washington. but how does jack smith how does this case end up in one jurisdiction or the other if there is a trial? so, this is a complicated legal issue. because the law in florida and the law in d.c., those two federal jurisdictions, is different. in florida, you could bring the obstruction case either where the acts of suction or committed, or where the investigation is that is being obstructed, namely an investigation in d.c.. either of those would be fine. but if you were to go to d.c. and bring that obstruction case, the law in d.c. is a bit of an outlier. and there is a 1975 case that suggests that you can only bring the case where the obstructive act occurred, meaning, unless they occurred in d.c., you would have to bring it in florida. and so, you could imagine here
brought criminal charges against one person in two different venues. for example, we saw the paul manafort case, a case andrew weissmann would know better than anybody, they charged him both in virginia and washington, d.c. here you could see charges happen in two different venues. a person who is going to play a really key role in the decision of where to bring charges or whose office or reptdative from their office would play a key role would be the solicitor general s office. this is somebody who is an expert in looking at whether or not the justice department could get fouled up on appeal if somebody can bring a credible accusation that they were basically monkeying around and trying to shop the case to the most sympathetic jury. it s something you really don t want to do in something this sensitive, and it s something the justice department would be guarding against. they don t want to lose because it looks like they were doing something wrong. they want to be as by the book as po
very, very different things. ronelle, this seems to go to the heart of knowingly broadcasting false information, seems to go to the heart of the shallowness of the claims and knowing that they weren t true before they put them on the air, but it also, and i use this word in the context of our coverage of trump, it suggests an obstructive act has taken place in obstructing the discovery process or standing in the way of turning over things that should have been turned over can you give us an explanation of the significance of each? sure. i mean this is an unenviable position to be in on the cusp of any trial in any case, but it s a particularly unfortunate one in a case that rises and falls substantively on a claim told k lies so no litigant wants a few days before trial starts to be in a
investigation into him, the one that was conducted by the muller team i think there were six, there was the obstructive act, there was the next specific crime and we all became terrified to check rosenberg and how to prove obstruction. one thing that was said derisively and dismissively by the justice department at the time, without an underlying crime, the obstruction stuff was just process do you think this justice department sees it that way? not at all. so, i mean, process crimes, first of all, can be incredibly important because the system depends on people coming forth and telling the truth, even after they ve made mistakes. so if you re hiding evidence, you know, the way that it looks like evan corcoran might have been involved in, that s a serious problem in and of itself the second thing, there might have been kind of convoluted arguments about no substantive crime in the russia investigation, i totally
element it wasn t just obstructing an investigation. like sort of a that was, but it was obstructing an investigation to ensure that classified information that could damage national security was obtained and any damage rectified. that s the obstructive act. so it really elevates i think the concern and really the level of seriousness of the conduct we re talking about. when you look at the public-facing evidence of obstruction, do you see things that normal person wouldn t? i mean, do you see that there s somebody cooperating that had access to this mishandling of classified documents? do you see that there s a flow of information to doj? i wish i could say i knew what, you know, redacted paragraph 65 referred to. me, too. i think more to the point, i think what it shows that there are certainly key people who are, in fact, cooperating, key witnesses who are participating. and i think when you talk about sort of the end game, what this looks like, really the ultimate quest