--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm Georgia Howe.
John Bickley: And I'm John Bickley, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief. It's Saturday, August 19th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is The Federalist's legal correspondent Margo Cleveland. Hi, Margo.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: Hi, thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: First off, what's the top line takeaway from the indictment?
--:-- Margo Cleveland: I guess the big takeaway is that it's 99 percent garbage and the one percent that could be legitimate crimes is buried amongst everything and is very difficult to get a handle on. And that 1% would be lying to the grand jury and lying to the legislature, which is alleged in there, but it's buried amongst everything else. So it's hard to see exactly what those issues are.
--:-- John Bickley: Fannie Willis is a fan of racketeering cases and has brought another one here. What do you make of the charge that's applied to this case?
--:-- Margo Cleveland: Well, the RICO charge makes it complicated, and it also allows her to throw in everything that she does from what happened in other states to tweets to text messages. But the fundamental problem is the assumption that her RICO claim is premised on, which is that there was an attempt to unlawfully install Trump as president. So she is presenting as the underlying goal of this conspiracy to override the will of the people, as opposed to what was happening was Trump and other campaign lawyers, other Republicans were looking at legally challenging the election. and legally challenging the legislative branches, whether state legislature or Congress, to use what was being presented as a constitutional right to handle a tainted election And that is far from what she is claiming the bottom line of the conspiracy was
--:-- Georgia Howe: Interesting. Because one of the odd features of this case was the way Willis cited otherwise legal behavior. So, for example, Trump's tweets about the election. and she criminalized those actions as part of a conspiracy. Legally speaking, what's Willis doing here?
--:-- Margo Cleveland: Sure. So RICO is making the conspiracy illegal. And when you are charging someone with a conspiracy, you have to show not just that they had an agreement to do something illegal, but that they also undertook overt acts to further it. So if your conspiracy was a conspiracy to rob a bank, You can have the agreement to rob the bank, but to be legally criminally liable, you have to do something. And you don't have to do much, but you have to do what's called an overt act. So you have to do something to further it. It could be that you stake out the bank, that you buy masks, that you rent a car. So what Fannie Willis is doing is saying we have this conspiracy and then everything that was done to help this conspiracy is showing the guilt for the conspiracy. And that ties to the point I just made, which is the fundamental problem is the assumption that there was an agreement by Trump and others who knew he lost the election to nonetheless install him as president. That premise is wrong. There was no agreement because that was not what the plan was. The plan was to challenge the election results and to show that Joe Biden did not win the election. So if the plan is not what she says, all of these things in furtherance of it are irrelevant. So the tweeting is not illegal. Telling people to watch OAN, telling people that they should watch a hearing, none of that is illegal. But if there is a illegal conspiracy, then all of that is evidence that can come in to prove the conspiracy claim.
--:-- John Bickley: I would say that it's actually kind of two-pronged. Not only did he believe he won the election, but kind of an alternative to that is that he believed the election was tainted So whether he won more votes is a completely separate matter of was the election tainted And here Georgia is a perfect example In Georgia under the law if the margin of error is such that you had that number of illegal votes, the election would be thrown out. So that's where that whole call to the Secretary of State to supposedly find those 10,000-some votes. He wasn't saying, I want you to find them, make them up. He was saying, look, we have all of these things that were done illegally in Georgia, and all I have to find is enough to reach that margin of error. That doesn't mean that Trump won Georgia and that he got more votes in Georgia. It just means that the election results were tainted. They can't stand, which is where the second part is, it goes to the state legislature, which was their argument, for them to decide who gets the electors. So I wouldn't even get to the point of arguing it to a jury. I would be trying to have the complaint either tossed as a matter of law or parts of it thrown out that this whole RICO claim can't stand. She doesn't have evidence that is sufficient. Now, that probably won't work, but I think that's the first step is to show the flaw of the legal claim. So you believe some shaky legal arguments here.
--:-- Margo Cleveland: Turning now to procedure. As you know, the way this case was handled, Willis impaneled two separate grand juries. The first was used initially to give Willis's office the authority she needed to investigate the case, such as the ability to compel witnesses to testify. The second separate grand jury was impaneled to look at the evidence and decide whether Trump and his 18 alleged co-conspirators should be indicted. My question has to do with that first grand jury. Listeners may remember the foreman of that grand jury back in February, Emily Kors, did a round of media interviews talking about the case, talking about Trump. She even told reporters that the draft indictment named over a dozen people. Let's listen to that real quick.
--:-- [Discussion pauses as they listen to the audio clip]
--:-- Margo Cleveland: Why do you want to speak out publicly? Because this was a really cool experience. How many people? Was this a long list? It's not a short list. So we're talking about more than a dozen people? I would say that, yes. What would your reaction be if the DA decides against bringing any charges after what you've seen? I will be sad if nothing happens. This was too much, too much of my time, too much of everyone's time for this to just be, oh, okay, we're good, bye. And if it was just a perjury charge or perjury charges would that be acceptable to you That fine I will be happy as long as something happens
--:-- John Bickley: Now at the very least it was widely commented that her remarks violated decorum but could they also be a legal liability for Willis's case?
--:-- Margo Cleveland: So the report and the fact that the first grand jury maybe was targeting Trump or was kind of loony or whatever, That all goes to just illustrate how weaponized and targeted this was. I don't think that's going to have any legal bearing on the second grand jury. And as most people understand, the grand jury is only seeing one side of the evidence. They're not hearing what I just explained of what Trump was doing. And I think the perfect example here is the electors that they're calling these fake electors, which is absolutely ridiculous. ridiculous. That's not at all what was going on, either in Pennsylvania or Georgia or Wisconsin or any of the other states where there were challenges. And that's the thing that's important to keep in mind. These alternative electors were put in place while there were still legal challenges going on. And that is exactly what happened when you had, I think it was Kennedy versus Nixon in Hawaii. It's exactly how a good lawyer would advise a candidate. They need to have that in place. I highly doubt that Fannie Willis told the grand jury any of it. So the grand jury is really a rubber stamp in most cases. What's going to matter is when a judge gets a hold of this and the motions start to throw out parts of the indictment.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay, final question. you've now seen the four big indictments against Trump, one from Bragg in New York, two from Special Counsel Smith, and now this one from Fulton County. Which one do you think is the most serious legal liability for Trump?
--:-- Margo Cleveland: I think the most serious legally is the Mar-a-Lago one because it has a rather vague federal statute, which is the defense documents. And we don't know enough because it's all classified. So I think that probably has the strongest or the most difficult analysis to it from the outside. From the inside, they might be able to look at it and say this is nonsense, but we don't have enough of the documents to be able to determine it.
--:-- John Bickley: All right, well, we'll see how these play out, and I look forward to having you back on to discuss. That was The Federalist's legal correspondent, Margo Cleveland, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire. Thank you.
