Justice for Ruby and Shaye

In courtrooms across the country, the March toward legal accountability continues. In Washington, DC, a federal judge finds Rudy Giuliani liable for information in Georgia, Donald Trump faces arraignment next week. Mark Meadows testified for the first time in New York the attorney general accuses Donald Trump of inflating his net worth by more than two billion dollars all the while could just push ahead for early trials on many of the ninety one felony counts the former president faces. Welcome to the latest episode of the Trump trials, a Bulwark podcast, that we are doing in, in conjunction with our partners from Law Fair. And we are joined today by Ben Willis, editor in chief of Lawfair and senior fellow in governance studies at the brookings institution and Annabauer legal fellow and court’s correspondence at law fair.

Thanks for joining me. I appreciate it very much.

Hey, Charlie.

Thanks for having me.

We have to start with Rudy rather extraordinary moment federal judge ruled yesterday that America’s former mayor is legally liable for defaming two George election workers who are the subject of all these conspiracy theories about how they handled ballots while working for the Fulton County Board of elections during the twenty twenty election. Let’s play a little montage of this that we put together. This is Rudy Giuliani, then the former president of the United States also defaming them, and then Ruby Freeman describing, the impact this defamation had her life.

Ruby Freeman and Shay Freeman Mars and one other gentleman, quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine?

We had, eighteen thousand voters, having to do with the Ruby Freeman that She’s a votes scammer, a professional votes scammer and hustler, Ruby Freeman. That is that was the tape that’s been shown all over the world that makes everybody look bad.

I’ve lost my name, and I’ve lost my reputation. Have lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with number forty five, and his ally, Rudy Giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shay. To push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.

So, federal judge Sarah Longwell in Washington wrote this really lengthy smackdown of Rudy Giuliani, and she issued basically default judgment against them and awarded the election workers punitive damages. So the case now goes to a trial. And the only question for the jury is the amount of damages that should be paid. Let’s so let’s start with this. This is rather extraordinary.

Rudy just basically rolled over on this case, but the this will have real consequences for him. Won’t it?

It will, especially because he appears to be running out of money anyway. There will be a trial on the amount of damages But liability is now established, as it should be, one of the real human victimizations of this period was his and Trump’s treatment of Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss, the two Fulton County election workers whose lives were really torn upside down as a result of this. Sarah Longwell is a very serious judge in in Washington. She She was until recently the chief judge of the District of Columbia District Court, and she You know, responds to this. I think the way any reasonable person would respond to this kind of, you know, malicious lying about two these were not public people.

You know, these were kind of random election workers caught on film passing a breath mint between them

It wasn’t crack. It wasn’t heroin. It wasn’t a USB port. It was it was a mint. It’s a mint.

And let’s be Frank, Giuliani would not have said light crack or heroin had they been white. No. There was a very racist component to this. These are you know, this is a predominantly black county, and these are two black election workers. And he accused them.

They used language like hustler and, you know, vote rigor. And so there was this sort of persistent insinuation of crime and the underlying accusation was false and malicious. And so he has essentially acknowledged that these were false allegations And so the only question left really is how much damages they are entitled to. And I think the answer to that if you listen to their testimony before the January sixth committee, the answer to that question is going to be a lot. They suffered a great deal.

They had to, you know, move out of their house out of the area. And so, you know, I think in the list of Giuliani’s troubles, this one is just money, unlike some of the others, but it’s gonna be a lot of money. And he’s already having to put his apartment up for sale to fund his various legal bills. So I think, you know, it’s in the spiritual accountability department for January sixth. That’s an important moment.

And I think also in the financial sense for Rudy Giuliani, it’s an important moment.

Well, it also feels like just an alignment of planets because Giuliani’s attack on these with these women claimed that this video showed them passing around this USB port, which turns out to be the men and that it was used to infiltrate the crooked dominion voting machines. Well, of course, you know, this this links back to the great dominion lawsuit against Fox News that they settled for, seven hundred and eighty seven billion dollars. By the way, just a little footnote here. You know, originally running out of money. He’s, you know, had been begging Donald Trump to pay his legal bills.

He wanted to be paid twenty thousand dollars a month, and Donald Trump as is his as this is pattern and practice, stiff Rudy Giuliani and, you know, had not paid him. But now that Rudy Giuliani is, you know, facing criminal charges in that conspiracy in Georgia suddenly, he’s doing something. He’s not writing out his own check, but I don’t know if you saw this. He’s actually scheduled a fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani. You know, Donald j Trump, you know, invites you to come to this fundraiser.

Are you gonna attend Charlie?

Well, wait. Here’s here’s the here’s the punch line. The seats are selling for one hundred thousand dollars a plate. One and here’s the question.

Seems a little steep.

It seems a bit steep. So the question will be, who’s going to do that? Who’s going to show up for Rudy Giuliani and pay a one hundred thousand dollars for your chicken dinner so you can listen to the the election wise. I don’t know. There’s a a kind of just sort of rageous unseriousness about it.

I’ll go only if Mike Flynn is speaking.

Are there free tickets? Right? Are there comps to all of How big is this event going to be? I mean, honestly

Also, Mike Linda, Mike Flynn. And, those are the people. If they’re not headlining it, I’m not going.

Carrie Lake might show up. Carrie Lake. Oh, yeah. Carrie Lake Taylor Green. I don’t know.

But speaking of the of the sort of the alignment of the stars, so this does link to the dominion defamation suits. And dominion is also suing him. But this harassment, this campaign of vilification against Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss is also a big part of Bulwark County racketeering case that’s brought by Fannie Willis. So it is going to be interesting to see, you know, how that all plays out. I have a sort of a to sort of an off the wall question.

Clearly, they have won this defamation suit based on these comments Could they sue Donald Trump himself for defamation? What do you think? Why not? I mean, if Regiliani is liable, I just played a tape of Donald Trump saying making the same completely false bullshit accusation.

Right. So it’s not off the wall. So ruby Freeman, and shout out to the folks at Protect Democracy here who are representing Freeman and and Moss But Donald Trump has a defense that Giuliani does not have, which is the case of Nixon V fits Gerald. Which makes the president immune from civil liability. Remember he was president at the time.

Mhmm. He’s similarly immune for anything within the outer reaches of his role as president. And so you would have a question, and I think there’s a reason why they brought this case against Giuliani and not in the first instance against Trump. There would be a question whether speaking out on this matter, including in a malicious false way, would be covered by in V Fitzgerald. And I think nobody really knows the answer to that question.

Giuliani is more obviously exposed.

Okay. Well, speaking of duties that are performed, as part of your official capacity.

Yeah. Connex kinda well, doesn’t it?

It does. Yeah. So let’s talk about the former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who wants to remove the the criminal case from Fulton County Court to Federal Court where he hopefully get the charges dismissed. Now, Anna, you have been covering this. You you laid out what Meadows really wants.

He has to establish three things that he was a federal officer time of the alleged defense, not not in dispute, that the conduct alleged against him, you know, has a causal connection to his federal office that he has a colorable federal defense against the charges. So I think to to pretty much everybody’s surprise, he showed up and testified for several hours in federal court. You were there, Anna. So tell me about that. Tell me how that went.

Yeah. It was a really stunning moment when his defense attorney called him to the stand ahead of the hearing. We many of us orders did not think he would even show up. We didn’t think he was required to appear. And then sure enough, we walk into the courtroom And there is Mark Meadows wearing a blue suit and a baby blue tie, looking very relaxed.

And then the judge instructed counsel, you know, we’re here for an evidentiary hearing, I will give each side an opportunity to present evidence. And Meadows defense attorney stands up, and I expected that he might have some documents to, admit into evidence, and then at the end might make some argument, but Instead, he said, your honor, we call Mark Randall Meadows to the stand and Meadows proceeded to testify for four hours, and it’s rare enough to see a criminal defendant take the stand and testify because often defense attorneys don’t want their client to be locked into one, you know, telling of events they don’t want to open their client up to cross examination. There’s just all kinds of concerns that are raised whenever a criminal defendant testifies, but Meadows went on for four hours. And he’s the former White House chief of staff, and it was it was a really remarkable scene, and and we were there ended up being there for about eight hours to to hear everything go down.

So did we learn anything new? Was there any, you know, revelation from that testimony? Because I don’t get the sense that there was.

Not necessarily from Meadows testimony. One thing that we did learn that is new information, at least as I understand it, is Kurt Hilbert, who was a campaign attorney who worked on some of the Trump campaigns litigation here in Georgia, He was called to the stand by the prosecution. And Kurt Hilbert is someone who was on that famous Raffensberger recall in which Trump asked Rafinsberger to find votes. And Hillbert testified that before that call was made to Rafinsberger, There was actually another call that occurred about ten minutes beforehand, and that involved Meadows and Kurt Hilbert, and I’ll Kaufman and Cleeta Mitchell, who were all of these campaign attorneys. And Gilbert would not testify to the substance of that call But as I understand it, I think what the prosecution was trying to show is that when Meadows says that he wasn’t really clear on whether the call was about a campaign happening or campaign litigation or some other litigation that he’s not being fully truthful about that.

So I I think that that was the point maybe there. So that was new. We also learned that Mark Meadows denies or dispute some of the conduct that is alleged in the indictment. It’s alleged, for example, that he met with some delegation of Pennsylvania legislators to discuss calling a special session to potentially appoint electors in favor of Trump. And Meadows says that he did not take part in that meeting.

He says he was there in the beginning. He introduced himself as chief of staff, and then he exited before the the substantive discussion about the election occurred. And then he also said that he did not instruct John Mack and T to write a memo about, how to potentially overturn the results of the election. So that was new. But otherwise, you know, there wasn’t a whole lot that was new.

Do you get a sense? I mean, do we have any signal which way the judge might go on all of this? I mean, the the the I mean, obviously, Meadows really wanted this ruling to come down to remove this to federal court before he had to be arrested. He was trying to avoid being arrested. He didn’t want that mug shot.

The judge pointed out that under the law and under precedent that you generally didn’t stop state level executions while a case like this was pending. Now the judges asked some questions. Do we know when a ruling will come down and do you get it sense of how it went. Do you think the judge is going to be inclined to remove the case?

We don’t know when a ruling will come down. I did get sense that Judge Jones might take some time, and I and I will point out that he’s ordered some additional briefing on the matter So I think it may be a little while. This is an area of law that’s really unsettled, and and he pointed out that there’s not a whole lot of press and then that this will probably set precedent for future cases. But in terms of what I gathered from how it went, I got the sense that Judge Jones seemed to think that at least some conduct was maybe not in the scope of Meadows’ duties as chief of staff.

Mhmm.

He

asked a lot of pointed questions about the president’s and the federal government power under the constitution to get involved in state elections. He seemed at times to maybe want Meadows to be a little bit more direct about some of the answers that he was giving that were seemed, I think, to me, to not be entirely credible. You know, Meadows would give some answers that sounded a little bit wishy washy, and that and that we’re

You want a surprise.

Yeah. You know, he would say things like there was this email that Meadows says we just need to get coordinated in the states. And Meadows came up with this, you know, response of saying, oh, well, I overused the term we it’s a leftover for my congressional days. I didn’t wanna take too much credit for myself. And there were responses that I think my impression of the judges facial expressions and and demeanor.

I I think there were times when the judge did not find Meadows to be entirely credible. And so I think at least to some extent, there’s a chance that it is not removed to federal court. But at the same time, like you said, Charlie, the judge pointed out that very often these things are removed, and it’s a very, very low bar. So I’m really not sure what to expect here.

Okay. Well, the other major development, of course, were the speedy trial request from Sydney Powell and Kenneth Cheesboro under the law they have the right to ask for an expedited trial. This creates, of course, a dilemma for Fannie Will Saletan you you can use whatever words you want to use on all of this. She clearly does not want to sever these cases, she wants all nineteen to be on trial at the same time, other because it’s certainly easier to be able to make paint the picture of the vast conspiracy, the interconnectedness, if they are all on trial. If they go singly, they kind of have the ability to say point to the empty chair and say, well, that other person was responsible.

Why should I be held responsible? So you have two of the the defendants who’ve asked for a speedy trial, Bonnie Will Saletan filed this rather extraordinary motion to say, okay. Let’s try everybody early. So how is that going to play out? I mean, it seems extremely unlikely that we are going to have a vast conspiracy Rico case, against nineteen defendants, including the former president of the United States, in October.

So tell me what’s going on this this back and forth maneuvering gamesmanship.

Like you said, you know, Fony Willis wants to try all of them together, I think that to some extent, Cheesebro and Powell filing these speedy trial motions, it’s a way for them to remove them selves from the larger group because I think it’s very unlikely that even though it’s the defense who has the burden to show that they should be severed separated from other defendants in a case like this. I think it’s very unlikely that the judge is going to effectively force these defendants who don’t want a speedy trial and who want more time to prepare to go ahead and go to trial in October. Right? Because There’s going to be all kinds of evidence. They might have a lot of, motions that they wanna file that maybe Powell and cheese rolls.

Team doesn’t. So there’s just a lot of complicating factors with, you know, putting defendants who don’t want this speedy trial to effectively say to them, okay, you gotta prepare for this, you know, nineteen defendant Rico case in two months. I just don’t think that Judge McAfee is going to to do that. The big question is going to be whether or not we see Powell and Cheesbro and anyone else who does want a speedy trial put together. Powell and Cheesbro, yes, today filed motions to sever from each other and from every other defendant.

And, of course, someone like Cheesebro who has not been implicated in things like the Coffee County breach. He he’s not gonna wanna have anything to do with Powell’s trial. So I I think that the question that remains for me is who else is going to file speeding trial demands And then to what extent will judge McAfee say that they should be tried together. And I think that you know, whether or not these actually go in October, it’s really unclear to me. There’s a lot of things that could happen that would delay that October date, and and that would effectively mean that Powell and and Cheesebro have waived their speedy trial demand.

So you know, like I said, this might be some gamesmanship on their part to just try to get severed from as many defendants as possible. But we’ll see.

Okay. No. And because it’s twenty twenty three, there’s always a political aspect to this. And, one of the extraordinary developments we’re seeing both in Washington and and in Georgia, is the the zeal with which, Republican legislators want to use their power to obstruct the investigation In in Washington, they’re pushing ahead with proposals to defund the special council. And there’s this effort to either oust or impeach funny Willis, in the Georgia legislature.

Now Greg Bluestein, the Atlanta Journal Constitution calls us a fantasy that far Republicans think they can stop her from prosecuting Trump. And yesterday, I thought this was rather significant. Another conservative Republican, the speaker of the Georgia House, John Burns, joined others, including the governor in saying that I’m not really bothered about antagonizing Trump, and he wrote a letter to his caucus speaker burden saying the targeting one DA would undermine the idea of separation of powers if not violated. So right now, does that appear to be dead on arrival in Georgia? Because, I mean, there there was this buzz that the Georgia legislature could step in and just yanked Fony Willis out of the case.

Not gonna happen.

While I understand, certainly, the concern over the talk about removing Fony Willis, I think that what people need to know is that Georgia has very complex Republican leadership politics it’s maybe not as, you know, simple as as a bunch of, you know, Maga Republicans who want to oust Fanny Willis. You’ve gotta remember that Brad Raffensberger at the Mark Meadows hearing on Monday testified about that phone call. You know, these are folks who who have taken a stand against Trump and and what occurred during the twenty twenty election

and survive. Yeah.

And survive. And and our, you know, Kemp is pretty broadly popular. You know, he’s certainly conservative. Mhmm. You know, George is just very different from other conservative states.

It’s hard to explain, and I’m not entirely sure what the reason for that is as to why George’s Republican.

It is interesting.

Yeah. It’s really interesting.

This is a really interesting question. Why the Georgia Republican Party is so different, say, the Arizona Republican Party or the Michigan Republican Party, you know, all of which have set themselves on fire with crazy. And then there’s the Georgia Republican Party, which seems to have this the threat of sanity. And in fact, the fact that Brad Rafinsberger and Brian Kemp, you know, won their primaries rather easily is it it really isn’t one of the extraordinary sort of contrarian political developments of the year?

It is pretty extraordinary. So back to the point of what’s happening with Vonie Willis, I think that even though there is a strand of the party in Georgia, there are Colton Moore’s, the those far right folks who are going to just make outrageous claims and and try to get some movement and get some attention in Magga World. I I just don’t see it happening in the long term. You know, I’m hopeful that it doesn’t. But it, in the meantime, it it really is, causing some infighting amongst the the legislatures who are Republican in in the Georgia general simply.

And, Barbara, thank you so much for, your reporting and joining us on on the podcast. We really, really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Okay. So, Ben, picking up with, something I was just discussing with Anna, this congressional push to defund the special council. It’s so bizarre. It’s not going anywhere. At least I don’t think it’s going anywhere.

But the willingness of congressional Republicans to basically say yes, obstructing justice, defunding the criminal justice system, is really one of our top priorities, is really one of the more remarkable developments of the year. I mean, I I mean, if you wanna be a little bit snarky about it, I mean, the Democrats had their defund of the police, and that didn’t work out well for them. And the Republicans seem to be saying, hey, hold our beer. We’re not just gonna defund the police. We’re gonna defund the whole freaking thing.

So This is a new development. I’m trying to think of other precedents where members of Congress, members of the appropriations committee would formally introduce resolutions that would cut the Department of Justice off at the knees. So talk to me about that.

I can’t think of any. No. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were had been some noises about that. Among individual members during the Mueller investigation or some past special council investigations, but I’m certainly not recalling it. It won’t, as you say, it won’t go anywhere because, you know, there is a Senate and the president has a veto.

And realistically defunding individual investigations is something that Congress is ill positioned to do. That said, it does, as you say, show a lot about where the caucus is and you know, what it’s willing to contemplate in in defense of Donald Trump and notice that it’s not you know, it’s not done with any protestation that he’s innocent. Right? It’s just, you know, let’s defund the investigation slash prosecution because, well, it’s all about power and we can.

Alright. The other major well, there’s a lot of major developments this week. Let’s go to the federal case in DC. The district court judge, Tanya Chuckin, set a trial date of March fourth two thousand twenty four, which is the eve of super Tuesday. And she did this after a hearing, but apparently a rather contentious hearing.

She had to, you know, several times, tell Trump’s lawyer, you know, let’s take the temperature down. They were asking for a trial date set in the spring of twenty twenty six, which was laughable. She tried to get them to be reasonable. Can we come up with a compromise? They wouldn’t budge And it’s kind of interesting because the attorney, Laura is considered to be, you know, a credible attorney.

Right? But clearly, he is doing what Donald Trump is demanding he do. And as a result, the judge just basically rolled over him. Is that what happened?

I think so. So we have a a very detailed account of this hearing on lawfare from Sarah Longwell Denani. I think in mister Lara’s defense, He has an impossible job here. The client is only interested in a trial date that is after the election. There is no basis for that kind of a request.

And so you don’t actually get to say, and judge Chuckkin was clear about this. You don’t get to say if you’re a professional athlete. Hey, can we wait till after the NBA season? Cause I, you know, really don’t wanna miss my games. Right?

And you don’t get to say if you’re you know, a concert pianist. Hey, I’ve got a tour coming up. Can we wait until after that? Trials don’t yield to professional convenience. And, you know, she was pretty frank and pretty clear about that, and that’s true if you’re a political candidate too.

So you can’t say if you’re John Laurel Hey, we’ve got an election coming up. And if we win it, we can make this case go away. So can you please schedule the trial for after the election so that preferably with a little time for us to get sworn in so that we can have an attorney general drop this case or we can, you know, pardon ourselves if need be. Like, you don’t actually get to make that argument. So what do you have left?

Well, you have to make the argument that this is some outrageous amount of discovery that is so vast that you couldn’t possibly get this done until, you know, several years from now. And the problem with that is that it’s not true. You know, this is a significant volume of discovery. But as the prosecution points out, a lot of it is duplicative of itself. A lot of it is duplicative of material that was already in the public record because the January sixth committee released it.

And a lot of it is also material that was obtained from Trump’s own campaign and super pack and And so he already has access to. We’re not providing him anything new when we give him this discovery. So, yeah, it’s millions of pages, but it’s not millions of new pages. And by the way, we’ve organized the stuff in a sort of roadmap kind of binder for him, the stuff that’s really new. And so if you think about it that way, it’s much less material than is in a lot of major white collar investigations.

And so Laura ends up in this position where he can’t make the argument that he really means. He has to make an argument that’s not really true. And judge Chuck, you know, she’s been around the block a few times. She’s not, you know, especially patient with this sort of nonsense. And so she, you know, gives him two more months.

The government was asking for January She gave them a trial date of March, but she didn’t give an extra two years, which was what he wanted.

Have a transcript of what she said. She said, let’s not overlook the fact that, mister Trump has considerable resources that every other defendant does not.

Translation. Hire some more lawyers if you need to.

Well, exactly. And then, yeah, given how much discovery has been produced in electronic searchable form, and given the substantial portion, that has been, you know, reviewed by Trump, and his team. Why won’t the manner in which discovery has been turned over speed up your review, which is the point you just made there? So do you think it’s gonna take place in March? I mean, that does seem a little bit aspirational.

Will it actually take place in March?

I think it’s likely to take place at or near March. So you know, as with all of these things, somebody can get the flu and you can have a brief continuance or something March fourth may mean March twentieth, but it won’t mean June.

Interesting.

I think we’re likely to have a trial you know, in the first half of next year. Yeah.

But of course, you know, as the New York Times pointed out, you know, it’s unlikely that you’re gonna get a conviction before Donald Trump has wrapped up the Republican nomination. I think they put it like before Republicans know whether he’s going to be found guilty. I I think that’s almost beside the point because there’s no evidence suggesting. That even if he was found guilty, that Republicans would not renominate him, I think that’s pretty clear. By the way, this whole argument that it just Will Saletan long to be able to mount a defense and Laura went out afterwards and said, you know, this will deprive Donald Trump of adequate counsel and all of that, that sort of thing.

He had another one of his lawyers of that young woman whose name month that I forget right now because they haven’t bothered to, to memorize it. Goes on one of the, the talk shows and says, no. This will be easy for Donald Trump. He doesn’t need to prepare. He’s got this great brain.

He’s got the best memory in the world, and, you know, he doesn’t need any prep. He knows what he did. He knows what he said. So you have lawyers arguing exactly the opposite point about how hard it is to bound to defense?

I mean, I think the judge is likely to ignore the talk show defense. There’s a sophistication among federal judges, at least good ones that there’s the PR thing, and then there’s what you say in court. I do think Laura’s advanced acknowledgement that he may provide an effective assistance of counsel because of the time frame was a pretty shocking thing for him to say And it will not have been lost on Judge Chuckkin that he basically threatened to not do his job And she responded pretty sharply to that. I think that was a tactical error on his part to make that threat.

The other word I was referring to is Alina Haba. Alina Haba. I’ll remember it in the future. So

You know, I wouldn’t spend a lot of brainpower, trying to remember their names because they do come and go real fast. Remember Ty Cobb?

Oh, yeah. But that was an easy one to remember. I mean, Ty Cobb,

It’s true because he because he was Tycobb and he had that mustache.

I wish they would’ve kept him around because that was he

How about John Dow?

Yeah. Exactly. Do you

remember him?

I do. Absolutely remember him. There are some names that stick in your mind.

They come and go so quickly that it’s hard to remember them. So I’ve just stopped trying.

Yeah. It’s like trying to remember license plate you see on the interstate. Okay. So this is not a strictly legal question, but I wanted to get your take on this as a as a student of the art and the politics. What do you make of the mugshot?

We finally got the mugshot. The iconic moment, Trump world has decided to embrace this because, you know, he’s a badass. Of course, you know, the anti trump world has also embraced it because it’s a mug shot What is your take? Does it help him? Does it hurt him?

Charlie, I I support anything that brings us all together like this. The Trump world supports the mug. I love the mugshot, the anti trump world that supports the mugshot. It came as I was flying home from Europe. I read everybody’s enthusiasm for the mug shot.

I just thought this is bringing America together, and so I’m for it.

I’m for it as well. Although I heard somebody say that, you know, he was trying to look like Churchill or something, which I think is I think is overthinking it. Because I’ll tell you the first thing I thought when I looked at it, Blue Steel.

I thought he was trying to look like Mike Tyson.

He’s not exactly Mike Tyson. I mean, that’s not exactly it. Blue Steel is is the look from Zoolander. Zoolander, by the way, you know, continues to, be be edging toward idiocracy as perhaps a documentary of our our times, you know, and it’s this, shall we say, intellectually challenged male model who has this patented look, which is really, really fierce. So, of course, Blue Steel is taken, so that would be orange Steel.

The thing about it is he wants to look badass and menacing. And he succeeds in looking ridiculous. But again, isn’t that the brand? You know, I think half of America is laughing at his ass, and half of them is going, This is the great leader. This is the one we have been promised.

Yeah. So I think in that sense, the mug shot is something deep, actually. Because you think of a mug shot as, you know, not stylized. Right? Usually not.

Right?

It’s right. It’s you bedraggled looking your worst. If you’re a female, there’s no makeup. Your hair isn’t done. If you’re male, it’s, you know, maybe you’re not even looking at the camera.

Right? It it’s kind of Oh,

he had the makeup.

It’s kinda your worst look. And then there’s that institutional background rather than whatever you would want it to be. And so it’s it’s kind of represents you hitting rock bottom. Right? But then this is the opposite of that.

Right? This is a highly stylized mugshot in which he’s clearly thought about and designed himself for the look that he wants in his mugshot. They’ve sold advanced mugshot merch. The anti trump world has been braying for the mugshot. And so you have this sort of mugshot to deliver all mug shots.

And so it kind of defies the notion of a mugshot. That said, it is deeply unimportant. However, it has, you know, moved a lot of people on all sides of the question, and there’s a reason for that, which is that you know, a mugshot is what happens to everybody when they get arrested. And so far, he has avoided a lot of the acout romance of being a criminal indictee. And this time, he couldn’t.

Ron DeSantis represents the treating of him like everybody else.

So when did they stop doing the mug shots where you had to turn to your right, turn to your left, you know, stand, you know, full size, where they they Oh, I

think it just depends where you are.

And and also the fact that they let himself report his height and his weight, I mean, seems a little bit, like, Like, what could go wrong there? I mean, six foot three, two hundred and fifteen pounds. Oh, right.

I’m also six three, two hundred fifteen pounds.

Which is a coincidence because so am I. No.

Yeah. We’re we’re all six, three, two, fifteen now.

Are you speaking of mug shots? I I thought the John Eastman mug looked exactly like what a mugshot should look like.

That’s right.

I mean, that’s looks terrible and just awful. John Eastman is actually going on television now talking, went on Laura Ingram. It didn’t go well. But, again, like, these guys are actually lawyers. They have in the past allegedly been legal scholars.

Generally, when you are facing serious felony charges you don’t go on television and keep running your mouth. I mean, obviously, they all think that this court is just like one of the venues that there’s another audience that may be as important or more important. I mean, who’s Johnny’s been talking to when he goes on Laura Ingram show? When he should be keeping his mouth shut. What’s that about?

It’s a very deep question, and I don’t know the answer to it. So sometime before I was banned from Twitter, I had a Twitter exchange with Jeffrey Clark that really reinforced this point to me. And I’m not sure whether I picked a fight with him on Twitter or he picked a fight with me, but we ended up in a argument back and forth that went on for some time until he blocked me. You know, I was asking myself this question, who is the audience for this? You’re talking about your own criminal exposure in public being baited by, you know, whatever I am, a think tanker or a journalist, and you’re a former senior justice department official, you’re the one who’s supposed to know don’t talk about your criminal case in public.

You know you’re likely to be indicted. You’ve already had a a search warrant executed at your house. There are pictures of you in your underwear in front of your house. Shut up. Right?

And who is the audience that is more important than the process that you are already messed up with?

Unless the audience is the one who can pardon you, unless they’re basically all throwing in. It’s an audience of one, and they’re all thinking it’s a binary choice at this point. I mean, a phenomenal time

except they can’t pardon you in Georgia, except they can’t pardon you if he doesn’t get elected. Right? And there are a lot of contingencies here if you’re John Eastman that you should be thinking through as a this is a guy who clerked on the Supreme Court. This is a guy who clerked for the estimable Jay Michael Ludig on the fourth circuit. This is a a formerly serious person who should know that going on the Laura Ingram show to whack indignant about your treatment in the criminal justice system is less important than preserving your rights and position within the criminal justice system.

It’s one thing with Trump who is, you know, a raging bull elephant who among other things is running for president. And so there is a competing set of of concerns with respect to his criminal trial, but with respect to Eastman, Clark, Sydney Powell, Giuliani, There is no good reason for these people to be speaking in public. And one of the things that they do when they speak in public and yap like this that surely they are aware of is that they reduce their value as cooperating witnesses because if you’ve been all over place saying everything. You’re less valuable as a witness on the stand saying one thing because you’ve said all kinds of things. Right?

And, you can be cross examined with, but didn’t you say X on Laura Ingram, and didn’t you tell Tucker Carl, y, and didn’t you say z to Sean Hannity? And the more you speak, the less valuable your words are and that has implications for any plea deal you might cut. It has implications for if you take the stand in your own defense, And so, you know, there is somebody who is behaving appropriately in this regard. And, you know, you and Anna were talking about him before. It’s Mark Meadows, who has said almost nothing and then took the stand in support of his own motion for removal.

That was a surprise. But again, he has extremely professional lawyers and including a former deputy attorney general, and he’s following their advice.

One last question. This has almost gotten lost in all of the different, trump trials. I mean, before, the four indictments, against Donald Trump, he was already facing this suit in New York from the attorney general who was accusing him of, fraudulently inflating his assets by billions of dollars this is scheduled for civil trial in New York in October. And the attorney general, Latricia James, is gonna try to bar him in three of his children from leading their family business, the Trump organization, and she’s looking for a fine of around two hundred and fifty million dollars. And yesterday, the attorney general, autistic James, fired this, shot arguing that a trial isn’t necessary.

You don’t even need to have a trial. To find the Trump and the other defendants inflated the value of their assets in their financial statements and which enabled them fraudulently obtained loans and insurance arrangements. She argued that the fraud was so pervasive that Trump had falsely boosted his net worth by around eight hundred and twelve million to two point two billion dollars each and every year over the course of a decade, Trump is firing back asking, the judge to dismiss the suit. So in the great scheme of things, this is likely to get lost But, talk to me about where this all fits in. The practical implication would be that he’d be barred or limited from doing business in New York.

He could do business elsewhere, but This certainly would not be good news for the former president. I mean, inflating your value by two point two billion dollars a year,

So the good news for Trump is that this is all just money. The bad news for Trump is that it’s all just money, and there’s a lot of it at issue. And he’s gotten away with an enormous amount both in federal and state taxes and in all kinds of other matters over a very long period of time, and this stuff can catch up with you And in the New York case, it is not catching up with him as a criminal matter, but it is catching up with him in terms of civil liability. And so, you know, much like Giuliani and the defamation of Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman with which we started, you know, this isn’t the thing that’s gonna sync Trump. But it is a thing that is, you know, while you’re being trod on by dinosaurs you can also be eaten by mosquitoes, and the civil liability stuff is a lot of welds that are forming in the form of nasty bug bites.

And, you know, I’m not, by any means, an expert on New York fraud law, but I think he’s got a lot of exposure here. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up with a very big judgment against him. Now the net result of that may be no more than he’s not allowed to run his business anymore in New York. In which case dirty little secret, it’s been a long time since Trump’s real business was anything other than raising money for political causes and using that money for to pay his legal fees. So that might not be the worst thing in the world for him.

On the other hand, it’s both embarrassing, and it’s a limitation on his ability to, you know, use resources like you know, to borrow against big buildings to create institutions like the Trump Hotel in Washington, the now former Trump Hotel in Washington that he kind of monetizes in the political arena.

Yeah. It may make it harder to borrow money going forward. And and it’s also another line in his growing legal resume, you know, liable for rape, fraud tax. I mean, all of these things are sort of have a cumulative effect. Ben Wittis Annabauer.

Thank you so much for joining me on the new episode of the Trump trials. It does feel as if the pattern is full, and we will talk again next week.

I have a feeling there’ll be stuff to talk about, Charlie.

I think that that is a safe bet. And thank you all for listening to the latest episode of the Trump trials, a Bulwark podcast, in partnership with Law Fair. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all

over again.

Secret Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.