Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. You've obviously been hearing the headlines about charges brought in Georgia now by a grand jury last night against Donald Trump as well as 18 other people for trying to fraudulently flip the certified election results there without evidence of Trump actually having won. In this case, Rudy Giuliani is an indicted co-conspirator. He was an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal case. Also very interesting to me, Trump's White House Chief of Staff from the post-election period, Mark Meadows, is indicted here.

I'm also concerned, and we'll talk about this with our guest, about the safety of the members of the grand jury whose names typically get released in Georgia. That doesn't happen with federal grand juries. Of course, Trump had that post recently, "If you go after me, I'm coming after you," not to mention all his previous threats. Who knows who may act on that? Here's DA Fani Willis last night on the essence of the charges.

DA Fani Willis: Georgia, like every state, has laws that allow those who believe that results of an election are wrong, whether because of intentional wrongdoing or unintentional error, to challenge those results in our state courts. The indictment alleges that rather than abide by Georgia's legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia's presidential election result.

Brian Lehrer: Racketeering. With me now, Elie Honig, senior legal analyst for CNN, a former federal and New Jersey state prosecutor. He's host of the cafe podcast Up Against the Mob, different kind of mob in this case. He's the author of the books Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutors Code and Corrupted the Justice Department and his latest which came out this year, he was on for a book interview, Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It. Elie, I'm sure you're logging many TV hours right now, so thanks for making time for us too today. Welcome back to WNYC.

Elie Honig: For sure. I did get to take my tie off for this at least.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, yes. That's good.

Elie Honig: You say racketeering with this sense of fear that I think a lot of people say, "Wow. Racketeering," but let me try to demystify it for you because I used to charge it quite a bit in my mob days.

It's a really potent tool that prosecutors have that Fani Willis is using here, but really, it's just a mega conspiracy that you name. You have to prove as a prosecutor, first of all, what we call a criminal enterprise, meaning this was an organization, a group of individuals, sometimes they have a name like the Gambino family or the such and such labor union, but they don't have to have a name. Here essentially they're not identified as such, but it's essentially Donald Trump's electoral apparatus.

Then you have to show a pattern of racketeering activity, meaning they got together and committed a series of two or more interconnected crimes or bad acts in furtherance of the racketeering conspiracy. It's basically, these guys were part of a criminal group, and they committed multiple crimes together.

Brian Lehrer: The federal indictment already accuses Trump of trying to steal the election by fraudulently getting swing states to change the outcome. Georgia was one of those states, and there's a dedicated Georgia section in the federal indictment. We talked about it on the show. How is this different from that?

Elie Honig: It's way more narrow than the federal case, and it's way deeper. Think about Jack Smith's case. Sometimes you'll hear the expression a mile wide and an inch deep. Jack Smith's indictment has to literally cover the landscape. It has to cover seven different states where there was this effort to steal the election, including Georgia. It has to address all these federal machinations. As a result, Jack Smith does a thorough job, but the entire Georgia section of Jack Smith's indictment, I think, is five pages long.

Fani Willis is, of course, a local prosecutor in Fulton County, Georgia, and her sole focus is in Georgia, although some of her conduct that she talks about, actually a surprising amount, happens in Pennsylvania, and Michigan, and other states, but she basically goes way, way deep within Georgia.

She gives us more detail about what was done in Georgia, and the people she charges, a lot of them, were local Georgia party bosses, or electoral officials, or campaign officials, people who probably would not even have ever been on Jack Smith's radar in the first place. Think of this as a much narrower, but deeper dive than Jack Smith's indictment.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your questions about the Georgia indictment welcome here for Elie Honig. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call in a question, or text a question, or we can take them on Twitter @BrianLehrer.

Elie, the AP story on this says, "In one particularly brazen episode, the indictment outlines a plot involving one of Trump's lawyers to access voting machines in a rural Georgia County, and steal data from a voting machine company." Are you familiar with the details of that allegation?

Elie Honig: Sure. If I can say so, I think we broke it here on CNN. We first reported the story over the weekend that that was being looked at, and sure enough, it makes its way into the indictment.

Brian Lehrer: And that is?

Elie Honig: Well, the charge is essentially illegally accessing voter machines, voter machine data. Yes, the allegation is that not Donald Trump directly, but that members of his legal team, and there are eight lawyers indicted in this case, by the way, were looking desperately for some evidence of fraud, and so they went to Coffee County, Georgia, which I should say overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, I think they probably thought they were going to a friendly venue, and they started working together with these local election officials, people who would have access to the actual voting machines. The allegation is that they attempted to and to some extent succeeded in accessing voter data.

Now, that's not to say they switched votes from A to B. What they claimed they were looking for any irregularity, but it is on its face illegal to crack into voting systems without proper authorization. I guess I do wonder if there will be a defense of well, the county-level officials in charge of executing the voting process, they said it was okay. They authorized it. I think the comeback to that will be that's not their decision to make. They don't get to break open the voting machines. It's run out of the Georgia Secretary of State's office.

Brian Lehrer: Not anymore, it isn't. Well, I guess they didn't get away with it. I'll assume most of the listeners know about the famous Trump phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to find just enough votes to flip the result, but there's other stuff in here regarding Trump and Raffensperger.

The AP story says, "It also charges Trump with making false statements and writings for a series of claims he made to Raffensperger and other state election officials, including that up to 300,000 ballots 'were dropped mysteriously into the rolls in the 2020 election,' that more than 4,500 people voted who weren't on registration lists, and that a Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman was a 'professional vote scammer.'" Elie, it's not illegal for a politician to lie to the public.

Elie Honig: Correct.

Brian Lehrer: Is the charge that it's illegal to lie in writing to state election officials for some reason?

Elie Honig: It's illegal to lie to an official in writing if you're trying to get him to do something. It's a fraud, basically. This is some of the charges here, it's also submission of a false statement to the government. You're correct. Anyone can lie publicly, anyone can lie on the media, but it becomes a crime when you either formally submit that lie knowingly to a governmental entity, whether it's a court, or a congress, or a regulatory body, and if you do it for a specific purpose, then it can be a fraud.

We do see a whole series of charges here related to, for example, as you said, beyond the famous or infamous "I need you to find 11,780 votes" phone call, Donald Trump also sent a letter to Brad Raffensperger who, let's remember, was Secretary of the State for Georgia, claiming there was all this electoral fraud, and trying to convince him or cajole him to throw out some of the votes.

There also were incidents when, for example, Rudy Giuliani gives false testimony in front of the Georgia State Legislature. He gets up there and just starts ranting about completely false claims of election fraud. A big part of this is they attack these two election workers who testified in front of the January 6th Committee, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. They're mentioned in here because while you are allowed to attack a person publicly, you may get sued for defamation as Rudy has here, but it's not a crime. The crime comes in if you're either, A, intimidating or retaliating against an election worker, or, B, if you're making false claims about them again to formal governmental entities.

Brian Lehrer: On the Ruby Freeman aspect, that Black election worker who, along with her daughter, have already gotten a kind of confession by Giuliani in a defamation suit against him based on these debunked statements that he made about them. AP says one of Trump's co-defendants here, a man named Steven Clifford Lee, is now charged for allegedly traveling to Freeman's home "with intent to influence her testimony." Now, would that have been witness tampering before their televised testimony in the January 6th committee hearings?

Elie Honig: Sure. If you're trying to influence or intimidate anyone's testimony, it could relate to the January 6th committee hearing. But let's remember there was also an ongoing-- this investigation, the DA's investigation has been ongoing since early 2021, so I think that would be the cleaner shot for a local prosecutor, which Fani Willis is. She's a county-level prosecutor. I assume that that charge goes to tampering relating to her testimony in Fani Willis's investigation. There could be a little bit of a jurisdictional issue. I'm not sure it would be a state-level crime to tamper with someone testifying to the Federal Congress.

Brian Lehrer: Is Trump charged with any witness tampering?

Elie Honig: He's not charged with witness tampering in the sort of old-fashioned sense of-- in the sense he may have committed it in an old-fashioned way. For example, by Truth Socialing the other day about former Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan, which to me was over-the-top witness tampering where he basically said--

Brian Lehrer: I don't know that one. What's that one?

Elie Honig: Yesterday or two days ago, Donald Trump went to Truth Social. Jeff Duncan was the lieutenant governor of Georgia. He's since left office. I should say he is a friend of mine now and a CNN contributor. Trump just went on a rampage about Jeff Duncan, and he's a liar, and he shouldn't testify. That to me, was over-the-top witness tampering.

Trump's not charged with that type of Trump directly tampered with witnesses, but one of the means and methods of the racketeering conspiracy that Trump allegedly is responsible for, because you are responsible for the acts of your co-conspirators, is the type of obstruction and tampering that we talked about.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes in a text message, "Fani Willis was clever to say all 19 defendants would be tried together. This is unlikely, but may draw fire and distract the Trumpees from making their usual false statement about the merits, the judges, and the prosecutors." What would you say about charging or planning to try the 19 defendants, Trump plus 18, in one massive trial? Can the courtroom even seat that many people?

Elie Honig: No, not at all. I fully agree with the caller that Donald Trump's attacks on Fani Willis and these outrageous lies he's making up are unacceptable. I disagree with the caller, the person who wrote in that this was a clever move by Fani Willis. I think it was an aspirational move at best. She has to know there's no way she's trying 19 defendants at one. Part of it is a logistical issue. Where would they even do that?

Look, I tried five defendants at the same time, once and four, a couple of times. Each of these people has legal teams. There's just nowhere that could house that. Also, the trial would take an impossibly long time because if you have 19 defendants, you have 19 openings, 19 cross-examinations of each witness, 19 closings.

I will add, Brian, the Supreme Court has in the past couple decades, expressed some real skepticism about what they call mega trials. They do not like it if-- They haven't ever given a hard and fast number, but they've basically said, "You prosecutors should be steering clear of double-digit people on trial at once, because people are entitled to some sense of individualized justice. You don't want the jury just sort of sweeping everyone all into one basket just based on, oh--" How is the jury realistically supposed to keep separate the evidence on 11, 12, 13 people? I will say whoever's recording, there is a 0.00 chance that Fani Willis will try all 19 defendants at once.

Brian Lehrer: Another Fani Willis question coming in from Elizabeth in Montclair. Hi, Elizabeth. You're on WNYC.

Elizabeth: Hi, there. Elie, I just read your book. It's amazing.

Elie Honig: Thank you.

Elizabeth: I recommend a whole segment on that, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, we already did one with Ellie on that.

Elie Honig: We did one [laughs].

Elizabeth: Oh, on this last one?

Brian Lehrer: Nice of your niece to call in. No, I'm just kidding. Elizabeth, go ahead.

Elizabeth: I actually ended up with two questions. My first question was, so I don't know what the specifics are, but the Republicans in Georgia have just created this law that can oust her in six to eight weeks or something like that. Maybe you can educate us on what that is. What happens then? What happens to the whole case? What happens then? My second question is, do they all go down together, all 18 of them, or can they all get acquitted individually, et cetera?

Elie Honig: These are two excellent questions. If and when these cases go to trial, the jury will have to return a separate verdict for each defendant and each count. Hypothetically, if they all went to trial together, when the jury came back with their verdict, the judge would say, "Count 1, Defendant Donald Trump, how do you find?" They would say guilty or not guilty. "Count 1, Defendant Mark Meadows, how do you find?" You can have some defendants convicted across the board. You can have some defendants acquitted across the board. You can have some defendants who are convicted on eight counts and acquitted on four counts. Each defendant, each count will stand alone and get its own verdict.

On your first point about this potential law, it's not passed yet, allowing or empowering the governor to get rid of DAs, this is happening in Florida. Ron DeSantis recently, just last week, fired his second elected county-level prosecutor. When I first heard that that had happened, I thought immediately that's illegal, that's unconstitutional. It turns out Florida does have a state law empowering the governor to do that. Now the reporting is there's some movement in Georgia at the state legislature level to pass a similar law in Georgia. I'm not sure it will pass. It's obviously politically fraught. I guess I would say this, even if Fani Willis gets fired, you raise a good question, how does she get replaced? What's the process for replacing her? Typically, the investigation would carry on even if something were to happen to her, if she were to get fired.

When I was a prosecutor, we would have new US attorneys come in, or new AGs come in, and it didn't impact our cases. Although I guess if a hostile governor, or a governor who was hostile to the case, installed someone who is similarly hostile to the case, that new prosecutor could move to dismiss it. This is something that we need to keep an eye on. You can see the sort of political machinations already.

Brian Lehrer: How about Mark Meadows? You mentioned Mark Meadows. Trump's chief of staff in that post-election period in the White House, he's been described so often, including by his aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, was that her name? Dramatic in the January 6th hearings, describing him as a central player in the election flipping efforts, but not previously charged criminally. What did Mark Meadows allegedly do that would be illegal in Georgia?

Elie Honig: This is a surprise, the fact that Mark Meadows was charged, because in Jack Smith's indictment, Mark Meadows, of course, is not charged federally. He's not even one of the six co-conspirators federally. He's barely mentioned in Jack Smith's indictment at all. He's alluded to a couple of-- I think it's three times as the chief of staff. It was a bit of a surprise to see him charged in Georgia.

What he's been charged for in Georgia is only two things. He actually has, I think, the lowest number of counts against him on the indictment. One, he is charged with being part of the racketeering enterprise. He's charged with being a facilitator for Trump's plans. Two, he's charged with the infamous phone call that Donald Trump made to Brad Raffensperger the, "I need you to find 11,780 votes." The crime under Georgia law is soliciting a public official to violate his oath, asking a public official to do something illegal.

I actually don't think that's that strong a charge against Mark Meadows because when you listen to that call, he's doing very little of the talking. Trump, of course, is the one doing most of the talking. Meadows interjects here and there, but I don't know that that's enough to hit him with a crime. He knows what Trump's doing. He hears it. He doesn't stop it, but I'm not sure how strong a charge that particular one is. I should say this too, Brian, there has been speculation. We don't know, but speculation about whether Mark Meadows is cooperating with the feds.

If he is, this new indictment is going to be a big problem for Mark Meadows and for the feds because if they had a cooperation deal-- both sides thought they had everything wrapped up and his liability was accounted for, and now it would turn out in my hypothetical that I'm weaving here, that Mark Meadows has to face a very serious charge by a state prosecutor, which would be bad news for him, obviously, but also for Jack Smith, if he was counting on Meadows as a cooperator.

Brian Lehrer: If Mark Meadows, of all people, is cooperating with Jack Smith, that would be very bad news for Trump, right?

Elie Honig: Oh, for sure. It's also a very common scenario. You talk about these RICO cases, Sammy the Bull Gravano flipped on John Gotti, and I don't say that to-- they're not comparable because there's no murders here. My point is that the underboss sometimes flips on the boss.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, we're talking about the indictments of Trump and 18 others in Georgia now with Elie Honig, senior legal analyst for CNN, a former federal and New Jersey State prosecutor, and author of the book Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and corrupted the Justice Department, and his latest which came out this year, Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It. He also hosts a cafe podcast called Up Against the Mob. Listener texts, does guest have any thoughts on why Lindsey Graham escaped indictments for his phone calls, because he also made some phone calls trying to solicit Georgia officials to change the vote. Right?

Elie Honig: It's a great question and one that occurred to me. I will say that for all the good work that the January 6th committee has done and that Jack Smith has done, they have all tiptoed around members of Congress. You remember the January 6th committee subpoenaed Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan because they both had actual conversations, highly relevant conversations with Donald Trump on January 6th, and then members of Congress proceeded to blow off the subpoenas and nothing happened. They were never even referred for contempt.

I wonder. I'm speculating here. I was going to say I wonder if Lindsey Graham's status as a US senator may have had any influence, but she just indicted a former president and a former chief of staff. Lindsey Graham is still in office.

It has to be that just that the facts of whatever he asked people to do in Fani Willis's view, did not quite measure up to the level of criminality. There are things as Fani Willis notes in the opening of the indictment, you are allowed to take certain steps to investigate and to contest elections through lawful channels. It's one of two things, either she didn't think the facts measured up for Lindsey Graham or she just didn't want to mess with it because he's sitting member of Congress.

Brian Lehrer: Shandra in Ossining, you're on WNYC with Elie Honig. Hi, Shandra.

Shandra: Good morning, Brian. It's been a while, and good morning, Eli.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, Shandra.

Shandra: Count 30 and 31, not only charges Steven Clifford Lee, but there was a woman Trevian Kutti, that's K as in Karen U-T-T-I. She actually traveled to Ruby Freeman's home and threatened her. I remembered when it happened there was a video. Ruby Freeman called the police and they actually did go down to the police station. There was a little bit deeper thing going on. I'm here to help you, you have to confess to the voter fraud. If you don't, we're not going to be responsible for what happened.

I will end with the thing about the Congressman. That blows my mind. Lindsey Graham, Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, and there was a representative, Loudermilk, I believe, who actually gave tours of the Capitol prior to January 6th, showing the tunnels and all that kind of stuff. That was never looked into.

Brian Lehrer: Shandra, thank you.

Shandra: Thank you. Bye-bye.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for all that. Elie on any of that.

Elie Honig: Very good points about the efforts to tamper with Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, and very good points about the various members of Congress who really have not been held accountable.

I do have to slightly correct though, that the representative Loudermilk allegations were never quite borne out. That was one thing that I think the January 6th committee oversold, overpromised and did not deliver. Yes, there are suspiciously timed tours, but there was never any reliable proof that he was showing secret tunnels in order to help people raid the Capitol. Maybe it was the case, but it's certainly never been proved.

Brian Lehrer: Did she say a publicist for Kanye West intervened on behalf of Trump with Ruby Freeman?

Elie Honig: That, I don't know. That does not ring a bell to me.

Brian Lehrer: All right.

Elie Honig: I wouldn't put anything past anyone associated with Kanye West.

Brian Lehrer: The names of the grand jurors are released in Georgia indictments. That's not the case in federal indictments. Why the difference?

Elie Honig: When I saw that, Brian, my copy of the indictment, my first thought was, "Oh, my God, they messed up. How could they? They're supposed to redact these names out. We can read them. They're right here." You're right, it was not an accident. Apparently, this is what happens in Georgia. It is unheard of for two reasons. One is just the grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret. You don't release the names. Two is security concerns, especially in this case.

Look, the clerk's office screwed up yesterday when they posted that document relating to the indictment prematurely, which turned out to be almost exactly on point. This apparently is a practice in Georgia that is inexplicable to me.

Brian Lehrer: Inexplicable. They explain it by saying it's transparency in the justice system. It's because the defendant has a right to know who's charging him.

Elie Honig: Yes, I'm going to take issue with that rationale. I understand that is the rationale, but what's he going to do now? If you want to take issue with the charge against you, there's ways you can challenge her indictment in court. You can't go around knocking on the doors and God knows what with the actual individual grand jurors. That's not the way you would go about defending yourself lawfully.

Brian Lehrer: Are grand juror's names released in New York indictments or in New Jersey where you were state prosecutor? I gather from your tone of voice, no.

Elie Honig: Federally, absolutely not, and New Jersey absolutely not. Those are the two places where I practiced. Not only absolutely not, it was unthinkable.

Brian Lehrer: Are you concerned for the safety of these grand jurors? I mentioned in the intro, the Trump post from the other day, "if you go after me, I'm coming after you." That was a very general post. We don't know who some lone wolf domestic terrorists might take it as applying to. Are you concerned for the safety of these grand jurors or have you seen any reporting or done any for CNN that indicates that they're having to hire private security or be protected by the state now?

Elie Honig: I've not seen any such reporting. The logical part of my brain thinks why would anyone go after a grand juror? It's not like they're deciding guilt or non-guilt. They are just almost rubber-stamping an indictment. Yes, they listen carefully to the evidence but I've spent plenty of time in grand juries, it is not a rigorous process. The old adage about the prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich is, in my experience, largely true. It's not like these grand jurors are realistically in position to reject this case.

My fear is not with the rational. My fear is with the irrational radicalised, really lone wolves are what frightens me most. One person, we've seen so many examples of this, just the other day, an individual was making threats about Joe Biden and he was killed by law enforcement. The day after [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: Just to be clear, he was also making threats against Joe Biden and DA Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, and the FBI. The FBI came to talk to him about this and he pointed a gun and it turned out that he had so many weapons in his home. At least according to the FBI, he pointed a gun at the FBI agents, and that's when they shot and killed him. That's the kind of guy to be afraid of.

Elie Honig: Exactly. We can talk about will there be-- I remember before the first indictment, which was in Manhattan, where I'm based for work, we were wondering, will there be more January 6th-like activities. I was down at the courthouse and I was by Trump Tower for CNN. There was next to nothing. There was a couple dozen people holding up signs doing what protesters should do loudly, obnoxiously. That's great. That's your First Amendment right. Nothing remotely disruptive. It's seemingly gotten less and less in terms of people showing up with each successive indictment to the point where there was next to nobody in DC protesting.

The fear is the lone wolf. Lone wolves, one radicalized person can do enormous damage. God help us, but let's not forget the horrible lessons of Oklahoma City. That was two radicalized extremists and they did an unthinkable act.

Brian Lehrer: Very few protesters in Georgia yesterday too, from what I've heard. I also see though that the grand jury does not need to be unanimous, like a trial jury. A majority of the 23 people is all that's needed. I'm curious if it was released, what the vote was regarding Trump in particular. Was it 12 out of 23? Was it 19 out of 23? Was it unanimous? Do they say who voted how as individuals?

Elie Honig: I've not seen any such count. Again, in my experience in the federal system in New Jersey State Courts, you absolutely would never reveal the count. We wouldn't even know the count as prosecutors. We would just when they would vote in confidentiality, and then we would get a knock from the inside of the door saying we're done and you would open the door and they would hand you a signed indictment or on the very, very, very rare occasion, they would say we turn this down. You are not told, hey, the vote was 18 to 3 or 18 to 5 or whatever it may have been. You certainly are not told who voted how, in which direction. This goes to Grand Jury secrecy. I don't think we will know that.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Here's Alec in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Alec, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Alec: Good morning. Thank you. I'm curious if the Georgia DA's office is adequately resourced to bring this case. If not, what can be done to help resource them, possibly?

Elie Honig: I know that they've brought in substantial resources during this investigation. I have to assume they wouldn't have brought this indictment if they didn't think they can handle it. You can pull in resources for a case like this. One of the people they brought back was somebody who is an old-fashioned RICO expert from Georgia. You can staff up as necessary. Fani Willis by all accounts is a very competent DA and prosecutor and you wouldn't bring a charge like this unless you had the right staff in place.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, Elie, it's a two-part question. I think I remember you saying on the show, correct me if I'm thinking about somebody else, once before that the phone call to Raffensperger, "I just want you to find 11,000 and something votes." Sounds like a slam dunk tampering crime but actually, the phone call was long and Trump will have many arguments for defending its legality.

Elie Honig: Yes, that--

Brian Lehrer: That was you?

Elie Honig: Probably was me because I agree with it and I've said it at various places. We always talk about the importance of keeping things in context, not pulling things out of context. The things that Donald Trump says in that call are very bad and should have gotten him impeached and arguably are a constitute to crime, but it's not as simple as just, "I want you to find-- look, ladies and gentlemen of the the jury. He said the word "find" and he said he wants just one more vote. There's a couple of responses that I've heard to that.

Number one is, look at the whole transcript. There are other points when he says, "I just want you to count all the votes as they are." It's a 62-minute phone call by the way. The other thing that we've heard from Trump's team is his view and there's a fair debate about whether this was honestly held. His view he was being told that he had won the state by hundreds of thousands of votes. What he was saying to Raffensperger is, "I don't need you to dig up all of these. All I need is just enough to get me over the hump then you don't need to find all of the votes that were stolen from me."

I've obviously probably from my tone of voice, I have a little bit of skepticism about the truth of that but it is a defense they'll make and the point I always come back to is Doug Jones, the former Democratic senator from Alabama, a former prosecutor, I think revered in Liberal circles, said publicly on air at CNN. He said in a while back, he held up a transcript of that call and he said, "Anyone who thinks this is a slam dunk has another thing in common." He said, "Any good defense lawyer could really pick holes in this." Again, I'm not saying it's a useless call but it's not as easy as he said the word fine, game over.

Brian Lehrer: By the way just to clarify and I guess amplify a little bit on what the caller from Ossining said earlier and you weren't familiar with the relationship between this case and somebody related professionally to Kanye West, according to the website Deadline. Yes, a former Kanye publicist was indicted. That's Trevian Kutti, as the caller said, and Deadline says, "Notably, the woman recorded on video trying to convince Ruby Freeman, a frightened Georgia election worker whom Trump had publicly attacked, to implicate herself in election fraud regarding the 2020 presidential election." It seems like it's legit according to that entertainment news site Deadline.

Part two of my closing question is somehow I have an impression from media coverage this morning that this indictment actually has more evidence including documentary evidence than the federal one. Therefore the implication is Trump is actually more likely to be convicted in Georgia than he is in federal court but that's an impression. I haven't read the Georgia one yet, just the federal. Is that a comparison you can make?

Elie Honig: No, I don't quite buy into that because prosecutors have a lot of discretion about how much detail they put into their indictments. You can put basically everything, you can put next to nothing. Different prosecutors are going to calibrate how much they want to put into the indictment differently. I wouldn't draw conclusions about the overall quantity or quality of the evidence simply from the indictment itself.

What I think is safe to say is, both indictments are well supported on the facts. Most of the things that you read about in Jackson, this indictment, and this indictment, you read them and you either say, "That definitely happened," in other words, it's captured on audio tape or videotape or in a text or something, or that seems to be based on credible witness testimony.

I think the bigger problem for both cases is going to be in this gray area of intent and is it a crime or is it just a political abuse of power, which we know Donald Trump's team is focused on as their defense. I'm not saying it's going to be a winning defense necessarily, we don't know at this point either way but I think the easy part of this case is the facts. The hard part of this case is arguing the legalities and the intent part of it.

Brian Lehrer: Elie Honig, Senior Legal Analyst for CNN, a former Federal and New Jersey State Prosecutor, author of the books, Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Justice Department and his latest which came out this year, Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It. He's also hosted the podcast Up Against The Mob. Elie, we always appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Elie Honig: Thanks so much, Brian. I appreciate you having me.

 

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