Feb. 6, 2024 - Epoch Times
13:36
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| This election season is really shaping up to be like no other, evidenced by the fact that, among other things, the latest numbers have just come out, and they show that President Trump has spent nearly $50 million in legal fees just last year alone. | |
| That particular number, it comes from the recent filings that were made with the Federal Election Commission, and they showed that, quote, Furthermore, | |
| if you go back one more year, it shows that President Trump has spent more than $76 million over the last two years on attorneys. | |
| Now, it's a little hard to find data on these types of things, but I would imagine that with numbers like these, President Trump might actually hold the record for the most money spent on legal fees by a single person in American history. | |
| And so, given the fact that the majority of the political donations are being spent on these different legal challenges, well, covering this year's election pretty much revolves around covering the developments in the different legal challenges that President Trump is currently facing. | |
| And so in today's episode, let's go through the major developments in three of these cases, starting over in Colorado. | |
| This upcoming Thursday, which for your reference is February the 8th, the U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in Trump's ballot access case. | |
| This was the case which came out of Colorado after the Colorado State Supreme Court claimed that Trump was ineligible to run for office as per Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. | |
| That case was of course appealed by Trump's legal team to the U.S. Supreme Court, who then agreed to hear it on an expedited timetable. | |
| And, indeed, the timetable really is expedited, evidenced by the fact that, for one, if you look at the U.S. Supreme Court's schedule, the one that they maintain over on their website this upcoming Thursday, not only are they scheduled to hear oral arguments in this particular case, but also, on that very same day, they're also scheduled to issue their actual opinion on the matter. | |
| And also, secondly... | |
| The U.S. Supreme Court just agreed to give the Colorado Secretary of State a cool ten-full minutes to argue why Trump should be blocked from the ballot. | |
| Quote, Colorado Secretary of State Ms. Jenna Griswold, a Democrat and fierce Trump critic, has filed multiple briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court. | |
| In a January 26 filing with the U.S. Supreme Court, Ms. Griswold asked for enlargement and division of time for oral arguments at a hearing this Thursday so that she could have time to provide the court with an important perspective on Colorado's election laws. | |
| The Supreme Court said in its decision that it would grant Ms. | |
| Griswold just 10 minutes to make her case for why, according to her subsequent January 31st filing, President Trump supposedly engaged in an insurrection and so should be barred from appearing on Colorado's presidential ballot. | |
| Now, in regards to what Ms. | |
| Jenna Griswold might say during her 10 minutes, well, her opinion on President Trump is not really a state secret. | |
| In fact, during a recent interview over on CNN, here's what she said. | |
| Quote, And then also, she released a separate statement from her own office saying the following. | |
| And so, she will now have a cool ten full minutes to try and convince the U.S. Supreme Court that President Trump should be prohibited from running for office again. | |
| Now, aside from the 10 minutes that Ms. | |
| Griswold was able to carve out for herself, President Trump's legal team will be given 40 minutes to present their oral arguments, while the other side will be given 30 minutes to present theirs. | |
| And like most U.S. Supreme Court cases, this one will not be televised. | |
| There will be no cameras present in the room. | |
| However, the oral arguments will be audio recorded, and then the audio recordings should be made available, very likely, on that very same day over on the U.S. Supreme Court website. | |
| Meaning, in practical terms, that by Thursday of this week, we can expect to not only have the transcripts from this trial, but also an actual decision for the whole nation regarding the question of whether or not the 14th Amendment bars Trump from running for office. | |
| So, consider marking your calendar for that, again, this upcoming Thursday, February the 8th. | |
| And now, let's switch gears a bit and move on over to Fulton County, Georgia, in order to discuss the RICO case against President Trump and 18 of his associates. | |
| Although, for the past month now, the RICO charges against Trump and his associates, they've taken a bit of a backseat to the allegations that Ms. | |
| Fannie Willis, who is the district attorney of Fulton County, she was having an affair with a special prosecutor and was allegedly benefiting financially from the case against Trump. | |
| If you actually want a deeper breakdown of those allegations, we covered them in much greater depth in our prior episode, which I'll throw a link to down in the description box below, which I should mention is that same description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I hope you take a quick moment to smash. | |
| Regardless, last Friday, which was February the 2nd, Ms. Fannie Willis submitted a 176-page court filing wherein she finally answered questions regarding this alleged affair. | |
| And indeed, this affair is no longer alleged because in her filings, Ms. | |
| Fannie Willis admitted to having a quote-unquote personal relationship with Mr. | |
| Wade, the special prosecutor, the man who she assigned to prosecute Trump in this trial. | |
| Quote, In the 176-page filing, Ms. | |
| Willis affirms that she and Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade have had a personal relationship, but she rejects the claim of a conflict of interest that would disqualify Ms. | |
| Willis or Mr. | |
| Wade from the case. | |
| She argued that there is no basis for disqualification, as she paid for Mr. | |
| Wade's travel expenses as well. | |
| She defended her statements about race and pushed to cancel the upcoming hearing. | |
| Likewise, you had Mr. | |
| Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor in question, as well as Ms. | |
| Fannie Willis' paramour. | |
| He also submitted a sworn statement saying that, quote, the personal relationship with Willis began in 2022 after he was hired as a special prosecutor on the 2020 election probe. | |
| Fannie Willis received no financial benefit from the relationship, despite records released as part of Wade's divorce case showing he paid for airline flights with Fannie Willis on at least two occasions during the investigation. | |
| Waite said in the sworn statement that personal travel expenses have been divided roughly equally between the two. | |
| And so in short, they both admitted to the affair, but they both claim that it did not taint the case and that Ms. Fannie Willis did not benefit financially from this arrangement. | |
| And it's that last part, whether or not she benefited financially, that's really going to be the sticking point here because Georgia state law, it's fairly unequivocal regarding in-kind donations, Meaning that if your government office is paying the man that you're having an affair with, and then that man turns around and pays for things like vacation travel for you, your hotel stays, your trips on cruise liners, your meals and so on, and you don't report it, well, that would be a clear violation of the law, at least technically. | |
| Now, of course, in his sworn statement, Mr. Navelle said, Nathan Way claims that the travel expenses have been divided roughly equally between the two of them. | |
| Now, whether or not that's true will have to be determined by the judge, and indeed, it will. | |
| On February the 15th, which is not this Thursday, but it's next Thursday, there will be a televised hearing regarding this whole affair. | |
| Although, what's perhaps funny is that even though, at this very moment, over a dozen people have now been subpoenaed to testify during that particular hearing, well, Ms. | |
| Fannie Willis is fighting her best to get the whole thing canceled. | |
| As a part of her 176-page court filing, Now, at this very moment, the judge presiding over the RICO case has shown no indication of canceling the hearing, and so, barring any unforeseen circumstances, it will still take place next Thursday, February the 15th. | |
| And in terms of who we can expect to testify, quote... | |
| Ms. | |
| Willis, Mr. | |
| Wade, and Mr. | |
| Wade's current and former law partners, as well as eight employees of Ms. | |
| Willis' team, have been subpoenaed to testify at the February 15th hearing, after which a judge will determine whether the district attorney should be disqualified and removed from the case. | |
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| And so that is where the case currently stands. | |
| All eyes are focused on whether or not Ms. | |
| Manny Willis financially benefited from this arrangement, and pretty much nobody is focused on the RICO charges against President Trump, at least at this very moment. | |
| Let's wait a week and a half to see what happens during that televised hearing, which is again on February the 15th. | |
| In the meantime though, let's move on over to Washington DC and discuss the January 6th case against President Trump. | |
| For your reference, that's the case being pushed forward by special prosecutor Jack Smith, charging President Trump with plotting to overturn the 2020 election results. | |
| And just two days ago, Mr. | |
| Jack Smith was handed some rather unfortunate news by the judge. | |
| That's because, despite the fact that he has been trying quite diligently to have this trial start right ahead of Super Tuesday on March 4th, the judge in the case has just thrown a wrench into that plan by placing an indefinite hold on the trial itself. | |
| The trial date in the election interference case against former President Donald Trump was postponed, the federal judge overseeing the case confirmed on Friday. | |
| Specifically, in the court order, here's what Judge Tanya Chutkin wrote. | |
| Meaning that while President Trump and his legal team are appealing the issue to the appellate level, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, asking whether or not a U.S. president can actually stand trial for such a thing, the trial itself is being put on an indefinite hold. | |
| This means that the timetable that Jack Smith was shooting for, meaning his plan for the trial to start one day before Super Tuesday, well, now that's been thrown out the window. | |
| And the reason that this really does matter so much is because this January 6th trial is truly not about the facts of the case. | |
| I mean, realistically, with a Washington, D.C. jury pool, it's pretty much a given that President Trump will be found guilty almost no matter what. | |
| And so instead, this is a race against time. | |
| That's why Jack Smith and his team of federal prosecutors, they've been so adamant about having this trial start on March the 4th, one day before March 5th, which is Super Tuesday and all those primary elections. | |
| Doing it that way, it will not only put a damper on Trump's ability to campaign in the primaries, but also it'll hinder his ability to campaign for the general election. | |
| And then furthermore, if the trial gets delayed too long, and if Trump happens to get reelected as president, well, that would mean that the entire thing has to be delayed by another four years because President Trump would not be able to stand trial as the sitting president of the United States. | |
| These are the three reasons for why this decision by the federal judge to indefinitely put a pause on the trial means so much. | |
| By putting an indefinite hold on the trial, it's making it such that the case will almost definitely be pushed back until after the November elections. | |
| Now, of course, if Trump loses that election, it won't really matter that much. | |
| But if he wins, the case will be delayed by another four years. | |
| And then also, there is the near total possibility that while he's in office, probably at the tail end of his term, President Trump would issue a pardon for himself. | |
| Now, a president pardoning himself has never been done before in American history, and whether it's constitutional or not is up for debate. | |
| It's a real question. | |
| But regardless, the whole point is that now that the case has been put on an indefinite hold, President Trump essentially needs to clinch a victory in the upcoming election in order to do something about these charges. | |
| Otherwise, if he loses the 2024 election, then the trial will start almost immediately, and he'll be facing a D.C. jury pool, and good luck with that. | |
| If you'd like to read more about either this Washington, D.C. case or any of the other two cases that we discussed in today's episode, I'll throw all my research notes. | |
| They'll be down in the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure. | |
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| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times. |
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