Prosecuting Donald Trump: A Primer
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While you still can. At participating McDonald's for a limited time while supplies last. Hello, this is Ari Melber, chief legal correspondent for MSNBC and host of The Beat. And thank you for joining us for our very first episode of prosecuting Donald Trump, a primer. In our country's 246 year history, we have never seen a president or former president indicted. So how does a prosecutor approach this case?

Well, we have some top lawyers, MSNBC legal contributors, Andrew Weissman and Mary McCord to walk us through all of it. They are two of the most well-respected prosecutors in the nation, having handled some of the most historic cases in the modern era. Andrew was at the DOJ for 20 years, handling 200 cases, and he was deputy to special counsel Mueller in that probe where he prosecuted Paul Manafort.

Mary is a former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the DOJ. She also served as assistant U.S. attorney in Washington for almost two decades and prosecuted the Benghazi attack. Speaker Pelosi has appointed her as legal counsel where she did a security review after the January 6th insurrection.

So we have two people here who we think are perfect to break down how you would deal with what is still a possibility, the potential prosecution and trial of former President Donald Trump. Please join me in listening to Prosecuting Donald Trump with Andrew Weissman and Mary McCord.

Hi, welcome, everyone. This is Andrew Weissman, and I'm here with Mary McCord. Hi, Andrew. Glad to be here. Glad to be talking about this today. So I think we should just jump right in and start by letting people know what we're trying to accomplish here. You and I have been at the Department of Justice for so long, and we've been on the criminal side of the House and the national security side of the House. And we've been on the criminal side of the House and the national security side of the House.

And we've been in the room where there's a lot of debates about sort of how to bring a case. What are the things that you worry about? What are the things that allow you to go from an investigation to an indictment, to a trial? What are you trying to anticipate? And I thought it would be great to try and get people into the room to understand exactly what people are focusing on and what kind of

of considerations one way or the other, which may not be obvious to people. So I thought that we should start by maybe first focusing on the Manhattan district attorney's case. And the reason is because it just seems like the one that could happen so quickly.

Mary, I don't know what you were thinking about the idea that we might be starting with Manhattan, which doesn't seem like the worst of the crimes that Donald Trump is being investigated for. And how it is that we're starting with that and whether you think that the DA there is actually talking to the DA in Georgia or to Jack Smith to try and figure out which case should go first.

Yeah, I think it's a great question because there's so many people right now talking about this very thing, like, oh, I don't know if that's the right case to go first. It doesn't really have anything to do with undermining our democracy. And that's where there's been so much focus with the Jack Smith investigation, the Fannie Willis investigation. That's just so much about what we've been talking about because even currently, presently, we still have, I think, efforts to sort of undermine democracy that are happening every day. And so, you know, I think

For some outsiders, the thought of a case that's based on hush money payments at this point now, a number of years ago, maybe shouldn't be the first out of the gate. But if you're the Manhattan DA, this is the case you're investigating. And, you know, you're investigating state law crimes.

that are squarely within your authority. And no, I do not think he's talking with Fannie Willis. I do not think he's talking with the Department of Justice, Jack Smith, or anybody else. I think that he and Fannie and the Department of Justice are wanting to protect their investigations against any kind of criticism that they're colluding together for political purposes.

Hey, Barry, I've heard that word before. Colluding? Yeah. I hesitate to use it anymore because I think collusion, everyone immediately thinks Russia investigation, Russia investigation, which you might know a little something about.

A little bit. I still, I still, it still causes me like, you know, I have like a Pavlovian response when I hear that word. Right. But I think, you know, just back realistically, they don't want to be criticized or subject themselves, open themselves up to criticism for trying to somehow do things, time things, sequencing things for political purposes.

And in fact, in many ways, if anything shows that they're not doing that, it is the fact that this appears that it may be the first case to actually break open with an indictment. Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, I completely agree that I don't think they are coordinating.

You know, it could just be a footnote to history that if Manhattan ends up going first, but we have other ones going later where it's just a happenstance. But, you know, this is—it reminds me when I was in the special counsel investigation, and we, by the fall, had the Manafort and Gates indictment ready to go, and my good friend Jeannie Rhee

had a case with respect to George Papadopoulos ready to go. And the two of us actually, because we are one team, we had an advantage that you don't see now where you have three separate jurisdictions. We actually thought about

sequencing because they were both ready. So it wasn't like we were sitting there saying, you know, do this one first and investigate even though one was ready and one wasn't. So we really thought that the Manafort case and the Papadopoulos case would show the public the sort of seriousness of purpose of what we were doing because while the Manafort case was incredibly detailed and

was about somebody who was the campaign manager for the sitting president, it wasn't sort of centrally focused on the stated mission, or at least what we...

people would think of the stated mission. And so we thought the George Papadopoulos case, while it was seen more minor, but was central to our mission that we would sort of avoid criticism, we would show forward movement, we would show breadth of purpose.

And one of the reasons to do that is when you're trying to encourage people to cooperate, it is useful for defense lawyers to know that this case is moving forward with alacrity and all avenues are being pursued. And so we thought it would help

and have that positive prosecutorial effect. But again, we were allowed to do that because we were one office, not three offices. And I agree with you that if they were to coordinate— I noticed the choice of verbs— that they would buy themselves a whole heap of trouble, and they're going to be dealing with enough incoming from Donald Trump and the House Republicans that they can avoid all that by just keeping their heads down.

Totally agree. And, you know, they know it will come because it's already happening. I mean, in fact, much worse than the kind of things that might, you know, be they might be criticized for if they were coordinating. We're having, you know, much worse things happening right now with the former president getting really, really threatening in some of his actions.

Truth Social posts and appearing, frankly, to try to pressure the district attorney to not take action, appearing, frankly, to try to summon a mob if he does take action. And really, this is all pretty obstructive conduct. And so there's every reason to believe that any misstep anywhere will be pounced upon by the former president. And then right behind him usually come his supporters. And I'm not just talking now about his supporters like

you know, out general members of the public, people who might come out and answer his call to protest. But I'm also talking about elected Congress members who are very, very quick to, you know, amplify or at least not denounce at the very minimum some of the more violent, inducing types of

I keep wanting to say tweets. They're not tweets. They're truth social posts, the things that the former president says and does. And those things are very dangerous and damaging to democracy, damaging to the rule of law. But it's a reality right now in these investigations. One of the unfortunate realities is, you know, prosecutors, jurors, judges, poll workers all now are sort of taking action

lives in their hands. I mean, there are threats and you have political leaders who take advantage of that. They're not just oblivious to it. They are fomenting and at times inciting exactly that response. But, you know, it used to be when you and I were sort of starting out, yes, if you did an organized crime case or certain types of violent gang cases that you had to

potentially worry, but it was rare. Very. But when I was in the special counsel, I remember the marshals wanted to come to my home and they wanted to completely outfit it.

And I rejected that because I remember an FBI agent telling me years ago, he said, hey, you know what? If they're threatening you, they're not going to kill you because if they wanted to kill you, they just would. Yeah, they wouldn't announce it in advance, right? Exactly. Not exactly a reassuring statement, but I mean, it was true. But now, you know, you can be sure that

Alvin Bragg, people on the case, people whose names get associated with it, agents, I mean, all have to deal with the issue of protection. And the idea is to have them be intimidated in the same way. I know, Mary, you're such an expert in this, but poll workers just trying to protect our right to vote.

they have to worry about this now. So, I mean, it's just, it's so depressing and so insidious, but you really have to give the jurors, the judges, the prosecutors dealing with this a lot of credit for having the backbone and fortitude of, you know, holding up what they need to to have the rule of law.

Yeah. Why don't we turn to the Mar-a-Lago case? Because I know that's one you and I have talked a lot about because it so relates to sort of two parts of our lives, which is the criminal side and the national security side. And I was wondering there if you could...

I think people don't really understand your national security hat and sort of what kind of issues that would raise for you or does raise for you in terms of not just doing a search, but the issues that would be debated inside the room about bringing a criminal case, because both of us have been in those discussions. And I was wondering if you could sort of take us into that.

Yeah, I think that is very misunderstood in the American public. You know, this case when at first when the search warrant was executed and the news about the case broke, I think a lot of people were really probably swayed by this idea of top secret documents and secrets.

even higher level SCI documents. And these must be so important to national security and they're so important to have a prosecution. And that's all true, but the strange thing about classified documents cases is that the more sensitive the information,

the greater the harm to national security by release of those documents, the least likely that the Department of Justice is going to be able to prosecute for the mishandling of those documents. And that's because in a prosecution, you actually have to go into court and say, this is real. The national defense information in this classified document is real information that

The disclosure of which could, in some cases, cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security. And our intelligence community partners, when you and I were in government, that makes their head explode, right? They're like, no, no, no.

Yeah, you cannot go into court and say that, you know, we need to protect this. And it's one thing to have people speculating in the media. It's a whole different thing for the government itself to go in and say, no, this is real. This, you know, there's these troop movements, these, you know, intelligence collection, these nuclear secrets, whatever it is for us to go in and say it's real. That is a bridge too far.

and frankly, a red line for our intelligence community. So there's this dance, and you and I have both been part of that dance when the Department of Justice is really wanting to go forward with the prosecution and our intelligence community partners who actually own that information. It's like if you think of information as property, the intelligence agency that collected it under their authorities, that's their information and they have an equity in that and they guard that zealously. And we will get into...

arguments in some ways, that's maybe too strong of a term, certainly no fistfights. But we would definitely get into debates about whether the department could use certain things up to a certain level. The Department of Justice, I mean, in a prosecution, would that be okay with the intelligence agency? And at some point, the intelligence agency would say, that's it, that's the red line. You can't go further than that. And so ironically, that means in a case like Mar-a-Lago,

Some of the most significant documents and information, in other words, those at the highest level of classification, are probably not going to be the ones that are the subject matter of any type of 793 offense, offense on the mishandling of classified information, because they're probably too sensitive. And so frankly, I've been looking at this case thinking that's one reason that the obstruction of

offenses could become more significant here, because there you would not necessarily have to reveal the substance of some of the most sensitive documents, assuming, of course, DJ's got evidence to prove every element of obstruction. That's when you might be able to present to a jury without

revealing some of the most sensitive national security information that is otherwise probably at issue. And I actually will just add, the new developments with respect to Evan Corcoran, one of the president's attorneys or the former president's attorneys, him going into the grand jury to testify about this matter and his communications with former President Trump,

You know, seemed to me potentially to be a significant piece of evidence in the obstruction investigation based on sort of the timing of the communications that I understand Jack Smith is interested in. But I wonder in particular, Andrew, because you've been through this sort of situation before in some of your own prosecutions, what you think of that?

So when you were talking, Mary, I kept on thinking about those discussions where, you know, because the Bureau has a law enforcement side and a national security side. So I remember as the general counsel, I'd be in these meetings and I'd be so schizophrenic because I'd be supporting the intelligence part when I was representing the national security side of the FBI.

But then I'd have the criminal side of the FBI saying, well, we also think there should be a prosecution. And, you know, people would look at me going like, pick a side. But very often, as you said, there'd be you can do it, but you have to agree that you're not going to use this and you're going to protect to the death people.

this information from not being revealed, and you'll come back to us if that happens. To the death can mean dismissing the case. Absolutely. It was like, if that becomes an issue, you have to come back to us, and that could be on the table. One of the things I found so unusual

in the special counsel investigation, Robert Mueller's special counsel. Now I have to actually say Robert Mueller's special counsel because there's so many that it no longer is unique. It's the in thing. So during, we brought these two Russia indictments, and I'm sure you were thinking, Mary, how in God's green earth did they get approval

Because we had so many methods and means in those indictments. I mean, it was just incredible and remarkable. But I can say this because it was not my team, and I'm really giving credit to Jeannie Rhee and her agents and analysts. But that's one where the intelligence community really understood the value of the public interest.

knowing what Russia was up to, even though there was going to be a cost to that information. And I thought that was really forward-leaning of them to be on that side of the debate, because you and I have been on the other side of that debate, where you're pulling your hair out, thinking this is the wrong call.

But to turn to Evan Corcoran, you know, it's just so unbelievable seeing this because this is exactly the situation we have with Paul Manafort in the special counsel investigation. Because Paul Manafort, when we took over the investigation, had, through his counsel, written two letters to the Department of Justice. And among other things, those letters said, I have no documents available.

They're all gone. And we had done a search of his home, and there were tons of documents there. Sound familiar?

Sounds familiar. We went to, it gets even stranger, we went to the chief judge who oversees the grand jury matters in D.C. who was one Beryl Howell. And we argued two things. We argued that this isn't even attorney-client privilege. I know lots of people have talked about how there's a decision that there's a crime-fraud exception, but our first argument to her was if a client is not seeking legal advice, but is just giving facts

to a lawyer to give to the Department of Justice, that's not attorney-client privilege. That's something that's intended to go to a third party, and the judge agreed. We also argued, obviously, the backup, which was this is crime fraud, and the judge found it was likely. That's important because she thought that was the legal standard that needed to be met. So there's every reason to think that with respect to Donald Trump and Mr. Corcoran that she found both things.

that this is not protected under the attorney-client privilege and that it's likely that the client was involved in a crime. One little footnote, it is not necessary for attorney-client information to be pierced by crime fraud to find that the lawyer is involved. And I say that because we went out of our way in the Manafort case to make it clear that we did not think the lawyer had any

knowledge whatsoever. We didn't want to cast any aspersions. We knew it was a hard enough position for a reputable lawyer to be in a situation where they had to testify. And that lawyer in our case was wonderful. She was just what you would expect from a partner at a reputable law firm. She knew exactly what had been said to her. She had contemporaneous notes. So it was devastating evidence. And it could be that

Mr. Corcoran going into the grand jury on Friday in DC has

spilled the beans as he's required to and said exactly what it is that the president told him. And the fact that he's not taking the Fifth Amendment means that he really isn't thinking that he did anything wrong. He's really going to be saying, I was duped by my client. But this could be devastating evidence with respect to obstruction. Do we know that he's not taking the Fifth? I mean, you know, there's been a lot of speculation about that, but we're not sitting there in the grand jury. So...

I've seen reporting, and you're totally right to raise that. This is the problem, Mary, of you and I now being on the outside, having to guess what's going on on the inside. It is totally possible that he's taking the fifth, in which case they'll have to make a decision whether they're going to immunize him or not, or whether they think they have enough to charge him. Those are difficult decisions we can definitely discuss. I wanted to say one thing about your obstruction point, which was really, I thought,

totally right in terms of this national security issue, but it also has a sort of, it has an important role play, I think, because this is

going to play out so much on the national stage. And you've got a special counsel with respect to President Biden's retention of documents. And you have at least the revelation of the former vice president having documents. And the obstruction charge is a way of really explaining to the public that

why there's a difference in how the Department of Justice is treating those situations, because there's no suggestion that with respect to the current president or the former vice president that there's any obstruction. So it really can play at different levels in terms of both a public education function, a public legitimacy function, and your point, which is it really helps resolve this internal problem of what to do with highly classified documents.

Yeah, I agree with that. And I think in particular, it's important because I do worry that when there were some classified documents found in both Biden's office space and home space and Vice President Pence's that people start to think, gosh, is this even important? Is it

Does the government and do government officials even protect classified information? And maybe this Mar-a-Lago matter is not that significant. First of all, I would disagree very, very strongly that it's not significant. Mistakes do happen. I was frankly appalled to see that there were documents that both men had in their homes or offices, you know, not properly stored in a sensitive compartmented information facility or in a safe.

I had, and I'm sure you did it when you were in the general counsel of the FBI. I had a safe in my house where I could bring home only secret level documents. And that safe was behind a deadbolted door in a closet in my basement and even still could only bring home secret level, nothing higher. Obviously, these men hold different positions, president, vice president, and probably had skiffs.

in their homes and outside offices outside the White House where they could store even higher level documents. But we all know when we first are read into any of the sensitive programs that govern our classified document scheme, we all know the importance of safekeeping of those things.

I'm not forgiving or excusing that they had those documents and certainly not belittling it. But I do think that there's a significant difference when it comes to the cooperation of all three of these men with the department's

reaching out to saying, ooh, we think you have classified information and we need to retrieve it. And there's really no question in my mind, if Donald Trump had promptly responded to the National Archives request for return of classified and the Department of Justice's request for the return of the classified, opened Mar-a-Lago and his other

residences and offices to a DOJ to look through to find things. We would not be where we are now with a special counsel investigation into things like obstruction of justice. He would be, he would have handled it the way Mike Pence did. Mike Pence did.

Mike Pence is such an interesting character because there are times when he totally does the right thing. And then there are times when he refuses to own that he did the right thing. But Mary, I was thinking about your issue with how to handle classified documents. When I was at the FBI, I know your office was everything was a skiff when you were at the National Security Division. So everything could be sort of looked at because of the Bureau having sort of

a national security side and a non-national security side. My office was actually two offices. In the middle of the office, there was a wall with a combination lock, and I had to keep on going back and forth, and you had to keep on unlocking it with a combination lock and signing in and going to your national security office

and then going back out again and signing out. And so like, I felt like, you know, half of my day was doing that. And my favorite anecdote about that was you might remember Raj Day was the general counsel of NSA. And he sends me on the, um,

what was called the low side, the non-national security side, he sent me a message saying, I sent you something on the other side, so I have to go into the other side, and I go there, and I go into the computer, and I crank it up, and I look at it, and the message is, do you want to have lunch?

That's great. That's pretty classified, though, because the general counsel of the FBI having lunch with the general counsel of NSA, surely that's classified. Oh, yes. But we would only talk about the most sensitive national security matters. Of course, it would never, ever have to do with like what restaurant to eat at. Right. We'll return with more of prosecuting Donald Trump in a moment.

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So let's turn to the big case. We call it the January 6th case, but I think you and I view that as sort of the culmination. And so it's a real misnomer. But let's talk about the January 6th case, both as sort of at the federal level and what I call sort of the mini version at the Georgia level. And I don't know if you even think of it that way. I tend to think of that as

Fulton County being sort of a subset of the big case Jack Smith is looking at. But why don't you tell us your thoughts about that?

No, I agree. I mean, because it is what happened, or at least, you know, what we know about the known facts in Georgia really is a subset of this bigger investigation, right? We've got Fannie Willis looking into not only, you know, the pressure on the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to find 11,000, whatever it was, 870 or something votes that would be enough to push

Trump over the top in Georgia. We now know about a new call pressuring the House Speaker, David Ralston, to actually call from Trump, allegedly, at least according to one of the special grand jury members, to pressure Ralston to call a special legislative session in order to have the legislature overturn the will of the people in Georgia. And then, of course, we have Fannie's

investigation into the 16 electors, electors for Trump and Pence, who fraudulently met and cast their electoral college votes and certified them and sent them to

Vice President Pence at the time, as well as others who are required by law to receive them. As though those were the legitimate electoral college ballots from Georgia when in fact Trump had lost there. And so the only valid electoral college votes were those of course

for President Biden and Vice President Harris. So all of those things are really part and parcel of the bigger January 6th investigation that Jack Smith is involved in. The fraudulent elector scheme is so crucial to that. Pressure on state legislators to call special sessions, overrule the results in their states.

pressure on Vice President Pence to refuse to certify the election. All of that is, you know, encompasses what Fannie Wallace is looking into. And what I think is really

Interesting here also is that it shows we have potential violations of federal criminal statutes and potential violations of state criminal statutes, which I think is also important for the public to understand. That's how vast this is, and that's how much is alleged to have happened. And many of these things, I'm always going to use alleged because I'm a former prosecutor, and that's what we do until things have been proven in a court of

law. But I mean, a lot of us know what the objective facts are. They're not many of the objective facts are not in dispute. I mean, electors in swing states did fraudulently sign certifications and send those ballots. We know that, you know, we've heard these phone calls to pressure people and pressure the vice president, pressure Raffensperger, pressure others. So we've heard these things. And I think it's important to understand that is so critical to our democracy that, you know, there are all kinds of things that make it illegal at both the state level and the

federal level. So this is one where, you know, I don't envy Jack. And I think you and I might differ a little bit on this, which is, you know, Jack is sort of late to the game, not through his fault, but he got appointed late. And he basically is looking at what Fannie Willis is looking at, but, you know, 10 times over because he has to look at it in terms of

many states, many types of electors. He has to look at the pressure on Mike Pence. He has to look at what happened in the Department of Justice, which I know for you and me is it strikes at the heart of every DOJ and former DOJ person because of what it means to the institution that we spent so much time at. But I think one of the hard parts for Jack is if you come, if you get appointed this late in the day,

And you're not inheriting a really robust investigation into all of that. And there's a bit of a time clock in terms of he may be thinking, you know, just when he realistically would have to bring a charge. How do you do that triage of deciding what to look at and what not to? I have to say, when I think back to my time in the special counsel, I think, well,

You know, if I think about it, I was lucky. I inherited what I thought was a very simple criminal case, but my best work was something that people didn't see, which was I remember the tax agents I was working with saying, oh, Paul Manafort's corporations have all these sort of arcane issues. There's potential evidence in Ukraine we should get. And I remember going, you know what?

Here's what we've got. We have a guy who had foreign bank accounts and he's paying for his gardener and his maid and his alligator jacket from his foreign bank accounts. That's a simple case. We can bring it. Enough, enough. Right, exactly. It was just like I sort of that's where I felt like I had very good training from you and I both started in U.S. attorney's offices in the field. And it was just sort of like, don't.

get distracted when you see a clear case. And I just wonder, Jack, given his experience in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office where he started and then he was in the Eastern District of New York with me, whether he's doing that, whether he's trying to say, you know what, I can't boil the ocean anymore.

That was a common phrase that we used when we were training people like Jack in general crimes at the U.S. Attorney's Office, which was, you know, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You have to bring a really solid, strong case, but you can't look at everything.

Yeah. And I hope that's what he's doing for many of the reasons that you've indicated. And, you know, when you say we may not agree on everything, I mean, I know you've, I think, been in some of your comments a little bit harder on DOJ about the pace of the investigation and the failure to have...

putting a little bit more pressure, and I'm not saying that's wrong at all on them. Mary, you're a nicer person. That's what it comes down to. I just know how hard sometimes it is, right? And I keep thinking if you've got the thousand prosecutions of all the foot soldiers out there who violently attack the Capitol, which are draining a ton of resources right now, then you've got this bigger

more complicated investigation in many ways because you don't necessarily have the videotape and the audio tape that proves your defendant did the thing that you're charging them with. This one's more complicated. They've had to pull more resources for this. I still believe, I firmly believe, and I hope I ultimately improved right about this, that they didn't just kind of sit around doing nothing for a year, that there actually were initial steps being taken that were covert. Because

you know, they're not going to do anything overt, or at least I would certainly wouldn't have when I was there. And by overt, I mean anything that the public is going to know about until they have buttoned up a lot of information, everything they could gather in a by covert means so that when they're

subpoenaing witnesses. They've got the documents they need. They've got the tape recordings, whatever to confront them with. So when you're doing anything else that the public is going to be aware of, that you've already gotten some other things. It also helps to prevent tampering with evidence and things like that. Absolutely.

So, and I know these things take time, but I do think the pressure's on now for the reason you indicated. I mean, we have a presidential election that is election season, a campaign season that has already started. There will be an election in November of 2024. And

the Department of Justice, there is no written rule. Everyone likes to think there's a written rule about not taking certain actions too close to an election. There's no written rule about that, but there is definitely a norm and a practice and guidance that is written about being careful not to do anything that will influence an election. So the time he has is not really till January 20th of 2025 or even election day in November of 2024. It's sometime before

that is far enough before that, that the department can maintain that integrity of saying we're not taking a step to influence an election. And that means there's not a heck of a lot of time left. And that means I think not boiling the ocean is critical. Maybe you're not gonna get every single possible offense that could be brought against every single possible person.

So let's focus on what you have the best evidence for right now and drill down on it and try to bring some cases if you've got enough evidence to prove and be around reasonable doubt.

Yeah, and there's no question that Jack Smith is, because he was head of public integrity, that's the public corruption unit in DOJ. He knows exactly what you're saying in terms of the DOJ policy is something he innately had to deal with as his bread and butter in that section. I do think one thing that I think both of us can agree on is in terms of saying something good about the Department of Justice is, you know,

Yes, they brought a lot of sort of lower level cases. I mean, a lot is an understatement, but they also brought

really, truly significant and difficult cases against the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. And those are hard cases, and they've had to do those quickly and with enormous resources. And I also know, Mary, because of your current work at Georgetown, just how important it is to be going after domestic terrorism groups.

which, you know, when you and I were at the department, we were so focused on foreign terrorism. We both sort of had what happened at 9-11 sort of being a huge formative experience in terms of our national security careers. But this is really the new challenge. And I really think that they've stepped up in a big way to that. My hat's off to them.

No question about that. Bringing seditious conspiracy complaints against, and I'm gonna use scare quotes that you can't see in a podcast, against domestic extremists is something that historically DOJ has fared very poorly in court on those types of cases. They have fared much better when those are brought against international terrorists.

But this is a domestic extremist case. And so I really applaud them. I've thought from the beginning that that's that there were facts to support seditious conspiracy. And I feel like it's different than some of the most recent past cases that have failed because it wasn't all aspirational and just, you know, bravado through.

internet chats and emails and phone calls about what kind of things were planning and then it never occurred. Here, they did actually go, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, to the Capitol, violently assaulted and tried to prevent the counting of the Electoral College ballots. So the jury doesn't have to sit there and wonder and guess, well, were they just fantasizing? Were they just engaging in bravado? They really did it. And at least for six hours, it was successful. It did him.

hinder and delay the counting of the electoral college ballots. So I thought it was an important thing for them to do to bring that case and felt that it was very vindicated when the jury returned guilty verdicts against so many of the, now Proud Boys are still outstanding, that trial's going on forever, but the Oath Keepers, a lot of good verdicts there.

What you're getting at is so interesting, though, because one of the things that happens when you're doing sort of covert work in the Justice Department is this idea of when do you take a case down? And in many ways, the January 6 cases were helped by the fact that there was such a huge intelligence

failure or failure to act on intelligence. And so in terms of the cases that could be brought, ironically, that failure makes it sort of an easier case because you can go to the jury saying this happened. But by the same token, you know, if I was sitting at the FBI in front of Robert Mueller, he would say the failure here, don't talk to me about the success of the criminal case because the failure is not having prevented it.

And so one of the reasons cases can be hard is because you have that inchoate problem because you want to bring the case down before it gets too close to the violence. So here you have, it's just an irony that, but on the other hand, just to give them credit, the prosecutors on the case who were not involved in sort of that intelligence failure part are really doing a commendable job in terms of putting cases together.

So, Mary, this sounds like there's going to be a lot more to talk about because, you know, there's going to be a ton of things going on because, you know, this is there's so many cases that are pending. And, you know, we'll wait to see which which one of the many shoes there are to drop going forward. But thanks so much. Couldn't ask for a better person to be talking to about this all. It was a pleasure talking with you about it, Andrew. And, you know, we could do this every day.

And we kind of do. We do. That does it for this special edition of Prosecuting Donald Trump. We'll be back with another episode once the Manhattan DA's decision comes down. I'm Andrew Weissman with my friend Mary McCord. The show was produced by Alison Bailey, Bryson Barnes, Alicia Conley, Aisha Turner, and Cedric Wilson.

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