Cornell Law's William Jacobson on Jack Smith’s new indictment against Donald Trump

[Music] now from the Signature Bank Studios only the biggest stories only the biggest guests and only the biggest opinions This Is am560 The [Music] Answer top of the morning Dan and Amy so uh professional Hatchet Man Jack Smith has filed a superseding indictment well secured a a superseding indictment on President Trump in the documents case after the previous case was dismissed the new 36-page charging document based on a more refined set of criminal acts after the Supreme Court uh ruled Trump was immune for prosecution for for some of the conduct included in the original indictment that was returned last year the uh for counts against Trump he previously faced including conspiracy to Def fr the US M are are maintained but Li the evidence is limited uh including um uh even the removal of one of the unnamed individuals from a list of unindicted co- conspirators that unnamed individual believed to have been Jeffrey Clark who led who was a a lawyer in the Justice Department Smith and his team has said a Federal grand jury in Washington DC returned the superseding indictment yesterday uh they are not uh opposing waving Trump's appearance at an arraignment on the new charging document uh so I mean we'll see if this goes uh any further than the previous iteration of it but it certainly doesn't seem possible that it would go anywhere before November 5th for more on this and other matters please to be joined Again by Professor William Jacobson clinical professor of Law and director of the Securities Law clinic at Cornell Law School he's also the founder of legalinsurrection.com which is a must-read Blog the president of Le legal Insurrection Foundation as well as the equal protection project Professor Jacobson thanks for joining us again appreciate it thanks for having me on uh so um your um handle on this uh superseding indictment that Smith secured yesterday well other than the timing I don't think it's anything particularly dramatic he is attempting whether he'll be successful to evade the Supreme Court ruling on immunity by taking a few things out saying charges but why is he doing it now why is he doing it uh when people are starting early voting next week that's really the question why is this guy so obsessed he could have just uh gone a different way and agreed in court to drop certain of the evidence in certain of uh you know the portions of the prior indictment but he made a decision he made a decision to re-indict now uh right on the cusp of voting so I think that just goes to show why so many people are questioning this entire process uh president Trump took the truth social with an extended post including several phrases in all caps this is merely an attempt to interfere with the election no presidential candidate or candidate for any office has ever had to put up with all of this lawfare and weaponization directly out of the office of a political opponent uh theyve weaponized local Das and AGS and everybody else that will listen to interfere with the upcoming 2024 presidential election so he certainly has a a viewpoint on the timing that you're describing and and frankly um some of his uh new found supporters or at least formally established new found supporters like RFK Jr and tulsey gabard are really singing the same song from their perspectives yeah I think this is exactly what RFK Jr was talking about when he announced that he was going to be backing Trump the lawfare that he's been subjected to I mean we have these bizarre situations in certain states where the Democrats fought to get RFK Jr off the ballot and now that he wants to be off the ballot they're fighting to keep him on the ballot right complet doesn't that seem like election interference yeah I mean whether it's legally a crime I don't know but it certainly is election interference in any way that you or I or any you know hopefully normal person would view this this is Jack Smith knew exactly what he was doing the headlines this week are about a new indictment it's going to be a Democrat talking point it's probably gonna come up in the fake staged uh interview that camela and her sidekick walls are going to have on CNN this is just gives them a talking point bring it up again again oh the Supreme Court means nothing they've just re-indicted him I we all know what's going on here the American public at least half of us are not stupid in when it comes to these political things we understand exactly what's going on and and there's no chance that this goes anywhere before November 5th I don't think so I mean I can't imagine you know it will start a a court process in the sense of doesn't start a new court case but will you know Trump will be able to now challenge this new indictment right and so it will start a process that in no conceivable world uh could finish or get anything substantive done by election day but it will be in the news it will be in the news and there will be things going on in court which will be in the news and that's what the Democrats want and I think that's what Jack Smith wants I mean we should be honest about what his motivation seems to be be in these things um yeah unless we forget I mean there's a whole the whole issue of the constitutionality of Jack Smith as a special prosecutor that's right I mean he was the case was dismissed in Florida on the ground that he was not constitutionally appointed and so because you know he's not an officer uh you know who has been confirmed by the Senate and the he was not appointed under any law that allows specifically someone for his position the the so-called independent Council law expired two decades ago there is no law that says you can have special councils even though a lot of presidents have done it and so yeah I think there's a whole lot of questions here I think he's just probably frustrated his Florida Cas has gone away until some appeals court or the Supreme Court rules differently on whether he's qual he's properly appointed and now DC is going nowhere fast and I think he's frustrated I think his whole thing was he's going to have Trump convicted before election day now you wrote an article about uh European social media censorship and do you think it's going to happen here in America well it is happening here if you read the what uh Zuckerberg wrote his Maya Cula a little late like two to three years late but may Cula about how the Biden Administration pressured him to uh suppress covid information he didn't like they didn't like and information about Hunter la top so it is happening here but the spark of that oped was the arrest of the founder of telegram by the French and it's very murky as to why he was arrested you're saying it's because he did not cooperate with them in terms of monitoring and uh moderating content on telegram now I don't really use telegram I think we do have an account at the website but I don't really go there but it has served as an outlet for people around the world who have been stifled in their home countries unfortunately it's also served as an outlet for terrorist groups and others but the whole concept that he's being arrested for failing to moderate content as somebody who runs a website that's a pretty scary uh proposition yeah it was also interesting that uh durov apparently told police he was scheduled to have dinner with French prime minister Emanuel macron the night he was arrested well so that a set up so yeah so so is mcro like a law enforcement asset now or is uh is there something else going on and he and apparently um he uh um he was invited I mean this is not longstanding he had lunch with mcon in 2018 um he was invited to relocate his company to Paris they even discussed the possibility of granting paval durov French citizenship durov ultimately declined he's a citizen of UAE now but I mean boy it's it's really I mean it's it's one of those things too where it's about a little bit of a cautionary tale even if you're a a tech Titan of U getting in bed with government well it's it's very uh strange I don't think we know all the details there the French have not been forthcoming with them so we don't know we only know right we only know what they say and what they've said or at least suggested is that it has something to do with him failing to control content right on the platform and we know in Britain that's enough to get you arrested now you Pro post a meme I mean there's all sorts of videos I just saw one this morning all sorts of videos of British police arresting people coming to their homes because they didn't like something they posted on Facebook not Facebook on the internet someplace could be Facebook um and so uh and these are not like death threats they posted and things like that these are you know mocking of politicians and mocking of the social situation in Britain and you know I think we're not there yet here because here the government doesn't come and arrest you for the most part uh because of stupid stuff you put on the internet but the social media platforms do the government's job so it's very troubling what's happening happening in Europe because it is going to reach here uh Americans millions of them who use Tel are now you know at risk and what about um Prosecuting uh droes who I don't know uh desecrate a campus Building at Cornell uh I saw that day Hall was uh vandalized by pramas protesters on the first day of classes graffiti reading Israel bombs Cornell pays blood is on your hands glass door was smashed during the incident uh spray painting so on and so forth we had an incident with it at a u Pregnancy Care Center for aid for women by these same people on their way out of town after the DNC in Chicago last week um yeah no nobody ever seems to get yanked in for those police are Johnny on the spot when it comes to social media and also making calls for especially in Europe since we were talking about that for extraditing Elon Musk to face criminal charges and so forth but when it comes to people actually committing acts of violence actually committing uh crimes uh it's there's a little bit less alacrity in pursuing them yeah I mean I think we've seen that around the country at Cornell day Hall is the central administration building it's where the president of the university has his office he's the interim president because the other one quit a couple of months ago yeah so it was very symbolic that they chose day there has been prior graffiti uh on campus last semester uh but to to Target the front door at day Hall to smash it and to spray paint it I think is a signal of the frustration that these students are going through for all their encampments and all their bullhorns and all their robotic chanting for an intifa they really haven't accomplished much they've gotten a few concessions here and there from universities but uh no University to my knowledge has divested from Israel yet no university has really cut off ties with Israel and uh so I'm not sure what they think they're accomplishing but I think their frustration is potentially very dangerous and in fact the student who did it or students who did it spoke anonymously to the Cornell daily son which is the student newspaper and said they they felt the need to get people's attention because nobody's paying attention to them so what's the next step to get attention we had a we had a student last fall who is now serving a four-year prison term for getting attention by threatening to shoot up the kosher dining hall and to Slit Jewish throats on campus is that what they're going to do next so I think it's a very dangerous situation yeah and it doesn't seem to me I don't I don't know I've saw some survey uh uh information recently too that um I I very close to a majority of Jewish students uh on campus feel uncomfortable being identified as Jewish because they fear reprisal um so so I mean that you know that did didn't stop when um when uh the kids broke for summer no and I think that you know what has happened on campuses is they use a code word and the code word is Zionist so they're looking to drive zionists off campus well the vast majority of Jers iist okay so that's the code word that they use and it's become an obsession uh they're going to at UCLA they set up a checkpoint which a judge excoriated issued rection against it um but on Cornell it's the same thing they're trying to make it toxic and unacceptable socially to accept you know to acknowledge that you're a Zionist and I think they're having some success because the majority of Jewish students who do support the existence of Israel as a Jewish homeland um are now afraid to even identify as being Jewish so anti- Zionism is in fact the new anti-Semitism Professor William Jacobson is a Clin professor of law director of the Securities Law clinic at Cornell he's also the founder of legalinsurrection.com and president of the legal Insurrection Foundation as well as the equal protection project Professor Jacobson thanks as always appreciate it okay great take care thanks you two and he joined us on our turkey. proo line This is Chicago's more