wasn t subject to the hatch act. so, if the president tells him to do something that violates the hatch act and because he s not, then somehow does that mean that he s not responsible for violation of the hatch kt a, meaning meadows? that just is all circular. it doesn t make sense. and it really does underscore why you should never put a criminal, someone who has been accused of criminal activity like mr. meadows on the stand under oath, especially this early in the case. one thing that someone highlighted today, geoff, was how in his memoir that he wrote after leaving office, meadows said his job, as chief of staff, he believed, was to, quote, the tell the most powerful man in the world when you believed he was wrong. is it clear that meadows didn t do that when it probably mattered the most here? well, he must have whispered it in his ear and not said it out loud, because i ve never seen examples of him standing up to donald trump over the ridiculous nature of where this
the timing difference of that and also just the completely different cases. if you ve been the judge in that room today, what would you have said to trump s defense attorneys when you brought that out? we first of, all i would ve read the pleadings and probably had a law clerk with me and i think the first thing that i would ve done is, wait having read it. and then deciding, we re gonna dress this in the courtroom, and she. did she said is profoundly working and i think she was offended. hopefully there s our learning curve on the lawyers side to not go rogue like this again and take cases that have absolutely nothing in common in trying to show that they do have something in common which in this case they did not. one of the big points of disagreement was the discovery, the timing here. and judge chutkan said that boxes of paper where you re looking at every single page but do you think that the defense has a legitimate point when they say it s a lot to go through in this timef
know, do my best essentially. did he seem to be setting up an argument where if there is a conviction they would be making an appeal? we ve both seen this for sure. defense lawyers will do this. it sounds counterintuitive. they ll say, i cannot give effective assistance to my counsel under these conditions. they do it not infrequently and for that reason, trying to make a record so if it goes up in appeal, they can say, look, the lawyer warned everybody. he wasn t able to do his job. with this time line, if that is what happens, could the conviction stand? yes, and i think the government has made a good case as to why they can pursue as soon as they can. they ve provided this stuff. the number of the volume that has been produced in discovery i think is a little misleading because a lot of it is public records, stuff that s been available for a long time. truth social posts. stuff they know, stuff he generated himself. so, i think for them to make comparisons they would have
from is correct that there s no practical way to this trial date is pushing trump s sixth amendment right to have time to prepare his defense. there are 12 million documents in this case. still have to review them. i know the prosecution put together a hit list of best documents. that s nice. it s the defense s decision what they re going to use. they are in addition to reviewing those documents, they get to do their own investigation. they have to bring motions. and i think to require them to do that in seven months is really getting close to the line constitutional. do you agree with that? yeah, look, there s a couple of different ways to look at that. i think that s a fine argument elie makes buchlt i think the prosecution has made a good case here as to how they can proceed in a prudent way and a fair way, and i think they can do it. i also think, frankly, that while this trial date is set in stone, it s probably going to get pushed. most trial dates do. how far do you th
those 157 overt acts that the district attorney has alleged were part of the conspiracy were done while trump was the sitting president of the united states. and so how does that play into meadows job? and trump s lawyers had a chance to hear this. they ll now know what to expect from raffensperger. they ll know he s going to say it s a campaign call. they ll know about the whether or notes on whether or not they think this is some kind of campaign violation on meadows part or otherwise. but it really gives them a very brief and it s very brief, frankly preview into the case to come. and i think it also tells us that we will have a number of versions surfing around both in the interpretation of the telephone call. and if you listen to that call where meadows says, this is the chief of staff, and apparently they re calling from the oval office, it s a unique introduction. clearly he didn t say, this is the trump campaign. whether that s positive from the federal judge, i doubt it.