The US special counsel investigating former President Donald Trump files an updated indictment that removes several pages of allegations following the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling.
For instant analysis, Bloomberg Businessweek hosts Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec speak with Bloomberg legal reporter Erik Larson.
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The US Special Council appointed to investigate claims of interference in the twenty twenty election filed updated charges against Donald Trump on Tuesday. With more, we've got Bloomberg News US legal reporter Eric Larson. He's here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio talk about a surprise fall of filing.
Come as it really did come as a surprise, and of it, we were expecting there to be additional court hearings in the case in Washington to see what was going to happen next, whether or not the judge there would just sort of decide on her own what charges in the in the case could go forward given that Supreme Court landmark ruling that presidents have some immunity from criminal charges. So it was just a wait and see what was going to happen with the case. And now we know there's a so called superseding indictment, a brand new indictment by Jack Smith. They've put in here that according like this is their view of how the case needed to given that landmark Supreme Court ruling in Trump's favor largely, So now we'll sort of restart the case a little bit as it moves forward here.
Yeah, from what I understand, the new indictment cutting certain allegations related to Trump's communications with government officials, including the section related to his alleged efforts to involve the Justice Department, But still those same for charges accusing him of conspiring to overturn the results of the twenty twenty election still there. So is it the whole idea is to make it a stronger case for Jacksmith.
I think the idea is to make it a case that, if when it returns to the Supreme Court, will survive the new scrutiny that they've put up there. So it's all going to boil down to whether or not everything in the indictment can be viewed as an official act or on the outer boundaries of an official act, or whether it's private conduct. So Jack Smith's team is, you know, clearly that they've gone through they had another grand jury. You know, look at this, and I'm this is the case that they think will survive the Supreme Court ruling if it goes back to the Supreme Court.
So go ahead, Well, so what happens next?
So what happens next? I don't know exactly for sure. But if I had to excuse yeah, well, there's no chance of a trial happening before the election at this point. Even before this superseding indictment was filed, that seemed like it was off not going to happen. So what will happen is the case will potentially have a new arguments where Trump's lawyers will argue to dismiss this superseding indictment. You can be sure they'll be disagreement over whether or not this has been narrowed enough to fit the Supreme Court ruling. Trump's lawyers may seek to narrow it further, or to have the whole thing tossed out again is another possibility. So it really remains to be seen if this ever does go to trial. Of course, plenty of people say if Trump wins, he'll just have this case thrown out. If he loses, of course, then this case we'll proceed.
Just reminder, this is completely separate from the Manhattan jury on May thirtieth finding Trump guilty on thirty four counts of falsifying business records.
Right right, that's a separate case. He was convicted in that case that did go to trial, obviously.
And he'll be sentenced or the Dutch judge he's supposed to be sentenced on September eighteenth.
That is correct, and we are waiting for a decision from that judge, Juan Marshan here in Manhattan, on whether or not to delay that sentencing until after the election. Trump made sort of a last ditch motion saying that it would be election interference for him to be sentenced with the election so near, and some other arguments as well.
If back to the filing from today, if Trump does win the election in November, can he make all of this go away?
That is our understanding is that the Justice Department is part of the executive branch, of course, and the president has a lot of authority to pressure or direct the Justice Department on cases. That's idly expected that that is what Trump would do. It's less clear exactly what steps he would have to go through to get there. For example, if an Attorney general could theoretically challenge him on that. But again, this is a lot of hypotheticals. But certainly the legal experts that we've been speaking to for months now theorized that if Trump is elected, he would have this case tossed out.
Sure about the Jack Smith. Yes, I mean, this is so remind us of kind of where we are on the case the white Board cases against former President Donald Trump.
Sure, so the one that we know he's already lost. He faces up to four years in prison on thirty four counts of falsifying business records to hide that hush money payment to Stormy Daniels before the twenty sixteen elections. So it seems like so long, so long ago he was in president when he wasn't president. But he argues, actually that this immunity ruling from the Supreme Court affects that trial as well, even though it had nothing to do theoretically with being president. He said that the trial that we have here in New York that we covered was tainted by testimony and other evidence that wouldn't have been allowed under this Supreme Court standard, because even though the hush money was paid to Stormy Daniels before the twenty sixteen election, some of the witnesses were his White House officials. The payments that he made, for example, were made, you know, while he was president, repaying Michael Cohen his.
How does that work though, Well.
What he's saying is that some of the payments were when he was once in the White House, but initially the hush money was happened before he was even there.
It was made by Michael Cohen one hundred and thirty thousand dollars and then he Cohen was and definitely before the.
Supreme Court ruling on immunity, right.
I mean it potentially is it is a long shot. The Manhattan dishest attorney says, there's no way this has an effect, and the case should the verdict should not be thrown out. So we'll wait to see what happens with that. Of course, the other Jack Smith case, the other federal case that was brought over Trump's taking of classified documents from the White House and his alleged obstruction of efforts to get them back, that was dismissed by Judge Eileen Cannon and Florida and the Special Counsel is going to be appealing to try to get that case revived.
Wasn't there. And there's also the Georgia case.
There's the Georgia case. Yes, a lot of drama from that one. It's sort of been on hold because of the dispute over Fannie Willis. The Fulton County District attorney there and the relationship that she had with the lead her lead prosecutor, and so there's been an effort to have her thrown out of the case. And I think we're just waiting for something to happen on that. So they have to straighten out the whole issue with that prosecutor before anything can happen again in that case.
Unbelievable.
Thank you so much, You're welcome.
Thank you so much. That really puts it all in perspective and gets us up to date.
I know, yeah, it's like, thank you.
That's Bloomberg News US legal reporter Eric Larson, who wasn't scheduled to be on with us today, but so much.
First, he's always to stay in August.
He's always be happy to be here.