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00:00 We begin our coverage tonight with Caitlin Polans.
00:01 She is out front in Washington.
00:03 And Caitlin, what more do you know about Trump's argument and what we can expect from the judge
00:10 there, right?
00:11 He posts, "If you go after me, I'm coming after you."
00:13 Yeah, Erin, there's a couple of different things at play here.
00:17 And what we're talking about, what the fight is in court right now, it is over the material
00:22 that Donald Trump has no access to at this time, that the Justice Department has, that
00:27 they've collected in the investigation and will give to him for trial.
00:31 The Justice Department, those records, they want to protect all of them.
00:34 They want to make sure that Donald Trump is not going to be disseminating them on social
00:38 media or sharing them in any other way, talking about them with others.
00:43 And the Trump team, they just want it to be slightly narrower than that.
00:47 They want to designate stuff in that pile as specifically sensitive.
00:52 And so they want provisions over that.
00:54 The judge, Judge Tanya Chutkan, she's going to have to come in and make some legal decisions
00:58 here about exactly what governs all of this evidence heading toward trial.
01:03 She could be moving quite quickly on this.
01:05 She did this weekend when the Justice Department asked her to intervene.
01:10 And once there is some sort of order in place on what to do here with disclosures or non-disclosures
01:17 of this evidence, then everybody can really move toward trial and start working very hard
01:23 there.
01:24 So that is what's going on legally.
01:25 But there's this other conversation that's taking place as well, where the Justice Department
01:29 did raise this Trump post in social media about, I'm coming after you.
01:35 Now, Trump's team, in response to that, in their filing, they're saying, that wasn't
01:40 about sensitive information.
01:42 That had nothing to do what we're talking about here.
01:44 That is what we call generalized political speech.
01:47 Pay no attention to that.
01:49 And actually, we'll raise you with a tweet of our own that we want to show you, which
01:54 was a tweet of Joe Biden holding a cup, a mug that he is selling, a cup of Joe never
02:00 tastes better.
02:01 And the Trump team is saying that that is a thinly veiled reference to his administration's
02:06 prosecution of President Trump.
02:08 Now, the reason we're talking about all of this is it's in court papers.
02:12 And so now we watch to see if the judge here, Chania Chutkan, if she addresses any of these
02:18 social media posts at all, has anything to say about that.
02:21 That could be really interesting.
02:24 And at a time where this case is not alone in the dark, there is an ongoing investigation,
02:30 clearly as evidenced by Bernie Kerik going in and talking to the special counsel's office
02:35 today about Rudy Giuliani and others.
02:38 There could be other things that emerge here in the future, potentially before Judge Chutkan
02:43 as well.
02:44 All right.
02:45 Well, Caitlin, thank you very much.
02:46 You know, the hundreds of people serving who have been convicted in the January 6th insurrection
02:50 and the riot have, you know, they've said it was Trump's words that launched them into
02:55 action, said so repeatedly under oath.
02:57 So if you go after me, I'm coming after you.
03:00 It's a threat.
03:01 Out front now, Ty Cobb, former Trump White House lawyer, is here.
03:05 And look, Ty, you know, at issue here, you've been on the receiving end of some threatening
03:10 posts from Trump, right?
03:11 He makes comments and threats against people in words.
03:15 In June, he said you'll be held legally responsible for what he called false statements.
03:19 He didn't specify what they were.
03:20 He hasn't followed through.
03:21 And in fact, in terms of physically following through, right, that's not something that
03:25 he's ever done.
03:26 So now he's posting about his indictments.
03:28 He's saying, if you go after me, I'm coming after you.
03:30 So is this just a case of prosecutors really aren't going to be able to do anything about
03:34 it?
03:35 I think the prosecutors with the assistance of the judge will be able to tame this somewhat.
03:41 I'm not sure that Trump's lawyers will be able to get him to adhere to whatever limitations
03:48 they impose.
03:50 And as a result, he may be sanctioned and could even be held in contempt and put in
03:54 jail and have to run for president from jail like Eugene Debs did back in the 30s.
04:02 It's pretty amazing to even think that we're having such a conversation.
04:05 There are moments when I hear it come out of your mouth that I pause.
04:08 I mean, so, so, Ty, Trump's lawyer is giving a lot of information about his defense, right?
04:13 He's been speaking and he told our own Dana Bash that Trump didn't direct Pence now to
04:18 do anything when it came to not certifying the election.
04:21 Here's what he said.
04:25 What President Trump did not do is direct Vice President Pence to do anything.
04:30 He asked him in an aspirational way.
04:33 Asking is covered by the First Amendment.
04:39 Aspirational.
04:40 He asked in an aspirational way.
04:41 He went on to say asking is not speech.
04:44 It's not action.
04:45 That's the heart of this, right?
04:47 Speech versus action.
04:48 Does that defense fly here?
04:51 Not at all.
04:52 I'm not aware of the aspirational defense or the free speech defense to a gang leader
05:01 saying to two of his subordinates, I need you two to please rob a bank for me and they
05:06 do it.
05:07 You know, that's, that's aspirational.
05:10 But it leads to a crime.
05:13 And that's exactly what Trump did, did with Pence.
05:17 The aspirational, I mean, it's, it is interesting.
05:20 I mean, what do you make, Ty, of the fact, and I know John Lara is a very respected lawyer.
05:25 A lot of lawyers have worked with him over the years, but what do you make of the arguments
05:28 that he's making and I guess the way that he's making it right now?
05:31 Right now he's making it through the media.
05:34 So I've been in his position before where he represented a very difficult client under,
05:39 you know, great pressure who's concerned about the possibility of going to jail.
05:44 I think one of the dangers, and John is respected and he has a good reputation and he certainly
05:51 knows his way around the courtroom.
05:53 Former special, former federal prosecutor, briefly.
05:56 But think about it.
05:58 He's been in this case for less than three weeks.
06:02 There's no way he could have mastered the nuances of the record.
06:06 You know, I mean, they've got a lot of talking points to work from, but most of those talking
06:10 points are false, just like the big lie is false.
06:14 And so John's stuck getting out there, you know, trying to, trying to go toe to toe with
06:22 Dan and other professionals who've lived this stuff for two years.
06:28 And that's difficult.
06:29 That's hard.
06:30 That's hard to do.
06:31 And that, you know, he also admitted a couple of things that I think will come back to haunt
06:38 them in terms of, you know, requests of Pence and an acknowledgement that they did want
06:46 to, they did want to delay the vote.
06:49 So I think, I think it's dangerous to be out there.
06:53 You know, Trump has needed somebody in charge.
06:57 John seems to be taking charge, but he also needs somebody who can effectively communicate
07:03 with the media with a finely honed message.
07:07 And this message is a little awkward so far.
07:10 Yeah, it's certainly an aspirational defense.
07:13 You know, an aspirational request is certainly, even to a lay person, reads a little odd.
07:18 I do want to ask you about the Mar-a-Lago case as well, because the judge there, the
07:21 Trump appointed Eileen Cannon, issued an order today, Ty, asking federal prosecutors to explain
07:27 the use of a Washington grand jury.
07:30 And this is, she's asking for this, even though a grand jury in South Florida, of course,
07:34 saw evidence and indicted based on the evidence that they saw.
07:38 So as far as we understand, the defense in this case is not asking for this explanation,
07:44 but the judge is.
07:45 Do you understand why?
07:47 Is this a normal thing?
07:48 No, it's not.
07:51 This is a highly unusual request for most judges, although it's typical of the conduct
08:01 that the 11th Circuit came down hard on her previously for, for insinuating defenses and
08:08 ideas that even Trump hadn't raised.
08:11 You know, in his defense, when she bungled the search warrant and the special master
08:16 issue and they finally forced her to dismiss the case.
08:19 I think, I think this is a jump the shark moment.
08:23 I mean, the reality is, no, no, the defense attorneys are capable.
08:28 Nobody asked her to raise this issue.
08:31 I'd suggest the possibility of misconduct by the Justice Department where there's absolutely
08:36 no basis for it.
08:37 The law is you cannot use an existing grand jury to investigate existing charges, previously
08:44 brought charges.
08:46 But there's no reason that a grand jury in DC can't share information with a jury in
08:52 Florida.
08:53 In fact, it's specifically authorized under Rule 63C of the Federal Rules of Criminal
08:59 Procedure.
09:00 And it was the Florida grand jury, after receiving and reviewing that information, that issued
09:06 the indictment.
09:07 So there's no head of impropriety and no sophisticated prosecutor would commit the
09:14 one area of misconduct that is prohibited in the grand jury in terms of continuing to
09:21 investigate an existing charge.
09:23 That's not really what's at issue here.
09:24 Her concern is, can a grand jury in DC actually investigate additional corruption that may
09:31 have occurred in her district?
09:33 And the law is clear that they can't.
09:35 I don't think the Justice Department is going to whine about this.
09:37 They'll brief it for her and hope she understands.
09:41 But it's a very highly unusual thing.
09:44 And it's the first time since the case was assigned to her that she has done anything
09:50 that's remotely like the way she handled the initial issues that got her in trouble.