BONUS: The Jan. 6 Indictment Drops

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Speaker 7 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

Speaker 9 I'm unindicted co-conspirator John Lovett.

Speaker 8 I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 7 We have a bonus episode for you because Donald Trump has been indicted yet again. And this is the big one.

Speaker 7 He has been charged with four counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Speaker 7 This is all related to his plot to overturn the 2020 election that began shortly after the election and went right through to January 6th when there was an attack on the Capitol.

Speaker 7 There were six unindicted co-conspirators in this indictment from Jack Smith. They have been identified by various reporters as co-conspirator number one, Rudy Giuliani.
Number two is John Eastman.

Speaker 7 Number three is Sidney Powell. Number four is Jeff Clark.
He was the Department of Justice official that Donald Trump made acting Attorney General after Barr left.

Speaker 9 You've last seen him being

Speaker 9 outside of his home while a search for him was being conducted and he was in his boxers.

Speaker 7 Correct.

Speaker 7 Number five is Kenneth Cheesebrow. Great name.
Great name. He's

Speaker 7 bringing that character back from the January 6th hearings. And then

Speaker 7 co-conspirator, unindebted co-conspirator number six is a campaign as an advisor to Trump that has not been identified yet. It's mystery.
Mystery. Some people think maybe it's Bannon.

Speaker 7 Some people think maybe it's Boris Epstein.

Speaker 7 I've seen some Ginny Thomas rumors. I doubt that one, but we'll see.

Speaker 8 That's too good to be true.

Speaker 7 I know, too good to be true.

Speaker 9 I cannot put picture of the hamburger.

Speaker 4 That's who I picture.

Speaker 7 On the list of faces. That works.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 the judge that Trump will appear before on this Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern is Judge Tanya Chukhin.
She is an Obama appointee. She is one of the toughest sentencers of the January 6th rioters.

Speaker 7 She has previously rebuked Trump

Speaker 7 in a case where she decided that his records need to be turned over. She delivered the line, presidents are not kings and the plaintiff is not president.
So lucky draw for him.

Speaker 7 And after the grand jury handed back the indictment, Jack Smith, Special Counsel Jack Smith, gave a brief statement, as is his usual,

Speaker 7 what he usually does, just a man a few words. Here's a clip from his brief statement today.

Speaker 10 The attack on our nation's capital on January 6th, 2021, was an unprecedented assault. on the seat of American democracy.

Speaker 10 As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies.

Speaker 10 Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.

Speaker 10 Since the attack on our capital, the Department of Justice has remained committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened that day.

Speaker 10 This case is brought consistent with that commitment, and our investigation of other individuals continues.

Speaker 7 All right.

Speaker 7 So we have a 45-page indictment that we have all combed through. Got our highlighters here.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 You guys have some initial reactions to this and want to just dive into some of the highlights or lowlights, if you will?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, it's worth just noting on balance, we knew a lot of this thanks to the January 6th hearings.

Speaker 8 There's not a ton of new sort of explosive facts. Well, there's a few of them, and we'll get to those.
But the thrust of this, we already knew.

Speaker 8 The fact that he was charged for them is the the biggest, newest item.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I think there's a lot of detail.

Speaker 9 There's a lot more detail than we've had before about the machinations inside of the conspiracy between Trump and these lawyers and these campaign officials and a level of detail and evidence that we haven't seen before.

Speaker 9 There's

Speaker 9 conversations, there's texts, there's emails, there's contemporaneous notes from Mike Pence. Lots of Mike Pence.
Lots of Mike Pence notes in this.

Speaker 9 And, you know, this was, I think, the biggest and most important indictment. It was also the one I think that we didn't, that felt like, you know, the documents case, it's simple.

Speaker 9 It's easy to understand, right? He stole these documents. He didn't give them back.
He obstructed justice to keep them.

Speaker 9 The question, I think, around this indictment was always going to be like, how do you spell out a case that isn't about, you know, stealing something and keeping it in your house?

Speaker 9 It's about fundamental American principles. It's about like the safety and security of our democracy.
It's about whether you uphold an election.

Speaker 9 And I'll say it before, I've said it before, I'll say it again. Jack Smith, the biggest scab in this writer's strike, this guy,

Speaker 9 this guy knows how to tell a story.

Speaker 7 It is a compelling document. I mean, it's interesting.
It was interesting to me how many times Jack Smith feels the need in this indictment to

Speaker 7 prove that Donald Trump knew that he had lost the election, that he knew he was lying.

Speaker 7 And even at the beginning, as he sort of lays out in the opening of the indictment, he says the defendant defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim falsely that there had been fraud and that he had won.

Speaker 7 His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.

Speaker 7 But then he also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. And then he lays out the three criminal conspiracies.
So he, you know,

Speaker 8 the conspiracy against rights probably sounds a little vague. It's conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted.

Speaker 8 So, like Lovett was saying, like a bedrock American principle of our democracy.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and you've, you know, there was been reporting about this ever since this statute was mentioned in the Target letter a week or so ago, that this was a statute that was used to prosecute the KKK.

Speaker 7 And so, it was a civil rights. Civil rights in this case, in the sense that we all have the right to vote and to have our vote counted.
And so, that's the connection there.

Speaker 7 But it was interesting to me just how much

Speaker 7 this case rests upon proving that Donald Trump knew he was lying and knew that he had lost the election and still, having known he had lost the election, tried to obstruct the count in Congress, tried to overturn the election, tried to fraudulently claim things and force others in states to fraudulently send fake electors.

Speaker 9 Yeah,

Speaker 9 there's two runs of proof points.

Speaker 9 One of all the different people that told Trump that the claims were false. There's also a run of Donald Trump specifically using

Speaker 9 basically verbatim

Speaker 9 claims of fraud that he had been specifically been instructed weren't true.

Speaker 9 And yes, this is, I think, in this document, it is Jack Smith and the Department of Justice saying he knew these claims were false. But you also don't need

Speaker 9 nobody is going to be able to hear, even if Donald Trump continues to claim, well, that's what these people told me. Other people told me that these were legitimate claims.

Speaker 9 I was just going based on conflicting information.

Speaker 9 I just wanted to get to the bottom of it. It lays it out in a way that just to no, no or no reasonable person could look at this and believe he was telling the truth.

Speaker 9 There's just no way, even if he keeps claiming it.

Speaker 9 He doesn't need to admit it. He can keep claiming whatever he wants.
The evidence is there.

Speaker 8 Yeah, so the people who told him in sort of formal briefings and settings that there was no mass selection fraud include Mike Pence, top DOJ leaders, the director of national intelligence, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, senior White House attorneys that were selected by Trump to be in those positions.

Speaker 8 And then there's an interesting anecdote where you know he knows they're right because there is a National Security Council meeting on January 3rd.

Speaker 8 Something happened overseas that they're briefing him on. And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs says to Trump, let's not take action on whatever this thing is because the inauguration is 17 days away.

Speaker 8 And Trump agrees and he says, yeah, you're right. It's too late for us.
We're going to give that one to the next guy. So he is witting of the fact that he is lost.

Speaker 7 I think the other, this is, so there's a couple new parts of the indictment. Tommy's right that most of it, thanks to the January 6th Committee, we already know about.

Speaker 7 The new parts in the indictment are one is

Speaker 7 the fact that Mike Pence

Speaker 7 kept a journal, Dear Diary,

Speaker 7 and they have these conversations between Trump and Pence.

Speaker 7 And at one point, Pence says to Trump, point blank, this is on page 33 for those following at home.

Speaker 7 Pence says there is no constitutional basis for him to overturn the election. I love this.
And in response, Trump says, you're too honest. My kids are too honest.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I just noticed before we came in here on Twitter, like, the AP stories lead with that line because that is, if that's not evidence that Trump knew he was full of shit and knew he hadn't won the election and was still telling the vice president to do something illegal.

Speaker 7 I mean, I don't know what is.

Speaker 9 One of my favorite moments in the document is on December 25th, when the vice president called the defendant to to wish him a Merry Christmas the defendant quickly turned the conversation to January 6th and his request that the vice president reject electoral votes that day the vice president pushed back telling the defendant as the vice president had already had in previous conversations you know I don't think I have the authority to change the outcome it was he's just stewing on Christmas Pence is calling him calling the boss to to to wish him a merry Christmas incredible have you heard the good news and then he just gets fucking broadsided it's Christmas

Speaker 8 it was also uh readily apparent reading this how comfortable a lot of senior Trump aides were with the prospect of violence.

Speaker 8 Deputy White House Counsel tells Jeff Clark that there hadn't been determined fraud that would change the outcome,

Speaker 8 but that if Trump stayed in office anyway, there would, quote, be riots in every major city in the United States, to which Jeff Clark responded, well, that's why there's an insurrection act.

Speaker 8 So they're ready to beat the shit out of us if we all protested.

Speaker 7 The plan was to stage a coup and then use the U.S. military to put down any protest by force.
That was the plan.

Speaker 8 And then another advisor told John Eastman, you're going to cause riots in the streets.

Speaker 8 And Eastman responded that there had previously been points in the nation's history where violence was necessary to protect the Republic.

Speaker 7 So this brings up, because

Speaker 7 we read this and we were all like, you know, Jeff Clark should be in jail. These people should all be in jail, right?

Speaker 7 They were not indicted.

Speaker 7 And I think the biggest surprise and what people are talking about right now is like, like, what's going on with the unindicted co-conspirators?

Speaker 7 There are, we don't know is the short answer, but there are a few theories.

Speaker 7 One theory is that Jack Smith is laying this out there for them to try to get them to cooperate because if those unindicted co-conspirators can then testify, oh yeah, Trump knew he didn't win this election, then that's more powerful evidence.

Speaker 7 The other theory is

Speaker 7 they will be indicted at some point and that perhaps Jack Smith just wanted to bring this now because he wanted to get things going so that he can get a trial before the election.

Speaker 7 Because we know that if he doesn't get a trial before the election and Trump wins, the whole thing will go away.

Speaker 9 I know it's like it'd be a combination that he wants to turn some of them, use some of them.

Speaker 7 And I also think that the other important point here is naming. So

Speaker 7 four of the six unindicted co-conspirators are lawyers.

Speaker 7 Jeffrey Clark was a Justice Department official.

Speaker 7 So naming these lawyers as co-conspirators, even if they're unindicted, really hurts Trump's advice of counsel defense, which they have previewed that that's going to be their defense.

Speaker 7 Oh, I was just doing what my lawyers told me. Well, your lawyers are co-conspirators who committed a bunch of crimes along with you.

Speaker 9 Yeah,

Speaker 9 they're all referred to as attorneys, and you just feel in this indictment the dripping fury and disdain the Department of Justice has for Eastman, for Clark, for Rudy Giuliani, for Powell.

Speaker 9 One question I think we've talked about at length is, you know, how sophisticated was this operation? You know, how bumbling was it? How much was this just people trying things?

Speaker 9 How much of it was a concerted effort? And there's one thread that runs through this whole indictment that I think captures the way it was both. So early on in the indictment,

Speaker 9 the indictment makes the point that some fraud and electors, so there's basically, you know, there's three parts to this scheme.

Speaker 9 The first part is trying to get the legitimate elections thrown out and have republican officials put in fake electors when that fails it's to have pence in some way get these false electors to throw the election in result and when that fails you go to your insurrection and

Speaker 9 early on when they're starting to talk to potential fraudulent electors in the state they're clearly leaving the the the conspiracy the the the scam evolves at first it is a scam to just have backup electors in place in case we need them Now as the certification is getting closer, when the defendants' electors expressed concern about the signing certificates representing themselves as legitimate electors, co-conspirator one, that's Rudy, falsely assured them that their certificates would only be used if the defendant succeeded in litigation.

Speaker 9 Co-conspirator six, the person we still don't know, circulated to propose conditional language to that effect.

Speaker 9 So basically, some of these people that were about to be false electors said, hold on a second, you told me that I was doing this just in case. And none of this language says just in case.

Speaker 9 You're telling me I'm a real elector. And so language was floated to change it so that it could sound more conditional.

Speaker 9 But a campaign official cautioned not to offer the conditional language to other states because the other states are signing what he prepared.

Speaker 9 If it gets out, we change the language for PA, it could snowball.

Speaker 9 So like in the middle of all this, they are well aware that they are coming up with a plan to overturn the election by using false electors.

Speaker 9 And when some of these electors balked at it and refused to sign, they were discussing whether or not they should do conditional language anyway. And they said, we don't need to.

Speaker 9 We've got enough people on the hook in all these other states to go along with this plan.

Speaker 9 They're just in real time, very, they're aware of what they're doing and they're aware of how the plan evolved from just having a backup to trying to overturn the election. And you see that happen.

Speaker 8 They're very dumb about putting in writing

Speaker 8 their knowledge of the fact that they're lying. Yeah.
John Eastman emails the vice president's counsel.

Speaker 7 Remember, this is a good one.

Speaker 8 The vice president's not going along with all this. His staff is pissed about it.

Speaker 8 He says, I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 7 One more violation of the Electoral Count Act. Of 1887.

Speaker 7 You say emailing him

Speaker 8 requesting a minor violation of the law.

Speaker 8 Also, John Eastman wrote on August, I'm sorry, October 11th that neither the Constitution nor the Electoral Count Act provided the Vice President discretion in the counting of electoral votes or permitted him to make the determination on his own.

Speaker 8 So right before he launched this scheme to get Pence to overturn the election, he had written that Pence didn't have the authority.

Speaker 7 He also acknowledged to the vice president's counsel, the same person that he sent that email to, that he hoped to prevent judicial review of this because he understood that what they were doing would be, quote, unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court.

Speaker 7 That's a lot more faith in the Supreme Court than I have for the unanimous ruling.

Speaker 7 I do think they would have blocked it, but I don't think we would have to be. I think we're talking about seven.

Speaker 9 I think it's about seven, too.

Speaker 7 But I will say, too, that John Eastman emailed Tommy, which said, I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation of the law. Of the law.
Came at 11.44 p.m. on January 6th.

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Speaker 7 There were two other new parts of this indictment that

Speaker 7 did not come up in the January 6th hearing that are new.

Speaker 7 One is we learned that Trump called two senators at 6 p.m. on January 6th as the

Speaker 7 riots in some places were still going on to ask them to block certification.

Speaker 7 We know that Rudy was trying to call people and like accidentally called Michael Lee or whatever.

Speaker 7 And then Pat Cipollone, he's back. Pat Cipollone, you remember him? White House counsel.

Speaker 7 That night,

Speaker 7 as January 6th was just, as the Capitol had been cleared out and everything was going on, the White House counsel asked, implored Trump to please call off the objections from the senators, and Trump refused even then.

Speaker 9 There's a moment during the

Speaker 9 where the campaign officials are saying to Rudy, here's the thing, the way this is morphed, it's a crazy play, so I don't know who wants to put their name on it.

Speaker 9 And the city advisor called it, and this is a quote, certifying illegal votes.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Like they.

Speaker 7 And back to, you know, what Trump knew and everything.

Speaker 7 I do think we heard this during the, this came out during the January 6th committee hearings, but they have Trump saying that Sidney Powell's Dominion voting machine claims were, quote, crazy.

Speaker 8 Yeah. And also, you know, who's number two again? John Eastman is calling officials in Arizona

Speaker 8 and being told by the Arizona House Speaker that the state had investigated, that the state had investigated these allegations and had uncovered no evidence of substantial fraud in the state, Eastman says, look, I don't know enough about facts on the ground, but decertify and let the courts sort it out.

Speaker 8 He's knowingly advancing these lies.

Speaker 7 Which is similar to the line that we've all heard from Trump that I still think is one of the most damning lines of all, which is just say the election.

Speaker 7 to Jeffrey Clark to the Justice Department, just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congress.

Speaker 9 What really comes through, through, and some of it we've known, I think some of it we're getting more detail,

Speaker 9 is the people that are saying no to this, and I think the people that are clearly being interviewed as part of this, these are Trump voters.

Speaker 9 These are Trump supporters and Republicans you have in Arizona, in Georgia, in Michigan. And you have these extraordinary comments from them basically saying, I voted for Trump.
I wanted him to win.

Speaker 9 I'm not subverting my oath.

Speaker 9 There's nothing in our state constitution or in the law that gives me the power to do this. And over over and over again, you know, there's, there's, again, some of this

Speaker 9 we've known, but now we're getting in more detail.

Speaker 9 The moment when Trump tries to make Clark acting attorney general, and you have the acting attorney general and the acting deputy attorney general saying, no, and if you do this, we'll resign, your White House Counsel's Office will resign.

Speaker 9 Like, it'll be a scandal. You see over and over again that

Speaker 9 this scheme got a lot further. than we even understood at the time.
It was more sophisticated than we understood it at the time.

Speaker 7 And the reason it didn't succeed, and by by the way, of course, Mike Pence, it was more and less sophisticated than we thought.

Speaker 9 Yes, it was more and less sophisticated than we thought. But I do think it was more concerted than we realized, and it was more coordinated than we realized.
That's what this indictment makes clear.

Speaker 9 And the reason it didn't succeed is not for lack of effort.

Speaker 9 It didn't succeed because at the time, there were just enough people with just enough scruples left to stand in this group of conspiracist sway.

Speaker 8 It does highlight the amount of pressure that was put on Mike Pence.

Speaker 7 Because,

Speaker 8 you know, I think sometimes we assume Trump has kind of like a public-facing demeanor and message where he lies and is full of shit.

Speaker 8 You kind of assume that he's in on the joke and tells the truth behind the scenes.

Speaker 8 No, he was like in the vice president's face as late as December 29th saying that the Justice Department was finding major fraud and infractions. Like Pence knew that was a lie.

Speaker 8 Everyone had been briefed on the fact that that was a lie.

Speaker 8 And by the way, breaking news, Mike Pence just put out a statement about the indictment saying today's indictment serves as an important reminder, anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.

Speaker 8 So it's interesting that he's leaning into it. Yeah.

Speaker 7 It was his line when

Speaker 7 he said that line when he

Speaker 7 announced for office, but I'm glad that he did not go to the sort of weasel, I don't know if we should criminalize the, you know, I think

Speaker 8 here it's in context of this indictment.

Speaker 7 Right. Well, I know, I saw that statement, but I think what he decided was

Speaker 7 It's not on me to judge the legality of what the jury is going to do. The guy shouldn't be president again, and that's enough, which, you know, is fine.

Speaker 7 And I guess, and I think Hutchinson and her and Will Hurd, Asa Hutchinson and Christie have come out with statements condemning him as well.

Speaker 9 There's one other meeting where Trump and Eastman

Speaker 9 and Pence and Pence's chief of staff and counsel are all meeting.

Speaker 9 And basically, there was this sort of other proposal that was being floated that Pence has the ability to send the fake electors back to the states.

Speaker 9 And there's a moment where Pence is like, who says I can do that?

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 Eastman says, well, it's never been tried before, basically. And Pence says to Trump, did you hear that? Even your own counsel is not saying I have the authority.
And Trump responded, that's okay.

Speaker 9 I prefer the other suggestion. The other suggestion.
Where he just overturns the election and certifies Trump.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 pretty damning. Pretty serious.

Speaker 7 You guys have any questions you're looking forward to being answered in the coming days on this one?

Speaker 7 I'm kind of interested in the timing and whether they think that they can actually get a full trial trial in before the election on this one.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I'm curious about, like, look, we're all learning these terms, like speaking indictment and how much prosecutors decide to put or not put in these indictments.

Speaker 8 I'm curious to see how much evidence was withheld here.

Speaker 8 We don't really know that. I don't know how we could know that.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and

Speaker 7 we talked about what's going on with the unindicted co-conspirators. Jack Smith did have one line in his very brief statement where he said investigations of various individuals are ongoing.
So,

Speaker 7 you know, we could expect, we could see more indictments on this.

Speaker 9 This indictment definitely doesn't read, though, that like Rudy and Eastman and Clark were just dragged along.

Speaker 9 They're written like people that at least Jack Smith would love to throw in fucking prison.

Speaker 7 Oh, I mean, I think that

Speaker 7 it's more damning for them

Speaker 7 than even Trump in the way the indictment reads for some of the stuff that Jeffrey Clark said about the insurrection. I mean, all the stuff that we read.

Speaker 7 I think it's Eastman and Clark seem like very criminal what they did. Yeah,

Speaker 9 the part where, that's why I was sort of interested in the part where you see the evolution of the plan from just having backup electors to it becoming a crazy plan to overturn the election, because that is five, Mr.

Speaker 9 Cheeseborough. And that, he, he gets the least,

Speaker 9 he gets sort of the least damning

Speaker 9 attention throughout this, as does six. And, you know, you have to, you have to wonder, like, man, Rudy is dead to rights in this thing.
Clark is dead to rights in this thing.

Speaker 9 Eastman's dead to rights in this thing. Like, I wonder who they're actually going after to get to testify.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, you know, to your point, Levi, like, Rudy, look, there was, like, post-9-11 hey geography, Rudy, wherever America's mayor, that whole bullshit.

Speaker 8 But, like, that image of Rudy, I think, is long gone. He's been a clown for a long time, so I wasn't surprised to read his comments in this.

Speaker 8 John Eastman is someone who's considered like a pretty well-respected scholar, constitutional scholar, but before this insanity at the end here and this coup effort that he clearly was behind in in knowingly you know putting forward lies and asking people to break the law might even call him a mastermind of the of this of this effort i mean it was really like you're right rudy rudy just goes off the cuff but like eastman here is he's thought it out he's thought it out he knows it's illegal and he just he's been pushing the whole time um just that we don't need to just get into the politics too much here but like

Speaker 7 this is one and i felt like this during the january 6th committee that I don't really care what the politics are.

Speaker 7 Like, when I read this indictment, I'm like, if Donald Trump wins again, these unindicted co-conspirators are coming back to the White House, and next time, they're not going to fuck it up.

Speaker 9 Well, no,

Speaker 9 they're going to have those Medals of Freedom hanging around their necks.

Speaker 7 I mean, it's like, this is, you know what?

Speaker 7 I don't know what other case you need to make to voters than, hey, all this shit that happened, them threatening that if Donald Trump doesn't get to stay in power for as long as he likes, they're going to use the Insurrection Act to get the military to put down any protests.

Speaker 7 That's going to be our future if you elect this guy as president again.

Speaker 9 Well, not if he wins.

Speaker 7 Well, then what happens after that for those four years? I'll be old. What happens when we're debating the constitutional amendment to

Speaker 7 let Donald Trump serve as long as he wants? And

Speaker 7 he tells the senators and House members, that's okay. You don't have to change it with a full majority.
It's okay. Don't worry about it.

Speaker 9 There's also one part in this where Tommy made this point before we recorded that Sidney Powell's texts are as bonkers as her personality. They're just half caps, half half lowercase.

Speaker 8 One sentence, in the same sentence, there's this like just a run of all caps texts followed by normal. But, John, on the political question,

Speaker 8 you know, this indictment and all the news reports around it could certainly change the context. There was some polling.

Speaker 8 There's a YouGov poll back in January where, you know, you had pretty strong majorities of American voters saying Trump bore responsibility for January 6th. When you asked about

Speaker 8 whether they approved of Congress referring Trump for a criminal indictment, it got a lot more partisan. It was 45 to 37 Americans approved of referring him to DOJ for a criminal indictment.

Speaker 8 So we'll see if that more partisan split sticks now that he's actually indicted.

Speaker 7 Yeah, the one set of numbers that stuck out to me, I think I was reading last night, is

Speaker 7 you know,

Speaker 7 like you said, it breaks down along partisan lines, and the question is, what do independents do? You know,

Speaker 7 how do independents see this and mostly they're sort of split on you know whether it was a crime all that kind of stuff but if you ask the question if donald trump is convicted of a crime should he be able to serve as president it's like like 75 of independents don't think he should and and a majority of all voters don't think he should like a healthy majority pretty big majority so i do think that The only point here is as this goes on, right, the politics now and the polls we're looking at now are all sort of frozen in time and they're backward looking, right?

Speaker 7 We are about to head into a calendar season of like court dates and indict and extra indictments. We had a superseding one we didn't even expect in the Mar-a-Lago case.

Speaker 7 And this is going to go on and on and on and be in the news over and over and over again. And right, like maybe it doesn't make a huge difference in an electorate that is very polarized.

Speaker 7 That's possible. But these elections are decided on the margins.
And is it, you know, do you want to put the guy back in the White House who did all this?

Speaker 7 Or do you want to give Joe Joe Biden four more years? That's it. That's the choice.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Also,

Speaker 9 the point that Jackson makes, the point when he gave the statement that he wants a speedy trial, that's a message also to the judge. This judge, as you pointed out, is not Eileen Cannon.
And

Speaker 7 she's the complete opposite.

Speaker 7 She's bizarro Eileen Cannon.

Speaker 9 Is this going to affect Trump's poll numbers? He may die in prison because of this.

Speaker 9 Poll numbers are the least of his problems. Like, he is going to be in court day after day after day, covered exclusively on his crimes.

Speaker 7 That's why he's running so hard for president.

Speaker 9 Some things don't end up being on the margins. We'll see, but man, this is...

Speaker 9 You read this, you're like, I finally can see it now. I see the end.

Speaker 7 If you think to yourself, maybe he's a little more disciplined in his run for president this time. It's so he can stay out of jail.
Yeah. He knows there's a lot more at stake right now.

Speaker 8 Yeah, he's got a lot of legal bills to pay.

Speaker 7 It's going to, it's probably hurting. Yeah.

Speaker 7 All right. Well, that's our bonus episode.
We'll come back with another bonus if there's more indictments. I think, let's see, we are at 74 felony counts yesterday on the pod we talked about.

Speaker 7 So now we're up to 78. 78 felony counts.

Speaker 9 I was reading this indictment.

Speaker 7 Is he 70?

Speaker 9 How old is he? He's 78. One per year.

Speaker 7 Yeah, he's got a felony country.

Speaker 9 One of the candle on the cage.

Speaker 7 Donald Trump, 78 years old, 78 felicity.

Speaker 9 I was reading this indictment, and all of a sudden I was like, wait, this is confusing. And I realized, oh, I accidentally turned into the other indictment.

Speaker 8 Oh,

Speaker 7 there were too many indictments on my indictments. You got to file those things.

Speaker 8 You need a new highlighter.

Speaker 7 You're going to get your indictments out. All right.
We'll talk to you on Thursday, everyone.

Speaker 7 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
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