Flipping Is in the Air

Welcome to the latest episode of the Trump trials. I am Charlie Sykes. Look, let’s just start with this day in history. I wrote about this in my morning shots newsletter. You know, I I this should be something to bookmark for historians of the future and maybe psychologists of the future as well on October twenty fourth two thousand twenty three.

The former president of the United States, Donald j Trump, who is facing ninety one felony indictments, spent the entire day in court, listening to testimony from his former personal lawyer about all of his systemic, systematic financial frauds. In the morning, he also learned that one of his other former lawyers, Jenna Ellis, had cut a plea deal in the racketeering case again and in the afternoon, sometime in the afternoon, he found out that his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, may have been given immunity to testify before a federal grand jury about Trump’s attempts to overturn the twenty twenty election. So on earth two point o, This would have been a particularly bad day for Donald Trump. But in the actual world we live in, Donald Trump had a fabulous day because with one tweet, one bleat, he reestablished his position. As the Apex predator of the Republican Party.

He shibbed the speaker ambitions of of Tom Emer, who had been nominated to be speaker, Look, I mean, there are slices of avocado that lasted longer in the sun than Tom Emma’s speaker candidacy. So Donald Trump put out one statement saying he was a globalist rhino, and was it. It was done. Now why did this happen? Tom Emma’s cardinal sin, the unforgivable sin was that he voted to certify Joe Biden’s election.

He voted to recognize the reality of the twenty twenty election, and that was completely disqualifying. So I do think that we need to put this in perspective what’s going on right now. And when we’re taping this, we don’t know what the result’s going to be. We may have a new speaker by the time you you hear this. But what Donald Trump did was not just assert his dominance over to the Republican Party.

He made it very clear that belief in the big lie and support for the coup is the litmus test for leadership in the GOP in case you hadn’t realized that that was what was happening here. If you do not have a coup in your resume, don’t even bother. Don’t even bother. To apply for the job. Of course, because it is Wednesday, we’re doing a special edition of the Trump trial.

Ben Wittis, editor in chief of law fair, senior fellow at the Brookings institution joins us from beautiful New Orleans. How are you, Ben?

I’m great. Not a single one of my former lawyers is testifying against me. None of my former chiefs of staff have been given immunity to, give evidence against me in a grand jury, you know, so I’m just fine.

And, by the way, for people watching this on YouTube, That is a dog t shirt you’re wearing. Those are dog’s eyes. I could just tilt it down to clarify the dog eye thing. Don’t want people to misinterpret that shirt.

Look, Virginia Hefernan Ron DeSantis described the dog shirts as nipply and weird, I I do wanna emphasize that they’re only nipply if you only see the top half of them.

Right. So we just I just wanna clarify that for people. I wanna get into, the flipping, the plea by Jenna Ellis, the fourth of the defendants down in Georgia to plead guilty. And then, of course, the the story about Mark Meadows, which I will fest you right now. I find a little bit confusing, and hopefully you can clarify this.

Before we get into all of this, could we talk about the new speaker designate? Because It’s very, very clear that this now is be that Donald Trump has successfully imposed his will on the Republican conference that if you voted to recognize the results of the twenty twenty election. You are disqualified. You are going to be in Liz Cheney Company. But this guy, Mark Johnson, I’m sorry.

Is that his name? I’m sorry. Mike Johnson. Yeah. Whoever even heard of this.

It’s hard to keep track of them. You go through them so quickly. I mean, Okay. One day, it’s McCarthy and then Emma and then Jordan and then scalise and then Johnson, and then there’s like ten Johnson’s in the house. What are you supposed to do with this?

Okay. So before you dump on me folks, you had to Google him too. Right? Actually, there’s a very funny anecdote. Somebody asked Susan Collins in the Senate.

So what will it be like to negotiate with speaker Mike Johnson, you know, on the on the CR? And she said, I don’t I’ve never heard of him before, but I will Google him. Yeah. But for people who have googled him, realized that he was not just your run of the mill, trumpest election denialist, I mean, CNN reported, you know, back in December, Trump ally lobbying fellow house republicans to support Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the election. Okay.

So let’s just remind people about this Texas lawsuit, which was completely bogus. But he apparently was enthusiastic He was all behind this theory. He used his personal email account to lobby fellow members of of the house to sign on to this Amicus brief to the lawsuit which sought to invalidate the electoral college votes from Georgia Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Now take a deep breath here. We’re talking about tens of millions of votes.

That would have been thrown out if this lawsuit, which was never gonna go anywhere. But if it if it had won, he signed on to something that I think is way more extreme than just voting against certifying the electoral college. So, Ben, your take on on that lawsuit and the fact that Mike Johnson is, like, all in on this. Not just denying, but, I mean, he does have the coup on his resume, which is why he is where he is today.

So, look, there are many levels of election denialism. Right? There’s the level where you expressed doubt as to the integrity of the election. There’s the level as a member of Congress in which you vote to object to certification of individual states or of groups of states. And then there’s this third level where you organize frivolous litigation to try to get courts to stop the certification.

And what Texas did in in this

case was not merely, by the way, to try to not certify its own vote it has the ability to count its vote to certify its electors like any other state, but it tried to get federal courts to invalidate the electoral votes of other states.

Other states.

That’s a little bit like, you know, Lithuania objecting to the vote count in Latvia. Right? If you think of them as their separate sovereigns, right, they’re both part of the EU. But so these are, you know, Georgia is its own state, Texas is its own state. Generally speaking, one state.

Wisconsin. We

are Wisconsin. It’s its own state. Right? You’re generally speaking in a federalist system. Texas doesn’t get to tell Wisconsin how to count its votes.

Much less, by the way, to tell Wisconsin how to count its votes wrongly since Wisconsin had counted its votes accurately. And Texas was was trying to get federal courts, trying to get the Supreme Court to step in and invalidate the correct counting of votes in several states. And so then as a member of Congress, you have a choice when a state does this. You can do nothing. You can denounce it and say, hey, we live in a federalist system Ron DeSantis are responsible accounting their own votes.

And by the way, what you’re asking for, Texas here, is an adjudication based on a lie about a different state. Or you can get enthusiastically on board with that in support of, you know, an authoritarian effort to invalidate and elect and that Donald Trump had lost. And, he appears to have done the latter. And I will point out that, you know, some Republicans who had, I’m thinking, particularly of you, mister Ken Buck of Colorado, who had taken an honorable position with respect to Jim Jordan and and some others that, hey, I don’t wanna vote for a speaker who doesn’t acknowledge the reality of the election seems to be caving now and seems to be willing to support, mister Johnson. He’s as new to me as he is to anybody else.

I’m not pretending to have a deep familiarity with his record. But it does seem like what’s happening or what may be happening here is that a bunch of people who drew the line at Jim Jordan are just fine with somebody who’s represents all the same things, believes all the same things. It was just as involved in objecting to the election, but just isn’t quite as much of an asshole about it.

Yeah. I I think that’s what it comes down to. Just remind me. This was I think, objectively, legally ridiculous. This thing that, that Mike Johnson was was pushing.

I mean, the Supreme Court didn’t even take it up. Did it, like, just basically say Never mind with, like, one sentence.

So I believe they just dismissed it on all but summary grounds if memory serves.

Not even Clarence Thomas said, hey, this is really brilliant. Gotta take this up. Did he? I mean, it was

I don’t think so. No.

I believe this was a theatrical exercise that had no prospect of going anywhere and didn’t. Theatrical, but also had consequences because, of course, this fed the fire that led up to January six. So, again, Mike Johnson, being one of the most aggressive election deniers. The resolution of this speaker thing does not solve the problem because dysfunction is now the new normal. I think the chaos has become a habit.

They’re going to have to negotiate keeping the government open. Somewhat problematic when you still have the the crazed, slavering Jackal caucus as you have so memorably described them who don’t actually want to engage in governance. And then, of course, you have the question of aid to Ukraine. This is another thing. Mike Johnson, on his resume, he is an opponent of aiding Ukraine’s defense.

Talk to me about that a little bit. Yeah. What that means?

There’s a lot of stuff I will joke about. I will never joke about aid to Ukraine. Look, this is a a life and death situation for a lot of people. And the Ukrainians need US military assistance in an ongoing fashion. This is an active war and the idea that we would have a speaker of the house.

I mean, Kevin McCarthy was not great on this issue, but at the end of the day, he often sort of said the wrong thing, but did the right thing. Having a person who actually represents the sort of Mac Gates position on aid to Ukraine is very dangerous and, and quite different, by the way, there’s a sense in the Republican world that the urgent matter is aid to Israel. The IDF has a lot of depth it’s a, you know, an organization that has years of planning is very well.

He’s not about to be wiped away. It is not about to be

working the

face of the earth. Yeah.

And they definitely need assistance, but it is not an urgent matter nor is Israel dependent on the United States for general budget support right now. You know, when you play with Ukrainian, you’re actually really playing with the ability of that country to continue to exist and to continue to fight in a fashion that’s effective. And that’s, you know, I just remind listeners that the people they’re fighting have stolen twenty thousand children the stakes in the Ukraine fight are extreme and very pointed and very now. I have made a lot of jokes about the speaker fight, and I will make more. But this is a deadly serious matter.

And for a lot of people, I mean, deadly, not in a metaphoric sense, but in a very real sense.

This is the balancing act. On the one hand, it is a clown car. It’s like an episode of South Park, and yet there are real real world consequences, and they are deadly.

Your analogy that it’s a clowns with flame throwers situation is a very good one.

And They’re clowns, but they are flame throwers. Yeah.

They are flamethrowers, and, you know, you can be very clownish and be very dangerous anyway. I will say that the administration, which is caught in a very difficult situation here needs to handle this with a lot of delicacy because the thing that would be a real disaster. And I’m sure if this Johnson character becomes speaker, I’m sure the part of the proposed deal is let’s pair Israel aid with border stuff with keeping the government open and freeze out the Ukrainians. That’s gonna be one of the Republican Right. House deals.

And I think the combination of the administration and Mitch McConnell, and for all the Mitch McConnell haters out there, I feel you. I see you on this matter. He is an adult and he has been excellent. Need to be very firm that continued Ukraine aid is part of the package and is an essential part of the package without which there is not deal.

Yeah. Life and death matter. Okay. One final word on Mike Johnson. Get a text message here from Adam Kinzinger who wants us to know that Mike Johnson is Jim Jordan in Drag.

Same views. Your point. Then let’s move on to the trump trials. The actual literal trump trials. Interestingly enough, I got a lot of folks have been digging up this, old quote from an interview with, I think, with Fox and Friends and Fox News, Donald Trump has some strong feelings about people who flip You know, all mafia dons have this thing about, you know, the people who break Omerta, who rat you out, Donald Trump has articulated this over and over again.

So here is, from a few years back, Donald Trump talking about people who turn state’s evidence. Listen to this.

People make up stories. This whole thing about, flipping, they call it. I know all about flipping for the thirty, forty years. I’ve been watching flippers. Everything’s wonderful, and then they get ten years in jail, and they they flip on whoever the next highest one is.

Or as high as you can go. It it almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair.

It almost ought to be out long.

K. Do

you wanna address that then? Because, you know, I don’t know if we have a debate about that, but

I do think there are a few really interesting points about that comment. It’s there’s a lot packed into there. So first of all, I’ve been watching it for thirty or forty years. What have you been doing for thirty or forty years that you’ve had occasion to be watching people flip. Flipping.

Yeah. I feel I wish to

have the theme for the godfather playing underneath this conversation now.

Exactly. So I’ve been around for a while too. You know, I’ve not had occasion to watch any of my people flip. And go cooperate with law enforcement against me.

When is Ben Wittis gonna rat me out? What really goes on to this podcast. Right?

Exactly. Right. Nobody talk about that sort of thing because, you know, I’m not a criminal. If you start the sentence by saying I’ve been watching people flip for thirty or forty years, It’s kind of a way of saying I’ve been engaged in criminal activity for thirty, forty years. And occasionally, my people talk about it.

Yeah.

And a lot of the fact that he thinks it’s it’s so terrible that ought to be outlawed that you should definitely not be able to testify. Wow. That would change the criminal justice system a bit. Wouldn’t it?

Yeah. That brings me to the second interesting point about this quote, which is that, you know, of course, what flipping is is deciding to take responsibility for your criminal activity and telling the truth about the people that you did it with. He says people just make up stories, but the truth of the matter is that the government has a lot of ways to check the veracity of people’s stories And so when somebody like Mark Meadows or Jenna Ellis decides to Meadows case testify, and in Alice’s case, you know, plead guilty to a felony and cooperate. The government has all kinds of ways of assessing and and verifying the harassed city of of the story that they’re telling. And when they’re doing their job properly, what flipping means is cooperating by telling truth about the people that you work with.

And that

That has

that. Of course, that is exactly what Trump says really should be a weak Yes.

Absolutely. Telling telling the two should be illegal. So I’m gonna come back to Mark Meadows because I think it’s a little bit more complex and we need to know more about it. But but very clearly, we have had some flips Jenna Ellis.

By the way, Charlie, I I just we need to have a conversation, one more thing just about flip. Yesterday, with John Martin, you played the flipper theme to discuss flips. I think when we talk about flips, that should be like a occurring motif

on the Trump trials. I think it kind of dated us. I don’t think that Jonathan actually watched that show. I mean, I remember the show. I remember the show flipper.

I don’t remember flipper, but I remember tune. And I and I do just think that there should be like a little

It plays in my head. Okay? Just so you know, it plays it play can we just listen to it? Alright. Well, we’re You know what?

Let’s let let’s give people a little bit.

They call him flapper. Man. That just takes me back.

I just have to say Thank you back.

I think whenever we discuss flipping, because there’s gonna be like ten more of these.

You think so?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We’ll we’ll we’ll get to that. But, yeah, there’s gonna be a lot more of these. And we just need a theme for flipping.

Okay. We have a theme for flipper. Okay. So Jen Ellis is number four. Right?

Jen Ellis is number four Kenneth Cheesboro, pled guilty. Sydney Powell plead guilty, that bail bondsman plead guilty. Jenna Ellis is interesting in the sense that she was so she was so militant in her defenses she was the public face of the big lie. She was the one who said, this is what was the phrase she used? This is like an elite strike force you know, and I’m never gonna back off.

We have a a little short YouTube video with a clip where she’s on with Brian Stelter from CNN who’s actually saying, you know, At some point, Janet, you’re gonna look back on this and you’re really gonna regret this. I mean, twenty years from now, you think maybe, you know, you’re gonna think this was a mistake. No. Absolutely not. Well, that was then then yesterday, Jenna Ellis.

And again, you almost you have to juxtapose the images of how fiery and adamant, and how there was no doubt in her mind. And then There was her appearance in court yesterday. Let’s listen to a little bit of Jen Alice, a tearful Jan Alice.

What I did not do, but should have done your honor was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true. In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges, to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence. I believe in and I value election integrity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post election challenges. I look back on this full experience with deep remorse.

For those failures of mine, your honor, I have taken responsibility already before the Colorado Barr who censured me. And I now take responsibility before this court and apologize to the people at this address. Thank you.

Wow, Ben. Very different Jenna. Okay. If only she had known only she had known.

And if only, you know, she had had relevant information. I also think there’s another important if only, which is if only Trump had paid her legal bills I suspect this plea may have been averted. I do not wanna question the sincerity of Jenna Ellis’s remorse or her tears, but I do note that she was loyal up until the point that she could not afford, and and I mean in a financial sense to be loyal anymore. And so I if I sound a little bit cynical about it, I am.

I am more than a little cynical about it. I mean, she was, talking about the weaponization of the criminal justice system, like, up to, like, five minutes ago. Declaring her innocence, like, up to five minutes ago, you know, going online, raising money, you know, for her defense with various right wing groups until about five minutes ago. The other thing though is that, you know, this is a grown woman. This is a she’s thirty eight years old.

She had access to tremendous resources and and information. This notion that she was just too naive that she just had didn’t know. She didn’t check her facts. As if this was some sort of a lapse in judgment, you know, as opposed to you saw your main opportunity You saw your path to riches and fame and influence and celebrity by pushing a big lie and it was too good to be true. I mean, I just I did I just don’t buy her argument that, you know, if only I had done my due diligence, I mean, no shit No.

That’s exactly right. And look, I think it’s important to separate at least three different thought streams here. Right? One is how do we assess Jenna Ellis? And I think the answer to that question is we should assess her as a rational actor in the criminal justice system, which is to say most people plead out because it’s in their interests to plead out at the point at which they plead out, most people say something taking responsibility for it.

She did that. The relevant question is whether she provides useful assistance to the prosecutors at this point. The second question is how do we assess her as a potential cooperator. Okay. Right.

And the answer here, this is completely independent of how we assess her remorse or whatever. The answer is this is not a huge player, but it is somebody who is present for a great deal. And specifically, who can provide important testimony about the effort to pressure state legislators.

And regarding this pattern, though, I mean, we now have four of the eighteen people that were charged by Fannie Willis under the racketeering statute who have, plead guilty. Now, I, again, I there were a lot of folks who were skeptical about whether or not Fannie Willis might have been overreaching by charging that many people. But, obviously, her plan, her theory was to use the racketeering strategy to put pressure on a lot of folks to do what these four have done. So, you know, I’m not that surprised by Jen Ellis because I think she’s been signaling it. But I was quite surprised.

I wanted to get your take on this, because you’ve watched this much more closely. I was surprised both by Sydney Powell, but especially by Kenneth Chezborough, because I thought Chesborough was probably the guy who was the least likely who might have actually had a plausible case. I mean, didn’t you think so? I mean, were you surprised by Chesborough?

Both. Yes and no. Okay. I interviewed Ken Chesborough’s lawyers on the law Secret Podcast with Anna Bauer at Well, I remember this. Right.

At significant length. They insisted they were not pleading. There would be no plea. They were going to trial. We got off the line.

And the first thing I said to Anna Bauer when we got off the line is he’s gonna plead the night before trial.

Oh, really? And so Okay.

At one level, I called it extremely exactly, and yet I was still surprised. So one thing that Ken Chesborough’s he has excellent lawyers. It was actually nice to watch people deal with this like professionals and they were fun to watch in action. I think they did an excellent job by their client. And game likes games, they did a very, very good job.

And so even as I could watch them and say, okay. They’re setting up a good plea here. I know exactly what they’re doing.

Yeah.

I still, at some level, block the act. I was surprised even though I was not surprised. You know, the third level of this analysis is about Fannie Will Saletan it’s not about Jenna Ellis at all. And it’s exactly what you said that she is methodically shrinking down the defendant pool, getting pleased, and using the big stick of do you really wanna go to trial on a rack hearing matter when, you know, she’s offering please relate on relatively generous terms. And so it shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of people are gonna take that, and there will be more people who take that.

Was Sydney Powell surprising? No. I don’t think so. Sydney Powell is is a little bit crazy, but she’s you go to trial on that and you get convicted. You’re a sixty eight year old woman.

You’re gonna be in prison for a good long time And I I think the same calculation is true for Kenneth Chesborough. Jenna Ellis does not have the money to go through, you know, she put, as you said, she was fundraising on right wing sites. She wasn’t raising any money because She has endorsed DeSantis and she’s, you know, disgraced in the eyes of the orange god king. How is she gonna pay for a defense at trial. And so at some point, you know, a lot of these people have rational actor questions, and they may say crazy things.

This is true of, by the way, all criminals. Criminals are rational actors in the justice system. They are gain maximizers and loss minimizers. And you can say, well, they did all this crazy shit. And, you know, they tried to overturn an election.

And by the way, knocking over a bank isn’t a the smartest move either as but once you’re in the justice system, most people behave pretty rationally. And that if you apply that to this case, that means a lot of these people are gonna plead out. I think at the end of the day, Fanny Willis thinks she’s going to trial against three or four people, not fourteen or fifteen people. And I suspect she’s probably right.

Okay. So one more point, kind of the the split screen here, which is interesting. I mean, so Jenna Ellis pleads guilty to one count. Of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, which is a felony, an account she plead to stemmed from her testimony before a Georgia state senate subcommittee in late two thousand twenty alongside Regiliani and and another Trump attorney, you know, named Ray Smith, who I don’t know anything about. So the three people testified that there had been ninety six thousand fraudulent absentee ballots cast in the election.

That twenty five hundred felons had voted. The sixty six thousand underage voters cast ballots, and the ten thousand three hundred and fifteen dead people voted And Ellis is now acknowledging that she knowingly, willingly, and unlawfully made those false statements about election fraud in Georgia. Of course, you know, this is the the entire myth. So she is pleading guilty to a felony for lying about it. On the same day, that an election denier who wanted to have the US Supreme Court hear a lawsuit that would have thrown out Georgia’s entire electoral vote count is elected possibly elected nominated for speaker of the House of Representatives.

Proving that it’s not you can’t lie to the Georgia state sub committee, legislative sub committee, but to the whole house of representatives, it’s fine. Right.

Exactly. Yeah. So on the one hand, the people at the heart of the big lie are acknowledging, yes, it was a big lie, and it was a crime. On the other hand, the politicians who continue to push the big lie and took the most extreme steps are now rising to positions of incredible power may be second in line to the presidency. Okay.

So let’s continue the theme of flipping. The Mark Meadows story. The Mark Meadows story is slightly more complicated because we don’t know all the details of it. ABC had this extraordinary story that Meadows has testified before the federal grand jury with some kind of immunity, maybe limited immunity. We don’t know.

Meadows, one of the closest aids to Donald Trump, according to the ABC report, Meadows has told cuter to the Trump was being dishonest when he said hours after the polls closed, the election was a fraud. Obviously, he said we didn’t win. Meadows told the prosecutors, he told them he agrees with the Department of Homeland Security’s Assessment that the twenty twenty election was the most secure election in American history. Of course, when Chris Kreb said that, he was fired by tweet. Meadows, of course, has a mixed record.

He in public. He has said repeatedly that he believes Donald Trump, he was the person who set up that Georgia call with Brad Raffensberger when Trump asked him to find the eleven thousand seven hundred and eighty votes. He was backstage on January sixth. He wrote a book that apparently he is throwing under the bus. He, you know, making all kinds of claims.

Yeah. I wanna retract by the way, all the factual statements I’ve ever made in any books that I’ve written. Right. I assume you don’t stand by any of the facts and how the right lost its mind or anything. Just because I wrote them doesn’t mean that yeah.

So first of all, what do you think is going on here? I tweeted last night. Okay. Meadows has flipped and a reporter, I’m not gonna name. He said, no.

No. This is not the same as flipping. It’s it’s not accurate to use the word flipping because He’s been given maybe limited use immunity to testify. So give me your sense. What do you think is happening?

Because I’m a little confused. What’s happening with Mark Meadows?

So the the short answer is you’re confused because the story is confusing and we don’t know precisely what happened.

It’s not just

But here is, I think, No. It’s not just you. Here is the range of reasonable possibilities. So when somebody testifies under a grant of immunity, that can mean a few different things. Often, what it means is they say, okay, we want you to testify before the grand jury.

And you say I can’t testify before the grand jury because of my fifth amendment rights, I would incriminate myself. So I’ll assert the fifth amendment And so the government says we’re gonna immunize the testimony, which means we can’t use any you say against you. We can’t use the fruits of it against you, but then you have to testify. And sometimes they can do this by agreement. They protect your fifth amendment rights essentially through the immunity instead of by your keeping silent.

But sometimes they do it by court order. There’s actually a statute that allows them to get a court order that says a, Charlie Sykes, you must testify, and b, it’s you’re subject to an immunity order for the use of the testimony and the derivative fruits of that immunity. So that’s one thing it could mean. The second thing it could mean is that they have an agreement with Mark Meadows that he is cooperating and that they are immunizing him. That is he is now a cooperating witness, and he’s helping the government in their communication.

This would be more of a flipping situation. My guess is that it’s the first situation. And the reason I think it’s the first situation is that none of the stories have used phrases like you know, cooperating witness or is in a cooperation arrangement with the government? On the other hand, Meadows is conspicuously absent from the federal indictment. And he is, like, as Georgia shows, which includes a lot of information about him.

He’s got some exposure. And so my best guess here is that we’re in a situation where And by the way, Meadows is represented by very good counsel at Maguire Woods. Again, this

We’re pushing back on this ABC report.

Yeah. Okay. I mean, I I’m quite sure the source of this story is somebody in the Meadows camp. But, you know, if you were them, what you would want is you get immunity for your client in testifying, and then you have an understanding with the government, hey, when you are ready to have a a operation agreement. We will work with you.

We’ll plead him out on something. Will, or maybe he gets some kind of transactional immunity. But I think there’s clearly some degree of cooperative arrangement or understanding between them and the government but it’s not he’s a cooperating witness at this stage. So that’s my best guess, but I think the facts are still pretty murky, and I don’t think we know the answer. I do think if he were in a real adversarial posture with respect to Jack Smith, he would have been named as an unindicted co conspirator in the indictment.

He would have been treated a little bit more, Georgia like.

Well, the fact is though he he apparently has a little according to report, he has already testified twice. So he has told whatever the arrangement is. He’s telling them stuff. Now Jonathan Carl from ABC, you know, the author as well. You know, reported on this.

He called this an extraordinarily significant development because between the election and January six, no other individual was closer to Donald Trump than Mark Meadows. But as a witness, given the fact that he has made all of these other public statements that he’s basically now saying that everything I have said and written is false. During trial, Trump’s attorneys are going to try to impeach that. Right? I mean, as you say, look, I mean, you’re saying this now, but this is what you wrote.

This is what you said. How does that play out in a courtroom?

Well, so it can play out in one of a few ways. One is that you put him on stand and you acknowledge upfront that he’s been lying about it and now he’s coming to tell the truth. This is one reason, by the way, that when you do that, it’s very important that the person have pleaded to a felony, right, that they they have to have some skin in the game, or else you you say, oh, I’ve I’m putting Charlie Sykes on. He’s contradicting everything. He’s further he’s ever said.

And by the way, he’s not gonna spend a day in jail. Right? This is why it’s very important for co operators in prosecutor’s eyes to take place. And so one One thing to look for is whether there is a plea with Meadows over the next, few weeks.

That’s a very important point.

But the second way it plays out is that you never put him on the stand. You use him as a whisper in your ear guidance, you know, hey, Cassidy Hutchison said you went into the meeting with Trump and then came out and said, Bulwark. Tell us what about that meeting. But you don’t actually use him as a witness for exactly this reason. So I think either of those is possible, the government has a huge amount of material And so what they need him for and what they don’t need him for, I don’t think we know.

The other big, trump trial case, and Flipper, Michael Cohen, being one of the most prominent. We had the the rather extraordinary reunion of Michael Cohen with, Donald Trump. I have I have to admit that among the long term things that have surprised me. Michael Cohen was such a thuggish water carrier for Donald Trump. I remember the first time somebody suggested that he might turn against Donald Trump.

I was extremely skeptical, well, obviously, he has. So he was in this Manhattan courtroom in the civil fraud case. And by the way, Donald Trump, everything he’s doing about the speaker’s race. He’s apparently doing during breaks in the New York trial, which is interesting. The guy’s sitting there.

That’s what the brakes are for. I know.

You know, it’s that he has a chance to tweet about who should be speaker. Doing this trial for his frog. There are bathroom breaks, and there are lunch breaks, and there are speaker break breaks, or speaker bleep breaks.

Yeah. I’m going to blow up the house of representatives during the next, bathroom break. So, Trump’s presence. He’s sitting there. There’s a lot of of him looking very, very unhappy.

Cohen describes Trump as a criminal and a cheat from the witness stand. The loyal fixer was called to testify about Trump’s annual financial statements, which are at the heart of this case, and he testified that Trump directed him to reverse engineer the financial statements to reach Trump’s desired net worth. And, of course, Trump’s lawyers, you know, challenge his credibility. Let’s talk about this case. I mean, this case is one that I think it’s, pretty safe to say that Donald Trump is going to lose this case.

But, I mean, how important is Michael Cohen and how I guess how problematic is his testimony given his own track record, including his his criminal convictions in the past.

Right. So this is a very good example in the past tense of exactly the issue we were talking about. Yeah. Mark Meadows and in the present tense. Right?

So this is a a fuggish criminal who was a, as you described, water carrier for Trump on a whole bunch of things, who turns against him and you know, appears to have told the truth about a bunch of things, his history, including his criminal history, including his history of lying, on some of the same issues that he’s now testifying is ripe for cross examination, is fair game, and he has to answer for that. And the trier of fact, which in this case is a judge and in the criminal cases of jury, gets to decide how much weight to give it. And which version of Michael Cohen they believe. Now the wrinkle, of course, is that And this is where I think a parallel with Meadows, makes a lot of sense, actually, that Michael Cohen is testifying as two things that are also painfully obvious from record evidence. So that these books were fudged to make properties worth what they wanted to make.

Because, like, we know that from other things. And so you’re actually having him testify not to establish the cheating because you know that because, you know, we know that these valuations were garbage from a hundred other means, but to add some texture to it, to give another validation of it and to talk about it from the inside, you’re not relying only on him. And I think that’s a good indication probably of the way that people are likely to use Mark Meadows on these points.

Okay. So the other big development over the last couple of weeks that I’m fascinated by are the the gag orders, the restrictions on Donald Trump, Now my understanding is is that, Judge Chutkin’s limited gag order has been lifted temporarily. So there’s actually not a gag order in place at the moment. Is that correct?

Yeah. So get your bleats in quickly because, you know, if you have something to say about witnesses, do you see jury pool, get it in really fast before the, judge enters her final order.

That was why I was gonna ask you about, Donald Trump put out a bleed attacking Mark Meadows this morning, And Kyle Cheney, writes, this Trump post about Mark Meadows is like a checklist of things barred by the now suspended gag order. It includes a direct attack on Jack Smith, It calls cooperators, weaklings, and cowards, and comments on the substance of Meadows, testimony, Meadows a known witness. So if that gag order was in place, this statement, this attack on Meadows, would obviously be something that Jack Smith would bring to the judge’s attention. I’m guessing that Jack Smith Will Saletan bring it to the judge’s attention.

I’m sure he will, and I’m sure the chuck in placed an administrative stay on the order by way of allowing adjudication of allowing its appeal and and whatnot. And I suspect also of improving the text of it herself. There were some questions about her use of the word target about the sort of vagueness of the order. And I I wouldn’t be surprised she perfected it a little bit amended it a little bit herself by way of making it a little bit more bulletproof. This will remind her to do it quickly.

And, you know, it will also, I think, remind her of the importance of the order. Not that she needs a reminder of it, but Trump will, you know, there’s nothing like issuing an order, freezing it by way of making sure your workmanship is proper and then immediately having it flagrantly violated and not being able to do anything about it because you suspended your own order. I suspect she will want the order in place and binding, in light of this as quickly as possible.

Yeah. I I think we will learn that very, very quickly. Ben Willis, thank you so much for another edition of Trump trials. I appreciate it.

Hey, we will be back next week, and we will do this all over again.

Probably on Thursday next week. And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again. Bulwark contest is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.