0:00

Hello

0:03

and welcome to an emergency edition of this

0:05

late political gab fest.

0:07

June 9th,

0:16

2023, the Trump

0:18

is indicted again edition.

0:21

I'm David Plotz in Washington,

0:23

DC. I'm joined by Emily

0:25

Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine

0:28

and Yale

0:28

University Law School from New Haven. Hello,

0:31

Emily. Hey, David. John is on TV

0:33

right now because we're talking right

0:35

after Jack Smith's little statement. And

0:38

so John is not able to join us. But you and I will

0:40

talk about the extraordinary events of the

0:42

last day. We

0:45

taped a gab fest yesterday. And

0:47

of course, we anticipated that something

0:49

would happen. And now that something has happened.

0:52

And a reminder that we have a live

0:54

show coming up this month, the end of this month, Wednesday,

0:57

June 28th at sixth and I historic

0:59

synagogue here in Washington, DC at 730. We

1:01

are going to do a

1:03

great live show. We have

1:05

a special

1:06

guest planned. We're not quite ready

1:09

to announce it, but it's a great special guest. And

1:11

you can get your tickets at slate.com slash gap as

1:13

live and slate plus members

1:15

who get a discount. So go get that discount

1:18

and come cheap. And you can also stream it if you

1:20

can't make it to DC.

1:22

There's streaming available so you can watch

1:24

it live. Again, slate.com slash

1:26

gap as live for our show on Wednesday, June

1:28

28th.

1:31

Emily,

1:32

special counsel Jack Smith unsealed the

1:34

indictment of President Trump

1:36

for his handling of

1:39

classified documents and his attempt to

1:41

withhold classified documents from

1:44

the

1:44

government when they were requested. And

1:47

it's an indictment that is largely about

1:49

how President Trump tried to

1:51

withhold the documents. It's partly about his

1:53

possession of the documents. And there's a whole

1:56

bunch of charges, more than 30 of them. And

1:58

some of those charges are about the. documents themselves that

2:01

he withheld when they were requested and that

2:03

he hid. And a lot of it,

2:05

a lot of the charges are also about the

2:07

fact that when the US government came

2:09

to him and demanded that he return these

2:11

classified documents that were not allowed to be in his

2:15

possession, he declined to do

2:17

so. He said he

2:19

was doing it, but then engaged in a conspiracy

2:22

to withhold the documents. Having his valet,

2:25

Walt Nada, move these

2:27

documents from one place to another, lying

2:30

to his own lawyer about whether he had turned

2:32

over the appropriate documents and then only turning over a fraction

2:34

of the documents while holding back

2:37

a ton of the other ones. And it's mostly

2:39

that conspiracy to withhold

2:42

documents when the federal government came calling

2:44

for them that

2:45

former President Trump is being charged with. Yeah,

2:48

it's willful retention of national defense

2:50

information and conspiracy to

2:53

obstruct justice and then making false statements.

2:56

And there's a smoking gun here, which we

2:58

had gotten news reports

3:00

of earlier, which is

3:03

that Trump was on a call with a couple

3:05

people working on the biography or I guess

3:07

the memoir of his former Chief

3:09

of Staff, Mark Meadows, and he was bragging

3:11

about having classified information.

3:14

He made it clear that

3:15

he knew it was supposed to be a secret. He was

3:17

telling them about it. And he was telling

3:20

them to settle a score with General Milley.

3:22

He wanted to show that it was General Milley's idea

3:24

to attack Iran, not something he'd been

3:26

pushing for. I don't know if that's actually true

3:28

or not, but he claimed that's what the documents

3:31

said. And in that exchange,

3:34

which is caught on tape, it's clear that

3:36

he knows exactly what he's got. He knows he's

3:38

not supposed to be sharing it. And

3:40

it also gives us a clear motive for what

3:43

he was doing, which I've been wondering about this whole time.

3:45

Like why did

3:45

he hold on to all of this stuff? And now that just

3:48

seems much more understandable. Not

3:50

only clear what he was doing, it's clear that he also knew

3:52

that one of his defenses, that people have

3:54

posited for him, that he had retroactively

3:57

declassified everything, that he knew that it

3:59

wasn't true.

3:59

He admitted that he couldn't declassify things now

4:02

that he was no longer president, and therefore that

4:04

is a defense of what he was doing that

4:07

was not going to be a tenable defense.

4:08

Yeah, it's really damning. And

4:10

then there's another instance in which he told someone

4:13

who was representing his political action

4:15

committee that he had documents

4:17

he knew were classified, and he made moves

4:19

to kind of share

4:22

them, less detail about that, but also

4:24

evidence that he was showing people things that they

4:26

weren't supposed to see and that he knew that's what

4:29

he was doing.

4:30

But what is amazing about this is it

4:32

is really overwhelmingly not

4:35

the retention of the documents that he's

4:38

been charged with. If it turned out

4:40

that he had just turned over everything

4:42

when the government asked for

4:45

it in the spring of 2022, if he'd

4:47

just gone ahead and turned over the 200,

4:51

300 plus documents, confidential classified

4:55

top secret documents that he had,

4:57

it would be fine. They would have let it go. There still would

4:59

have been crimes that he committed. He still shouldn't have

5:01

shown those documents, but it is clear that

5:03

the reason he is in so much trouble right

5:05

now is that he thought

5:08

he could

5:09

lie to prosecutors. He thought he could lie to

5:11

his own attorney, and

5:13

he thought he could lie to the FBI.

5:17

You can do that sometimes, but you can't do that when

5:20

you're talking about matters of national security, I think.

5:22

Yeah. I mean, two other things. He didn't

5:24

just lie to his attorney. On other occasions,

5:27

he asked his attorney to obstruct justice.

5:29

He said, like, well, wouldn't it be better if there was

5:31

no secret information

5:32

here? There were no documents, right? Wouldn't it be better

5:34

if there were no documents? Can't you make this go away

5:37

in effect? The second thing

5:39

is, I'm okay with that distinction

5:41

you just drew between I was

5:44

the president, I took some documents I wasn't

5:46

supposed to take, but oh, I realize now

5:49

you want them back. Here they are. I'm

5:51

okay with that because we're learning

5:54

in the process of all this and in

5:57

the process of the investigations into

5:59

Biden's retention.

5:59

mention of documents, and Mike Pence's

6:02

had a couple things he wasn't supposed to have. I

6:04

don't think it's totally obvious what you're supposed to

6:06

leave or take. And these are

6:09

highly trusted public officials while they're

6:11

in office. I think it's fine for the government

6:14

to not bring criminal charges

6:17

if you took some things you weren't supposed to have,

6:19

but you give them back when you're asked.

6:21

And it's the flagrant flouting

6:24

of that part of the law

6:27

and that part of our understanding of the role

6:29

of a former president

6:29

that's so remarkable

6:32

here. Whoa, more breaking

6:34

news, GAPFEST listeners. John Dickerson is

6:36

actually able to join us. John just got off the air

6:39

at CBS, and he is

6:42

now here with us. So I lied

6:45

earlier. We do have John.

6:47

John, you've been marinating this

6:50

since it happened last night. What

6:52

do you make of the indictment now

6:54

that you've had a chance to read it?

6:56

Well, I'm glad that I've had a chance to read it because

6:58

it's so irritating in these moments where

7:01

people rush in and make claims for an indictment and

7:05

you don't have the facts of the case. So now we have an indictment.

7:07

What strikes me is that there is a central actor

7:10

at the center of the stage with

7:12

at least five instances of obstruction,

7:15

and that central actor is Donald Trump.

7:17

And this is not an instance in which a

7:20

few pages with over

7:23

classification wandered into

7:25

the memorabilia of the White House.

7:27

This is an orchestrated

7:29

attempt by the president, former president,

7:32

at regular turns to

7:34

keep this information one step ahead of the people

7:36

who were looking for it. And that undermines

7:39

his larger claim among the ones he makes

7:42

that he had some broad declassification power

7:44

and that he had a right to have this. He knew he had no

7:47

right to have it. And the indictment also outlines

7:49

the way in which he used the information. This is incredibly

7:52

sensitive material that, as Jack

7:54

Smith pointed out in his very brief press conference,

7:57

is the most sensitive information that that

9:50

himself

10:00

and he behaved

10:02

wrongly in multiple different instances.

10:04

I don't know, even though the evidence

10:08

is pretty powerful, and

10:10

the fact that Jack Smith said so little at his press

10:12

conference suggests that the indictment will

10:14

do the talking for him. Sometimes

10:16

they say, the more you talk, the less you say. Well,

10:19

when you say so little, maybe it means because you've

10:21

said a lot in your indictment. I don't see how

10:23

they can get around. But we've said that before.

10:26

We've said that before. We've said that before. I

10:28

know. I know. Exactly.

10:31

And also, that's in fact, as we've also said

10:33

before, that's in fact why it's so hard

10:36

to condemn something because the thing you

10:38

end up condemning, and this is something the candidates

10:40

running against for President Trump are wrestling with in

10:42

the campaigns, is if you say that

10:44

he has fatal flaws

10:46

of character, then the question

10:48

is, well, when did you notice those fatal flaws of

10:51

character and why are you only speaking up now?

10:53

So the things that you might condemn him

10:55

for in this indictment would be

10:58

of a piece of behavior that goes back

11:00

to the Mueller report. The Mueller report charged

11:02

Trump with obstruction. It said it

11:05

didn't charge him formally, but it said

11:07

that he had not been exculpated

11:10

of obstruction and that it was a decision

11:13

that was based on, I think, and Emily,

11:15

you can correct me if I'm wrong, that Mueller's

11:18

reading of whether you could go after

11:20

an actual sitting president. But my point

11:22

is that obstruction has been in

11:24

his toolkit for

11:27

a long time. So if you don't like

11:29

it in this case, why didn't you like it in the

11:31

previous ones is one of the things that would hang up

11:33

anybody who would try to get off the

11:36

train at this moment.

11:37

So this is the case of the many

11:39

potential prosecutions of Donald Trump that lawyers

11:41

like the best, right? It's very clear.

11:44

It seems buttoned up. They have

11:46

a lot of evidence. They laid it out clearly. There

11:50

are charges that seem to very neatly apply.

11:53

And also bonus points for getting

11:55

the indictment sealed today rather

11:57

than having days of an asymmetrical PR

16:00

narrator actor figure

16:02

in every single thing that happened in

16:05

american politics and then there was

16:07

this there was a brief reprieve from it

16:09

in the sense like okay well there's some kind of

16:11

normalcy the republican party can

16:13

move on and the fact that they haven't moved

16:15

on has been so depressing and that it's returning.

16:19

So hard i hope what you're saying

16:21

is right i hope what you're saying is correct that there are

16:23

that there is at least a pool people who are just like

16:25

i don't want the michigan's.

16:27

I'm not gonna go vote for biden i can't

16:30

stand kamala but i'm not

16:32

gonna return to this craziness

16:35

that would be great. I mean also look this

16:38

is a federal indictment it

16:40

lays out criminal charges

16:43

it's very detailed about a series

16:46

of moves that trump and his

16:48

valet made that. We're

16:50

clear i mean there's just no way to read

16:53

it and not thinking think that that trump

16:55

was deliberately trying to conceal this information

16:57

he shouldn't have taken with him he

16:59

knew he didn't have the power to declassify.

17:03

He knew it had potent secrets and he didn't give

17:05

it back when they asked over and over again

17:07

like that is not hard to understand

17:09

you. Emily do you think that trumps

17:12

lawyer that evan korkrin

17:14

do you think he went to the.

17:16

Prosecutors i was like please please

17:19

pierce the attorney client privilege. You

17:21

just like. This guy's

17:23

committing crimes he's trying to drag me into his crimes

17:26

please no i don't think so because

17:28

that would be a really bizarre thing for a lawyer to do

17:30

because lawyers are supposed to put their clients interest

17:32

first unless. We

17:35

are in the land of what's called the crime

17:37

fraud exception in which a client

17:39

is trying to use the lawyer to commit a crime

17:41

or that's what trump is a key

17:43

but you have to still it's so ingrained

17:46

in lawyers that deeply that they

17:48

are supposed to keep. Client communications

17:51

privileged and confidential i can't imagine

17:53

that korkrin like waved his hands

17:55

up and down for the justice department i think the prosecutors

17:58

came after him and then one.

17:59

the judge ruled, like, yeah, you can

18:02

pierce the attorney plan privilege here, then he turned

18:04

over what he had.

18:05

Although notwithstanding what you just said, I felt

18:08

like the voice notes he was taking for himself,

18:11

maybe this is an insurance policy. But I

18:13

mean, I feel like if you work for the

18:15

former president, you're taking a lot of contemporaneous

18:18

notes and voice notes and maybe even recordings

18:21

because

18:22

you kind of think maybe someday it might turn around

18:24

on you. Oh, absolutely.

18:26

That part, I think the insurance

18:28

policy aspect and maybe

18:30

some inkling that you're kind of recording

18:32

this craziness for history. Sure.

18:34

I'm just quarreling with the idea that Corcoran

18:37

would have volunteered the information. That's all. Yeah.

18:40

I mean, there's no question that it was incredibly damning

18:42

that he took those voice memos. And if you're truly

18:44

like the lawyer for someone

18:46

who, you know, the classic mafia

18:48

lawyer does not take detailed

18:51

voice memos. That's not how you do

18:53

it on Better Call Saul.

18:54

Well, if he does it, he does it

18:56

once. And

19:00

never more. Before we go, actually, before we

19:02

go to our quick second topic, I should say, what

19:05

is the likely schedule of legal

19:08

events now that there's an indictment?

19:10

Oh, man, I don't know, except that Trump is

19:13

turning himself in or whatever they work out

19:15

on Tuesday surrendering. But

19:17

we should talk about Judge Cannon. I mean, this

19:20

case got assigned to one

19:22

out of the 15 judges in

19:25

this federal district in Florida. And Judge

19:27

Cannon drew the straw. And she is the same judge

19:30

that gave these incredibly favorable

19:32

rulings to Trump when the government was first

19:34

trying to investigate. Rulings that

19:36

got overturned by the appeals court that

19:38

just seemed honestly kind of bananas

19:40

in terms of her read on the law. She

19:43

is a Trump appointee. It's going to be really interesting

19:45

to see if the

19:47

knockback she got from the appeals court

19:49

makes her more cautious this time. Is

19:52

a trial likely to happen before the election

19:54

if there's going to be a trial? I can't really

19:56

imagine that because you can just drag

19:59

these proceedings.

19:59

out for such a long time. And they're going to file

20:02

Trump's lawyers, whoever's left. We should

20:04

also note that a couple of his lawyers quit

20:07

today, Friday. Or were encouraged

20:10

to quit. Have

20:12

exited the scene, have tipped off

20:14

into the distance. I wonder if they got paid or not.

20:17

Yeah, I mean, it just seems like

20:20

whoever's representing Trump will throw

20:22

every single, what's

20:24

the metaphor, throw every snowball you can possibly

20:27

throw into this case. And that

20:30

it's going to be important for the courts to show that

20:32

they're taking all those claims seriously

20:35

and considering them. And I don't

20:37

know if this case is going to stay with Judge Cannon or not.

20:39

But whoever is holding on to it

20:41

is going to have to be a model

20:44

of judicial rigor. And so I would just

20:46

assume that they'll be able to stall it out. But

20:48

I don't know. It's pretty far away, the 2024 election.

20:50

So we'll see. Oh

20:52

my god, it's far away. Why can't it be tomorrow?

20:57

There's a year and a half of this left, good

20:59

lord.

21:02

The hearing will come to order. Good

21:04

morning, Judge. Welcome to the Blinding

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23:35

Emily, let's do a twofer. Why

23:37

don't we do a twofer? Let's do a second topic

23:40

here. You're our Supreme Court expert. And

23:42

of course, also after we taped yesterday, there was a huge

23:45

Supreme Court decision in the Alabama

23:47

Voting Rights Act case. What

23:50

did you make of the fact that

23:52

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh joined

23:54

with the liberals to

23:56

rule that an Alabama redistricting

23:58

map was a dissipation?

23:59

discriminating against black voters.

24:01

Well, I was just as surprised as everyone

24:04

else. I did not predict this at all. I

24:06

do think that Chief Justice Roberts is amazing

24:08

at pulling out of his back pocket,

24:11

some result in every term

24:14

that makes it seem like the court remains

24:16

even handed. And Milligan,

24:19

Allen versus Milligan, this case looks like

24:21

the candidate for this particular

24:23

term.

24:25

I was also really struck by

24:28

Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence because

24:31

he just really clearly laid out

24:33

what he thought the court was doing.

24:36

So first he starts off with this famous precedent

24:38

about section two of the Voting

24:40

Rights Act and explains why the

24:42

court should hang onto it so that essentially

24:45

this

24:45

part of the Voting Rights Act is gonna live to see

24:47

another day. And what it means

24:50

practically speaking is that states

24:52

are gonna have to continue to be careful when they

24:54

draw maps that they're not racially

24:57

gerrymandering. It looked like maybe

24:59

the court was just gonna kind of get out of the business

25:01

of policing racial gerrymandering,

25:04

absent evidence of intent to racially

25:06

discriminate, but they're not.

25:08

And what's interesting is that

25:10

the reason they're not or a major

25:13

reason is that they tried to

25:15

have an intent test years ago.

25:17

And then in 1982, Congress amended the

25:19

Voting Rights Act and they actually rejected

25:22

that intent test. And so what you have here is

25:24

like a real dialogue back and

25:26

forth between the branches of government and the court

25:28

is continuing to respect that.

25:30

What this decision does not do though, Emily

25:32

Wright, is it's not

25:34

a rebuke to gerrymandering broadly.

25:37

I mean, I think we have lots of gerrymandering

25:40

problems in this country. Well, we have a problem that A, lots

25:42

of people have sorted themselves so they have

25:44

chosen to live in different areas, but this

25:46

does not solve the problem of

25:48

this partisan gerrymandering that is going

25:51

on in wild

25:53

ways in state legislatures,

25:55

particularly in

25:57

purplish states, in Wisconsin

25:59

and North Carolina.

25:59

in Pennsylvania where we've seen

26:02

that as a real

26:04

heavy-handed tool to entrench

26:07

minority power for a

26:11

party that

26:12

may have only a bare actual majority or

26:14

maybe no majority at all. Right.

26:16

So this only applies in the context

26:19

of a claim of gerrymandering on the basis

26:21

of race, not partisanship. And

26:24

that's because the Voting Rights Act only addresses

26:26

racial gerrymandering. So the court

26:28

has a statute here. It's interpreting. It was

26:31

interesting, though, they did a lot of, well, they didn't

26:33

do a lot of math, but they talked about statistical

26:36

analysis in this opinion and

26:38

addressed the fact that, you know, obviously now when people

26:40

are drawing new districting maps,

26:43

they use millions of computer

26:45

simulations are possible.

26:46

Right. You can configure the map any

26:48

which way. You can throw the voters all

26:50

over the place. And so the court

26:53

is grappling with how you decide

26:55

whether a state has crossed the line

26:58

into an impermissible racial gerrymandering

27:00

when there are so many possibilities on the table.

27:03

And

27:04

I kind of think that in

27:07

acknowledging that there are all these possibilities,

27:09

but as long as you have some possibilities

27:12

that allow for preserving

27:14

the power of a racial minority while also

27:16

doing things like keeping a city or a township

27:19

together, what's called a community of interest

27:22

by acknowledging that balancing, there

27:24

is

27:25

an avenue toward addressing political gerrymandering

27:28

here because it's the same problem. But

27:31

in previous political gerrymandering

27:33

decisions, the court acted like that was an impossibility.

27:36

And so that will remain the law.

27:38

That's our special edition. It feels like if we're,

27:40

if we do a special edition every time

27:43

Trump is indicted, we could be doing, maybe we should

27:45

just have a whole special edition edition

27:47

because they're going to be, he could be indicted at least twice

27:49

more in the next couple of months. Oh

27:52

my gosh, it's true. I thought

27:54

you were kidding. And then I realized

27:57

actually, not, that's not, that's

27:59

incredibly plausible. Not

28:01

kidding. Mark Meadows and others

28:03

who have testified

28:06

in the documents case are key players

28:08

with respect to January 6th as well. So,

28:11

you know, that and then of course, Fulton

28:13

County is the other thing you're thinking about.

28:15

Can I ask you guys one more question? Does anyone

28:17

want to pour one out for Walt Nauta, the

28:20

valet in this position? I mean, he lied to

28:22

the FBI. That's not great.

28:24

He's being charged with making his own false statements.

28:27

Do you feel sorry for him?

28:29

I see a really good point. I think

28:31

that poor Walt,

28:33

you can imagine people saying, you know, this

28:35

is the cost. Basically, this one poor guy

28:38

who's having to pay for Donald

28:40

Trump's behavior. I wonder if that changes the way

28:42

this

28:44

cuts for people. But yeah, poor guy.

28:46

And I wasn't quite sure whether he,

28:49

whether that was basically a part of the

28:52

process of Trump basically

28:54

hiding the documents from his own lawyers. But

28:57

I haven't quite figured that out yet. Or if it's

28:59

proved in the indictment. I'm not sure. I'm

29:01

not sure whether I feel sorry for him yet

29:04

because we don't know quite enough. But

29:07

I mean, going to work for President

29:10

Trump,

29:11

it's

29:12

a long time we've known the character of this man,

29:15

a long time we've known who this person is. And

29:18

to make that choice to work with someone who is

29:20

of such low character is a choice. And

29:22

I don't know. I mean, he, Walt

29:25

Nauta may be a wonderful person and

29:27

he may help every like damaged

29:30

frog get across the highway and, and,

29:34

you know, have a home for widows and orphans

29:37

out back. But you work with Trump at your

29:39

peril. And we all know that.

29:49

That's our special edition for today. It was produced

29:52

by Shannon Roth, our researcher is Julie Hugin. Ben

29:54

Richmond is

29:55

senior director for podcast operations

29:58

and Alicia Montgomery's VP of audio for Slate.

30:01

We'll be back with a regular

30:03

episode. Unless Trump isn't dated again next week.

30:06

Who knows? Maybe we'll be back Monday, maybe over the weekend.

30:09

But otherwise, till then, I'm David Plots for

30:11

John Dickerson and Emily Gosselin.