some of the trump supporting groups like the proud boys and so on who have already said that they want to show up here. again, the procedure is already starting to ramp up, some of the protections you can see being put in place, but it s not clear that they re quite ready. so, evan, you have some new insight as well about why the special counsel decided to bring this case in florida, right? the whole venue issue, right, until a week or ten days ago everyone made the assumption this was going to be in washington. that changed, they re bringing it in florida instead of d.c. what have you learned are the specifics as to why? reporter: well, they started making some of the preparations for that just in the last few months, erin, and the issue of venue is one of the things that i think you and i talked about just a couple days ago. you remember the former president left town hours before joe biden was sworn in president and that meant that certainly these documents when he went back to
accused of forum shopping. he can make the public understand this is not about politics. this is about the law. and he can avoid the inevitable delays as donald trump would have fought the venue issue and actually could have won based on a venue issue and undermine the whole case before it got started. dave, do you think he was essentially trying to get out ahead of a fight from trump and his legal team? yes. i think they re worried about the delays. i think they want this tried before the election, and if they got into a lengthy battle over venue, there would be no chance that this would be tried before the election. now with judge aileen cannon, not the judge the department of justice wanted, i can tell you, because she s now apparently on the case. it s not definite yet but it looks like it. she could extend this thing out because a judge has a whole lot of power when it comes to the time frame of a case. dave, two of the former president s attorneys who were handling this cas
florida is trump s home state. in miami-dade county trump goss 46% of the vote, 46% of a 12-person jury is 5.5 jurors and i think that may be donald trump s best chance at an acquittal by getting some of those supporters on the jury to do some jury nullification where they just ignore the evidence and say, i don t want my guy locked up. palm beach county is 43%. he does better here than in d.c. but it was foreign to smith to file in florida because he can make the public understand it s not about politics but about the law and can afford the inevitable delays that would have happened as donald trump would have fought the venue issue and could have won based on a venue issue and undermine the whole case before it got started. is that what you thought was happening, dave? he was trying to get out ahead of a fight from trump and his legal team. i think they re worried about the delays and want it tried before the election.
indicted months ago. again, if it was one of us, he would ve been indicted months ago. he s gotten special treatment in his favor. and this is not a criticism of the justice department. it s a statement of fact, that the justice department has to be extra careful and extra cautious, and make sure that it has all its ducks in a row, before bringing a charge against the former president and presidential candidate but these charges could have been brought long ago. and the other point, on the venue there has been the suggestion that somehow this was a sudden change in venue. with fact of the matter is that, we knew, back in august, there was going to be a potential venue issue. and people were discussing it legal nerds were discussing, it not not not in the, cafes not in the coffee shops of america. but there was a real because so much of the illegal conduct that was described in the fbi affidavit took place at mar-a-lago, in palm beach
of assumptions that people are making and their own understanding of events. in other words, reporters are hearing trump s lawyers all sorts of theories and ideas about what s happening. they are not hearing from jack smith, the guy that, you know, we rarely catch on video, nbc reporter might catch him, you know, when he s on his way back from subway. what we are really getting are these main echoes, so what i do think is george said, is really coming, you know, two ahead right now. that s the important point. george, let me ask you about this venue issue and i know no one has, again, any special insight into this, to stress what renato just said, right? we do know that there is this granddaddy in florida, it appears to be fairly new. and i think the informed speculation about that is that you want to avoid venue problems. if you indict him in washington on events that happen specifically in florida, you could be setting yourself up for venue challenges, those venue challenges could