On the heels of yet another criminal indictment against Donald Trump, Megyn Kelly and her guests look at all the angles of this latest development, from the legal to the political to the media coverage. Plus, we take a trip down memory lane to see how the media covered the fake election idea back in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost.
00:07:47.900And the three specific criminal conspiracies that Trump allegedly perpetrated, as outlined in the indictment, are as follows.
00:07:56.460There's a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit to impair, obstruct and or defeat the federal government's function, meaning the certification of the vote.
00:08:07.720They're talking about what happened on January 6th, trying to prevent that from happening.
00:08:12.560Number two is a conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6th congressional proceeding.
00:08:17.620They spell it out more specifically about that day.
00:08:20.320The other one could encompass his attempts prior to that day to stop the vote and then a conspiracy against the right to vote or have one's vote counted, which is what I just said.
00:08:29.640So they do have to talk about Trump's state of mind and whether he believed genuinely that he won that election.
00:08:39.620They are positing he knew he lost and and therefore it was dishonest and fraudulent for him to run around telling everybody he didn't lose and that they should behave accordingly.
00:08:53.860And I think it it goes to what's a pretty interesting legal question and would be very interesting, even if it wasn't so politically fraught, which is what really is intent and proof of intent in a criminal proceeding?
00:09:09.860Because, you know, you know, you prove intent by objective evidence, generally speaking, meaning, you know, most people you deduce that they they what they meant by what they did.
00:09:27.160And it's not all that often that you get, you know, you know, there's a lot of criminal cases where the defendant doesn't testify and you don't get actual direct testimony about what the person what was running through the person's mind.
00:09:40.880What they're going to say here is that there were a number of reliable people who at least the prosecutor thinks was were reliable and the January 6th committee thought were reliable.
00:09:54.180Of course, the question in a criminal case is what the defendant thought.
00:09:59.100But they have a lot of people like, you know, Bill Barr and some people in the intelligence community, some other people who were around Trump and in the know who told him that there was not material fraud that could have overturned the election.
00:10:15.240And I think what Trump is going to come back and say is he was hearing a lot of other things from a lot of other people.
00:10:19.780He says, in fact, that he intends to relitigate whether there actually was fraud.
00:10:25.020I think, Megan, frankly, by the end of this, if Smith actually does get this to trial, Trump's going to talk about this on the campaign trail so much that by the end of this exercise, there will be more people in the United States who believe the election was stolen than currently there are.
00:10:42.680Jack Smith's examples of how he knows Trump knew that he lost the election, page seven, Trump knew that these representations were false, are as follows.
00:10:53.700The vice president told the defendant he'd seen no evidence of outcome determinative fraud.
00:10:57.900The senior leaders of justice appointed by defendant told the defendant on multiple occasions that various allegations of fraud were unsupported.
00:11:05.140The director of national intelligence disabused the defendant of the notion that its findings regarding foreign interference would change the outcome of the election.
00:11:12.100The Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, put out a statement that there was no evidence any voting system had been compromised.
00:11:21.520So what they're basically saying is you had to believe them.
00:11:24.780You must have believed them as opposed to the reality, which we know anecdotally, which is Trump more than likely did not believe any of those people.
00:11:33.220Well, it appeared to us all that he believed Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, his lawyers who were telling him they had fraudulent examples, be it at voting stations or at Dominion voting machines, and that they were going to release the Kraken.
00:11:50.260And that's what Trump wanted to hear, wanted to believe.
00:11:52.460So we're now at the point where you have to believe certain officials over other officials, including your own lawyers, or you're a criminal.
00:12:01.180Yeah, well, I love the way you framed that, because as you were saying, I'm thinking philosophically, and you could see where this would be just up somebody like Jack Smith's Alley.
00:12:13.560But what we're talking about is, you know, do you believe the elected official who the public actually elected to vote, or do you believe the administrative state?
00:12:23.360And as far as a lot of people in this construct are concerned, if the administrative state is spoken, nobody gets to counterman that, even the elected official.
00:12:33.960But, you know, that's an interesting point for a political science class.
00:12:41.540So what matters is what Trump's state of mind was.
00:12:45.360I think he's going to have a very hard time proving that Trump believed or didn't believe what he was saying.
00:12:55.120But I think, Megan, even before you get to that, I'm not sure these counts are firm.
00:13:01.640I think that, you know, there are a lot of legal problems such that even if you assume for argument's sake that Trump knew everything he said was false,
00:13:09.180which, by the way, would not remove it from being unprotected speech.
00:13:12.740I know that's an inconvenience point as well.
00:13:58.400I do wonder whether he's got to prove it was a knowing lie or whether it was just a reckless disregard of the facts, you know, because if you're if it's a defamation case, you can prove reckless disregard.
00:14:09.320I don't know in a criminal fraud case that you could get away with that as opposed to just proving he truly knew what he was saying was false.
00:14:16.400I'm not sure, but that'll all be good.
00:14:42.340Yeah, we're saying you've been saying that in, I think, May, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling or a pair of rulings involved.
00:14:50.600No, one ruling involving two guys from the Cuomo administration in New York, Andrew Cuomo's administration that speaks directly to this and speaks to these statutes and says when you're trying to it's one thing if you're trying to criminalize speech that leads to a fraud, a financial fraud.
00:15:06.860Like, hey, give me your thousand dollars and I promise I'll give you this ointment that's going to take away all your problems.
00:15:13.760You know, the snake oil salesman thing.
00:15:15.260But it's very different to try to use these traditional federal fraud statutes to criminalize politics.
00:15:59.760So it's a little bit different from the freewheeling days of the mid 20th century.
00:16:04.240What they say is what fraud meant when it was enacted into federal law in the 1870s is what commonly people think fraud means, which is a scheme to swindle people out of money or tangible property.
00:16:27.280Applied fraud or stretch fraud to cover deceptive schemes that undermined the government's legitimate functions.
00:16:39.180So, for example, you know, Mueller prosecuted Paul Manafort on one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States on a theory that because he hadn't registered as a foreign agent, he had undermined the government's ability to have a comprehensive registry of government agents.
00:17:02.380The inconvenience for Mueller was Congress hadn't enacted a conspiracy statute like that.
00:17:10.620So what the Supreme Court is telling prosecutors in May in these two cases that we're talking about is you can't do that.
00:17:18.480You know, this whole idea that we can stretch fraud to mean somebody's idea of good government has been undermined is not something that prosecutors have it in their bailiwick to do.
00:17:31.040What the court has said is that Congress, if it can enact a clear, non-vague statute, can criminalize it.
00:17:38.700But prosecutors don't get to make it up as you go along because criminal statutes have to be sufficiently clear that a person of average intelligence knows what they forbid.
00:17:49.180Right. And if you start with these vague concepts, you can't know what the law is.
00:17:54.340Progressives like that because then the threat of prosecution hovers over everything.
00:17:58.620And what the court is saying, they don't get to do that.
00:18:01.880And that's really had Donald Trump getting the advice of counsel.
00:18:06.800You can say what you want about the counsel, but getting the advice from Giuliani and who was then Sidney Powell, a respected Third Circuit appellate attorney who had a very good winning record, telling him not to mention the John Eastman letter, telling him this is all available to you.
00:18:22.260This is the way we can challenge it. This is the fraud that we see. These are the legal claims that we have and that we still think are viable.
00:18:29.260And even in the statement that Trump put out yesterday on Truth Social, Andy, he says, among other things, referring to himself in the third person, President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution with advice from many highly accomplished attorneys.
00:18:42.860So he's going to go in there and say these statutes were not meant to encompass anything I've done.
00:18:49.040And by the way, I relied throughout on the advice of counsel.
00:18:52.860And wouldn't this in the normal case just result in motion practice, a motion to dismiss this whole case that that a nonpartisan judge would have to seriously entertain?
00:19:02.980Megan, I think that's not only true, but what you've just described takes us directly to the second thing you want to talk about, which was the obstruction count, those two counts that you described earlier, because what in effect they do in the obstruction count is try to criminalize a frivolous legal theory.
00:19:27.800And I've been telling people that when I was a prosecutor, you know, defense lawyers are very creative people.
00:19:33.020If a frivolous legal theory is a felony now, I could have been died at five of them a day when I was a prosecutor.
00:19:41.160Right, right. That's half of what lawyers do is offer BS legal theories to their clients.
00:19:46.640You must have dealt with better lawyers than I did. I would say it was more than half.
00:19:50.360But, you know, it's just me. But but I just, you know, look, think of whatever you want to think about.
00:19:56.740But Eastman's theory, you know, I've I've always thought it was cockamamie, this idea that like the vice president can invalidate votes.
00:20:06.200On the other hand, when John explains it, it's like one of these things where, you know, he's such he's he's sufficiently persuasive that it's like a five part theory.
00:20:16.380And you hear the first part, you go, yeah, OK. Second part. Yeah.
00:20:20.680And by the end of the rainbow, like the vice president is canceling out the election.
00:20:24.720So, you know, it's some somewhere along the line. It was it was it was for cockta.
00:20:29.440But in any event. Our legal system has never criminalized bad legal theories.
00:20:39.740And I think it's just as dangerous, if not more dangerous to start doing that now than it is to to screw around with political speech, which they do elsewhere in this indictment, because people's ability to defend themselves when they're accused of things, whether it's criminally or civilly, depend on lawyers understanding that they're allowed to make fringy and creative legal arguments.
00:21:06.040Which every now and then turn out to have persuasive force, you know, you would have thought a year ago if I argued that Roe versus Wade was unconstitutional, that was frivolous until it wasn't right.
00:21:18.720So every now and then, you know, you you have to argue against a precedent and it may be a long established precedent.
00:21:26.040But if it's wrong, it's wrong. You get to make that argument.
00:21:28.340And our legal system has always figured that the best way to deal with frivolous legal arguments is to make better legal arguments, not to criminalize them.
00:21:37.740So I just think going down this path is disastrous.
00:21:41.480And it's like not even I mean, they are criminalizing the lawyers.
00:21:45.040Rui Giuliani and Johnny's been appear to be unindicted co-conspirators yet to be indicted.
00:21:49.520Almost certainly will be. But but the client, the client for listening to the lawyers and enacting the scheme and not for nothing.
00:21:59.520But we're going to get into this a little later. But this whole let's let's get the electors to sub out, you know, the ones who have been designated and are going to go in there and vote for Biden.
00:22:10.700Let's sub them out and get new ones who are going to vote for Trump. Let's sub them in.
00:22:14.620This has been pushed for by Democrats election after election after election, saying the electors need to disregard the actual vote.
00:22:23.600Do what's right. That's written into the Constitution that you don't have to just follow what the popular vote is.
00:22:29.820Use your discretion. It was all well and good when George W. Bush was reelected back in 20 2004.
00:22:38.120It was all well and good when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, Andy.
00:22:42.880But now because it's part of a Trump Trump lawyer scheme, right, like let's let's get the electors to do something else based on the fraud and the shenanigans we're seeing.
00:22:53.280Now it's this unprecedented thing that has to be criminalized.
00:22:57.280Jack Smith has got to get involved and we're all just going to pretend that the Democrats didn't push for this time and time again when they were on the losing side.
00:23:04.560Oh, that's totally right. And, you know, look, if you strip out the Capitol riot, which is very hard to do.
00:23:10.980Right. But Capitol riot is the prism through which we see all of this.
00:23:14.960And by the way, Smith is banking on that. Right.
00:23:17.500The he absolutely wants you to see it that way.
00:23:21.120That's why he put the stuff about the Capitol riot into the indictment, even though he didn't charge it.
00:23:26.080But if you could strip it out, what Trump did may be a degree, but in kind, it's no different from what Jamie Raskin did in 2017 when he objected to he got up, even though it was against the rules because he didn't have a senator to sign on with him.
00:23:40.180So he knew it was lawless. And he claimed that, you know, Trump's electoral votes in in Florida or was it for I think was Florida shouldn't be counted.
00:23:48.300They should be invalidated, you know, completely lawless. But nobody's filed a felony indictment against Jamie.
00:23:56.160And he might actually have a state of mind defense, actually listening to to him.
00:24:01.060But but I think the the other thing about this electors, if we could just like splash a little bit of reality on this for a second, Megan, on January 6, we were all whipped up for this proceeding in front of Congress.
00:24:17.040There had been a lot said about it in the lead up to it. I argued, you know, I covered pretty closely the South to steal stuff that didn't do my heart any good to say, you know, this is just nonsense.
00:24:28.020But it was it was nonsense from beginning to end. So we're all watching very closely about what they were going to argue on January 6.
00:24:36.680But nobody thought there were alternative slates of electors. You know, we've had occasions in American history where you had alternative slates of electors, where a state like in 1960 in Hawaii, where, you know, they originally certified the slate for Nixon and then they certified it for Kennedy.
00:24:56.180I think that was the that was the order had submitted an alternate set of electors.
00:25:00.080Right. And but the state had certified it so that there was you know, you could actually legitimately say there were two slates of electors.
00:25:07.920Nobody thought that these people that Trump had come in and go through that exercise were actually legitimately state certified alternative slates.
00:25:18.340That was not going to come up in the argument. So if you talk to these electors, what they understood was they were not fake electors.
00:25:26.800They were contingent electors. So the idea was that if Trump succeeded in getting the legal process, whether in court or through the legislatures to to remand the election back to the disputed states,
00:25:40.680and then they could talk the legislatures into substituting their vote for Trump for the popular election for Biden, then those electors, if those things all happen, they'd be prepared to stand as a substitute for the for the electors who had been certified by the states.
00:25:57.460But nobody was arguing on January 6th that those were state certified electors.
00:26:02.740And in fact, Trump's position wasn't that those electors should be recognized.
00:26:06.500It was that the election should be remanded back to the state for for further consideration.
00:26:12.860So I've always thought this thing was the biggest bunch of B.S. in a whole bundle of it that we have, because nobody believed that on January 6th.
00:26:22.240But it's right at the heart of Jack Smith's complaint. I mean, it's the it's the biggest piece, I would say, of his complaint.
00:26:28.380Yeah, it reminds me of electors. It reminds it reminds me of Trump during the Russiagate stuff where they kept saying, remember when Trump said to, hey, Russia, I hope you're listening, because if you're listening, I'd like you to.
00:26:41.880And I mean, at that point in time, the FBI had had Hillary server, you know, for a couple of years.
00:26:48.700The thing was offline. There was no way it could have been hacked.
00:26:51.340But they put it in every indictment like Trump tried to direct Putin to pack the.
00:26:56.200And I'm sitting there thinking I covered Russia gay pretty carefully.
00:26:59.440I thought it was Putin who was giving Trump directions.
00:27:01.980You guys, I can't even keep up with what what goes on here.
00:27:06.020Who's the puppet? Who's the puppeteer? All right. Last question.
00:27:08.700So this judge is going to hate Trump and she is not going to be she's not going to dismiss this case on the papers, I think.
00:27:16.020And I think you agree. So then it's going to go up to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is a respected court.
00:27:20.560But I don't know that I like his chances there much better.
00:27:23.120And then it's going to go up to the U.S. Supreme Court where he's going to have a much better chance of finding a reasonable panel.
00:27:30.420So do you how do you think this ends that the judge says the case stands?
00:27:34.700The D.C. Circuit says we affirm that. And the Supreme Court says these are bogus charges.
00:27:40.460They're done. There will be no trial of Donald Trump on any of this.
00:27:45.060Yeah, I'd be interesting, interested to know what you think on this.
00:27:48.000I what I've been straining my brain to figure out is, is there a way he can get this up to the appellate courts prior to trial?
00:27:55.960And I haven't come up with it yet. It's easy to come up with that with Mar-a-Lago because that's all controlled by the Classified Information Procedures Act, which actually has provisions in it for appeal.
00:28:08.180This doesn't. So you run into the normal presumption that the case has to be tried before the district court to completion before it goes up on appeal.
00:28:17.600And I think Trump really needs to be able to appeal prior to trial.
00:28:22.460The dynamic, Megan, if this is as political as I think it is, it could very well be that Jack Smith basically said, I'm going to file these charges no matter how infirm they may be.
00:28:35.060I'm going to get a D.C. jury. I'm going to get him convicted.
00:28:38.320And then I'll dare the Supreme Court to reverse it.
00:28:41.100And that would only be what he's up to if he if they can't get an expedited hearing that happens to three years down the line.
00:28:49.380He's already it's we're post November 2024. So the whole thing has worked the way they intend.
00:28:54.900Right. Andy McCarthy, you're brilliant. Thank you so much for everything you write and say.
00:28:58.940Follow him. Go listen to his podcast. Listen to him at National Review.
00:29:02.820Read Andy at National Review. You'll be a lot smarter.
00:29:05.220And you'll thank him and me for referring you. Thank you, my friend.
00:29:08.880And thanks, Megan. You're the best. Thank you.
00:29:12.420All right. Up next, our Trump indictment legal dream team is back to break this new one down.
00:29:16.320And we will play you a little soundbite of these lefties before and after on this issue of the alternate electors.
00:29:27.880Another indictment, another chance to hear from our lawyers on both sides who've been following this case very closely.
00:29:32.860Mike Davis is the founder and president of the Article Three Project, which defends constitutionalist judges and the rule of law.
00:29:38.880Also with us, Dave Ehrenberg. He's the state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida, where Mar-a-Lago is located.
00:29:45.280Guys, so great to have you back. Just a little walk down memory lane on these whole, quote unquote, fake electors or alternate electors.
00:29:52.360We talked about it the last time. This is really at the heart of this indictment that Trump had this whole scheme.
00:29:58.180He was going to have these, quote, fake electors put in there and he tried to convince others to go along with it.
00:30:04.540I'll just give you a little a little sampling. Let's take a look at Chris Hayes and Michael Moore back in 2016 after Donald Trump won.
00:30:15.040There are people who are pushing very hard who think that because of some of the constitutional perils of the emoluments clause, because of the popular vote margin, because of fundamentals, they think threat to liberal democracy, that that that electors should be persuaded and pressured on Monday to to part with what their pledges and vote and vote against Donald Trump.
00:30:35.780Yes, they absolutely should do that. Absolutely. I believe right now that there are electors.
00:30:40.080They only need 38 of them who have a conscience or who are worried about a man who won't attend the daily security briefings, who who we now know Russia was trying to help get elected.
00:30:52.140Just a little sampling more of the celebrities who chimed in on it in SOT 7.
00:30:57.240Republican members of the Electoral College, this message is for you.
00:31:01.180The Electoral College was created specifically to prevent an unfit candidate from becoming president.
00:31:07.760There are 538 members of the Electoral College. You and just 36 other conscientious Republican electors can make a difference.
00:31:15.900I'm not asking you to vote for Hillary Clinton.
00:31:18.380I'm not asking you to vote for Hillary Clinton.
00:31:20.540I'm not asking you to vote for Hillary Clinton.
00:31:22.600As you know, the Constitution gives electors the right to vote for any eligible person.
00:31:26.780Any eligible person, no matter which party they belong to.
00:31:30.020But it should certainly be someone you consider especially competent.
00:31:33.840By voting your conscience, you and other brave Republican electors can give the House of Representatives the option to select a qualified candidate.
00:31:43.520What is evident is that Donald Trump lacks more than the qualifications to be president.
00:32:19.880It's only illegal to object to elections in third world Marxist hell holes.
00:32:25.400Otherwise, Democrats would be in prison for objecting to Republican presidential wins in 1968, 2000, 2004 and 2016.
00:32:35.200This is a very laughably stupid case by Jack Smith.
00:32:40.660It's almost certainly going to get overturned by the Supreme Court like Jack Smith was overturned unanimously when he brought a bogus corruption case against another potential Republican presidential candidate, Bob McDonald.
00:32:53.660Back in 2016, but the damage was already done.
00:32:57.040They eliminated Bob McDonald as a potential presidential candidate.
00:33:00.920I think they're trying to run the same play here.
00:33:02.820They don't care if the Supreme Court ultimately reverses this bogus conviction.
00:33:07.720They want to take out President Trump for November 5th, 2024.
00:33:24.300Yeah, it's good to be back with you, Megan, and with my friend Mike.
00:33:27.340I think this one is important because we all saw this unfold live on TV and involves the peaceful transfer of power.
00:33:35.940But I think as far as the strength of the case, I'd rank it third out of the four behind Mar-a-Lago documents, which to me is a lock solid case.
00:33:46.340The second I would say we haven't seen yet, but I'm predicting it's going to be the Fulton County case because you have Trump on tape.
00:33:52.500That's going to be a very strong case under state law.
00:33:56.080But this one has some issues in that it does give Trump some defenses.
00:34:02.180And by the way, if I can, can I respond to the clips you showed from Martin Sheen and all those?
00:34:06.800You were showing, Megan, the faithless elector issue where you have people who are voted in as electors and they are pressured to vote against the person who won the state.
00:34:19.300Do you know that's actually happened about 165 times as of 2020?
00:34:24.460I looked it up and as of 2020, 33 states and the District of Columbia have laws that require electors to vote for the candidates for whom they pledged to vote.
00:34:34.320So it is not unheard of and it is not illegal unless you violate state law with enforcement.
00:34:40.240When you're talking about the fake electors here, you're talking about something that is illegal because they are claiming to be the real electors.
00:34:48.140It is not illegal to be an alternate elector to say in case the real electors aren't counted, here is an alternate slate.
00:34:55.200That's what happened in Pennsylvania and I believe in New Mexico.
00:34:58.120And that's why charges will not be brought in those states.
00:35:00.400But in a state like Michigan, for example, where they said we met on this date in the state capitol, lie, we are the official electors, lie, here is the state seal.
00:35:11.420Well, that's a forgery because you can't be sending that to the Congress to pretend that you're the real deal.
00:35:20.880In order to show fraud, you have to show that you intentionally made a false representation that someone else relied upon to their detriment.
00:35:33.740Everyone knows that these electors were not fake electors.
00:35:38.280They were alternative electors that Trump was going to have go to the electoral college if his claims won in court through the legal process.
00:35:48.760And so this idea that no one knew what was going on and just random people showed up on January 6th and, you know, apparently tied up the real electors and put them in the trunk.
00:36:13.740Well, it was part of the whole scheme to have two sets of electors only in those seven swing states, although New Mexico really wasn't a swing state.
00:36:22.840But in the states where they wanted to overturn the election, they sent him up to Mike Pence.
00:36:27.100And the goal was to have Mike Pence look at both and say, there's a dispute.
00:36:37.040It was it's only fraud if Donald Trump did not believe in any way, shape or form that he actually could prove fraud in those in those states.
00:36:43.900And that goes back to the discussion I had with Andy talking about how how is he going to prove that Trump did not believe that he actually won the case, Dave, won the election?
00:36:53.540Right. Well, first, it is a conspiracy to obstruct the counting of the votes.
00:36:58.720When you're trying to tell Mike Pence not to count the votes, to send it back to the states, that's a crime.
00:37:05.820In fact, how is it a crime if you genuinely believe that you that there was fraud in these states and that this is going to be a travesty of justice for this fraudulent vote to be counted?
00:37:31.640And in this case, he was told by all these Republican officials that his own attorney general.
00:37:37.620We went through that with Andy, but he was also told by Giuliani and Powell and Eastman that this was three respected lawyers, that this is a legitimate avenue for for contesting the results.
00:37:48.120Eastman, that was the first he was told by Powell and Team Crazy and Giuliani.
00:37:52.400And I think that's part of Jackson's case.
00:37:54.400You're told by legitimate people and you're told by kooks.
00:38:13.720Eastman, though, in the meetings, did not say that this is an established legal theory.
00:38:18.260He admitted that this would get thrown out by the courts.
00:38:21.780And at best, he said that it's untested.
00:38:24.280So in that sense, that's the best they could do.
00:38:27.180But also, I personally don't think, Megan, that you even have to prove that Donald Trump knew the election was legit because there is a process to go through.
00:38:36.220If you think the election was stolen, you go to the courts, you know, you ask for recounts, you ask for audits.
00:40:06.020Number two, we recruited fake electors.
00:40:08.380That's the same different side of the same coin.
00:40:11.340Number three, he used the DOJ or at least tried to to fuel his lies.
00:40:14.820He went to the I think it was the deputy AG and tried to convince him to write threatening letters to certain states about, you know, we're seeing all sorts of fraud.
00:40:22.700You shouldn't sort of certify these results.
00:40:24.860That's kind of an interesting one to me.
00:40:28.560If you ask me, number five, you exploited.
00:40:32.760Oh, this is where he tries to get January 6th right into it.
00:40:34.880You exploited the disruption caused by the Jan 6th riot to convince members of Congress to further delay the certification.
00:40:40.400Andy explained how number five is really just an excuse to try to get in all the riot footage and the riot facts because that's an emotional appeal.
00:41:03.780You can have the Justice Department, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, investigate election irregularities around the country.
00:41:27.280They're taking conduct that is political, but it's not a felony.
00:41:32.160And they're trying to wrap this all up into a felony.
00:41:34.900And that's why the Supreme Court is never going to uphold this conviction.
00:41:40.180Dave, they allege on page 27 of the indictment in late December 2020, Trump attempted to use the Justice Department to make knowingly false claims of election fraud to officials.
00:41:49.460Again, this goes back to Trump's state of mind.
00:41:52.080But they say knowingly false claims of election fraud to officials in the targeted states.
00:41:56.300These are the swing states that he needed to go into his column to win through a formal letter under the acting attorney general signature.
00:42:03.540This is the proposal that Trump wanted this AG to do, thus giving the defendants lies, the backing of the federal government and attempting to improperly influence the targeted states to replace legitimate Biden electors with the defendants.
00:42:17.320Now, let me just ask you back to this one, Dave, is this illegal that he you know, let's say he did go to pressure the AG or the the assistant AG at the time.
00:42:27.820And this we understand he did because the the assistant AG said, I'm not doing that.
00:42:33.200Is it illegal if Trump genuinely believed he should do it, that there had been fraud, that he was the rightful winner?
00:42:39.780I mean, doesn't this once again come back to Trump's state of mind because he, according to his own indictment, has to prove that Trump made a knowingly false claim of fraudulent behavior and so on?
00:42:49.980Yeah, Meg, I think the problem for Trump is a statement in the indictment that says, hey, just say there was fraud and leave the rest to me and the congressional Republicans.
00:42:59.980That's going to come back to bite him.
00:43:01.780Now, if that was it and he can get on the stand and testify that he honestly believed the election was stolen, he'd have a shot.
00:43:25.980But I do think that you and Mike have a point in that it will be harder, I think, to prosecute Trump for the DOJ matter than other things because the letter was never sent.
00:43:37.480So the conspiracy was never effectuated.
00:43:39.660And that's a defense that, look, Trump ultimately rejected the letter.
00:43:49.540Jeff Clark is the low-level environmental lawyer in there who was elevated by Trump because he went to Trump behind the backs of his superiors to say, hey, name me.