George Conway Explains: Trump’s 91 Problems (& Jail is One)

The thing to remember is, and the point I make to is, like, you’ve been charged ninety one felony counts in four different cases. Any combination. A conviction on any combination of those counts virtually could put him in jail the rest of his life. They’re not the win they’re not ninety one for ninety one these prosecutors.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to George Conway explains it all to Sarah I’m Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and because I am not a lawyer, I have asked my good friend, George Conway from the society for the rule of law, to explain the legal news to me, and we bring it to you roughly every week. How you doing, George?

I’m good. How are you?

It’s very nice to be in person.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Do you read the comments on YouTube?

No. Should I?

I don’t well, they’re just all about how handsome you are. Yeah. You. And I’m always like, I’m right here, guys. Just sitting right here.

You know?

Look, we’d all would dress similarly today.

I don’t know who that’s bad for.

I am. Okay.

Whatever. So here’s the deal.

Okay. The deal.

We are recording this on Wednesday. Which means it is the day after the New Hampshire primary.

Yes.

And so, I’m politics are on my mind. I know we have to talk about, like, real legal stuff. Polit politics are out to that.

Sounds like a good song. Politics’s on my mind. What is it?

George on my mind? Yeah.

I think I like that. New Hampshire on my mind. Okay.

New Hampshire is on my

mind. Alright.

But also so Ron DeSantis dropped out of the Republican primary over the weekend. Yeah. I know. He’s already you already forgotten about him. Right?

Ron what? Oh, okay.

Long gone.

Long gone. But it’s I don’t think he was I don’t think ID is it technically possible dropout of something you never really were in.

Well, this is so this is what I wanna talk about. So do you I don’t know if you remember this, but I was doing focus groups at the end of twenty twenty two and early twenty twenty two. Can you

imagine wearing those boots?

No.

And and then just not getting any delegates?

Well, did you see there’s a

video that’s

missing it?

Making it to the making it not even making it to the first primary? Sad. I feel bad for him.

The number of people who were Ron DeSantis curious in the beginning of twenty twenty three, like, he was the obvious frontrunner so much so that I think lots of people didn’t run because they were like, Ron DeSantis is gonna know. Oh, no.

They were treating him as like he was he was he was the next becoming of the next he was gonna knock everybody out, the young guy and

Yeah.

Strapping young ass kicking guy from Florida.

That’s right.

I mean, I have a close friend who was like big buddies with DeSantis and is always talking how great DeSantis was and And my reaction to him was and this was even before I knew how bad a politician to stand to speak.

Mhmm.

Was Unless you have a one on one race against Donald Trump, and you’re willing to go at him hammer and tong. It’s a pointless exercise.

Yeah.

And even if you go after him hammer and tong, you might not win anyway because people don’t want to admit that they were and they wanna double down a lot of them wanna double down on Trump. And even if you win the nomination, it’s not like Trump’s just gonna go away and say, Congratulations, the best man won. I endorse you and I urge all of my supporters to go out and vote for you. I mean, if Nikki Haley runs away with a majority of the delegates. Do you think he’s gonna say, I’m not gonna call you.

I’m sorry for calling you birdbrain. Yeah. I support you. It’s a it’s a lose lose proposition for anybody to to have run, I guess.

This was always my argument about why it would be Trump. Is that the party was eventually gonna realize he could walk with not half the party, but with like a solid thirty five percent that would follow him anywhere. And So, and and he would just burn the whole thing down because he doesn’t care about it.

He doesn’t. And that’s part of his that’s actually been part of his power over the Republican power the republican party for the last several years. Yeah. They know he he they know he’s willing to torch the place down.

Yes. Absolutely.

So they have to be nice to him.

But here’s the thing that was interesting to me about when DeSantis dropped out, suddenly there was a bunch of, you know, there are a lot of the anti antis as we like to call them in commentariat Mhmm. They were blaming.

I think there are anti anti anti anti anti anti is another horse.

I it’s tough to it’s tough to follow that. But they are the there were there was this line of thinking that it wasn’t Ron DeSantis’ fault. It was Alvin Bragg’s fault. That that was when DeSantis started dropping like a stone because Trump got indicted in the first in the the Stormy Daniels case. And it had this effect of, like, the rally round trump effect happened.

And and DeSantis sort of said this too. He tried to make this as an excuse that it was the legal cases. It was the fact that Trump was being indicted. That was leading to nobody else being able to sort of get anywhere with this. Do you think?

No. You don’t think. Please tell me why.

I think. No. I think and I think not. I mean, I don’t I just don’t I think the problem was they saw Ron DeSantis. I think the problem was that all of these people decided to attack each other instead of Donald Trump.

I mean, that this has always been the prisoner’s dilemma problem of the Republican party over the last time. Nobody actually wants to go out. And tell the truth about this guy because they don’t wanna be out there standing alone and all the other people around them chicken out. I mean, you you have to have you have to have a pact where everybody goes in and in does it all together, but they’re not capable of doing that because they can’t they’re not trustworthy, they can’t trust each other. And the other problem is, you know, we have the same dynamic as we were just talking about that that there were so many alternatives to Trump.

That all he had to do was sit back and let the they did exactly what they did to each other. A different group did to each other in twenty sixteen. Was a demolition derby and everybody and and trump gets a pass and trump even trump even engineered it by not showing up to any of these debates. There was no re you know, it was actually I mean, I would have advised them not to show up to any of the debates. Let them let them all trash each other.

Know, that’s what’s crazy. It actually seems like Trump learned a lot from twenty sixteen, like that he didn’t need to show up to the debates. Well, he needed he needed

to show up in the debate in twenty sixteen because he was Of course.

Right? He knew that he could that that they could stand there and drive with each other’s negatives. It didn’t seem like the other candidates learned anything.

No. They didn’t learn anything because because they all wanted to be the alternative to Trump. And that’s what happened last time is, you know, Trump got ahead a little bit and then everybody just sort of like they wanted to make it a one on one and the problem was it never became a one on one quickly enough. Now it is a one on one before before, super Tuesday, unlike what happened eight years ago. But He’s he’s he’s he’s got he’s gotten so much the base locked in already that he didn’t have that in twenty sixteen.

So it’s not You know, they they needed to do this earlier. They needed to they needed to eliminate each other earlier and they needed to go in at him like, you know, Christie did all at once. They just never did that. And I think even if they had done that, I think there’s just a ceiling to what they could have accomplished because These people out there don’t want to admit they’re wrong. And also there was this article.

I’m sure you saw it in politico by Michael Cruz just the other day about how this interviewing one voter and this one voter who was ex military colonel. I wasn’t I think Ringcor or army, I don’t remember. And he’s, well, reasonably well off g o p voter in New Hampshire. And basically, the upshot is he wants to destroy the country. Yeah.

It’s like burn it all down.

Burn it all down. And and, you know, and Trump is the right candidate for that. I mean, his view is, I mean, it is a very nihilistic mentality. It’s just like he doesn’t like it’s there’s nothing in particular that he gets that upset about. I mean, any immigration, maybe this, but he’s really just mad at the forces that he thinks because thinks controls the country that control the country.

And he wants to take those people down. And he doesn’t care. I mean, he basically humidity doesn’t care if that hurts him at the same time. I mean, it’s just it’s just inconceivable to me that that they’re that that people can think that way.

I don’t do a lot of comic book references, but, you know, Baine and the Batman movies, is it Bane? Is that who I mean? Who just says some people just like to watch the world burn Yeah. About the Joker? Yeah.

That that feels That feels right. And this idea that people are just and I hear this in the focus groups all the time where you say like, well, how are the how do you think things are going in the country? And it’s not that they’re wrong track. I don’t like it. It’s like we’re losing the country.

The country is over. It is the level of catastrophizing. Yeah. Then you look around and you think, stock market, all top five. The economy is bouncing back.

We’ve moved on from COVID. Like, is it I mean, everybody, everybody

in the and and and has a cell phone. Everybody has I mean, we we’ve never I mean, you don’t hear about the well, we don’t people don’t wanna launch another war on poverty like they did in the sixties because we don’t have as much of it. We just don’t. I mean, I don’t know I mean, we just people are pretty well off in this country. We we compared and if you look back at human history, We have it as good as anybody has ever had it in terms of material wealth.

I just think people are just I mean, I

Maybe that’s the problem. Yeah.

That’s the problem. I mean, Tom Nichols’s point is like everybody’s bored.

Yeah.

And and it’s not an exciting life to you know, watch TV, go home, go to work in the morning, want to go home, watch TV, watch Fox News, and but Fox News gives everybody I guess some kind of outlet where they can feel like we’re in a battle with somebody. And That’s exciting. It gets the people’s juices flowing. So

Alright. So I wanna get the the whole thing with DeSantis and the idea of that somehow Alvin Bragg was the cause and not his catastrophic candidacy and or bad strategy. It got me thinking about the election going forward and how the criminal trials are going to impact it. Because, you know, in focus groups with two time Trump voters, a lot of people said, like, conviction isn’t gonna change how they think about Trump. And some of them, the ones who really love them said it made them wanna vote for him even more.

So in terms of perception with his base, criminal convictions don’t hurt Trump at all and might help him, but criminal convictions aren’t just about perceptions. They have real consequences. Yeah. Like, prison.

Prison.

Yeah. Potentially. So first, I wanna ask you, what is Trump’s thirty thousand foot strategy for the criminal stuff. Is he trying to run out the clock in hopes of being president again before he’s convicted of anything? Like, big picture.

Well, trump is not a strategizer. I mean, the point I’ve been trying to make to a lot of people is there is no he personally doesn’t have a strategy. Okay? Because he is a short term thinker. He’s associate path.

He’s impulsive. But, you know, he has certain instincts that come into play. And one of the instincts is if something, you put off something bad and delay. And and that’s something he’s learned into in engaging in decades of litigation, mostly against him, but also he he just He wants to basically freeze everything. And and and and then and but also play the victim at the same time.

And those, you know, those are just instincts. I don’t think there’s there there’s I don’t think there’s much of a strategy there because if he had actually been thinking about what he was doing when he does things, he wouldn’t have taken the the documents to Mar a Lago. He wouldn’t he would’ve just given them back. He’s not capable of thinking more than a step ahead. And but I think that what what he is capable of doing is he understands that he doesn’t wanna be convicted and he understands that if he’s president again, the convictions may not stand or at least they they the the sentences could not be enforced against him at least while he is sitting in the in the Oval Office.

Okay. So there’s gonna be for criminal trials against Trump this year. Right?

Well, at four are currently scheduled, whether they all go off as a a fair question. But, yes, Alright.

Let me see if I can get

through this.

So one is the DC election interference case, which is Jack Smith’s case. That’s a federal case. Right. One is the Florida, like you just mentioned, the confidential documents case, which is also by Jack Smith, also a federal case

Correct.

Jack Smith is very busy.

He is a very busy man. Yes. I had

not quite realized he was doing both. Yes. Okay. He’s a

he’s a very special, special counsel.

Okay. And then one is the Hush money case in Manhattan. Mhmm. That’s

the Alvin Brad case.

Right? New York state case. And then one is the Georgia Rico case.

Mhmm.

Okay. So I’m gonna probably ask you to do a deep dive into all these cases as those trials get going, but for now, We just ask you about the trial timeline. So which trial is gonna go first? And how does that get decided?

Well, I don’t have my calendar in front of me, but DC election interference trial is scheduled to go on March fourth. I don’t think that’s necessarily going to happen because of the delay that has been caused by Trump’s assertion of presidential immunity. And we I think we talked about in a prior episode how that was argued into the DC circuit now two weeks ago. I think there’ll, you know, it’s pa it’s possible that if the decision comes down this week, the trial could occur in March, or maybe early April. It could get delayed further, though, if Trump is successful in he’s gonna lose in the DC circle.

I’m pretty confident based on the argument. It could get delayed further if Trump tries to take it to the Supreme Court, which he absolutely will try. And the question is whether the Supreme Court will bother to take it And if they do, then they’d, you know, likely to decide the immunity issue, which isn’t a hard issue to my mind. By June, and then you’d end up with a trial. Probably my guess would be August.

I don’t remember what the trial date is for the Florida, documents case, but you just get the feeling that the the judge is putting that on a slow boat and she hasn’t postponed the trial date. I I think at some time in the summer. But you just get the feeling she’s not all that anxious to push the case and she’s She’s doing things that people read as potentially slowing the case down, but we’ll see. The brag case, I think, is sometime in eight But I but I I, you know, and then the question is, you know, is that going to interfere with any of the other cases? And it may or may not depending on what happens in the DC in in the DC circuit with the immunity case.

And the Georgia case, you know, it’s also scheduled to go sometime this year, but that it’s a very that’s a much more complicated case. And so it’s not clear that that’s going to happen. Because it’s a real way as it evolves so many defendants, although quite a number of them have pleaded And, you know, they’re working on delay trying to to to delay that. And there’s this little controversy that, that Fannie Willis stepped into with the hiring her boyfriend to be a prosecutor in that case, which was a

side note. Can we talk about that really quickly? Why? Why? Why would one do that?

I mean, look, I I I Bub? Well, you know, I don’t think he you know, I don’t think it was a thing where he she’s trying to reward him, and I’m just guessing on them to for for his loves, shall we say. Yeah. I think that, you know, I think that she wanted some and my guess is she wanted somebody she could trust and she fell close to this man and can and can trust him and that he’s a good lawyer. Problem is, It looks bad.

The other problem is he’s not really he doesn’t really have a prosecutorial pedigree. He’s a good, a very, you know, good civil lawyer, and he’s done for what I can tell from what he’s done from the work that they produced and especially including and especially the the the the the extensive indictment. They’re doing a good job and nobody has said he’s not. But that said, it’s it it looks bad. Because it looks like you’re you know, your high it’s nepotism.

I mean, you know, far be it for Donald Trump to to to be critical of that, but he will. And, but I don’t think anything I mean, these all raise issues about public administration and about, the ethics of maintaining, you know, not not engaging in mixing personal and professional. But it’s got nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the offense, and I don’t Yeah. I nobody that I have talked to can see how it can possibly help the defendants legally. It may help them politically in some sense because it gives them something to bash Fanny Willis with.

On on the other hand, I mean, this thing could could just go away because I, you know, it’s not clear that it’s even relevant to the divorce case that that Wade is involved with because that that there’s also there’s an agreement already he had with his ex spouse. They’ve been separated for three years. And I, you know, it’s just unclear why all of a sudden this got resurrected or got put on the radar screen other than, I don’t know, than politics.

Knowing nothing about it other than really what you just told me and what I’ve read, I do drives me crazy when people

just got a big No. You got a big job.

You get important thing to do. And the Why

you muck with something that’s against us.

Deeply important in this moment. Yeah. Alright. But back to the back to the calendar you were just doing, if I heard you correctly, it sounded like the most the case most likely to move is the Alvin Brad case, which I don’t even think you’re gonna have discussed that. Would would you agree that that’s the weakest from a the offense is just kinda like everyone’s like, okay.

The guy paid off

a worn straw. Yeah. I mean, it is a crime. It’s just not it doesn’t have as much oomph as some of the other offenses, like stealing classified documents containing nuclear secrets than trying to overthrow the Constitution of United States. It looks pretty trivial.

Those are bad.

Yeah. Those are bad.

Those are bad.

Those are bad in my book. But paying, you know, paying off a porn star. I mean, that would and and then creating false books and records. I mean, that is a crime under New York law. I mean, you you are not allowed to create false books and records.

Even if you have a privately owned family company, you’re not allowed to do that. And, you know, what what happened here was it wasn’t it, you know, they created false records in the books of the Trump corporation but it was also an effort to cover up from the public. You know, why what what this man was about. So it was in a sense a kind of a a a low level election interference case. You could call it that.

But it’s just doesn’t it pales in comparison to the other stuff. I mean, it is something though that the Justice Department should to my mind should have brought on January twenty one, two thousand twenty one. But they did not. They brought, you know, they brought a case against, once upon a time, they brought a case against John Edwards. John Edwards had a baby and a baby mama and he got some old lady donor to give money to support the baby mama.

And he was prosecuted for that. Now he was acquitted But people say that he was acquitted because the the old lady who gave them money was sold, she couldn’t testify, and they really there were gaps of proof. But the fact is, You know, it charged they charged a crime because you’re not allowed to, you know, you’re not allowed to create, in that case, that was a that was a federal election that those were donations to the campaign because they were done for purposes of advancing as candidacy or preventing something from derailing his candidacy. And you could make that same, you know, and that that same argument, could have been made about Trump.

Okay. So, but again, so just on the timeline, It doesn’t sound like there would be a conviction in anything before the convention in July.

I I’m not I’m not certain of that. I think it’s possible. I could I could work out a timeline for the election interference case in DC. Uh-huh. Right?

That that would get that case to trial before the before the convention.

Okay. Tell me what that would be.

Okay. That would be would be that, this afternoon, the US Court of Appeals Circuit will just hypothetically. A a firm judge Chuckkin’s denial of Trump’s motion to dismiss on grounds of presidential community. They could then say that the mandate, which is the order that they issue saying this judgment, shall take effect immediately. They could issue a man, an order saying that, well, that this the judgment is affirmed and the mandate shall issue immediately.

In which case, that would lift the stay of proceedings in the district court and cause things to happen. Like, you know, all the pretrial stuff. Well, he could. He could, but here here’s the rub is that in he he wants to stop the proceedings in the district court.

Right.

And if the DC circuit issues a mandate saying that the judgment is affirmed and essentially lifts the stay, They’re off to the races in the district court unless Trump goes somewhere and get someone else to stop it. And you could there is two places you can go. One is to the full DC Circuit on Banc, Northern Court on Banc. Yes. And and the other is the Supreme Court of the United States.

If he, you know, if he he could he could easily lose those stay applications. I think what would happen most likely is that that the Supreme Court would enter a stay or maybe the even the DC Circuit could enter a stay until the disposition of a petition for Zershwararai, if the if the petition is filed by a x date, which is what happened essentially in the Colorado case, which forced Trump to file a quick cert petition to the Supreme Court, which is why that case is moving like the speed of light. That same thing could happen in the immunity case. And if the court word is deny cert, you could see basically trial proceedings recommencing assuming that the DC circuit ruled today in a couple of weeks or three weeks. And if that were true, then You probably get another month of delay for the for the for basically to make up for January and part of December.

And the case could get tried in May or June. Okay. It’s or April, April, May or June. So I I think it’s possible I I I don’t think we know for it really depends on how quickly the DC Circuit rules and I actually would thought they would have ruled by now or they could rule any day now. And whether the Supreme Court wants to take the case.

That’s fundamentally too. But the one thing the Supreme Court cannot do because it would get roasted. It would be to take the case on some kind of a slow track such such that it would be argued in the fall. In which case you’d never get a trial before the election. Yeah.

That’s just not gonna happen because if they they’re gonna understand like that there’s a there’s a there’s a fire that’s going on in the district court. This thing is ready for trial and they’re not, you know, they don’t wanna look. They certainly don’t wanna look like they’re trying to delay things for for trauma.

So I guess, oh, but what if what if they take the I’ve always wondered this. What if they take the opposite view, which is not that it delaying it makes it look like they’re helping Trump, but that they decide to delay it because they think we cannot rule on this before an election because we don’t wanna interfy.

Yeah. You can’t do that. That that would that would be they they their their job is to decide cases. And they’re gonna they’re not going to they’re not gonna put this I just can’t it’s inconceivable to me that they would do that. And I think the perfect example of that is, I mean, it’s illustrated by the fourteenth Amendment case, which is gonna be argued on February eighth.

Now, that said, I mean, the fourteenth amendment case is a little different. This disqualification case is different because the argument for expedition is that state election officials need to know the answer to this question because they’re printing ballots.

Yeah. Right.

And and they’re printing ballots for super Tuesday, although I don’t know whether the this decision is gonna be able to affect that, but there are still gonna be some primaries left over going into April. And No. They were they any and we need resolution for the fall since he probably is going to be the Republican nominee. Almost certainly could be the Republican nominee.

Certainly gonna be. I mean, literally unless a health event, I think, barring a health event. But you just said something that I don’t know why this keeps reoccurring to me, but that is four criminal cases. Two civil cases. And then there’s also the cases of, like, can he be on the ballot or not?

No. Well, I mean, the civil cases, which civil cases do you think? If you think of Lee and

Carol, which organization.

Yeah. But there’s another one too.

What’s the other one?

There is a case called ACN. And ACN was this multi level marketing scheme.

Like, Trump University? Basically, what

it was is they it was advertised on the apprentice. And you basically you send in money, and then they they they they they is they’re supposed to teach you how to get money make money. Yeah. But the way they make money is they just keep taking they just keep taking the money. I mean, it’s like, you know, like a chain letter.

And So, that was a fraud. Mhmm. And the same lawyer who is who who brought the, eugene Carroll case, my friend, Robbie Kaplan, is the plaintiff lawyer in that case. Why is

that just happening now?

Because it it’s just, you know, the litigation a long time. This case was this case was brought in, I think, twenty eighteen. It was brought before in twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen, because it was brought before the eugene Carroll story came out. And that’s actually how it’s actually how I met Robbie Kaplan. I I saw the complaint in this.

It was a Rico. It was originally charged as a Rico case or alleged as a a Rico case. And, I was very impressed with the complaint. And I then went back and I looked at the various news hour have it written about it. And so the light for the life of me, I don’t understand why federal prosecutors didn’t get involved in that one.

So I mean, it’s just it’s just outright fraud.

Three civil, four criminal, and one that I’ll call procedural.

Well, you know, it’s yeah. It’s not lie it’s not for liability, but it’s for all the marbles, you know, whether he gets the be on them.

And then they have these like tentacles of like the immunity and all these other things that end up in their own. You can forgive voters for feeling like the legal stuff is white noise.

Yeah. Because it’s just there’s just so much of it. It’s overwhelming. So much.

And the one of the things you said this earlier, and it struck me.

The thing to remember is, and the point I make to is, like, he’s been charged ninety one felony counts in four different cases. Any combination, a conviction on any combination of those counts virtually could put him in jail the rest of his life. They don’t have to win they don’t have to go ninety one for ninety one these prosecutors.

Not the Alvin Brad case, though.

There’s there’s a there’s a Would you

go to jail for that?

Is potentially yes.

Okay. Well, then what happens if he goes to jail? Or what happens if he’s convicted? Given a sentence of jail time, and he’s present in the United States.

The sentence would not be. I I don’t think you could execute the sentence. I don’t think you could you could put him in jail. I I mean, the the there’s a history here of there are these memos written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council, which is basically the the legal brains of the Justice Department where they think about hard issues and they give advice president and give advice to other people in the executive branch. And in the Nixon Administration, the question came up could a president be in indicted.

And also it came up in the Clinton administration. And both the Nixon and Clinton administration Justice Department wrote memos saying, no, you can’t. And the argument is that you you you can’t criminally prosecute the president of the United States because he can’t prevent him from being president. The proper remedy is to impeach and remove him, and then you can prosecute him. Now I’m not sure that’s completely correct.

Because I think you, you know, just in the same way that you can bring civil cases that was shown by the Paula Jones Jones case against the president if they don’t have sufficient connection to his office. I I don’t know why you can’t actually bring the criminal case, but I think it’s pretty clear. I I don’t I don’t I think it’s pretty clear you couldn’t incarcerate him because if you incarcerated him, either pretrial or after sentencing after after a jury, a conviction, you would prevent him from doing his job and and that’s, you know, that would violate article two of the constitution. So I think he’s got a pretty good argument that even if he were in lockup, a federal or state lockup on January twentieth and and for breakfast, if he won the election, he’d have to be sprung at noon.

That’s why he’s running. Right?

Of course it is.

Yeah.

And in fact, in fact, Maggie Hayberman reported a few times in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty that one of the reasons why he was re he ran for reelection was because he wanted to make sure that nobody could prosecute him.

Yeah.

I mean, this is a man who would never admit his guilt but knows that he’s at risk. He’s always known that he is risk. And this and this goes back to, I mean, The thing a story that haunts me is about two days before the inauguration, I was on a plane. It was the Trump plane and there are four people in the cabin. There was the president-elect of the United States, Hope Hicks, my then wife and me.

And we’re just sitting like I was sitting about this far from the president-elect and he asked me this question. He goes, should I fire the US attorney of this other district in New York, replace it? Who is pre barra. And my answer was, well, I mean, generally speaking, it’s better to have your people in positions of power than not. I mean, I just was giving just a generic answer.

We want people who are gonna be, you know, if what if you if you have some kind of a priority. And and I’m thinking here of a prosecutorial priority of of of some sort like a legitimate one. I guess, you know, It would be it would be better to have your own person in there. Although I didn’t elaborate on this. I mean, The the practice is mixed on whether or not people stay on from administration to administration in the US attorney’s office.

And there’s a special kind of aspect to the US attorney’s office in the Southern District, New York, is that it considers itself kind of independent of everybody in independent of the Justice bombing The joke in the Justice Department I learned when I was, contemplating going into the Justice Department twenty seventeen was they call it the sovereign District of New York. Mhmm. But that said, I mean, there there have been lots of circumstances where new presidents replace US attorneys, not because they think they’re gonna be charged in any particular district. But in this case, years later, I realized This guy had something on his mind. Mhmm.

K. Why did he care so much about that about that district? Other, you know, it wasn’t just, you know, hometown.

Did he fire Pre?

Yeah.

I forgot about that.

He did. The first podcast one of the first podcasts I ever did was with Preet.

Did you tell him that story?

Absolutely, I did.

Oh, yeah. Was he mad at you? No. No. I mean, he

I mean, he understood why I said what I said. I’m just like, you know, I didn’t say he should fire.

I just

said, all of the things, you know, I I I did it the way the economist do ceteris powers. All of the things being equal. Yeah. If you’d write all of the things being, would you rather have have your own person somewhere important?

I would spend the rest of the time talking about just what else happened on that plane.

No. I don’t that’s the only thing I remember. Yeah. That’s the only thing I remember. The only other thing I remember I mean, the rest of it was just I I don’t know whether there was much talking.

I remember, you know, to a selfie and, you know, the kind of things that you do when you’re riding, you know, a big seven fifty seven with a guy who’s about to be sworn in as president of the United States.

I don’t know. That’s never happened to me. No. I don’t think it’s

gonna happen. No one

fights me on their privacy.

It’s never gonna happen to me again. Yeah.

Well

That was unique.

So, What’s the difference if Trump’s convicted in one of the state cases for the federal cases? Does that have any bearing on what we just talked about?

No. I don’t I mean, I don’t I I I don’t think that a state could incarcerate a president of the United States while he is president.

Okay.

The only difference would be that as president, he can fire the federal prosecutors. He has that power, but I don’t think he’d even need to do that. He certainly will. But he can’t fire the state prosecutors. But I do think in either situation, if he’s incarcerated, found con if he’s convicted and incarcerated, by Either state authorities or federal authorities, he he’d be they’d have to spring them at noon on January twentieth two thousand twenty five.

Wild. You know, it all feels so unprecedented because we’ve never had a president try to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power before. Like, we’ve never had a

He’s got ninety one problems.

I

won’t say the rest

of it.

At the

base ain’t one. But I have to keep reminding myself that it is

yeah. JZ.

I have to keep reminding myself that it is not uncommon for government officials to go. To prison. Absolutely. And no one says we’re a we’re a banana republic and Rob La Goyevan. Yeah.

I mean, this guy is a re this guy Yeah. No. This guy is I mean, I made the same point about the Ukraine situation. Right? Ukraine, he basically He’s got these federal funds that he is required by law.

They have the the the the the spending authorization has been made and he was required to disperse military aid, security aid to Ukraine. And he held. He he ordered that it’d be all held. And he strongly intimated as we all infamously and as we go in the perfect phone call, he basically said, hey, listen, you can do me a favor. You know, quid pro quo.

And if the point I always made about that is if a state official had done that with federal highway funds, in order to encourage a prosecution or some kind of a negative action to be taken against the political rival. I mean, this hypothetical, I would think of. Let’s say you’re you’re you’re you’re the governor of longwell state. Oh, that’s a

great scene.

And then and in the capital, the capital also named Longwell has a mayor named, Joe. And the and then the governor, wants to the the job decides to run for governor and his successor as mayor, takes over. And the governor then says, I’m not gonna give you those highway Ron DeSantis you conduct you announce you’re conducting an investigation into bad acts of your predecessor. Same thing. That would be the that

would not stand in Longwell.

In the state of Longwell, the US attorney for the District of Longwell would would would would just convene a grand jury. And in the the long well times the next morning, they’d be a, you know, they’d be an investigate. They’d be saying people have received grand jury the governor, blah, blah, blah, his office had, you know, and we’d be, and we’d be off maybe off to the races.

It’s like a Melkovich, Melkovich. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

Alright. Now that I’m telling stupid jokes, it’s probably means it’s time to go.

Oh, I had my stupid joke. Ninety one ninety one charges in a something one, you know.

The base ain’t one?

Yeah. Base ain’t one? Okay.

So anything should be looking out for this coming week in one

of the news. Well, okay. So what’s going on this week is we’re waiting that awaiting the DC Circuit decision in the immunity case. We are also watching the weird situation in Georgia involving Fannie Will Saletan the eugene Carroll trial has been delayed because I mean, nobody knows exactly why, but there was a sick juror who had symptoms of COVID and nobody has said that anybody has COVID, but the the the supposition is that there’s somebody in that courtroom got COVID. And that’s, you know, but it’s been day to day.

They’ve been delaying each day. They’re probably gonna kicked over till next week because I just, you know, I mean, it’s like a what the CDC guidelines are like five days or something like that. I don’t know. And, the the real issue then is that Trump was supposedly going to testify, this week. He may, supposedly court’s gonna happen tomorrow if they don’t kick it again, and he could testify tomorrow.

If he does testify tomorrow, That’ll be the last thing that happens this week, and then they’ll probably charge the jury Monday or Tuesday, and the jury will get the case Monday or Tuesday. We gotta have a verdict Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. If If there’s no court tomorrow, then they’ll probably get pushed another day. But we’ll see.

Okay. Well, I’ll look forward to having you explain it all to me then.

Yeah. Hopefully, a week from we’ll have, you know, we’ll have something to talk about.

Sounds great. George Conway.

Thank you, ma’am.

Great to have you here.

Always nice to be here.

Thanks to all of you for joining us for another episode of George Conway explains it all. Don’t forget to hit subscribe and we will see you next week.