Jay Weber Show transcript 7-19-23 SEGMENT 1 6:10am
So...it looks like a 3rd indictment is coming against Donald Trump, this one associated with the January sixth riot and Trump’s alleged attempt to overturn the election results and I say ‘alleged’ because he was clearly working to delay the certification of the election, but he can insist that it was in pursuit of a recount or more accurate results in critical states-that he and his team wanted to explore.
And so- was he really trying to overturn a legitimate election? Or was he just trying to pursue an accurate result?
Did Trump break any laws? Or are we going to get vague ‘election tampering’ claims as he and his team went about working their strategy to delay?
I believe part of the case hinges on that question: what was Donald Trump doing behind the scenes? Was he trying to delay certification of the election?
Or was he trying to generate fake results and-thru some slippery scheme- overturn the election after the states had confirmed their results?
I think that makes a big difference in whether anything was criminal here: was trump fighting hard-legally? Or breaking laws to rig an outcome?
And if prosecutor jack smith’s burden of proof is to prove the second scenario-then he’d better have a lot of conclusive proof.
Otherwise- if Merrick Garland and Jack Smith- and Biden’s DOJ- are going to bring criminal charges against trump for election tampering or ‘attempted insurrection’....and all they have as proof is a perfectly acceptable speech trump gave that day- they’re going to lose the case.
Clearly- smith, as the investigator, believes he has enough evidence to make a convincing case. And so, what does he have?
We won’t know until it’s leaked.
Normally, we wouldn’t know until the actual indictment came down and the court proceedings started-but everything related to the left’s effort to smear and convict Trump is leaked early to their accomplice media-
And so- within a day or two- at least some of the additional evidence that jack smith has against trump in this case will be leaked.
Trump announced that he’d received a target letter from smith and Biden’s DOJ on Sunday night-and called this a witch hunt and election interference in his 2024 campaign.
There are a couple of factual errors: Trump is not dominating Biden in the presidential race- sadly-
And he did not reject Merrick Garland for the supreme court. Mitch McConnell did. Obama nominated him. McConnell never gave garland a confirmation hearing. Trump never had a say in it either way-
And so that’s simply more trump puffery.... but Trump is right about the rest.
And a target letter is what you think it is: it’s simply a notification from federal prosecutors that you have been targeted for a federal investigation and should preserve your documents and lawyer up.
Johnathan Turley was rushed to the Fox news set when this news broke yesterday morning ...
As Trump indicated-this target letter almost always means arrest and indictment. It also always means that the feds already have what they consider overwhelming evidence and a ready to charge you-
But- in one last test to see how stupid or arrogant you are-they invite you to come and explain yourself to the grand jury.
Every attorney worth his or her salt is going to say: you don’t accept the offer to appear. It’s a trap. An ambush- as a former US attorney for Florida says.
Grand jury rules are different than rules in open court-and you cannot have your attorney representing you in the room. At best-he or she can wait outside-and you can ask to talk to them before you answer a question if you choose to-but Jonathan Turley says -in general- people dumb enough to want to testify in front of the grand jury don’t do that, either, because they are urgently trying to explain themselves or ‘get out of this’ and don’t understand that-with their answers-they are simply digging themselves in deeper.
So-even Donald Trump- who is generally arrogant enough to try to pull this off and talk his way out of it- isn’t dumb enough to testify in front of this grand jury. He already knows jack smith and the feds have set up an ambush. Why walk into it?
Still- Jonathan Turley says smith and his team must have more evidence of ‘inciting a riot’ or ‘trying to overturn an election’ than just the speech Trump gave that day-because that is protected speech and there’s no case related to it.
And what smith plans to charge trump with isn’t clear: is it insurrection related? Or election tampering related?
I assume its election tampering related, given that Smith’s team has run around and interviewed every swing state election official that they could find-including three here in Wisconsin.
Smith interviewed the head of the Wisconsin election commission, Megan Wolf, in April...and he interviewed both the Madison, and the Milwaukee city clerks, too.
He went right to the democrat-friendly sources to ask whether they think Biden did something illegal related to 2020s results here.
What a shock.
How is this possibly a fair investigation?
But- smith is clearly looking at potential obstruction charges. He’s investigated rumors that trump had a plan to seize voting machines. He’s investigated the ‘second set of electors’ schemes.
If this was a normal prosecution I would be-certain-that smith has more than enough evidence to convict- or he wouldn’t even bring the case.
But since these indictments have reeked of politics- I’m not willing to say that.Neither is Johnathan Turley, who says, in general- if you are going to charge a former president with these sorts of crimes-you’d better have the goods. And a mountain of them-
But even Turley admits- Jack Smith does not have that reputation.
And there’s no timeline for charges- or when smith might have to bring them. It could be tomorrow- or in 2025. The indictment could be right around the corner-or months off. But it’s most likely that charges are close-because the ‘target letter’ is often the final step before the indictment drops.
And trump has already been federally indicted by this same prosecutor for his alleged mishandling of classified documents. So that case is percolating.
Then there’s the April indictment in New York court over a ‘falsification of business records’ case that is so weak that virtually every reasonable lawyer and prosecutor says it shouldn’t have been filed.
This is NY’s jag of a district attorney trying to use a ‘novel’, totally silly legal route, to claim hush money payments to stormy are somehow a violation of campaign finance laws.
That case won’t go anywhere.
But then there’s also the state of Georgia case in which Trump could be charged-again- with crimes related to election tampering.
A Georgia prosecutor who wants to ‘get trump’ has been building a case related to his attempt to reverse a 12-thousand vote deficit in Georgia and flip their election results.
Again- whether he did anything illegal in pursuit of that- and whether ‘intent’ can be proven is questionable- and so- it isn’t thought that that’s a very strong case, either.
But these two federal cases- on mishandling documents and on January sixth- have the potential to be very serious, depending on the quality of jack smith’s evidence...and how much of it he has.
I know politics is at play here-but I cannot imagine that garland and Smith have- zero evidence- of election tampering...but are going to plow ahead with charges, anyway.
I must believe that Smith at least has something that is going to shock the sensibilities of voters- if he’s following thru with actual charges.
But again. This is all hyper-political, so we’ll see
Jay Weber Show transcript 7-19-23 SEGMENT 2 8:10AM
I talked earlier about how- it looks like a 3rd indictment is coming against Donald Trump.
This one associated with the January sixth riot and Trump’s alleged attempt to overturn the election results- and it comes from the same prosecutor who is sitting atop the ‘mishandled document’s case.
This is Merrick Garland’s appointed ‘special prosecutor’. He leapt to appoint one to go after trump, but still refuses to appoint one to investigate President Biden and his corrupt family criminality.
And so, we know this is a politically motivated witch hunt. We know that this wouldn’t be happening to any other former president or presidential candidate-
We know this is about ‘destroying trump’ and making him unelectable to a second term-even as the indictments anger the republican base and virtually assure, they will make Trump the GOP nominee-
This is absolutely the strategy here.
But...it doesn’t mean that trump isn’t in some genuine legal jeopardy, here.
It doesn’t mean that Smith’s lawyers cannot ‘prove to a jury’ that Donald Trump violated laws when he kept documents or tried to delay the election results.
We have no idea what sort of proof they have-or how they will present it to a jury-when it comes to this latest case.
And...
I know politics is at play here-but i cannot imagine that garland and smith have- zero evidence- of election tampering...but are going to plow ahead with charges, anyway.
This guy’s team has spoken to everyone from mike pence and Bill Barr to election officials in Georgia and Wisconsin and other swing states-and has investigated every strategy that Donald Trump floated to delay the certification of the election...including the so-called ‘second set of electors’ schemes.
And since trump has already been indicted on the document’s charges....it has me believing that if smith is following thru with actual charges here- he has at least some narrative .... something he will use as evidence that he believes is going to shock the sensibilities of voters- and ‘prove’ trump broke laws.
but everyone on the hill- and everyone who isn’t a naïve Pollyanna- knows that this is all politically motivated.
Greg-give us Kevin McCarthy’s take on this-when the news broke yesterday.
That comes from a Fox segment in which Brian Kemp-the Georgia governor who has fought with Trump -and been smeared by him- over the election results- was on set-
And even Brian Kemp said- this is clearly politically motivated. The January sixth commission has already investigated all of this-and for all of their hype and hyperbole-they couldn’t point to any laws Donald Trump had broken.
And as Johnathan Turley said earlier: jack smith really must stick the landing if he’s going to bring charges of election tampering or conspiracy to commit insurrection against a former president. He’s got to have a mountain of evidence- or this is silly-
Was Turley’s suggestion.
Meanwhile- Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley were characterized as ‘bashing trump’ following this news and insisting that it is why the party needs to move on-
Actually- only Nikki Haley did that. DeSantis defended trump and said he did nothing criminal, and this was all political theater-
But he said it after offering a mild criticism of how trump handled himself that day-on January sixth-and so all the trump haters hopped on him before they heard the total statement.
It is going to be a pathetic mess of a primary and general election that never does hold Joe Biden accountable for a disastrous first term-because most GOP voters are going to fall for all of this ‘trump drama’...and walk right into the democrat’s trap.
But DeSantis didn’t even say: the party needs to move on past trump. He defended Trump against the indictment.
All DeSantis did was state another obvious truth: that Donald Trump didn’t do enough to quiet or quell the riots...because he seemed to love the drama he was watching on tv.
DeSantis backs Trump against ‘weaponized’ DOJ: ‘I hope he doesn’t get charged’
That’s an entirely defensible take from Gov DeSantis-who said- trump also did nothing criminal.
He said-what i see is an attempt to criminalize politics and criminalize differences.
And it is: the leftists are trying to make all sorts of things into crimes that amount to pushing back on their bullying agenda. If you use the wrong pronouns- that should be a crime.
If you disagree with the trans-agenda? That should be a crime.
Etc.
But as to how credible the charges are related to this indictment; we will have to wait to see-
Remember- jack smith handed down a bogus 37 count indictment on trump related to the mishandling of documents case-and they are all the same crime. Smith padded out a weak charging sheet-and it was embarrassingly obvious to most legal experts afterward.
Yesterday- Johnathan Turley- who is a democrat and a straight shooter- said that smith has the reputation for being ‘weak on the evidence’ while having a penchant for puffery and overcharging-
And he suggested- if that’s the case this time- it will be embarrassingly political.
If you view this as part of a larger political scheme to ensure trump is handed the GOP nomination by an angry voting base-but then is so damaged with the rest of America’s voters that he cannot win the election-
Well then, smith bringing an indictment with weak evidence-or no evidence-still makes sense: if the mission here is to engineer a damaged GOP candidate who cannot even beat Joe Biden-
Well then- Merrick Garland and jack smith don’t really need much evidence. All they need is something that they can-claim-points to trump criminality and lawbreaking-as they did in the document’s case.
Folks, it is the steady drip, drip of investigations that these democrats want...and that Garland and these other accomplice prosecutors are manufacturing.
The New York indictment by Alvin Bragg was such a joke that not a single lawyer or judge would take the charges seriously. Bragg jumped from state laws-to claims of federal election crimes-it’s a total mess.
But the documents indictment is considered more serious in legal circles simply because you are dealing with the feds-and simply because- yes- Donald Trump clearly had classified documents in his possession. The argument will be over when-and if-they were ever declassified...etc.
This case too deals with the feds. This new case, too, deals with the same feds-
And when the feds are involved, and they are eager to charge process crimes if you lie to them...etc.—
Well, any federal case is serious. And time and time again, we have seen federal cases ‘go wrong’ on notable or powerful or famous people. Because they think they can weasel their way out of something by lying or being cute to the feds.
There’s also the time, money, and distractions that these cases represent to trump and his campaign team. That too, is real. Trump can’t simply ignore these legal battles and let his legal team deal with them-as he could in the past with business deals and lawsuits...
And the drip, drip, drip will go on for the next year and a half-right up to the election- as every few weeks there is a new twist in one of these cases.
One of these-four! - indictments.
Good lord. It virtually ensures all the focus remains on Trump’s alleged misdeeds-instead of Bidens- right up to election day.
Unless.
Unless someone else gets the nomination.
story credit: NY Post, Mediaite
photo credit: Getty Images