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Laura, you know, you hit the nail on the head, the media doesn't focus on what, if any, crime there is here. There's salacious details on them and they're very interesting to some people. But you asked how could the case get this far? The answer to that is Judge Murchand. No normal judge would allow this case to go forward, just since the DA's office didn't think it should go forward when Mark Pomerance presented it. The question is, do we ever, do we really believe that for a candidate to want to either pay extortion money or hide some fact that may be unpleasant from the public, that that's really election interference, but the problem is we don't even know what they claim the charge is. We don't necessarily even get to the misdemeanor because that requires an intent to defraud with the way the thing was booked. You can be sure President Trump didn't direct how this was to be booked, but if you got to that, they then have to prove that he did that with the intent to commit some other crime. If the grand jury ever charging what that other crime is, it's impossible to defend. Let's say that through this witness, it's to cover up some salacious fact to help himself in the election. But another witness says, well, it's really a campaign finance violation. Another one says, no, it's really a tax violation. A defendant doesn't have to hit a moving target all of the time. I think today's testimony perfectly highlights what many of the problems are with this case. And by the way, would it be to advance a campaign if someone plagiarized and then covered that up? Or if somebody ruined a server that might have had embarrassing details on it and emails on it to promote a candidacy? Would those be illegal? Were they ever charged against any other candidate? Did you get the sense that they're just kind of almost given up over at the law practice of never Trump LLC? I mean, today really kind of took the cake for me. They never give up, Laura, and they never will give up no matter how many times they're slapped down. There was nothing in today's testimony that changed the underlying legal problems that I think Bragg is going to have or that changes the key facts in the case. And the key problem is it's not illegal, as you pointed out, it's not illegal to pay somebody money to catch and kill a story. It's not illegal to reimburse a publisher who pays that money. To convict Trump under the latest esoteric theory, you have to show that he conspired to promote his own election by unlawful means. But as we have pointed out, apparently the theory is the unlawful means was that they didn't report this or they were trying to stop from reporting this as a federal campaign expenditure. But as we know, that actually is not the federal campaign expenditure law. So I don't see any movement by them at all here. It's a very troubling case. Even if they get a conviction, I think it stands a chance of being reversed on appeal.

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Here are one of the great civil rights criminal defense lawyers of our time, David Shone. He also represented President Trump in one of the impeachment cases. You're familiar with him. David Shone, I want to talk about Judge Chunkin for a moment. I've made the case that this setting the date on March 4th violates the Sixth Amendment, effective representation by counsel. There's 12.8 million pages of documents. You have five months to prepare. Even the feds couldn't say that they've ever had a case where five months was enough. And this is a very complex case. You have a lot of questions that are raised for the first time, complexity involving a former president, motions, filings. She also sets the date one day before Super Tuesday, the most important date in the election cycle in the Republican primary. She also jumps the line, jumps in front of the first case that's in Florida with Judge Cannon, who already set her trial date for May. And I'm sure that's created a lot of chaos down there on the other case. My argument, David Shone, is she's doing this. She wants a Democrat jury. She wants at least one conviction on one of the counts. So Donald Trump is walking around with a scarlet letter, convicted felon. So the likes of Chris Christie and others, as well as Democrats, can say, well, he's a convicted felon. What's your take on this? Well, I think we've seen just that sort of thing in some of her words. In other words, the lady doth protest too much, methinks. She has made clear that this is only going to be treated like every other case for every other defendant, and she won't kowtow to election concerns and that sort of thing very defensively. Of course, it's not like any other case. There's a great public interest. The government spoke about a public interest in a speedy trial rather than the defendant's interest in a speedy trial. There's a greater public interest here in the election and the democratic process and letting that democratic process run its course. I had a misdemeanor case in this same district set for eight months in the future, not this kind of schedule. This schedule is outrageous. Nobody could prepare in this timeframe, certainly not these lawyers. It's once more, unfortunately, the political process reaching another branch of government and where it has no place. And I earlier read what the code of professional conduct is for judges, and this would seem to me to violate it in multiple ways. That's number one. Number two, she says it's like any other case, whether it's athletes or anything else. And yet the Department of Justice for several decades, Democrat and Republican attorneys generals have issued memos in March of election years specifically saying this is not like any other case. You better make sure that when you conduct investigations that you do not interfere with a campaign and they go further. You're not to charge people before a campaign unless you get a sign off by the attorney general of the United States himself. But they give warning after warning after warning that this is different, that you are not supposed to use the criminal justice system to affect an election. Yet we have a prosecutor and a judge who are doing exactly that. No? Yeah. Well, I don't think you got the most recent memo, which was if Trump is involved, ignore all previous memos for every other election. No, you're 100% right. In my view, it violates the fifth and the sixth amendment rights. There's no possible way you hit on the most important one, the effective assistance of counsel, but also due process, all of the fair trial rights, the right to compel witnesses. He can't even sort out who the witnesses would be. They don't know what the exculpatory evidence would be. And the prosecutor said, well, they streamlined things and they've gone through and made it easier. It's not for the prosecutor to decide what evidence the defense finds most important. The defense has to do the painstaking work of going through the evidence. Listen, I've had experience with two members of a couple of members of this Mr. Smith's team, and especially in this DC process. I have right now a sanctions motion going against JP Cooney, the lead fellow in this case and Molly Gaston in another case in this district. We're awaiting a hearing because of their outrageous government misconduct. And in that case, the judge said he's very concerned about their misconduct and he's concerned that they don't seem to be concerned, but we haven't had the hearing yet. So Trump is a speedy trial on behalf of the government, not on behalf of the defender or the public. Let's make that clear. And you have a matter before one of these judges in the same district and they can't seem to get around to it, right? Right. I've got a case actually with Judge Chutkin and another judge in this district, Judge Walton, both of whom I'm sure are in another setting of fine judges. But literally I've had a motion to dismiss, and those are civil cases, but important cases with claims hanging over my client's head, and then literally I've had motions to dismiss pending for over three years without any action on them. Well, maybe Judge Chutkin can put that in the front of her calendar and work that out. I mean, it's been sitting there for three years. Yeah, this is a railroad job. That's all it is.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.