all right kind enough to join us here to break down some of the legal news that’s been happening around the former president and the current president a
bunch happening in both spaces uh he’s the managing partner over at the paratory Law Group I met him recently at
CNN former legal counsil to former president Trump Timothy poor Tim joins us here on the podcast Tim Mike and Nick
thank you so much for hopping on with us of course you know Tim one of the things that was funny because a few weeks ago when you
and I ran into each other you you said something to me and I was like save that for the podcast so here we are we’re going to save it for the podcast we’re
finally here uh I wanted to First at a high level because I want to get into a bunch of the the legal news happening
around the former president and then some stuff that happened last week with the current but first for for our audience here that may not be familiar
with you maybe they’re not news junkies like Nick and I are in terms of consuming all this you’ve been on obviously the networks talking about
what you did for the former president and the defense around the mar Lago case can you kind of explain high level what
it is you worked on with the former president sure so I spent uh just over a year uh representing uh president Trump
and my responsibilities primarily dealt with the investigative phases of both
the January 6th and the maralago investigations uh and you know I got into it before the special Council was
appointed so back when it was you know the US attorney for the District of Colombia on the January 6 and then um
you the National Security division Mar Lago and then of course those all merged under Jack Smith but yeah the easiest
way to say it is you I was responsible for the exact opposite of you know the
other side of the Jack Smith right um stuff right well see it’s so much and
that’s why I’m I’m glad we have you on because there’s so many moving pieces to all this and I think people don’t understand Florida Georgia New York DC
like there’s so much to it so let’s start first with kind of where you were uh sitting with the former president
presid in terms of what you helping him defend on there was a recent uh as we’re recording this so it’s it’s happening in
parallel but there was the marago trial there was a discussion on the evidence uh a docket in the Fort Pierce Florida
there that the former president is in court for uh as of this taping like I said can you kind of explain what it is
that they’re maybe potentially looking at here from an Evidence perspective in front of Judge Canon sure I mean so
right now they have a two-day hearing on the on the classified information
portion of this uh case and so a lot of that stuff is is things that um you
obviously you can’t talk about publicly uh you know it’s it’s one of the complicating factors of a case like this
because when you are alleging that somebody you know willfully retain National Defense information um yeah
National Defense information is things that if disclosed would be damaging to National Security and
so that kind of clashes with the idea of having an open courtroom where some somebody is presented with the evidence
against them because you know they’re trying to prove that the evidence shouldn’t be disclosed um and so you
know really they’re dealing right now with some of the more technical motions on how to deal with the classified
information uh in that context Tim to that question though you just mentioned
the logic flaw in in presenting evidence that it’s actually not meant for public consumption correct but doesn’t the but
doesn’t the sort of the opposite also then work too like this is compelling enough that the fact that was still at
the residence despite an attempt of retrieval you know by the archives Department the fact that it wasn’t at
least it’s the case you know bring you know tries to Bear out the fact that was still at the residence is that
potentially something that you know the special council’s trying to present as like evidence in and of itself even
without the jury trying to look at a redacted document so it’s the difficulty
with that is what we’re talking about National Defense information you know the the chart is not withhold or you
know retaining classified information classification is just one person’s opinion as to what level of National
Defense information it is so that there are plenty of things that are classified that are not National Defense
information I can give you some examples you know from this case uh on that and then there there have been even
situations where there are things that are unclassified that probably should have been classified that would be
considered National Defense information so it really is one of those things that in order to convict somebody you have to
prove to the jury that you know what how damaging this would have been um so if
you look at the indictment you know they talk about how they recovered you know hundreds of documents with classification markings and yet they’ve
only charged you know 30 some documents as actually being National Defense information the vast majority of these
documents even though they had classification markings on them were not National Defense information um things
like daily schedule you know I’ll give you a perfect example um with the schedule that says tomorrow
the president is going to fly to Afghanistan to have Thanksgiving dinner with the troops highly classified really
don’t want the Taliban to know that the biggest juiciest Target in the world is about to fly over their heads but the moment he hits the ground
and walks out into the you know dining hall facility with all the cameras it’s
no longer National Defense information everybody knows that he’s there so you know there’s a lot of things that are
like that where very secret at the time but not so much in
retrospect and and so that’s really the issue is how many of these things you know really are still National Defense
information you know as well said it’s like an FBI special agent that came on the program told us it’s not how many
it’s what’s in it right and that’s really what matters um I did want to ask you and like I said there’s so much I
want to get into like a kind of a summation of all of this towards the end and where you think some of these will net out we’re going to have you put your
prognosticator cap on there but but first uh let let’s pivot real quick because there’s been some rulings last
week when you and I met at CNN a few weeks ago we were circling some dates that would happen on the calendar last
week and there was a couple that were really pivotal so first I would love for you to talk about the US court of
appeals in DC the ruling that they had against former president Trump about the president not having immunity can you
kind of explain what the court of appeals ruled on what case it applies to
and how does this in terms of a defense argument like does this kind of Po koh’s in what the president is doing give us
your summation of it sure so you know the argument was whether presidential immunity essentially bars the January 6
prosecution uh because all the allegations in the January 6 case are about things that he did while he was
president and it’s something that’s never really been tested as to what are the limits of a presidential immunity
and yeah in that case um you know the president’s lawyers took the position
that everything he does is immune and of course Jack Smith took the exact opposite position that once a president
leaves office nothing is immune uh and you know in that circumstance I think
what the what the court did was they took the indictment itself and they said
okay based purely upon the allegations in the indictment assuming that they’re true that an analysis of these facts
there would be no immunity uh and so and quite frankly the way that they did
the analysis I think that they’re right uh I think that they they did correctly apply it because you know what they did
was the indictment makes very clear that he was doing these things allegedly in
his capacity as candidate Trump as opposed to president Trump and that’s
always been kind of one of the um difficult points that you know we were looking at is that you know so many of
these things just if you change the perspective ever so slightly it puts everything into a very different light so on one hand you you go with the way
that Jack Smith has done it and you see it in the media all the time that candidate Trump was trying to overthrow
the will of the people and have himself installed if you change the perspective
just ever so slightly on that and you say that okay maybe he didn’t know that
he lost maybe he did believe that he won maybe he did believe that there was fraud that wasn’t being properly
investigated as president Trump somebody who under the Constitution is mandated
to ensure that the laws of the United States are Faithfully executed does he have an obligation to pressure the
attorney general and law enforcement to make sure that the will of the people was accurately
counted and so that that slight change in angle really makes all the difference
here because uh if he was really just trying to push to ensure
that the will of the people was accurately counted and he was trying to avoid certification of a inaccurate
counting then that could potentially be within his role as the chief executive
and therefore subject to privilege or uh immunity whereas as a candidate trying
to overthrow the will of the people there’s nothing that could possibly be considered legal or immune about that
and you know the difficult thing that the appell court had to deal with was that this was all done without the
benefit of a pre-trial hearing uh so they didn’t have an evidentiary hearing to really test any of this uh whatsoever
now there’s a couple of ways you could have done it you could have done it with a pre-trial evidentiary hearing or you could wait until after the trial is over
and say what was the evidence that came out at trial and does that show that immunity should have applied and so um
yeah I think that that’s probably you know if I were them that’s that would be the points that I would be hitting to
the Supreme Court right now and say hey they made this decision based on this but maybe an evidentiary hearing should
be held first and either way that ruling while it certainly says that the uh
prosecution can proceed at this stage it doesn’t preclude a potential argument
after trial that the evidence that came out differed from what the indictment
claimed and therefore immunity could apply I’ll be honest Tim as you mentioned that I’m a loss too I’m not a
legal expert obviously but this seems a little like we’re sort of trying to figure out what
was the initial interpretation of these laws versus in the Practical world you
know how where do we fall into and this the parallel I’m going to draw here is what’s going on in Colorado yeah from
what it seems to be is that we’re talking about a 14th Amendment with a particular section this case I think section three that doesn’t quite name
the president as a role for someone to be mindful of potentially um being eligible to run for office while being
involved in you know potential Insurrection you’re going to correct me all on this in a minute but is that what
we’re dealing with here that there’s just a lack of clarity from the founders or those who’ve written all these legal
documents that leaves this kind of room and if so is that just a case that it
was just never imagined we’d be in this situation or or was there some intentionality of leaving some room for
interpretation so that you know lawyers nowadays or in the future could continue to to try to make
sense of this well and that’s you’re you’re hitting it right on the head there because yes there’s there’s always
vagueness in these things I mean you can make you know very clear laws but those
you know then run up against facts where there are factual situations that are much more gray and yeah I think that in
the in the 14th Amendment context you know certainly you you are running into a situation where it doesn’t name the
president or the vice president you know why because nobody was even thinking
about that because Abraham Lincoln did not join the Confederacy uh it doesn’t clearly Define
what an Insurrection is because the the name you know the understanding of what
an Insurrection is was very very clear at the time it was you put on a gray coat you trade in the stars and stripes
for the stars and bars you pick up a rifle and you start shooting a guys wearing coats you know that’s that’s a very simple definition
of of insurrection so nobody really questioned if you a member of the Confederacy it it excludes the vice
president too and interestingly if you look the vice president at the time Andrew Johnson he was a former senator
from the state of Tennessee and when Tennessee joined the Confederacy he broke with his own State and he remained
loyal to the union and so you know that’s those are some of the reasons why
when they wrote the 14th Amendment they didn’t need to add those positions um
you know the flip side of it is just Justice Jackson you know raised some very good points there um where she was
saying isn’t this different because these are National positions you know
we’re afraid of the South Rising again and so we don’t want to have you know congressmen and Senators you know from
you know these these states where you will have you a Confederate congressman from a deep south state but
when it comes to the president and the vice president that’s a national election and so you a small you know
insurrectionist state in the South can’t dictate who the president’s going to be because the north gets a
say so it is that’s another possible reason why they did that but you you’re
right and it’s one of the reasons why if everything was so clear and you know not
open to interpretation I would be totally out of work my profession wouldn’t exist it’d
be very simp simp right and we’d be out of work too because we’d have nothing to talk about here I mean quick break from
our pod to tell you about a new POD at fresh roasted coffee Envy pods so if you
go to freshroastedcoffee.com my partner shaking his head that’s a gr change this what are you are youing me
it was good no I shook my head I was like that’s brilliant thank you thank because I saw I saw this picture earlier
I was like I saw I saw what you’re doing it is pretty good that’s right so listen the new Envy pods over at Fresh FR
roasted coffee.com the official sponsor of can we please talk environmentally safe compostable you can go check these
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freshroastedcoffee.com today use the promo code can we get 20 for 20% off
your first order or hit the link in our show details but Tim you’re doing a great job because because uh like I said
there’s so much to this and I feel like voters are truly not understanding it and it’s what I love about what Nick and
I do not the tutor on horn but podcast format is better to kind of explain and get a little bit more in the weed so I
did want to ask you as you were mentioning all of that and and obviously we know the president has been the
former president excuse me has been traveling to a bunch of these places you know with the Georgia RICO case with the what’s happening in New York he had a
Civil Trial now he’s uh potentially with Alvin Bragg’s case whatever happens with that he’s in Fort Pierce Florida for
this um I want to ask you kind of a two-parter here first did any did you
when you were serving on his legal team did you guys have any Communications or were you looking at like a calendar
holistically to say look we may be up against this uh in terms of a date wise where he could have a conflict he our
client would have to travel to and from different states kind of give us the background of what that looks like you
know what that war room kind of looks like and then the second part of this is where do you see some of this stuff
shaking out because every television segment always ends with a look at the political calendar and his legal
calendar but nobody has been able to really kind of outline or articulate I feel like like you do of where they
actually see it shaking out because they weren’t in on the inside right where you actually were making a projection so
kind of give us the Insight of what it was like working under him and the coordination between some of the legal
teams if there was any and then on the flip side where do you see some of this stuff shaking out before November well I
so the answer to your first part of the question is actually very simple because I left the team um about a month before
the indictments came down so uh we were not really looking at the schedule
because quite frankly I mean one my goal at the time was to make there be no indictment
you know we we were trying to convince meric Garland not to pursue these things
and so um trial calendar was something that was you know very far outside IDE the scope of my view at the time uh as
to like where do I see it shaking out now you know one of the interesting things here yeah I try a lot of cases
some of which are you know pretty uh politically sensitive but um none that
involve an active candidate you know that’s kind of a very unique situation you have right here because usually when
somebody gets indicted they drop out you know or they’re or they’re in a
jurisdiction where they have you know so much support that reelection is not
really as big of an issue um you know like you know Senator
Mendez so you know having that calendar is a very unique thing and you I know
that everybody kind of looks at it as oh he’s trying to delay it and he’s trying to push it out past the election but I
look at it as I have never had a federal criminal case this complex
with this volume of documents that ever comes close to a trial date within two
years it just doesn’t happen you know I I have a I have a case right now where
the the number of documents the sheer number of documents is on par with the
January 6th case that was indicted back in
2018 we still haven’t got to trial Okay so the idea that you can take
a case with over a million do documents in Discovery and pick a jury in Under 12
months is crazy to me it goes directly against you know all of what we do in
federal criminal defense and so you know Jack Smith is really you know pushing
these things to get them done before the election in derogation of how these
cases normally go and and then turning around and saying look he’s he’s trying to delay it um and so you know look I
would be saying the exact same thing if you ask me you know are they trying to delay the hunter Biden trial past the
election yeah same thing these cases they just don’t go that fast you know
there have been very few instances I’ve had two cases where I’ve you know pushed for it to go that
fast and both times it was you know relatively simple cases and all of a
sudden I got up and I said okay my client invokes his right the speedy trial we want to you know try we want to pick a jury in the next two
months prosecutors fell apart and dismissed the cases in those situations
so it’s it’s not realistic to try any of these cases that quickly I appreciate
the reference to well I’m originally from New Jersey so gold bars Mendez is someone that is definitely part of the
chatter you know for my fine folks in the Garden State Tim is I’m originally from New
Jersey too actually what’s that I’m originally from New Jersey as well we can’t be blamed for you know saying this
um Tim as we’re talking about the former president I guess I’ll as this as
plainly as possible oftentimes doesn’t seem like he’s aware or understands the
ramifications of public sentiment in a case where it seems like ideally you
want to defer your lawyers from messaging am I misreading that or is Trump really the belief that the more he
can be able to basically put forward a his view in a public space like in social media the more that may
potentially work to his benefit even though he may potentially be putting forth information that for his legal
team of which you once were a part of may actually make your jobs
harder it’s it’s a unique situation I look um I got along well with my former
client you know and this is not a political statement this is just a person personal statement I got along
well with him I never had an issue with him um the problem is the people that he
is surrounded with and every other person that I’ve ever represented that’s had a
campaign the representation is always started out the same way they’d introduce me to the campaign and they
they’d say look you guys you’re here to get me reelected Tim you’re here to keep me out of trouble you guys stay the hell
out of his way Tim anything you need you give it to him and that and that was it it was very
clear lines from the beginning here um you know he has he has
the campaign he’s got you know the legal and you know one of the things you know I am
not a campaign guy I I refuse to take part in any of that stuff um you know
for either party I’m just you I don’t fit into either party I’m I’m nonpartisan uh you know to an extent and
so I don’t I didn’t participate in that all
I’m focusing on is should my client go to jail whether she go back to the Oval
Office is somebody else’s issue and you know so when you do have that you do have competing interests uh
and one of the unfortunate things is when you have people like this you have
competing interests of people that all feel like their opinions mean something and so you know in an Ideal
World you focus just on the case in front of you and you don’t have to deal with these other things uh then you
wouldn’t have all these issues with the calendar you wouldn’t have have the issues with the public statements you
wouldn’t have the issues with the competing cases you know this all of this would be
far simpler if you were able to strip out all the election stuff and just focus on
the facts evidence and law and what is Justice require I know that’s not a direct
answer to your question but that’s as that’s as close as I can come I I do I am compelled to ask you a followup to
that though Tim so what you’re just alluding to if I heard you correctly is that the candidate aside for a minute
can surround himself with some problematic people that can make a person like you have a harder time doing your job is that safe to say yes he wins
the election How concerned are you about those kinds of people possibly being involved in policymaking that is a political
question which as as a lawyer I’m staying out of think they welcome welcome to radical that’s a good lawyer
answer by by the way right there no and it’s fair but I I am compelled to ask because I mean it’s a good question I I
don’t I don’t blame you for asking the question but you know like I said I’m I’m I’m a lawyer not a politician and I
don’t I don’t want to even touch that well welcome to radical Central uh centralism if that’s a term here we just
coined it on C we please talk Tim I did want to ask Ben Franklin used to say I’m an extreme moderate oh I like that may I
have to take that oh on the Mast head here of the show Nick um Franklin never gets enough credit that’s a political I
did I did want to ask you real quick about um something I was mentioning to you before because I want to shift to the current president and you know
special counsel in his case of mishandling of classified documents a little bit different obviously in terms
of the cooperation but there was some damning stuff that came out of there and then on Meet the Press this past Sunday
speaking of a political show um his his co-chair Biden’s co-chair for his re-election campaign Mitch landra was
asked a question from kren Kristen Welker excuse me the host of Meet the Press I want to play the clip for you
here because I kind of want you to react because it kind of uh intertwines between what you were mentioning in
terms of campaign versus the legal analysis and legal beagle so take a listen to this we’re going to react on
the other side and just to be very clear the report didn’t say he wasn’t n engaged in any wrongdoing in fact it was
quite firm in the fact that he mishandled classified documents he just wasn’t indicted and criminally charged
but let me follow up with you the documents found in the president wait wait no CHR wait let me no no no no no no no you can’t no no no I’m not going
to I’m not going to accept that premise in an investigation a a special counsel determines based on the facts and the
law about whether somebody engaged in criminal wrongdoing and he found out that the president didn’t as a matter of
fact he’s the only special counsel that’s been engaged this kind of activity that had to say that he could
not indict somebody and that is that is a fact and so that’s the big takeaway from this report from a legal
perspective all right Tim is that the big legal takeaway from all of this because this kind of made news and
obviously the former pre excuse me the current president these Freudian slips are killing me Tim but uh the current
president gave a op pressor in right right president exactly right so you you
know what’s happening here so he he comes out after the special counsel gives you know a little bit of you know
the summation of you know the findings from the report but then no charges give us a little bit of a breakdown of what
happened there and then what his what Biden’s co-chair there said is he accurate is that the major takeaway from
this report from special counsel her so you know one thing to remember is
you know investigators they they come they do their investigations they come up with their you know
conclusions but there’s no due process in that okay this is a prosecutor who has conducted investigation and they
come up with you know what the allegations are that have to be actually proven in court um
so any special counsel or Inspector General anybody that comes out with a report saying somebody did do this you
know that’s not proven as of yet um and I would you know I’d say that about
anybody you know whether you know the current president form former president the the evidence in this case
appears very daming it does appear um you know that he did you know engage in
the willful retention and I think that the special council did a um a pretty good job of you know kind of
analyzing how does this go to trial okay because ultimately
investigators um you know like the FBI they’ll go through and they’ll say we
think this person did this the prosecutor has to then take it the next
step and say okay that’s great that’s certainly enough you know to arrest somebody is it enough to win at trial
you know can I convince a jury of 12 people Beyond a reasonable doubt that they did it so you have to consider
potential defenses and you know here he obviously you know laid heavy on the defense of you know mental
incapacity uh that the jury May believe that he didn’t intend because he didn’t know because he forgot um I’ll tell you
the thing that that really jumped out at me about this report uh is is I went
back to you know to my own work um in the marago case and we had written a letter um to the House and Senate Intel
committees um you know right towards the end right before I left where we did a deep analysis of how these documents got
out of the White House to begin with and we wrote it in a way way that was
applicable to president Trump President Biden and vice president Pence because the reality
is what this case shows beyond the shadow of a doubt what the Trump case
shows beyond the shadow of a doubt is that the white house does not have proper document handling procedures they
do not follow the same procedures that the Department of Defense follows that the intelligence Community follows and
so the reason why these documents left government control to begin with is
because of a failure of document handling procedures within that institution I would say that based on
reading that report it appears to me the documents got to marago because of
carelessness because it was a rushed transition and GSA packed everything up
real quick and moved them down they didn’t have any place to put them other than marago and so there’s no allegation
that anybody said hey I want to take all those classified documents with me all of the litigation that they’re going
over right now is based on what happened down there once the documents were found
now robur has taken a little bit back and said some of this may be that but
also some of these like the notebooks were things that you know his staff specifically told him know you can’t
take this but it wasn’t clear and so he he was allowed to take them anyway which
again is the type of thing that you would not expect coming out of the Pentagon or CIA
headquarters or anything like that although David Petraeus was in fact
charged and convicted for doing exactly that um so it does go back to the point
that we were making at the time before the marago charges came down that the
way to resolve all of these cases is by the legislature going in and
creating a solution of fixing the procedure within the White House they have actual
knowledge of a national security threat of an actual National Security
vulnerability that can be fixed focus on that instead of putting you know former
or current occupants of the White House in jail and if you look back in history
presidential records Act was passed during the Carter Administration it first applied to President Reagan every
single president from Reagan up through the present they have found a mixture of
classified and unclassified documents in the boxes after they left office every
single one they found documents in Joe Biden’s house they found documents in Mike
Pence’s house they’re too afraid to go look at Dick Cheney’s house you know it this is a problem and one that can be
fixed Jimmy Carter found documents in his house presidential records act didn’t apply to Jimmy Carter he found
them and he called the National Archive and said hey you want to come get these over 40 years we’ve known about
this problem over 40 years and so then you look at when the uh when the pr when the
transition happened and president Trump you know they have all these boxes out
on the driveway and the you know the National Archive director is saying oh I was very concerned seeing that on TV
because I thought you know those records should go to the National Archives no he knew that there were
classified documents in those boxes he didn’t say anything he let him go down to marago for the next year when they’re
going back and forth saying oh these are you know these are presidential records act documents they should be brought
back he never once says Mr President by the way I think that there’s classified documents in
your basement can I send somebody down there to go through them and just make sure that we’ve safeguarded classified
information never once in instead they waited until the
first set of boxes came back find that it’s the exact same mixture of documents
and by the way I went to the National Archives I went through these boxes myself they went through and they found it’s the exact same mixture of documents
that they’ve had in every single Administration up to that point and they you know run off to doj
say oh my God he’s got classified documents in his in his house it’s exactly the same thing that they’ve had
for every other Administration Joe Biden when they found stir finding documents in his house he had the benefit of
seeing what happened in Mar Lago he had seen the FBI raid marago and if I was his lawyer at the
time I would have sat down with him I said hey look dude here’s what we got to do you see what happened to Mar Lago we
are going to make a huge show of being different from
that we’re going to make a big drama about how you know compliant and helpful
we are so that at the end we can you can make
this speech saying look how compliant I was versus the other guy so I mean that that to me was
something that was you know really choreographed from the beginning by some very smart lawyers I give them a lot of
credit for that I think they did a good job and But ultimately at the end of the
day how you respond once you’re under investigation doesn’t mitigate at the
original act you know the the crime if there is a
crime in this case is committed when the documents are removed intentionally if
they are when they’re retained after you find them if they were and not how nice
you were to the investigators once they reach out to you that’s why we have you on that’s why
we have subject matter experts people that have been around this stuff have worked in it have worked on it have covered it are covering it Tim I can’t
thank you enough for hopping on the podcast with us and give us a couple minutes continue success to you sir and please stay safe all right thank you hey
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