Dear listeners,
Last week’s presidential election, which has made Donald Trump once again the president-elect, will obviously have profound effects on the various criminal cases against him. The nation will be spared the spectacle of Trump ordering his own prosecutions terminated because, even while Biden remains president, the Department of Justice moved to wind down the two federal prosecutions — a move that is consistent with longstanding departmental guidance prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president.
Ken and I discuss this rationale, and we take a look at the prospects for the prosecutions in Georgia and New York. In Georgia, the state of limbo affecting Fani Willis’s RICO prosecution will likely get further extended, as Trump is unlikely to be compelled to even participate in his own appeal of the decision not to recuse Willis’s office from the prosecution while he is in office. In New York, Judge Juan Merchan has already delayed sentencing and may simply dismiss the counts for which Trump was found guilty, rather than force state and federal courts to explore the question of whether a sitting president can be compelled to participate in an appeal process regarding a conviction. On the other hand, the New York civil penalties against Trump and his businesses are likelier to stand — or, at least, if they are reduced or overturned on appeal, it probably won’t be because Trump is president.
That’s the discussion for all listeners. Paying subscribers get a deeper conversation on what should have been done differently in the handling of all these prosecutions — should Merrick Garland have moved to charge the president earlier? Should Fani Willis have brought a faster and simpler case that could have been tried before 2040? The answer to the second question is surely “yes,” but a theme recurs when we discuss every way the strategy could have been different — sooner or later, every one of these cases was going to run into the buzzsaw of the Supreme Court and presidential immunity, which poses problems even for the cases that deal only tangentially with Trump’s presidential acts.
Paying subscribers also get an update on the search for Rudy Giuliani’s assets — he showed up to vote in the very same Mercedes convertible his creditors have been having trouble locating — and a look at how President Trump might be able to monkey with the proceedings on Rudy’s behalf (if he cares to, which he may not). And we look at a story we missed last month — the very light sentencing of former FTX head of engineering Nishad Singh, who benefitted from what Ken White calls a “cooperation cascade”: when you are so cooperative that you become indispensable to those who are working to clean up the mess you helped make, and you get to stay out of prison because it would be really inconvenient if you were not around. Good for Nishad.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
