Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hi, welcome back to Prosecuting Donald Trump. It's Tuesday, February 20th. I'm Andrew Weissman, and I'm here with Mary McCord. Hi, Mary. Good morning, Andrew. Well, guess what? There's a lot to talk about. We have nothing to say. Yeah, it has been such a slow week. If this is slow, I hate to see what not slow is. That's kind of a preview of what we're about to talk about.
There's so much that happened last week, and it's very much about what our lives and all of our lives are about to be in short order. So, OK, Mary, take it away. What are some things that happened last week that we're going to talk about? Yeah, quick roadmap for today's episode. Obviously, we're waiting for two decisions out of the Supreme Court. One, I think, could come today, which is a decision on Trump's motion to stay the D.C. Circuit's immunity decision, basically a decision saying he does not have immunity from criminal prosecution.
That's been fully briefed. We'll talk a little bit about that. So we may have like breaking news in the middle of this recording. When you're ruling on a motion for a stay, which is somewhat of an emergency type rushed motion, they can put out an order anytime they want. They could have put it out on the holiday yesterday. And if you think about it, and this is
you know, a very serious moment. Like there are emergency appeals in death penalty cases with some frequency that the justices will rule on, you know, at midnight, right? And so I'm not trying to equate this motion for a stay with that type of appeal, but the point is the Supreme Court, when it needs to rule, it rules.
And then, of course, we're waiting on the substantive full decision from the court on the 14th Amendment, Section three argument where, you know, the argument is that Trump should be disqualified because of having engaged in insurrection. So that could potentially come as early as Wednesday, which is a day that the court is issuing opinions. That would be really, really fast to get out an opinion. So I don't really expect it. There may be just some other opinions that come out on Wednesday. But anyway, these things are very much on our radar.
But there's so much else, Andrew, that we'll talk about today. So there's the trial court. But just so everyone knows what's in Mary's head, the court in general will talk about stay petitions and cert petitions on Fridays. And so there was a real sense last week that all the papers were getting in in anticipation of that Friday conference. And so I think, Mary, that's what's in the back of your head for this is the first sort of full day event.
after the conference. That they could be announcing and there's some urgency. And we'll talk about why I think that. But we got to get through like our opening remarks before we get to our substantive remarks. You're right. This is like the opening in a case where you're like, let me tell you what you're going to hear at the trial. And then let me talk to you again. Yeah, exactly.
The second thing is Judge Ngoran, which is the New York civil case that the Attorney General brought. He had said he was going to be issuing his decision and he did. And there is in total with interest that he imposed
There is an amount of about $450 million. By the way, that has been sometimes reported as only about $350 million, and that's because people have not been counting the interest. So it's about $450 million. At that end, I never do math in public.
but I'm going to do rough math, which is if you add 450 to about 90 in the E. Jean Carroll case, soon we're talking about real money. We are talking about some real money. Yeah. So it's about half a billion dollars. We're going to talk about that decision and sort of what's next. And then, of course, we had Judge Merchan last week denying Trump's motions to dismiss the case that the New York D.A. Alvin Bragg had brought forward.
The very first criminal case brought against Mr. Trump almost a year ago for a number of false business records relating to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, which was really an effort to keep her from talking during an election and potentially hampering Mr. Trump's
campaign back in 2016. So it really is an election interference case that people like to call a hush money case. But it's really about efforts to prevent that information from getting out. So that's set to go to trial in late March. And then, of course, we'll talk a little bit about the hearings last week down in Fulton County, Georgia, involving the district attorney, Bonnie Willis, and
a special counsel that her office had appointed, Nathan Wade, and the motions to disqualify Ms. Willis. So, so much, so much to cover. Okay, Mary, I'm already tired and I'm just listening to the intro. Okay. And we already have our producer saying, you know, you're almost out of time on the first issue. And we're like, wait a minute, we haven't started the first issue yet. Okay. So this is, this...
basically, my producer probably is sitting there going, Andrew, snap a doodle. Snap a doodle. Yep. That's our new word around our house, too, by the way. Okay. Snap a doodle. No anecdotes. Get to the substance. So Supreme Court.
Mary, go. What do we expect today? And you're going to say, why are you thinking it might be this morning or this week, certainly? Yeah. So you may recall last week, all that had happened when we recorded is Mr. Trump had sought this stay. And he sought a stay because the D.C. Circuit had said, we're going to send the mandate back to the trial court to go ahead and
Put the trial back on schedule unless you go to the court by last Monday, February 12th, and seek a stay pending your petition for cert. So, of course, Mr. Trump filed that on Monday. We talked about it Tuesday. The court, the chief justice, gave the government a week to file its opposition. But Jack Smith, of course, did not wait a week. He filed his opposition much, much earlier than that.
And then immediately, even though they didn't have to file a response that quickly, immediately Mr. Trump came in with his reply. So that entire briefing got compacted down to just a few days. And as you were just previewing, Mr. Trump's attorneys filed their reply brief on Thursday night, knowing that the court would be meeting for conference on Friday. And I think thinking, wow, they don't want the court to rule on this just based on Jack Smith's opposition. They want to get their reply in and make sure that's in front of the court.
And because we know the court met on Friday, and frankly, I think the court has had ample time to figure out, does it want to take this case or not? I think it knows that based on having already, I mean, I know the court's busy. It has other huge cases, but still they're not oblivious to what's happening in the world. And I think they probably were well aware of
you know, this issue as it percolated up through the district court and the D.C. Circuit. And, you know, they've looked at these pleadings and I think they probably all have an opinion about whether they want to take this case or not. So I think some of us thought they might make a decision Friday. I also thought it was possible
that one or more justices might be wanting to write something. So if they decide that they're going to just grant the stay, they could also treat that motion for a stay like a petition for cert. In fact, Jack Smith specifically said in his filing, "We think you can deny this, even though we told you it was very, very important
Back when we sought the Supreme Court to take the case even before the D.C. Circuit, remember, Jack Smith wanted to leapfrog the D.C. Circuit. He says, even though we told you how important it is, we're not saying it's not important anymore. We're just saying the D.C. Circuit got it right. You just denied cert once before. Now there's even more reason to deny cert because the D.C. Circuit got it right. And importantly, you don't have to agree with everything the D.C. Circuit said.
in order to deny cert and deny the stay. You can just agree that in a case like this, where the crimes charged are related to an effort to stay in office and overturn the votes of the American people and extend your term in office beyond when it should have ended,
This is all you have to decide here. That in a situation like that, you don't get immunity from criminal prosecution. One of Trump's points that he sort of harps on both in his moving papers and in his reply papers is very much, you know, Jack Smith, this is what you had previously wanted to take, how this go to the Supreme Court. What happened? You know, you were saying it's such a big issue. I would make the same point if I were them. But there's such a good answer, which was that was about speed.
That was like, you know what, we need to jump this forward because of the need to have a result. And so the natural response is there's a very good court of appeals decision that addressed this issue.
It's a frivolous issue in many ways, certainly, as you said, in the context of this case. So there's nothing inconsistent about speed. They got it right and the speed is there. And so I think that was sort of an important issue. The other quick thing is that some people have taken to task. Why didn't Jack Smith say why? Why didn't he give a reason for why this is so important to do quickly? And Trump is saying, what's the big deal? Why take it so quickly? Of course, because he's thinking, I don't want to have the facts in the trial come out before the election.
But I didn't see any reason why, I mean, Jack Smith should be faulted for saying that the American public should have its day in court. I mean, there is this Speedy Trial Act actually requires the public's interest to be one of the considerations. The trial court actually already factored that in and picked a trial date. And essentially, Trump, especially his reply brief, is basically trying to get the court to reconsider
Judge Chutkin's decision about the trial date. I mean, just directly says, what's the big deal? It shouldn't be this fast. She's rushing us to trial. That's not technically at all what's before the court. He's saying this is all political, right? That's essentially what Trump is saying. And the fact is that, you know, everyone knows and appreciates the significance of why it's important to move with alacrity on this. It's true that Jack Smith does not tie it in his papers to the election, but we all live in this world and
And it's obvious that we're talking about allegations against Mr. Trump that, if proven, are hugely significant to the future of sort of governance in this country and what's coming up. So I think everyone understands that, including the Supreme Court. I think to the point I was
developing up to about why it might be taking a few extra days is that, again, the court could decide to go ahead and grant the stay and grant cert right based on the stay petition. They don't have to wait and have a whole briefing. Mr. Trump wants a whole briefing. Give us a chance to go first brief up a petition for rehearing on Bonk in the D.C. Circuit so that the full D.C. Circuit can hear. Then after the
after they rule, give us a chance to file a petition. You know, I don't think the Supreme Court's gonna go for that. So they could grant the petition, but even if they deny it, it could very well be that one or two might want to write a dissent from the denial, and even that those who concur might want to write some sort of limiting statement like Justice Kavanaugh did when they denied certain the Trump v. Thompson case, explaining something like the point I just made, if they agree with it, which is that this is not saying, we're not saying
by denying the stay that we agree with everything the D.C. Circuit said. We're not saying that there would never in any circumstance be immunity from criminal prosecution for a former president for things done within the scope of his special acts. We don't have to decide any of that here. All we're saying that in this case on these facts, we're denying the stay and we'll see. I mean, I'm obviously speculating. There was a very, I thought, powerful amicus brief, friend of the court brief,
from our friend, Judge Ludig, and several others from six previous Republican administrations, making that very point, which is Supreme Court, you don't have to agree with everything. But here in a case like this, it's so obvious and important that he not have immunity. And by the way, one of the things, Mary, that you're raising just to be in law school class for a moment is this tension as to when a court, particularly the Supreme Court, writes big
and writes a general rule that is for all time's sake, basically, and isn't really thinking about the limits of its decision as much. It really is laying down a rule for people to follow that happens a lot. For instance, the Fourth Amendment, one of the things I teach very...
Versus something you're saying, which is a lot of times the court says, look, we don't need to think about all of the various applications and all of the parameters of what we're doing. What we are thinking about is this specific factual scenario. And yes, we do have to think about how it could be applied, but they try and write narrowly.
And there's a way for them here to deny hearing the case and say, look, don't overread what we're doing for all purposes. But it certainly applies in this situation. That's one of the arguments that Jack Smith made.
So, Mary, I love the prediction. So, you know, basically at 12 o'clock tonight, expect a little email from me saying, what the hell? Yeah. Oops. What the heck? Let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll turn our attention to what's been happening in New York City, Trump's civil and criminal cases.
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Welcome back. So, Andrew, since you are the inveterate New Yorker, let's... I mean, I just got to talk about the stuff happening here in D.C., so time for you to talk about what's happening in New York. Huge, huge ruling, like you indicated in the intro today, $450 million in disgorgement of ill-gotten gains ordered by Judge...
and Goran. Walk us through the highlights of that. And I think there were some very choice words in this lengthy 92-page opinion. And what's going to happen next? Sure. So, by the way, I love that you're calling me an inveterate New Yorker, because when I lived in D.C. and I was telling my friends, you know, well, it's an inveterate New Yorker
A friend of mine who is a New Yorker looked at me and said, not anymore, Andrew. Oh, that was just a temporary. Yeah, that was like a cut to the quick. I was like, time to get back. Yeah.
So, judging Goran, what was before him, if you remember, is he'd already found on the first cause of action against Donald Trump and various other people and entities. And so he had six other causes of action. He found liability with respect to all of those six causes of action. Five were with respect to Donald Trump himself. So it's a total of six causes of action. Why is that particularly relevant? Some people might be like, why do you need more than one? It
It's because those additional causes of action actually required higher showings that you need to reach different elements, such as you needed to actually have intent to defraud, which wasn't required for the first cause of action. And Judge Ngorun found that. So he found liability with respect to Donald Trump, both Don Jr. and Eric Trump, Al
Allen Weisselberg, Jeff McConaughey, who had worked for the Trump Organization and various Trump entities. He also found various amounts of disgorgement. As you said, Mary, if you count the disgorgement and the interest, it came to about $450 million. There were various amounts also with respect to disgorgement of Allen Weisselberg's, a million dollars from him for his severance agreement, which the judge found to be improper.
about $4 million each with respect to Don Jr. and Eric Trump. So various amounts. Those are all things that in that part of the judgment, within 30 days, if nothing else were to happen, within 30 days, that is enforceable, meaning that the plaintiff, the attorney general's office, could start to enforce
force that. They could find assets, they could seize assets. In this case, because there's a monitor overseeing it, they could actually force sales if nothing else were to happen. That's unlikely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I'm so safe. But it's important to know. Yes, that's how things work in the ordinary course, right? Right. That's sort of running in the background that something has to happen or in 30 days it's enforceable. There is one aspect, though, that is an injunction that is in effect
Immediately, right? When the decision came out, it enjoined Donald Trump in various ways. And one of the things that it said is that he's enjoined from taking out a loan, new loans with respect to banks that are either chartered or registered in New York.
That's huge.
And in order to have this not go in effect, there are a number of things that Donald Trump could do. But one of the things is he either can put up all the money now while he appeals the decision. He obviously can appeal the decision. That's not an issue. But if he doesn't
put up the money or a bond, it is enforceable. Right. Unless you get a court to somehow change that. So he either has to put up the money, and I'll relate this to E. Jean Carroll in a moment, that decision, or he has to find a company that puts up essentially what's called, I'm sorry, what's called like an appeal bond. Yeah. And what that is, is that I find a company that says, you know what,
If I pay you, this company, X million dollars, that company will put up the money for me for a fee and with collateral. But Donald Trump has probably, because of his loans and a personal guarantee, I've worked in this area. There are all sorts of restrictions when you take out a loan. You have put liens on property. You have covenants about what you can and cannot own.
post, if you've got liens on property, you can't use it for a secondary purpose. So if you're a bank, you're going to be like, wait a second, that collateral's for me. That's not for somebody else. So I'm not willing to relinquish my lien. Also, sometimes when you get out a loan, a bank will say, I want collateral, but I also want to guarantee that you're going to keep a certain amount of cash on hand.
So there are all sorts of restrictions when you take out a loan, like in a business context, like Donald Trump. And he gave a personal guarantee. So this relates to anything he can do. So it's not clear to me that he will either be able to put up the money or be able to find enough
collateral and a company that's willing to put up this bond. And so the other choice is finding a third party who is willing to do this for him. And there's nothing that prevents a third party, friends, family, foreign friends, Elon Musk friends. So the issue there is if it is a third party, somebody who is running for president and then could be president could be enormously beholden
Yep. To that person. I mean, to the tune of we could literally be saying... Hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes. And we could be saying, hey, Mary, I can give you half a billion reasons why Donald Trump is going to be favorable to... My company, my country, right? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So if you're MBS or Saudi Arabia or some Russian oligarch or Elon Musk, you might be thinking...
Hey. Yep, that's right. Time for me to swoop in and be the savior. So that I think really tells people really clearly sort of like the financial aspect of what he's got to do to appeal. But I want to come back to the injunctive relief. So.
Injunctive relief is a permanent court order, right, preventing somebody from doing something. And you already talked here about what Trump's being prevented from doing. Or sometimes it's telling them they have to do something, right? So it's equitable. It's not usually about money. It's about like stopping behavior or requiring certain behavior. And to do that, a court has to find that you're likely to continue to do this bad thing. And it wasn't just this thing you did in the past. It's never going to happen again. But you're likely to continue to do it. And that's why they have to issue an injunction. Right.
And I think some of the most impactful language in judging Goran's opinion is when he is talking about why he's issuing injunctive relief. And he talks about a number of things, including the Trump organization and Donald Trump's history has been so replete that there's no reason to think they're going to stop inflating assets now. But another is when he has a couple of paragraphs on refusal to admit error. And I think this was just really so important.
powerful. He talks about how Trump and the other defendants, their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They're only accused of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin. Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernie Madoff. Yet defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.
Instead, they adopt a see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil posture that the evidence belies.
And that's so interesting to me because he's actually saying this is not the crime of the century. It's very significant to the financial markets and to New York. And so I'm entering a big judgment because you did reap the benefits of your fraud and your falsity. But like, come on, guys, why did you have to come in here and essentially lie? Because you did it. And this is why I have to enjoin you, because you still won't admit you did anything wrong. So I have every reason to believe you're going to keep doing it.
Yeah, so I couldn't agree more that that was sort of striking to me because he does bar Donald Trump for three years from essentially running a company in New York. Why? Because of exactly what you said, which is that he couldn't be trusted to do that.
In addition, when he can run a company, it's required to have not one but two oversight personnel. So essentially a compliance monitor and an independent monitor to babysit him. And if you step back even further to what does this mean, you have a judge after a full hearing, after actually hearing from Donald Trump, hearing from all of his witnesses, direct and cross-examination, putting in all of the evidence saying, you cannot prosecute.
be trusted to run a company in New York for three years. And even after that, you cannot be trusted to do it on your own without oversight. This is the man who is asking the public to run our country for four years. That's right. To elect him to run our country. Yep. So the contrast between a judge saying the rule of law or facts and law matter saying you cannot be trusted to run a company in New York wants to yet
be the leader of the free world, run a country for four years. I mean, an enormous discrepancy between what is happening in the courts and what is happening in the court of public opinion. Yeah, absolutely. So should we take another break? Yes. And then we'll quickly talk about the criminal case in New York before moving on to Georgia. Love it.
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Welcome back. As promised, quick hit on the other big thing that happened last week in New York. Remembering almost a year ago, the very first criminal indictment against Donald Trump was brought by the district attorney in Manhattan, Alvin Bragg.
And for all these many months, it's not like nothing's been going on, but it's been kind of quiet in terms of public hearings and filings that we've spoken a lot about. But folks may remember that the trial date that had been set in that case was March 25th. Then there had been some discussions when Judge Tanya Chutkin in D.C., who's presiding over the January 6th related case, set her trial for March 4th and told people she had talked with Judge Mershon. And D.A. Alvin Bragg had also come out and said, look, my case could yield if
this other case goes forward in early March. Well, obviously, that other case is not going forward in early March. That would be less than two weeks from now. So Judge Marchand had a hearing. He did a couple of things. Importantly, he denied all of Mr. Trump's motions to dismiss the case. You know, we've been talking about motions to dismiss in the January 6th-related case a lot.
But there were motions to dismiss. In fact, some were similar type motions, including a motion to dismiss on the grounds of selective prosecution. The judge denied all of those motions and said, we're going to trial on March 25th over the post
vociferous protestations of Mr. Trump's attorneys that this was unfair, this wasn't enough time to prepare, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, by the way, as you said, Mary, just to make it clear, that date was not something that was not already on the books. That's right. Donald Trump and his counsel knew that date was still there. The
The only issue was whether it would get put off because of the D.C. trial. So when they knew the D.C. trial wasn't going to happen, which they did, this was a distinct possibility. But anyway, there was one small aspect of the motions that Judge Merchan ruled in favor of Donald Trump. There are various theories for why this is a felony versus a misdemeanor. And he rejected one of four theories, meaning there's still three theories that the state can go to the jury on.
But one of them related to Karen McDougal, he said, was not sufficiently presented to the grand jury. It shouldn't make a big difference. And we can get into the details of that when we really dig into the trial. But just to be clear on what you're talking about here, for the spalsification of business records to become a felony means you have to be doing it with the purpose of either committing another crime or concealing a crime. So that's
where we have various theories of what he's trying to conceal. Election, campaign contribution limits, or tax laws, or other things like that. Obviously, if and when this gets ready to kick off trial next month, we will deeply dive into that.
Last thing I'll say about Judge Marchand is that in this written opinion, denying the motions to dismiss and making the ruling you just explained, Andrew, he does express how important this case is. I mean, I think people sometimes just say, oh, that hush money case. And he says, while it is true that the charges involve the lowest level felony and no one suffered physical harm, it can hardly be said that the allegations are not severe. The people claim that the defendant paid an individual $130,000 to
conceal a sexual encounter in an effort to influence the 2016 presidential election and then falsified 34 business records to cover up the payoff. In this court's view, those are serious allegations. And that is not word for word, but that is the exact same sentiment that Judge Hellerstein, a federal judge, found as well when he rejected Donald Trump's effort to take the case federally.
So you have two judges, a federal and state court judge, saying this is serious. These are serious felonies. I think that's just, again, very notable. Should we talk about Fannie Willis? Yeah. And I was just thinking here, saying the word serious. I would say that the motion to disqualify Fannie Willis is far less serious. It
It's a motion, but the evidence to support disqualification certainly seems, based on last week's hearing, to be lacking. But I'm not sure people would understand that because it was kind of explosive last week. Yeah, I think there's like a legal piece and there's a factual piece. That's right. So legally, I can really understand why people are like, this is like apples and oranges. It
Who cares who she's sleeping with? What does this have to do with the guilt or innocence of the defendants? It just seems like a sideshow. And there is a ton to support that. One of the givens here, though, is that the judge has said what he is concerned about is the issue of financial benefit. In other words, it's not about an affair directly. And
And it's not just him saying, that's what I care about. That's what the law is, right? You only have a conflict of interest if you've got an interest, like a financial interest or a personal interest or something like that. Yeah. Of course, the financial interest isn't really in whether there's conviction or not. It's like the allegation is so, seems so strange when...
which is that because Fannie Willis was having a personal relationship with a special counsel, somebody hired from outside the office to come in. So there's a contract. Whether she had a relationship before that or after that is somewhat irrelevant. It's just a question of were they going Dutch? Yeah. When they were out spending money, was he using money he got from her office to enrich her and for her benefit?
And of course, he's not destitute beforehand. And so there's no sort of like... And neither is she. Right. So this isn't like he's using the money that he got from the contract as the only thing he's ever earned in his life. And the idea that this is being done for some... Like, if you had to look at intent, there's no way in God's green earth that she's doing it for that reason or he's thinking that. I mean, it just seems so preposterous. And also, the amounts are so trivial when you think about Harlan Crowe.
And like, it's impossible not to think about Harlan Crow and like vast amounts of money going to Supreme Court justices who still sit on cases. So that the apples and oranges of all of this and the tawdryness of it is something that's really hard to fathom in terms of what they're put through. So I come at this as that this is a sideshow. And I don't really understand the law here as to like how it allows this process.
This increase seems so frivolous and so far is uncontroversial evidence that they roughly split things.
I do think that areas that I would keep an open eye for sort of whether defense can actually prove it is whether there is more evidence about when their relationship started. Because, you know, there is a conflict of witnesses. You have Fannie Willis and Mr. Wade saying it started after Mr. Wade was hired. You have a witness who they've said is disgruntled, which doesn't, by the way, mean that she's telling the truth or lying, but she may have a motive. But you can also be disgruntled and tell the truth.
That's right. But she says it happened before. And the issue is whether there's more to that. There is apparently text messages by Mr. Wade's friend and lawyer. But there is, according to the defense, they think may undermine the issue of when the relationship started.
Again, a bit of a sideshow because maybe it would now show that somebody was less than candid in court, but it's really not all that relevant to the issue of the financial component, which is what the judge said he's really concerned about. There was one question put to Fannie Willis that I'm going to be interested to see whether the defense has more evidence, which is she said, I basically did the true up of making things even with cash. And the issue isn't so much that she had cash on hand. Her father said that she had kept cash
There's no contrary evidence. There's no reason to disbelieve that. But she said, I didn't use Venmo or a cash app because I wasn't sure whether he had it. And so I'm going to be keeping an eye out for whether because the defense seems to have access to his divorce filings, again, very tawdry that they do, but whether they can sort of show that he used a cash app.
Big picture, though, I don't think this is going anywhere unless facts really change. This seems like a really, I won't say frivolous, but it should be denied. Yeah, there could end up, I mean, the part you were just getting at about when this relationship started, again, the relevance here is if they had a relationship,
intimate romantic relationship before she hired him, the theory would be that means you purposefully hired him so that you could pay him so that then he could use that money for you guys to go on fancy trips to Belize and Aruba and Napa Valley, et cetera. And you would benefit yourself from that. If you just play out what that means, I mean, that's a lot to have to go through to take a couple of trips. Totally.
Totally. And it has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the 19 people, four of whom have already pleaded guilty in the RICO election interference case that she brought. But if it were to be determined that she or Nathan Wade lied on the stand about when that relationship started, that would be very unethical.
harmful to them as attorneys, you know, with their bar in Georgia and their future as attorneys and their ability to continue to practice. So, you know, it again has nothing to do with the criminal charges here. And Bonnie Willis, I think pretty rightly said, I'm not the one on trial here. It's the 19 people who were charged with crimes that are going to be on trial. Again, four have already pleaded guilty. But there are things that, as you say, as a factual matter could be significant. They just don't really have to do with guilt or innocence.
Obviously, if the court were to find that there was this financial conflict, that she purposefully pick mixed or weighed in order to reap financial benefits, that might support disqualification. But that's where the judge right now seems to be thinking, I'm still not here. He said it a few times. That's what I'm focused on. Where's the financial conflict? Bring me that evidence. And that's where it seems like they're lacking.
So I think the thing now they're going to argue about whether Mr. Bradley, this is Mr. Wade's former partner at his law firm who became his divorce attorney, whether he actually can testify or whether that attorney client privilege prevents him from testifying.
And then after that, I guess Judge McAfee will issue a ruling. So we're right now on hold, I think. Yeah, and just quickly, the attorney-client privilege issue is a little complicated because this is a friend who was also Mr. Wade's divorce lawyer. So information he might have
through Mr. Wade about who he was or was not sleeping with and when would be the kind of thing that a divorce lawyer would be interested in, in terms of representing him. And so that kind of information would be covered by the attorney-client privilege if it was said in the context of seeking legal advice and representing him. On the other hand, if Mr. Bradley was saying it because he observed Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade together in a
in a way where he could draw a conclusion as to whether they were having a relationship, that would not be attorney-client privilege. So this is an issue where a judge can see things and hear things sort of off-camera and then can make a decision. It's a little odd here because, of course, that judge is also going to be the decider of the facts.
So he's going to be exposed to it. But presumably he then makes a decision about the evidence in the record that is admissible. So keep an eye out for what he does there. But I have trouble with the law here. I have trouble with the standard. I think it just seems so irrelevant to the criminal case. Yeah. And whether there are other consequences, I actually don't think the record's terribly good for the defense, even for other consequences as of now. So, you know, I
I can understand why people are sort of like this. It seems like a sideshow. Having said that, Mary, there's so much that we're going to keep our eye on. Absolutely. Because there really are, I can't really even say there are three balls in the air. There's just a ton of legal proceedings. I have a feeling we may be getting that decision any moment from the Supreme Court that you were starting us off with. So I'll talk to you very, very, very soon, hopefully. Yep, you bet.
If you've got questions, you can leave us a voicemail at 917-342-2934. Maybe we'll play it on the pod. Or you can email us at prosecutingtrumpquestions at NBCUNI.com. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week with much more. This show is produced by Vicki Vergolina and Jessica Schrecker.
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