Implications of Mark Meadows Getting Immunity

Former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz, a partner at McCarter & English, discusses the Special Counsel giving Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former Chief of Staff, immunity in the January 6th case. Bob Van Voris, Bloomberg legal reporter, discusses the testimony of Sam Bankman-Fried. June Grasso hosts.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:
This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio. We had begun our jury selection process this morning, but I've been informed that there is a change of plea, and then there was another change of plea and another as the dominoes started falling in the Georgia racketeering case accusing Donald Trump and eighteen others of scheming to keep Trump in power after he lost the twenty twenty election. How do you plead to count fifteen conspiracy to commit filing false documents in indictment number two three SC one eight, eight, nine, four seven guilty. Four have now pleaded guilty, including three lawyers. Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors last Thursday. Kenneth Chesborough pleaded to one felony the next day, and on Tuesday, Jenna Ellis pleaded to one felony. Tearfully, I believe in and I value election integrity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post selection challenges. I look back on this whole experience with deep remorse. Here to discuss how all this flipping affects the case against Trump is Michael Moore of Moore Hall, the former US Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. So Michael, four down, fifteen to go. How significant are these please? I think it's significant anytime that you have a co defendive flip, and the lawyers flipping are a little bit of a different bird baby than we normally see. When I listened to miss Ellis and the charges against her, you heard a lot about the Trump campaign, You heard about her direction from others. She called the more senior, more experienced lawyers, and that seems to me probably where the biggest jeopardy lies, and that is with those lawyers who have instructed her to do something. So it sounded like that would be potentially mister Eastmann and mister Giuliani. And of course if they have pressure on them and they were then to cooperate, then they may get to the next level, which would be closer I think to the former president. These are all sweetheart deals, aren't they? The lawyer's deals they are. They are unusually liked. I mean, remember that this case had been tagged as essentially the largest election fraud case in history or something like that, and it's will be a massive reco case, and people are basically walking away with a slap on the wrist. They up with probation, no jail time, and a first offender plea, which means that at the end of a certain period of their probation and the completion of those requirements, the charges are since the dismissed, so that with no record, they can vote, they can have a gun, they can do all those things once they have completed the requirements that the court set out. So they're unusually light, and they are especially like when you compare them with the sentences received by people who were involved at the Capitol on January the sixth, many of whom had jail sentences, some of them very significant. So it's maybe a little bit like the architects of the building are not going to jail, the construction workers who worked on the building are. That's sort of how I see it. So I can see why Willis gave the deals at this point to Powell and Chesbro so that she wouldn't have to go to trial against them early and reveal evidence to Trump. But why give a deal such a good deal to Jenna Ellis? I think probably she has made some statements that the ba will find useful against other people in the indictment. I don't know necessarily that that's Trump, but I think she probably gave them enough information to at least move forward. And also too, I mean, she was essentially a mouthpiece for other folks involved with the campaign, and her culpability I think was probably less than other people who may have been more of a puppet master than she was. CNN I believe is reporting that Willis is talking to six more defendants who will be left to go to trial once it comes time for trial. I mean, does she have a number in mind besides Trump? I think maybe a half dozen people or a few left that will be left standing. And those may be Trump and Juliani, that may be one Eastman, maybe another, people who think they have different constitutional arguments to make. They may be stronger arguments. It will be interesting to see how Metas is involved. I mean, we've heard that he was offered some of me into your cut a deal with Jack Smith. That's very interesting to me given the statements that he has made in the Georgia case, especially during his motion to remove the case to federal court. And you know, essentially he came to Atlanta in federal court and said everything I was doing was lawful. This is part of my job and it's protected activity, and it should entitle me as a federal official to move my case to federal court. And it sounds like to the contrary. When he got to Washington, d C. He decided that he wanted to cut a deal with the special counsel and tell him that, well, I don't know that I was doing the right thing, and I tried to tell the former presence that he was telling lies or whatever. I'm not quoting again, but something to that effect. I don't think those are necessarily consistent positions, and it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. So I don't know if mss Willis at this point, given the objections that he made to have his case tried in Fulton County, will look a favorably on a potential plya offer from him. So he may be one of the few that remain. That's really interesting because he has a very experienced attorney representing him. Do you let your client testify in a federal case to something that's going to cause you jeopardy in a state case? Yeah, I don't think you do. And I think that's the problem. And I do think he has a very good lawyer. I just think some of the statements that he may have made in the federal court here in Atlanta may not be exactly consistent with positions that he has taken to the special counsel. And I don't know how you claim that what you were doing was part of your actual lawful role as a chief of staff then suggest somehow that what you were doing, you know you had objections to because you thought your boss was not tell the truth in this kind of thing. So those will be maybe inconsistencies, and what we have to see actually the substance of each statement side by side. We haven't seen those yet. But any inconsistencies certainly give room to attack credibility with a witness, and may give fodder to a defense attorney to raise objections, and certainly may give some interest at least to a prosecutor to the side when or not you know that witness needs to be put on, is a cooperating witness, or with that witness independent needs to simply move forward toward trial. So this scenario is what they think about when they say the dominoes are falling, Well, it is. You know, if you think about a line of dominoes, a circle of dominoes or whatever, you know, you can pick a domino in the middle of the line and push it to the right or the left, and only the ones in the direction that's falling are going to continue to fall. And so that's why prosecutors try to work from the bottom up. They want to push some that has information at the bottom to try to get to the top. And some people argue you should work your way down. That's not necessarily tear to those people who are much less culpable, but you push generally from the bottom of the top. Cut deals with the people who are les