Trump’s trial dates and primary schedule could put country in ‘unchartered territory’

Channel: MS NOW

Transcript

Language: English (original, Whisper AI)

[0:00] Joining me now is Paul Butler. He's a former federal prosecutor and an MSNBC legal analyst

[0:03] who along with, and by the way, also with us is Jennifer Rubin. She's an opinion writer for

[0:08] the Washington Post and an MSNBC political analyst, the author of the book Resistance,

[0:12] How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump. Welcome to both of you. Thank you for being

[0:16] with us this morning. Jen Rubin, this makes us wonder whether the only way to deal with

[0:23] Donald Trump and prevent him from becoming the next president of the United States,

[0:27] short of people voting that way in November, is some sort of a political answer, something

[0:32] that the Republican Party does as opposed to something that the courts do. What's your sense

[0:37] of it? Well, they are headed for, just as you said, Ali, the map that you pointed out is critical.

[0:45] He could well wrap up the nomination and then be convicted. The most likely scenario is that he

[0:51] will accumulate a majority of the delegates either on Super Tuesday or shortly thereafter

[0:57] when that criminal case begins. Jack Smith has an excellent case. The decision that you referenced

[1:04] from Judge Chutkin kind of puts him on a guide path to that trial. I don't think the D.C. Circuit

[1:11] is going to overturn. They, as you noted, in a parallel civil case rejected this immunity defense.

[1:16] And I don't think the Supreme Court is going to get involved at this stage. So that means he's going

[1:21] on trial in March, could be convicted by or maybe even after the GOP convention in the summer.

[1:30] And then what do they do? Do they have a backup plan? Do they have a plan B? I don't think so. So

[1:36] the person he chooses for VP may become very important, or they may need to think about some

[1:41] mechanism by which the candidates or perhaps the body at the convention kind of do a redo in

[1:50] the convention. So we are really headed for uncharted territory here.

[1:54] Paul, let's talk about a couple of things that Jen just mentioned. First of all, she says,

[1:58] I don't know that the Supreme Court will get involved. It's 2023. I never know about the Supreme

[2:02] Court. On the other hand, we do know that the Republican primaries and caucuses that I laid out

[2:07] are dates that are pretty much set in stone. The court dates are not dates that are set in stone.

[2:13] And there's some discussion amongst legal circles that there may be valid reasons why Tanya Chutkin

[2:20] may grant the Trump team some delays in the federal trial, the Jack Smith trial, so that that may not

[2:26] actually get started first. We may actually be into July or August and the Georgia trial before we get

[2:32] to that. What are your thoughts on that? I think of the four trials, the one that's most likely to go

[2:39] first remains the federal election interference case right here in the District of Columbia with Judge

[2:45] Chutkin. Judge Chutkin wrote a scholarly learned opinion this week that was written in order to

[2:54] withstand the inevitable appeal. So this was about the issue of immunity. Trump has been making this

[3:01] extreme claim that he can't be sued in civil court or prosecuted in criminal court for anything that

[3:10] he did when he was president. Two different courts shut that argument down this week. And I agree with

[3:17] Jennifer. I don't think the Supreme Court is likely to take up that case. What I am more concerned

[3:22] about, though, is this upcoming opinion about the gag order. I think that there's a good chance that if

[3:28] Trump loses that, that the Supreme Court would take up that case. And the Supreme Court moves on its own

[3:36] schedule. And so it's possible that if that couldn't be resolved until after the, before the

[3:43] election, that even the federal election interference case would happen after the election.

[3:49] You called Judge Chutkin's ruling scholarly and learned. It's also remarkably accessible. People

[3:55] know I'm sort of partial to reading these things, but it's a very easy read. And I would recommend to

[3:59] my readers, my viewers, that you go out there and you read this. It's 48 pages and it lays it out

[4:04] very, very clearly that being president is not a get out of jail free card for after your president.

[4:10] If you committed crimes while president or not while president, you are the same as everybody else.

[4:16] Jen, last week you wrote an op-ed titled It's Nikki Haley or Bust for the GOP. I just want to read a

[4:22] little bit from it. The question is whether if she managed to topple Trump, she would break with the

[4:27] MAGA cult of personality, decline to bow and scrape before Russian President Vladimir Putin,

[4:32] decline to weaponize the Justice Department against her enemies and return to some version of normal

[4:38] Republican politics. All indications suggest that, yes, she would refrain from subverting

[4:44] constitutional democracy if she somehow won the nomination and went on to win the presidency,

[4:49] end quote. I had Stuart Stevens on yesterday who said otherwise. He said she's not, she does not seem

[4:54] prepared to fully stand up to that Trump cult of people who believe that the 2020 election was

[5:01] overturned. Are you fairly certain you think that she'd go back to the normal Nikki Haley that we knew

[5:05] as governor of South Carolina? Well, we can speculate all we like. The proof would be in the

[5:13] pudding. But here's the problem that she would have. Even if she personally doesn't think that Trump

[5:20] lost the election, she doesn't believe in a lot of this hooey, consider the party that she would be

[5:25] riding into the White House on. If she wins the White House, there's a good chance that the House

[5:30] and the Senate would be in Republican hands as well. So she will be under tremendous pressure.

[5:36] So perhaps the real question is not whether she would break with the MAGA Republicans if she had

[5:41] her druthers, but what that dynamic would be between House Republicans, the Mike Johnsons of the

[5:47] world, the Jim Jordans of the world, and Nikki Haley, who might, should she have her druthers,

[5:54] want to return to some normal politics. So I think it's an open question, obviously.

[6:00] I tend to think of those left in the race. She's probably the only one who could possibly beat

[6:06] him. Ron DeSantis has essentially crashed and burned. There's no one else who's rising up.

[6:12] So it's either going to be Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, or, you know, they're going to have a chaos

[6:19] at the convention. So buckle up. Well, when you talked about who is vice presidential candidate,

[6:24] as I immediately thought, you know, Vivek Ramaswamy is really running for that job. So if Vivek Ramaswamy

[6:29] becomes a vice presidential candidate and Donald Trump goes to jail, we might, you know, hold

[6:32] different set of pickles. Paul Butler, let's talk about Georgia, Scott McAfee, the judge there,

[6:38] Steve Sadow, Trump's attorney, who made the argument that any kind of trial, if Trump is

[6:45] campaigning to be the president of the United States, this trial would at best start in July

[6:50] or August and maybe later. Trump might then be the nominee or at least might have enough votes to be

[6:55] the nominee. Any trial then would constitute election interference, which means he couldn't

[6:59] have a trial until after the election. But if he were to win as president, he couldn't have a trial

[7:04] until after he was president, putting the start date of the possible trial in Georgia at January 20th,

[7:11] 2029. Don't know what Judge McAfee is going to do about that, but didn't sound like he was he was

[7:17] taking the bait on that argument. So it's certainly not the case that this trial would count as

[7:24] election interference if in fact it happens before the election. What is probably correct is that if

[7:32] Donald Trump wins the presidency and the trial in Fulton County hasn't started, it wouldn't start

[7:39] until after he left office. And I think the judge knows this, and I think the judge is trying to

[7:45] rush this trial. We know that four of the 19 defendants have pled guilty. It's quite likely that

[7:52] many, many others will also plead guilty. Finally, Willis has suggested that she won't accept a plea

[7:58] bargain from Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, or the former president. So we could be looking at really

[8:04] just the three of them in a trial. And I think it's quite possible that that could happen before

[8:09] the election with a concerted effort. Really interesting that Judge McAfee suggested that

[8:14] Fonnie Willis and Jack Smith who ordinate, especially on discovery issues. Right now there's a court order

[8:21] preventing the lawyers in the federal election interference case from sharing documents with

[8:26] anybody else. Judge Trunkin might allow that sharing, which would allow both federal election

[8:32] interference and Fonnie Willis' trial to proceed more quickly.