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Feb. 29, 2024 - The StoneZONE - Roger Stone
54:35
Will The US Supreme Court Allow A Trump Trial? Super Lawyer David Schoen Enters The StoneZONE!
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The Stone Zone with legendary Republican strategist and political icon and pundit Roger Stone.
Stone has served as a senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents.
He is a New York Times bestselling author and a longtime friend and advisor of President Donald Trump.
As an outspoken libertarian, Stone has appeared on thousands of broadcasts, spoken at countless venues and lectured before the prestigious Oxford Political Union and the Cambridge Union Society.
Due to his four-plus decades in the political and cultural arena, Stone has become a pop culture icon.
And now, here's your host, Roger Stone!
Welcome, you are back in the Stone Zone, and yes, I'm Roger Stone.
Yesterday was a tumultuous day on the legal front when the U.S.
Supreme Court agreed to hear the question of whether Donald Trump had absolute immunity for acts that he took while president.
Here to help me break that and other legal news down first is my co-host Troy Smith of Slingshot.News.
Troy, welcome back in the Stone Zone.
Roger, as always, it's an honor to be here today.
We have as our guest one of the most distinguished attorneys in the country.
David Schoen is a criminal defense attorney.
He's also a noted civil rights attorney.
And interestingly, he's a lawyer with particular expertise in the question of ballot access.
We are honored to have David Schoen join us now in the Stone Zone.
Thank you very much.
David, it is great to see you as always and saw you last night with Laura Ingraham.
We're going to actually play that in a little bit.
You were brilliant as usual, but let's start at the top.
So to try to review for our viewers the sequence of events, Donald Trump's attorneys raised the defense of presidential immunity at the trial court level in DC.
Uh, in the, uh, January 6th related cases against him brought by special counsel, Jack Smith, uh, the judge there, Judge Chutkin rejected those arguments.
Uh, at that point, as Trump was preparing to, uh, go to the appeals court, uh, Mr. Smith, uh, tried to leapfrog to the U S Supreme court in the interest of His preferred time frame, but the U.S.
Supreme Court ordered that no, it had to go through the regular process.
It then went to a three-judge panel of the appeals court, which not surprisingly ruled against President Trump.
And then until yesterday, there was some question as to whether the Supreme Court would hear this matter.
Then yesterday, they granted cert and agreed to do so.
David, give us your analysis of the situation, but most specifically, try to look down the road from a timing point of view in terms of the significance of the High Court's decision to hear the case.
Turn of events.
I think that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
I don't think that was certain by any means, but I think it was the right thing to do without any question.
It's a monumental case.
We have in the civil arena, a Nixon versus Fitzgerald 1982 case in which the court found absolute immunity from civil action, civil liability for a president For a president or former president in that case also for act official acts taken in office.
And so this is the criminal side of that.
That is should the same kind of standard or approach or framework apply the court accepted 1 question and that is whether and to what extent.
A former president is immune from criminal liability for acts alleged to have been official acts in office.
So it's a very straightforward question with a number of.
Elements to it, frankly.
What kinds of things affect that, whether it's an official act, when is it an official act, and so on.
Former president versus president.
Although I don't happen to think that's much of an issue, really.
I mean, Nixon versus Fitzgerald dealt with a former president.
I think the relevant time frame is when the person is in office.
But in terms of your specific focus of timing, first of all, the court set it on an expedited track so that it's going to be Argued the week of April 22nd.
That's extraordinarily fast for this kind of thing.
But I don't think we should be driven by Jack Smith's quest to get things done as quickly as possible to make sure to get a trial before the election.
These are important constitutional issues and they should be fully fleshed out.
This case can't go to trial, in my view at least, before the obstruction statute is fleshed out by the Supreme Court.
That's also under review and also relates to the charges in the case against President Trump.
And so I think that it's more important to get it right than to move quickly here.
There's no question that there's an agenda to try to get a conviction for President Trump before the election.
It's not coincidental that all of these cases were brought at the same time, including a business case that's attacking business practices President Trump and real estate developers have used for decades.
It's not a coincidence that they're all brought at the same time, just before an election.
The President, especially with President Trump, the clear Republican candidate, and in most polls, I think, winning the general election.
Let's come back to that.
I think you make reference to 1512, the obstructing an official proceeding charge that's been used by prosecutors in D.C.
against so many of the January 6th defendants.
Explain to our audience why this is a significant issue in the Trump case.
Well, in the Trump case, it's charged that he was attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.
We don't know from the Supreme Court yet, and we will find out, what's an official proceeding, what it means to obstruct, what frame of mind is required.
All of these are elements that have to go into the preparation of defense, and can only go into the preparation of defense Once we know what the legal parameters are.
It will guide jury instructions in the case.
It will guide the entire formulation of the defense on the obstruction charges.
And so, you know, it's little talked about.
Everyone talks about just the immunity thing, holding things up.
And I was asked the question last night, is it fair when the Trump team, I was asked on CNN whether it's fair For the Trump team to raise these issues and then complain about timing and ask for a delay in the trial, I said, of course it is.
These criminal charges were foisted on them.
They never should have been brought in the first place.
The lawyers have an obligation to raise all of the legal issues, and the court had an obligation to hear the case as it's doing now, and the same goes with the obstruction charges.
That's relevant to virtually all of the January 6th defendants, but even well beyond this.
We're seeing an effort here by Jack Smith and others to make law that's unique to President Trump, and that's very dangerous.
So I think the court did the responsible thing.
I heard some commentators on CNN last night saying it was arrogant for the Supreme Court of the United States Now would probably be a very good time since I don't want to be duplicative.
After all, the D.C. Circuit wrote a comprehensive opinion.
That's an absolutely outrageous position to take.
This is the high court of the land.
They're acting responsibly and hearing the case, and no one knows yet how it's going to come out.
Now would probably be a very good time, since I don't want to be duplicative.
Let's run that great interview last night with Laura Ingraham.
The great defenders of democracy have now kicked Trump off another state ballot.
Of course, this happened in Cook County in Illinois.
Circuit Judge Tracy Porter has ruled that former President Trump is disqualified from the state's March 19th primary ballot and the general election over the, quote, anti-insurrection clause.
How is this democracy, David?
It's not democracy.
It's as anti-democratic as it gets.
They're going to get slammed by the Supreme Court.
Illinois has long, and especially Cook County, long been heavy-handed with ballot access.
I had to go into the federal district court there to challenge the constitutionality of ballot access law on another heavy-handed move they made.
They slammed them.
They were so adamant about it.
When I went to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, they sent six lawyers in to argue against me, and they lost again.
They're going to lose this time.
It's horrible.
It sends a terrible message to the American people.
Why are they afraid of the ballot?
The ballot is what really makes this country work.
Here's what the judge, Judge Tracy Porter, who was responsible for this outrageous decision tonight in Illinois, this is what she said when she was appointed back in 2021.
She said, my motto is impacting lives and changing communities, and that is how I will approach this new position.
David, last time I checked, that's not the role of a judge.
That's the role, perhaps, of an activist or an NGO or maybe a representative.
But she put it right out there for us.
Yeah, and actually her role ought to be the enforcement of the Constitution, the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the voters to vote for a candidate of their choice and of the candidate to be on the ballot.
This is absolutely wrong.
It's going to get slammed, but they ought to shut it down immediately.
And she should probably be sanctioned because she knows what she did is right.
She knows the matter is pending at the Supreme Court.
What's amazing about this, reading a great piece by the Illinois Review, is that The Illinois State Elections Board has already ruled that Trump can appear on the ballot.
The judge, Tracy Porter, is essentially oversees cases in the traffic division of the Cook County court system.
I mean, this is, I guess this was to get her 15 minutes, but I guess my question, David, is this, I believe this is exactly the issue that's already before the high court pertaining to the Colorado ballot access.
It is generally believed, despite the fact that the president's lawyers may have missed a few cogent arguments in their presentation to the court, it's still generally believed that the court is going to overturn the decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to bar Trump from the ballot.
If that were to happen, would that have the effect of killing all of these efforts in the various states?
Since they all seem to be based on the same flawed argument that Trump has participated, not been charged with or convicted of, but has participated in insurrection and is therefore ineligible for the ballot.
That's at least part of their argument.
Would an affirmative decision, or I should say a decision overturning the Colorado Supreme Court, clear this issue away in Illinois and other states?
Yes, it would.
And especially in the Illinois case, all she basically did was copy the Colorado decision.
So a clear decision by the Supreme Court will erase all of these efforts.
And I think that's what we're going to see.
There are many ways the court can go to resolve the issue, but it will reverse The Colorado case is clearly cannot apply this case to keep President Trump off the ballot and it really is all that once and for all.
And this judge knows it up there, but she gave a very narrow window now to take it to the Supreme Court.
What I think should be done.
I've made the suggestion already is that they go immediately into federal district court in the.
District Court there in Chicago and request an injunction to the Illinois State Board of Elections.
That's the board that determines who's on the ballot.
An injunction requiring that President Trump's name be placed on the ballot.
I wouldn't even necessarily get into the state court decision.
I don't want to hear Any abstention arguments and so on.
This is a First and Fourteenth Amendment issue.
It's very clear and the District Court has to act immediately to enjoin the State Board of Elections to put President Trump's name on the ballot.
There's a history of this in Chicago.
I mentioned last night that I brought a case against the Illinois Board of Elections in the past for keeping a small party off of the ballot.
They had draconian laws there.
They fight very hard to keep them in place.
And there is a special election that happened up there.
They had to redo the ballots before because at the last minute they tried to pull a fast one and a court said it wasn't constitutional.
So this is going to cost Illinois a lot of money if this thing sticks, because they're going to have to redo it if they dare to try to run this election and bar President Trump from being on the ballot. - Okay.
Okay.
Troy, do you have a question for Attorney David Shum?
Absolutely.
Mr. Sean, just as somebody who looks at this stuff constantly and you're constantly... I love hearing your explanations on these things and going into the laws and things like that.
What's your reaction when you see... I mean, it appears to me from what you're saying that most of these cases fall apart with a simple review of what they're actually talking about.
What's your reaction to these things being launched all over the country just as somebody who practices law?
Yeah, I think it's terrible.
Listen, there are a couple of people who happen to be behind almost all of these, the agenda in this case, and almost all of these initiatives.
Norm Eisen is one.
His group, CREW, C-R-E-W, brings these cases.
They have other organizations under whose auspices they operate, these folks.
Their goal is simply to find some way around the ballot for keeping President Trump off of the ballot.
And I always say, you know, it harkens back to something Jerry Nadler said during the Trump administration, and that is we can't trust the voters.
We have to find a way outside the ballot to keep President Trump out of office.
That's as undemocratic a message as I've ever heard from a United States representative, but we see how it's playing out here.
And not only that, they have folks in the media who take the exact opposite position, and they say, oh gee, there's no argument really against the Colorado decision.
That opinion was so sound, and it's clear that President Trump must be kept off the ballot under the 14th Amendment.
You're doing a real disservice to American voters and to the world, I think, frankly, when you misstate constitutional principles like that.
There's so many reasons the Colorado Supreme Court decision is wrong on constitutional grounds.
All right, let us go back, if we may, to the immunity question, because there's one that I have to ask you.
I followed the proceedings at the appeals court level, and one minute and 58 seconds into his presentation, The president's lawyer was asked by Judge Pan, what would happen if President Donald Trump ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate his chief political opponent and then ordered SEAL Team 6 to kill any U.S.
Senator who dared to impeach him over that?
Would he have immunity in that case?
And surprisingly, the president's lawyer, after a moment, said, my answer is a qualified yes.
Even I found that, as a non-lawyer, to be kind of a shocking lawyer.
David, had you been before the court, how would you have responded to that question?
From his perspective and his framework, I understand why he said yes.
I think he's simply wrong.
And I think it's wrong to take that kind of extreme approach.
It's not necessary to win this case.
My answer would have been no, we would not be absolutely immune in that circumstance, because that would not be within the outer perimeter of the duties of office.
It wouldn't have been an official act.
Yeah, it's a ludicrous question, but of course, the left has run with it.
Nixon versus Fitzgerald in 1982, the president's absolute immunity extends to all acts within the outer perimeters of his duties of office.
Personally, getting a SEAL team to hit a political opponent would not be within an official duty in any realm.
Yeah, it's a ludicrous question, but of course, the left has run with it.
They've tried to use it to characterize this entire case.
Watching the people like Rachel Maddow flipping out yesterday because the Supreme Court agreed to hear this.
Now, I was not certain whether they would hear it or not hear it, but you're absolutely right.
Their level of anger all has to do with timing.
You see, they are desperate to have a criminal trial in D.C. against President Trump prior to the election.
That's really the overriding goal here.
And And lawyers like you, who I respect, and several others are really beginning to wonder whether that can actually happen given this Supreme Court decision.
Now, I've already been surprised by the extent to which the process has been expedited, sometimes confounding how special counsel John Durham can take five years To reach his conclusions.
So the system can move very quickly when it wants to.
It also can move very slowly when it wants to.
David, this is kind of an outside the box question, but the Supreme Court ultimately had to decide about the release of President Richard Nixon's White House tapes.
They ultimately determined that Nixon had to turn them over.
That, in turn, made them public.
I'm curious about the audio tapes of special counsel Robert Herr's interrogation of Joe Biden during his investigation into Biden's, what he called his, willful retention of top secret and classified documents.
And because democracy dies in darkness, because I'm a full disclosure guy, I'd like to see that tape be made public.
Would anyone have standing to bring such an action in that regard?
That's a great question, and there's not enough talk about this.
You're 100% right about the importance of transparency, and especially now that President Biden has gone on record at his press conference in denying factual assertions that Mr. Herr made.
So I think the case has to be brought I would hope that Norm Eisen would bring it under the auspices of Crewe, since he is going around the country claiming that he has standing to raise public interest into matters of public interest, but I think in this case,
Frankly, there could be a number of entities or people who have standing, but I think at a minimum, Congress needs to demand it, because at the end of the day, special counsel has to deliver a report to Congress with the approval of the Attorney General.
The Attorney General Very, very interesting.
Excellent analysis.
I had not focused on that.
is permitted under the special counsel's guidelines to ask questions.
I think that the way to go about this one is that this should be subpoenaed and the subpoena should be enforced by Congress in a court proceeding if that's required.
Very, very interesting.
Excellent analysis.
I had not focused on that.
All right, let's turn now, if we may, to the so-called valuations case, the Ngaron case, I mean, there's been plenty of discussion about the case itself and the fact that essentially the judge in this case found Donald Trump there's been plenty of discussion about the case itself and the fact that essentially the judge in this case found Donald Trump and his companies and members of his family guilty prior to there ever really being a And,
And that's outrageous enough in itself.
Again, to cite the facts of the case, Donald Trump borrowed money from banks.
He put up certain assets as collateral.
Regardless of what he declared the value of that collateral to be, the banks conducted their own due diligence, their own appraisals to determine whether they thought this was a good loan, a safe loan.
They made the loans.
They were paid back in full.
In some cases, paid back, in all cases on time, in some cases, actually paid back early.
They made as much as $40 million in interest.
There's no victim here.
There's no complaint in here.
This wasn't this complaint wasn't brought by a bank or someone who claimed they were somehow cheated or defrauded.
It was brought by the Attorney General Letitia James under a law under which no one else had ever been prosecuted.
But I want to go to the more recent part of this.
Just in order to appeal this, the judge is requiring Trump to post a bond, as I understand it, that costs as much as a half a billion dollars, and there's actually some risk to that.
In other words, he may, even if he gets to appeal, lose some of that money.
How can this be considered fair?
I mean, everything you just said is 100% correct.
It can't be considered fair by any measure, by any standards.
Even Trump haters don't think it's fair.
Even Trump haters who are in business have basically taken the position, there but for the grace of God, go I. Some are moving out of New York.
Some are threatening to move out of New York.
All are saying it's unfair, even people outside of business.
Jeb Bush recently wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal saying how this undermines the integrity of the system.
You're 100% right.
This judge, Engeron, even addresses in the beginning of his opinion why this is not really fraud.
He says fraud requires certain things, and that's always materiality and misrepresentation that it's relied on to one's detriment and all that.
But then he says along came executive general That's not fraud.
312 in New York, and that changed the whole ballgame.
So just as you pointed out, no loss is required, no victim is required, no materiality is required, no reliance is required.
That's not fraud.
It's some made-up law that's now used to punitive effect.
And so there are so many, in my view, so many constitutional infirmities with what went on here.
You start with the amount of damages.
That looks like an Eighth Amendment to the Fourteenth Amendment violation, excessive fine, and so on.
But I think it's even more basic than that.
I think that the law itself is standardless.
We don't know what the burden of proof is.
The law provides that the judge can order whatever relief he, quote, deems proper.
I don't even know how to begin to approach that, what the standard would be for or the framework for the relief could be.
But then there's another issue.
They didn't get a jury trial in the case.
And so there's a 2011 case from that same court, Justice Ramos, former respected Supreme Court justice in New York, Supreme Court is the trial court.
And he finds that there is no right to a jury trial under this section of the law.
But his reason is because it's not really about damages.
This is just supposed to be an equitable measure.
If you find that someone committed fraud in business, you can adjust it by limiting their business practice or something like that.
But he said damages are just incidental.
Well, in this case, damages are the tail wagging the dog.
It's an extraordinary amount, $355 million.
With interest compiling, it's $450-something million.
There's no end to the thing.
And so that's clearly punitive.
You clearly have to have the right to a jury trial.
I wouldn't just argue that the amount of damage is excessive, because I don't think the full remedy in this case should be just a reduction in damages.
It shouldn't certainly be.
There shouldn't be any damages.
But I think you need a completely new trial.
I think the law is unconstitutional as applied for many reasons, some of which I've said, and I think the whole thing was misguided.
And from the start, we know the agenda was a political one.
The attorney general ran on a platform of getting President Trump.
He wasn't even under investigation at the time.
That's clearly unethical, inappropriate.
No one should accept that from a public servant because, again, today it's Donald Trump.
Tomorrow it's somebody else with some other attorney general.
So this case has to be reversed ultimately.
But you're right in focusing on this bond issue because it's a killer.
It's not appropriate to make someone who wants to appeal a case with these kinds of substantive issues in it put up any kind of bond.
It's in the public interest to have the appeal go forward.
It's really quite extraordinary.
Now, of course, given the delay in the January 6th and what appears to be a delay in the so-called documents trial that Jack Smith has brought in the 11th District of Florida,
They're now moving ahead with what should be a regular, if anything, a business records case, a civil litigation, which prosecuting attorney, District Attorney of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, has bumped up to be a criminal trial.
This has the same markings in terms of motive as the so-called valuation trial, although I think it has the potential from a public relations point of view to be more damaging to the president because of the subject matter.
The court will be relying on Michael Cohen as their chief witness, who I think that's extraordinarily dangerous.
David, what is your assessment of that upcoming trial?
Well, first of all, you know, the judge is a bit of a nightmare.
He's a real Trump hater.
He's also, I found him to be a sort of very insecure fellow who's very much subject to what he believes public opinion to be, very sensitive to what's going on in the courtroom and that the press is there.
That's dangerous.
He's a Trump hater, a contributor we know, you know, to Campaign from the other party.
But beyond all of that, I think the case is fatally flawed in its indictment.
The indictment is a cockamamie, jerry-rigging, jerry-rigged contraption by which they charge a misdemeanor of errors in the business records.
But, under New York law, it can be a felony if the misdemeanor was intended to commit another crime.
The problem here is, to make it to a felony, the grand jury never has identified what that so-called other target crime is.
I think that's a fatal defect in the indictment.
I don't think it can be cured by a bill of particulars or any other measure.
This is what the grand jury found and didn't find.
And so, for example, one theory is They falsified business records, allegedly, in order to advance his election by covering up the Stormy Daniels thing to advance his election prospects.
That would be one defense, then, to face that with.
to oppose that kind of theory with.
Another theory is allegedly doctored business records for tax purposes to avoid certain taxes or to get certain tax advantages.
That's a completely different defense.
Without the grand jury identifying what the so-called target crime was, there's no way to defend it and there's no way to raise a claim of double jeopardy if the state loses this time around and then says, oh no, what we really meant was the following, and they charge the other theory the next time around.
So I think it's fatally flawed in that regard.
They're also going to have to deal with a number of logistical issues.
That is, there's a book out there that a special prosecutor they brought in to investigate this matter wrote, and in it he just details why the office was fundamentally against this prosecution, including Alvin Bragg, why the higher-ups with the experienced people in the office thought this case never should have been brought.
And then as to Michael Cohen, You know, we can't leave out that Bob Costello was Michael Cohen's lawyer at some point.
He's on record already as saying that Michael Cohen told him a completely different story about the underlying matter here, and so you can be sure he's going to appear as a witness in the case.
It's a case that never should have been brought criminally, but again we see a prosecutor, this time Alvin Bragg, running on a campaign promising to get Trump.
Yeah, the timing is what seems extraordinarily suspicious.
As soon as it became clear that because of the federal litigation that there would be a delay in the January 6 trial, and there also appears to be a delay in the so-called documents trial taking place in the 11th Circuit of Florida, well then it was Mr. Bragg's turn.
I think, strictly from a political point of view, I think President Trump actually benefited politically, certainly not financially, but politically from the overreach of the valuation case.
Whether this case will have the same effect given some of the lurid accusations, well, that remains to be seen.
You're right.
Just the idea that the judge gave a contribution to Joe Biden's presidential campaign, even though I think it was a $15 contribution, I think that's Immaterial.
Any contribution creates an appearance of bias under which I think the judge should have disqualified himself, but very clearly he refuses to do that.
All right, Troy, one more question here for David Schoen, who has a busy day.
I'm going to let you ask the final question, and then we'll let David go back to practicing law.
It's an honor to meet you here.
And I just wanted to ask you really, as you're looking across the country and you see all these cases, is there one in particular that you think would be the biggest problem for President Trump in the way that it's being set up?
And also, if you could also kind of go into how we can kind of fix this so we don't see these rogue prosecutors and everybody kind of going after people for things that you're telling us are just not legitimate.
Boy, I really don't know how it can be fixed.
I mean, we've come to a point now, I think we saw it in the snap impeachment of President Trump, so we're going to see tit-for-tat in that.
But here, you know, I'd like to think that if President Trump wins this election, he's going to just rise above this and say, listen, we have to get this country back to doing the business of the country.
And this is what he did so well with the economy and with foreign policy before.
And let's just focus on it.
Hopefully that stops it.
The temptation is going to be for many in the public, at least half the country, to say, you know, there's got to be payback for what these folks have done.
I think we need to move beyond that.
But right now we've got to deal with all of these cases.
As for, you know, which is the biggest problem?
I mean, right now, if he's really going to go to trial, March 25th, and that's the immediate problem on the plate.
There are full defenses to all of these cases.
There are motions that have been denied, but I think they raise tremendous issues for appeal.
But it's all a giant distraction from the election campaign.
The people want to hear about the issues from the candidates these days.
And I think that's one reason we see his poll numbers going through the roof every time these things happen.
And as Roger said, especially with the Judge Enger on case, people all walks of life think that it was extraordinarily unfair.
You have the banks literally in that case saying they love the loans, they want Trump business, and that makes sense.
And they did their own due diligence and they discounted any outside valuation and so on.
It's absurd.
And that's why you see, they're not getting the money if it has to be paid.
The state gets the money, and that's just a windfall that's undeserved.
One final question, which I'll preserve as a privilege as the host.
In the Florida documents case, there seems to be a lot of illegal action surrounding the whole question of confidentiality.
It seems to me that the prosecutors Don't want to reveal either to the plaintiff or to the public what these alleged documents that they claim the president improperly held on to regard.
How can that possibly be?
I think it's wrong.
I think the judge has been very careful.
You know, she's come under attack by most in the left wing.
She's the only judge in all of these cases, in my view at least, who's acted like a judge.
But anyway, what she said most recently in her decisions is that some of the sort of secondary defendants don't need access to the documents because their charges don't require the same mens rea, the same state of mind, the same intention with respect to national defense documents. the same intention with respect to national defense documents.
But she is giving President Trump's team, it appears, access to the documents to know what it is the government's talking about.
I mean, there shouldn't be a veil of secrecy in any of these things.
Obviously, if there's classified information, we don't the public doesn't need to see the classified information, but we can have a sheet that tells us the nature of the matters involved, but they even want to keep jury questionnaires.
Secret, because some jurors, Mr. Smith says, might have strong feelings about Donald Trump.
That's what the public needs to see.
The public needs to see the political nature of the prosecutions and what they call a fair and impartial, unbiased jury.
Again, I heard someone on CNN last night saying, you know, the American public demands the right to have President Trump brought before an impartial, unbiased jury.
It's not coincidental the timing of the cases or where the cases were brought.
Jack Smith well knows the demographics of the jury in D.C.
and what the voting pattern was in D.C.
It's not coincidental that that case was brought there or in New York City.
Excellent point.
I guess if a juror has an antagonistic view towards President Trump, I'm not really certain how it's possible for them to sit in judgment and put that aside as an impartial juror.
It should be hard, it will be hard to find a juror, a prospective juror who has no opinion of President Trump or Joe Biden for that matter.
On the other hand, it would seem to me that that should be the goal in jury selection.
On the other hand, I lived through this and I can tell you the jurors in my case, We're not well disposed to President Donald Trump.
All right, David Shum, criminal defense attorney.
Thank you so much for joining us yet again in the Stone Zone with your extraordinary analysis.
I'm going to go look for your other interview with Laura Ingram because I want to see you talking about immunity.
But thank you so much for your time and thanks for joining us today.
Always an honor and a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
All right, folks.
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Nitric oxide exists as one of the body's most potent natural antioxidants.
It's a short-lived gas produced in the walls of the arteries and the veins.
And as you get older, the natural production naturally drops.
It has a number of crucial functions in the body, keeping blood pressure and cholesterol at healthy levels, supporting the anti-inflammatory process, promoting general good health and a sense of well-being, but also supporting natural energy.
I find that I get a burst of natural energy and much quicker recovery when I'm taking Cardio Miracle.
Now, it's very easy to take.
You take a capsule of it twice a day, mixed with water or juice.
It tastes like raspberry.
It's quite pleasant tasting.
And I found an almost immediate improvement in my well-being and also in my natural energy.
I put in long hours putting together the Stone Zone.
As well as producing my WABC weekend radio show, as well as cranking out print media at StoneZone.com.
And this has helped me enormously.
So folks, check out this great product by going to CardioMiracle.com.
CardioMiracle.com.
It is a powerful combination of nitric oxide, both a proprietary blend and a broader antioxidant blend.
You can actually Get all of your necessary vitamins on a daily basis from Cardio Miracle.
I'm not a doctor.
If you have heart problems, I urge you to see a cardiologist.
But for general health, for general cardiovascular health, and I think for quick recovery and generally boosting natural energy, let me recommend Cardio Miracle.
Once again, go to cardiomiracle.com and use promo code STONE when you do so.
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I think you'll be very, very pleased with this product.
All right, Troy, let's go back to the political scene.
David Choen, I think, made a very key point there at the end yesterday.
First time I've seen this in the Emerson College poll.
Pardon me, that's incorrect.
In the Harvard Harris poll, Uh, for the first time we saw numbers that indicated that even if Donald Trump were to be convicted of some of these alleged crimes with which he is accused, he seems to beat Joe Biden in the polling anyway.
This is a sea change.
This is a, this is a more recent development.
Now the Harvard Harris poll.
Uh, this is conducted by Mark Penn, uh, who is a Democrat, uh, but more precisely, I think one of the leading survey research experts in the country.
Uh, he is not somebody who sugarcoats or tries to color his research.
He's very, very straightforward, has a huge amount of integrity.
I've actually known him, I don't know, almost, almost 40 years.
Um, I find this a very significant development.
What do you think?
Well, and I'm 100% interested to hear your thoughts on how we kind of examine polls, Roger, because I think for the most part, I think it's important for you to talk about, you specifically, because you review this stuff so often, how polls mislead people and why it's so important to focus on polls that matter.
And I think, you know, the shoes are a perfect example.
You know, people in the mainstream media were freaking out about the shoes, Roger, the Trump shoes.
And they were making fun of him.
They were making fun of the shoes.
And it almost reminded me of 2016.
And I think what they're failing to realize here is that Trump has become a cultural phenomenon.
He was political in 2016 and he had a cultural aspect to his aura, his being, who he is.
He had a cultural aspect to that, but it wasn't really the dominating aspect of it.
Now with him being really a figurehead of what it is to be a forgotten American, he's really become the symbol for hardworking Americans, for people that are just trying to get by, for people who have been persecuted.
And the mainstream media has been complicit in pushing these cases.
So in reality, they've created the cultural phenomenon that is Trump.
And I think the reason that Trump is not going to be hurt by anything here, even if he does get convicted in any of the cases, is the same reason that famous rappers or famous artists or musicians like Johnny Cash or Jimi Hendrix or whoever, who get arrested, their popularity doesn't go down.
In fact, their album sales go up because those people are being related to President Trump is a relatable person, something that you don't see often in politics, Roger, and I'd be interested to hear if you've ever seen somebody who had as much of a cultural impact as Trump in politics, just in general.
You know, I agree with you.
When I first saw that he was going to be marketing these sneakers, when I saw he was going to SneakerCon, I basically said, what in the world?
Well, first of all, he made a lot of money, money that unfortunately he badly needs now Post the bond where they're asking him to put up almost a half billion dollars just in order to have his appeal heard.
Outrageously unfair.
I think he's going to meet those requirements.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know whether he has to sell certain assets or borrow money to do it.
I don't know what his cash position is because remember, his companies are privately held.
But I noticed a couple things.
First of all, the sneakers sold out almost immediately.
I mean, they're not available, and my understanding is that at least this version was a limited edition.
So you snooze, you lose.
I didn't buy a pair.
Now I wish I had, although I'm not sure I could have gotten in fast enough.
But secondarily, there are a lot of working class Americans.
minorities and others who like this culture, who like the sneakers, like the whole thing.
And I think it makes Trump more relatable, makes him more of every man, more like the average American.
I'm sorry, I can't picture as hard as I might George H.W. marketing a pair of Bush sneakers.
I I just, I can't even begin to imagine that.
To go to your question about polls, it's one, there's two misnomers here that need to be constantly, unfortunately, revisited.
I have said on this show many, many times that one cannot look just at one poll and reach a conclusion.
One needs to look at several polls taken essentially within the same time frame, but even those polls have to have a certain professional and scientific methodology.
In other words, the sample size needs to be large enough to be Scientifically and statistically significant.
The order of the questions has to be in an unbiased manner, so that before you introduce positive or negative information regarding the candidate or public figure that you're testing, you are asking the questions prior to introducing that information in order to gauge what the impact of the information may be.
You also want to look at the general, the manner in which the sample is drawn.
In other words, is it a representative sample of the larger jurisdiction that you're trying to measure in?
So, for example, I see this all the time.
I will see polls, but then I notice That they're not of registered voters.
They're just of citizens and they were selected through random digit dialing.
That's not a politically viable or scientifically valid poll.
Can you take a poll and make it show whatever you want?
Yes, you can cook the sample, you can cook the wording of the questions, you can cook the order of the questions.
Now people go out and say, Roger Stone said all polls are fake.
No, that's not even remotely what I'm saying.
But what I am saying is that you go to RealClearPolitics, which I really like, and you look at the RealClearPolitics average to look at all of the polling within a given time frame.
And if all of the polls or the overwhelming number of polls are showing one thing, but one poll is showing something else, Well, then that poll is what they call an outlier.
It is unlikely to be correct within the larger context of looking at all of the polls.
So if you look at it within that context right now, Donald Trump is leading in every swing state as well as maintaining a narrow lead nationally.
Now, one of the things you always look for is to see whether either candidate is over 50%.
a candidate who's over 50% is in not impregnable, but much stronger position.
We still have a race in this country.
It's hard for me to look at these polls and figure out how, in some cases, 46% of the people are voting for Joe Biden.
It's almost hard for me to figure that out, but that's not a scientific observation.
That's just a personal observation.
When a candidate moves over 50, they are considered to be in excellent position, maybe even impregnable position to win the race.
This is one of the reasons why I am rejecting the advice of Richard Nixon, who has often said, told me directly, That in choosing a vice presidential running mate, one should not look for an individual who can help you, just find someone who doesn't hurt you.
Well, generally speaking, I think what he means by that is select somebody once you determine that they are fully qualified, that they have the experience, the judgment, the temperament, the commitment to the America First agenda to potentially be president, if God forbid, That should become necessary.
Then, and only then, can you look at the political considerations.
But I think a lot can be said for selecting somebody who is sure-footed.
Running for Vice President of the United States is not the same as, say, running for Governor of a small state like South Dakota.
It's a very, very different situation.
It's a high-pressure atmosphere in which, candidly, the fake news media, which is Hostile to Republican candidates are seeking to find some controversy, seeking to find some way to damage your ticket through a perceived misstep of some kind.
One of the classic tricks they use is to try to get the presidential and vice presidential candidates to contradict each other, or more precisely, to get the vice presidential candidate To contradict the presidential candidate.
So you want somebody who has political experience beyond just the experience of being elected in a small state.
Yes, I have said and I will say again, I'm intrigued by the potential for the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard, who is now an independent, a former Democrat Congresswoman.
I recognize that online this is getting mixed results.
Some people love the idea.
Some people hate the idea.
Let me be very clear.
I'm not endorsing anyone.
I'm for whoever Donald Trump is for.
And so I am merely having a discussion of the potential of her candidacy, which given her record as a combat veteran in both Iraq and in Kuwait, Her current status as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S.
Army Reserve, her evolution on a number of key issues.
On the key issue of war and peace, she's clearly very solid.
She is very anti-neocon.
She's against giving more money to Ukraine.
She clearly has had an evolution when it comes to Second Amendment rights.
Troy, when I interviewed her for my WABC radio show on Sunday, she was calling me from a shooting range in Arizona where she was in a shooting contest.
You could hear the gunshots in the background.
And of course, she is pro-life, which I think is vitally important within the Trump coalition.
So I'm intrigued by that idea.
Now people say, oh, well, she was for Bernie Sanders.
Well, you know, had I been a Democrat, And I had to choose between Hillary Clinton, the war machine candidate, or Bernie Sanders, who is opposed to war.
I guess I'd have been for Sanders as well, although I disagree with probably most of his other positions.
So anyway, I'm going to continue talking about this.
Some people don't like it, but I'll be honest with you, I really don't care what they like.
Anyway, here's a matter that is perhaps the most important.
We're going to talk about today.
If you've followed me here at the Stone's Zone or at my WABC radio show, the only thing I probably take more seriously than politics is food.
And I'm a kind of an amateur chef.
I cook Italian and I always use and insist that others use San Marzano tomatoes.
Now, San Marzano tomatoes are not a brand of tomato.
It is a style of tomato that is only grown in the San Marzano Valley of Italy, and they're imported into this country by a number of companies.
However, a woman in California whose name is, let's see, Andrea Valiente has filed a lawsuit against Simpson Imports, a Pennsylvania tomato seller, Claiming that they are using misleading labels to give the impression that the tomatoes they are selling are San Marzano tomatoes.
This is not the first time I brought this problem to the American people.
It is claimed that the tomatoes from this company, Simpsons Imports, are priced higher than many other canned tomato brands, which contributes, according to her lawsuit, to the plausibility of the consumer's expectation that the tomatoes are indeed San Marzano tomatoes.
That comes actually from the judge in this federal case.
Now, the labeling of San Marzano tomatoes in the United States has been loose in the European Union.
Only tomatoes that are grown in a specific region of Italy and fulfill a number of other specific requirements receive the designation of protective origin, or DOP.
Look for that always, folks, DOP, to show that they are genuine, authentic San Marzano tomatoes.
In the United States, many tomato sellers claim to grow strains of San Marzanos and may sell those as...
As San Marzano style tomatoes but they do not have the official European certification.
Folks, this is a fugazi.
This is a fraud.
So, to wrap up the Stone's Own today, for all your Italian cooking, for all the recipes you can find in my book, Stone's Rules, which you can buy at Stone's Own in the store, always be sure that you are using genuine San Marzano's authentic plum tomatoes from Italy, and that you're not using San Marzano-style tomatoes.
That has to be the last word today.
I want to thank my co-host, Troy Smith.
Hopefully I've made him very hungry with this important news item.
Until tomorrow, I'm Roger Stone.
On behalf of Troy and myself, thank you for joining us today in the Stone Zone, and Godspeed!
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