Trump's Legal Dramas

counts of falsifying business records. Trump pleaded not guilty and only uttered ten words behind closed doors in the Manhattan Criminal courtroom, But in a Grievanceville speech before supporters at Mara Lago that evening, he attacked the indictment as politically motivated and leveled attacks on the judge, the district attorney, and their families. I have a Trump painting judge with the Trump painting wife and family whose daughter worked for

Kamala Harris. The criminal is the district attorney because he illegally leaked massive amounts of grand jury information. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg claims that Trump falsified business record at his company relating to a one hundred thirty thousand dollars hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in an effort to hide salacious news from the public in order to win the presidency. Thirty four false statements made to cover up other crimes. These are felony crimes in New York State.

No matter who you are, we cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conducts. Joining me is Michael Moore, a partner More Hall and the former US Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. Michael, it's a bare bones indictment. Thirty four records. Trump is accused of falsifying. That's clear and simple. But in order to bump these up to felonies, the district attorney has to show that they were falsified with the intent to commit, aid or conceal another crime.

But the indictment doesn't specify what those other crimes are, and the district attorney was really ambiguous about them at the press conference. So is that a weakness in the case or is it the DA playing his cards close to his vest I really think it's a weakness in the case. A prosecutor's job is to do things in a way that follows the law in the facts, but also to give the public confidence in his or her decision making and charge of decisions as they've moved forward.

And you know, without that information, I just don't think the indictment does that when I looked at the indictment in the statement of fact, I was underwhelmed. Would probably be generous to say that. And I've heard a lot of talk about the issue of everyone's treated the same

or should be treated the same under the law. But the reality is you can do that while at the same time recognizing the fact before us, if this is a former president and historic prosecution in any manner, and so I really felt like it needed to have more meat on the bones than we saw in the indictment.

I think there's some things that are going to be subject to appeal right away from the indictment that deals with you whether or not the federal election laws can be the crimes that are sort of the secondary tier that allow the cases to be vowed from a mistermount to a felony, and then with are not in a potential tax violation in fact and cover that as well. So we just begin to see, I'm sure what will

be a long pre trial motion process. So is what's likely to happen that during discovery, defense attorneys get those answers from the prosecutor about what the underlying crime is or will they have to wait till trial. Now I think they'll probably file a motion early on to demand that there'll be more specifics given in the charge of document and indictment for people who don't do it every day.

If you think about this, that the indictment is really the document that has to be given to anyone who's charged with the crime so that they can have a complete and full understanding of what they're being charged with. It's a notice document, and so this just simply I

don't think gave sufficient notice. So I imagine that the lawyers were Trump will not only file them motion to dismiss that they'll also then ask accord in the alternative and maybe in second motions as well, for specific particulars about the charges in question. The defense attorneys have said they're going to be aggressive with motions. What kind of motions can we expect, Well, I think it's likely that you'll see an initial motion challenging the jurisdiction of the court,

probably raised on constitutional grounds. There will be arguments about presidential immunity. I think you will have motions on the indictment itself and whether or not it's sufficient. So you'll see likely motions to dismiss, challenging the language of the indictment, the notice given to a defendant in the indictment, the sufficiency of each of the allegations that stated on the face of the indictment. And you know, when you think about that too, remember that a defendant doesn't have to

try to guess what's in the prosecutor's mind. He didn't have to wait and guess what might be presented to the jury. He's entitled to some notice in a case. And so they'll challenge the indictment on sufficiency, I feel certain, and there'll be some challenges as well on this sort of new idea about whether or not you can have as a basis for a state criminal prosecution and allegation that is so inextricably tied to federal election law and a federal statute, and is that actionable in the criminal

courts in New York. That's some of the initial motions I think we'll see. You're going to have other motions as well. They'll probably be a motion to change the venue or the place where the trial would be held. I'd expect very likely that you'll see motions to disqualify the prosecutor and likely to ask the judge to accuse himself.

You know, these will be aggressive defense attorneys, as they should be, and every defendant under the Constitution has a right to a zealous defense, and so I expect that you'll see this. But again, it will be especially so because of the enormity of this case and the ramifications of this case really not just now, but in fifty years, what this means and whether or not there could be local charges against the formal president for some conduct even

while the president may have been in office. Are you basically saying that, despite what Bragg says, that Trump can't be treated just like any other defense. I think that that's right. I think that you try to treat people fairly, but you can't get around the circumstances that we're in. And you don't have to look any further the fact that you know, we had to have the courthouse closed basically to allow Trump to appear in court for security reasons.

That's treating it different than any other defendant. I mean, that's just the reality that we're in. I think, given the charges against a formal president, there'll be security issues that go on throughout the trial. There'll be scheduling an appearance issues that go off throughout the trial. There may be appeals where the federal courts are more actively involved in the case because the charges involved a formal president.

You basically matters move more quickly towards the Supreme Court because of that, as we deal with constitutional issues that are not president in every other case. And I think too, I mean, I do think that you know, a prosecutor has to also use his or her discrestion and bring in cases. And you'd like to say, and I think prosecutor would tell you that every time they ever see a violation of any crime anywhere and if your station,

they bring charges. But that's just not the case. And you can think, I'm sure about circumstances where people get a warning when they violated speeding on him, some drivers get a warning, somebody does not, or cases where somebody's charged with an offense that could prohibit them from going to college and complete the scholarship that the prosecutor decides to reduce the charge so that they're not thrown out

of college. You can go down a list of examples that are very much real life examples about how prosecutor has to think about things. And I think this is an example of when even though the law has an even hand and Lady Justice is blind, you still have to think about what we're doing as it relates to the United States and what case may be the case if you're going to bring one forward that should be a league case against a former president of the United States,

And is this the case? I mean, is this in fact the case that basically is the best to knock the king off the throne? And I think that's going to be the question today. Remember as well that you know, the former disc attorney did not prosecute, the Department of Justice declined to prosecutor case like this, and yet here we are. And you know, one thing they have to be thinking about, I'm certain is you know they had

a very sort of a similar type of case. It wasn't exactly it would say, among the facts, but you had a former presidential candidate who had been charged similarly in the Edwards case, and ultimately he was acquitted at trial. There were some tausid but Jerry hung on, but they were ultimately dismissed and not pursuing further by the government. So all those calculations have to be in a prosecutor's mind. You can see if you think about even the Southern

District of New York declining to move forward. They have to be thinking about things like witness credibility and availability of evidence on the statements that have been made. Those are real life calculations that go into a decision or whether or not to move forward the case, even though you may be satisfied in your gut that something illegal was done. Before the arraignment, Trump called the DA an animal.

He posted a picture of himself with a base ball bat next to a photo of the judge, and during the arrayment, the judge warned him about dangerous rhetoric. Yet hours later at Marlogo, we attacked the judge, the DA and their families. Inexcusable. It's inexcusable. I thought that his

comments have been outrageous. You know. I think a prosecutor expects in some regards to not have friends and on the other side of the versus mark, and that is because you're essentially doing a job that would likely result in a criminal conviction and maybe jail time against the dependence that you're prosecuting, and so you sort of expect as part of your job to have names used against you.

I think that when you bring in family members, children, spouses, the spouses and family members of the court, those types of things, It's inexcusable, it's ill advised. I think, at the end of the day, can come back to bite people who do that. And I also I'm not surprised at all given what we witnessed during the Trump administration and certainly during the campaign time. I'm about his use

of that kind of rhetoric. You know, you remember, this is the same person who's mocked people in hurtful and hateful ways, and so I'm not surprised by it. I think if you're a lawyer trying to represent a quiet like that, you have your hands full and you have a great deal of frustration that you can't probably fully expressed to somebody who's a former president of United States. But I'm sure that every lawyer was cringing when the attacks got cut loose on the judge. I also don't think, frankly,

that they were just at homitive attacks. I think it was an effort to force an accusal by this judge and debate him a little bit. Given the recency of the comments and the warnings that have been given by the court to Trump and his team. But to do anything that incites violence, to do anything that places a famine member of a prosecutor or a judge, or anybody involved in the system. I mean, to do anything that puts those people in harm's way and at risk is inexcusable.

It needs to be addressed on its own, outside of what may or may not come in the way of a gag order. You know, this is not normal conduct. This is not something that's allowed. I can tell you a fact in Georgia that did that, they'd find themselves locked up in the jail, their bond revolte. But somehow he has done things to our system and sort of trained us to think that, at least as it comes

from him, that this is a normal conduct. Well, there's nothing normal about and it's one of the great damages I think he's done to America and to our institutions, and that is to do away with the norms of decency and professionalism and the psychicety for our institutions that have kept our Democrats are strong. Even if they make a motion and they've sort of hinted at making a motion for the judge to recuse himself. Judge oversaw the tax fraud trial against the Trump Organization and CFO. Do

you think that he would ever recuse himself. I think he could. And let me say this, I don't think that's the fact that he may accused himself or consider accused himself, is any sign of weakness or wrong doing. I think judges and prosecutors are to do things that make sure that there's no appearance of any conflict of interests and no appearance of any impropriety in any way, even if there is none, it's to protect the system

and the process from the appearance of that. To me, that seems like a pretty clear reason for the judge to refuse himself, and that is because his daughter, if she's working for the campaign, is basically in the throes of an upcoming election season against that campaign's opponent or likely opponent, you know, if the likely opponent is going

to lose. And that may mean that the daughter, my virtual work on the campaign stands to gain income or continues employment as a campaign or whatever it is she does. And I don't know that, but let's just use as an example. That's a good reason to set aside and let another judge here. Now. Doesn't mean that this assigned judge would do anything different because of that. But it lets the public have a confidence and it lets the detractors.

It takes the steam out of their engines to say, Okay, we've got to judge now who has no connection, no familiar connection at all, to Trump's opponents. You're never gonna make everybody happy, but it gives the appearance of the process that there's no no possibility of favoritism or more slant and rudely drink thing like that. Yeah, this judge may have done nothing different, he may do nothing different through the trial. But it's more about protecting the appearance.

And you know, an example that Democrats want to talk about is the Class Thomas situation. You know, we've heard for years now and especially very recently about concerns about text messages that the justice's wife may have made and money so she may have received and our organization may

or may not have received. I mean, there's been all these kinds of this talk out there, and there's this clamor from the Democrats said, well, they've got he's got to accuse himself, he's got to step day, he's going to do this. You know that the appearance is bad.

He could have a confident to venture as well. The same may be truth here, and that is it's again there's nothing to say, but the justice is ruled a particular way because he was told to do that, of because he was doing a particular favor for his wife or anything else. But it calls into question the decisions that he's made because of this potential appearance of the conflict.

Now in the Trump case, you know, every decision that this judge makes may be called into question because of the impossible appearance of a conflict of interest, whether in fact there's anything to it or not. So it's simply a way to protect the public's belief in public confidence in the judicial process. Let's say it remains with this judge. He set the next major court date for December fourth. The prosecution was pushing for opening arguments to begin sometime

in January of twenty twenty four. Trump's defense asked for a few more months, maybe sometime in spring of twenty twenty four. Do you think the judge will be able to keep this on a tight timeline. It's unimaginable to me that he would. Number one, he won't be handling this on at all without appeals to the courts in

a locatory appeals or intermediary peoples. And also, I don't think there's any way possible to consider that a court is going to make a candidate for office come try a case a few months before a primary election or in the middle of a presidential election season. I just have a hard time of imagining that that's going to be allowed. And again, I mean that throws into the

debate I guess about as we go forward. Does that mean that every time a presidential elections comes up, a local partition's going to charge the candida to the other side and try to get up into court so they can't campaign. I mean, that's that's one of the very real concerns. I think that's out there as we think about this this case. If they wanted to try the case,

it should have been tried a long time ago. But we've now suddenly waited until pretty much in the middle and certainly the warm up of the presidential campaign season. And I just have a hard time believing that the courts will allow a candidate to be sidelined for a case it could have been brought years ago. Speaking of should have tried it, sooner. What is happening in Georgia. Da Willis started her investigation just days after recording was

made public. In January twenty twenty one, she had this special grand jury where seventy five witnesses, including some high level Trump people, testified. Eighteen people have been notified their

targets of the investigation. So what is she waiting for? Well, I mean, that's a good question, and that's another example of where the case could have been brought a long time ago in a more clean fashion and with an easier, simpler target of a case, rather than what I think she's doing, and that now all appearances is she's looking at this is more of an organizational type conspiracy or

agreement to overthrow the election. And that's led to this idea for whether there's going to be a Rico prosecution and wi be a Rico indictment in those cases take

a long time after they indicted. So I see no way even if she got an indictment tomorrow from the grand jury against Trump and whoever else, I see no way that her case could ever wrap up before the election in twenty four And you know there's a case going on in in Lina, right now against a rapper, and it's a Rico prosecution, and they've spent months and months trying to get a jury to have been unable to do that, and in part because people can't acknowledge

and can't say with any certainty that they can take a year off what they're expected for the trial. And so I just think it's going to be next impossible for that case to move forward before the election. She could certainly give the indictment. I see no way she could get the case tried. They could be through the emotions process and the appeals process and working on that to be an electory appeals, But to get to a trial and have any kind of conclusion, I think there's

no way. And so then you get into the question of what if he wins, if he wins broke the primary, and if he happens to win an election, what do you do then and what happens to the case. And I think that you know, we know that the courts are not going to make somebody come in and answer who is president States after state criminal charges, because they've got other things to tend to, like whether or not the nuclear missiles are safe and those kinds of things.

So you know, those are big considerations that have to come down. But this again, sometimes you know, you don't always want the perfect to be the enemy of the good. And so this is a kind of example where maybe you don't want the complex, the more complex and complete to be the enemy of the good. And that is could she have moved forward on a case that was

more targeted. Could she have moved forward baby on account if she wanted to charge or an account of attempting to influence Secretary Raffersburger that performance kids duties by way of that phone call, because she's done something like that, and without going through this lengthy, lengthy investigation that I think so. But often again she may have evidence that we all know about. She certainly has been involved in the case, and I have no insight knowledge about what

she's considering and reviewing. So I don't want to sec against everything she's doing. But I would have liked this thing that they were going to bring a case because of these timing issues. And there again kind of takes this full circle for this idea about or people treated differently, Well, you are treated differently if you're a sitting president and you're charged with a crime. Or your schedule for trial you would charge before your president and your schedule try

you are treated different. That's just that's just real. There's no real way around that. Those are considerations that have to be out there, you know, and we'll say kind of it's sat here as we've taught long. You know, another example, you think about people or they treated differently under the law, Well, you have a lot of people when they're convicted, they're immediately carted off to jail. They're handcuffed in the courtroom and taking to jail. Sometimes that's different.

If you're having to be a pregnant mother, you know, you're given a certain amount of time. There are other things that considerations that are made. So there are differences that life and circumstances bring, and that's sometimes the beauty of judicial and prosecutors discretion as you work through those

things to still give people confidence in judicial process. And during this Moralogo speech, Trump kept coming back to the investigation that reportedly is the one that bothers him the most or concerns him the most, and that's the Special

Counsel's investigation into the classified documents. And as he's done before, Trump admitted that he had those documents sent to Morolago, and there's additional reporting from the Washington Post that the Special Council has information that he actually went through boxes of documents after he got the subpoena. So there's another one where I'm like, well, why aren't you bringing the indictment? Right? I mean, it seems like a fairly clear case. Either

you had the documents or you didn't. I mean, and either you responded to the subpoena or you didn't. Least pretty clear issues. I think the Special Council has moved fairly quickly since he's been assigned, and we know that he's put some some pressure and interviews on various members of Organslation, and he's continuing to look at that. But it does seem like a case that could be very clear.

I'm sure that when Trump was making his comments about I think he said he was openly and clearly or something like that packing up his boxes or bringing boxes down the monologue. I'm sure his lawyers will probably crawling under one of the Golden League tables, you know, down there in that country club as they listen to that. Think I have he had just kind of admitting to things that he didn't need to do. And I'm sure he'll have a reason and there'll be some excuse this

is what he really meant. But you know he can be his own worst enemy. I'll bet there was a note taker in the Special Counsel's office, you know, using a highlighter and and to be marking that on a transcript somewhere, and it's likely to show up later in a court prositing. That's why I think Jack Smiths cases are the stronger. The DA in New York, the Dam Georgia,

and the Special Counsel. They should have met somewhere for a summit, I mean in secret, if Camp David or whatever they need to do, you know, to meet somewhere and talk about what are we doing so that I don't step on your toes, you know, so that you know we work in a way that's productive. We can talk about time and lawforce nats whos do this all

the time and deconfliction. So if you've got the DA working on a case and the FBI working on the case and the higher s agents looking at the case, they deconflict so they don't put their sources in jeopardy. So the investigations not compromised in some way that they can protect lawforcement officers that may be on the sane. They deconflict, well, they should have been sort of a deconfliction between these three prosecutors saying, okay, who has the

case it's going to survive? Exeppellent question, what happens if your case gets the Supreme Court first and they rule you know this way, that may kill off nine diement? What happens if you know? There has to be a discussion and there's nothing wrong, that's not a conspiracy against Trump, that's a that's just law enforcement officers getting together when you're talking about are you going to bring charges against

their former president? And I hope they did it. There's no indication that they have, but I would hope that there's been some discussion. I mean, the charges of them, that'sation between jack Smith group and the Fulton DA are so overlapped that surely there's been some discussion about who's bringing what you know, who's got the best venue to bring it in, whose laws he's going to be more favorable, who can support a conviction if you know, if they

get one. Surely they've talked about that, but I don't know, there's no indication they are. That's amazing to me. I mean one of the first motions I think. I mean, it would be filed down here depending on what she does.

But if she charges him with anything to do with the phone call, and especially anything that between January one and inauguration day in twenty twenty, I imagine you going to see a moast of transferred to federal court and they look, he was president and he was doing such and such as his position as president nited states he was called as a candidate but also president calling to

check on middle extra time. I mean, they'll make some motion, but surely they thought about is the case will be in federal court or stake core but in thanks so much for joining us. Michael. That's Michael More, former US Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia and a partner at Moore Hall. Jury selection begins in the one point six billion dollar defamation suit over Fox News airing of false claims that Dominion voting systems rigged the twenty twenty

presidential election. Fox's list of witnesses includes current host Maria Bardaromo, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Janine Pierro and Rupert Murdoch and his son Laughlin will have to testify if they're subpoenaed by Dominion. The trial should shed light on why Fox repeatedly allowed guests like Rudy Giuliani and former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell to falsely claim that Dominion conspired with foreign hackers and corrupt Democrats to ensure Joe Biden one,

even though many Fox employees knew that was bogus. Sydney, we talked about the Dominion software. I know that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that. Let's to put it mildly. The Dominion software system has been tagged as one allegedly capable of flipping votes, and don't forget still serious questions about the integrity of Dominion. Fox is going

to trial facing a major legal setback. The trial judge has ruled that it's crystal clear that none of the statements made on Fox relating to Dominion in the twenty twenty election are true, taking that question away from the jury.

Joining me to preview the upcoming trial is David Korsnick, an expert in defamation law and a partner at Miller Coorsnick Summer's Raymond David tell Us about the ruling that Fox can't dispute that it broadcast falsehoods when it allowed allies of Donald Trump to float harmful claims about dominions supposedly rigging voting machines. Well, first of all, it's a really methodical and careful decision, and what he's doing here

is kind of shaping the battlefield to this trial. There are issues that have been determined on summary judgment, and there are issues that are open for the trial. The ones that are closed and that he ruled on, but no jensonable person could think otherwise is that the statements

about dominion are false. There's no contrary evidence that would make that an issue of fact that a journey needs to decide where an open question was in this motion which statements were fact and which are non actionable opinion. And the judge actually does, in the appendix go through every single alleged statement broadcast and identifies those lines within them that are factual assertions and not non actionable opinions. All of that shot. So, how much of a blow

to Fox is this decision. It's significant, but not surprising, It's most significant for Fox in terms of the fact that it hoped that they could get rid of some of the claims by getting a ruling that they were matters of opinion is now behind them and didn't succeed. By the way, some of it did succeed in the sense that the judge isolates those statements that are fact, and he highlighted those that were clearly non actionable opinion.

So to some extent they probably did winnow down some of the claims to get some of them excluded his opinion, But within each broadcast, the court found that there were statements that were assertions of fact and therefore actionable. Fox tried a First Amendment defense that it was simply reporting on newsworthy statements from public figures. How did that defense fair? Overall? It didn't farewell. In other words, that they wanted to say that these were just neutral and fair reports of

public perceivings. Some of them were, and the court doesn't explicitly identify those that get thrown out, so those didn't go well either. I just think one thing about this case that is some ways really remarkably different than most, and that is that rarely do you ever in a case get the degree of insight into the internal editorial deliberations of the news organization about a particular story or

set of stories. There's a thing called the reporter's privilege which was litigated in order to prevent the disclosure of internal deliberations within Fox about what they were broadcasting. And normally that will work, but in this case it did partly. When you read some of the motion papers, you see that they're redactions, and that's probably because some of those redacted statements were protected by the reporter's privilege, and some of them may even be confidential sources that are under

New York law absolutely privileged. There are other kinds of statements that are only conditionally privileged, and those are the ones that the plaintiff dominion were able to get. How did they get them? How did they over fund the burden that you have to meet in order to beat

the privilege or crack it. It's really interesting. This is unique about this case is that the Fox reporting was itself the subject of months and months of reporting by other news organizations, and many of its employees had left in distress and anger over these issues. They'd fired some of them too, including some of the people who called the Arizona stuff and so on. So you had all these sources out there talking to news organizations and saying, oh, well,

Suzanne Scott spent this email to me. I don't have it, but this is what she said. So and so had this meeting and they talked about this, and I heard it and I was in. Once you have that kind of particularity, once you know what you're looking for as a plaintiff, you can then meet the burden that you have to meet in order to crack the reporter's privilege. Otherwise you can. So let's discuss what will be before the jury and what dominion will have to prove. What's

called actual malice. So actual malice is a technical term and it's got nothing to do with malice. What it is is a state of mind about truth and falsehood. Publishing something knowing that it is false or with a high degree of awareness of its probable falsehood. That's the definition of it. What it is not is biased. You're allowed to be biased. It is not irresponsible journalism. You can be irresponsible but still not act with actual malice.

You can be careless, you can be irresponsible, you can be grossly irresponsible, which is the lower standard in private figure cases. The plaintiff has to show that the defendant published something that was false and at the time they did that they published it, they knew it was false or had a high degree of awareness of its probable falsehood.

And what's really kind of scary here for the defendants in this case is that there's a lot of traffic within their organizations and indicate that they're highly aware of its falsehood and that the people who are expressing that are And this is what the jury is going to have to decide participants. In the shape of those broadcasts, you know, there's this big thing about what is Rupert Murdoch think and what is Lachlan think and so on.

It looks like they're kind of calling audibles too the news team as to what it ought to do, but the planiff doesn't need them in order to land the proof of actual malice, which by the way, is pretty daunting. Normally, you have to prove it with not just preponderance of the evidence, which is the usual thing, but you have

to prove it with clear and convincing evidence. But somewhere between preponderance of the evidence, which is more than fifty percent likely, but less than what is required in a criminal case, which is beyond a reasonable doubt. Some who've looked at all the emails and techs seem to think that it won't be that difficult to prove actual malice here.

I don't think that it will be difficult. I think that there could be some open questions about, you know, how soon did Fox editors and producers recognize that these statements about demeaning were false. It seems pretty early in it. You see the judges laid out both a timeline of their awareness of falsehood and a timeline of the different publications. So there could be some early on that don't meet the actual analyice standard. We'll see what the jury does

with that. But as the understanding of the falsehood of these statements kind of traits all levels of the news organization, then I think it's not going to be hard for the plaintiff to show that. So how likely is it that there'll be a settlement on the eve of trial. It just looks to me like a really hard one to settle. If I had to guess, and this is just a guess, I think it's going to go to a trial. Why do you think it's hard to settle?

Just explain that, because I think that the plaintiff may have little incentive to do that, and Fox itself may be hoping to be able to contain some of this on appeal. Keep in mind that if a plantiff gets to a trial in a libel case, often the plantiff can prevail, but typically on appeal a lot of it gets really carved back and cut back. So I think Fox's biggest incentive is that it doesn't want to have a trial with all of these witnesses being hauled in

to court and questioned in a public way. I mean, right now, all these things are just on paper, but when they have to testify in court and have Earlson, that Murdoch and you name it all in there, bad R goes right against what they seem mostly preoccupied with about appearing to be doubtful about what their viewers believe truth. It's going to be a fascinating trial, Thanks so much.

That's defamation law expert David Korsnick. Coming up next is Obamacare headed to the Supreme Court for a ninth time. This is Bloomberg