Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Georgia Prosecutor Seeking Trump Trial Within Six Months. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired August 15, 2023 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:01:24]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: New charges against Donald Trump, new co- conspirators, this time indicted co-conspirators, and a new defense strategy for the most indicted former president ever.

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: Trump says he will have a major press conference on Monday. The timing is exactly four days before the August 25 deadline for him to surrender in Georgia.

The same goes for his 18 co-defendants, who also have to surrender before that date, after an Atlanta-based grand jury voted to indict them all.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: The indictment argues all of them -- quote -- "refused to accept that Trump lost and knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election."

Trump himself is accused of 13 new crimes. His first response to the charges? Calling them politically inspired. Fulton County DA Fani Willis now says that she plans to ask for a trial date within the next six months.

Let's get to it.

CNN's Paula Reid, Sara Murray, Jessica Schneider all standing by for us.

Paula, first walk us through the nuts and bolts of this case laid out in this indictment.

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, this is the fourth criminal indictment for former President Trump this year.

But, in terms of the scope, this is definitely the most broad case that he is facing. It encompasses not only the allegations here in Georgia, which Sara, Jason and our colleagues have been reporting on, but also allegations of this effort to overturn the election in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

And in addition to being this really broad conspiracy that they're alleging, he's also charged alongside 18 co-defendants, including some of his closest advisers, like former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadow and Rudy Giuliani.

Now, Rudy Giuliani is referenced in the federal January 6 indictment. He is Co-Conspirator 1, but he wasn't charged. And, of course, Mark Meadows, who the January 6 Committee concluded was at the center of all of this, he is conspicuously absent from the federal indictment.

So, seeing him here charge for his alleged role in this conspiracy, it was significant. It's part of what makes this case is different from the special counsel's probe. Now, former President Trump has, of course, denied all wrongdoing.

But I expect one of the first things we're going to see after he gets through surrender, initial appearance at his arraignment is that he and his attorneys are probably going to try to move this from heavily Democratic Fulton County to the federal level, so we can have that much more broad jury pool.

SIDNER: Sara Murray, now to you. It's Sara Sidner here.

I just wanted to ask you, you had a really pertinent question to Fulton County DA Fani Willis yesterday about how she's going to try this case. What do you know about the timing of all this?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, yes, I mean, I think one of the questions is how this is going to practically play out.

Donald Trump obviously has a lot on his legal calendar already. And when you're alongside 18 other defendants, that means you have a lot of attorneys bringing a lot of challenges. So, I asked her if her intention was to try all of these 19 defendants together, as we have seen her do for other racketeering cases.

Take a listen to what she said last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: Have you had any contact with the special counsel about overlap between these cases? And do you intend to try all of these defendants together?

FANI WILLIS (D), FULTON COUNTY, GEORGIA, DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Do I intend to try the 19 defendants in this indictment together?

MURRAY: Yes.

WILLIS: Yes.

MURRAY: And have you had any contact with the special counsel about the overlap between this indictment and the federal indictment?

WILLIS: I'm not going to discuss our investigation at this time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:05:04] MURRAY: Now, it was also sort of telling that she wouldn't answer the question of whether she's had any communication with special counsel Jack Smith, because, in the past, she has said: No, I haven't heard anything from him. I wouldn't even recognize Jack Smith, if I saw him.

So we have definitely seen a change in that rhetoric. It's unclear what that means behind the scenes. But I think, practically, trying to bring all these defendants to trial together, I mean, you would expect it's possible some could take deals.

SIDNER: Yes.

MURRAY: We couldn't maybe not end up with 19 defendants at the end of this. But that's logistically very difficult.

REID: You had sort of the best questions, I thought, at the press conference yesterday. Those were the two most newsmaking things.

One, how could you charge all these people at the same time? And why won't you disclose if you're talking to Jack Smith? Because there's nothing wrong with that.

MURRAY: Right. Exactly. That was very strange that she decided to keep whatever conversations may be happening private.

BERMAN: Well, Sara Murray's completely legit. I think we can all -- we can all agree on that.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: And it was no surprise at all that her questions in the news conference, which came at like 2:30 a.m., by the way, were truly fantastic.

Jessica Schneider, let me ask you something here.

Besides, like, reclining at the table, why are these new Georgia charges different from all the other charges?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I'd really say that the breadth of this Georgia indictment much more extensive. I mean, you saw it.

It charges 19 defendants. The special counsel's case, in terms of the election subversion case, that, for now, only charges Donald Trump, even though it does mention those other -- unindicted, unnamed co- conspirator.

So, in that case, the special counsel has brought four charges just against Trump. This Georgia indictment, it lays out 161 separate acts that span all the way from November 2020 through 2022, prosecutors in Fulton County saying all of these acts were in furtherance of this broad conspiracy to flip -- flip the election, subvert it for Trump nationwide.

So, this indictment really does lay out the acts that were taken not only in Georgia, but also in other states. And what's interesting here is, because the district attorney, Fani Willis, is charging this under this racketeering statute, she said it. She can really paint this broad picture, tell this overarching story of what they're calling an enterprise and criminal scheme.

What's notable, guys, is that Fani Willis has repeatedly gone to this racketeering statute in Georgia in other high-profile cases in the state. In fact, just recently, she won convictions against 11 educators in the Atlanta public school system. They were accused of this broad cheating scandal, where they inflated test scores.

So she's used this statute before successfully. And, also, this statute if convicted, it mandates a minimum five-year prison term, maximum of 20 years. So the penalties for this are very severe. And Fani Willis has tried and tested this statute in other realms, now looking to try it against these 19 defendants, guys.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

Paula, you -- we have talked about how one of the first things that is expected after arraignment is for Trump to try to get this moved to federal court. What are you hearing about the chances of that happening, the likelihood of that happening?

REID: Well, look, I'm saying there is a chance that that could potentially happen.

I mean, his lawyers believe that this is a possibility for him. They're going to lean heavily into what he faces here in, again, heavily Democratic Fulton County. And there's a larger argument that they make in the court of public opinion. They argue that there should perhaps be limits on the ability of elected prosecutors to bring charges against former presidents.

I mean, they will argue that what goes around comes around. We could be opening a Pandora's box here. This is -- again, is a theoretical argument. I don't think they're going to succeed on that legally. But as part of that, they're going to argue that he can't get a fair trial here in Fulton County.

Now, if they are able to move this to federal court, two things happen. Not only does the jury pool broaden out, and perhaps become somewhat more favorable to the former president, but if he or anyone else is convicted, then they are potentially eligible for a pardon from a current or future president.

SIDNER: All right, thank you so much, Paula Reid, Jessica Schneider, and Sara Murray. Appreciate you guys.

Still ahead: the response, Donald Trump railing against the Georgia indictment and once again lashing out at the Fulton County DA. What he's saying ahead.

Plus, 18 other people, of course, as you saw, are charged alongside Donald Trump. We will take a much closer look at all the co-defendants names in the Georgia indictment. Also, we are tracking the very latest from Maui. We now know the

wildfires have killed at least 99 people. And officials say that number might double.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:14:29]

SIDNER: This morning, former President Donald Trump with new reaction to the Georgia indictment. He calls it politically inspired and says Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis -- quote -- "should focus on the people that rigged the 2020 presidential election, not those who demand an answer as to what happened," even as federal and state prosecutors are now showing the American public the evidence they say they have that Trump was actually the one trying to rig the election.

CNN's Alayna Treene is following all of this.

This reaction comes as no surprise, doesn't it, because this is something that we have seen over and over and over again.

[11:15:05]

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: That's right, Sara.

This is the third time now that Donald Trump and his team have gone through and -- gone through something like this. And they have a playbook that they think is working. And so they're going to continue to use it, his advisers tell me. And that's really to label these charges as a political persecution against Donald Trump and also argue that the district attorney in Fulton County, Fani Willis, is trying to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.

And Donald Trump personally has been responding to this, as you said, Sara, over last night and also this morning, railing against these charges.

In one TRUTH Social post, he wrote -- quote -- "So the witch-hunt continues, 19 people indicated tonight "-- he, I think, meant indicted -- "including the former president of the United States, me, by an out-of-control and very corrupt district attorney who campaigned and raised money on -- quote -- 'I will get Trump.'"

The post goes on to say: "Why didn't they indict 2.5 years ago? Because they wanted to do it right in the middle of my political campaign. Witch-hunt," Donald Trump said.

Of course, there are questions of whether the district attorney is actually campaigning on this and false allegations about that. But, anyways, this is Donald Trump's strategy. He wants to get ahead of the charges. He wants to frame this on his own terms, just as we have seen him do with the previous three indictments.

And I know from my reporting as well that his team was pretty prepared for this. They had spent most of Monday lining up their surrogates and their allies, again, as they have done with past indictments and readying them with talking points, so that, immediately, once an indictment was dropped, that they would come to his defense.

And we saw them do that last night. We saw people like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy posts on TRUTH Social, same thing with Jim Jordan, arguing that Trump did nothing wrong. And so this is really the playbook that they have cultivated over the past several months, and we're going to continue to see them use exactly that over the next couple of weeks -- Sara.

SIDNER: Alayna Treene, thank you so much, reporting there from Washington for us there.

She talked about the playbook. They have used this playbook before. It might help them politically, but don't know if it's going to help them in those criminal indictments -- John.

BERMAN: All right, among the indicted is Trump attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

According to the indictment -- quote -- "On or about the 10th day of December 2020, Rudolph William Louis Giuliani committed the felony offense of false statements and writings in Fulton County, Georgia by knowingly, willfully and unlawfully making at least one of the following false statements and representations to members of the Georgia House."

Now, one such false statement includes this: "That Ruby Freeman, Shaye Moss and an unidentified man were -- quote -- 'quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they're vials of heroin or cocaine at State Farm Arena to be used to infiltrate the crooked Dominion voting machines."

You know what? We had Ana Navarro. I was going to ask her the best question ever and she was going to say to me: John, that was the best question you ever asked.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: And then she was going to give a stellar answer. But we don't have her right now. We will try to get Ana Navarro already.

And, believe me, you will want to hear what she has to say. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:22:59]

SIDNER: Aside from former President Trump, 18 other people are facing criminal charges this morning in the sweeping Georgia indictment.

So let's break down who they are, starting at the top of the Trump administration. Mark Meadows was the former White House chief of staff who was engaged in the efforts to contact state election officials, including that infamous call where Donald Trump asked Georgia's secretary of state to find votes that he needed. Jeffrey Clark was a top Justice Department official who urged the

acting attorney general to sign documents that made false election fraud claims. And there was an entire legal team pushing those false claims as well, according to the indictment, chief among them, Rudy Giuliani, but also John Eastman, who wrote the memo theorizing that Vice President Pence could single-handedly reject the vote certification.

And Kenneth Chesebro wrote his own memo detailing how states can submit alternate slates of electors. Sidney Powell was also pushing those bogus legal theories in White House meetings. According to the indictment, the three other attorneys, Jenna Ellis, Ray Smith, and Robert Cheeley, were also intimately involved in pressuring Georgia officials to subvert the true outcome of the 2020 election.

On the so-called fake electors scheme, David Shafer, the former GOP state chair, allegedly reserved the room at the state capitol for those fake electors to meet. Shawn Still was a fake elector who allegedly encouraged others to sign.

Mike Roman, Trump campaign official, was said to be a co -- go-between on both the fake electors scheme and the efforts to breach the election system in Coffee County, Georgia.

Cathy Latham, Scott Hall, and Misty Hampton are all accused of giving pro-Trump officials access to ballots, computer systems and voting machines there. Latham was also a fake elector.

The indictment alleges that Harrison Floyd, the leader of Black Voices for Donald Trump, a publicist named Trevian Kutti, who used to work -- who used to work for Kanye West as a publicist, and a pastor named Stephen Lee were all involved in the effort to intimidate two Georgia election workers who were wrongly accused of tampering with ballots and who has said it ruined their life -- Kate.

[11:25:15]

BOLDUAN: Joining us now, CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson and former federal prosecutor and defense attorney Shan Wu.

Sara laid out all the co-defendants, if you will. And so now we know who they are. Joey, what do you think of the fact that the DA says that she intends to try all of these defendants together, rather than separately?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So prosecutors like to do that for a number of reasons, right?

Number one, you get all of the information out that's compelling as to everyone. Number two, that means you dirty everyone up. There may be facts that are unrelated to another person, but guilt by association, right? So it makes it more compelling.

There's also judicial efficiency and economy. Why are we trying a case five different times when you could try it once? But, Kate, it's important to mention that there's a number of considerations, right? The first consideration is that defense attorneys are going to make motions to sever, right?

BOLDUAN: Yes.

JACKSON: What that means is that, hey, I don't want my clients muddled in with everyone else. I have a right to have my client tried separately. This is prejudicial. It prejudices his or her rights in moving forward in this way.

The other issue is, you have to look at whether or not there will be people who get dispositions. What does that mean? People who perhaps might plead because the evidence is just so overwhelmingly compelling. You then ask the question of whether there will be people who may cooperate and therefore get out, right?

So it could whittle away. But, look, I look at this, and I don't even know that the prosecution needs people who they're trying to flip, et cetera, because it's so precise, it's so factually detailed. Doesn't mean, right, that it's provable. We will wait and see. That's for another day.

But with respect to the specificity of the indictment, Kate, it looks like they have the goods and then some here. So the bottom line is, although the prosecutor wants to try them all together, from a practical perspective, for all the reasons I mentioned, that may not end up happening.

BOLDUAN: Super interesting.

And, Shan, it's also expected that one of the first -- I'm going to call it one of the first moves that Trump's team is going to could try to make is trying to get this moved out of state court into federal court.

Pros, cons likelihood, what do you think?

SHAN WU, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: A lot of pros for Trump for it to go to federal court. He may get a broader jury pool than just in that county.

And, of course, theoretically, maybe he thinks, were he to win the presidency, that having been in federal court would give him greater control over trying to pardon himself or something of that nature.

I don't think that's going to succeed here. A somewhat similar move failed in New York. And I think this is something that is squarely within the jurisdiction of the state prosecutor. And that's where it's brought. So I don't think he's going to have much success on trying to move it out of there, although I see why he would want to try to do that, because, as Joey was saying, with this level of specificity in the indictment, it's not looking that great for other defenses at the moment.

BOLDUAN: So, that's really interesting. And, Joey, on that specificity, add into this that, in Georgia, RICO charges carry a mandatory minimum of five years behind bars. I have heard some attorneys kind of theorize that, because of that, just that element of a mandatory minimum of prison time, that that could lead to some of these co-defendants, if you will, trying to enter into plea deals.

Do you see that? Could that be part of a strategy here?

JACKSON: I do.

I mean, whenever you get an indictment, right, you sit, and, ultimately, what's next, that's going to drop is, you're going to get discovery as a defense attorney. That's relevant to your question, because now you know how compelling the evidence is as against your client.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

JACKSON: And so, if the evidence is so overwhelmingly compelling, what are we arguing about here?

You go to the prosecutor, you say, look, what deal can we cut? What is my client going to have to do, if anything, for that deal? Will they have to turn state's evidence? And so I do see that happening.

BOLDUAN: Who decides that? Is that Fani Willis, like, what that deal looks like?

JACKSON: So, absolutely.

Listen, prosecutors are very powerful, Kate, and they control the cards. They control the cards with respect to, are we allowing a plea? Are we going to make a reduction in the charges for purposes of the plea? Are we going to put you on our team, such that you will give evidence against someone else?

A lot of different things. And then, of course, ultimately, if you do play, the judge, right -- has to go to the judge, who ultimately says, what's going on here? But I see a lot of things here, even in terms of the order, right, of when these cases may be tried.

Because of the compelling nature of the Georgia case, are there conferences with respect to the other cases? We have one pending in Manhattan.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

JACKSON: We have two pending federally. As far as I know, calendars had been set, but calendars do move.

And so let's see whether or not Georgia is pushed up, pushed back, and where it goes in the pecking order of the matters moving forward.

BOLDUAN: That is interesting.

JACKSON: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Shan, one thing, speaking of, I don't -- I won't call it overlap, but when you're looking the federal indictment that Trump's facing over 2020 election subversion -- subversion, Mark Meadows noticeably absent from that federal indictment over the election.