Additional Trump Charges Likely Won't Be Decided By Election

This episode delves into the ongoing legal cases involving former President Donald Trump and how they are likely to impact his political future.

1. The legal proceedings against Donald Trump are complex and involve a variety of strategic delays by the defense.
2. These delays could push critical decisions past the 2024 election, which might benefit Trump if he re-enters the presidency.
3. The episode discusses the potential impacts of ongoing legal cases on Trump's campaign strategy and public image.
4. It also covers the broader implications for the Democratic campaign, highlighting how Trump's legal issues are being used in political messaging.
5. Legal theories suggest significant challenges in prosecuting a sitting president, which could affect the timing and nature of the charges.

1. Introduction

Hosts introduce the episode's topic, focusing on the legal challenges facing Donald Trump and the potential delays in court proceedings. They discuss the background and current status of the cases. Susan Davis: "There's a case against Donald Trump and a bunch of other people in Georgia."

2. Legal Maneuvering

Discussion on the strategic legal moves by Trump's defense team, including attempts to remove the district attorney and the expected timelines for court appeals. Stephen Fowler: "Trump and several other defenses are trying to get the prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fonnie Willis, removed from the case."

3. Political Implications

Analysis of how the legal battles might influence the upcoming elections, with insights on the political advantage these delays provide to Trump. Oliver: "Strictly politically, speaking, this is a good development for Donald Trump."

4. Campaign Strategies

Exploration of the impact of Trump’s legal situation on both his and the Biden campaign's strategies, especially focusing on the use of the term "convicted felon" in political messaging. Susan Davis: "President Biden has used the term convicted felon in recent rallies."

5. Conclusion

Summary of the key points discussed and a look ahead to the potential outcomes of the Supreme Court decisions on presidential immunity. Oliver: "We're still waiting on a decision from the Supreme Court regarding the questions of presidential immunity."

1. Stay informed about the legal processes involved in political figures’ cases to understand their potential impact on governance.
2. Consider the implications of political strategies in election campaigns, especially how legal and ethical issues are leveraged.
3. Engage in discussions about the balance between legal proceedings and political campaigning to foster a more informed electorate.
4. Analyze how the media covers complex legal issues and the influence of this coverage on public opinion.
5. Follow updates on the Supreme Court's decisions as they can set important precedents affecting presidential powers and accountability.

The state charges in Georgia are on ice as Donald Trump and his team pursue an appeal, with initial arguments set for October. In the near term, Trump will need to select a vice presidential candidate and Sen. Tim Scott is making his case with a $14 million dollar effort to persuade Black voters.

This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, campaign correspondent Franco Ordoñez, campaign reporter Stephen Fowler and campaign reporter Elena Moore,

The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.

People

Donald Trump, Fonnie Willis, Susan Davis, Oliver, Stephen Fowler, Franco Ordonez

Companies

None

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Susan Davis
Support for NPR. And the following message come from. Bombas makes absurdly soft socks, underwear, and t shirts. And for every item you purchase, Bombas donates another to someone facing homelessness. Get 20% off your first purchase@bombas.com. nPR and use code NPR hi, this.

Oliver
Is Oliver from Jordan, Miss Hall. I just graduated kindergarten today. This podcast was recorded at 12:06 p.m. on Thursday, June 6. Things much have changed since the time we heard this, but I'm still gonna be playing baseball. Okay, enjoy the show.

Susan Davis
Congratulations, Oliver. We should have some graduation music.

Oliver
You know, I am planning a banger of a kindergarten graduation party of my own. So I was really feeling that time stamp today. Hey, there. It's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

Susan Davis
I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the campaign. And I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover the campaign.

Oliver
And there's some potentially significant news in Georgia in the election interference case against former President Trump and his associates. Stephen, just catch us up. What happened?

Susan Davis
So, as you may know, there's a case against Donald Trump and a bunch of other people in Georgia.

All of these different people have all of these different charges, and all of these different charges have all of these different filings from the defense attorney saying, no, we want this charge gone. We want that charge gone. No, take everything off the case. So the big thing right now, as you might have heard in the past couple of months, is that Trump and several other defenses are trying to get the prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fonnie Willis, removed from the case. They say she has a conflict of interest because an attorney who helped manage the special grand jury part before the charges was her boyfriend. And some of the issue was, were they dating while this was happening, before the charges were filed, after, so on and so forth, there was a lot of very salacious hearings, a lot of personal details. Ultimately, the judge said either Willis or the man she was involved with needed to resign. He did resign, and she stayed involved with the trial in the case. Now Trump is appealing to try to force her off the case as well, with oral arguments set for October. But the big news is that the appeals court in Georgia says, you can't do anything on the Georgia case until we decide this, which might not happen until March of 2025. So no Georgia election case developments until next year, if ever.

Oliver
You know, we've said a lot on the podcast that there could not be clear answers in a lot of these cases, and that seems to be bearing out. And Franco just, but strictly politically, speaking, this is a good development for Donald Trump.

Susan Davis
I mean, in many ways, its a vindication for Trump and his long strategy to delay, delay, delay. I mean, hes wanted to delay these cases for a long time, and there are many of them, until after the election.

Stephen just pointed out that this would not come up, the appeal would not come up until October. Likely its going to go longer. Its not going to happen until after the election. If he wins, there are real legal questions whether its constitutionally state can take action against a sitting president.

You know, Trump can't throw out this case. It's a state case. But the other ones that are led by the special counsel Jack Smith. If Trump wins, if Trump wins, he can toss out those cases. So, you know, this is a very big deal for Trump, Amy.

Oliver
And look, there's a lot of questions about what a state prosecution could do if Donald Trump is elected, although many legal theorists suggest that it would be highly unlikely that a prosecution would happen with a sitting president. And there is also longstanding DOJ precedent that you don't prosecute a sitting president.

Susan Davis
Right. And it's also a question Fonnie Willis might not even be the district attorney in 2029. There might not be an appetite to go after this. There might be settlements or plea deals or a lot of the evidence has kind of fallen out of the public realm of attention. And so it might be that the window for this has passed. But another thing I do want to make sure people know is that this sort of delay was likely to happen regardless of Fonny Willis and who she hired and who she dated. Because there are so many charges and so many defendants. It's almost like throwing defense spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. There were motions to try to eliminate individual charges. There were motions to try to eliminate every single charge and kind of ticky tack ways of saying, no, we don't want to face these charges, please throw these out, or please eliminate this, or don't put this in, run the jury. So it's likely that no matter what, something was going to be appealed with this case, with Trump, and something was going to kick that well past the 2024 election. It just so happens that this one is the most tawdry of them all.

Oliver
And the most politically advantageous for the defense.

Susan Davis
Right. And most politically advantageous for Trump. But I will say oral arguments over this appeal happening in October. I mean, the appeals court of Georgia is not the big flashy tv courtroom of Fulton County Superior Court or the Supreme Court or like we saw in New York but in October, there's going to be more conversations about Fonnie Willis and who she dated, but also about Donald Trump facing criminal charges and already being a convicted felon. And it could not be the best for him that in October, as people are voting, there's more headlines in Georgia reminding people, hey, remember what happened the last time an election with Donald Trump on the ballot happened? Yeah.

Oliver
I mean, the politics are still there that maybe there's no conclusions in these other cases, Franco. But Democrats are still going to be able to mess message against running against Donald Trump as a convicted felon on 34 counts.

Susan Davis
And they already are. I mean, it's a big part of their messaging for the last couple of weeks, President Biden has used the term convicted felon in recent rallies. The campaign is putting it in their press releases and their marketing. Now there are questions whether that is, you know, a good look for the administration. There are definitely some powerful people in democratic circles who, you know, feel that Biden should kind of step above the fray. But it seems very clear right now that the Biden campaign is going to make that point clear. And it's part of their efforts to kind of develop a contrast between Biden and Trump. As Stevens was saying, you know, in October, they want the american people to really be thinking about who do you want? They don't want this to be a referendum on Biden. They want this to be a choice election. And the convicted felon, I think they think works in their favor.

Oliver
And of course, we're still waiting on a decision from the Supreme Court regarding the questions of presidential immunity. And we will likely have those in the coming weeks. So we'll have more to talk about soon. Stephen, thank you so much for doing this. Of course, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about the Trump campaign's effort.

Susan Davis
To win over black voters support for NPR. And the following message come from bombas makes absurdly soft socks, underwear and t shirts. And for every item you purchase, Bombas donates another to someone facing homelessness. Get 20% off your first purchase@bombas.com. nPR and use code NPR.

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Oliver
And we're back. And campaign reporter Elena Moore joins us. Hey there.

Elena Moore
Hi, guys.

Oliver
So, Franco, you have some new reporting about republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who I think it is fair to say has not been subtle at his interest in being Donald Trump's running mate. What's his pitch? What's he doing?

Susan Davis
What he's doing is, you know, appearing to make the best case that he can to be Trump's running mate in November. And how he's doing that is hes launching a new campaign to woo black voters, a segment of the voting public that Trump has made very clear that he wants to win. And Scott is, you know, pointing to a path that he thinks can really do that. He thinks they can make a real difference. You know, black voters, of course, overwhelmingly supported democratic presidential candidates over the years. But he points to recent polling that show that support is falling and he thinks he can chip away at those numbers. I was part of a conversation with him. Here's what he had to say about that.

Tim Scott
There's a lot of reasons why the shift is becoming just so blatantly obvious that it's now undeniable that there is something amiss and it's real. And I think, frankly, it's not just racial, but it's going to manifest itself in a racial shift that we haven't seen in probably three decades of politics.

Susan Davis
Now, he's going to put some of his own money behind this with his pack. He's going to invest $14 million, almost $15 million in a campaign to do this. He's going to be traveling to battleground states. And, of course, we can't forget the politics here. And this effort could boost his chances because, again, Trump has made it very clear that he wants to appeal to these voters.

Oliver
Can we also, I think there is a distinction that's important here because polling has absolutely shown that there's been some movement towards Trump among black voters and latino voters. But there does seem to be a gender divide here. A lot of that movement seems to be more male than female.

Susan Davis
You know, it's a very similar trend that we're seeing in other groups. I mean, this is an area that Trump has been able to kind of, you know, cleaves some voters from. And Tim Scott thinks that he can do more. Again, Tim Scott is not expecting all these black voters to all of a sudden move over onto the Trump aisle. But, you know, that doesn't need to happen. You know, they just need a few thousand to either vote for Trump or not vote in these very close races and battleground states like Pennsylvania, like Georgia, I mean, a small amount matters a lot in this coming election when all.

Oliver
The swing states are decided on the margins. Every margin matters.

Susan Davis
Absolutely.

Oliver
And, Alina, you have some recent reporting as well that suggests that there is some ability for potentially Trump to appeal to these voters.

Elena Moore
Yeah. And I think it's less that he has ability to appeal to them and more that Biden has a disconnect with them. We know, like what Franco just said, black voters overall have overwhelmingly sided with democratic candidates for decades.

Weve also seen specifically a generational divide here. And poll after poll, national polls, show that younger black voters are distancing themselves from Biden. And I got exclusive access to this new poll this week from the University of Chicago that extensively polled young Americans of color, black Americans, Latino Americans, and AAPI, Asian Americans. So among young black voters under 40, just a third of them say they're going to vote for Biden.

Around 23% say they'll vote for Trump, which is higher than the margin he had. Exit polls showed that around, you know, voters under 45, black voters under 45. Around 80% supported Biden four years ago. So it's a pretty striking number that instead of getting 80% of that vote, they're getting a third.

And I think that, like, another thing to note here is that black voters are not alone in that. This is, like, by far a generational divide among young voters, among young asian voters and white voters.

Susan Davis
Sure.

Oliver
And we know historically young voters, lower income voters, they tend to be lower propensity voters. But the political magic of Donald Trump has also been he's able to get lower propensity voters to show up. And that seems to be something that his campaign is banking on again.

Susan Davis
Yeah, I mean, they've been very successful at getting these low propensity voters, getting them to vote. That's how he was able to do so well in 2016.

And you can see that they are banking on that again.

Oliver
And low. This is the trick of this election because we talk about polls a lot, too. Polls don't always account for the low. It's hard to predict who's going to show up if they've never shown up before.

Susan Davis
Right.

Oliver
So this is why we always use that caution with polling data, is the polls could be and have been in the past wrong about where these groups will land.

Susan Davis
And the Biden team is absolutely taking notice. I mean, that's why you're seeing Biden traveling across the country specifically targeting these groups, these groups in Atlanta, these groups in Detroit, these groups in Philadelphia. He knows how critical this constituency is for him. His campaign knows how important it is for him. And I mean, they are doing the work. And when I talk to democratic strategists and pollsters about this, they say, look, no campaign is perfect five months out.

And thats why, you know, you have a campaign to make sure that you go out and get these voters and remind them of why they need to vote for your candidate, whoever that may be. Amy.

Oliver
But, Elena, it also seems like theres two ways for Trump to benefit from the situation. Sure, some element of voters may vote for him that either never voted in the past or switching over, but also a real risk that these voters just stay home. And a stay home vote that was leaning Biden is almost as good as a vote for Trump.

Elena Moore
We've seen time and time again that the issues are the reasons that a lot of these groups stay with the Democrats. I mean, that's what I hear when I'm out talking with young people. You know, there's like, yeah, maybe you don't love the guy at the top of the ticket, but, you know, you're turning out because of abortion access or you're turning out because you want criminal justice reform. And the thing here that I think will continue to be an obstacle for the Trump campaign and people like Scott is, you know, you can go anti Biden as much as possible, but you can't reinvent your platform. And I think that's going to be their big challenge. And that's kind of what Kathy Cohen and I talked about. She's a professor at the University of Chicago who runs the genforward poll. And we discussed that balance of, yes, there's a huge deficit here for Biden. He's losing a lot of voters of color, but where are they going?

Kathy Cohen
So it's not that they see Trump as always a viable alternative. Right. For them. I think it's an analysis of Biden. Can I support Biden? I think if people hold, for example, criminal justice issues as most important to them, the alternative is not to go to Trump. The alternative is to either vote for Cornel west, maybe for Kennedy, I think, or to stay at home. And I think we don't take seriously enough. What does it mean if enough young black people or enough young folks of color decide just not.

Elena Moore
And that's the other thing we haven't even talked about, is Trump isn't the only alternative here. We know that there are some major third party candidates that are going to be on the ballot in some states. You know, you heard Doctor Cohen mention Cornel West, a progressive professor, and of course, Robert F. Kennedy Junior.

Oliver
All right, let's leave it there for today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

Susan Davis
I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the campaign.

Elena Moore
And I'm Elena Moore. I also cover the campaign.

Oliver
And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics pollution podcast.

Susan Davis
Support for NPR and the following message come from Bombas makes absurdly soft socks, underwear and t shirts. And for every item you purchase, Bombas donates another to someone facing homelessness. Get 20% off your first purchase@bombas.com. nPR and use code NPR.

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