The Crazed Slavering Jackal Caucus

Donald Trump faces four different indictments in more than ninety one 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. Welcome to a new episode of the Trump trials with Ben Willis editor in chief of Law Fair Look, we have to talk about the what’s going on with Donald Trump. The attacks on the attorney general, the gag rule from the judge. I mean, that’s pretty amazing.

But can we just start with something a little bit different? By the way, first of all, good morning, Ben.

How are you? I am thriving. It’s a great day in Washington.

Okay. Well, thriving is pretty good. What is the opposite of thriving? I need a segue into the Rudy Giuliani development.

Oh, well, you know, I was gonna contrast it with Kevin McCarthy, who is not thriving. I think you can even say the opposite of thriving is rutying.

Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about Rudy. Okay. So there’s a justification for talking about this.

It turns out that the special counsel Jack Smith is actually looking into Rudy Giuliani’s drinking, which apparently is notorious. Apparently, it’s the worst kept secret in the world in New York and Maggo World. The guy drinks parties. He drinks at nine eleven commemorations. He drinks before he goes on TV.

He drinks before he gets press conferences. He drinks before he sexually harasses his aids And apparently, what Jack Smith wants to know is, was he drinking before he gave a prison to the United States, his considered legal advice, because, of course, Trump might say, well, it was just relying on advice of counsel, even though counsel was falling down drunk. 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. In fact, it got so bad, apparently.

That his friends would kinda warn people. I would tip their hands up and go kind of like this. Like, hey, you know, won’t wanna steer clear of America’s mayor right now because he’s had a couple at two Yeah. He’s been over served. So here’s Rudy.

Rudy is absolutely incensed, says, what? Like, who would possibly think? That I have a drinking problem. Here’s Rudy.

You have a possible problem with alcohol?

Maybe I should sue him for that. Yeah. I will comment that if I have an alcohol problem, I should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. Seventy nine years old, and I’m an alcoholic. You know how much I’ve accomplished?

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

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.

Yeah. So I wanna tell a sad story about Rudy Giuliani.

And there are so many.

Yeah. Well, this one’s gonna make you sad, Charlie. Okay. So I the other day, was at ground zero. The I was at the museum for the swearing in of a bunch of intelligence officers, and they the agency in question, does the swearing in at ground zero?

And as part of the program, they showed this movie they had made of a whole bunch of leaders, including George w Bush and Condy Rice and Andy Card and Rudy Giuliani and George Patakie, sharing their memories of that day. It was not made super recently, but, you know, judging from the appearance of George w Bush, it’s relatively recent. Right? And Giuliani was articulate and thoughtful and interesting and he, you know, remembered individual officers who were killed by name. It was, like, this throwback to who he was when we remembered him.

You know, it was made. I wanna say between five and ten years ago, but not between ten and fifteen. You know, what’s happened to Rudy Giuliani is relatively recent. And our sense that he used to be somebody substantial is right. He used to be somebody substantial, and he has self consciously destroyed himself.

And what percentage of that problem is an alcohol problem versus a moral problem versus a Who knows? Cognitive decline problem. I really don’t know, and I’m not qualified to say. But I was really struck by how different to the person that was on this video was from the Guinness Book of World Records asshole who you just played.

That is a sad story. But, obviously, this is gonna play a role in in the various trump trials. I can’t imagine that anybody at this point is gonna is gonna call him as a witness because America’s mayor now, it may be America’s most unreliable witness. And who’s gonna put him on the stand at this

And I do think the New York Times what he calls hit job is 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. But You know, the government is gonna respond to that by saying, okay, well, which council. Right? 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 Council’s Office all the respectable lawyers of the Trump campaign, all saying the same thing, which is you can’t do this. And then you have these individual cherry lawyers, one of whom there’s testimony was evidently inebriated at the time he’s giving the legal advice. One of whom Sydney Powell, Trump himself describes as a bit crazy. 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? Was it the person you described as not?

Was it the person your campaign manager said was evidently inebriated the night he gave you that legal advice? Was it John Eastman who’s facing disciplinary proceedings right now? 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. You do it because of motivated reasoning.

So I I wanna 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, the house GOP, And, what you very colorfully called in your wonderful newsletter this morning, the crazed Slavering Jackal caucus of of the House Republicans. You know, the the crazed Slavering Jackal caucus, of course, is at least eight members led by by Matt Gates. I mean, it it changes in its composition. It may not be huge, but they’re big enough to stop the majority of Republicans from doing anything remotely rational.

Right. I mean, so that’s that’s kind of that that’s kind of their thing.

So the total size seems to vary from three or four to about twenty. 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 it grows and shrinks depending on the specific vote. It does tend to be always led by Matt Gates, although sometimes it led by Jim Jordan in certain contexts. So, you know, exactly who is the what the composition of it is. I think it’s a little bit it’s not like know, the congressional Bulwark caucus, which has a membership.

Right. It’s Yeah. You know, there’s a pack of Jackals, and sometimes they’re feeding on the car of a wildebeast, 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 flattering because they wash the blood off of their muzzles.

Right.

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.

And they don’t give a shit, whether it sends everything on fire.

And number too, 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 criminal caucus, right, which is also a a feature in the house of representatives. The reason is is because without them, the Republican don’t have a majority.

Right.

And so what’s going on now is the mainstream Republican caucus. The mainstream caucus here includes some crazy people

Right.

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

Right.

So for this purpose, Jim Comer, I think, is part of the mainstream, Marjorie Taylor Green, is part of the main stream.

We we’ve dumbed down the the standards for mainstream. Yeah. Yeah.

This is defining deviancy damage, but We’re being political scientists here. We’re not passing judgment on anybody’s voice. Some crazy people can be part of the mainstream if they vote with the mainstream caucus. The mainstream caucus now has to decide, do you continue doing business with the Jackals, or do you now do business with the Democrats? And that’s what’s fundamentally at issue in the current shenanigans.

You gained it out of me. Here’s the dilemma the Republicans have. Is that in order for any successor speaker to get two hundred and eighteen votes, you either have to have the sport of the crazy slaughtering, Jackal caucus, or you need Democratic votes. 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. Right?

Right. So that’s kind of a non serve. Or You have to cut a 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 Mar a lago. So they are really in a tough situation. You are gaming all of this out in your newsletter.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. It seems reasonable to think that this might drag on past next Wednesday. So at the end of the day, Let’s set aside the fan fiction. It’s not going to be Donald Trump.

Even though Margery Taylor Green wants it to be Donald Trump, it’s not gonna be him. But also, it’s not gonna be Joaquin Jeffrey. There’s not gonna be a scenario in which five Republicans say, hey, you know what? We’re so sick of these people. We’re gonna vote with the Democrats and elect the Democratic leader as speaker.

So those two things are not gonna happen. Do you agree?

I agree. I think the range of possibility is either the Republicans unite behind a single candidate, probably Steve Scalia, And that would happen because the crazed Jackal caucus decides that if we force them into the hands of the Democrats, we’re gonna lose all our power. Right. Right? So, you know, extort what you can from Steve Scalia, and then get behind him much as they did for nine months with Kevin McCarthy, that’s possibility number one.

Possibility number two is we have a protracted period of testing, whether there’s anybody they will get behind. We find out the answer is no. And then two things happen roughly at the same time. One is that the Democrats start to get anxious because They actually care Right. Whether we shut down the government.

They actually care whether we pass a Ukraine supplementary. By the way, taking off my political science hat, and as a advocate of Ukraine funding, it’s a disaster if we don’t pass a Ukraine scary. Supplemental. And so I think there’d be a lot of Democrats who will react the same way and say, we actually have to have a leadership. We actually have to have a speaker so we can do some of these things.

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 two hundred eighteen votes. 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. And that’s a very tough and negotiation that I don’t think any of us really knows what it looks like.

No. No. Nobody knows what it looks like. And and this is why part of me thinks that This guy Patrick McHenry is gonna stick around for a lot longer. You know, he is the interim speaker.

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. But at some point, just the status quo, the guy that happens to be sitting there may be the easiest option for them. But, again, I don’t know. 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. Correct.

And it is Matt Gates, 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. This other question is, so Charlie Sykes Ben, how much do they hate this guy? Okay. This is a Republican US senator.

Talking to CNN’s Manu Raju, it is Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma. And he’s talking about Matt Gates. I mean, think about this is the way a Republican senator is talking about a Republican congressman Listen to this little tidbit. And again, for those of you that think, hey, Rudy Giuliani’s drinking problem is really serious. Trust me, this one may actually may be worse.

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. He’d brag about how he would ED medicine and and and chase it with, with a energy drink so he could go all night.

I am sorry. I apologize for putting that image in in your minds. Matt Gates crushing Viagra, mixing it with energy drinks, so he could go all night.

So that is, I actually didn’t need that, Charlie.

No. He did no one. America does not need this. But it’s just a reminder that these are the people we have empowered. These are the people who are influencing our government.

These are the people who are raising the question about whether or not America is an ungovernable republic anymore. Because apparently, when he’s not, going after interns, popping blue pills, mainlining red bull. He’s deposing speakers of the House of Representatives, and We live in such a serious country. Don’t we?

It’s a serious country. It’s a morally serious place, and this is what the decadence before the fall looks like. I mean, you know, the visigoths are are coming down the appian way, and we’re we’re partying.

Okay. When you listen to Tim my podcast with Tim O’Brien from Bloomberg yesterday? Because he made the same analogy. He said this kinda feels, you know, decline of fall of the Roman empire ish?

Well, I I did listen to that. I I wasn’t self consciously referring to it, but I was, I liked him, and I I think it does have that feel of Alaric the first. Could be, ten miles away, but we’ve got our little scores to settle here.

Yeah. It’s either the fall of Rome or it’s the Weimar Republic, you know, because at some point, it’s it’s the decadence, and there’s the comedy, and there’s the Beavis and Budhead stuff. And then, of course, you know, we go off to the beer garden and somebody stands up and sings the future belongs to me.

And the truth is that,

to reference to Cabaret, great scene. Look it up. Google it. Cabaret, the future belongs to me. I’m sorry.

Alright. Look, you know, Babylon, Berlin. There’s a reason that show is

Oh, it’s so wonderful.

So poignant to us right now. It’s the opposite of the French village. The French village is what happens after the Nazis come in. This is what happens before the Nazis come in. Right?

What what Berlin was like? And it’s a it’s a wonderful piece of work.

Okay. So let’s go back to New York and Donald Trump losing his shit. We know there are a lot of things that happen.

That’s a technical term, by the way.

It is this is I believe the technical term. I I believe that’s taken from an opinion by Justice Scalia. I’m just making that up. So can I just do a little bit of a reading from the various rants? Because

Oh, dramatic readings? Yeah. Yeah.

So you saw this morning he actually put out all in cap 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 hitting judge are destroying all in caps.

The image and reputation of the New York state legal system and courts I don’t even get a jury, which is kind of

amazing comp. Happens if you don’t ask for one.

Yeah. Exactly. All the while murders and violent crime, all in caps, hit unimaginable records. This is so bad for New York, health, I am in a rat’s nest of New York Democrat corruption. That’s all in caps too.

A reason so many companies are leaving our racist attorney general, by the way, racist because Patricia James is black. That’s the term he always uses. All Bulwark law

enforcement officials are racist in Trump lingo.

Yeah. This case is a political sham. Sham is all in caps. I don’t even get a jury all in caps. He’s kind of obsessed with that.

Apparently, His attorney, Alina. Alina Haba. Yeah. Has has not explained to him that, yes, sorry, mister Trump. With choosing her eyes.

It’s not

I just didn’t see that box that has for

It’s also not clear that they were entitled to a jury trial for for other reasons, but he didn’t wasn’t complaining about that, you know, three months ago when he could have filed a motion for one.

Yeah. Okay. So Trump is obviously not having a good time in New York. And he’s already lost this this fraud trial, the judge in Gurren. Is that how we pronounce it?

In in Gurren? You know, has, made it very clear that he’s not buying a lot of the bullshit that, that the the Trump and his lawyers are spreading, including This, I think, was significant. This was the first, real gag order slapped on him. So talk to me a little bit about this. Trump had been attacking in and doxxing one of the court quirks.

Right.

Because, of course, he always punches down as far as he possibly can. And the judge told him stop it. He didn’t stop it. And now he’s threatening him with possible jail. So Let’s talk about that for a moment.

I mean, first of all, this is an issue that is gonna come up in every case. It’s maybe not in South Florida where Trump is counting on that judge to cut him every break, but it’s a big issue in Washington where there’s a pending motion for as you correctly point out, not a gag order. You’ve seen similar attacks on the criminal judge in New York. As well as on Alvin Bragg and Latisha James. He has not interestingly attacked the white Republican appointed judge in Fulton County, judge McAfee, who by the way is doing a superb job.

Judge McAfee has been very impressive. But look, in each of these cases, Trump is going to push and push and push until somebody makes him stop. And Judge Chuck in in Washington has is contemplating what to do. There’s a motion that Trump has responded to very belligerently, but this judge has had enough. And, you know, it’s not typical that you see this kind of thing in civil cases.

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, but Trump’s goal here is win the election and then make all of this stuff go away. You know, it’s not to win by winning the litigation. 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.

Well, and also it’s about his money, and he is about his money. And, I mean, this is real stuff. Donald Trump can go to prison and be a martyr, but Donald Trump who has to watch as they pull the letters off Trump Tower.

Oh, exactly.

That’s a whole different level.

For him. But also think about it from a winning the election standpoint. If you win the election, the federal cases one way or another go away. The Georgia case well, it doesn’t go away, but it gets probably almost certainly put on hold, right, because of the supremacy. Clause.

Ditto the New York criminal case. But this civil case, if you lose Trump Tower, if you if Mar a lago gets you know, seized by Latisha James, that’s it. The president doesn’t have a mechanism to undo that. Yeah. 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.

Yeah. There is no obvious way to undo it. Okay. So it seems that one of the themes that developing though in the litigation, which I think he’s already lost, is his argument that this wasn’t fraud. It was just embellishment.

So let’s let’s talk about that a little bit because the whole question of valuing real estate is a little bit tricky. Right? I mean, it’s It’s not a science. 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 that property when they wanted to get loans, deflated the property when they wanted to avoid paying taxes.

So Talk to me a little bit about embellishment versus fraud and how this is gonna play out in this particular case.

Okay. So I wanna make two distinctions here. The first is the embellishment versus fraud distinction, but the second is the everyone does it distinction.

Yes.

Those are slightly different things. Right. And the everyone does it is I think about the New York real estate market, probably true to a point Mhmm. Or at least a lot of people do it. Yeah.

But there’s a difference between doing it a bit and doing it provasively and in a you know, sort of grow task. Fuck you. I can do this kind of way. And when you triple the size and value of the trump tower apartment, and you, like, literally triple the square footage. That’s not embellishment.

That’s lying.

Yeah.

And when you say that Mar a Lago is worth one point two billion dollars, That’s not embellishment. That’s lying. 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. Now, separately from that, embellishment is I’m looking at this lamp that there are three hundred of them in the world and one of them sold for a hundred thousand dollars. So I’m gonna value this lamp at a hundred thousand dollars.

The other one sold at ten thousand dollars, but because one of them so it’s defensible, but it’s kind of nonsense. Right? And there’s a lot of that. And, you know, there are a lot of appraisers in the world whose job it is is to, you know, sort of appraisal high when the client’s interest is for a high valuation and low when it’s a tax thing. The individual decisions have to be defensible.

And if they’re not defensible, if you can’t explain why you did it, it’s fraud.

Right.

Now when I get the city real estate tax assessment for my house Mhmm. That assessment is significantly lower in terms of the value of the house than 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. And you say and all of that is kind of within the reasonable margin of error. Right? Yeah.

But there’s a difference between that and lying. 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. That’s just lying. It is rent controlled. You can’t rent it for that.

Right? And so I I do think there is embellishment that routinely goes on. There is also a bit of everyone does it, and that’s not what’s going on here.

We can spend the whole show on this, but let’s talk about some of these other cases because, you know, down in Georgia, since you wanna spoke last. There was a rather significant development. I wanna get some sense of how big a deal it was. Scott Hall a name that was it’s not a household name, but he’s a he’s a Georgia bail bond.

That’s because you’re not a you’ve never had to get a bail bond in Georgia, Charlie Sykes,

that’s that’s my disadvantage here. I I imagine that that among the criminal class in Georgia, he is a household

house. He’s the guy you go.

That’s right. You have him on speed dial. There are a lot of people who have a bail bondsman on speed dial. Anyway, he was one of the defendants. He’s charged alongside Trump.

He pled guilty, and he agreed to cooperate with the prosecutors. He was the first person to reach a plea deal in the case. You know, the whole racketeering conspiracy case, He was involved in this breach of election equipment, and he pleaded guilty last Friday to five counts of conspiring to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties. And, you know, he got a sentence of five years of probation. But he also this is the 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. 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 Sydney Powell. He had a sixty three minute phone call with Jeffrey Clark on January second two thousand twenty one. He was described as our man in Georgia by some of these players in the White House, Jeffrey Clark, being the guy that Donald Trump wanted to install as acting attorney general.

So he was more wired in than I had realized before this plea. So your sense about the significance of Scott Hall flipping in Georgia?

It’s significant in three different senses. The first is that As you say, Scott Hall is not a a central player in this scheme, but he was around everybody.

Right. Right.

And if you read, my colleague Anna Bauer’s magisterial tome about Coffee County, the name Scott Hall comes up quite a bit because he’s there. And being there makes you an important witness, as you say, he does have this phone call with Mr. Clark, he is present for the removal of material from the Coffee County Election Bureau. He’s involved. And so his testimony is a significant thing.

The second importance of it, which I think may be greater, is that the more people plead, the more other people will plead. There’s a cascading effect when you have seventeen defendants Right. Or eighteen defendants. Which is that the deal is the best for the people who plead earlier. And the more they need you, the more they need your testimony, the more generous the deal you’re gonna get.

And Scott Hall got a pretty good deal. He got some misdemeanors. He’s gonna have some probation He’s gonna have to write a letter of apology, but he’s not going to prison. But the eleventh person to plead doesn’t get that good good deal because they don’t need into him as much. And so the first person who pleads sex off a little bit of a race, who are the people who were gonna get the better deals?

And I would be surprised if you did not see some additional, please, over the next couple weeks before the the case against, Sydney Powell and Ken Chesborough goes to trial. So that’s the second reason it’s important. The third reason is important is that, it shows that Fony Willis is capable of getting convictions. You know, when you bring a big case like this, you know, and it’s really unclear whether you’ve shocked the moon or whether you’ve really engaged in a significant overreach.

Right.

This is not a huge office with a lot of prosecutorial muscle to take on a big case like this we’ve talked about. This, whether it was a good move for her to be this grand about it. Well, one of these seventeen eighteen cases is now resolved and she got a conviction. And that I think is a is an important thing. 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.

So I think the Scott Hall thing is a big deal. It’s not a big deal by itself, but what it could lead to is is important.

See, this is what’s interesting because, I was among those who was concerned that perhaps had bitten off too much. I mean, nineteen indictments. But then again, you and others made the point. This, Georgia Rico statute is pretty powerful. I mean, the this conspiracy statute has been used in the past.

She’s been successful in the past. And when you indite that many people, you’ve also created that many potential people to flip. Right? I mean, you indict people in order to put pressure on them. So as this plays out, that sense of, like, wow, there are just way too many cases, way too many defendants to your point.

If you have, you know, 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 of this powerful legal weapon that she is point.

Right. Look. The case looks very different. So Anna and I did an interview on the Law Secret Podcast. With Ken Chesborough’s lawyers who, by the way, are a an impressive group of people.

And, you know, they made a very good case for their client. I thought it was a very good conversation. They are absent simply going to trial on the twenty third of this month. So let’s imagine two scenarios. One is that four or five, six people plead out between now and then, and Chesborough and Sydney Powell go to trial and get convicted.

Yeah. Fannie Willis looks really different at the end of that than she does if nobody additional pleads out and Chesborough, I don’t think Powell’s gonna get acquitted. But Chesborough, I think could get acquitted. Yeah. So you have one plea and you take two people to trial and you lose one of them.

Right? That’s a very different scenario than four or five, six, please, and you’ve got two convictions at trial. 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, what I would say the big thing is our two people start pleading out. And somebody pleaded out. And it’s not a trivial person.

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

Okay. So the next big development, feel free to disagree with me here. Will Saletan judge Chuckkin decides what kind of protective order, how hard to go with all of that. Do you agree with that first of all?

I agree that’s one of the next big developments. I think the other one is whether Trump can either from her or from Aileen Cannon and get a substantial delay either because of SIPA or some other motions practice. But the world is a different world. If we have a trial in March and a trial in May, then if we don’t

Well, and obviously judge Chuckkin is very aware of that. I don’t know about Aileen Cannon. And, of course, that’s one of her weapons Right. To use against Trump. Okay.

He doesn’t care about being fined. He would play the martyr if you, you know, put him in jail, but if you hurry up the trial, that gets his attention. As you point out, that’s very, very different. 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. Mark Millie is a potential witness in this case, so Once again, Jack Smith is signaling as dramatically as possible, we are following everything you are saying, what 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. 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?

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. And in fact, the judge shutkin has to walk around that courtroom with security. Certainly is a pretty dramatic instance of the fact that this thing is real. This is a real threat.

It’s a very real threat. And as I said last week, all you have to do to understand it is to go to that courthouse. The security there is a very real thing This is not the first time this court has had security issues. It’s, you know, obviously, a lot of high profile cases in that court. But Tanya Chuckkin, you know, is somebody who’s going to require Marshall’s protection for a good long time, And by the way, jurors and witnesses in that case are gonna have security issues too.

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. It’s not cheap. And you know, this is a tax that Donald Trump is capable of imposing on people by talking about them. And look, I mean, I’m sure you’ve had some security issues at times. I certainly have.

You know, my car was defaced, and I’ve had I know that. Interesting postcards show up at my house with pictures of Guantanamo Bay and stuff. You know, nothing nothing terribly serious, but it’s not a joke. Yeah. And when judge Chuckan reads this briefing, she reads it with an awareness that this is about her and about the Everyone personnel and about the safety of the witnesses and jurors that have serve in her court.

And that’s a heavy responsibility. And I don’t know how she’s gonna handle it. She has been Sure. A picture of thoughtfulness and care about it so far. And I I do think it’ll be very interesting to see what she does with it.

Alright. So what else are you watching this week, Ben? What else should we have our eyes on?

I am looking for more pleas in Fulton County. I am looking for a ruling from Judge Check-in on this, this question is now fully briefed. I’m also looking for a ruling from the eleventh circuit on these removal questions in the Mark Meadows case, which are under appeal. Other than that, the big thing that’s coming up, and, you know, we gotta get ready for this, is that there’s actually gonna be a trial in Fulton County starting at the end of this month. And, you know, jury selection in Fulton County can take a while, but the judge is saying he’s gonna get it done by November seventh.

So, you know, we’re gonna have some trial coming up. There’s a status conference, I think, before Judge Chuck in, I believe, next week. Oh, and the other thing that we’re still waiting on is Trump’s motions in the check-in matter. You know, he promised a big motion on executive immunity. That has not materialized.

His lawyers were all over the television talking about the, you know, first amendment and the advice of counsel defense, there’s been no presentation of motion on those. Interesting.

And

so I am still looking for the big motion to dismiss from Donald Trump that explains why this indictment in Washington is legally defective. So I I think there’s a lot coming. I think October and November are gonna be big months.

And we will be here every week to talk about it. Ben, thank you so much for joining me on the latest episode of Trump trials.

It’s an honor and a pleasure as always.

Thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow.

And next week.

And we’ll do this all over again. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.