thank you so much for joining us. cnn prime time starts right now. hi, abby! >> hey, thank you so much. have a good night. good evening, everyone. it is shaping up to be one of the biggest criminal trials in american history. literally. today was the very first televised hearing in that georgia case against donald trump and 18 of his allies. district foreigner fani willis and her team revealed three big things. first, they want to charge and try all 19 co-defendants together. second, this trial could last four months. and third, they'll call more than 150 different witnesses. that means that the former president of the united states could spend a third of the next year sitting in a courtroom. in just one of his cases, while running for a second term. it is just extraordinary. and we are getting a preview of the tensions to come. two of those co-defendants, trump's legal adviser, sidney powell, and the so called architect, they want their cases to be separated. today they started pointing the finger at each other, essentially over who is less crazy? >> she was fired before the conspiracy even started up. she said something that was supposedly crazy and the trump people got rid of her. >> evidence the will show she was not the driving force behind that. >> in the end, the judge did deny their requests so they will be tried together. joining me, the justice correspondent and columnist for the nation magazine. jim, i want to start with you. the fulton county d.a.'s office, they have a plan for a four-month trial. they could hold the trial as soon as next month for all the defendants but will this ensure that we won't even see it in the next year because of how sprawling this all is? >> look, i think you can see perhaps those two tried on the 23rd. but you have to take into consideration the rights of the other defendants there. and them not looking, asking for their speedy trial rights. i think it is unlikely that you will see a trial on the 23rd with all the defendants. i think there will be a will the of pretrial motions. you have 150 witnesses. a lot of motions related to evidentiary issues. a lot of motions to dismiss. and quite frankly, as clean as jack smith's case was, this one is just a mess in terms of trying to manage it from the judge's perspective. sure, there have been cases around the country that all the defendants in that number have been tried before. but i don't think it is likely to happen in this case, given all the complex issues. i think you're not looking at a georgia case until next year or even the year after. >> so -- >> when i say next year, i may not 2025. >> right. the next year after the presidential election. the former justice department prosecutor andrew wiceman, he says that it really is absurd. overtraying a case is never a good thing for the government. there is in a way a principle here of trying to get a conviction. not just trying to make a appoipoint? is he right? >> we only talk about overtrying a case when we have that. we never say when it is about people of color. we never talk about it when it is a drug kingpin or a terrorist. what he saw, i'm glad the american people got to see was a rico trial. yes, it is large, it is complicated. you see why we have the rico statute. what happened in that court ram today within minutes, all the defendants, oh, it was not me, it was her. i don't know nothing. the reason you have a rico trial, you try them all together so they can't get away with it. so they were all part of the same criminal conspiracy. i fundamentally agree that it will take a while. i don't really think that it will happen until 2025 because the nature of rico is messy. but i don't think that because we are doing a rico trial, that necessarily means that anybody is being overcharged or overprosecuted. they all potentially, allegedly, were part of a conspiracy to overthrow the election in georgia. so we are going to try them all together and that is what rico is for. >> jim, you brought up the point -- >> you might even see -- >> go ahead. >> you still have these determinations that need to be made by the federal judge and the folks had a said they need to be tried federally. that'll will delay it even more. they are issues that will be taken up and decided and will delay this thing further down the road. >> so -- >> the federal issues are still live -- >> go ahead. >> i was going to say, the federal issues are still live. we don't know what u.s. district judge jones will do about that case. i don't think meadows has a great case to remove it to federal court. however, because of the nature of rico, if you start taking one defendant out and removing them to federal court, you have an argument, and this came up in the hearing. maybe you have to remove the whole case to federal court. so there's a lot to play out. that means that we are unlikely to see, this is not going to be a snappy law and order resolution right before the commercial break. this will take some time. but you know, the wheels of justice do move slowly but they do move. what we saw today was the start of movement to hold these people accountable for their alleged crimes. >> well, look, fani willis is the one who says she wants to do this quickly as well. some of the defendants have asked for their speedy trial rights. she said i'm ready to go next month. it sounds like based on the case she put together, it can't possibly be as quick as that for all the co-defendants. stand by for me for a moment here. also, new tonight, one of donald trump's aides is flipping on him. that mar-a-lago i.t. worker who was threatened with prosecution in the documents case is cooperating with prosecutors now. and as a result, he will not be prosecuted in that case. this come as trump says that he is willing to testify in his cases. >> if you have to go to trial, will you testify in your own defense? >> oh, yes, absolutely. that i look forward to. >> now, if history is any indicator, don't hold your breath for that. like that time that he declined to testify in the e. jean carroll case, or the time that he refused to testify in the january 6th hearing, or the time he declined to testify in the investigation of his real estate empire, and the time he refused to testify in the hush money case. also, there is the time he wouldn't testify at his own impeachment trial or the time he didn't sit down with robert mueller, even though he said that he would. >> i'm looking forward to it, actually. >> talking about two or three weeks, but i would love tad it. >> you see the trend hear. who is he kidding? >> not me. look, trump is a layer so he is lying. the fact that he's lying is one of the reasons why he can't testify. if he testifies, he will lie. and he will catch himself another indictment. this time for perjury. joe is less of a perjury risk than donald trump putting him on the stand. no lawyer, no lawyer who has been through, i would say, three months of law school would dare to put trump on the stand to lie some more. so no, he won't testify. he knows he won't testify. his lawyers know he won't testify. all of this is another lie from donald trump. >> jim, you know him. you also have the distinction of being a former lawyer for donald trump. what say you? >> so, look. i think this is just more donald trump bravado, right? there is no chance that he will testify at these trials. there is no chance that his lawyers will agree for him to do that. so i agree with everything he's saying. i don't think there's any chance he testifies and there is no lawyer in their right mind that would allow him to testify. >> so we were talking about the mar-a-lago worker who struck the deal with the special counsel's office. he's agreed to testify in the classified documents case. until exchange, he won't be prosecuted. jim, i wonder, this idea if you turn on trump, you don't get prosecuted. can the other co-defendants, or even unindicted co-conspirators hang their hat on that? if they flip, they escape all consequences here? >> it depends on the conduct and the allegations that have been made against those particular defendants in those cases. there may be some break that they're given. they may not be given immunity. they all have to be looking over their shoulder right now, looking at that, looking at that, at that former defendant in the case did. the deal that he made and saying, maybe i should be doing the same thing to save may skin. that has to make trump really nervous. any other defendants in the case nervous, because they'll be looking around saying, had a is going next? >> yeah. >> and from a paurely psychological perspective hour, big of a deal is this for the special counsel's team? >> i think the real issue is that trump doesn't have any more pardons to sell. he's not the president. he can't dangle pardons in front of these people. he can only say if he gets elected president again, maybe he'll pardon them. even that doesn't work for georgia. so one of the reasons trump has been able to avoid accountability prosecution for so long, most of his people had stayed amazingly loyal to him. roger stone, paul manafort, people have done that for donald trump. this might be where it all starts to break down. once his own people start turning on him and start telling the truth to prosecutors and to the states, things will get even worse for a person now under four, five indictments. >> i have a feeling there will be quite a few more twists and turns in this case. you have at least in the documents case, two individuals who have attorneys who are tied to trump. that in and of itself is a big source of problems down the road for those co-defendants and perhaps for trump as well. thank you very much, both of you. up next, a watch dog group sues to keep trump off the ballot, citing the 14th amendment. that group makes its case right here, next. plus, an obama campaign veteran calls his party a bunch of bed wetters and tells them to relax about biden's chances. hours later we're learning that hunter biden is about to be indicted. and we're now seeing video of how the inmate escaped the prison as the manhunt intensifies by the hour. ♪ chevy silverado has what it takes to do it all. with up to 13 camera views. and the z71 off-road package. ♪ you ok? 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a new lawsuit is trying to make that happen. a watch dog suing on behalf of voters in colorado to keep trump off the 2024 republican primary ballot there. their argument stems from a rarely used provision of the 14th amendment that bans insurrectionists from holding public office. colorado's secretary of state, a democrat, said in a statement, that she hopes this case will provide guidance to election officials on trump's eligibility as candidate for office. the executive director of that watch dog group, citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington, know a bookbinder joins me now. noah, thank you for being hear. >> thanks for having me. >> so noah, i want to put you to the test a little bit here on some of this. while understand what is so appealing about this for a lot of people, frankly, this is really, really untested. i do wonder though, first of all, why clues the state of colorado which biden won pretty handily by almost 500,000 votes? >> colorado really emerged as our lawyers looked state by state as a particularly good first place for this kind of lawsuit for a couple reasons. first of all, different states have different laws as to how you can challenge the qualifications of a candidate for office. and colorado has a statute that says that the secretary of state is required to remove from the ballot anyone who is constitutionally unqualified. it also has a law that says that citizens can go to court to challenge a candidate who is not qualified. it has a procedure built in. a quick procedure. it is relatively early in the primary calendar so that the case will be ready earlier than other places. it had a terrific group of grags plaintiffs willing to take a stand on this. we thought it was a good first stop. it won't be the last stop. we will bring other cases as well. >> so just days before trump launched his presidential bid a year ago, you warned him in a letter that you would pursue this very thing, disqualifying him from holding public office. why did you wait a full year to file? >> we wanted to bring the case when a court was going to consider it to be ripe. when a court wouldn't throw it out as premature. and also, because we are ready to go in with witnesses, with evidence to put on a full case and prove that donald trump is constitutionally disqualified. that takes time to get a team together. to get all that evidence together. that's what we've been hard at work on for that year. >> so what are the sticking points here, that the 14th amendment does not have any context about what the due process is for people who might be subject to it. who does get to decide who has violated the 14th amendment? >> well, as you said, this has been little used and that's a fortunate thing west haven't had a lot of insurrections in this country. but it has been used. there is case law in the 1860s after the civil war and there is a case my organization represents new mexico residents in a case last year gerns a county commissioner, who was an organizer of the january 6th insurrection. >> can i just jump in here only for context for our viewers. tell cases in the civil-war era were against people who actually fought in the civil war. so there is that. then the case you just mentioned about 2022, that individual was actually convicted of playing a role in january 6th. what is missing here for trump is a conviction. >> so it's interesting. so griffin was convicted of a misdemeanor offense of essentially trespassing. he was not convicted of insurrection. and none of the post civil war cases involve people who were charged with or convicted of insurrection. there is actually a whole lot of case law saying this is a totally different thing from criminal cases. this isn't a criminal punishment. it is a qualification. like the constitution says you have to be at least 35 to run for president. and you can go to court. if a 23-year-old runs for president, you can go to court and say this person is not constitutionally qualified. you have to establish with evidence that they're in fact 23 years old. not 35. and if you do, they're off the ballot. it's the same thing here. obviously, the substance is much more serious, but if we can go to court and it's a civil trial. you prove by a preponderance of the evidence that there was an insurrection. that this person, in this case, donald trump engaged in that insurrection, and we did that in the case of griffin in new mexico, totally apart from his misdemeanor conviction, and in that case a judge ruled that he was disqualified. that can happen here as well. >> i don't want to hold you too much to your example of the qualifications on age because i think it is pretty clear, those are not really that comparable. this is a question of who gets to decide, a, what an insurrection is, whether someone's conduct constituted engaging in an insurrection, whether that should be applied in a particular area. it's really quite different. and i will say, because frankly, you can prove from a factual perspective how old a person is. those other questions are difficult. but what underlies a lot of this is, the american people are being asked to say, okay, we'll let judges decide that. do you understand why some people might not be comfortable with that? >> i certainly do. i would say that, look, deciding difficult issues, particularly difficult constitutional issues is why we have courts. that's what our courts do every day. i take your point that somebody's age is a much simpler question. tell american court system decides what the questions mean and who does it apply to on a daily basis, and in this case, whether you look at what the house select committee on january 6th found, or what conservative scholars, professors, a very prominent conservative scholars were, a lot of people across the political spectrum are looking at this and they're saying, the law and the facts are very clear here. now, it is true that certainly one line of criticism is, shouldn't the american people get to vote? and one of the retorts to that is that is what happened in 2020. the american people got to decide whether they wanted to vote for donald trump. they didn't vote for him. he refused to semithe result of that election and actually ultimately incited a violent attack. there is no particular reason to believe that the result would be different this time. so the idea that we just trust it to democracy when you're talking about someone who has literally attacked democracy is not particularly satisfying. >> one of the things you just mentioned is that you are gathering evidence, preparing to go to court. basically to have a trial on the subject. just explain to us here, are you suggesting that basically, you're going to put donald trump on trial in all these different jurisdictions and litigate the factual question of whether or not he participated in an insurrection? that sounds to me similar to the question that is being investigated at the federal level by jack smith. it sounds to me similar to the question being investigated at the state level in georgia. you all are going to do that state by state? >> we are starting in one state. we may well do others. and it is, these are not criminal trials. we're not trying to have anyone go to prison. this is just a question of qualification. but they are, you know, we are ready to make a comprehensive factual showing. and then we'll see what happens from there. that may enable future court cases. it also may empower secretaries of state who can make these constitutional decisions on their own but may not want to do that before a court has had the opportunity to look at evidence. they may be able to go do that without having the same kind of procedure in every state. >> a lot of secretaries of state, we read the statement yesterday to the michigan secretary of state as well. they believe this is going to the supreme court. this is a really conservative supreme court. donald trump has appointed several of its members. what makes you think you would be successful at the supreme court level if this goes there, as it might eventually? >> i do th