On a solo Friday, Dan begins by discussing the sprawling indictment of Trump and his co-conspirators in Fulton County, Georgia. This indictment includes lawyers, pastors, and others who allegedly helped Trump attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
Dan then turns his attention to the ruling on the abortion pills out of the 5th Circuit. It's a monumental story that, while unfinished, will have dramatic impacts on reproductive rights all over the country.
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Hello and welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller.
I am your host today.
Flying solo.
No Brad Onishi.
He could not be here, but I will do my best to ride this out, see how it goes.
There won't be any witty banter or, I guess, clever college stories or anything.
I will try to fight the urge to talk about cargo shorts or where I get them or why I wear them, and I'll just accept who I am.
In all seriousness, lots to talk about today.
We want to begin by just always saying thank you to all of you who listen, to our patrons, to everybody who, as I always say, suffers through the ads, the people who reach out with ideas.
Please keep them coming.
We always love to hear from you and can't do this without you.
We are an indie series, an indie show, with no external support, so we need you.
As always, I would love to hear from you.
You can reach me at danielmillerswaj, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
Love the ideas that you have.
Feedback, whether it's for this, the Weekly Roundup, whether it's for the interviews that Brad does so often, whether it is for the series that's in The Code.
Yeah, love to hear from you.
Let me just dive in.
Really, just two topics today.
In case you didn't notice, Trump was indicted again this week.
That, of course, will be the main focus.
It kind of sucks the oxygen out of the room, but there's no way to not talk about it.
We're going to spend most of our time there.
But I want to start with something else first, and that was the decision in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on methaprostone.
I think I finally said that right.
The key for me to say it is to not think about it and just spit it out.
But the shorthand is the so-called abortion pill.
And folks will remember that several weeks or a few months ago, some court decisions came out.
This had been targeted.
The abortion pill had, in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned by SCOTUS, It had been targeted by conservatives as a way of combating what is, for many, the most common form of abortion access, which is medical abortion.
I had a kind of crazy judge down in Texas who just banned it outright.
That was overturned by another court.
It's been sort of in limbo, appeared to be headed like a heat-seeking rocket back to SCOTUS.
And the decision this week is just going to reinforce that.
So what was the decision?
Well, the Fifth Circuit ruled largely in line with abortion, anti-abortion activists.
The banning the drug was not allowable.
That was the part where they disappointed the activists, I guess.
The panel as a whole was not willing to ban the drug outright.
But they did roll back federal actions undertaken since 2016 that made the pill more accessible, right?
So these would affect things like the ability to order the drug online.
The ability to get the drug by mail and of course this is one of the issues that a number of states have already tackled to make it so that it was illegal to ship or receive this drug via mail.
They also made it so that pharmacies would not be able to dispense it as well and doctors would have to prescribe it so that no sort of pharmacist dispensing and as I understand it also I think If doctors have to prescribe it, I'm not sure what that means for, say, other medical health professionals who are not doctors in their ability to prescribe.
And also rolled back eligibility from 10 weeks to 7 weeks.
So largely a win for the anti-abortion activists.
What does it mean?
Here are some takeaways.
The first thing is it wouldn't go into effect yet.
Things I'm reading are saying that because you've got all these competing court cases now, it's going to be decided by SCOTUS.
It's going to go back to the Supreme Court.
But we already have a patchwork of states with different rules and regulations, and that will continue.
Which means that people around the country are going to have to know what their state allows.
And we've also run into this already with other kinds of providers and things, where providers are unwilling to provide access to the drug, even if it's legal in a jurisdiction, because they're just afraid of what will happen if they do.
So that's one piece of it.
It's going to go to SCOTUS.
How does that play out?
We don't know.
You have a conservative court, we've talked about this before, that somehow through, I don't know, delusion, whatever, thought that they could overturn Roe v. Wade and somehow, you know, throw it back to the states and settle the abortion issue.
And of course, that hasn't happened.
We know that.
And so it's boomeranging right back to the Supreme Court.
So we'll see what happens there.
It also means that for Democrats working to keep this topic front and center, it'll be before the court, probably.
Around the time of the 2024 election.
We've seen, we've talked about, everybody's talked about, we're not unique in this, Brad and I, talking about the significance of abortion as a topic that Democrats can ride to electoral wins, that Democrats can use to get more sympathetic voters voting and so forth.
This will keep it alive in that regard.
And so I do think that there may well be a sort of be careful what you wish for element to this for the anti-abortion activists, given the timing.
The more interesting takeaway, the more significant takeaway, are some of the statements that were made about the drug and this decision on the part of the justices who decided the majority opinion.
Here was the first statement.
This is from Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, who is an appointee of George W. Bush, so conservative justice, or judge rather, on the Fifth Circuit.
And of course, what they have to decide is that the doctors who brought this suit, that they received injuries somehow by having ready access to the drug, mailing access and so forth.
And she said, it's a concrete injury.
When they are forced to divert time and resources away from their regular patients, quote, and when they are, quote, forced to choose between following their conscience and providing care to a woman, end quote.
Following their conscience, providing care to a woman who has had an abortion.
So this is what she had to say.
So this is what strikes me about this.
I say this all the time.
I'll re-emphasize it.
I'm not a legal expert, but I understand the notion of concrete injury.
I understand the idea that if we as judges are going to say that a lawsuit wins on its merits, we have to show that the people bringing the suit have somehow been injured by Well, in this case, the actions of the FDA to win the suit.
So we've got to be able to show that that happened.
But notice how she says this, they're forced to divert time and resources away from their regular patients when they have to deal with a woman who has had an abortion.
The logic here is really clear, which is that women who've had an abortion, they're not real or legitimate patients.
That somehow or another it's an undue burden on doctors to have to provide medical care to women if this somehow involves reproductive health or abortions.
The moral judgments here are obvious.
The moral judgments on those who terminate pregnancies for whatever reason Are absolutely clear.
And I think that this is a really chilling point on the part of the judge here, saying that they have to divert time and resources, basically saying, you know, they got to take time and resources from real patients.
Morally upstanding patients, patients who didn't have abortions to deal with women who did.
It's chilling.
It's awful.
And I think it's a window into the conservative mindset and the game that the judges can play as they can make anything that suits their ideology sound like it's an appeal to the law.
OK, so that, again, is just as Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod.
That's what she had to say.
But there's even worse.
So another judge on the case, Judge James Ho, who is a Trump appointee, he went further.
He concurred with the majority opinion in part.
He dissented in other parts.
He agreed with the most radical interpretation of those arguing against the drug.
He argued that, in fact, it should be pulled, that it should be stopped, that the FDA should never have approved it, and so on and so forth.
The other judges didn't go that far, but he did.
And he also goes on to argue, in a sort of concurring opinion with Judge Elrod, he said that doctors, the doctors wearing the suit, also experience an aesthetic injury, okay?
Aesthetics is the study of beauty.
He's trying to get at sort of the mood, or that I guess abortion hurts their sensibilities or their feelings.
And just listen to what he says, okay?
Again, this is a quote.
He says, Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them.
Expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos with loved ones.
Friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child.
Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.
That's absurd, folks.
Now, I'm not a legal expert.
I don't know if there's a legal category of aesthetic injury or if this is something that Judge Ho made up.
But it's ridiculous.
And as I say, I'm not a legal expert, but I can think philosophically.
I can employ logic.
And so let's look at the logic of this.
So, you know, maybe we don't even need doctors.
Maybe we can, for example, we can ban cancer.
We can legislate against cancer because oncologists receive aesthetic injuries when their patients die.
Whatever an aesthetic injury is supposed to be.
Or maybe doctors can start suing all of us.
You know, if I go to the doctor and they say, you know what, Dan, you're a middle-aged guy.
Your cholesterol is a little high.
Here are some things I think you should do.
You should exercise more.
You should eat better.
Maybe here's a medication that you should take once a day.
Whatever.
And I choose not to do it.
Maybe the doctor can sue me because they have an aesthetic injury that I'm not following medical advice.
The point is that this notion of an aesthetic injury is absolutely absurd.
But I want to dig into what Judge Ho actually says, because it's also factually inaccurate.
And just again, like Judge Elrod, it gives us a view into the mindset here, into the logic.
First thing, unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them.
That is not true of everybody in every circumstance.
Quote, expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos of loved ones.
Not true.
People who have become impregnated through rape or incest or other assault do not eagerly share ultrasound photos.
Kids, teenagers who get pregnant who live in, say, abusive households, guess what?
Those unborn babies are not a source of profound joy for those who view them.
Maybe it's the parents.
It's the parents who threaten the life of the child who is now pregnant, or they're going to kick her out of the house, or something like that.
People who have unborn children with severe cognitive defects or physical defects, May not experience profound joy when they view them.
They may not eagerly share ultrasound pictures.
And not because they somehow hate babies, or they didn't even want to have the baby, but because the baby won't survive, or the baby will be in pain, or the baby will lead a life of debilitating disability, or whatever.
On and on and on and on.
Friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child again.
Just not factually accurate.
Not in all times and circumstances.
And folks, this is what the anti-abortion activists miss.
Because note a serious dis-symmetry, if we want to call it that, between abortion rights activists and anti-abortion activists.
Abortion rights activists are not saying that there's any circumstance in which somebody has to terminate a pregnancy.
Somebody has a child that's going to have severe mental or physical defects, they can carry that child to term, assuming that that's possible.
Somebody who has a medical emergency, like an ectopic pregnancy or something.
If they don't want to have that dealt with medically, they don't have to.
They can't be forced to do that.
But it doesn't hold the other way.
People who would be at risk from having a baby, either in their physical body from the birth or the pregnancy itself, or the social circumstances around it, they are being forced to carry infants to term by anti-abortion activists.
That's the aim.
We've talked about this.
So this notion of an aesthetic injury, it's just absurd.
So Judge Ho's opinion is full of just factual inaccuracies that only take the perspective of a certain circumstance of birth.
Yes, when people are trying to get pregnant and want to have a baby, they absolutely become and experience profound joy when they view them.
Expectant parents who are trying to get pregnant and want to have kids absolutely eagerly share ultrasound photos.
And yes, doctors delight in working with them.
But guess what, folks?
Part of being in the medical field and your Hippocratic oath is that you have to help everybody.
That's your ethical obligation.
Whether it causes you some discomfort, some aesthetic injury or not, is absolutely beside the point.
So this was the other logic.
This is the point that it brings up.
This is what's really chilling about this because we don't know exactly what SCOTUS is going to say or how SCOTUS is going to respond when it goes before them, but it will.
And we now have this legal rationale about an aesthetic harm to the doctors.
We see into the mindset of the conservatives, the moral judgments against women who would seek abortions, the sort of tunnel vision of those who delighted in having children or wanted to be pregnant or whatever and carried the child to term and the projection of that onto everybody.
We see this, all of which is not legal reasoning.
It's just an effort to demonize those who seek abortion.
So that was one big event this week, the decision in the Fifth Circuit about the abortion pill.
We'll continue following that.
I know a lot of you will as well, and we'll see where it goes.
In the meantime, before we dive into some other topics, let's take a break.
Hi, my name is Peter, and I'm a prophet, in the new novel, American Prophet.
I was the one who dreamed about the natural disaster just before it happened.
Oh, and the pandemic.
And that crazy election.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not bragging.
It's not like I asked for the job.
Actually, no one would ask for this job.
At least half the people will hate whatever I say and almost everyone thinks I'm a little crazy.
Getting a date is next to impossible.
I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me.
But the job isn't all that bad.
I've gotten to see the country, and meet some really interesting people, and hopefully do some good along the way.
You can find my story on Amazon, Audible, or iTunes.
Just look for American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
That's American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
All right, we're back.
We're gonna shift to Trump.
And probably, no surprise, you know that Trump and a number of co-conspirators, I think 18 co-conspirators, were indicted in Georgia this week.
We've been talking about this.
We've been waiting for it.
Everybody had been expecting it.
Trump had been posting on Truth, his Truth social media platform, that he was going to be indicted.
Finally happens this week.
And I want to start, I want to look at a number of things about this.
I don't want to dive in into, you know, sort of fine-grained detail about the specific charges and the nuances of them and so forth.
It's very complicated.
It's very sprawling.
I need to stay awake to do the podcast solo today.
I need all of you to stay awake if you're like driving or mowing your lawn or something.
I don't want you falling asleep, injuring yourselves or others.
So we'll keep it kind of more general.
But I'm going to start with a broad look at how things stand for Trump.
I think that this is really important.
It's important to a couple of points that I'm going to make.
But let's just remind ourselves of where Trump is now in terms of these indictments and legal standing and so forth.
Trump is now facing, wait for this, he is now facing 91 charges over four indictments in at least three different jurisdictions.
Manhattan, state of Georgia, and then the special counsel investigation into him keeping the classified documents and the January 6th uprising and efforts to overturn the election.
Not specifically the uprising, it culminated in that.
Ninety-one charges stretching over four indictments coming from three different jurisdictions.
This is massive, unprecedented legal peril for a former president.
It'd be massive legal peril for anybody.
But this is really staggering, and I think it's important for us.
It's like most of us, I hear, oh man, he's been indicted four times.
Wow, that's big.
But 91 charges, folks.
Why do I think that that matters?
It's not just the size or scope.
And I understand fully that having a bunch of charges against you doesn't mean you've been proven guilty in a court of law.
Look forward to that happening.
I'm going to get into the specifics about Georgia shortly.
But what I want to start with here is by revisiting, we've talked about this before, but I think it's worth revisiting some of the MAGA lines, the lines in MAGA Nation, including in the GOP, about these charges and Trump's status.
And we've seen this over and over and over again.
They're typically dismissive of the charges by just talking about the charges are they are political, they are a weaponization of the Department of Justice, and so forth.
It's all a Biden plot to overthrow Trump and, you know, solidify his hold on what was already an illegitimate election and so forth.
I want to look at two facets of this.
And the first one is the conspiratorial nature of this thinking.
And here's what I mean.
Again, this is why the facts matter to me.
And we're coming up on Labor Day here in a while.
Maybe you'll have some cookouts.
Maybe you'll see Uncle Ron.
Maybe you haven't seen Uncle Ron this summer.
It'll finally be your chance.
But one of the facts to point out is, right, let's say that they are out to get him.
Let's say that Merrick Garland has decided he's going to go after Trump.
There's not a single charge that's been leveled.
It's not even a single indictment.
It's 91 charges over four indictments.
And oh, by the way, the Department of Justice isn't even involved in all of them.
The Department of Justice doesn't have anything to do with Manhattan or Georgia.
Those are completely separate.
Georgia doesn't have anything to do with what's going on in Manhattan.
These are separate jurisdictions, separate charges, separate indictments.
So we've got federal jurisdictions, we've got state jurisdictions, we've got all kinds of things.
So that's why the facts matter here.
Why?
Well, because they're dismissed.
The argument is that, well, it doesn't matter.
All of these charges, they are ultimately the reflection of a complex plan, a conspiracy on the left to persecute and punish Trump by any and all means necessary.
We've talked about conspiracism a lot on the show.
It's one of the things I've thought about doing a series on or maybe putting together a SWAJ seminar, Straight White American Jesus seminar.
If you're interested in something like that, I'd love to hear from you.
DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
But one of the things that we've talked about is how the facts don't seem to matter for conspiracies, because conspiracies are not just about facts or not just about information or a lack of it.
And I've been thinking about this a lot.
I actually taught a class this past semester.
We talked about conspiracies.
So when I read some things that brought up some points, I think we're dead on it.
And here's one of them.
And this is this puts a better name to something that has always bothered me about conspiracy theories.
But I didn't really have the words for I didn't have like the concept to think through it.
But here it is.
And it was the idea that conspiracism involves attributing what the authors of an article called strategic omnipotence and strategic omniscience to adversaries.
What does that mean?
Strategic omnipotence, strategic omniscience?
We know what those ideas mean.
Omnipotence is being all-powerful.
If one is omnipotent, one has complete power.
Omniscience is having perfect knowledge.
And what they argue is that the way that conspiracism works is you identify some group.
So in this case, it's a vague, amorphous group of the left or Democrats or, you know, when Trump was still in office, it was the deep state or whatever that's viewed as not being totally unlimited in power or knowledge.
But in a particular area, They have virtual total power and knowledge, and this is how this has to work.
That if we apply it to Trump, if we apply it to this, the MAGA world tells us that there is a cabal on the left that has effectively coordinated and co-opted not just the Department of Justice, but the New York Manhattan DA's office, the special counsel investigating Trump, And the Georgia Attorney General's Office to level charges against Trump.
This group has the power and the ability to coordinate all of these different groups to bring their, you know, what, travesty of justice to bear on Trump.
And not only that, but another point that I brought up is that this isn't as simple as just, you know, a Democratic Attorney General or a DA or somebody in the Department of Justice like leveling charges or something.
No, they had to go to grand juries.
Grand juries had to look at the evidence and determine whether or not they were going to issue subpoenas, sorry, not subpoenas, indictments.
So this cabal has also somehow miraculously coordinated the deliberations and maybe even the selection of multiple grand juries.
They have control and power over not just high-ranking Judicial or legal figures.
Nope.
Nope.
Not just law enforcement figures.
They have control over the regular people.
People like you and me who sit in the grand juries and deliberate about these things.
Again, completely different jurisdictions, completely different cases, completely different sets of evidence.
They've managed to doctor all of that.
Okay?
All right.
Wow.
Not only that, folks.
But they have managed to make it so that it coincides with Trump's presidential run.
No, it's not because Mayor Garland was too timid to do anything about this, and it was not until the House investigations on January 6th sort of pushed him enough that he realized, the Department of Justice realized, that steps had to be taken to investigate this.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, not that, not that, no.
The all-knowing, all-powerful Democrats somehow swung all this around so that not only did all these different jurisdictions work the way that they wanted them to, not only did all the grand juries come to the conclusions they wanted them to, not only did the charges and indictments that they wanted get leveled, but it happened in such a way that it coincides with the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.
That's the conspiratorial logic.
And why do I call it conspiratorial?
I call it conspiratorial for a lot of reasons.
The first is it's just simply implausible.
You think about all the pieces that would have to be in place, all the control that would have to be exercised, all the coercion, whatever, that would have to go in And it's just implausible.
Think about how hard it is to keep a secret around Washington or in today's political world.
And they managed to do this and not one member of a grand jury somewhere has gone to the media and said, you know what, I was going to say that we shouldn't indict Trump.
But, you know, the black car rolled up and the feds came in and threatened me and my family.
And so I had no choice.
Or whatever it is.
Maybe, you know, I got a letter from the visit from the IRS saying that if I didn't, you know, fall in line and indict Trump, they were going to take a hard look at my taxes and I was going to be in a lot of trouble.
So I did that.
None of that.
No whistleblowers because there are no whistles to blow.
No scandals erupting from this.
No signs of widespread corruption.
So it's just implausible on the face of it.
But this is the other thing.
And this is the point I've made about conspiracies in the past.
And this is the point where this notion of attributing a level of omniscience and omnipotence to those that we view as our enemies really strikes me, is that these are the same Republicans, the same people on the right, the same MAGA nation, That in every other domain of life insists that the people on the left cannot get anything.
They can't control the border.
They can't control crime.
They can't control or rein in state spending.
They can't run taxes.
They can't fix the, like they can't do anything.
Can't get anything right.
They're completely inept.
They're headed by Joe Biden.
Biden, who we argue is too old and decrepit and mentally deficient to be able to do anything and be president and so forth.
Except when it comes to this, in this one domain.
Man, they've got everything down.
They're omnipotent.
They're omniscient.
So this is what I invite you to do if you're at Labor Day and it comes up with Uncle Ron, is just ask that question.
If Democrats can't get anything else right, How are they able to pull all the strings and the levers on this?
How are they able to make this one work?
So that's my first sort of big sort of meta-level takeaway on this, is the conspiratorial nature of it, which I'm always struck by, I'm always interested in, and it's right there on the surface.
The second point, the sort of broad sort of overarching point that I want to make, and again, this is something I've kind of brought up before, but it's right there, is I think that this also reflects the MAGA response, right-wing projections and fantasies.
What do I mean by that?
What I mean is that MAGA World has shown its absolute support and willingness for candidates and individuals who would do exactly what they accuse the left of doing here.
For weaponizing the DOJ, for stacking the judiciary and then expecting that the judiciary is just going to do whatever they want, of targeting political enemies.
We have talked about Trump and his unified executive theory and this notion that he is sort of That the president is essentially an autocratic ruler and that all the mechanisms of government are there solely for his benefit, for him to use as he will.
This is exactly what they would do.
Trump has explicitly appealed to this.
And so what they accuse the Democrats of doing is exactly what they would try to do if they were in the opposite position.
They're doing it right now.
They're doing it right now with like talking about impeaching Biden.
I'm not a huge Biden fan, folks.
We know this.
But I mean, just take a look and tell me like where the evidence is that he's done something that rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.
And by the way, the evidence is presented and he has and it's worth impeaching by all means.
Let's impeach Biden.
But there's no evidence that it's there.
It's just retribution.
You people on the left impeached Trump twice.
We're going to impeach Biden.
That's all it is.
And so there's a sense in which they just cannot imagine, cannot contemplate a reality in which this could be true, in which the charges against Trump, which appear overwhelming, talked about this before too, that the Trump charges, it's all, so much of it, not all of it, so much of it is public domain.
New insights come out all the time.
We learned, you know, in the last week or so that apparently the Trump camp was actually part of breaking into the voting systems in parts of Georgia and trying to get information, right?
Again, what they accused their enemies of doing.
So much of this is public domain.
It's not even hidden.
It's not secret.
We know the phone call that's been recorded of Trump with the Secretary of State from Georgia, and yet none of that matters.
It's a weaponization.
It's a politicizing of the Department of Justice and, I guess, in this case, Georgia and the Attorney General and so forth.
It's all part of that.
Why?
Because it's what we would do.
On the right, it's what we would do.
If we had the power and the ability to do it, it's what we would do.
And folks, it's also convenient.
It's convenient to be able to say that and not have to face the possibility that your guy is a criminal.
One of the biggest criminals, apparently, in modern political history.
Maybe in U.S.
history.
I don't know.
That's a tough pill to swallow.
So this allows you not to swallow it, And the other piece of this is just like, we know how this works, this projection.
Like all of us, all of us, if we're reflective at all, we recognize that, I don't know, that habit that our brother or sister has that drives us nuts.
Like, I don't know, maybe they make passive aggressive comments or they do things that like, you know, when we're together for holidays and it's really annoying.
And in our more reflective moments, we realize that we do the same things.
Or all of us have had the experience, again, if we're reflective enough to recognize that we do the things that, you know, our parents do that annoy us.
What does that mean?
Well, it means that if I'm the Republicans and I'm so afraid that this is happening, it probably says something about how I operate.
I'm going to accuse you of doing these things because it's what I would do if I were in your position.
And again, it's a familiar idea.
I think we all project who we are onto other people sometimes.
I have known people who are the kindest, best-intentioned people, and they view the world as a world full of kind and well-intentioned people.
And sometimes I'm like, man, I don't think you're looking at the same world that I am.
They just see the world as being people like them.
That's what's going on with MAGA World, folks.
They view the world as being people like them, and I would humbly suggest that most of the world is not.
So those are my two big sort of meta-level things.
The conspiratorial nature of this, and then once again, the fact that the accusations being leveled by MAGA World against the left and the prosecutors, they tell us much more about the psychology and the mentality of MAGA World than they do anything about what's actually going on in reality.
Let's take another break.
When we come back, we will dive into what are, you know, some of my takeaways from the Trump, the actual Georgia indictment that came down.
Okay, so much we could say about these indictments, so much we could say about yet another crazy week in the news.
You know, I spent a lot of time kind of organizing some thoughts and reflections and yet, you know, things overlap.
I'm just gonna do my best to throw out what I think are some of the sort of main points, the salient points, the things that really stand out to me, things that I'll be looking at over time.
So the first one is this, and this was really interesting, that Trump and 18 allies, okay, so not just Trump, 19 people, Have been charged with racketeering in Georgia, right?
And the indictment also notes dozens of unindicted co-conspirators.
Now, I don't understand kind of where a co-conspirator does and doesn't rise to the level of being indicted and so on and so forth, but a large-scale conspiracy to commit a crime, and we call it racketeering, right?
George's RICO law, those are the anti-racketeering laws, there's a federal one and states have them as well.
George's RICO law, like others, like the federal law, like laws in other states, it was set up primarily to bring down organized crime and specifically the mafia.
And the way that it worked is, the way that they work, is they allowed mafia bosses to be prosecuted for the actions of underlings.
Because what would happen in the, you know, in the mob or something is say somebody gets killed or something, they get assassinated, And it's like, they were given an order from somebody who gave an order, from somebody who had a wink and nod, from somebody else who, you know, was in communication with the mob boss.
And there were so many layers between the underling and the mob boss that it was hard to prosecute the mob boss when everybody knew that they were the one who gave the order.
And so this is what RICO laws do, okay?
And the way that they work, I'm reading here from an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, because again, I'm not a legal expert, so I lean on the people who are.
And what it says is that in a racketeering case, what prosecutors have to show, they have to show a pattern of racketeering activity carried out by two or more people.
In this case, we've got 19 accused seeking to control or protect an interest of some kind.
In this case, seeking to overturn or subvert the election process to keep Trump in office.
That's the logic of where this is.
The significance of the fact is that there's actual racketeering charges here.
So the charge is essentially that Trump and 18 others represented a kind of criminal organization trying to overturn the Georgia election.
The reason this stands out to me is, number one, it gives us a real sense of the significance of what they're being charged with, and should they be found guilty, of how historically significant this is.
That there was essentially an organized crime circle run by Donald Trump trying to subvert an election and stay in power.
It's a breathtaking charge and a breathtaking realization.
Which also highlights the second point that lots of analysts are talking about is that this is a risky or controversial strategy.
Things I've read say that Georgia's law is broader than federal law, their RICO law.
It means that they can introduce evidence that wouldn't be admissible on its own.
By being able to put it, like wrap it up in a racketeering charge, you can essentially bring in other evidence that were it sort of introduced individually might not be admissible.
They can also look at actions outside Georgia, and they did.
If you've read anything about the charges that were brought against Trump, you know that a lot of them are about actions that were undertaken by Trump and people in his orbit outside of Georgia.
The argument being, of course, that they are part of the process of ultimately overturning not just the election federally, but that involved overturning the election in Georgia as well.
So you get some leeway if you can get it to be a racketeering charge.
Critics of this — this is not specifically about Trump, these are not specifically MAGA people — critics in general just say that this is too broad and that the RICO laws are used in ways that they were not intended to be used.
But more significantly, it also means that it could backfire in Georgia if some judge down the line says, you know what, this doesn't rise to the level of racketeering.
What happens when all that non-Georgia evidence is thrown out or different kinds of things like this?
That's one of the concerns that they have there.
Or what happens if the case doesn't stay in Georgia, becomes a federal case, and you don't have the Georgia RICO law working for you?
We're going to come to that in a minute.
The point is, it's a really significant charge.
I think the criminal penalties are higher and significant because of this.
It allows all these individuals to be wrapped up into one thing.
It brings into view the full scope of what is in question, but it's also a risky strategy for a number of reasons.
And that brings me to the second point I want to look at, which is that this is a real risk for Trump.
I think in my view, I think the federal cases about election interference and the Georgia case are like the biggest, the biggest, most risky charges that Trump faces.
That's my view.
Again, I'm not a legal expert, but that's what I think.
There's real risk for Trump in this.
If I'm Trump and I'm staying awake at night, this is what I'm staying awake about.
Number one is that these are state charges, which means this.
It means that let's say Trump becomes president.
Let's say a sympathetic Trump ally becomes president.
Trump can't be pardoned by a president for state charges in Georgia.
Let's say that there's even a Democratic president who comes into office and decides it's a bad precedent for the U.S.
To have former presidents who are indicted and found guilty of crimes and so forth, and so they choose to pardon Trump.
Can't happen with state charges.
So there's a real risk there.
There's another real risk that comes to Trump with the racketeering charge, I think, which is that all of his alleged co-conspirators, they have incentives to turn on him.
If you're one of these 18 people wrapped up in this, You've got a real incentive to go to the prosecution and say, you know what, if you drop the charges or lower them or give me a lighter sentence or whatever, I'll plead out and I will testify against Trump.
He faces a real threat because of this.
And we can just think about, you know, their futures are at risk.
Articles this week about Rudy Giuliani and how much financial trouble he's in with all of his criminal cases.
Articles that he went to Trump and asked for Trump to pay for his defense and Trump wouldn't do it.
There's a real risk of these people turning.
All of which is part of why, if you're Trump, you want to fight two things.
You want to try to get the racketeering charge dropped or that component of it.
But you also, and this is the third thing I've been looking at this week and learning a little bit more about, which is why Trump will try to quote-unquote remove the charges to federal court.
What does that mean?
Removal is the technical term for the transfer of a case from state court to federal court.
And you might say, well, why would somebody be able to do that?
The argument, as I understand it, is that for people who essentially are functionaries of the state, they're legislators, they are, in this case, Trump would argue that because he's the president.
Mark Meadows has already made this argument because he was Trump's chief of staff.
arguing that the things that they're being accused of were committed in the course of them fulfilling their required governmental duties.
Therefore, they belong in federal court, not state court.
Right.
And again, Mark Meadows has already petitioned for removal.
He was one of the co-conspirators.
And the argument is, hey, look, what I did, like the things I'm accused of, they're not illegal per se.
I was accused of lining up meetings or arranging phone calls or advising the president, all of which, as chief of staff, I'm supposed to do.
Therefore, I should essentially have protection from state prosecution.
It should go to a federal court.
People are already talking about this with Rudy Giuliani.
And of course, Trump is expected to try to remove his case to federal court as well.
Why?
It would give him advantages.
One, it probably opens up to more arguments that he is somehow immune from prosecution for various things because he was president.
And he's going to argue that the things he's accused of were things that he was doing in his office, his capacity as president, and therefore he's immune from those.
It would also put this Georgia RICO law that we're talking about under greater scrutiny.
It would move it into a jurisdiction that's got narrower definitions of probably what racketeering is, of the kinds of evidence that can be used.
I'm assuming, I don't know for sure, but the evidence outside of Georgia would become more complicated and so forth.
You've got a federal trial, you have a bigger jury pool, and so potentially a more sympathetic jury.
You're also more likely to draw a judge that maybe you as Trump appointed.
And we have seen judges that Trump appointed rule against Trump.
We've also seen, as we just talked about Judge Ho on the Fifth Circuit, carry water for the former president and say exactly what it is that the right wants them to say and what Trump expects them to say.
So Trump's going to try this, and this is going to be something to watch.
And the experts that I've read have been pretty mixed on how reasonable they think it is, the chance that this will happen.
On the one hand, I've read that removal of criminal cases is pretty rare.
It doesn't happen very often.
Another analyst that I read made this, and this was interesting.
He said, number one, before I get to that, most agree that the actions, it's not clear that they were the actions that would have been required of Trump as president.
In other words, the president has nothing to do with calling the attorney general in Georgia and making sure that the election is or isn't above board.
There's nowhere that that's the case.
We saw, by the way, we saw Lindsey Graham several months ago try to make the same argument when he was trying to get out of testifying in the Georgia case by arguing that he was undertaking his actions as a senator.
And people basically were like, It didn't work for him.
And he had a stronger argument because he was part of the Senate, I think it was the Judiciary Committee.
But the point is, people are like, that doesn't give you any purview to be talking to the Attorney General in Georgia about their presidential election.
So it's not clear that Trump was doing anything that was like a normal part of the responsibility of being president.
And that brings me to the point that one legal analyst made that I thought was really interesting.
So that in his view, essentially Trump was playing dual roles at this time.
There was President Trump, but Trump was also a candidate for president, and the things he's been accused of really had more to do with his role or status as a presidential candidate than president.
So he was acting in that capacity, in which case he would not have grounds for removal of the case.
Trump also made this argument in New York and tried to argue that that case should be removed to federal court.
It was rejected by the judge.
We don't know how that's going to happen.
We don't know what the decisions are going to be, but it's something to watch because if it does leave Georgia and go to federal court, that changes things radically.
I think there's even a chance that if some of the other co-conspirators are able to remove their case to federal court, Even if they can't in Georgia, that really complicates the Georgia case.
The Attorney General in Georgia has said that she plans on trying all defendants together in one trial.
So that would really complicate things.
So I think this is a really, really important move to watch and to see how that plays out over time.
Okay?
A few other kind of high points here before we wind this up.
The other one is the standard effort that Trump has very much on display this week of trying to slow down the process.
In all cases, we've seen this, Trump has tried to delay the onset of these trials.
We saw that he already is trying to make hay out of the fact that we're in the presidential candidate season, the presidential election season, because he's already used that for an argument, that these are going to inhibit his ability to run for office, that it was timed this way, and so forth.
He tried to push it back to this time for that.
We now also see that he's asking for more time in these trials.
And this is like just a second thing to watch.
Going back to the election subversion case, special counsel Jack Smith has requested to start his case on January 2nd.
Okay.
Trump lawyers have proposed a countertimeline.
Listen to this, folks.
The prosecutors want to start January 2nd, 2024.
Trump lawyers have proposed April 2026.
Not like April of 2024, not even April of 2025, but April of 2026.
of 2024, not even April of 2025, but April of 2026, they have asked for an additional two plus years for this case to start.
Their argument?
Their argument is, this is so circular, their argument is that Trump faces so many charges and so many different trials that he shouldn't have to stand trial on January 2nd.
The trick is, as I understand it, they're arguing, they're making essentially the same kinds of arguments in every jurisdiction.
So if they had their way, it's not that they actually want one of the trials to start and get going and be resolved so they can start the others.
They're trying to push them all back.
And folks, you know as well as I do, they've made the argument and said, well, Trump can't possibly be expected, you know, candidate Trump can't possibly be expected to be part of all these trials in the midst of a presidential election.
It's not fair.
He's being targeted and so forth.
Do we really think that midway through another term, if he were to win in 2024, That in 2026, midway through another term, coming into the summer before midterm elections, that Team Trump is really going to say, yeah, let's go to court.
Of course not.
They're going to say it would interfere with his duties as president.
They would probably say that to address this, he would have to talk about things that are top secret.
Or maybe by then he will have Classified information that pertains to the Georgia trial.
Who knows?
But we see this going on over and over and over again.
The logic is circular.
The aim is clear, which is to delay and obfuscate and hold off doing the trial and just keep moving the goalposts.
Keep having new reasons why the trial can't possibly happen in a reasonable and expedient fashion.
And finally, the last point that I want to make about Trump today, I promise, is that we have the typical Trump promises that there is evidence that shows that he is innocent and it's just around the corner.
This week, he promised, Trump did, he was going to hold a news conference where he would share indisputable evidence of his innocence of the charges.
I'm sure you were all waiting with bated breath, which couldn't wait to see this press conference, to hear what this evidence was.
And on Thursday?
Yeah, he announced it wouldn't happen.
He had a long tweet, a long message on Truth Social.
I almost said tweet.
I know it's not Twitter or X or whatever Twitter is called now.
It's Truth Social.
He had a long statement where he said that that wouldn't happen now, and he said instead his lawyers will put this evidence of quote, listen for this, election fraud and irregularities in court filings.
Folks, we've heard this before.
Remember in the run-up to January 6th, when the GOP and MAGA land was trying to discredit the election?
Over and over and over again, they said that there was exculpatory evidence coming.
There was irrefutable evidence of voting irregularities and fraud and so forth.
They said it and said it and said it.
We noted on this show that what you never saw was any evidence in actual court filings and no evidence was ever presented in court.
That's why they lost every court case that they had.
There is no evidence.
What is Trump doing now?
He goes back to the well, assures MAGA Nation that the evidence is there.
We're just not going to share it yet.
We're going to save that for court filings.
So folks, Keep your eyes on the screen, keep listening for the news, because when that exculpatory evidence comes out and we find out that there was widespread election fraud and irregularities, we'll be happy to talk about that.
We've seen this game before.
He's playing the same thing he did before.
And I will end with a thought for Uncle Ron at the cookout, and it's the same point that I made back when these claims of evidence were made at the time, which is, what are you waiting for?
If you have evidence of widespread irregularities and fraud, why wait until you have, I think in the Georgia count it's something, 40 charges, whatever it is, why wait until you have numerous charges, federal and state, against you for subverting the election?
What do you keep that evidence in your pocket for?
What are you waiting for?
You could have played this a long time ago and saved yourself a lot of trouble.
A lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of trouble.
We know, of course, that the evidence isn't there, but it's a fun question to pose to Uncle Ron.
If the evidence is there, why hasn't Trump shared it before?
Need to wind this down.
I'm getting tired.
I love to talk, but even I, you know, talking for this long can be a bit tiring.
I will end with my reason for hope this week, which is another court case.
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday, so I'm recording this on a Friday, ruled yesterday, that New Jersey can sue the gun industry under public nuisance law.
Now, I'm not going to get into the ins and outs of this, but basically, as we know, there have been court rulings that make it difficult for states to sue gun manufacturers for gun violence.
The Supreme Court has consistently made it difficult for states to regulate gun ownership and possession and so forth.
So New Jersey, and I think not just New Jersey, has tried another strategy of going after the gun manufacturers under public nuisance laws.
The point is that they ruled that they could do that, and I take great hope from that.
Will it work out long term?
I don't know.
Will it stand up to further judicial scrutiny?
I fear not.
But it was very hopeful to me to hear about that this week, especially on a week with so much, I don't know, so much uncertainty.
I think all the Trump indictments are hopeful on one hand.
There are so many machinations to go through, so much time involved that I'm like a lot of you.
I think I've got really mixed feelings about it.
I want to close again by thanking all of you for listening.
Flying solo today.
Hard to do.
Hopefully I've done alright.
Keep the ideas coming.
Thoughts, feedback, topics.
You can reach out to us via the website.
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You can email me.
Yes, I am a dinosaur.
I use email, but you know, so what?
My email is danielmillerswaj.com.
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