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Cayley Lin's here joining the conversation with Wendy Benjaminson. Wendy, I know you've covered a lot of ground already, but we really need to dig into the legal troubles of the former president, because this obviously isn't something going away. I now on my computer every day, in addition to my newswire and my email, things I always keep track of,
also have true social up well. Two former President Trump's page, for example, six hours ago he just posts in all caps election interference and of course that's likely a reference to the multiple indictments that this former president. Yes all caps though all caps, And of course we've had to pay a lot of attention to this, not just as he has been repeatedly indicted, but also as we get questions around when we're actually going to see him go to trial.
Absolutely, and the trial calendar is just insane. When you overlay it over the primary calendar, there will be the IOWA caucuses in January. In February, you will have New Hampshire and South Carolina, really critical state, South Carolina in particular this year because of the presence of its Senator Tim Scott, and it's former governor Nikki Haley. And then
you have Nevada. And then Fannie Willis thinks she's going to trial with this massive Rico case, which I'm really eager to hear what Dave Erenberg has to say about this in March. I mean, forget the politics for a moment. It'll be interesting to hear how he's going to do this. And then Alvin Bragg gets his bite at then at the Big Apple, so to speak, on March twenty fifth, and then in.
May May class documentum is well, and not to mention the Department of Justice in the Washington case here where we are requested January second.
Right, which is also really interesting to see. And also in civil cases. Trump is really good at delay tactics. It may not work as well in criminal court, but he is. He has faced thirty five hundred lawsuits as a businessman. Wow, and then almost everyone delay has been his best friend.
Okay, so we'll see if it works in the criminal cases. You mentioned him, Wendy, so let's get to him now. Dave Arenberg, state attorney for Palmyach County, is joining us. Dave great to get your perspective on this. Let's first just begin with that proposed start date in Georgia of March fourth, twenty twenty four. Do you think that is a realistic timeline for this trial in what, as Wendy rightly points out, is a very wide ranging case with lots of defendants, and by that I mean nineteen.
I think Wendy is right, because Tom always a good way to start. You know, she charged forty one counts ninety eight pages of one hundred and sixty one over at acts of the alleged conspiracy. I mean she even cited conduct and states that are not her own. I was in awe of this indictment. It was a tour de force. But because of that, I don't think this
is going before the twenty twenty four election. I think Fannie Willis's best chance is to get a bunch of the nineteen defendants to flip, to cut a deal, and then to have just a couple of these defendants left to try before the election. But even then, Rico is still such a complex charge that I don't see how this is going to get done, especially competing against all
the other cases over Donald Trump's head. So I think the good news for people who want accountability is that she is the first prosecutor to try to hold accountable all the leaders of the attempted coup. But the downside is that I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.
Well, let's go to that timeline. Then, if it happens after the twenty twenty four election, and let's just say for a moment that Donald Trump wins, he is the president elect. By January twentieth, twenty twenty five, he would be president of the United States. Again, I thought, sitting presidents can't be involved, can't be defendants in a criminal case, So how would that even work.
One of the great well, one of the great things about our job as state attorneys or district attorneys is that the US Attorney General is not our boss. The president is not our boss. We don't have to subscribe to the Department of Justice guidelines which say that you cannot indict a sitting president. So she can indict him, and she can try to put him on trial. I suspect the courts would step in and say that as long as he's president, you can't put him on trial,
and you can have to wait till after he leaves office. Now, if that's the case, and this is uncharted territory here, we've never had this before, but that's the case, I think that the state cases in Georgia and New York will be more powerful than the federal cases because Donald Trump will certainly try to pardon himself out of the federal cases if the trials have not happened yet, he'll order his Department of Justice to drop those cases against them.
But he cannot order the DOJ to drop a state case, and he cannot pardon himself out of state cases. So it's great to be a state prosecutor.
Well, there's also the question of whether or not he ever becomes president again. He still is a former president that we're talking about here, who has been charged with crimes that, if found guilty, could mean prison time in Georgia, specifically, as he's charged with violating the Rico Act that has a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. And it becomes a question as to whether or not we're actually going to see a former US president be sent to prison.
I asked this of Nick Ackerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, on Balance of Power earlier this week. This is what he told me.
Rico count itself carries with it twenty years or I think he's going to get twenty years. No, but he could definitely get some time under that ricer statute. If he's convicted, there's a minimum of at least a five year sentence. Now that doesn't mean five years in prison. It could be year, three years, probation, two years in prison. But yes, I think if he has found guilty, this is an extremely serious indictment. The allegations are serious, and if he's convicted, he's going to do time.
So, Dave, as a prosecutor, would you push to send a former president to prison or would you be worried about the broader signal that would.
Send Well, no one is above the law, and so I would push to treat him like others in the same situation. One thing that Trump has going for him is that he has no prior convictions, although that could change by the time this trial comes about. Fair Nick, Yeah, I do good. Nick Ackerman that although Fannie willis at a press conference, said there's a five year managed or a minimum prison sentence. The way I read the statute is that it does not require a judge to order
prison time. He can give or she could give probation, a fine, a combination of prison and a fine. So we'll see. But I do think that if he's found guilty of these serious charges, that it is likely he will get some sort of incarceration. It could just be house arrest and that would be the lightest form, but he could be sentenced to a prison stay. I know it's hard to believe and imagine that would happen, but look, who could ever imagine that a more present would be
indicted four times already? We've never been down this road before.
Well, and Dave, that leads to sort of the question of the bigger picture that even state prosecutors would have to consider in this case, is what happens to the country at that point? And as if you recall your history, I guess it is now. Gerald Ford really wrestled with whether to pardon Nick's and for any possible crimes he might have committed, because he was he thought the country had been rending itself apart over Vietnam and civil rights and other things, and it was just too much for
the country, so he pardoned him. Would prosecutors or judges take that sort of idea into account, because we're not at sixties level yet, but we're pretty close.
As it's possible. But remember back in the day when Gerald Ford part and Richard Nixon, we were a different country. We were a country that watched Walter Cronkite all at the same time. We weren't as divided into our tribes. Now it's shirts versus skins these days. And there is nothing that at President Biden or any other future president can do when it comes to pardoning Donald Trump that
would ever ingratiate themselves into the magabase. There's nothing that could convinced Donald Trump's core supporters that Donald Trump is guilty or that Biden or anyone else is less than evil. I mean, these people, a lot of them think that Democrats drink the blood of babies. So I just I know I'm being a little over the top here, but my point is that we're in a different society now.
If you continue to try to appease the most radical elements in Trump's space, it's going to blow up in your face, and I just think you have to treat Trump like you would treat anyone else in the same situation, because that's the only way to show that no one is above the law and that we're not going to be intimidated by threats of violence or rhetoric coming from the other side.
Yeah, it's a very good point, and I think that is the violence and questions around the security of the journey, for example, have arisen in recent weeks as a result of this indictment. You know, Wendy, you and I were discussing earlier that a number of members of the Grand Jury in Georgia were docked addresses posted online. So that's definitely something we're going to have to continue to talk about. But Dave, just to go back to the kind of
timeline question. Wendy was talking about how in civil cases, former President Trump has been very successful at delay, delay, delay. In these criminal cases, not just in Georgia but also the one down in your state of Florida the others, how many levers realistically are there for him and his defense team to pull. Do you think we could see any of these cases realistically fully wrapped up in a bow before the twenty twenty four election.
I think the two cases most likely to be tried before the election would be Jack Smith's case on the election shenanigans in Washington, d C. Because you have judged Chuckin, who wants that case to move, and Jack Smith limited his indictment to what he thought he could prove and without dealing with complex First Amendment issues over charging seditious conspiracy or insurrection. So I think that case is going
to go. I think the New York case, which is the weakest of the four cases about the hush money payments, I think since that was first, that could go too, And so those two the other two I think will happen after the election. I think the strongest case is the documents matter, but I think that case involves some complex issues over classified documents and a federal law called SIPA and the need to get clearances. So I think
that's going to be delayed. Plus you have a judge and judge I think Cannon, who has seemed to make rulings that have benefited the former president. So I think he'll have two cases that will be tried. But here's the thing. He may be found guilty, but then I think he'll stay out of jail pending appeal, and so I don't think you'll see full justice until after the election.
Well, and I wanted to ask you about the judge and the trial prosecutor in Fulton County. Apparently the judge is fairly new to the bench and the prosecutor comes up from sort of small crimes division of the District Attorney's office. And now these two are faced with a case involving the former president of the United States, in a case that really, if without putting too fine a point on it, is about whether US democracy still works.
If you were them, would you be wretching in a waste basket as I would be having been given this assignment.
I would relish it. I mean, this is a moment of a lifetime of generation. You know, you don't get situations like this in American history. And now if you're the judge who was just recently appointed in Georgia, I mean, and this is thrust in your lap. I mean, this is why you want to become a judge, is to deal with a case like this that is about preserving American democracy. And so I think that's okay. But as
far as their lack of experience. Judge Cannon is inexperienced, and the judge in the Atlantic case is inexperienced, doesn't mean by that nature that they're bad judges. That's our system. We have a system where yeah, well we have a system where judges are assigned randomly these cases and sometimes they're going to get inexperienced judges, and that's what appellet
courts are for to overrule their bad decisions. But I'm not as worried about that as I am the fact that there are going to be so many delays and they're not going to be cameras in the corum except maybe in Atlanta. If that stays in state court, that there's just a lack of transparency and you're going to have a whole segment of the population who will believe what they're told and won't be able to see it with their own eyes.
All right, Dave Ehrenberg, it's really great as always to get your perspective. I'm sure we're going to be talking to you a lot in the coming months, the state attorney for Palm Beach County. We appreciate the time.
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Thirty middle of August, Wendy supposed to be a quiet month here in Washington. It has been anything, but arguably.
It's a myth. August is a myth, hasn't it. We haven't had one for years.
Yeah, I think I'm learning this. The thing is as
insane as August has been. I bet comes September, things are going to be a whole lot crazier really, just throughout the fall, because when we come back, when Congress comes back post Labor Day inter session, it's going to be all about avoiding a government shutdown, which theoretically could happen after September thirtieth, and then one day later when October starts, people are going to have to start paying their student loan debt again, something they haven't done for years.
But that pandemic policy is coming to an end.
It is, and right at the time, the President, Joe Biden is trying to sell his Bidenomics program and say that everything's great. Everybody will have a nice chunk of their paychecks dedicated to paying off their student loans again, and it's just, you know, bad luck. If sometimes I think if Biden didn't have bad luck, you have no like at all on the economy.
Sometimes, well, this is something that not only you and I are paying attention to as journalists, but companies are paying attention to as well, because theoretically this is going to change people's budgets. They have to start repaying their loans. A couple hundred dollars a month, say, probably means they're
going to spend less on other things. And this is something that came up on the call for Walmart, of course, the huge retailer reported earnings today, and actually on the conference call, the company's CEO, Doug McMillan said he sees a headwind coming from US student loan repayments. We want to get more on the Walmart story and Target as well, which reported yesterday. Brendan Case is joining us. He is
a US retailer reporter for US here at Bloomberg. So Brendan overall, what picture of the consumer is both Walmart and Target painting here.
They're both painting a picture of a consumer that is still spending, but is facing additional strains. And so, as you said, for Walmart, they're worried about the student loan repayments. That's actually the first time I've heard them talk about that. It's something that Target's been talking about for for a long time. Walmart also flagged rising borrowing costs in general. Uh, and and and and and and just sort of the weakness of of having that part of your household budget
under pressure. It's not at all a totally gloomy picture. The companies say that the strong jobs market is still helping their customers, and so you know, they've still got uh they've still got a fair amount of of of of demand. Uh, but you know, there are some some cracks in the armor. The other big thing, of course, is just the continuation of the split between essentials and
discretionary goods. So if you think about buying food versus buying you know, electronics or home goods, you know, a lot of people are having to spend more on food after the inflation we've had the last couple of years, and less on discretionary that's why you're seeing Walmart turn in pretty strong sales gains while Target sales are falling.
Well, Brendan, you know, the President is campaigning on the idea that the Inflation Reduction Act did what its name suggested it is supposed to do. And we do know here at Bloomberg that inflation is down, but our consumers and our consumers feeling it or do they just feel less rise in prices.
Based on what Walmart and Target said, it's much more towards the latter. And one thing that Walmart was it pains to point out is that, yes, inflation is coming down. Yes, it's much less of an issue in a lot of the basic categories that they're selling in than it was, you know, six or twelve months ago. However, it's not as if vices are going back to where they were
before all of this happened. And Walmart was it pains to say, you know, shore inflation is down in terms of the monthly inflation rate, but if you look at the food that we're selling, you know, and you look at those underlying food costs from suppliers, they're still up twenty percent over the last two years. Wow. And that's not going to go away anytime soon, and in fact it's probably never gone away.
Well, Brendan, This of course being Bloomberg, we do care very much about the fundamentals and the pricing power that companies have. But this is also Bloomberg's politics show. The fastest show in politics is what we like to call it. So there are political angle tier as well, not just on the inflation story in President Biden that Wendy was talking about, but specifically this pushback we are seeing around the idea of woke however you want to define it.
It is a thing that has talked about frequently and we saw just two months ago back in June, Target specifically had a big issue with its Prime displays in its stores. This is something that Brian Cornell, the CEO, spoke about on the earnings call yesterday.
We have featured a Prime assortment for more than a decade. However, after the launch the assortment this year, members are our team again experience in threats and aggressive actions that affected
their sense of safety and wellbeing while at work. I want to make it clear we'd announced violence and hate of all kinds and the safety our team and our guest is our top priority, So to protect the team in the face of these sprending circumstances, we quickly may changes, including removable items or the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.
So Brendan, is this just a convenient excuse for Target as it relates to some of what the company was actually seeing in terms of sales, or is this an issue that's going to be ongoing for them.
It's definitely an issue for them, and it's going to come up next year. It'll be interesting to see how they hand in twenty twenty four. But if we just look back at what happened in June, they provided some interesting numbers, just kind of on a bottom line basis. What they said is that they're comparable sales, you know, to simplify, you're talking about sales at stores that have been open about thirteen months, and how that compares year
to year. You know, they said that that metric fell three percent in May, seven percent in June, which was after the controversy first erupted at the end of May, and only five percent in July. So in other words, there was a bit of a recovery in July. They resolutely refused to quantify the effect of the controversy over their Pride collection. But those numbers give you a hint that there was a real impact in terms of their sales. And what you heard Cornell and the other executives trying
to do is to sort of thread the needle. You know. What they know is that their customer base is something like a very broad swath of the American population, a lot of different opinions baked in there, a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of different consumer preferences. They said that they don't want to get too far away from what their customers want, and you could read that however
you want. I mean, that's a pretty ambiguous statement. But I think it'll be interesting to see what they do next year, and especially I think the item I would watch is just how prominent those displays are. And you know, I think what you'll also see is that you'll see T shirts and mugs and and things like that. One of the items that was at the center of the controversy this year was a bathing suit design, and I'll bet you that you're not going to see, you know, a lot more things like that.
Well, we have just a minute left here, Brendan, But what about the issue of rising thefts in these stores and shoplifting. What did they say about that and what would they like to see happen?
So this is clearly a problem for them. They have different communications strategies about it. Hard to know exactly what the numbers are since they don't provide enormous amounts of detail, but Target said that it continues to be a very big problem. This is a company that said that shrink, which is the sort of the retail jargon for a number of costs that include fest is going to hit profits this year to the tune of half a billion dollars beyond what it did last year. And I said
that that expectation still remains pretty much intact. What they did say is that it's become more predictable and that that that shrink at least was in line with their expectations the most recent quarter as opposed to being much worse. Walmart spoke even less about it. But the one mess that It's CEO Doug McMillan did send us that he thinks that some US jurisdictions need to do more to combat this type of crime.
Well, and it's not just retail executives who have a message on crime. We're seeing it a lot in politics here in Washington as well. Brendan Case, Bloomberg US retail reporter, thank you so much.
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