The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of whether or not Donald Trump is immune from criminal prosecution for acts taken while in office. Breaking it down, Stone and his co-host Troy Smith and attorney David Schoen discuss the significance of the decision, and what it means for the future of the case and the possibility of a Trump trial. They also discuss the timing of the Supreme Court's decision and the impact it could have on the case as it relates to the ongoing investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into the Trump administration and the possible obstruction of justice charges brought against President Trump by former White House lawyer Jack Smith. The case is scheduled to be argued on the week of April 22, 2019, and will be heard by Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Chief Justice Neil Proctor, who will rule on the issue of presidential immunity from criminal liability. The Stone Zone with Roger Stone and Troy Smith is a production of Gimlet Media. Roger Stone has served as a senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents. He is a New York Times best-selling author and a long-time friend and advisor of President Donald Trump. As an outspoken libertarian, Stone has appeared on thousands of broadcasts, spoken at countless venues, and lectured before the prestigious Oxford Political Union and the Cambridge Union Society, and is a regular guest on countless public events, including the BBC Radio and other media outlets. He has been described as a pop culture icon . and Roger Stone is a prolific writer, and a frequent contributor to conservative media outlets such as The Weekly Standard, The Daily Caller, The New Republic, and the Weekly Standard. and the New Republic. . and Rolling Stone. David Schanen joins us to discuss the implications of the ruling in the Trump/Russia case, and why it s important to have a trial before the election of Donald Trump in 2020. We are honored to have Roger Stone on the Stone Zone. on The Stonezone. in this episode of The StoneZONE. Stone's case is a must-listen episode. of the Stonezone in the Stone's new book, "The Stone Zone Podcast. The Case of the President Trump's White House is out in the new book "The White House of the People s Guide to Trump's Most Powerful People's Guide to the White House by Roger Stone's Most Influential Person in the New Year's Eve Edition of The New Year s Eve Edition by The Daily Mail's Michael Bloomberg.
00:12:57.660They fight very hard to keep them in place.
00:13:00.580And there's a special election that happened up there.
00:13:03.840They had to redo the ballots before because at the last minute they tried to pull a fast
00:13:08.180one and a court said it wasn't constitutional.
00:13:10.420So this is going to cost Illinois a lot of money if this thing sticks, because they're going to have to redo it if they dare to try to run this election and bar President Trump from being on the ballot.
00:13:20.820But OK, Troy, do you have a question for attorney David Schoen?
00:13:27.300Mr. Schoen, just as somebody who looks at this stuff constantly and you're constantly I love hearing your explanations on these things and going into the laws and things like that.
00:13:35.860What's your reaction when you see I mean, it's it appears to me from what you're saying that most of these cases fall apart with a simple review of what they're actually talking about.
00:13:44.100What's your reaction to these things being launched all over the country just as somebody who practices law?
00:13:51.900Listen, there are a couple of people who happen to be behind almost all of these the agenda in this case and almost all of these initiatives.
00:14:35.720And not only that, they have folks in the media who take the exact opposite position and they say, oh, gee, there's no argument really against the Colorado decision.
00:14:45.120That opinion was so sound and it's clear that President Trump must be kept off the ballot under the 14th Amendment.
00:14:51.700You're doing a real disservice to American voters and to the world, I think, frankly, when you misstate constitutional principles like that.
00:14:58.880There are so many reasons the Colorado Supreme Court decision is wrong on constitutional grounds.
00:15:05.720All right. Let us go back, if we may, to the the immunity question, because there's one that I have to ask you.
00:15:12.980I followed the proceedings at the appeals court level in one minute and 58 seconds into his presentation.
00:15:20.820The president's lawyer was asked by Judge Pan, what would happen if President Donald Trump ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate his chief political opponent and then ordered SEAL Team 6 to kill any U.S. senator who dared to impeach him over that?
00:15:41.180Would he have immunity? Would he have immunity in that case?
00:15:44.520And surprisingly, the president's lawyer after a moment said, my answer is a qualified yes.
00:15:51.200Even I found that as a non-lawyer to be kind of a shocking lawyer.
00:15:55.480David, had you been before the court, how would you have responded to that question?
00:16:00.700From his perspective and his framework, I understand why he said yes.
00:16:05.260I think he's simply wrong. And I think it's wrong to take that kind of extreme approach.
00:16:12.560My answer would have been no, we would not be absolutely immune in that circumstance because that would not be within the outer perimeter of the duties of office.
00:16:20.900It wouldn't have been an official act in any universe.
00:16:24.080And that's what Justice Powell wrote in Nixon versus Fitzgerald in 1982.
00:16:28.520The president's absolute immunity extends to all acts within the outer perimeters of his duties of office.
00:16:35.260Personally, getting a SEAL Team to hit a political opponent would not be within an official duty in any realm.
00:17:07.520Their level of anger all has to do with timing.
00:17:11.440You see, they are desperate to have a criminal trial in D.C. against President Trump prior to the election.
00:17:21.200That's really the overriding goal here.
00:17:24.320And lawyers like you, who I respect and several others, are really beginning to wonder whether that can actually happen given this Supreme Court decision.
00:17:34.160Now, I've already have been surprised by the extent to which the process has been expedited, sometimes confounding how Special Counsel John Durham can take five years to reach his conclusions.
00:17:49.460So the system can move very quickly when it wants to.
00:17:52.440It also can move very slowly when it wants to.
00:17:56.240David, this is kind of an outside the box question, but the Supreme Court ultimately had to decide about the release of President Richard Nixon's White House tapes.
00:18:07.900They ultimately determined that Nixon had to turn them over.
00:18:14.720I'm curious about the audio tapes of Special Counsel Robert Herr's interrogation of Joe Biden during his investigation into Biden's, what he called his willful retention of top secret and classified documents.
00:18:34.460And because democracy dies in darkness, because I'm a full disclosure guy, I'd like to see that tape be made public.
00:18:42.860Would anyone have standing to bring such an action in that regard?
00:18:48.500It's a great question, and there's not enough talk about this.
00:18:52.240You're 100 percent right about the importance of transparency, and especially now that President Biden has gone on record at his press conference in denying factual assertions that Mr. Herr made.
00:19:03.280So I think the case has to be brought.
00:19:05.880But I would hope that Norm Eisen would bring it under the auspices of Crewe, since he is going around the country claiming that he has standing to raise public interest into matters of public interest.
00:19:20.800But I think in this case, frankly, there could be a number of entities or people who have standing.
00:19:30.680But I think at a minimum, Congress needs to demand it, because at the end of the day, Special Counsel has to deliver a report to Congress with the approval of the Attorney General.
00:19:42.100The Attorney General gave that approval in this case.
00:19:44.820And the Congress is permitted under the Special Counsel's guidelines to ask questions.
00:19:49.920I think that the way to go about this one is that this should be subpoenaed, and the subpoena should be enforced by Congress in a court proceeding if that's required.
00:20:04.500All right, let's turn now, if we may, to the so-called valuations case, the Ngaron case.
00:20:12.100I mean, there's been plenty of discussion about the case itself and the fact that essentially the judge in this case found Donald Trump and his companies and members of his family guilty prior to there ever really being a trial, prior to the president being allowed to put on any defense.
00:20:33.360And that's outrageous enough in itself.
00:20:36.460Again, to cite the facts of the case, Donald Trump borrowed money from banks.
00:20:43.080He put up certain assets as collateral.
00:20:46.680Regardless of what he declared the value of that collateral to be, the banks conducted their own due diligence, their own appraisals to determine whether they thought this was a good loan, a safe loan.
00:21:00.700They made the loans, they were paid back in full, in some cases paid back, or in all cases on time, in some cases actually paid back early.
00:21:10.640They made as much as $40 million in interest.
00:21:19.640This complaint wasn't brought by a bank or someone who claimed they were somehow cheated or defrauded.
00:21:25.800It was brought by the attorney general, Letitia James, under a law under which no one else had ever been prosecuted.
00:21:35.400But I want to go to the more recent part of this.
00:21:39.180Just in order to appeal this, the judge is requiring Trump to post a bond, as I understand it, that it costs as much as a half billion dollars.
00:21:50.820And there's actually some risk to that.
00:21:54.320In other words, he may, even if he gets to appeal, lose some of that money.
00:22:33.660The judge, this judge, Engeron, even addresses in the beginning of his opinion why this is not really fraud.
00:22:39.260He says fraud requires certain things, and that's always materiality, misrepresentation, that it's relied on to one's detriment and all that.
00:22:48.200But then he says along came Executive General Law 6312 in New York, and that changed the whole ballgame.
00:22:54.940So just as you pointed out, no loss is required, no victim is required, no materiality is required, no reliance is required.
00:24:31.680You clearly have to have the right to a jury trial.
00:24:35.240I wouldn't just argue that the amount of damages is excessive because I don't think the full remedy in this case should be just a reduction in damages.
00:25:40.160Now, of course, given the delay in the January 6th and what appears to be a delay in the so-called documents trial that Jack Smith has brought in the 11th District of Florida,
00:25:53.640they're now moving ahead with what should be a regular, if anything, a business records case, a civil litigation, which prosecuting attorney, district attorney of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, has bumped up to be a criminal trial.
00:26:12.040Now, this has the same markings in terms of motive as the so-called valuation trial, although I think it has the potential from a public relations point of view to be more damaging to the president because of the subject matter.
00:26:31.600The court will be relying on Michael Cohen as their chief witness, who I think that's extraordinarily dangerous.
00:26:41.520But, David, what is your assessment of that upcoming trial?
00:26:47.360Well, first of all, you know, the judge is a bit of a nightmare.
00:26:50.900He's also, I found him to be a sort of very insecure fellow who's very much subject to what he believes public opinion to be, very sensitive to what's going on in the courtroom and that the press is there.
00:27:04.700He's a Trump hater, contributor we know, you know, to campaigns from the other party.
00:27:11.420But beyond all of that, I think the case is fatally flawed in its indictment.
00:27:16.020The indictment is a cockamamie, jerry-rigged contraption by which they charge a misdemeanor of errors in the business records.
00:27:26.020But under New York law, it can be a felony if the misdemeanor was intended to commit another crime.
00:27:31.920The problem here is to bring it, make it to a felony, the grand jury never has identified what that so-called other target crime is.
00:27:39.420I think that's a fatal defect in the indictment.
00:27:42.480I don't think it can be cured by a bill of particulars or any other measure.
00:27:45.620This is what the grand jury found and didn't find.
00:27:48.440And so, for example, one theory is they falsified business records, allegedly, in order to advance his election by covering up the Stormy Daniels thing to advance his election prospects.
00:28:02.180That would be one defense then to face that with, to oppose that kind of theory with.
00:28:08.880Another theory is they allegedly doctored business records for tax purposes, to avoid certain taxes or to get certain tax advantages.
00:28:17.700That's a completely different defense.
00:28:20.120Without the grand jury identifying what the so-called target crime was, there's no way to defend it,
00:28:25.140and there's no way to protect, raise a claim of double jeopardy if the state loses this time around and then says, oh, no, what we really meant was the following, and they charge the other theory the next time around.
00:28:36.620So I think it's fatally flawed in that regard.
00:28:39.120They're also going to have to deal with a number of logistical issues.
00:28:42.200That is, there's a book out there that a special prosecutor they brought in to investigate this matter wrote, and in it he details why the office was fundamentally against this prosecution, including Alvin Bragg,
00:28:55.960why the higher-ups with the experienced people in the office thought this case never should have been brought.
00:29:00.700And then as to Michael Cohen, you know, we can't leave out that Bob Costello was Michael Cohen's lawyer at some point.
00:29:07.040He's on record already as saying that Michael Cohen told him a completely different story about the underlying matter here.
00:29:14.400And so you can be sure he's going to appear as a witness in the case.
00:29:17.500It's a case that never should have been brought criminally.
00:29:19.640But again, we see a prosecutor, this time Alvin Bragg, running on a campaign promising to get Trump.
00:29:26.760Yeah, the timing is what seems extraordinarily suspicious.
00:29:30.400As soon as it became clear that because of the federal litigation, that there would be a delay in the January 6th trial,
00:29:39.500and there also appears to be a delay in the so-called documents trial taking place in the 11th District, 11th Circuit of Florida.
00:35:23.020It will be hard to find a juror, a prospective juror who has no opinion of President Trump or Joe Biden, for that matter.
00:35:31.760On the other hand, it would seem to me that that should be that should be the goal in jury selection.
00:35:37.620On the other hand, I lived through this, and I can tell you the jurors in my case were not well disposed to President Donald Trump.
00:35:46.000All right, David Chung, criminal defense attorney, thank you so much for joining us yet again in the Stone Zone with your extraordinary analysis.
00:35:54.560I'm going to go look for your other interview with Laura Ingram because I want to see you talking about immunity.
00:36:00.260But thank you so much for your time and thanks for joining us today.
00:39:23.120I think you'll be very, very pleased with this product.
00:39:26.800All right, Troy, let's go back to the political scene.
00:39:31.220David Choen, I think, made a very key point there at the end.
00:39:34.100Yesterday, first time I've seen this in the Emerson College poll, pardon me, that's incorrect, in the Harvard-Harris poll,
00:39:42.400for the first time we saw numbers that indicated that even if Donald Trump were to be convicted of some of these alleged crimes with which he is accused,
00:39:53.540he seems to beat Joe Biden in the polling anyway.
00:41:21.280But it wasn't really the dominating aspect of it.
00:41:24.780Now, with him being really a figurehead of what it is to be a forgotten American, he's really become the symbol for hardworking Americans, for people that are just trying to get by, for people who have been persecuted.
00:41:41.820And the mainstream media has been complicit in pushing these cases.
00:41:45.740So in reality, they've created the cultural phenomenon that is Trump.
00:41:51.160And I think the reason that Trump is not going to be hurt by anything here, even if he does get convicted in any of the cases, is the same reason that famous rappers or famous artists or musicians like Johnny Cash or Jimi Hendrix or whoever who get arrested, their popularity doesn't go down.
00:42:08.600And, in fact, their album sales go up because those people are being related to.
00:42:12.820President Trump is a relatable person, something that you don't see often in politics, Roger.
00:42:17.820And I'd be interested to hear if you've ever seen somebody who had as much of a cultural impact as Trump in politics, just in general.
00:42:27.500When I first saw that he was going to be marketing these sneakers, when I saw he was going to SneakerCon, I basically said, what in the world?
00:42:36.740Well, first of all, he made a lot of money.
00:42:38.600Money that, unfortunately, he badly needs now to post the bond where they're asking him to put up almost a half billion dollars just in order to have his appeal heard.
00:43:24.360Now I wish I had, although I'm not sure I could have gotten in fast enough.
00:43:28.460But secondarily, there are a lot of working class Americans, minorities and others who like this, who like this culture, who like the sneakers, like the whole thing.
00:43:41.220And I think it makes Trump more relatable, makes him more of every man, more like the average American.
00:43:49.360I'm sorry, I can't picture as much as I might, George H.W. marketing a pair of Bush sneakers.
00:43:57.080I just I can't even begin to imagine that.
00:44:01.000To go to your question about polls, it's one that there's two misnomers here that need to be constantly, unfortunately, revisited.
00:44:10.220I have said on the show many, many times that one cannot look just at one poll and reach a conclusion.
00:44:20.540One needs to look at several polls taken essentially within the same time frame.
00:44:26.820But even those polls have to have a certain professional and scientific methodology.
00:44:33.740In other words, the sample size needs to be large enough to be scientifically and statistically significant.
00:44:42.740The order of the questions has to be in an unbiased manner so that before you introduce positive or negative information regarding the candidate or public figure that you're testing,
00:44:58.720you are asking the questions prior to introducing that information in order to gauge what the impact of the information may be.
00:45:10.140You also want to look at the general, the manner in which the sample is drawn.
00:45:17.700In other words, is it a representative sample of the larger jurisdiction that you're trying to measure in?
00:45:26.720So, for example, I see this all the time.
00:45:29.340I will see polls, but then I notice that they're not of registered voters.
00:45:34.020They're just of citizens, and they were selected through random digit dialing.
00:45:39.660That's not a politically viable or scientifically valid poll.
00:45:45.940Now, can you take a poll and make it show whatever you want?
00:45:54.880You can cook the wording of the questions.
00:45:58.280You can cook the order of the questions.
00:46:02.480Now, people go out and say, Roger Stone said all polls are fake.
00:46:06.700No, that's not even remotely what I'm saying.
00:46:10.060But what I am saying is that you go to real clear politics, which I really like, and you look at the real clear politics average to look at all of the polling within a given time frame.
00:46:22.160And if all of the polls or the overwhelming number of polls are showing one thing, but one poll is showing something else, well, then that poll is what they call an outlier.
00:46:35.480It is unlikely to be correct within the larger context of looking at all of the polls.
00:46:41.760So if you look at it within that context right now, Donald Trump is leading in every swing state, as well as maintaining a narrow lead nationally.
00:46:54.760Now, one of the things you always look for is to see whether either candidate is over 50 percent.
00:47:01.840A candidate who's over 50 percent is in not impregnable, but much stronger position.
00:47:25.840When a candidate moves over 50, they are considered to be in excellent position, maybe even impregnable position to win the race.
00:47:35.920This is one of the reasons why I am rejecting the advice of Richard Nixon, who has often said, told me directly that in choosing a vice presidential running mate, one should not look for an individual who can help you.
00:47:53.540Just find someone who doesn't hurt you.
00:47:56.200Well, generally speaking, I think what he means by that is select somebody once you determine that they are fully qualified, that they have the experience, the judgment, the temperament, the commitment to the America First agenda to potentially be president.
00:48:14.420If, God forbid, that should become necessary, then and only then can you look at the political considerations.
00:48:21.960But I think a lot can be said for selecting somebody who is surefooted.
00:48:27.760Running for vice president of the United States is not the same as, say, running for governor of a small state like South Dakota.
00:48:35.180It's a very, very different situation.
00:48:38.220It's a high pressure atmosphere in which, candidly, the fake news media, which is hostile to Republican candidates, are seeking to find some controversy, seeking to find some way to damage your ticket through a perceived misstep of some kind.
00:48:59.140One of the classic tricks they use is to try to get the presidential and vice presidential candidates to contradict each other, or more precisely, to get the vice presidential candidate to contradict the presidential candidate.
00:49:12.080So you want somebody who has political experience beyond just the experience of being elected in a small state.
00:49:21.900Yes, I have said, and I will say again, I'm intrigued by the potential for the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard, who is now an independent, a former Democrat congresswoman.
00:49:36.820I recognize that online, this is getting mixed results.
00:49:50.460And so I am merely having a discussion of the potential of her candidacy, which, given her record as a combat veteran in both Iraq and in Kuwait, her current status as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, her evolution on a number of key issues.
00:50:16.260On the key issue of war and peace, she's clearly very solid.
00:50:23.540She's against giving more money to Ukraine.
00:50:26.960She clearly has had an evolution when it comes to Second Amendment rights.
00:50:32.540Troy, when I interviewed her for my WABC radio show on Sunday, she was calling me from a shooting range in Arizona where she was in a shooting contest.
00:50:41.400You could hear the gunshots in the background.
00:50:45.620And, of course, she is pro-life, which I think is vitally important within the Trump coalition.
00:50:56.080Now, people say, oh, well, she was for Bernie Sanders.
00:50:58.520Well, you know, had I been a Democrat and I had to choose between Hillary Clinton, the war machine candidate, or Bernie Sanders, who was opposed to war, I guess I'd have been for Sanders as well, although I disagree with probably most of his other positions.
00:51:14.240So anyway, I'm going to continue talking about this.
00:51:18.360Some people don't like it, but I'll be honest with you, I really don't care what they like.
00:51:23.920Anyway, here's a matter that is perhaps the most important we're going to talk about today.
00:51:30.360If you've followed me here at the Stone Zone or at my WABC radio show, the only thing I probably take more seriously than politics is food.
00:51:44.960I cook Italian, and I always use and insist that others use San Marzano tomatoes.
00:51:53.460Now, San Marzano tomatoes are not a brand of tomato.
00:51:58.320It is a style of tomato that is only grown in the San Marzano Valley of Italy, and they're imported into this country by a number of companies.
00:52:10.340However, a woman in California, whose name is, let's see, Andrea Valiente, has filed a lawsuit against Simpson Imports, a Pennsylvania tomato seller,
00:52:25.400claiming that they are using misleading labels to give the impression that the tomatoes they are selling are San Marzano tomatoes.
00:52:36.640This is not the first time I brought this problem to the American people.
00:52:43.940It is claimed that the tomatoes from this company, Simpson Imports, are priced higher than many other canned tomato brands,
00:52:53.140which contributes, according to her lawsuit, to the plausibility of the consumer's expectation that the tomatoes are indeed San Marzano tomatoes.
00:53:02.520That comes actually from the judge in this federal case.
00:53:06.120Now, the labeling of San Marzano tomatoes in the United States has been loose.
00:53:10.880In the European Union, only tomatoes that are grown in a specific region of Italy and fulfill a number of other specific requirements
00:53:19.260receive the designation of protective origin, or DOP.
00:53:25.020Look for that, always, folks, D-O-P, to show that they are genuine, authentic San Marzano tomatoes.
00:53:33.060In the United States, many tomato sellers claim to grow strains of San Marzano's and may sell those as San Marzano-style tomatoes,
00:53:44.620but they do not have the official European certification.