What About All the People I Didn't Indict?

Dear listeners,

We’re back again with Serious Trouble and this episode starts in Georgia. Ken and I talk about Mark Meadows, who lost harder than we expected in his efforts to keep his RICO trial in federal court. That said, the law on criminal removals to federal court is not especially well developed, and the appeals courts may have more to say on this matter.

And we talk about the report of the investigative special grand jury, which recommended charges against 39 individuals — way more sweeping than the already-cumbersome 19-person indictment that DA Fani Willis got from the regular grand jury. We talk about the reasons the DA would have passed — some potential defendants are likely cooperating, while others could have raised federal constitutional defenses that would have further complicated her prosecution — and about what makes special grand juries extra special.

We talk about a very strange open letter, published by Just Security, from some criminal defense attorneys to Ken Chesebro, urging him to protect his interests by pleading guilty. As Ken notes, those attorneys lack sufficient familiarity with the case to know whether Chesebro would be best served by a guilty plea or not. You shouldn’t take unsolicited legal advice offered over the internet, and you shouldn’t really offer it either — though as Ken notes, this isn’t professional misconduct, it’s just stupid.

And speaking of stupid, we talk about Peter Navarro, who walked himself into a federal criminal conviction through a set of actions even the Wall Street Journal editorial page couldn’t defend. He should have remembered that, if you’re going to assert constitutional privileges against testifying, you have to actually assert them — you can’t just blow off a subpoena and then say after the fact it was because of a privilege.

We hope you enjoy the episode.

Josh

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

The Just Security lawyer letter to Kenneth Chesebro

Judge Steve C. Jones ruling that kicks the Mark Meadows prosecution back to Georgia state court