The Hunt for Indictments

As we prepare, I don't know. I'm not holding my breath, folks, because I don't want to pass out for whether or not Donald Trump is going to be indicted. Is it going to come from Georgia or the Georgia white Republican politicians going to fire Fannie Willis from her job because you know, they don't want their good old buddy indicted. Is it going to come from New York because the Manhattan DA has called him in for an optional interview before they drop an indictment. Is it going to come

from the federal government? Probably not, because Merritt Garland is pretty much a jellyfish. So coming up next, my in

depth conversation with thirty year former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirshner. Folks, I am very excited for the first week launch relaunch of woke F to welcome back our friend, former federal prosecutor, MSNBC legal analysts and the host of Justice Matters, Glenn Kirshner, onto woke F to bring us the latest rundown on all of the legal news that is plaguing Donald Trump, that is currently plaguing Fox News, and where we stand in our hunt for indictments. Glenn, It's been a while,

so it's wonderful to have you back. Let's start with New York, where I am right now. Just recently, we have an announcement that comes down from the Manhattan District Attorney. Now you know all too well that I've gone hard on Alvin Bragg since he came into the position as District Attorney, because I thought that Sivance had things set up and ready to go. Alvin Bragg comes in, pumps the brakes too. High level prosecutors quit because they say

that they wanted to move forward with an indictment. Alvin Bragg said, Nope, we're not ready. Now we've seen over the last couple of months and about face of sorts. Talk to us about the latest news that everyone saw, which is that the Manhattan District Attorney now is inviting I use that in quotation marks Donald Trump in for

a quote unquote interview. What does this mean? Yeah, the backstory of how Alvin Bragg got to this place is really curious and contorted, and you know, we could engage in some informed speculation about what the heck has gone on thus far. But you know, yesterday the New York Times broke a story that gives us a concrete indication of where the grand jury investigation into Donald Trump's hush money payments of Stormy Stormy Daniels is right now, and

it looks like it is very close to being indicted. Danielle, We've both been fooled before, we've both been let down before. But let's talk about what this reporting means. So the New York Times said that Alvin Bragg's prosecutors reached out to Donald Trump's legal team and invited him to appear before the grand jury this week. What does that mean? Okay, First of all, Donald Trump is the target of this criminal investigation. He's the person that the prosecutors are intending

to indict. So That means they won't subpoena him, because you don't subpoena the target of an investigation because the subpoena is a court order. It is a compulsion order saying you must appear and you must testify. Well, the target of the investigation has a Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination, so he or she does not have to testify. They just plead the Fifth which is why prosecutors don't generally subpoena the target of an investigation. But here's what

we do. We will invite them to come down and appear before the grand jury, not require them, not compel them, but what we say to them, and we deliver a specific letter to them. I'll talk about that letter in a minute. We say, we are inviting you to appear before the grand jury and provide your side of the story, because maybe the prosecutors got it wrong, maybe you didn't commit any of these crimes. Maybe we're looking at all of this evidence incorrectly. So we're inviting you to come in,

set the record straight, tell your side of the story. Now, ninety eight times out of a hundred, defendants decline the invitation. They're not going to come and lay themselves bare under oath in the grand jury, when the only person in there is the prosecutor grilling them, asking them questions. Right, every once in a while a defendant will do it because he or she thinks they can talk their way out of it in the grand jury. Rarely does that

work to a defendants or a target's advantage. So this letter we deliver, I tell this story because I think it's cute. We call this invitation letter a Maywest letter. We've been calling it that for decades. Why do we call it a may West letter? Well, people of a certain age, me maybe not. You remember the movie star Maywest from the thirties and the forties was the queen of the one liners at one point in time in Hollywood. Great actress, funny, and she has a number of famous lines.

One of her most famous lines is she's standing in a bar with a gentleman who's in uniform. She says, yeah, I always did like a man in uniform. Why don't you come up and see me sometime. That's the famous line. Yeah, that's a that's the famous Maywest line. So what have prosecutors called this letter that we deliver inviting a defendant to see the grand jury a Maywest letter, Why don't you come up and see the grand jury sometime now.

Nobody's asking prosecutors to play comedy clubs anytime soon, but somebody thought that was cute back in the day, so they name it a Maywest letter. So we only deliver that kind of a letter at the absolute tail end of the grand jury investigation, because we wanted to develop all of the evidence through the testimony. We wanted to subpoena all the documents and business records to the grand jury. We wanted to have it all in hand when we

question the target. If the target chooses to testify, as I say, they generally don't, So this gives us the informed opinion that they are right at the end of the grand jury investigation, because inviting the target to testify as the last thing we do, and frankly, Danielle, we only do it if we know there's enough evidence to indict, and this is the last base we touch. So concretely, this is a pretty good indication that we could see an indictment of Donald Trump soon, at least on the

hush money payments. Okay, So that's that's what I was going to follow up with, which is this is with regard to what Michael Cohen essentially became famous for what he also went to jail for, right, which is using the use of campaign finance money in order to payoff Stormy Daniels a high class escort in order to keep her quiet. Correct. Correct. So we know that all of this became very much reality TV when Stormy Daniels hired her attorney, Michael Cohen then decides to flip on Donald Trump.

Tell us what would a trial look like? Because this is these are criminal charges. This is separate and apart from what Tish James has been doing as New York ag This is separate and apart. Her case is a civil one against the or against Trump Organization for reclamation of you know, upwards to a quarter of a billion dollars, right, So just remind us what the criminal possibility is here? What excuse me, what the criminal charge would be from

the Manhattan DA. It's a great question and one that's really hard to answer because we don't know what kind of evidence was developed as a result of the prosecution of the Trump Organization. The very successful prosecution convicted on all counts for running a fifteen year long criminal scheme to defraud in the first degree, basically a massive tax fraud scheme being run by the Trump organization. And we're still scratching our heads as to why Donald Trump wasn't

charged in that case. But what I'm confident of is that case probably produced a whole bunch of evidence that might be why we see Alvin Bragg having jump started this other criminal case against Donald Trump. That coupled with the fact that, remember, Congress finally got its hands on Donald trump tax returns, and some of the reporting is that these hush money payments we're taken as business expenses on his federal taxes and estate taxes. That adds additional

crimes to the hush money payments. So when you ask what are the charges, really hard to say. The one obvious charge that's been kicked around a lot in the media is falsifying business records because Michael Cohen ginned up for Donald Trump a bunch of false documents making this look like it was part of Michael Cohen's legal services, when in fact, it was a hush money payoff to hide deeply damaging information from the American voters. And here's

the thing. Falsifying business records in New York is a misdemeanor unless it is done in furtherance of, or to conceal other crimes. So I don't know what an indictment is going to include, but I have a feeling it's going to include several charges as a result of additional evidence that has come to light since Alvin Bragg first

looked like he was killing the Trump investigation. So really hard to predict exactly what the indictment will include, but I suspect it will include more than just one or two minor charges. I think he's probably going to build on those hush money payment charges. So there could be a possibility of multiple indictments coming down because each of whatever the suspected criminal acts are would require their own indictment.

This is not it wouldn't just be one blanket A great legal question, So there is a doctrine called joinder and severance. Joinder means prosecutors will try to bring all related charges in one indictment and try them all together, But there are lots of legal niceties that dictate when you can join charges together, and if the defense doesn't want them join together, they'll file emotion to sever joinder and severance. They'll try to break them all apart into

separate trials. So one of the things that we will learn when we hopefully see the first indictment drop soon is how many related charges has Alvin Bragg been able to join together in one indictment, and how many might have to come in a separate indictment because they're not sufficiently related to the hush money payments. These are all sort of fine tuned legal decisions and tactical decisions that I'm sure Bragg's prosecution team is making as we speak

switching gears. The big breaking news at least on Earth One, as I like to call it, with regard to the Dominion case and against Fox News, is all of the depositions that have now been made public where Fox King CEO Rupert Murdoch essentially through all of his famous faces and voices underneath the bus. We have now seen Glenn

a treasure trove of text messages exchanging this. This is folks a defamation lawsuit that Dominion has filed in around I think it's one point six billion dollars against Fox News for their false um coverage. With regard to the fact that Dominion had something to do with stealing the election from Donald Trump in the treasure trove of text messages.

In Rupert Murdoch's own testimony, I guess his own his own deposition under oath, he says, oh, no, we knew that the election wasn't stolen, and oh I should have done something sooner, maybe before January sixth, who knows, Um, Glenn, I want to get your thoughts on what the public outside of the Fox, you know, sphere, because they're not covering this at all, what the public has learned, And in your opinion, does Dominion have a really strong case here?

Dominion has an incredibly strong case. Defamation cases are often difficult to prove because you have to prove actual malice. You have to prove that either these anchors and executives were recklessly disregarding the truth of what they were putting on air, or even beyond that, that they were intentionally

sponsoring lies. And here's the thing, Danielle, as you say, these text messages and emails, and then there was a zoom meeting that was reported out by Peter Baker of the New York Times, who got an got his hands on a zoom recording of the Fox executives and Fox anchors in the days after the election talking about how they had messed up by correctly calling the election for Joe Biden, right, And what I said is, you know, that would be like a bunch of surgeons getting together

for an emergency meeting after an operation and saying, how did we mess up by saving the patient? I mean, that's kind of what Fox News was saying. We mess up by calling the election correctly, but it hurt our revenue stream, so we have to start lying about things. This defamation suit is so strong that I think the evidence has blown right past recklessness and dominion will be able to fairly easily prove actual intentional lying, because, as Rupert Murdoch said, it ain't about the blue, and it

ain't about the red, It's about the green. So I think the only thing left to decide is what our dominions damages in the words, how much money should Fox be made to pay. I cannot imagine Fox will go to trial. I have a feeling they will settle, And the question is do they get one point six billion, do they get more impunitive damages? Do they get less? Because they can't prove the valuation of the damage that

Fox did to Dominion voting systems. But I think liability is a lock and it's going to be all about the amount of the judgment that Fox has to pay to Dominion. So here I have a couple of questions, right because I'm not a lawyer, I just play one on the podcast because I started to really think about this, Glenn, and I said to myself, if Dominion is able to prove malicious intent, which is essentially what the Zoom called the text messages, they knew who Sidney Powell was when

they were putting her on the air. They themselves called her a crackpot, a Looney Tunes, and they put her on the air to spout her conspiracy theories. One my first question is what is the Department of Justice do

with this information? Knowing that had Fox News not been the megaphone of Donald Trump and the Big Lie, would the insurrection have gotten the legs that it had, Because what you would have had and I'm not taking Donald Trump's tweet and all of his lies on social media off the table, I'm adding on Fox megaphone of hour after hour for the election from then until January sixth, ginning up the very people who would arrive at the Capitol to then try and overthrow a free and fair election.

So what, if anything, that's my first question. Does the Department of Justice do if this case is cited in dominion's favor. Well, this is probably going to come as no shock to you, but my opinion is the oj will do exactly nothing. Now, I'm not saying that there is criminal liability that could be easily proved based on Fox's lies that obviously inspired violence. But I'm also not saying that we should just throw up our hands and say nothing we can do about it. Freedom of the press,

freedom of speech. We can't prove a connection, a direct connection between Fox's lies and the violence on January sixth. But here's here's what really ticks me off. I believe that there are things the executive branch could do. I

believe there are regulations the FCC could enact. I believe there are executive orders Joe Biden could sign in the name of protecting our democracy and protecting the American people that could begin to chip away at what we have abdicated for years, which is that you know what Fox and other phone news agencies can lie as much as they want, sponsor as much hate speech as they want, even when that hate speech is reasonably likely to incite

imminent violence. There's just nothing we can do about it. You know what. That is not a satisfactory answer, because that's the answer that's gotten us here. Let me just add this, Danielle. Do you think the Republicans and we have broad, sweeping First Amendment speech protection and First Amendment freedom of the press protection. I love it, I embrace it, I welcome it, but it can't be unlimited. Yeah. There's

a test called the Brandenburg test. It tests when speech enjoys First Amendment protection, even hate speech, or it loses First Amendment protection. And it says, basically, if speech is likely to end intended to inspire ima in lawless conduct, it doesn't enjoy First Amendment protection. And people will say, but you can't prove it was intended to Maybe you can prove it was likely too, because that's an objective standard.

And so what we do, Danielle, is year after year we see hate speech that's inciting violence and we say, oh, Brandenburg tests fifty years ago, too high a bar. We can never overcome it. So we do nothing. Do you think the Republicans sit around and say, we want to revoke women's constitutional privacy. But Row versus Wade, fifty year

old president, nothing we can do bullshit. Yet they do is they pass forward leaning legislation in the States, They signed bs executive orders, they promulgate regulations, and they try to take away our rights. Donald Trump had to go through four Muslim bands with executive orders before he could push it through the courts. Why why are we not doing the same thing. Why is Joe Biden not doing the same thing for good? Signing forward leaning executive orders?

Trying to protect the American people. Go into court and defend them, and if you lose, you go back. You'll learn the lesson of the loss based on what the court said. You rewrite it, you rechool it, and you do it again. Donald Trump did that for evil. We can do it for good. But we refuse to because we are the ones who throw up our hands and say, fifty year old precedent, nothing we can do. Well, you

know what precedent changes with the times. If it didn't, we would still be living with plus e versus Ferguson. Come on, folks, get off your asses and do it. Be forward leaning, be aggressive, go into the courts. Don't be afraid of the legal challenges, Embrace them. And that's what we need to do on the gun on the proliferation of guns front, That's what we need to do on the hate speech inspiring violence front. We need to be forward leaning. The way the Republicans are for evil,

we can be forward leaning for good. I'm not advocating violating, and I think that everything that you're saying is one hundred percent right, and all the things that we've been screaming from the rooftop since Donald Trump came down that escalator, since he started with this executive order, since he started with policies that were reprehensible and enough to have Amnesty International look at Americans say you know what, I think that you're doing something a little wrong here, right enough

for us to be referred to as a backsliding democracy. It's like you have to. If they are leaning in on hate and you are not doubling down on good, then I don't know what we're doing right. I honestly don't.

Because my feeling, Glenn, is that when I'm seeing this dominion case unfold, and I'm saying to myself if I'm the Department of Justice and I'm the Department the Department of Civil Rights, and I'm saying, you know what, if this is ruled in dominion's favor, then we have probable cause to begin an investigation into Fox News and how they helped insight oh A Riot, how they helped be the arm because as as all of these papers lay out, it shows that Fox Fox was not there as analysts,

they were not there as journalists reporting what was happening. They were an extension of the campaign. They were an extension of the administration. Tucker Carlson is still doing it, yes, with his piecemealing of the coverage the videotapes that Kevin McCarthy gave him. And I said, why did Kevin McCarthy Glenn still have forty thousand hours of that video footage in his possession? Why was that not in the possession

of the Department of Justice. Well, it was in the possession of the Capitol Police, and I guess Congress had possession of it courtesy of the J six investigation. So I think once Congress has it, they have it. And when the leadership changed hands, I used the term leadership loosely when it comes to Kevin McCarthy. Come on, you know he decided to use it for evil period. The

other thing that has been gnawing at me. And again I'm not an attorney, but if Fox is caught red handed lying about the election and has to pay out billions of dollars to Dominion in the end, it all, if it all goes the way that justice should tell me whether or not, you think that it is a possibility that Fox would then be held liable in some type of way for COVID deaths and spreading the lies about COVID being a hoax, about COVID being a democratic trick,

and that because of their consistent lies, a quarter of the population remained unvaccinated and they contributed it to the deaths of a million. Yeah, I think civil liability if they can mine Fox for discovery and get the kind of evidence of intentional lies about COVID the way they found about the election, I do think civil liability is something that people could pursue. The challenges the element of causation, Right, did Foxes lies cause or directly contribute to a particular

person's death. That's a tough element to prove. Now it's going to be easier, somewhat easier in the civil context because the standards is just a preponderance of the evidence fifty one percent more likely than not. I have actually argued that Donald Trump and company have criminal liability for COVID deaths because they had a duty to protect the public.

And the law of involuntary manslaw says, if you engage in a grossly negligent act or you have a duty to act and protect the public and you fail to do that, and that failure is grossly negligent. We know Donald Trump's failure was intentional because he lied to the

American people about it. And if you're grossly negligent conduct was reasonably likely to result in death or serious bodily injury to another, check And the third element is that you're grossly negligent conduct thereby caused the death of another. That's the sticking point, right causation. How can you Well, it's important to know that in the law, causation is defined as your conduct being a substantial factor in bringing

about death, not that you killed them. Not do you shot him or strangle them, or bludgeoned them or saved them. Your conduct of lying to the American people mocking reporters when they protected themselves by wearing masks. Your conduct was a substantial factor in bringing about death. Therefore, the causation

element is satisfied. I know we're doing crim law one on one now, but I actually have maintained all along that Trump and Mike Pence as the head of the Coronavirus Task Force, and Jared Kushner liar that he was let's let it run rampant through the United States because it's killing more Blue voters than red voters. I think they have criminal exposure for involuntary manslaughter. But that's just

from an old career homicide prosecutor. Okay, Oh, Glenn, how I wish that your title was attorney general, um, because I just I need somebody with a backbone. They'd all I can tell you, blues or draw, they would all be indicted. If you're interested. I have a documentary that just premiered on Peacock. Yes, please, who killed Robert Juan?

The reason I raised this is because three privileged, connected, influential men covered up the murder of this young Asian American lawyer named Robert Juan, found dead in their guest room, and they said, we don't know what happened. They covered it up for years. I investigated them. They thought they got away with it. I said, I don't care if

I can't prove who killed Robert Juan. I'm charging you all with a conspiracy to cover it up, obstruction of justice, and tampering with evidence, because that's what you do for victims. That's how you lean forward and you bring cases that you might not win. The reason I mentioned it and this is a case that is near and dear to my heart. It's a two part documentary that just premiered

on peacocks Streaming. There is a tip line because these three men who covered up the crime of murdering Robert Juan, they did it in two thousand and six. They've run their mouse and I hope somebody will drop a dime. Somebody will call in the tip line, talk to our homicide detective who's still at the police department in Washington, DC, and say I've got some information so you can help us answer the question who killed one Robert. Oh, Glenn,

thank you so much. Thank you for that which folks do check it out on Peacock the two part series and Glenn, thank you as always for making the time to join Woke app, particularly during our relaunch week with iHeart We Just We appreciate you, your voice, your analysis, and your fierce compassion for justice and fight for justice. Appreciate you and I appreciate all those qualities in you, Danielle, which is why I love you know, doing this every week for as long as we've been doing it. Thank you.

That is it for me today. Folks on Woke f as always Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.