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The Trump Indictments and The Challenges Ahead For Prosecution · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  Welcome to the third hour of the Morning Show with Preston Scott. I'm Preston
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  Jared running the show over there. Grant is there as well in Studio one
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  A. I'm here in Studio one B. Great to be with you this
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  morning. Trying to keep you focused on the big stories in the press box,
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  not letting you forget that there are now tape recordings involving Hunter and Joe
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  Biden and bribery that the foreign national who is believed to be the head of
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  Barisma recorded as quote an insurance policy. Meanwhile, everybody in the world is
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  going nuts as well. They should over a rival candidate for the Oval office
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  and former president being arrested in technical terms and joining us to talk about it
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  is one of our favorite guests. Horace Cooper's chair of Project twenty one.
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  Horace, good morning, Welcome, good morning. It's great to be on
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  the program, Horace. I liken this to back in the old days when
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  royalty would lock up rivals, even heirs to the throne, and put them
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  in a castle somewhere to keep them from being competition. Is this really that
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  far from it? Well, if reminiscence of that, it is in fact
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  part of the reason why in our constitution our founders created the pardon power,
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  and it was implicit and understanding that every trial, every conviction did not serve
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  the interests of justice. Yes, we believe that there should be trials.
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  Yes there should be the right of the juries, made up of the community,
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  to make an ultimate determination. But still the founder said there were instances
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  where those convictions ought to be set aside. This is one of those examples.
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  And our president, mister Biden, has decided that no, this is
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  not a large issue. This is not a comprehensive opportunity for him to show
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  leadership. Instead, this is a time for him, or at least his
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  life, to be able to say, wow, how is it that after
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  this has all happened that people still support the president. That's not all justice
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  works. It's not a measure of whether people will vote for you or not.
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  Justice actually would have been if our president announced that he had personally ordered
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  the ending of this particular indictment. Blaine, as best you can what the
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  former president is charged with. So the former president is charged with having possessed
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  documents that during the time that he was president he could regularly have had access
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  to. He could look at he could transfer, he could even hand off
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  to people. These documents are now some of these documents are now in his
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  possession. There is no allegation that he reached out to the Iranian government,
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  the North Korean government, or any other hostile force to share the details of
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  the documents that he had. The Espionage Act, which constitutes thirty one of
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  the charges, is the kind of thing that Ethel and Joe wrote a Joseph
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  Rosenberg would have been charged with. They were, and they were fun guilty,
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  and they were executed because they worked with a foreign government. The idea
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  that a president who had the ability to have access to these documents, to
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  be trusted with this information is now going to be punished when the Presidential Records
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  Act doesn't make it clear what is to happen when there is a dispute over
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  whether a document is considered a personal paper or whether a document is considered a
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  public paper. Making sense of it all The Morning Show with Preston Scott on
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  News Radio one hundred point seven WFLA. Chris Cooper with US. He's chairman
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  of Project twenty one. He's a constitutional law professor, serving previously at George
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  Mason University served as lead counsel General counsel for House Minority Leader Dick Army.
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  And we're trying to sort through the accusations of Donald Trump. Thirty seven charges,
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  and you mentioned, horace that thirty one of them deal with the Espionage
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  Act. What are the odds that thirty one charges get kicked out on the
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  very beginning year because there's zero evidence anything was ever shared with a foreign government.
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  Well, those odds are very high. In fact, part of the
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  problem with this particular indictment is that, while using an analogy like I might
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  in my classroom, a lot of people speed. They see the sign and
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  they choose not to comply with the speed limit requirements. There are myriad numbers
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  of people that pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars every year or more in tickets
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  because of this. In our American system, you are not allowed to be
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  ticketed merely because quote almost everybody speeds. They must actually intercept you at the
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  very act of speeding, not the day after, the day before. Now
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  you get these photo tickets, and that is a gray zone that the court
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  has not ultimately ascertained because the photo doesn't demonstrate it's actually you. Most jurisdictions
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  simply don't give you a penalty. They just find you. But set that
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  aside. It's also not true in our system that because everyone does speeds,
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  that the sheriff could hide in a spot, who wait for you to arrive.
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  But if we find out that five cars went by speeding fifteen miles over
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  the speed limit, twenty cars went by at doing that same pace, thirty
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  cars went by, and then finally you went by, and he pulls out
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  and says, gotcha, I'm going to get you because I caught you in
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  the act. You again get to raise in court that you were targeted,
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  that this was selective prosecution. That's no different from what's happening here. We
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  have a circumstance where former President Obama, a former President Clinton, even former
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  President Bush had dispute over whether or not documents that they had thought to retain
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  were documents that they were lawfully allowed to In none of those instances where those
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  individuals prosecuted. The Presidential Records Act, which is a civil statute, is
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  how it was resolved, and that's how this should have been resolved this time.
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  I was just going to bring up the case of the tapes in the
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  sock drawer under Bill Clinton. When a ruling was made in the case involving
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  the forty second president, the UDGE wrote at the time, Jamie Berman Jackson,
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  that there's no provision in the Presidential Records Act to force the National Archives
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  to seize anything, and so the very outset of this seems to be beyond
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  the reach of the federal government. So this is why there has been a
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  stretching of the definition of espionage to cover to cover the particular behavior, and
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  that is the possession of national defense documents, not national security documents, national
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  defense documents. I don't believe that that new interpretation is going to hold up.
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  Now, let me just say this discovery alone, in getting all of
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  the motions and the documents and information needed for trial to get set, is
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  going to take more than a year. We will not have a trial date
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  for election day. If Donald Trump is ultimately elected president, the Justice Department
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  is going to drop these charges. Now you say, oh, well,
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  that's because Donald Trump is going to make them do so. No, it
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  is actually Justice Department policy that they don't charge a sitting president with selonie if
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  in fact, the Congress of the United States is able to hear about this
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  and then make a determination on their own. This president, mister Biden,
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  understands that, or should understand that, and he should not put America in
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  the middle of this by letting his political opponents be targeted in this way.
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  But it's pretty obvious that they think, at least his life does that there
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  would be some political benefit from doing so. WLA on your phone with the
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  iHeart radio app and on hundreds of devices like Electa, Google, Ha,
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  Xbox, and Sonos. Yes, and I hears radio station almost twenty two
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  minutes after the hour, joining us for just a few more minutes. Horace
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  Cooper, he's chairman of Project twenty one and our guest constitutional law expert and
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  really smart guy, Horace. I have noted that Jonathan Turley, who generally
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  has been a very strong advocate where the president, believes that there are some
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  potential challenges for the president inside these indictments. Do you concur has he done
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  anything that might be remotely problematic? Well, again, did disturb catch you
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  while you were speeding? If you were speeding and you were targeted, there
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  are still protections that you, as a citizen have, you can't be singled
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  out, and there that is a very very high hurdles. What we shouldn't
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  allow is if all of these espionage charges are dismissed and then we're left with
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  a lying or a obstruction of justice charge, we shouldn't allow a conviction to
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  go forward where there is no evidence of any underlying charge. You obstructed justice
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  on this bank robery charge, except we now know that the bank didn't get
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  robbed and you are in no where in faults. Typically, even if you
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  didn't give the information that law enforcement while they're doing the investigations, you are
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  not charged for that. In this particular instance, our foreign president is surreptitiously
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  recorded, excuse me, talking to his own attorneys and asking them questions,
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  and the prosecute uses the president's queries as one of the basis for a conspiracy
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  charge. How problematic is it that they recorded him with his own attorneys.
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  This is extremely distressing that the piercing of the veil between you and your attorney.
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  The entire process of getting a lawyer in general to be someone that is
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  a confidant is that they can be trusted to tell you can tell them anything.
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  There was a Lynn Irene Steward, I believe her name was was prosecuted
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  during the Bush years. She was sort of a defense attorney to the mother's
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  any crazy terrorist person out there, she would agree to operate as their representation.
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  And when there was a trial in New York, she, instead of
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  assisting her client in getting a not guilty please, took messages about announced terrorist
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  targets from him and delivered it to those That, of course, is not
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  the role of a lawyer. But when she was taught prosecuted, the New
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  York Times and CNN they blew a top. There is no evidence at all
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  here that any of Donald Trump's attorneys in any way acted in any unlawful manner.
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  Now, the fact that Donald Trump asked questions, there's a lot of
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  people. One of my nephew's favorite questions is, well, how would I
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  know if I don't ask? What's the purpose of having a lawyer if you
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  can't ask questions? Final questions for it? And you got about a minute
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  before you got to go here, Tucker Carlson said last night, And I'll
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  make it brief. This all started back in twenty sixteen and Trump's position against
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  the war in Iraq and actions taken by George W. Bush. This is
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  not just the Democrats. It's the Democrats and the mainstream Republicans. Do you
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  agree, well, I agree that there is a deep state. I agree
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  that the Durham Report reveals that a sort of a uniparty worked diligently to thwart
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  the ability of Donald Trump to achieve his objectives. And I think actually that
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  there is a lot more at the top tier of our intelligence agency and even
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  in some of our government agencies like the White House, that sought to minimize
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  the ability of Donald Trump while he was a candidate, and when that didn't
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  work, sought to marginalize him as a president. I'm sure we'll talk again.
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  Thanks again for the time. As always, Horace, you'd be well.
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  Horace Cooper Project twenty one chairman, former constitutional professor of law at George
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  Mason University, Former General counsel to House Minority Leader Dick Army, Representative Dick
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  Army twenty seven minutes after the hour, Back with the big Stories in the
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  press box, The other big story next,