Today, the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on whether the 14th Amendment disqualifies former President Donald Trump from running for president in 2020. Will he be allowed to run for president if he's not on the ballot? And will he be able to stand trial if he is?
00:00:00.600Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:00:12.340Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:15.540Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on whether the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
00:00:21.220disqualifies former President Donald Trump from running for the White House.
00:00:26.240This is Mr. Trump is likely to file an appeal with the high court over his immunity claims in the D.C. criminal election interference case.
00:00:34.820I'm already confused. Are you confused already? I am.
00:00:37.860So he's got the argument that he shouldn't be kicked off of these state ballots in Colorado and Maine
00:00:44.440and several other states that are trying to kick him off as an alleged insurrectionist.
00:00:48.660That's going up to SCOTUS and the arguments are tomorrow.
00:00:51.900But then he's got this other argument that he raised in the D.C. federal case brought about based on January 6th
00:01:00.700that you can't bring this charge against me at all because I was president when I did these acts
00:01:04.920and you can't come after a president under the criminal law for things he did while he was president.
00:01:10.540He just lost that one. He lost that with the trial court judge.
00:01:13.520It went up to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
00:01:15.440They just ruled a three-judge panel unanimously against him.
00:01:18.440And now he wants to take that one up maybe to the en banc the entire court of the D.C. Circuit,
00:01:25.540but probably not and we'll explain why.
00:01:27.560But definitely he's going to try to get the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on this.
00:01:31.800So that's one that's in SCOTUS, one that he's probably going to get to, you know, he's going to try to get to SCOTUS.
00:01:37.340And what are the different scenarios that are going to play out here and how does it affect the timeline of these four cases?
00:01:43.580Because honestly, that could affect the outcome of the election and it could truly affect whether Trump goes to jail or not.
00:01:52.420I mean, will the Democrats abandon the state prosecutions if he becomes president and they haven't actually been tried to conclusion?
00:01:59.460You can bet he's going to pull those feds off the federal prosecutions if he becomes president again.
00:02:03.280So much lies in the balance and we're going to get into the latest developments on all of this, including the Fannie Willis case, some developments down there.
00:02:11.260And we're going to talk about Jussie Smollett back in the news and this trial in which the mother of that mass shooting,
00:02:18.900that mass shooter out in Michigan was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
00:03:07.780I mean, sometimes in all my years covering the court for Fox News, the one client I remember who showed up and completely stopped the court in its tracks.
00:04:04.800I'll start with you on this, Dave, because I feel like you're the underdog on this one, that Trump's going to win this, that this court is not going to say he can be kicked off the ballot.
00:04:18.800I think the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, does not want to bump Trump off the ballot.
00:04:23.920By the way, Megan, there's always a Florida connection everywhere and every time Anna Nicole Smith actually passed away at the Hard Rock Hotel down here in South Florida.
00:04:45.360But, you know, there's a thing on the Internet where you're supposed to Google your birthday in Florida and just see what comes up because there's always something absolutely wacky.
00:05:01.260So as far as the Constitution and, you know, I think the Section 3 of Article of the Amendment, the 14th Amendment, is pretty clear that you can't qualify for office if you engage in insurrection.
00:05:15.100It doesn't say you have to be convicted of it.
00:05:17.840And you're also bumped if you provided comfort or aid there, too.
00:05:22.840And so I think there's grounds for the Supreme Court to uphold the Colorado decision and main decision.
00:05:28.580But I have said this on your show previously, and I agree with you and Mike, that I do not think the Supreme Court wants to set a precedent where 50 different secretaries of state come up with their own different conflicting rules and policies, especially when we've not seen this before.
00:05:45.040Like, there hasn't been an institutional mechanism to show people how to approach this issue.
00:05:51.380This is the first time, and I think the Supreme Court's going to step in, and they're going to point to Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, which gives Congress the power to enforce the 14th Amendment and say, Congress, do your job.
00:06:25.380And I assume you agree, but what do you think it'll be?
00:06:27.320Well, they don't need to get to whether Trump committed an insurrection, because all they have to do is look at the Griffins case from over 150 years ago from then Chief Justice Salmon Chase.
00:06:41.260It's the case on point after the 14th Amendment was ratified, and it says if you want to disqualify under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,
00:06:51.820Congress has to use its Section 5 power, as Dave just said, and pass a federal criminal statute on insurrection or rebellion, which Congress did nearly 150 years ago.
00:07:04.240I think it was last updated in 1948, and it has a disqualification provision in the federal criminal statute.
00:07:12.800So if you want to disqualify, you have to bring federal charges, have a federal grand jury indict, a federal jury find guilt with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, unanimous guilt.
00:07:40.100If it's just clear he's insurrection-y, this is self-executing, and you don't need to do anything more to boot him off of the ballot, right?
00:08:00.380And if you think about it, think of how bad that argument is.
00:08:03.540You have four Democrat partisan judges on a Colorado Supreme Court in a four-to-three ruling, or you have an unelected Maine Secretary of State, Shanna Bellows, just unilaterally decreeing-
00:08:19.060Yeah, who's not a lawyer, just unilaterally saying, hey, I feel like January 6th was an insurrection, even though House Democrats and the Biden Justice Department spent tens of millions of dollars hunting for evidence of insurrection.
00:08:33.760And Jack Smith didn't charge Trump with insurrection.
00:08:36.760But I think that Shanna Bellows, this unelected non-lawyer in Maine, is just going to say, you know, it felt kind of insurrection-y that day, so I'm going to throw him off the ballot.
00:08:44.680All right. Now, there's also the question about the 14th Amendment, this piece of it, can only be applied to someone who's an officer of the United States.
00:08:55.000It says if an officer engages in an insurrection, et cetera. I'm just paraphrasing.
00:09:00.160And a dispute has arisen on this word, too, with Trump team arguing he's not an officer as the president.
00:09:07.860The people who are under Trump, who he appoints in these executive agencies, those are officers of the United States, but he, the president, is not.
00:09:18.300And the other side and people who don't like Trump are arguing that there's a Scalia opinion from 2014, one of every conservative's favorite justices, that helps them against Trump, Dave.
00:09:37.880They're citing a case involving this 14th Amendment and saying that there was a Scalia opinion back in 2014 between the Teamsters and a soda distributor, National Labor Relations Board versus Noel Canning.
00:09:52.660And in it, the court unanimously affirmed a challenge to the recess appointments of three NLRB commissioners.
00:10:01.240And Scalia wrote in a concurrence in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Thomas and Justice Alito joined, saying,
00:10:07.380except where the Constitution or a valid federal law provides otherwise, all officers of the United States must be appointed by the president.
00:10:15.780He was asked then in a letter for a clarification by two legal scholars, and he did say,
00:10:36.640I meant exactly what I wrote, the manner by which the president and the vice president hold their office is provided otherwise by the Constitution.
00:10:45.240In other words, he would amend this sentence to read, except where we're talking about the president or the vice president,
00:10:53.960all officers of the United States must be appointed by the president.
00:10:56.840So that's basically what he was saying they were holding.
00:10:59.600That's a good argument that he believed in this ruling.
00:11:31.040Well, the Scalia opinion you referred to, Megan, was a concurring opinion, so it doesn't have necessarily the force of law, but it is something they could take into account.
00:11:40.600But it would make no sense if the framers of the 14th Amendment, who were so worried about former Confederate supporters being in government, would make an exception for the president.
00:11:53.200They were so worried about insurrectionists gaining control of government, but they would say it's okay if an insurrectionist became president.
00:12:01.660That's why I think this issue of whether Trump is an officer of the United States is a no-brainer.
00:12:06.420The only person who ruled opposite is the original trial court judge in Colorado.
00:12:12.180She used that as a way to get out of it.
00:12:14.060Like, she found that Trump engaged in insurrection, but Trump wasn't covered by the 14th Amendment.
00:12:18.020But every one of the Colorado Supreme Justices, Supreme Court Justices, all seven of them, in the 4-3 decision, ruled that Trump was covered under that provision.
00:12:27.460And one other thing, what my friend Mike said about the provision being self-executing or not, it is self-executing because the 14th Amendment has other parts in it, like equal protection, like due process.
00:12:38.940And if it's not self-executing, then Congress could repeal its civil rights laws, and then we go back to the old days where blacks have no equal rights, even though the 14th Amendment due process, equal protection exists.
00:12:55.520And so I would submit that the best argument for the Supreme Court to overturn the Colorado main decisions is just a punt, as we were saying, by saying that the Section 5 of the 14th Amendment says Congress shall enforce this.
00:13:22.300It's highly unlikely they're going to take that on.
00:13:24.360Then, in order to keep him bounced off the ballot and get this court to uphold the Colorado main decisions, you have to say, or vice versa.
00:13:33.180I can't remember whether Colorado, the appellate court, went Trump's way, right?
00:13:38.700The Colorado district court's opinion went Trump's way by that technicality, saying he wasn't an officer of the court.
00:13:53.180Is he an officer of the United States?
00:13:55.780And if that Scalia concurrence holds, it'd be bad for Trump.
00:13:59.760They'll probably say he is an officer as the president.
00:14:01.980So he does fall technically within this provision of the 14th Amendment.
00:14:05.720But then they have to get to, if he is an officer and allegedly committed an insurrection, is it self-executing?
00:14:14.460And if they can get to, irrespective of whether he engaged in an insurrection or not, and he's an officer for purposes of this discussion, this thing's not self-executing.
00:14:43.520That's the one that was in front of Judge Chutkin, the D.C. Federal District Court judge who we know doesn't like Trump and really doesn't like the January 6th defendants at all.
00:14:54.600And that's one of the two Jack Smith prosecutions.
00:14:58.980In that case, Trump said, you can't come after me because I was a sitting president.
00:15:02.960You can't come after a sitting president for civil litigation, and it makes no sense to change the rules when we were talking about criminal charges.
00:15:20.120The three-judge panel, two Biden judges, one H.W. Bush-appointed judge said, wrong, a president can be criminally held liable or guilty for criminal acts while he was president.
00:15:31.660So now tell me what you think of what the D.C. Circuit Court has done here, Mike, because they've said normally your move would be, especially if your goal was delay, to go to the en banc, seek an en banc hearing,
00:15:46.720get all the judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal to look at the case before you bother SCOTUS.
00:15:52.880But the D.C. Circuit, the three-judge panel said, you have until February 12th for this stay.
00:15:59.000Like, we're staying the lower court proceedings against you until you just tell us what you're going to do.
00:16:03.240Are you going to go up to SCOTUS or not?
00:16:04.320And they're kind of, like, doing an end around the en banc piece of this by saying, you've got until February 12th to tell us whether you're going to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:16:17.320Many people are saying that's political.
00:16:19.540He has the right to take his time to go this, do this step by step.
00:16:23.680And you're shortening it because you, like his partisan prosecutors, want to get this thing tried as soon as possible.
00:16:32.060Yes, and it's pretty shameful what the D.C. Circuit did here.
00:16:38.020Generally, parties have 30 days after they get a three-judge panel ruling with a federal appellate court to file.
00:16:47.840Sometimes it's 30, sometimes it's 45 days.
00:16:50.280But they generally get a set amount of time to file what's called a petition for rehearing with the panel or a petition for rehearing en banc, meaning the full circuit court, the full federal appellate court, all the active judges would hear the case.
00:17:07.940And when you have immunity cases against government officials, the proceedings are stayed until the immunity issue is resolved.
00:17:17.640And so it is, there's no other explanation for why this three-judge panel short-circuited President Trump's procedural rights under the rules and procedures, the normal rules and procedures that every party has before the D.C. Circuit, other than they're trying to get this case rushed and tried before the presidential election.
00:17:43.280Right? Jack Smith and the Biden Justice Department waited 30 months to bring these charges.
00:17:50.020What is the rush? Why are they trying to rush this trial?
00:17:53.480Why are they trying to bump other January 6th defendants and other defendants who are in the queue before Trump, other than the fact that they're trying to change the outcome of the election?
00:18:04.580They know Trump is on a glide path to victory on November 5th, 2024, and the only thing that changes that is a criminal conviction in D.C. under this January 6th case, according to the polling.
00:18:17.380Right, because the voters are saying they're pro-Trump, but they might not be if he gets convicted prior to November.
00:18:22.820So, Dave, what is with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals saying you don't have 45 days to file your petition for an en banc full appeals court review, and you don't have 90 days after that to go to the high court?
00:18:45.820They say you have until Monday to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:18:49.960Well, Jack Smith asked for the expedited review, and I think this decision is part of it.
00:18:56.500The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the expedited review, and then on my side of the aisle, people were so frustrated with this court because it looked like they were dragging their feet, and then they came out with this very thorough, powerful ruling, and now they're putting it on the fast track.
00:19:12.540So I understand where Mike is coming from if you look at it and say, hey, why speed it up now?
00:19:17.560But those judges know reality like the rest of us.
00:19:21.220They know that Trump's legal strategy is to delay this past the election where you would not have a trial, and then Trump gets elected very possibly and then dismisses the attorney general and Jack Smith, and that's the end of that.
00:19:33.880So for the interest of justice and the rule of law, they're saying, let's get this decided as soon as possible.
00:19:39.260But, you know, despite all that, the Supreme Court can still drag its feet and delay it and prevent this from being heard before the election.
00:19:47.920Well, we'll get to that in one second, what the Supreme Court's going to do.
00:19:50.500But I kind of feel like we have an admission there that it was a political decision to get this thing fast-tracked up to SCOTUS by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
00:20:00.540And I realize that we have at least one Republican-appointed judge on that three-judge panel, H.W. Bush.
00:20:18.340He wants 45 days to go to the full D.C. Circuit and then his 90 days to file before SCOTUS and then to drag that out and wait for an opinion that won't come until June, probably.
00:20:31.240By that point, it's going to be really hard to put the pedal down so fast in that January 6th federal trial that it gets resolved before August.
00:20:41.260And you raised something, Dave, that I wanted to raise.
00:20:43.360And the outcry, the outcry from many, you know, respected legal scholars, some less respected, on the left, that the D.C. Circuit, this three-judge panel, was taking forever, in their view, to issue a ruling on whether he had immunity or he didn't have immunity.
00:21:00.220We just pulled a little sampling of some of the hysterics that I was listening to.
00:21:03.740Like, my God, this is—people need to calm down.
00:21:10.960I am officially now at the freak-out stage.
00:21:14.160I can't imagine a more compelling need for speed than the idea that American citizens deserve to know, before the election, whether a candidate for office is a felon and an insurrectionist.
00:21:42.040And I think it's fair to say, Mike, that the justices or the judges who just ruled that everything has to be filed by Monday and you have to skip the en banc, may have been feeling some of that pressure.
00:21:51.860I mean, what a dumb and dangerous partisan argument to make that you have to have a criminal trial before an election because you—apparently these are political forums for the voters to decide the election in these federal courts.
00:22:09.120That is—that is the stupidest argument I've heard.
00:22:12.180And you're rushing—you're making Trump rush to file a petition with the Supreme Court on Monday when they know that he has this Thursday oral argument with the Supreme Court.
00:22:37.620And why are they treating him like he's below the law?
00:22:40.760This is an important constitutional issue.
00:22:43.700This is a critically important constitutional issue.
00:22:46.100When the Supreme Court decided the issue of civil immunity for presidents of the United States, it took almost two years for that to happen.
00:22:55.840So why do they think that they need to rush and decide this issue in, like, 30 days before the Supreme Court,
00:23:02.200other than the fact that these Democrats want Jack Smith to try President Trump in D.C. in front of this D.C. Obama judge, Tanya Shutkin,
00:23:11.920and this 95 percent Trump-deranged D.C. jury pool and convict him before the election because they know that's the one way that President Trump could lose?
00:23:21.880If the high court were to rule that Trump does have immunity, if they take the appeal, which is a big question, I know you've got your doubts, Dave.
00:23:32.460But if they take the appeal and they rule he is immune, we disagree with the three-judge panel, do all the cases go away?
00:23:39.680It depends on the scope of the opinion.
00:23:43.820If they say that he's immune for everything he did while he's president, then a lot of those charges would go away,
00:23:50.200but not the Mar-a-Lago documents case because that happened after he left the White House.
00:23:54.760And you could say the New York case wouldn't go away because that happened before he entered the White House,
00:24:00.960But the Jack Smith case would be gutted and the Fannie Willis case would not entirely go away because some of the actions took place after he was out, but most of it would.
00:24:12.560So, yeah, it would gut at least two of the cases against him.
00:24:26.420And what are the odds they'll take it?
00:24:29.000Mike, I'll ask you that one first, because I kind of teased what Dave's position is.
00:24:33.860But what do you think SCOTUS is going to take it?
00:24:36.700Well, what I think Trump should do is file a motion to stay the proceedings with the Supreme Court.
00:24:41.940And I think the Supreme Court is going to grant that because I think the Supreme Court is going to resent the political games that this panel,
00:24:50.140this D.C. Circuit panel is playing where they're trying to put a burning bag of political manure on the Supreme Court's step.
00:24:59.920So I think the Supreme Court will issue a stay of all these proceedings pending President Trump's trial court.
00:25:06.880When you say all these proceedings, you're saying stay the trial court federal case against Trump until it can weigh in the Supreme Court.
00:25:13.300And I actually think the Supreme Court is going to say we're going to stay these proceedings so Trump can file his petition for rehearing en banc with the D.C. Circuit.
00:25:23.200And then if they deny that, then Trump can file his petition for cert with the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:25:30.480The bottom line is, is even if the Supreme Court grants Trump's petition for cert immediately,
00:25:37.600they're not going to hear this case before the election anyway, because they have cases before Trump's case that are already piled up on the docket.
00:25:45.480You're not going to get a resolution by the Supreme Court of this case before the presidential election.
00:26:41.100The disqualification case, they have to rush because they have to decide whether Trump's going to be on the ballots or not.
00:26:47.780But the immunity case, there's no reason to rush it.
00:26:50.160And why would the Supreme Court want to rush this case and get itself in the middle of a very hot political issue before the presidential election?
00:27:02.680That is the most robust argument that, you know, Trump could have.
00:27:06.720And that would be the best case scenario for him.
00:27:09.340That would be a great scenario for him.
00:27:11.060As they take it, they brush back the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals three judge panels saying, you don't tell the litigants what the schedule is.
00:28:11.140I've got to believe, though, that this Supreme Court with Chief Justice Roberts, you know the number one thing in his mind is the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
00:28:18.940He wants us badly to believe in the Supreme Court as an institution.
00:28:23.000And nothing would discredit the Supreme Court more than, I think, than dragging this out past the election, make a decision.
00:28:28.920I think the decision will be that they are going to reject cert, meaning they're not going to review it.
00:28:34.280They're going to send this back to the trial court and say it's done, and then it's game on.
00:28:39.960Now, you need five justices to implement a stay.
00:28:42.460I do think that they'll get a stay at least until they decide on the issue of certiorari, cert.
00:28:47.540Of whether they're taking it on the merits.
00:28:49.760So just to clarify that, and I'll give you back the floor, what he needs to file by Monday is a request to continue staying the case while he pursues his appellate rights.
00:29:00.240It's not a judgment that the court's going to take the case or a judgment on the case.
00:29:05.620It's will you please keep it stayed for now while I can fulfill my appellate obligations?
00:29:11.980Well, Trump has two choices, and he's in a bit of a trick bag here.
00:29:16.160Either he asks for the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to meet en banc, where he doesn't get an automatic stay there, and then chucking can keep moving.
00:29:25.380Or he goes straight to the Supreme Court, which is what he's going to do, because there he can ask for the stay while they determine whether they take the case.
00:29:33.880And I don't know how long they're going to take, but I do think that they don't want to get involved in this one too heavily when they are going to get involved heavily in the issue we just discussed on Colorado, Maine, and whether he qualifies for the ballot.
00:29:46.600So I'm on the opposite side of this as Mike.
00:29:48.560I think they're going to act quickly, and then they'll be up to Judge Chubkin to move ahead with the calendar.
00:29:54.020And I think this case does get heard before the election.
00:29:56.200The last time I was on with you, Megan, I predicted by the end of May.
00:29:59.500I think that may have been a little too ambitious.
00:30:01.680I'm now thinking perhaps by the end of June or July, but I do think it's going.
00:30:07.320Even if he gets Supreme Court review, if they take the case, you think he'll have to face a June trial?
00:30:15.200I do, but I don't think they're going to take the case.
00:30:17.760But if they do take the case, I do think they'll have an expedited review.
00:30:21.020They did that with Bush v. Gore, and I realize it's a different situation.
00:30:24.120But there is precedent when you're dealing with the president and you're dealing with matters of great public importance, like an election coming up, that they want to get this resolved before then.
00:30:34.660You know, Mike, I was looking at this.
00:30:36.060They estimate that this trial, the one we're talking about in D.C., is going to take two months.
00:30:42.160I mean, if you're Trump and this thing starts, let's say, June or July or August, right around there, depending on what SCOTUS does and all this stuff we're talking about.
00:30:52.080You know how it is as a lawyer when you're on trial.
00:31:01.960You could do so many things to cause chaos at the trial, and you might feel emboldened to do that because you think the entire thing is illegitimate election interference.
00:31:14.260It's really just a time game at that point to see if you can cause enough chaos to get this thing extended beyond November 8th or whatever election day is this year.
00:31:25.340It's going to take two months to seat the jury in D.C.
00:31:30.280I mean, we have a 95 percent anti-Trump jury pool, and you have a lot of people on that jury who could have been affected by January 6th.
00:31:38.840They worked in the Capitol or they worked with the D.C. police or their spouse did or their kid did.
00:31:44.260I mean, this is not going to get resolved in two months.
00:31:47.640Frankly, it's not going to go to trial before the election because the Supreme Court is going to stay these proceedings because they see the D.C.
00:31:56.900circuit's political games that are being played.
00:31:59.580The Supreme Court is going to accept cert on this case because you're dealing with novel, weighty constitutional issues,
00:32:06.940whether the president of the United States, any president of the United States can be thrown in prison by his successor based upon his official acts.
00:32:19.360When the Trump 47 Justice Department is back in the game, does that mean that Trump can throw Obama in prison for capital murder for drone striking American citizens?
00:32:31.640Does that mean that U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron, who helped Obama with the Office of Legal Counsel, Barron advised Obama he can drone strike American citizens, including a 17-year-old.
00:32:44.860Does that mean this now federal circuit judge can stand trial with Obama for capital murder?
00:32:51.020Do we really want to go down this path?
00:33:25.020If anything, there would be an ethical obligation to slow it down because that's just going to feel like such interference.
00:33:29.680So what do you make of the obvious delay tactics that we will undoubtedly see if this thing does get started in the summer?
00:33:36.600Yeah, that's a $64,000 question to date me there.
00:33:40.580I think that it's difficult to know exactly how long it would take.
00:33:44.560But if it does go by May or June, then I'm confident it can be done before the election.
00:33:49.480Once you get to July and August, if Mike is right and it takes two months to pick a jury, then this thing may have to be put on hold.
00:33:56.560But I don't think it will take that long.
00:33:58.260I've dealt with a lot of high-profile cases in my jurisdiction, and I've never had an issue because it's not whether people have heard about the case.
00:34:05.780It's whether they can put their biases aside.
00:34:08.040And although Mike is right that Trump only got 5% of the vote in Washington, D.C., it doesn't mean you can't find people who can put their biases aside and just pay attention to the law and the evidence and just do justice.
00:34:20.160So I think because you have a judge like Judge Chutkin, who is so motivated to hear this, she said that she was going to cancel her international trip in August if it took that long, that I think this case will go and it'll be done enough time before the election that it won't constitute what Mike calls election interference.
00:34:37.960Mike, she's such a dedicated, selfless public servant.
00:34:44.080I mean, there have been a thousand carjackings in D.C.
00:34:47.220I wish Tanya Chutkin would find time on her docket and maybe take time from her vacation schedule to put violent carjackers who are murdering D.C. residents in prison.
00:34:58.020I mean, she's so excited to try Trump before the election.
00:35:00.940That proves that she's a partisan operative who's trying to interfere in the election.
00:35:06.020Yeah, it's got a little stink to it, I admit.
00:35:08.920Okay, so that leaves us with Georgia—yeah, go ahead.
00:35:11.920Just one quick thing, if you call Judge Chutkin, a political operative for rushing this, then what do you say about Judge Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, who is slow-walking that case where it can't be heard before the election at all?
00:35:53.580The New York State case will be the first one to go.
00:35:56.280It probably will be tried to completion, the Alvin Bragg hush money payment case against Trump.
00:36:01.380But he's not facing any jail time in that one, and everyone, even Democrats, agree that's the weakest.
00:36:07.440I'm not inclined to spend too much time on it with you guys today.
00:36:10.100But if we go further south down to Georgia, that's not a good case for Trump.
00:36:15.360But there have been some favorable developments with the implosion of Fannie Willis, her reputation, and her potential ability to stay on this case.
00:36:23.680She's now admitted that she has a personal relationship with the special prosecutor she brought in.
00:36:31.080That's what's been alleged, and she is no longer denying it.
00:36:35.220But she says it did not start until after she brought him on board as special prosecutor.
00:36:41.560However, the lawyer for the defendant, Mike Roman, he's one of Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia case.
00:36:48.060The lawyer who represents that guy, Ashley Merchant, says that's a lie.
00:36:52.280It did start before he was appointed to this case and is suggesting thereby that that's one of the reasons he was appointed to this case and potentially paid more than the others, something Fannie Willis denies.
00:37:06.160She also, this lawyer, has subpoenaed documents from Atlanta-area travel agencies and financial records tied to Nathan Wade, the alleged paramour, and his law firm.
00:40:06.940One of the days he billed 24 hours in a day.
00:40:09.120That's the thing that gave me the most heartburn because I don't know how you can do that.
00:40:13.120But it would be a conflict, a clear conflict, and really undermine the case if this relationship is with a judge or the public defender or any defense lawyer.
00:40:23.180But when you're having a relationship with someone in your own office, and if Bonnie Willis' affidavit is true that the relationship didn't take place until after he was already hired, then there's no there there except it looks bad.
00:40:37.960And I think Nathan Wade should not be on this case anymore.
00:40:40.980I think she should find someone else to help lead this case for the perceptions.
00:40:44.200And this is an unforced error because if you're going to go after Donald Trump, you need to be just totally clean and not have any issues that the other side can exploit.
00:41:34.160OK, I want to get to these other two quickly while I have you guys.
00:41:37.200This woman, Jennifer Crumbly, the mother of a shooter, one of these school shooters whose name we don't say on our show, convicted for counts of involuntary manslaughter because the jury found she played too much of an active role in ignoring his mental health problems, in buying him a gun four days before he went on the rampage.
00:41:59.460And that morning was called to the school, shown all sorts of disturbing drawings and did not pull her kid from the school.
00:42:20.640Kudos to the prosecutor, my counterpart up there in Oxford, Michigan.
00:42:24.040This was an unprecedented case by a gutsy prosecutor who reflected the mood of the country that we've had enough of these school shooters and someone needs to be held accountable.
00:42:33.980And it's unsatisfying just to throw the then 15 year old in jail for life when the parents here acted so egregiously.
00:42:41.040I mean, I've talked about this on my YouTube channel, Megan, because this thing was so beyond the pale that it's not just that they ignored these clear signs of mental illness.
00:42:51.900But instead of getting him a therapist, they bought him a gun and then they didn't secure the gun.
00:42:57.180And then when the kid was found looking for ammunition in school on his cell phone, the mother ignored the calls from the school and then LOL her son texted him, LOL, I'm not mad at you.
00:43:09.520And then the worst thing is when the kid drew a very disturbing drawing of shooting up a school, you know, with a gun and saying the thoughts won't stop.
00:44:28.820Yeah, you have to wonder how these people who are cheering on this criminal case here, how would they respond if we use this same criminal theory for parents in D.C.
00:44:41.380whose minor children are carjacking and robbing and causing mayhem in Washington, D.C.?
00:44:57.980I've been raising this because I actually wrote my law review article on the dangerous instrumentality exception to the negligent supervision doctrine.
00:45:47.460He served six before he was released on appeal.
00:45:50.920The appellate court of Cook County denied his appeal, saying, nope, go back to jail two to one.
00:45:57.100And now he's still out pending this other appeal.
00:46:00.660He's appealed to the U.S. or to the Illinois Supreme Court, repeating his earlier arguments, saying double jeopardy should stop this because the Cook County prosecutors, you know, who are these sort of left wing, soft on crime prosecutors?
00:46:13.680Kim Foxx, right, wasn't it, dropped this thing and a special prosecutor was brought in and he thinks that's double jeopardy.
00:46:20.740I cannot do this segment without bringing you back to the brilliantly done piece at Fox News, which involved the Osandario brothers, the two black men he hired to beat him up, who reenacted the thing for Fox here.
00:46:34.820So we waited here for about, what, four minutes?
00:46:39.440It was about four minutes, but it felt like forever.
01:01:48.820It's not allowed as a plus factor, as a bonus, as a consideration.
01:01:52.460It's against the law, but he's been one of the biggest defenders of this so-called DEI hiring where we're supposed to prize people's skin color as like an acceptable reason to hire them instead of somebody who looks different or is of a different gender.
01:02:07.720So I realize everyone's doing it, even though it's unlawful, but I understand that you have a difference of opinion with him on this.
01:02:15.580Well, we differ on a lot of things, and I think that's what makes our interaction interesting, certainly on structure of deals and everything else.
01:02:23.160But, you know, I watched the Harvard situation and Bill Ackerman's attacks on other institutions, and, you know, there's merit in both sides of that argument.
01:02:35.320And, you know, when I guess lecture at Harvard, it's quite obvious that that issue hasn't gone away.
01:02:40.760You see lots of students still very active on either side.
01:02:45.020But I look back over time, you know, I've been doing venture capital and investing in private equity for about 25 years now.
01:02:53.160And in aggregate, we've probably have over 10,000 employees in our companies and our supply chains.
01:02:59.940And what I've learned actually works in this topic that isn't mandated by government is merit.
01:03:06.860We hire people on their ability to execute their mandates.
01:04:15.020But actually, what makes companies work and be successful and be able to employ people and support their families over a long period of time is merit, is their ability to do the work.
01:05:36.200She's young and she knows how to use it.
01:05:37.740It's certainly not all the great legislation that she's passing.
01:05:39.860So she she she fell within your crosshairs not too long ago because you detected a hint of capitalism inside of this declared socialist and responded accordingly.
01:05:54.120Here's a bit you posted on X back in twenty twenty one after she was pushing her expensive sweatshirts.