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Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Prosecuting Donald Trump. Well, it's Tuesday, August 22nd, although at times it's really hard to remember the date because the news is coming in so fast and furious. And I'm Andrew Weissman, and I'm here with Mary McCord. Hi, Andrew. It has indeed been another busy week. I know we say that every single week.
Georgia indictment, of course, dropped last week. There's so much to catch listeners up on. Perhaps most importantly is what is happening, frankly, in real time as we're speaking today on this podcast with various defendants in the Fulton County, Georgia case turning themselves in through the booking process. And Donald Trump, of course, expected to do that later this week.
So we're going to talk about that. We'll talk about his bail conditions. I think it's actually, I'm really, this is where it's great to have a podcast because there's been a lot of misinformation and it's really great to get the details right. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the warnings he was given, contrast it with the other warnings
bail conditions that we've seen and go into a little bit of the nitty gritty so everyone has the data that Mary and I have been working with. Yeah. And, you know, then we'll also talk a little bit about the trial date decision that is going to be made soon by Judge Tanya Chutkan in federal district court in D.C. in the Jack Smith January 6th related case.
And finally, about new legal arguments that have been really getting a lot of attention because they're serious and important constitutional arguments that Donald Trump may, in fact, be disqualified to actually serve as president of the United States or in any elected office, for that matter, because of his conduct. Yeah, and that
Just to plug our, I can't even say friend or colleague, because he's just, at least for me, he's just in a completely different league. But Judge Ludig is one of those voices. Yes, absolutely. And so we're going to talk about that. Mary, before we begin, and I don't know if we have enough time, but I was thinking this morning about something about
you and me pre-podcast and even maybe post-podcast, which is, I don't think, and you can tell me if I'm misremembering, I don't think we have ever had a discussion about our personal politics. Like, I don't know whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. I don't know who you voted for. I don't know if you've ever given money to any candidate. You're right. And you know why? It's because it's totally...
irrelevant. The thing I do know about you is because you were in the Justice Department for a zillion years, because you and I, like me, because we're both dinosaurs. No, no, no, no. We started when we were five. That's why. Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's the story. We're going to stick to it. Let's not tell anyone. So it's just between you, me, and whoever's listening to this podcast. But I
It's just so irrelevant to what you do and how you think of the country. And it sort of does tie into Judge Ludig, who, you know, I personally disagree with a lot of the decisions he had made as a judge, but on a
philosophical or sort of the way he views the law. But it's within the framework of believing in the rule of law. And so I just was thinking about that for people who think this is political,
It's just not. It's just a really different discussion. I think that's also, you know, that is something that is extremely common across the department. I mean, I was there for 23 years and I didn't talk about politics with any of my colleagues at the U.S. Attorney's Office or at the main justice when I was in the National Security Division. I mean, obviously, I worked with some political appointees, so, you know, they'd been a
appointed either by a Republican president or a Democrat president, but we did not talk about who we were voting for. We didn't talk about any of that because basically our jobs, right, as prosecutors and in national security were to use our judgment and do the right thing to ensure that the rule of law was
vindicated, whether it was a matter of criminal cases or national security matters or what have you, and that constitutional rights were protected, due process was ensured, etc. And that's why I think you can see people from across the political spectrum weighing in on these issues involving the indictments of Donald Trump and doing so no matter their purpose,
politics and understanding why these cases are so important. Of course, you have him and some of his base supporters saying just the opposite, that this is political persecution, but there's really no support for that. Anyway, so that was my digression from, you know, my morning coffee thinking about our podcast and the conversation we're going to have. But why don't we, Mary, you want to talk to us a little bit about what's going on in the
Georgia this week, and in particular, what is different and not different about Donald Trump's
now signed bail conditions where the counsel for Fannie Willis and the counsel for Donald Trump have agreed to certain bail conditions and the judges signed off on it. Sure. So folks might remember that after the Fulton County indictment was returned, Fannie Willis indicated that all 19 defendants, including Mr. Trump,
could have until August 25th, which is this coming Friday, to voluntarily surrender. And that meant because it was, you know, unnecessary in a case like this to have
sheriffs come out and arrest them and haul them down to court. They could voluntarily surrender and be booked, and then arraignments would be set at a separate time. An arraignment is the time when the defendant is read the charges or is asked, have you had the chance to read the charges against you? Do you understand them? Do you have any questions? And how do you plead? So that's going to happen down the line. So what's happening this week is various defendants are in fact
doing what she indicated and coming voluntarily to be booked, to have fingerprints taken, to have photographs taken, to go through that booking process. And what we're now seeing is that a lot of times that would happen if someone was arrested.
then they'd be presented in court, then a judge would issue their bail conditions or make a decision to detain them. But in many cases, issue bail conditions that might be money bail, that might be other conditions of release, have them sign a form that they understand all of those, and then release them under those conditions. But because of this sort of weird voluntary surrender situation that won't really take place in the courtroom,
It looks like what has happened is that Fannie Willis and her team have reached consent agreements to conditions of release and to bonds that they then presented to the court, and the court has signed those orders. And with respect to Donald Trump, as you indicated, that includes a $200,000 cash bond, and that is broken down in the order by count. He's charged with 13 counts, so each of them have a money limit.
a cash bail associated with them. $80,000 for the RICO charge, $10,000 for each of the other charges. Can I ask you, with the cash bond, that's like money or a bond that's put up, but they get it back if they complied with the conditions. That's right. Now, sometimes if you go through using a commercial surety, like a bail bondsman, then that bail bondsman will take the portion that he puts up for you. It's like equivalent of like, it's a service fee. Yeah.
Right. Now, I will do a slight digression here. Cash bail is something that under the Constitution, a person who is too poor to pay cannot be made to pay a cash bail. And if they can't pay it, be detained. So it's really only usable against people who do have the ability to pay. And it's supposed to
be basically a commitment so that they don't flee the jurisdiction or otherwise fail to appear in court and so that they comply with their conditions of the release. The idea is have this thing hanging over their head, this money they've put up that they want to get back and therefore they'll engage in good behavior. So clearly Mr. Trump has the money to pay this. That's not an issue for him. But
But importantly, I think, and here's where really the rubber meets the road, is this consent order setting his conditions of release, the conditions with which he must comply if he wants to maintain his freedom. These are very specific. I mean, they have things that are always there. You may not commit any other crime. You shouldn't communicate in any way about the facts of the case with any person that's a co-defendant or with any witness. Those are pretty standard. But
It also says that the defendant, Mr. Trump, shall perform no act to intimidate any person known to him or her, him to be a co-defendant or a witness in this case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice. Yeah, Mary said that's the critical part. The language you just read about shall perform no act to intimidate any person known to him or her to be a co-defendant or witness, that general prohibition, right?
is in the other bail conditions for the other defendants. All of the ones we've seen have that general language. And I just wanted to nail that down because you're about to go to and what is different with respect to Donald Trump. And I think that, you know, that general language, most people, particularly so many of the other defendants are in fact lawyers. They know what that means. That means don't do anything that would intimidate a co-defendant or a witness.
Period. Full stop. But no, with Mr. Trump, we better put a finer point on it, right? I like to say, let's bring out the big crayons. Yes, the big crayons. Not the finer point, the fatter point, I guess. Five very specific detailed prohibitions, right? She'll make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against a co-defendant. No direct or indirect
direct threat of any nature against any witness, including people named in the indictment or the unindicted conspirators, 1 to 30 in the indictment. No direct threat of any nature against any victim. So think of people like Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss who were clear victims in this. Right. These are the election workers who were really harassed and horribly threatened by
shall make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community or to any property in the community. And then here's the one that I think a lot of people are really taking a close look at, that all of this includes but is not limited to posts on social media or reposts of posts made by others on social media. Why do you think that is? Why do you think they included that? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, this is really, to me, it's just so spelling out something that's implicit within everyone's bail conditions. Frankly, it's pretty implicit within the bail conditions in the D.C. federal case. That's right. But this is basically saying we are delineating this
because we're not going to put up with this. So you need to understand that this is what it includes. So if it occurs, you do not get to say to us,
Oh, I didn't understand what that meant. And it's obvious that the reason this was delineated for him and not the other people is because of his history. Because if you say things on So Truth Social that's like, "If you come after me, I'm going to come after you," and we actually have so many instances of actual violence that he has either intended or
been the cause of because of his either intentional or reckless language. This is basically saying you are on notice. And it'll be really interesting because it clearly indicates that the prosecution
has some real backbone here in terms of what they're doing. They're like, you know what? We have no problem treating him differently because he has acted differently than the other co-defendants. And the judge was willing to agree with that. Now, granted, it's a consent motion, which means the defense attorneys agreed to those terms, which I think is also telling, Andrew, that they didn't push back harder on that. Yeah. Well, I think in many ways, this is one where...
if you're a good defense lawyer, you're kind of like, hey, help me. Help me help you. Right, which is like, have him stop doing this because this is, as sure as we're having this conversation
discussion, Mary, we know there's going to be a violation. That is just part of it. That leads to another interesting point I think we have to make is one of the things, and that's partly why I spelled out the normal process where you'd be presented in court, a judge would go over these conditions with the defendant, and then the defendant would sign the same form that says, I have been
informed of these conditions of release and I agree to them. And Mr. Trump's signature's not on this. That's the standard. Yes, in every case I ever did. You and I, we were discussing this before the podcast, in case you think we never talk about anything, but this is one where both of us were like, "Wait a second, how come he is not being – where's his signature line?" And the reason it's done is precisely so that if there's a violation, there's no question that the defendant understood the conditions.
That's right. I have actually had cases where there was some snafu and at the end of the presentment, the defendant was called up to the bench to sign and somehow later in the records, he must have signed something else and it's not there. And guess what? When he violates those conditions and that signature's not there, the judge says,
sorry, his signature wasn't there. We're not going to have a penalty for that. So it is important. And, you know, this order doesn't even say, his attorneys don't say in there, we have discussed these conditions with our client and our client has agreed to them. They don't even make that representation. So I do think we will be seeing at some point him signing something. Otherwise, if there is a violation, it's likely that it would result in a warning and then him signing something
a statement agreeing to comply because this is something that's unusual. Yeah. And it's so easy to do this because you either have them sign it or you have the judge read the conditions on a transcribed record or as happens in the federal court-
Both. Both. Right. Exactly. This is like belt suspenders. Like, just make it clear. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see whether that happens in the first arraignment. What we're seeing this week with people turning themselves in, and I think
We have heard that John Eastman's already done, that Bell Bondsman's done that. But this week, we'll see all of those people sort of appear. And people will remember John Eastman is one of the lawyers who worked on the fake-elector scheme.
And it could be that there will be a form there. And when they post that bond, that cash bond, they'll be asked to sign the form. Exactly. And then, you know, we'll keep an eye out for that because this is where you and I are like, wait a second, there's a glitch. The other thing that's pending in Georgia is various people are trying to get their cases removed.
to federal court. We'll spend more time maybe next week talking about that issue because we're seeing more and more. Obviously, Mark Meadows started that. Now Jeff Clark has just filed. Mark Meadows, folks will recall, was the chief of staff to President Trump when he was the president.
Jeffrey Clark was an assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice who positioned himself and got the former president's favor to actually potentially be the acting attorney general. And we're going to see the federal defendants, the people who used to have a federal position, making that argument that they should go to federal court. And the one thing just to
calm people down is if it goes to federal court, the prosecutors stay on the case. The charges are still state charges, and you cannot be pardoned by a president for state charges. But there are ways in which it would change the jury pool. It would change the judge. There would be no cameras in the courtroom absent the chief justice deciding it. But we'll go through the kinds of arguments that are being made. But let's wait till we have the whole constellation of
papers that have been submitted by all of the people. Donald Trump surely is going to do it, but he hasn't done it yet. So we'll sort of get to that later. I mean, the one little preview I want to give people is that this removal is really all about making the argument that I was a federal officer doing my job. Engaging in a coup, which was part of my job as a federal officer. Right.
Yeah. And so my defense is I'm immune from this from any state prosecution and I should go to federal court and then the case should be dismissed because I was a federal officer acting within the scope of my federal responsibilities. And so you just honed in on exactly what the issue will be. Well, is that right? Is this conspiracy to actually undermine and overthrow the votes in
for president in Georgia, is that within the scope of any of these people's actual official duties? And to state the question is to answer it, in my view. So more to come on that. Yes. More prosecuting Donald Trump awaiting Trump's Georgia surrender in just a moment.
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So should we turn to DC? Yeah. And I really want to turn this to you, Andrew, because, um,
I think so many of the huge cases that you've done really help educate us on what this dispute over the trial date is. As listeners may recall, Jack Smith proposed a pretty aggressive schedule that would actually have trials starting in early January. It would actually have jury selection starting in December, right? So that means getting to the point of already being selecting to jury really just months from now. And Jack Smith rationalized that, look,
We have put together and have already transferred over Discovery voluminous materials, but we've organized it in a very easy fashion for the defendants to look through it. We've highlighted the most critical documents. Everything's there on a silver platter for them, and the schedule is reasonable. Of course, Mr. Trump's attorneys came back in arguing –
no, no, no, no, no, we can't possibly do this. The amount of discovery in documents is in the millions and we'd have to each be looking at, I don't remember how many thousands and thousands of documents a day to get to trial by January and we should have trial in April. Get this, not 2024, not 2025, but 2026. So Jack Smith has now filed a response yesterday to that and I'd like to get your reaction to that, Andrew, because he has come back saying, look, in no big...
cases like this, do actual attorneys sit there and read every single document provided in discovery. They use electronic means. Now you've done cases like Enron, et cetera, with huge terabytes and zillabytes and gigabytes and whatever bytes of documents. Did you read them all before you turned them over in discovery? I still remember Enron was the first case I did where I had not read
every document in a case, and it was just a really queasy feeling. That's the way of the modern world. I mean, Enron was over 20 years ago. So many people may not remember, but before the Mueller investigation, which is, I think, the only way anyone really knows me, is I was head of the fraud section at the department when you were over at NSD, the National Security Division. And our bread and butter was large corporate cases, period. Yeah.
That's what we did. And there were huge international cases against major banks in the United States and overseas, against Volkswagen for Dieselgate. I mean, when I looked at this and I heard Donald Trump's team say, "Oh, there were 11 million documents," I was like, "Piddly."
I was like, 11? That's easy. It reminds me of when I heard about the Mar-a-Lago search. I was like, that's the smallest search I have ever seen since I was in general crimes in the Pleistocene years. So here's the problem with Donald Trump's argument, and Jack Smith really calls it out, is one, you do not do page-by-page evidence.
document review anymore because you can't. If that were to be the standard, no
significant civil or criminal case would go to trial for a decade. We would still not be going to trial on Enron. I mean, none of these cases would work that way. And it's standard for judges and magistrate judges to understand that in the course of practice. And it's because of electronic data. The other thing that... And just to be, I want to make sure people are clear. It's not just that
The defendants, when they get discovery from the government, don't go through everything, single thing, page by page. They use electronic search mechanisms that we can get into. But even the government, as I think you were indicating, the government, they do a search warrant like in one of these big corporate fraud case and they get scammed.
So much data, even the government, like you said, you, your first case of not actually reading every document was Enron. And, you know, as criminal division chief at the attorney's office, you know, so many times what we were setting up was this electronic system of keyword searches in order to review what we had gotten in a search document.
warrant or what we had gotten from, you know, so it's not just the defendant who doesn't read it, the government doesn't either. Everything is about computer searches. Now there's artificial intelligence, there's sort of searches that sort of build on themselves as they find stuff. You have discovery teams of discovery lawyers and paralegals that go through the so-called hot documents. I mean, this is standard operating procedure.
But the other is that Jack Smith points out 11 million isn't really even the right number because so much has been previously turned over or is redundant or is repetitive or is irrelevant documents. And primary thing is like all of the January 6th committee stuff has been available to the public, including Donald Trump, for months and months.
The Secret Service documents are really irrelevant to this, and that's 3 million of the documents, but the government didn't want to withhold anything. They also talk a lot about redundant documents. One of the things that the government did, according to their reply brief, is to make it easy to review. If they got documents from source A, they turned that over so you knew, "Oh, I got these documents from Google."
But if they use those same documents in interviewing a witness, so they interview Mary McCord and they use that document, they turned it over in a witness file for Mary McCord. So if you looked at Mary McCord's transcript, you would then have in one place all of the documents that she was shown. They're repetitive. Yeah, it's not a new document. Right. Exactly. And that could happen like a dozen or more times in a single case. In electronic documents, the first thing you do is de-dupe.
De-dupe.
daily, 78 times. And Norm said, yeah, but with this problem of everything duplicated, here's the way that that analogy works, but not in the way the defense intended. Once you read it once, you don't need to read it another 77 times because you know what's in it. So
Anyway, I actually think that the submission by the defense, including the 2026 date and the argument about page by page, was intended for an audience that is not Judge Chutkan. That's right. It reminds me so much during the Enron case. I remember Amy Bourbon Jackson saying to the defense, "I understand your submission. The intended audience is not me."
And that's the way I viewed that. And I think you really lose a lot of credibility when you say you want April 2026, you
you lose credibility when you suggest a page-by-page document review. Now, having said that, the defense is entitled to adequate time to prepare, and we'll see what Judge Chutkan does. Remember, I just want to recall everyone's attention that Judge Chutkan said at the first and only appearance she's had with the parties that if the defendant...
intimidates witnesses, obstructs justice, interferes with the integrity of the judicial system, that is a reason for a faster trial date to get it to trial to give a smaller window of opportunity for that conduct to continue. And— Adds to the urgency, I believe she said, right? Exactly. Of getting to trial. So, look, I think August 28th, which is the day that she has said she intends to decide the trial date,
I can't stress enough that that is kind of the whole ball of wax for the D.C. case. It is, I think, the most important case. I think it is going to be the strongest case and that no one knows what's going to happen. I do think that Jack Smith's submission is very strong. I wouldn't be surprised if the judge agreed with it or delayed it a few months. And she's going to have to work through with other judges how that's going to
be able to fit in. But that is the thing I am keeping my eye on. So anyway, Mary, should we turn to, I think, the thing that's just so, so topical, which is two conservative law professors have written a law review article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.
Judge Ludig has teamed up with Professor Lawrence Tribe, which I just think is so brilliant of them because they are people who are giants, giants of the legal profession. I can't stress enough, just for Mary and me, these are people that, you know, it's just a different world.
constellation when you think about them. But they're very much viewed as sort of a preeminent conservative jurist and a preeminent liberal jurist, except those labels mean anything. But they've teamed up because they have the exact same view here. And then Just Security just came out with a piece from Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, also concurring. And they're raising this issue about whether the 14th Amendment actually means that Democrats
Donald Trump is not
qualified, not personally, but actually cannot be the President of the United States under the 14th Amendment in the same way that if he were under 35 years old, he could not be. Right. Just like disqualified. Exactly. And I think I want to make sure listeners know exactly what the 14th Amendment Section 3 says. I'm not going to read the entire thing. By the way, this is a great example, but it's like, this is what we start with, which is what's the language? What's the language?
It says basically no person who has been already an officer, a federal officer, and taken an oath to the United States is eligible to serve again in any elected office in not only the United States, but also in any state. So, of course, that would include President of the United States if eligible.
That person who has previously taken an oath of office, which Donald Trump did when he was the president, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, the same being the Constitution of the United States. That's the previous sentence. Or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof, meaning enemies of the Constitution of the United States. That person shall be ineligible to hold any future elected office. Okay.
Now, that disability can be removed by a two-thirds vote of each House of Congress, the House and the Senate. And this provision dates back to, guess what, post-Civil War, when there was an effort to have Confederate generals and officials be sent to Washington as elected representatives in some of the southern states.
And this amendment as part of the 14th Amendment, which in this section as part of the 14th Amendment, which of course was passed after the war, was to disqualify those people from holding those federal offices because they had engaged in insurrection or rebellion or gave aid or comfort to insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution of the United States. Right.
So that's what we're starting from in the language. Now, let's talk about how that operates to disqualify in practice. Abstractly, you can read that and you have like a lot of issues that you think of as a lawyer, which is one, there's this term of whether it's self-executing, meaning does it need to have an enabling statute? Like it might be in the Constitution, but sometimes you need to have Congress execute
act on something in the Constitution, and sometimes you don't. So that's one of the issues, is it sort of self-executing. Another though is what is insurrection and rebellion? - Right, it's not defined. - Who's going to define those terms
what kind of finding has to be made and who has to make the finding, and what's the standard proof? In other words, is it proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Do you need to have a criminal conviction in order to have that finding? Because remember, the former president is not charged with insurrection or rebellion. So those are all issues. And then I think maybe one other is if there's ambiguity or a lack of clarity, which way should that cut? In other words,
Does it cut that it should be in favor of the person who's being disqualified, meaning that you'd want to make sure that the public has the ability to still vote for that person or that person has the ability to still run if it's not totally clear. So those are just some of the
many, many legal issues. By the way, this is for people who want to know like the good and bad of like law school. It's like somebody once told me that there are two types of intelligences. There's people who take something really complicated and make it simple. And there's people who take something simple and make it complicated. And this is one where you can look at the language, but it does become complicated because you do think about all these issues. The one thing I will say is, before I turn it back to you, Mary, is that
I do think this is going to end up getting litigated because I think some secretary of state of some state, and it could be a blue state, is going to say, I think the person's disqualified. I'm not going to put them on the slate of who you can vote for in, you know, whatever it is, Vermont or whatever, pick some state. And then there'll be litigation over that. And so you will have judges weighing in on this issue, presumably, since this is
totally an issue of first impression in the Supreme Court, they may have to weigh in on this issue and also presumably quickly. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's really key, right? Because we can sit here and debate about what does this mean? And does Congress need to have enacted a law that provides for how you prove up insurrection or rebellion? Or is it self-executing? Like you said, all these are interesting legal questions. But for the present moment,
The question is, well, how would these get answered? What would be a mechanism to actually implement this 14th Amendment Section 3? And one, as you indicated, is one or more secretaries of state
if they have authority under state law to make the determination about who can appear on a ballot or not, or it could be some other election official, think of things like, is the person 35 years old? If somebody comes in and says, I want to be on the ballot, I'm 25, they say, no, you can't be. They don't go to court. I mean, maybe somebody could challenge it and say, well, no, I really am 35. But those decisions get made. This seems like a little bit
trickier, right, to decide did you engage in insurrection or rebellion? But I think that's a mechanism to get this in front of the courts if there's a secretary of state with authority to make those decisions or another election official with authority. Of course, Mr. Trump and possibly even voters in the state would immediately challenge that in court, and that's how it would actually get in front of the courts. There are also other possible mechanisms of voters or potentially other candidates –
seeking a declaratory judgment in court, like a declaration that he's ineligible and things like that. But without something like this happening, we can all sit here and ponder what this means and say he's ineligible, but we won't have a mechanism for testing that. And so I think that's what's really important about people like the professors Bill Bode and Michael Paulson having written their extensive law review article, people like Lawrence Tribe and
and Judge Ludig having written their piece, and then other election experts like Ned Foley writing about this. This is getting now into the public knowledge. That's why public education is so important. The bloodstream. There's more conversation about it across the political spectrum. And this is something that I think our election officials are going to have to take a long, hard look at. And I would say in red and blue states and purple states. Yeah, absolutely. And one thing to...
to keep in mind is, and obviously it's a hugely important issue, and whether you are in favor or not and think that's the right solution to this problem. I mean, this is sort of an intractable, inevitable discussion that's going to have to be decided by the courts. But that's just about whether one person is eligible to hold federal office.
It is a separate and distinct matter that that person is being criminally charged. In other words, even if he were eligible or ineligible to become president again, in my view, that's sort of a separate issue from if he engaged in crimes and many, many, many grand jurors have found probable cause that he has in four separate indictments.
That is a separate matter. You can be president of the United States and still be convicted of all these things. You could not be eligible to be president, and you still can be held accountable for your criminal acts. So it's important, I think, to separate those two issues that are very, very important, but they're really distinct. One is just about holding an office. The other is about going to jail.
No, that's right. And that's another conclusion of these, you know, constitutional experts that the Constitution doesn't condition, 14th Amendment Section 3 isn't conditioned on a conviction. It's just about if you shall have engaged, you're ineligible. Exactly. So it's a fascinating issue. We are definitely going to get more data on it. So we're going to come back to this topic. And the one thing I would just maybe end on is, you know, we're going to
in relatively short order, see Donald Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia
their first actual court appearance. And that will be televised because it's in state court. And it'll be the first time that we've actually seen him be treated like any other defendant without the trappings of limousines and seeming like a sort of princeling. He will be just like any other defendant in a courtroom. We will be able to see him and the court appearance. And I just think that is
really important for America, for all the reasons we've talked about, the importance of cameras in the courtroom, especially for these kind of pretrial proceedings and the legal process, which you and I talk about. Many people have never seen these pretrial proceedings. They've never seen them. Yeah, so we try and do that through our
discussions because we've been through a million of them. But people will actually, you won't have to rely on Mary and me. You'll be able to see it. Exactly. So that's something, I don't think it's going to happen this week, but it could happen early September. There'll be an actual court date. Mary, I have a feeling we're going to be talking a lot more, maybe even some emergency episodes. Maybe so. So see you next week, if not sooner. That's right. Looking forward to it.
If you've got questions, you can leave us a voicemail at 917-342-2934. Maybe we'll play it on the pod. Or you can email us at prosecutingtrumpquestions at NBCUNI.com. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week with much more.
The senior producer for the show is Alicia Conley. Jessica Schrecker and Ivy Green are segment producers. Our technical director is Bryson Barnes. Katherine Anderson is an audio engineer. Jen Maris Perez is the associate producer. Ayesha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio. And Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC.
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Hi, everyone. It's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening, author and philosopher Daniel Chandler on the roots of a just society. I think that those genuinely big fundamental questions about whether liberal democracy will survive, what the shape of our society should be, feel like they're genuinely back on the agenda. I think it feels like we're at a real, you know, an inflection point or a turning point in the history of liberal democracy. That's this week on Why Is This Happening. Search for Why Is This Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow.
