact, that he's running out of money, and he's down to just $4 million cash on hand. So basically, he's raising money for his 2024 campaign that he's spending not on his campaign, but on his lawyers. And he has so many. Because he has so many different legal cases. And Jane, you followed the saga very closely of Donald Trump and his lawyers. The former Attorney General Bill Barr, who broke with Donald Trump over his false rigged election claims, going on television, on cnn. And one of the things that really leapt out at me in that appearance was when he said, you know, they asked if he had any advice for these lawyers defending Donald Trump, to Evan's point, in this case. And Bill Barr said, well, I would watch out, because you're likely to be a witness in the next one, and Donald Trump is gonna commit another crime and you're gonna be in the hot seat. So what do you make of, like, wow, that's like a full employment act, certainly for lawyers. Millions and millions of dollars here.
- [31:40]
D
You know, I think in some ways Will Hurd, who's one of the lesser known Republican candidates from Texas, put it best. He said, Trump's not running a campaign, he's running a fund so that they can pay his legal bills. It's hard to see where, you know, where the legal defense fund ends and the campaign fund begins. It's going to raise a bunch of legal questions. And I think the campaign Legal center has already raised questions about whether or not it violates various campaign finance laws to do some of the sort of fancy footwork he's been doing.
- [32:16]
B
It would be very on brand, wouldn't it, were the dispute over Donald Trump's legal fees in his multiple cases to generate another case, another indictment, another, like.
- [32:26]
C
A fractal, each one is sprinting off into creating its own independent case.
- [32:31]
B
Well, that's right. And so actually, that's why I've got to go back to this obsession of mine, though, which is the metastasizing cases and what they mean when they intersect with the political calendar. We are hurtling towards what appears to me to be another full fledged crisis. And I do think it will be a political crisis, a crisis of legitimacy. And I'm just, I look at this calendar and it's like I feel like we're hurtling over the cliff again. Evan, walk us through how you see this calendar working and what are some scenarios that are reasonable, because I feel like people have been in denial and now we have to just sit down and we have to look at it and we have to say, okay, here's a scenario. Here's what's gonna happen. Donald Trump is gonna lock up the nomination if he does it in a period of time that's like any other presidential campaign after New Hampshire, Iowa, Super Tuesday, that you're only in March. And very likely, given his dominant position, he could already be the nominee. Then what? What's gonna happen? Help me understand how we're even thinking about this.
- [33:35]
C
Well, right before we came in, Susan, to tape this, as you know, of course, he was in court, being arraigned in Washington. And one of the things that came out of that were a couple of interesting indicators about the schedule. We got a very clear sense from his lawyers. They basically said the sort of quiet part out loud where they said, we wanna make sure that we have adequate time to grasp the full scope of discovery. All of that is a way of them flashing a light to say, we're gonna try to slow this down as much as humanly possible. They don't want this to go to trial before the prosecution of course, is pushing for a speedy resolution in this case. And there is a question about what is the public's right to a speedy trial. It's not just the defendant's right to a speedy trial. Cuz he can waive that in this case. He certainly is. But the public itself, we the people in a sense have a right to see the resolution of these cases. And that's one of the things that you're gonna hear. But as a practical matter, this guy's supposed to be in court again this fall, Susan, for his civil case involving the New York State business records. There's also the Stormy Daniels case. There's also another case involving E. Jean Carroll, the writer who he is accused of defaming. And one thing we have to remember, we've talked about this on previous podcasts, but it's just worth remembering that in criminal cases you have to show up. In civil cases you don't necessarily have to be in the courtroom, but there is a scenario evolving where this guy is shuttling back and forth from Iowa to other primary and caucus states and then eventually appearing in his courtroom appearances along the way. It's bizarre. I mean, there's just no other way to describe it.
- [35:10]
B
It is bizarre. But I wanna press you on this because let's stipulate to all of the foregoing since we're now talking in lingo lingo here. But let's get back to the politics, Evan. There's no realistic scenario where these serious criminal cases are resolved before the voting. So then what? What's gonna happen?
- [35:28]
C
So, I mean, this is the part that is the hardest for people, I think, to sort of imagine you have a scenario where this man is conceivably he will be the nominee if it was held tomorrow. And it's worth reminding people this week we saw some analysis and some polls that point out that there has never been a front runner with this kind of lead who has then gone on to lose the nomination. So that is very much in his favor at the moment. If he gets the nomination and he goes on and in fact is, let's say he's elected president, he is in the position at that point of using his authority over the Justice Department. And as we know, he is willing to expand that authority in any way that he sees fit. And he could conceivably in a sense, force the Justice Department to drop all of these cases immediately. There's a lot of Republicans who will Hurd, as Jane mentioned a moment ago, has said pretty explicitly he thinks Donald Trump is running simply in order to have the power to be able to rescue himself from prosecution. What happens if he's then in office and then let's say the court does continue cause state cases cannot be thrown out by the president, let's say Georgia indicts him and then eventually sends him to prison? Well, he could in fact argue that that prison term is untenable because it would interfere with the conduct of the presidency. So there are a whole range of scenarios that are wild. But before we get too far out into the sort of constitutional sci fi, I think you have to acknowledge one thing that's fascinating that came out just in the hearing today, Susan, which is the judge said very explicitly and to people who have watched a lot of these cases, it was quite conspicuous. She said, I need to remind you that if you violate the terms of your release, you could be detained throughout the course of this case. And violating the terms of the release include, for instance, saying things that would seek to try to sway a jury or tamper with a jury or do things that could harm the prosecutors or the judge, any of that kind of stuff. You could have a scenario where all of a sudden, like Roger Stone or Paul Manafort, who really tested the outer limits of what a judge would accept, you could find Donald Trump conceivably detained in the course of these cases.
- [37:41]
B
All right, constitutional sci fi, Jim.
- [37:43]
C
That is wild.
- [37:45]
B
Constitutional sci fi.
- [37:46]
C
No, that's actually the much more term prospect.
- [37:49]
D
You do know that he'll never, he'll never have the self control not to slam the judge and end the process.
- [37:58]
B
They're not going to lock him up before he's convicted. I'm sorry, he's not going to be detained.
- [38:03]
D
Even if you imagine way far ahead in the future, in some other universe he is convicted, that it would be much more like Berlusconi, who you know, instead had to do some kind of penance but never was locked up in a prison. You know, we all say that. We all say, well, I talked to a federal judge who was convincing me of this, but we shall see. We shall see.
- [38:28]
B
It's a great phrase, constitutional sci fi, because we're in uncharted territory as a country. And Jane, given the significance of the moment, I feel like we should sort of end up on that note, you know, which is like, how do you feel? I mean, we all were here in Washington. We experienced January 6th. We experienced the two months leading up to that as this sort of gradual. He's not really doing it. Is he really doing it? Is he really doing it? Wait, is this a coup, or is he just, you know, waiting for time? Is he gonna leave office peacefully? No. What's happening here? What's happening here? Right there was this extraordinary moment, right, ever since election night 2020, when Donald Trump comes out in the middle of the night, and instead of giving a normal kind of speech, he says, frankly, I did win this election that he didn't win. We've been in this kind of uncharted territory, and in some ways, I suppose we were inevitably leading up to this moment and to whatever comes next. I'm just curious, how do you respond? How do you feel knowing that whatever happens, this is a week for the history book?
- [39:36]
D
I mean, I've seen many people say that this is an incredibly sad moment, you know, a terrible, you know, embarrassment and mark on our history forever. And I actually feel that in many ways it's a positive step to see some accountability. I think we've already seen the disgraceful acts. They all unfolded, as you've said earlier today, Susan, in plain sight. You know, and what we're looking at now is the rule of law. Is there accountability? When you cross a line that threatens the very fundamental basis of our democracy, is there going to be some kind of penalty? And I think it's a step in the right direction that there is this process.
- [40:23]
B
Evan, you are, I think, with Jane, one of our, generally speaking, congenital optimists on this podcast. But we haven't talked a lot about the Republicans today and their remarkable coherence around Donald Trump. Right before I came in here, I saw a new CNN survey that said that the percentage of Republicans who believe that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen has actually gone back up, and it's now back around 70% of Republicans.
- [40:52]
C
Yeah. I will tell you that the thing that I find most unsettling about their reaction among his supporters is not that this would dent his political standing. I didn't expect that. But you've now seen some of the most influential people in Republican and conservative politics using the language of warfare. I mean, there's just no other words for it. I mean, Jesse Watters, who is the Fox News host, who is now one of their most prominent faces, calls the indictment a political war crime. And if that is the kind of language that changes places, it changes countries, you don't casually come back from that kind of culture. Before the 2020 election, right before votes were cast, I wrote a piece in the New Yorker about what seemed to me like a kind of new violent style, a way in which the sort of language of violence just permeated our politics. And what we're seeing today is it's achieved a kind of new and what appears to be a permanent state. And I will say, returning to my optimistic instincts, it's actually not. It's not, because I just want to be hopeful. Like Jane, I came away from this experience saying, no, this is actually what separates a country that can gather itself and recover from an experience like this from a country that can't. And had somehow we had rationalized and explained away what had happened and said, well, we can't go after a former head of state. That would be a glide path to disaster. And what we're instead seeing is the very painful but real process of seeing this man treated ultimately like a regular citizen when he goes into court and they tell him, you have a right to remain silent. That's the former president, the private citizen, Donald J. Trump. And that's where we are. And that is actually a reason for confidence.
- [42:47]
B
Well, it's an important note to end on. I will say this in my capacity as our residential glass sometimes half empty. There's a very, very vast gulf between political war, crime and historic moment of accountability and victory for the rule of law. And I'm not sure that that's a gap that we can bridge very easily anytime in the foreseeable future in this country. But I know that if we have to live through it, I'm glad to be doing it with both of you. Jane, seriously, I am grateful every week for your insights and wisdom and, yes, even your optimism. So thank you both.
- [43:31]
C
Thank you, Susan.
- [43:32]
D
Thanks, guys.
- [43:38]
B
This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Susan Glaser. We had production assistance today from Alex Scalia and Dan Richards. Steven Valentino is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. We'll be back in two weeks. Thank you for listening.
- [44:01]
E
I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's global editorial director.
- [44:04]
C
I'm Michael Colory, Wired's director of consumer tech and culture.
- [44:08]
B
And I'm Lauren Good.
- [44:09]
E
I'm a senior correspondent at Wired.
- [44:11]
B
And our show, Uncanny Valley is all about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.
- [44:17]
E
At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. So each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech.
- [44:27]
C
Right? So whether we're talking about privacy, AI, social media, or a major tech figure, we will always explain the Silicon Valley forces behind these stories and how they affect you.
- [44:38]
E
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [44:48]
D
From prx.