Good morning, peeps, and welcome to Will Kate f Daily with Meet your Girl Daniel Moody pre recording from the Home Bunker, Folks. In today's conversation, I bring on one of my faves and longtime analysts that we go to every time there is a legal web to unravel, and that is Glenn Kirshner. And in today's conversation, Glenn and I look at what happened in twenty twenty three as it pertains to ninety one charges for indictments across multiple
jurisdictions for Donald Trump. We talk about, you know, the latest news around Rudy Giuliani being forced to pay nearly one hundred and fifty million dollars to the two the mother and daughter, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss that he defamed and whose lives he destroyed. We talk about what we think this unelected body, the black robes of the Supreme Court will do now that Jack Smith has kicked up a question to them, which is can former presidents
be prosecuted or are they above the law? And Glenn gives us his thoughts about whether or not he thinks that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of democracy. Or not, but what this setup is going to look like for us in twenty twenty four, Make no mistake, folks, everything is on the fucking line. And I keep trying to get people to see that, to understand that, to wrap their minds around it, because we don't get another bite at this apple. Donald Trump gets in and he
is telling you he's going to be a dictator. On day one. His a sycophants are telling you that they want people burned at the steak who are dissenters, that they're coming for everyone and everything, and they will bankrupt this society in order to seek their revenge. And no one,
no one will be fucking safe. And so I think that it's really important for us not to be placing all of our bets on the fact that these legal cases will transpire and somehow Donald Trump will find himself in a jumpsuit before he finds himself back in the
Oval Office. The decision on whether or not he makes it back inside the Oval Office is going to depend on all of us deciding that we are choosing democracy, not a person, not between Biden and Trump, but between our freedom and our annihilation as a country of laws that conversation with our friend Glenn Kirshner is coming up next, Folks.
I am so excited to welcome back to WOKF Daily our friend, the host of Justice Matters MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirshner, to kind of round out twenty twenty three for us and shape the crystal ball and look into twenty twenty fourd's legal news. Glenn, I don't know that when you went to law school, when you were even a federal prosecutor, if you would imagine that your degree would be as worked at as it has been in
twenty twenty three. I mean, the legal news. Your neck looks good, but I'm assuming that your head has been on a swivel for twelve plus months. Just give us like an overview and your impression of the legal drama that is played out in so many ways around Donald Trump in this country and what has like stood out for you.
Yeah, Danielle, after retiring, I did thirty years as a federal prosecutor. I never thought my retirement would involve discussing what we're going to do about a presidential candidate who is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, declaring that he will be a dictator on day one. That was not on my bingo card. So where we are at the moment, let me not bury the lead. I think twenty twenty four is do or die for democracy, plain
and simple. In other times that would sound like hyperbolic nonsense. I think it's due or die time for democracy. So on the legal front, you know, we can look back at twenty twenty three as the year of becoming accountability, because accountability is not here. But you know, it ain't nothing that We've got this big orange mob boss, right, the biggest orange criminal blowfish in the ocean, indicted in four felony cases too federal and to state. That's a
really good start. That is at least getting after Donald Trump for some of the crimes he committed against we the people, the people of New York, the people of Georgia. But you know, the ending is as of yet unwritten. We don't know where things are gonna go. We don't know if he's actually gonna be held accountable. I mean, there is potentially a Supreme Court hurdle that we the people will have to overcome if we're gonna hold Donald
Trump accountable for his crimes. There are jury trials. Jurors will have to sit in that wooden box as the conscience of the community, and here the mountainous evidence of Donald Trump's guilt, and they will have to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed those crimes and find him guilty. So, you know, we are far from home. But I do think twenty twenty three was the year of becoming accountability and twenty twenty four is do or die time. So you know where we are at the moment.
We are kind of in this holding pattern because we know that. You know, let's focus on the case with the most imminent trial date, the DC four count indictment for Donald Trump trying to overturn the results of the presidential election being presided over by Judge Tanya Chutkin, and there's a March fourth trial date. Now, that trial date may or may not hold because there are there's what I call a legal belt d suspenders approach going on to the issue of whether Donald Trump can ever be
prosecuted for his crimes. The reason I say it's belt and suspenders the issue of whether a president is absolutely immune against prosecution for all the crimes he commits while in office. That issue is sitting right now in the DC Federal Circuit Court of Appeals because Donald Trump appealed Judge Chutkin's ruling that Trump ain't king and he can be prosecuted, and it is also sitting at the Supreme Court sort of. And here's why I say sort of.
Jack Smith did two things. Once Judge Chuckkins ruled that Trump can be prosecuted and Trump appealed, he filed emotion for an expedited appeal with the DC Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, and they instantly granted it. And that thing is on a very fast track. All briefs on that issue are due January second, and I can only imagine we're going to have an oral argument on January third, or very soon after all of the briefs are in. It may take a few days or a week or two,
but it will be quick. Simultaneously, Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to take up the issue immediately to leap
frog over the appellate court. These two things aren't inconsistent because Jack Smith doesn't know which court might exercise jurisdiction, so he's going with the Belton suspenders just to get this issue resolved quickly, So you know, we have to sit here and wonder and gameplay about whether the Supreme Court will grab hold of this case or whether they will wait for it to run its usual course, albeit on an expedited tract, through the Appellate Court in DC, and then grab hold of the case.
This was great explanation. And I have some follow up, which is this this Supreme Court, I mean, my god, I can't say enough terrible things about the grifting of Clarence Thomas, the just I mean abhorrent behavior in the overturning of precedent. This Supreme Court will probably go down if we still have history books, as one of the worst. Three of them were appointed by Donald Trump. Gorsic Kavanaugh can So I'm looking at this and I'm saying to
my Barrett, excuse me. And I'm looking at this and I'm saying, do we already know, Glenn, how this is going to play out? What are your beliefs and your hopes that we have justices who are appointed by Trump who are going to actually rule as if they were regular justices that were listening to cases.
You know, I have very little confidence in the Supreme Court. As you say, not only have they been grifting, but they have enjoyed their status of being above the law. They have enjoyed operating under no mandatory rules of ethics. When Congress begged and pleaded and the American people begged and pleaded with them to please promulgate a code of ethics that applies to Supreme Court justices, what they gave us was a pamphlet of suggestions. It says the Supreme
Court justices shouldn't act unethically, but they can. They can because the Code of conducts doesn't say they shall not act unethically, just says they shouldn't. These are suggestions, right, and there's no enforcement mechanism, and there's no punishment if they act unethically. One thing I'm confident in is that the Supreme Court loves being above the law, which is ironic because they're actually the last stop for a government institution to interpret the law and the constitution. But they
consistently put themselves above the law. Here is why I am completely confident they will rule that a president can be prosecuted. A president is not a king. They can rule that way for one of two reasons, the right reason, for the wrong reason. The right reason that there is absolutely not one shred of support. There are three sources of law, statutes, case law that's precedent from an appellate court,
and the Constitution. There is not one shred of support in any of those three sources of law that a president can't be prosecuted for his crimes. So they can get it right for the right reason. I will drop as a footnote that Kavanaugh wrote a paper twenty five years ago saying a president can be prosecuted once he leaves office. Not that consistency is a thing for these justices.
We saw it in the Roe v. Wade arena when they promised us in their confirmation hearings that Roe had nothing to worry about from them, and then they overturned it. So consistency is not really their strong suit. But they can do it for the right reason, or they can do it for the wrong reason. The wrong reason is if they rule that a president is king above the law, can commit all the crimes he wants in office and can never be touched for them, then that will be
putting the Supreme Court out of business. Because Donald Trump, aspiring dictator that he is, will come in he can literally order the Supreme Court justices summarily confined without charges. That would be a crime, but he can't be prosecuted for it. And if you tell Donald Trump he can do whatever he wants without the risk of prosecution, we
know what Donald Trump will do. So because they love their supreme status, because they don't want to put a dictator in the oval office and announce he's above the law and can cut the legs out from under the Supreme Court, they will do for the wrong reason self preservation. Right. They may say, oh, oh, he's not king. He can't invite us all out onto Fifth Avenue and shoot us.
He can't do it. Right, So, one way or another, for the right reason or the wrong reason, they're going to rule, in my opinion, that a president can be prosecuted for his crimes.
Okay, so let's say right or wrong reason. They rule the way that they should, which is to say that no president is above the law, even though they themselves are the unelected black cloaks. What happens then with this Jack Smith case. We're looking at the documents case, we're looking at the insurrection case. Let's look at his two cases before we go down south.
So what happens is the Supreme Court can decide this issue quickly or slowly. If they decided quickly, we should be in jury selection beginning on March fourth in Washington, DC for Dom Trump's election busting crimes democracy busting crimes. That is entirely up to the whim of the Supreme Court justices whether they want to act quickly or slowly.
I still don't think. You know, listen, if they wanted to install Donald Trump back into the White House, give him the reins of power again, they could have done it in the election challenge cases, you know, a couple of years ago, and they didn't because they don't want a dictator in the Oval office because that puts them out of business. So, but we don't know how quickly they will resolve it. I think they'll do it quickly because I actually think they want to be rid of
Donald Trump. I really do. They want to get back to a good, old, reliable Republican president that they're hoping for so they can keep the grift and the money flowing into their coffers without having a code of ethics that they're bound by. What does it do to the judge canon case? That's an interesting question. Let's assume Supreme Court acts quickly. They ruled it a president isn't king.
Before I finish the thought, you know, if they rule that a president is king, Joe Biden doesn't have to leave the presidency.
So this is what I You know, I was gonna wait right, and I was just like. And also the bullshit impeachment inquiry that they opened in the House, which we still don't know what the basis for that is, because they haven't told anybody that Republicans have done in the House is null and void because then a president is above the law, which is what it is that you've wanted all along. So it actually does not work
in their favor. But I don't know if they think five steps ahead when it comes to Donald Trump.
No, if Trump gets to commit crimes with impunity while in office, so does Joe Biden and every other president. Now, I think we all have a sense that Joe Biden wouldn't but he would be given permission by the Supreme Court to do it. So correct, there's a philosophical question there that I even I hesitate to articulate. I mean, if you know you're going to have a benevolent dictator or an evil dictator, and you have to pick a dictator because they're all above the law in the Supreme
Court's opinion, who do you pick? Okay, philosophical discussion for another day. So, but here's what is interesting about the documents, and I don't I never just call it a documents case. In Florida, the Judge Cannon is presiding over because it's a document substruction of justice, espionage case. Those are the charges against him. Because that has a May twentieth trial date.
If the DC trial starts on March fourth, it's going to go for probably six weeks, maybe a little longer, and it will bump right up very close to the May twenty trial date in Florida. Under those circumstances, I have every reason to believe the May twenty trial date will be vacated and will be pushed down the road. In fact, Danielle, on March first, three days before the trial in DC is scheduled to kick off, Judge Cannon has invited everybody down, prosecutors and the defense attorneys, for
what's called the scheduling conference. What that means is if on March fourth, when they're all down in that courtroom in Florida. They know that three days later the trial in DC will begin. At that point, I can all but promise Judge Cannon will vacate, that is, cancel the May twenty trial date in Florida, and they'll be picking
a new date well down the road. Because it actually is unfair in my experience, to make a defense team spend two months in trial in the highest profile case in our nation's history, only to immediately go into another lengthy trial that is also one of the highest profile prosecutions in our nation's history. People do need to breather, they need time to prepare. I get all that, so I don't think you're going to see these trials go back to back.
And I'm also like, I don't care, don't work for a criminal. Let's put a pin in Jacksmith. Now that we have some kind of murky understanding of where things could go, it looks like arch depending all on the Supremes and what it is that they decide to do with the question of can a president be above the law? And I think to all of the points that you made, I think that the decision is going to come to
self preservation. I do not think that they are going to rule because you know, they care one way or the other about the country or dictatorship. They care about it so much as they care about their own skin. So that's in one space. I want to move now to the ruling that we all saw out of Georgia with regard to Juliani. And so Rudy Giuliani was found absolutely and we knew this libel for the character destruction
that he did on Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman. This decision that came out of the Georgia courts was about how much money he would need to pay to make amends, and it has come out Glenn too close to one hundred and fifty million dollars. Now we know there's going to be appeal, appeal, appeal, appeal. How does this decision
land with you? And how do you think that it plays into the other case that Rudy Giuliani is a part of, which is the larger Rico case that that we have Fannie Willis has in Georgia playing out.
You know, it lands pretty well with me in theory. I think one hundred and fifty million dollars in both compensatory damages for the harm he did to Shay Moths and Ruby Freeman, and seventy five million of that is impunitive damages to punish him, to send the message anybody else looking to lie about, defame and call all sorts of racist names and endanger the lives of our election workers, you can expect the same fate. Rudy Giuliani will die penniless.
Now he may die penniless trying to hide whatever assets he can try to hide. But there are lots of vehicles in the law. Listen, what we always say is half the battle is winning a money award like this a civil judgment. The other half is collecting it, Okay, but there are also you can attach property, you can put leans on homes, you can garnish wages, you can do all sorts of stuff to get after Rudy Giuliani's money.
But I think the signal it sends. And I was sitting in the courtroom in DC watching some of the closing arguments, watching Rudy Giuliani sit there, not fifteen feet away from the women he lied about defamed. Who's lie he put in danger people saying sending messages. This is right after he launched his lies about them. Saying we want to see you hanging from a tree in your front yard, and we want to be so close, we
want to hear your next snap. And the horrific circumstances that Shay's fourteen year old son had to go through. I mean, you know, there are no words for how disgusting this is. Ye, So I think it sends a message you're looking to mess with our election workers, the good people who are working the polls, trying to promote free and fair elections. Yeah, you got real trouble coming your way. And I look at this in conjunction with the fact that three states have now criminally charged fake electors.
Yeah right, so and Wisconsin brought a suit and successfully sued the fake electors. So accountability is spreading, and the message should be spreading that you want to play this way. Oh, you're going to pay. You're going to pay, even if it takes a long time, You're gonna pay. Hopefully that deter that message of deterrence, both civilly and criminally is spreading.
So you know, as we close out and you we are now looking at twenty twenty four, we have four cases ninety one charges an election coming up. Caucuses all of these things are happening at the same time. Glenn, I'm asking you to take it out and dust it off your crystal ball. Do these trials impact the election? Will any one of them be decided by October, you know, November twenty twenty four.
I think the answer is yes. They at least one of the criminal cases will come to fruition with a verdict and a sentencing before November twenty twenty four. I think the most likely candidate is the DC trials, scheduled to begin on March four. Really, we are at the whim of the timing of the Supreme Court resolving this absolute immunity claim. But even if they take a month or two to decide it and that pushes the trial day till let's say June, it can still be tried
and resolved well in advance of the November election. So I'm guardedly optimistic that we will get a jury verdict, a guilty verdict, a sentence to incarceration. I also happen to believe Judge chuck In will order him remanded to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. I don't think she will leave him on release pending appeal, because that is not
the norm. When somebody is convicted of crimes, and these are democracy busting crimes, they are to report to prison, begins serving their term, and then they can take as long as they want to appeal conviction. So I think one of the cases will at least come to fruition. Will it impact the elections, that's anybody's guests, because sadly, you can be a convicted felon and run for president.
You can be an imprisoned felon and run for and be elected to the presidency, which is probably something we ought to try to take up and the future, but that is the reality. So will it hurt Trump's numbers enough to finally get him out of the game of trying to kill our democracy? That I don't know. I forever am believing that at some point the Republican Party will stop slicing themselves up with a thousand cuts by continuing to support him, because they're going to do the
party in if they continue down that road. It feels like the Republican Party is circling the drain as we speak now. At some point, don't you have to turn away from a convicted, imprisoned felon who's serving life. I would think so if you care about preserving and rebuilding your political party. But what do I know?
I know, and that is just the sickest thing that I think I have heard that you know, I don't see them turning away. I see them turning Donald Trump into a political prisoner and a martyr, and you know, and the fame and the legend of him growing even more so. It's you know, we will see and time
will tell. And I hope Glenn, that you will be checking in with us throughout the year because the news is going to keep coming and so are the hits, unfortunately, but we always appreciate you your time and your analysis.
It's great being with you. Danielle. In twenty twenty four is do or die for democracy, and I think we should all do.
Yeah, one hundred percent. That is it for me today. Dear friends, on woke a f as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.