Beyond Unprecedented Times

this brand new world. Donald Trump in a couple of weeks is going to be sworn in as a forty seventh president of these United States, and he was most likely will be the last democratically elected president of these

United States. And so I thought it was important to go back to a conversation that I had with our friend gentalb about Donald Trump running for office in the first place as a twice impeached former president with multiple indictments, and recognizing that we have long since left precedented times. This is not normal. And I think that it's so important, folks to remind ourselves of that, because they want to

make the abnormal seem normal. They want to make it seem okay that a white supremac apologist, a man that's multiple has multiple indictments, a man that said, can you do me a favor though, A man that's been accused of sexual harassment and adjudicated for rape, a man that has called Mexicans rapists and murderers, that said that black people come from shithole countries. A man that has ripped families away from each other and pledges to do mass

deportations in his second term. None of this is normal, and we should never normalize it. We should never allow ourselves to just say, well, you know, it is what it is. We have to remember our power in these moments. We have to remember our light in these episodes of darkness, and we have to remember to remember who we are. So in this conversation with Gentobb that we revisit, we talk about all the ways that this isn't the America that we want to be living in, and so what

do we do. Take a listen, folks, I am always so happy when one of my friends, fellow nerd Avenger, just fellow colleague in the space, who loses their mind. Regular bathists try to keep direct with the news cycle. Gentib joins Okay daily. You know her. She's a law professor and the author of Big Dirty money and other people's houses. And she is the host of Booked Up with Gen Tobb, Jen.

Jack Smith's documents case against Donald Trump. Folks. I know that there are so many cases, so it's hard to keep track, but let us start with the document's case has set a court date for May twenty fourth, I believe twenty twenty four. Uh so five twenty four, twenty four, ha ha on us, Jen, what do you make of

Aileen Cannon's moves thus far? Uh? In this in this case and whether or not we will we'll see pushback from the Department of Justice by way of Jack Smith because he said he was ready to go in December. We knew that that was unlikely. But but where what are you thinking so far about her moves and then the timing of this trial?

has created for the future of democracy. Because May twenty four, there's only one good two good things about that date. One that's literally the last I think, like the last day, like when grades are due spring semester for my classes, so like I will be done teaching. So if that's going to take over all of my time, I'm ready. That's but you know, that's the one good thing, hardly enough to recommend the date.

There's no In other words, The reason why, as you know, that the Justice Department pushed out the date to December from the judge's original summer date, which wasn't going to happen, was because there's some complications around how to share top secret type documents that will not be the case in the January sixth indictment, you know. And I think the Justice Department has brought hundreds of cases involving the rioters and has already the benefit of, as you know, the

special Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. They have done incredible amounts of work even before this Special Council got involved. I think they're ready to go one day in DT. So my hope is they ask for a

November date October even for that case. The yeah and the only, the only true other than the selfish motive, the only true good thing about May twenty fourth is it gives the opportunity a wide open field to bring the most important case against this guy, which is trying to stage a coup to stay in office and the you know, ongoing lie that that is associated with all that, all the time between the November election when he lost, through the attack on the Capitol and his role all

of that is feeding into his campaign and the undermining of what little we have left of our democratic institution. So that's the bright note. Now, if there I am hoping he asks for October or November or December date. If Jack Smith doesn't, you know, I give up. I really do. I don't know what to tell you.

January sixth. With the rollout of these indictments, you know, he sends up a flare, all of mainstream media jumps on the Trump train right, giving him once again all just the free press that he he uses that attention to. Then send out threats to Jack Smith and to others, and then sends out this video basically another digital stand back and stand by. So tell me how these kinds of things can be used in a court of law that he's doing.

activity during the Carol two trial. It was Carol two because it was brought second even though charged, you know, she filed the the defamation and sexual assault case. This was the second case, even though it went first and there were things that you know, the Donald Trump was doing on Twitter, and the judge I was in the courtroom, you know, said to his lawyers, you got to talk to your client, and sometimes he took down what he

was saying off Twitter. But then when he continued that behavior after he lost the case, now that's become part of the next case. I mean, Carol want it's been added to that case against him. Now this is all about a civil case. Right, You're more concerned about him stand back, stand by kind of language actually creating violence.

I remain a little bit less concerned because when he was indicted his first federal indictment as opposed to the Manhattan DA indictment, the first federal grand jury indictment, we didn't see that much support for him around the courthouse

in Florida. Now I realized this is probably this is different because these are the same people, right, this is all about But however, there are a lot of people who were charged and either serve time or are going to serve time, who feel abandoned by Donald Trump, in other words, he so they may not come and also they may themselves not want to get arrested again. So we've got to think about that. So I don't know if you're if you're worried.

of behavior and basic intent with his continued language. Now you could have yeah, because my thought was if Donald Trump, let's say, had been a normal human being and you're caught doing something and then you decide I'm going to back away from that said behavior so that my attorneys can say that this was an isolated event, caught up in passion, whatever bullshit kind of you know, defense is going to be created. You could say that that was

an isolated of it. But over the last few years since January sixth, we've watched Donald Trump continue to use social media as a way to either virtually assault people, right, make them a target in an attack, the same way that he did with the voting staff in uh in Georgia. Right. And so my question really is like, how is the process, how do you feel, how can the prosecution use Donald Trump's continued behavior or there for their case.

to obstruct and try to stir up violence. In terms of admitting evidence that his lawyers are obviously going to want to exclude that kind of evidence, and they want to narrow what a jury can hear, right, And so the tension in our rules of federal rules of evidence is, first of all, only things that are considered relevant can be admitted. This would obviously, you know, I think it's relevant to his intent and so on. So but the next thing is and of course the other side, his

defense will say it's not. But even if a judge thinks it's relevant, the judge then has to decide whether something is two what's called too prejudicial to be probative. It's this concept of you know, for example, when a defendant is trial for a particular let's say, you know, breaking into a grocery store to steal formula for their kid or something. God forbid, we prosecute for that, you know, whether they had been caught doing, you know, shoplifting something

else at a different time. You know, if a jury gets to hear the other shoplifting, it's going to make them think, oh, this is a bad person. I'm going to convict them. And so the defense is going to want to say, you know, that's not really relevant. What they were shoplifting before was you know, I don't know Amazon, you know, gift cards or whatever, and that just has

nothing to do with this. However, you know, the idea would be, well, if the way that this person did this was similar, then we can look for a pattern of behavior. But the idea is it's relevant because it shows this person has the intent to take things that aren't theirs. But a lot of judges would exclude that earlier, that earlier evidence because they would say, you know, that's going to make a jury try him for being a bad person, and we don't do that in America. You're

supposed to be tried for your your actual offenses. So it's going to really be up to what a jury, what the judge is, and how the judge rules. So

that's going to be an evidentiary battle. The second way, though, I think is interesting, is if his tweeting or his it's not even tweeting xing, or his his what that we call him now is true thing whatever, if his public statements are directed toward this particular case, and it could be seen as trying to influence witnesses or tamper with them, or somehow create threats against physical or other threats against jurors or the court. That could be its

own kind of separate case, you know. And I don't know if you saw this, but the other day I saw like it was it Mike Huckabee. Did you see this thing going around on threads like he put up?

It could have been on true social maybe it was an interview on the news, But what I saw is he was on air or something saying the most important values are loyalty, and he was like saying it was a very weird, like if you don't get it, like they're all out there sending signals for people to not not squeal, you know, not rat out the mob boss. And the closer he gets to this prospect of being convicted for something in federal court, maybe he believes jail time,

which I don't think would happen. But the closer he gets to that, the more desperate his moves will become. And so I think we should keep our eye on both both avenues.

are actually coming down the pike. My assumption is yes, it is why from Georgia because Fani Willis had sent up a flair months ago telling us that between July and September for law enforcement to prepare, so we know that those things are are underway. Part of Jen I guess the rumors that are circulating is that Fannie Willis the DA in Georgia could potentially be looking at racketeering charges. So Jen, talk to us about this, what if this big?

What if that we don't know yet? Why would this be a BFD.

And the idea with racketeering is that you uh the law, whether it's the Georgia one or the federal one, is designed to criminalize, to create, criminalize a pattern of racketeering activity. So that's how the language works. And then you have to say, well, what is racketeering activity and what is a pattern? Well, racketeering activity at the federal level is a little bit different at the state the federal level.

The reason why RICO was established is so that you could turn into a federal crime or a pattern of state criminal behavior, so as well as a series of different federal crimes, so that we call them predicate offenses. So all of a sudden, someone who's just committing crimes like doing you know, black met or bribery or shaking people down, or murder. At the state level, you know, murdering people, you could now say, well, murder's usually a

state offense. But now if it's a pattern of racketeering activity, if it's a if you have an enterprise, which is, you know, a group of two or more people working together to commit a series of murders, now all of a sudden, instead of just a state crime, you could charge that at the federal level, right or kidnapping, So think of that. That's the federal way. Similarly, things like wirefraud or counterfeiting or all kinds of other federal offenses. If someone is a pattern of it, if you've called

you call it a pattern of racketeering activity. Now what you've done, If you've said, okay, Danielle, if you're at the hub of this group, if you're in charge of you know this activity. You if you set up this sort of racketeering enterprise and you're either making money or benefiting from this kind of behavior, even if you were not involved in all these underlying things, if you're part of this rico enterprise, you now can be tagged with

all this other stuff. It's a way of creating a web around a sort of amorphous activity where you cannot see. So let's put Donald Trump at the center of this, and let's look at the let's look at the efforts to change the vote count in Georgia. The reason why racketeering, Now, let's look at the state level. The reason why racketeering would be helpful is if if Rico at the state, at the Georgia level, is also criminalizing a pattern of

racketeering activity. Rico at the Georgia level has a whole bunch of other types of crimes, state crimes, and some of those are the you know, the activities that people like Giuliani and anyone he.

that makes sense to you. That's what I'm trying to So that's why it's sort of a big deal, and you know it just it just as layers of liability and just yet another crime. And it also sounds bad. But remember he already settled Rico State Rico charges with his fake university. You know, it's not like he hasn't been tagged with RICO before. I just think people like, they think it sounds they think it sounds scary. But the other thing is that Fawnie Willis has had success

using the Georgia Rico statute before. Wasn't she involved in the whole thing about teachers cheating helping students cheat on exams? Yes, So again, when you have.

that has engulfed an entire political party. And there are many mechanisms, much in the same way that you know, organized crime members have different hands in different jars.

was making the rounds, who was absolutely giddy going on television. Yeah, so she told us, you know, there are not going to be any plot twists. There are lots of people's names. We're not going to be surprised to see them. You know, I would like to see those.

were former presidents of the United States. I want to turn your attention to Michigan for a moment and the sixteen sixteen Republican of fake electors who were caught up in that scheme, who were charged with felonies for their quote for their role in the alleged false elector's scheme. How does that? How does what is happening in Michigan tie in to what is happening in Georgia and as a larger part of this overall twenty twenty scheme by Trump and company.

it came to anything Donald Trump was involved in. And only when he announced his plan to run for office does he appoint Jack Smith. And only I think shortly after maybe they found those documents at Biden's house? Did that? Do you even do that? Like he should have a pointed some long time ago, and he also should have done something about the flake collectors in Michigan and the other states. And so I admired Dana Nessel for saying, you know what, I don't have to wait forever. I'm

going to bring this case. And she, you know, she brought this case against these against these these people. It was sixteen of them, and the kinds of charges she used were ordinary state charges. I love this one. One crime called uttering and publishing. When I worked in the courthouses when I was a teenager and I had some summer jobs, they're uttering publishing was something you charge people with if they wrote a bad check. It's kind of

any kind of sort of false written statement. Others were charged with, you know, other charges included for each of them election law forgery, and these are these are serious, serious felonies. These are you know, when they're at this level, when it's not just passing a bad check, when it's actually trying to falsify the electoral slate and and and you know, give an opportunity for overturning a lawful election. We're talking about fourteen years for each of these offenses.

There's like one, two, three, four, or five, like six different felonies here in several counts each to My hope is that other states, not just Georgia and Michigan where this was going on, the prosecutors decide that they're not going to wait around for the federal government. Jacksonith's obviously very busy at this point and whatever else he's not working on, I wouldn't leave it to Merrick Garland, and hopefully they step up.

go to the Justice Department first? And there's a reason. Yeah, because I you know, and I don't know. I I have a lot, you know, I'm very disappointed. I you know, as you know, I believe a special counsel should have been appointed right away at the outset. But we're where we are. But if there had been a special counsel appointed the minute Marek Garland was sworn in in March of twenty twenty one, we may have actually had some trials by now. This is ridiculous.

Ross Perot was there. It's very hard, even under normal circumstances, for anyone to either party to win the presidential election the way the electoral College is set up, in the way our country has always been divided. And now we're in a real danger of Donald Trump being re elected. And you know, I blame that on the Justice Department because and I'm not saying it because this is not a partisan issue. I'm saying someone who tried to overthrow

the election should not be running again. And and that is if you don't if you don't understand that, then you really don't know what you're doing in your job. And I don't understand how that was in his priority day one.