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Welcome to the Thursday edition of Bloomberg's Balance of Power. You made it to Little Friday. I'm Joe Matthew and Washington, where people are getting scarce around here. Just about two hours from now. That'll be it for the House. The Senate's already gone. Hey, it's President's Day recess at least for some. And we'll talk more about the dysfunction on Capitol Hill a little bit later on in the program. Here as we begin with Donald Trump's legal challenges and
a remarkable headline. We've been talking about it for months and months. We expected it. It's not a surprise. Some folks thought it wouldn't be news, but it feels different when it actually happens. We've got a date to circle on the calendar, March twenty fifth, the first criminal trial of a former US president. We're joined this, of course, by the way, is Alvin Bragg's case, Stormy Daniel's hush money. We've been through this before, and it will begin before and likely conclude.
Before or long before the presidential election.
The question becomes what happens to Jack Smith's case, the special counsel, and so on. But we want to stick with this right now and bring in June Law, the host of Bloomberg Law, who's with us from world headquarters in New York.
June.
It's great to see you.
It's so easy to drive by this headline because it's not a surprise, but we have to stop down and bring some perspective on how significant this actually is.
It's not a surprise, and yet it is a surprise because the judge in the case at the hearing this morning was really tough. I think that judges are starting to learn now that they have to keep Trump's lawyers in check. Trump's lawyers brought out every possible argument you could think of being and I think we're gonna have to start making diagrams off to make a big diagram of which case is going and which case intersex because
it's so confusing. But they said that there are forty two primaries and caucuses and Trump has to help prepare for trial, and that is an unconstitutional violation, and I'm looking at what constitutional violation we're in the constitution, it says that a president can be on trial in four criminal cases and still has the right to campaign, So we know that people have campaigned from prison, So that's
that was a bad argument. But they also brought out all kinds of things, including that they've been They say they've been preparing for Jack Smith's trial, which is the DC federal election trial, which was supposed to go March fifth, but has been put off because they make Trump has been a claim of absolute presidential muni. So they said, your honor, we're busy preparing for that case. And he said, basically,
too bad. I told you March twenty fifth. It's a date certain you proceeded at your own peril in representing him in two cases. So it's on.
So that's where we are. It's on, says June Ross.
So we've been told by a number of legal experts, Nick Ackerman most recently that he expects this to be a roughly three week trial that would allow a lot of room June for the Special Council Jack Smith to have his case here in Washington, and he did respond to the Supreme Court yesterday.
He didn't wait more than two days to.
Get back to the High Court on this issue of presidential immunity. When do we expect to hear from the Supreme Court and what could happen then?
First, I just want to say that the judge in the hush money case said he expected the trial to be six weeks long just to get that out there.
So yeah, we could hear that. That still leaves half a year.
There is a lot of time if you look at the calendar, there is actually time here. If now the Supreme Court, we could hear from them at any moment, and they have to. It has to be five justices. So in other words, Trump is asking for a stay and what that will do would be to delay even more so it would delay, delay again, and so the Springbrook could rule at any time. Jack Smith's you know, his arguments actually I.
Thought were very good.
He still didn't bring out the argument that we all know is back there and that every judge knows, which is if Donald Trump gets elected, then this case will go away. So but he said it's in the interest of justice. I thought the most important thing he said was, in order to get this kind of a stay, you have to prove that there's a likelihood that you'll succeed on the merits. And you know, everyone says that Trump's claims of presidential immunity the way he's framed them are
just not viable. So he said he's not going to win on that, and I think that's an important point. The only question being are there justices who want to address this issue? And if so, he said, okay, but then let's have oral arguments next month, so we'll see whether it's hard to tell right now whether the justices
will take it or not. But from what you know from what's gone below, the fact that you have this really very well written and opinion that covered all the ground another thing Trump is done in that case, though he's also asking for the justices to put it on Hoole while he appeals to the full d C Circuit. And you know that's sort of a foolish. It's a thing that he'll do if he gets the chance, but there's no way the DC Circuit is going to overrule these three judges.
There you have it, June, thank you for helping us make sense of it. It'll be a great evening to listen to Bloomberg Law with Junie Asso. We appreciate it as always. I haven't even mentioned Atlanta. We've had wal to wall coverage on cable news of what's happening down there, because it's not too It's three cases that are in the mix today, Donald Trump and co defendants seeking to disqualify Fannie Willis. That's the DA in Fulton County from running her case on news of her affair with one
of the prosecutors. So this gets ever more complicated the more we talk about it. But getting back to where we began, the Alvin braggtrials, Stormy Annuals, Michael Cohen, They're all going to be there in court in New York starting in this case March twenty fifth, the beginning of the process will be there to bring that for you. Our other top story that we're following today is a scary one with the headline on the terminal Russia Mull's
nuclear weapons in space. US Intelligence finds US goes back to Mike Turner's tweet from yesterday that we talked about talking about warning every one of this national security problem that he was urging the Biden administration to declassify so they could bring this forth. Apparently it does involve Russia discussing the possibility of basing a nuclear weapon in space.
And it's another dangerous world conversation that we have with Michael Allen, Managing Director partner at Beacon Global Strategies.
This is getting to.
Be a habit having you in here to talk about scary stuff. But your experience brings you to this conversation, Michael, and it's great to have you here.
Thank you for coming back.
This is interesting because Jake Sullivan told the briefing room yesterday, Yeah, I actually already skeed to classified briefing with the Gang of Eight on this. Well he didn't say it was really on this, but we knew what he was talking about. What compelled the Intelligence Share to scare everybody with that sweet yesterday.
You know, this is a sort of a parlor game already, everyone trying to figure out what he meant to do.
I think he had good intentions at heart. I know that he cares a lot about nuclear issues, and I think he was just trying to get the word out and to remind his House Republican colleagues and others in the Republican Party that Russia is a true threat, that Russia is always working against our interests, and that they're profoundly destabilizing and they're taking another step change to weaponized space.
So we understand that the administration or the Pentagon has known about this about a year. Congress has been briefed what about a week ago on this specific matter. We've also been talking about hypersonic weapons that Russia has reportedly used now in Ukraine for the first time. Are we falling behind Russia on missile technology?
I think we're definitely behind on hypersonics. I think the United States has this has been a public record that China's way out ahead of us, and even is Russia. The interesting thing about the Russians using their hypersonics, however, in Ukraine, is that remember there was this stunning news last year that the Ukrainians repurposed our patriot missile batteries and actually shot down the Kinzol, which is a Russian
hypersonics So I'm sure they're embarrassed about that. I don't doubt that they're trying to use every munition and missile that they can against the Ukrainians.
Okay, in this case, though, if the hypersonics are being used in Ukraine, our patriot defense systems are useless against them. Russia doesn't have a lot of money or resources at the moment. Do they have many of these or is this a great threat or not?
I think it is a great threat. I think it's something that our missile defenses would have a very hard time stopping because of the nature of the projectile's path when you're talking about hypersonics. So it's another reason why you know, we need to get on budget here in the United States. Congress actually passed the defense budget and start to move things along very quickly so that we can catch up on hypersonics and help Ukraine.
That's a whole other conversation right now, because we're actually potentially shutting down the government starting.
Three weeks from today.
As a matter of fact, we can't seem to figure out how to fund our allies in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. I don't need to give you the background and all of that. There are new questions this week about NATO though, in a potential second Trump administration, as he's floated this idea now of a two tiered NATO.
I'm sure you heard about this.
Article five would only apply to those who meet their spending goals as part of the alliance.
Is that the end of NATO in concept as we know it.
I think it would be. Look, I know it's superficially attractive. Of course, we want everyone to pay their bills and we should stay on top of them. In fact, more of them since the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been paying up, have been exceeding two percent of their gross domestic product on military expenditures. But I think to create a two tiered system is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants.
He wants dissension within NATA. We don't need questions about what countries NATO would defend and which ones they wouldn't. That is the beginning of the end of the alliance, and I don't think we should go this way.
Well, it makes you question whether this is a transactional alliance, a transactional relationship, or something more principled, as the president would suggest. Now Joe Biden has made that point recently.
Yeah, I believe that the president, well President Trump is transactional and is always or frequently trying to get a better deal. And so if you talk to people I think who were around the President Trump and when he was president will remind you that I don't think he's really trying to get out of NATO where I don't really think he's trying to vitiate some other treaty with our Asian allies. He's trying to get them to pay more and stand up and again, to a degree, I
think that's a good idea. I'm even more comfortable with them being more aggressive about it, but not to the point where we're trying to kick out certain members who can't make the two percent GDP for whatever reason.
The philosophy becomes dangerous or carries new risk at a certain point, it would seem yes. And so there's a larger question here about what Mike Turner might have been up to by releasing this, by bringing this information to make it public. Was it to underscore the need for funding in Ukraine? Was it to underscore the threat that Vladimir Putin poses?
Was there more to it?
I think so. I know that he is a strong supporter of Ukraine. He is a Russia skeptic. There was a famous clip of him challenging Tucker Carlson on Fox News about two or three years ago, and so he,
I believe, wants to remind everyone. Just to Stucker, Carlson and others are visiting Moscow, and just as other members of the House are saying we don't want to pass the Ukraine supplemental I think it's the job of some of the members who've been around and are chairman of the National Security committees to stand up and say, listen,
they're not our friends. They're spying on us, they're messing with our elections, and of course they're militarizing space because they want to take out all of our satellites in a time of war.
That's what this is, right, This would be a weapon that could neutralize or destroy our satellites in orbit. This is something that they are apparently I guess, prepared to use, if not close to being ready to use. Here, the US is taking this matter seriously. I think it was Congressman Jim Hines who told one of the tip sheets this morning, it's not time to start buying gold yet, right.
Is that true?
Yeah?
I think it is true. I don't think they've launched They definitely have not launched a nuclear weapon into space. I think we're right to be worried about it. It's something else that goes on to the agenda. And using anti satellite capabilities isn't new. You may remember at different times Russia and the United States have used ballistic missiles.
But where this is a step change in addition to just having a nuclear weapon in space, which is frightening enough, it's that it would be a more efficient way to knock out numerous satellites, because what we're doing is hardening our satellites. We're trying to make them more redundant by having many, many more smaller satellites to be able to run GPS and navigation and the rest. And so this would be a more efficient way using radiation in space to knock out hundreds of them.
This is real Star wars.
It's still serious. It is serious business, incle that's right.
It's a game changer though, right, it's a new front.
I think it's I think the militarization of space is a new front and is all the arms control treaties with Russia and the former Soviet Union has sort of fallen by the wayside through the years. It's a new wild wild West.
So when is it time to start stepping up the Space Force briefings.
I'm not kidding.
You say Space force and people start laughing. I don't know what it is about this. There is something just inherently humorous about the way it was rolled out. But this is a real agency task to handle this very issue.
We have so many issues. This is why we need to increase defense spending. This is why we need to pass the supplemental This is why we need to get the defense budget passed on time and get off of continuing resolutions. We can't start new programs, we can't ramp up, we can't get the defense industrial base ramped up to where it needs to be. So I definitely think the Republicans and Democrats in Congress who are national security minded and Biden as well, need to get out there and
stand together on certain core national security issues. And we haven't even talked about Charita yet.
I haven't mentioned a lot of things.
Yeah, and I keep hearing from the Freedom Caucus. Don't fear the shutdown. We're out of time.
Do you think we're shutting down in three weeks or is there another seat?
I think this time there will be a little bit of a there will be a little bit of a shutdown.
You do.
I think this is nobody's talking about it.
I think the speaker has really tried hard so far and he might be out of lock.
Wow.
Great conversation as always with Michael Allen Beacon Global Strategies. Thanks for coming to see us. Thank you in the Washington bureau at Bloomberg. I'm Joe Matthew in the Nation's Capital and glad you're along here. On the radio, on the satellite and on YouTube.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast kens just live weekdays at noon Eastern on Applecarplay and enroud Oro with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven.
Thirty three plates spinning in the air today for Donald Trump's legal team.
Absolutely, and of course we're spinning all the plates as well as a result, and Charlie Pellett's always spinning a lot of plates because there's a lot of different asset classes in financial markets to look at.
Charlie, I've got you covered.
Here's what's going on. Lots of earnings coming up after the close of trading, today among those names we'll be hearing from Applied Materials, Dropbox, Coinbase, door Dash right now, though, equities trading mixed, and of course big economic data tomorrow morning. Here's where we stand, right to the numbers. S and P hire by ten up now by two tenths of one percent, Dow Jones Industrial Average up one hundred and sixty eight, that is again now of four tenths of
one percent. Nestak the composite index now back in the red law by twenty a drop there of one tenth of one percent. The big story, perhaps so the Russell two thousand surging another one point three percent today, Tenure yield four point two to three percent. We've got the two year four point five seven percent spot. Gold today is trading back above two thousand. We have got gold right now two thousand and four, the ounce up six tents of one percent, and West Texas Intermedia crewed up
one point nine percent, seventy eight thirteen a barrel. So the Dow the SMP, they're both higher. We've got Nezstak in the red and again those earnings after the close of trading, Apply Materials, Dropbox, Coinbase, and door Dash there they are spinning plate. So I'm Charlie Pelock back we go to balance of power, Joe Matthew and Kaylee Lyones.
All right, Charlie, thank you very much. As always, from financial markets to the very nuanced legal world. Joe, we have to go here at Bloomberg, we've all to some extent have at least had to get semi fluid in fluent in legal ease.
I just called June Grosso.
Well this is true.
Well, we actually have some wonderful people to draw on, and this has been a massive effort from our legal and political teams to cover together.
Absolutely because right now the legal in the political is very much intersecting. Because we were talking about the Republican front runner at this point, the very likely Republican nominee, who is now confirmed going to be in trial in the middle of primary season starting March twenty fifth. It's official, and it's hard to campaign when you're spending millions and millions and millions of dollars on legal fees.
That's true.
And as we're learning in some great reporting at Bloomberg, the cash crunch will get real for Donald Trump in July, knowing that he's already spent over fifty million dollars on attorney's fees. He's going to blow through another twenty three and change here in the next couple of months, and at that point in July could be in the throes of a trial, and we certainly will be the throes of a campaign. And that's where we start our conversation
with Laura Davison, Bloomberg Politics editor here in Washington. Laura, it's great to see you. Let's start with what we learned today. This is Alvin Bragg's trial in New York, not considered by everyone to be the most serious of the cases against him, hush money payments, Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen. We're going to see all of this unfold starting in just weeks now.
Yes, and it's important to note that this will be after Super Tuesday, after a bunch of primaries coming up, So at that point it is very likely that Trump will have effectively sewn up the nomination and won't need to be out having rallies doing things on the campaign trail, will be able to dedicate more time to the courtroom, which you know, if you're his advisors, that's an advantageous thing, but it does mean that the campaign effectively shifts to
the courtroom, and you'll be seeing that dichotomy between President Joe Biden in the White House campaigning as president and former President Donald Trump in.
The courtroom, well, in the courtroom with a bunch of attorneys.
And we already.
Learned that in twenty twenty three he spent what fifty million dollars of funds for his campaign on legal fees coming from super packs.
How much does he have left in the war chest?
And when's he going to run out of money? Because if we're talking about a trial here in Washington that could follow the trial in New York in pretty short order, depending on the decision of the Supreme Court, we could be talking back to back trials that take us through the summer here.
Yes, so here's kind of a simple breakdown of the numbers. He started with a little bit more than seventy five million dollars of money in his political operation he could tap.
He spent just a little bit more than fifty million.
Of that last year, and so over the next six months he's going to spend down very likely if he spends at the same rate he did last year.
You know, the remaining twenty three million.
Or so that he has left in the bank, and that's where things get tricky. One it'll be July, It'll be in the heat of both the summer as well as the general campaign mode, and he either then has to go to donors to get more money, which means that that money is not going into his campaign, or ask the RNC, the re Publican National Committee, to pay his legal bills, which is likely to be a sort of fraught discussion because they are.
Also behind on fundraising.
So this is sets up a really big issue for not only Donald Trump and his campaign, but Republicans across the board.
What do the rules changing have to do when you go from primary spending to general elections spending? Does that affect any of the accounts that he's pulling from.
So generally, you can raise, you the way that campaign finance rules work, you can raise money that certainly earmarked for the primary, and then new money that's in for the general. So he will be able to go back to donors who have donated before and get more money.
But these are really big numbers that we're talking about, you know, you know, twenty five million dollars, you know, for over two quarters or so that is you know, a huge chunk of change and would really dent the money that would be going into other races.
Yeah, and as you're talking about spending money there, maybe it's less money you'd be spending on traditional campaigning, which, as we've had extensive conversations about Donald Trump in many ways, isn't necessarily a traditional political candidate. He has a lot of earned media that he doesn't need to pay for, and part of that's the nature of being a form president, not just a presidential candidate. But we also know that
voter's minds about him change. Our own polling here at Bloomberg with Morning Consult has shown this if he is convicted of a felony, and we very realistically could be talking about a conviction before we get to the Republican convention. Laura, how should we be thinking about this in political terms? What does this mean for Nicki Haley?
For example, so.
We know that the general is going to be close, you know, it does give Nicki Haley an advantage if he is convicted, if he's potentially behind bars, if something happens to him health wise or anywise else, you know, Nicki Haley is still running essentially so she can sort of be the party standard bearer in second place, and whether that means twenty twenty four or twenty twenty eight
or something down the line. But if Trump, you know, is convicted, let's say over the summer or in the fall, we know that that means that in swing states voters are less likely to vote for him, which is a huge advantage for Joe Biden and also a reason why Trump would need more money to be able to run more ads, to do more get out the vote efforts, to do all of these things to make up for you know what that that you know, sort of headwinds would be on the conviction front.
We were talking with our panel a little bit about how this could impact Nikki Haley's decision, even if she performs terribly in South Carolina, even if to your point, Laura, Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee following Super Tuesday, that she might want to wait to see how these trials pan out and just hold her breath until the conventions. Don't need to spend any money, just wait in the wings.
Yeah, and Nikki Haley has done very well with fundraising, so she's able to kind of keep her campaign going even at just sort of a bare bones level, essentially for as long as she wants, you know, looking at just even the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, she was almost raising as much money as Trump, which is impressive. She even today is in Texas. She's fundraising with Carlon Crow and other big oil and gas names down in Texas. So she's able to go and donors have said, look, we want.
To keep funding her. We don't want Trump. We'll keep supporting her as long as she's in this fight.
Well, and it's funny you mentioned Harlan Crowe because of course we also know that name because of his relationship with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. And then this somehow comes back to the Supreme Court and the legal issues that we began this conversation talking about Bloomberg Politics editor, Lord Davison, Thank you so much. It certainly is head spinning. So to help us make sense of the developments specifically in the legal world today, we want to bring in
now Jessica Roth. She is Jacob Burns Center for Ethics in the Practice of Lot Cardoza Law School co director and of course a formal federal prosecutor as well. Jessica, thanks so much for being with us. We got, of course, the decision from the judge today. The trial in New York will begin on March twenty fifth. Is there anything that Trump and his legal team can do between now and then to change that.
I don't think there is, in the sense that I don't think this is an order that can be appealed to the New York courts at this stage. I suppose they could try to run the federal court to seek a stay. I don't think that that is likely to succeed. He's previously tried to remove the case of federal court and that was rejected. I think that as a practical matter, the thing that might delay it would be if there's
movement in one of the other cases. For example, if the US Supreme Court were to say it wasn't going to take cert on the case involving immunity in the January sixth case, or if it quickly decided against him on that case and that matter were reset for trial in DC. That wouldn't preempt this trial in terms of
the trial date. But if it looked like that were on track, one could imagine that the two judges the DC District Court judge and the judge in New York would communicate, and the judge in New York might defer to the preparations for that case, which is what we all thought was happening initially before the case got put on hold in DC. So it could be a calendaring issue between various courts, But legally, I'm not seeing the route to delay the proceedings in any other respect.
Jessica, it's good to have you back on Bloomberg TV and radio. I'm wondering, if you can talk to us, assuming this trial starts as planned March twenty fifth, what jury selection would look like. Bloomberg is reporting that jurors may have to disclose what bumper stickers they have on their cars, whether they've read the art of the deal, what radio shows they listen to. How difficult will it be to assemble this group in New York.
I think it's going to be a challenge to select a jury that can be fair and impartial in this case. I think the ver dear process, that questioning of jurors to know what they've heard about this case and whether they think they can be fair and impartial, is going to be a challenging one that said, the judge who presided over the civil case, the defamation case, and the sexual assault case involving Egene Carroll did in panel a jury twice, so we know it has been done before
in New York. And these two courthouses, the Federal District Court were those defamation cases were tried, and the criminal court where this case is going to be tried in March. They're just across the street from each other, so they're drawing upon many of the same jurors, not exactly the same jury pool, the jury pool for the Manhattan cases Manhattan as opposed to the Federal District Court where it's
a broader district. But nevertheless it's been done. I'll be very interested to see what if any protections are put in place for those jurors. As you may recall, in the civil defamation cases involving Egene Carroll, the judge made those jurors anonymous, meaning nobody learn their identities, and so I'll be very interested to see what, if any discussion there is about protections for the jury in the criminal case against former President Trump.
Well, yeah, the security considerations around this certainly are significant, considering this as a former president we're talking about, and I would imagine there will be quite a circus in New York as this trial begins. I feel like it's worth reminding our TV and radio audience, as Jessica, just what exactly it is the former president has been charged with. Here we're talking thirty four counts of falsifying business records.
Usually in the state of New York, that's just a misdemeanor, and Alvin Brown, I'd made them felonies because he says it was done with the intention of violating state and federal election law. Can you just walk us through the strength of these case, bringing these charges making them felony charges specifically, and how likely it is you think he would be convicted on all or any of them.
So, the charges that were brought, as you mentioned, are falsification of business records. Under New York law, that can be a misdemeanor at its most basic level when a person intentionally creates and enters into the business records of their organization false entries. But it can also be a felony when that false entry is made with the intent
to further or conceal another crime. And as a felony that is frequently charged in New York, so it's not all that unusual that this crime, in its felony version
is charged here. The allegation is that the false entries were made in the business records of the Trump organization in order to conceal the payments to Michael to reimburse him for the payments he in turn made to Stormy Daniels and to others to conceal an alleged affair with the former president at the time that he was running for office in twenty sixteen, when it was thought that if the affair became public, or the allegations of the
affair became public, that that would hurt his campaign chances, and the reimbursements to Cohen for those payments that were made during the campaign continued in twenty seventeen even after Trump took office. Now, the legal theory for the crime that Trump allegedly was trying to further or conceal through the false business entries, which was those entries of the payments to Cohen as reimbursement for payments for legal fees
sort of. Those underlying crimes that the entries were designed to conceal are alleged to be several, including violations of the federal elections law, violations of New York state elections law, and violations of New York state tax laws. And the court basically said those are three permissible theories to underlie the charge, the felony charge, that the false business entries were designed to conceal one or more of those crimes.
This will smack of a tabloid trial, though we're going to have Stormy Daniels on the stand here telling the story, Michael Cohen telling his story all over again.
I would say, certainly we will have the testimony of Michael Cohen. I imagine we would have the testimony of Stormy Daniels, although to my mind that's less clearly necessary. But yes, Michael Cohen would be an important witness for the prosecution.
We all are.
Familiar with the problems of his credibility, given that, among other things, he has pleaded guilty to lying under oath before and all of that will be explored, I'm sure, on cross examination, and I imagine that the prosecutors will actually elicit it on their direct examination as well, so that they are putting before the jury on everything that they know about Michael Cohen and the jury can evaluate his credibility, and the key to the case from the
prosecution's perspective is going to be can they corroborate Michael Cohen's accountess with the testimony of other witnesses and with documentary evidence, including the checks that were made out to him, the invoices, and other documents that would corroborate his account about what those payments were for.
Jessica, we only have about a minute left with you, but I also want to get your take on the response we got from the Special Council here in Washington, Jack Smith's to the Supreme Court after Trump asked for a stay in this case. Here, Jack Smith basically says the case should go forward without delay because the nation has a compelling interest in seeing the charges brought to trial. How do you expect the court will decide here and how soon?
It's really hard to say. I imagine that the court will decide fairly soon, perhaps as soon as next week, whether it's going to grant the stay or not. That's the first thing it has to decide. Will it stay the mandate from the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. If it doesn't grant the stay and the case is going to go back to the district court to resume the trial day, which is what we started talking about earlier. It also have to decide whether to actually review the
case independently of the stay. So there's a scenario where they don't grant the stay, but they do say we'll consider the case on the merits. It's hard to say whether they're going to take it or not. It is such an important novel question whether there is immunity from criminal prosecution or a former president, but it's just it's really hard to predict.
Well, Jessica, thank you.
That was incredibly helpful as seminar once again with Jessica Roth with us from Cardozo Law, former federal prosecutor in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Breaking news today in the case hush money case against Donald Trump.
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Welcome back to Balance of Power on both Bloomberg TV and Radio. Nothing like scheduling testimony from the Chairman of the Fed the week of the State of the Union and potentially when parts of the government are going to be shut down, Joe. But I guess we all just got to buckle up for the first week.
Of March taking that week off, So good luck with that. Let me know.
Oh, I'm super Tuesday, Super Tuesday State of the Union. The hits keep coming here, Kaylee. And they do for this Republican speaker.
Yeah.
And I'm not even talking about being jammed by the Senate or dealing with controversial legislation.
It's the retirements. We're at five now, five high profile Republican chairs who say they don't want to do this anymore, and one of them just yesterday, Mark Green announced his resignation or retirement. I guess I should say, the day after his committee impeached the Homeland Security Secretary. And you would have thought that was a win.
For him, you would have thought.
And yet the statement he gave when announcing about that that he's not seeking reelection is pretty brutal.
Joe.
The quote, our country and our Congress is broken beyond most means of repair. I have come to realize our fight is not here within Washington. Our fight is with Washington. It's just a stunning statement.
Mark Green add the chairs of Energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Appropriations, now the China Select Committee. Mike Gallagher was I think the most recent before Green. Here, we need to assemble our panel for their take on this. Ginny Shanzano is here Bloomberg Politics contributor, joined by Lisa Camuso Miller, former communications director of the RNC, host of The Friday Reporter pot Cast.
Lisa.
I don't want to pick on you as a Republican, but I am curious your thoughts here. You worked for a Republican Speaker of the House. What's Mike Johnson doing wrong?
Oh?
I don't know if the.
Blame goes to the speaker. I mean, I think that this epidemic has been happening long before he took the.
Gavel, that is for sure, Joe.
What I think is happening, though, is I think we're losing some really tremendous leaders in the House in general. As we see these chairmen, the chairs step away. And the problem here is not so much that it leaves more room for those that are in sort of the troublemaking part of the conference to rise up to then become chairs. And that's something that I think is even more concerning. The districts that they're evacuating will either go to because some of them are are challenged districts, so
they'll go to the Democratic Party. There's an opportunity for pickups in a couple of those seats, but also two we risk run the risk of now having more radical and more well willing to buck the system if you will, members come into those districts. So it's not as if a freshman member would step into the chair of some
of these great and powerful committees. It's that it opens up an opportunity for more of sort of the early The problem in the conference is not necessarily with the leadership and those that have been there for some time. It's some of the newer members that are willing and ready to disrupt everything that is happening.
And that's what we're.
Seeing and I think that's the difficulty with some of these committee chairs is that they want to they want to invoke power. They also want to enact really great legislation and policy, and that is it's uncapable of being done right now. There's just not the ability to have that happen, and that's where you see the frustration and them stepping away. But the retirements aren't on both sides.
So we see a lot of Republicans stepping away. There are a lot of Democrats that are also making that choice.
Absolutely, And Genie, just to go back to the statement from the for Now chairman, our country and our Congress is broken beyond most means of repair. Do departures like this from leaders in the House make it all that more difficult to repair?
How can it be repaired?
Yeah, it is so difficult. You know, he's talking about fighting Washington from the outside, and what really needs to happen is Washington needs to be repaired from the inside. So we need to see reform in Congress itself. And if there is this brain drain, and that was a great descriptor that was used in the Bloomberg piece, you know that's what's actually occurring. And I would just say it's not just a brain drain, it's also the people who are the workhorses, who are want to make policy,
who are interested in legislation. Those are the people that we're seeing leaving and the showmen and women are staying and that doesn't vote well for any of us. We have twenty four retirements now, fourteen of which are on the Republican side, five of which are chairs, and the numbers will likely only get worse. You know, Let's just remember it is what February fifteenth, The government shuts down at least partly starting March first, And where is Congress?
The House is leaving town for two weeks. What sense does that make? And who would want to stay in an institution operating this way?
Well, let's get into that for a minute here, Lisa.
I think we've appropriately framed the dysfunction as the baseline in Congress. To Janie's point, everybody's leaving town. What an hour from now? It's official, Senate's already gone. They don't come back until the end of the month, and there will be seventy two legislative hours, not even actually it'll be three days, three business days to get this done. And when I say this, I mean figure a way to fund the government. Do people need to start preparing for a shutdown?
Yep, for the longest short of it. So yeah, it seems really likely because there are so many things that are the fractions are everywhere, right. The fractions are happening in the Senate, in the House, on the Republican side, on the Democrat side. We can't seem to agree on just about anything at this point. And the problem is that this isn't just about shutting down the government in
sort of the traditional people. We have to remember that that means that we have armed services that doesn't get paid.
We have people that are in difficult.
And challenging parts of the globe that are not getting paid and not getting compensated for the hard work that they do. So not just regular government functions, but everything else. And yes, it absolutely feels that way. I mean, it was Meg Greenfield who wrote this book, this great book that if you haven't read, you have to read. It's from my mid so many years ago. But it's about
how Congress operates like a like a high school. You have freshmen, you have sophomores, you've seniors, you have a vacation, summer vacation, you have holiday breaks. That's precisely how your Congress works every single day.
I read this book in so many days.
But the other thing too, all of those things that's happening, they are right exactly right, Kaylee, It's exactly that. And so the difficulty here is we are dealing with teenagers. They are all on social media. They're all looking for ways to be, as Genie said, to be seeking publicity and not necessarily policy. That's the challenge that we have here. And so the fact that they're going home, that's the
way they operate in Congress. But unfortunately it used to be that they would get their work done and then they would go home. Now it's just we're going home. And a lot of what you hear from leadership is that members are tired of being here and arguing all day long, Republicans and Democrats.
So it's a challenge.
It's a challenge we're going to see for the rest of the year, and it's only going to get harder because we're looking at.
Election election Day in November.
When you describe Congress like high school, it helps you understand the retirements a little bit more, perhaps because I wouldn't want to spend another year in high school. You cannot make me O, thank you go back there. Genie.
Just to.
To Speaker Johnson specifically, as we're talking about the challenge of funding the government, he of course, has said repeatedly he does not want to do another short term continuing resolution. We've already seen several short term continuing resolutions. Is this ultimately going to come down to the decision of doing another stopgap measure or losing your speakership in the process.
Yeah, I think so. And Kaylee, you reminded me of that great Reese Witherspoon movie Election, which is fabulous, talking about Congress as high school.
But everyone's aside tonight to go watch that, Genie.
That's right, it's so good. But you know, the fact is is that he made a promise that he simply now cannot keep. And it's just one of many. I mean, the reality is he can't do anything about Faiza. I mean I was, you know, kept saying that I was optimistic only because they wouldn't want to shut down in an election year because obviously nobody wins in that case,
that they would avoid it. But I'm not so sure how they avoid it now except for a cr and to your point, Kaylee, that could likely cost him the speakership. So the fact is, there's a great, great Peter Drucker quote where he talks about a job that defeats any person, you know, three, two or three people in a row needs to be rethought. The Speaker of the House job needs to be rethought and reconstructed. It is unworkable at
this point. I'm no fan of Mike Johnson, but everybody who has tried it of late, except for Nancy Pelosi, has ended up in this same position and it's only getting worse.
Well, there you have it. Maybe it's a power sharing agreement.
I mean, Mike Jefferies.
If Mike Johnson loses two more and anything's possibly, you got three vacancies. Now that's actually the conversation that we're going to be having here, isn't it.
It very well could be. Also the question of if it's not Mike Johnson or hackeing Jeffries of a power sharing agreement can't be made, who's going to be the speaker next? Well, which many others have tried and failed.
In this No one has the answer to that. But I am just going to just leave this here.
Tom Emmer is going to be coming on Balance of Power a little bit later on today five o'clock here on Bloomberg TV and Radio.
This is the majority whip.
He ran for Speaker and he'd be on any shortlist, Kaylie, if there were one.
To be drawn up.
Well, we're going to ask him about that for sure later this evening. Remember Donald Trump didn't really like the idea of a speaker we first go around.
Yes, that's true. Thanks for listening to the Balance of Power podcast.
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