Three Guilty Pleas. Two Gag Orders. One Former President’s Legal Troubles

Today, a judge put on a gag order. I'll be the only politician in the history that runs with a gag order where I'm not allowed to criticize people. It's been a little while since we checked in on Donald Trump's multiplying legal troubles, and a lot is happening. Judges presiding over two of his trials are struggling to contain his frequent public outbursts like the one you just heard there.

So right now, there are two court orders in place that restrict what Donald Trump is allowed to say, post do whatever publicly. The first is in Washington in the federal election obstruction case.

One of former President Donald Trump's legal battles, continues today in the district. Federal prosecutors and lawyers for mister Trump will be back in court to argue over a potential gag order in the case.

And that prohibits him from any comments That target is the keyword. Prosecutors in the case, potential witnesses in their testimony, and court staff. And that was a result of prosecutors going to the judge in DC, Judge Tanya Chutkin, and saying, you know, we had a couple of weeks, a couple

You know, government servants.

Where things stand now is you know, we expect Trump's legal team to continue pushing to get this.

Gag order lifted.

They had asked Judge Chutkin to do that, she had paused it temporarily. During that time, he managed to post about a witness in the case, his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the judge said, you know I'm not gonna keep this on hold, and so now he can go to an appeals court to try and fight it there, and that's what we expect to happen next. The second order is from a state judge in New York where he's on trial on civil fraud allegations.

Back here at home, there was a bit of drama today at the civil fraud trial of former President Donald Trump in New York when a judge find Trump again for violating a gag order against criticizing the judge's stat.

And that's a narrower order after he posted a message that disparaged the judge in that case as clerk promoted her photo. He later took it down, but judges are extraordinarily sensitive when it comes to their staff, and that was sort of a wrong bear to poke and prompted an immediate reaction, and since then has actually been fined for violating that order.

But you know, as of now.

Someone who is used to being able to say whatever he wants and to use the platforms that he has to go after attack what he sees as his enemies, is really for the first time under legal constraints to not do so. And whether he can comply with that long term is a very big open question.

And it was very interesting in Chutkins's reasoning on when she imposed the gag order. She basically said, no, you do not have unlimited First Amendment rights, because of course this is the defense position that they're trying to silence him and muzzle him. And she says, no, you cannot criticize and go after court staff or potential witnesses. And she's also concerned about tainting the views of the jury when the case goes to trial.

Now, initially the judge suspended her own gag order while the Trump legal team argued against it, but then she decided over the weekend to reimpose it. Why did she do that?

I mean, she basically ruled that their defense arguments were not legitimate and that she correctly had imposed the gag order, and that then clears the way for them to take it up on appeal.

You know, I think it's important to take a step back and say that in all cases, it is not sort of free reign for everyone to say whatever they want. That when you are allowed to go free pending trial, you are under a microscope and you're under the jurisdiction of the court and things that you say, or do you know the phrase goes can't be held against you.

Just to jump in here, I mean, this is all in a political context, right, So he is saying that these cases are part of a political witch hunt. In the New York case, he was calling out the judge's clerk as being partisan and being affiliated with Democratic lawmakers, and he kept on doing it even after the judge had put him unnoticed.

We're being railroaded here, very partisan judge with a person who's very partisan sitting.

Alongside amount, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.

So now what we're seeing is judges are not taking this and then putting him on notice. They're telling him to stop. Then they're finding him. So we're now on the second violation in New York where the judges has hauled him and even put him on a stand. Last week in a eye popping moment where he stopped the proceeding, which is about the New York Org trial where he's being accused of artificially inflating the value of his businesses.

And of course Trump said that he was talking about his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the judge said that is not credible.

I don't believe it.

Now the judge in that case find him five thousand dollars the first time, ten thousand dollars the second time. But is a fine ever going to be effective against someone like Trump, who has a lot of money and probably thinks that the political attention he gets whor it is worth the money.

Well, I mean, the fine for him is a drop in the bucket. The point is if he keeps going, what will the judge do next? And he's even said, you know, this could include prison time if he doesn't stop.

And Zoe, That of course is the big question and why everything involving these cases and Donald Trump is extraordinary. Another defendant might be put in jail for violating a judge's gag order. But does anyone think that a judge would actually confine Donald Trump to jail.

I think that he is counting on pushing that line as far as he possibly can and forcing a judge to potentially do something really uncomfortable. You know, this is like an ultimate game of chicken. But these are the tools that are available to judges, and there are different types of sanctions. They have, you know, a good amount

Go into custody what happened? And they've been a little cagy.

They don't want to disclose, obviously, the extent of how they protect people, but the general senses it's really never happened, and no one's really sure how they would handle it.

Sarah Zoe mentioned that Donald Trump is appealing here. What is the path? Could this ultimately go up to the Supreme Court where they're going to have to make decisions about what a court can tell the former president, what he can say and not say.

Well, actually yes in a short answer. So the next step would be to you peel to the DC Circuit and then depending on how that goes, it could easily land in front of the Supreme Court at a time where the Supreme Court has been trying to stay out of the political pray, or at least they say they want to stay out of it, but they may be, you know, right on the board having to make these very difficult and conflicting decisions.

After the break, Trump's former lawyers talk to prosecutors Zoe. As all of this drama has been playing out over the gag orders, there has been even more drama as some of Donald Trump's former lawyers to help push the case that the twenty twenty election should be overturned, have now turned against Donald Trump and are cooperating with prosecutors.

That's right, you.

Know, as we geographically shift our attention from New York and Washington down south to Atlanta, where the sprawling state racketeering case is unfolding against not just Donald Trump but eighteen other defendants who include some of his closest allies

Lawyers who played a key role.

In developing the legal theories that underpinned the whole attempt to overturn the results of the election, who were public faces of conspiracy theories and trying to get Georgia lawmakers to intervene so ahead of a trial that was supposed to start against two of the lawyers, Kenneth Chesbrow and Sidney Powell, who had asked to expedite their hearing of the case and to go to trial fast and gotten their case severed from everyone else. But right on the

Trump and Sarah Do we know what they're telling prosecutors as part of their deal.

Well, we know what their alleged conduct that they're being charged with is. We don't actually have transcripts or access to their testimony. But the reason these deals are significant is that when it raises the leverage by the DA in Atlanta Fulton County, Fannie willis to try to flip more people, as Zoe was saying. And two, it also makes them the witnesses in her case who are going

And Zoe, if others do decide to follow these lawyers' lead, do they get the same kind of deal or is it better to be the first one to give a deal? And there's an additional incentive to not hold that too long.

As a general principle, it is always better to go first. You tend to get rewarded when you reach an agreement early on to testify. You tend to have the most leverage at that point because if you're the first, you know, prosecutors don't know what you have or what anyone else has, so you're in a stronger position to say you know

This was a public face of this case.

She ended up getting a deal that included misdemeanor guilty plea and no jail time. You could really not ask for much better in this situation. I think Kenneth Chesbrow and Jenna Ellis the other two lawyers who pleaded guilty, they had to take felony guilty.

Please not so good. They're still not going.

To jail very good. That's sort of the big thing. But you know, for lawyers who are looking at their bar licenses, for instance, a felony on your record is a lot worse than a misdemeanor. So, you know, we already see a bit of an escalation. There are degrees of discretion that prosecutors have in terms of what they put on the table, and the deals just typically tend to get worse.

You hold out, and do we think that these lures will be called to the stand to testify against Trump in court?

That's what she's slaying the groundwork for.

Absolutely, it seems really likely, you know, that is the value that they bring. At this point, all of this unfolded so publicly, there's a sense, really, you know, talking to sources on all sides of this, that there is not much new that could necessarily come out about key events. What happened, Who was where, who was talking to whom?

But the power of.

Having someone who was in that room saying this is what happened to the jury is a lot more effective than more of a hearsay secondhand accounting of that.

We mentioned Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and he too has now testified. Can you tell us about that case, Zoe.

That's right, So that's shifting gears back now to the federal criminal investigation into the twenty twenty election. Mark Meadows was not charged in that indictment. He is not one of the unnamed, unindicted co conspirators referenced in that indictment.

And there had.

Been a fight earlier in the year that was under seal, but that we and others had reported on where Trump was trying to stop Mark Meadows from complying with a subpoena to go testify before the grand jury on executive privilege grounds. And Trump lost that fight, and then things went very quiet, and there was some reporting that perhaps Mark Meadows had in fact gone to the grand jury to testify, but wasn't quite confirmed or sure what had happened.

And how, if at all, does that affect Meta's circumstance in the Georgia case.

I mean, there's no direct correlation between the two cases. The two prosecutors are working independently, but certainly it does raise the question whether he would be open to some kind of agreement in Georgia and whether the prosecutor would take one. But it's important to you know, as Zoe said, he was not a cooperating witness. He did not strike a deal. He's not trying to help out prosecutors unlike the others. Unlike the others. Exactly, he was compelled to testify.

Say there is an open question of if he is called as a witness at trial in the federal case against Donald Trump. Former prosecutors say that as a general rule, what he says on the stand there can't necessarily be used against him in the Georgia case, But it also could in some ways still be fair game for Georgia prosecutors to I mean, they don't have to like.

Close their ears off. If he took the.

Stand, it sort of would be yet another extraordinary situation that would pose very rarely tested questions of the interplay of these state and federal prosecutions. It doesn't stop him from being called, but it does raise a lot more questions about the relationship between these two cases proceeding on, you know, generally very separate tracks.

I would see mini minimum, you know, in openings and closings they could always reference public testimony by Meadows in the DC case. And here we have a timing question just to sort of put the schedule back and focus. The DC case right now is scheduled to start March fourth, whereas there's still no trial date for the remaining defendants in the Georgia case. So there's potential for the DC case to be well on its way before we get a trial moving in Georgia.

And even though there's a lot we don't know about what Meadows has told prosecutors, what these lawyers have told prosecutors, Donald Trump certainly appears very concerned about what they might have said.

And you know, Meadows in particular, was you know, he was the man in the room. And Meadows, let's remember, was the one who actually set up the quote perfect phone call with Georgia's former Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to find those eleven thousand plus votes that he needed to flip the election.

When we come back, can states kick Trump off the ballot in twenty twenty four? Sarah? While all this is going on in courtrooms in DC, in New York, and Georgia, there's an entirely separate question also involving Donald Trump in Minnesota, in Colorado, where these states are exploring the question of whether to disqualify Donald Trump from the twenty twenty four ballot. Exactly what is that and how is that proceeding?

Well, this is very interesting. So there is a provision in the Fourteenth amendment which would prevent an official from being on the ballot if that person has been involved in an insurrection. And so we have state election officials across the country actually, and also you know, advocates and defendants on both sides who are trying to press this question. So does Donald Trump's involvement in the events of January sixth and the assault in the Capitol preclude him from

The section of the Constitution that we're now engaging with has its origins in the post Civil War period, and it was intended to sort of address this question of, you know, the Civil War has ended, and there are these ex Confederates who you know, either were serving in the Federal Congress at the time and then join the Confederacy and now want back in on politics, or just you know, former active members of the Confederacy who want

But there are two cases, really three, and the two main ones are in Colorado.

And Minnesota, one of which was brought by the group that got this New Mexico County official kicked out of office, saying Donald Trump incided them up and supported it and pushed them and then didn't.

Use the resources at his disposal.

As president to stop them when it happened, and that all of this meant that he engaged in an insurrection and should be barred from.

Holding office again.

And you know, secretaries of state have largely said, even those that are sort.

Of Democrat aligned, I'm not going to make.

This call, but judge, you make the call, and I will follow what you tell me to do.

And one of the big questions here is does this amendment apply to the office of the presidency? Okay, because back in the Civil War era it wasn't, you know, involving a president or former president or a presidential candidate. So this is one of the big questions that these cases are going to need to address.

As a practical matter, if one or more states who were disqualified down Trump on these grounds, how would that actually work? How can you have a presidential election where the nominee of one of the two major parties is not on the ballot.

It would be absolute chaos.

We're back in like constitutional crisis mode where I don't think anyone really knows what would happen the state Republican parties have intervened in these cases to sort of advocate specifically for that component of it, to say, you know, we have a right to say who's a bona fide candidate, and it's not for other outside entities to make that

And this is important because these cases are actually the ones that have the most direct bearing on Trump's ability to run for office. And we've talked about this in one of our previous chats. The actual cases that he's charged with, the four cases, none of them involve a potential conviction that would prevent Trump from either running or holding office.

So these started as kind of an interesting academic constitutional question. Now they're actually live in the courts. But do we think that these have a chance of actually prevailing, that Donald Trump could possibly truly be barred from the ballot in any states.

Well, that's why we're watching these two in particular. As always said, most of them, you know, don't have legs, but these potentially seem to be able to do that.

This is another situation where the Supreme Court, like it or not, could be asked to make really big decisions about the election pretty quickly.

The courts in both of these cases, it's.

A trial level judge in Denver and then the Minnesota Supreme Court that we'll hear arguments later. They've all acknowledged that whoever loses is going to try to take this up the chain as quickly as possible, and everyone has eyes on getting it to the Supreme Court as quickly as possible before ballots start, you know, becoming official early in twenty twenty four, ahead of primary contests.

You know, the judges have set schedules with.

That in mind and understanding that they are probably very likely not the final arbiters of this question. And even if the Supreme Court doesn't do anything if you know, there's a ruling and they decline to act on it, That in and of itself is becoming involved in the election, and quite early on in the cycle.

So, Zoe, you do think that ultimately this question will come before the Supreme Court.

As of now, you know, the sources that I've talked to on this on both sides have indicated that they're in it to win it and whoever loses. You know, Trump, certainly, I think his side has been quite clear about that in court.

But there's an.

Expectation that the advocacy groups that brought these cases, they have been laying this groundwork, you know, for months, if not years, to try and pursue this issue as far as they can take it.

And of course, Donald Trump and his lawyers completely refute any idea that he was responsible for inciting this assault on the Capitol.

There's never a shortage of things to talk about with Donald Trump, and certainly this conversation shows that's true. What are you watching for next in all of these various cases?

Yeah, I mean what's fascinating is we haven't even talked about the case in Florida and where things stand with the alligation making mishandled classified documents.

And we haven't even talked about the other New.

York criminal trial that's scheduled to happen early next year on you know, did he falsify business records? There is constantly now a flow of filings and hearings and deadlines that he and all of us watching this have to contend with this week, against the backdrop of everything else we've already talked about, the judge in the Florida case is going to hear arguments on Trump's request to kick that trial down the road right now. It's scheduled for May.

In addition to the Florida hearing this week that Zoe mentioned, we're also watching a prod of Donald Trump's children testifying in the New York trial This is the Letitia James, the New York Attorney General in the Trump Org trial. So they're testifying this week Don Junior, Eric and Ivanka and then Trump himself is taking the stand in that case on Monday, and at stake there are the charges that he has falsely inflated the value of his businesses to get loans and other business opportunities.

Sarah Zoe always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for taking the time, Thanks for having.

Us, Thanks for having us. I'm sure we'll be back.

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