George Conway Talks About Donald Trump's Court Cases

is convicted on 34 counts so I think there's a decent chance uh that he will be sentenced to a term of incarceration but the term incarceration would not go into effect until all his appeals have run he can't appeal until the sentence is entered on the conviction and the conviction is thereby made final so that it can be appealed um so if he if he does end up serving a sentence it will be sometime in the you know a couple of years from now um Assuming he's not elected president in which case if he's elected president then all bets are off it's not I don't think it can is constitutionally possible for any state or the federal government or anybody to incarcerate a sitting president of the United States got it so the 18th just as a practical matter they he let's say he gets sentenced to whatever who the hell knows three months in prison or something yeah and he then immediately appeals he gets to leave like what I I've never been sent before so like what happens there you're sitting there he will file immediately a notice of appeal on the Judgment of conviction and the sentence so he doesn't get cuffed he doesn't get CU I mean in theory um in some cases a criminal defendant who's convicted could start serving his sentence during you know like a murderer or something who has basically who they have dead to rights but I I can't imagine that the the the court the trial court judge or the or the appell at court would I can't imagine they wouldn't give him a stay of execution on the sentence such that he would not be serving the sentence during his op that's unfortunate all right let's move down to DC Jack Smith um has asked for an extension of deadlines um he requested this was maybe a couple days ago now a 3-week delay in in his filing uh after the Supreme Court ruling um uh that is I think for anybody that was still hoping that there was going to be an evidentiary hearing or any testimony ahead of the election that seems unlikely at this point but talk about that delay what you think might be happening in DC yeah I mean one of the one of the um possibilities that we've been talking about I mean you know panish it may as it may seem now in hindsight was that even if the Supreme Court made took all the time that It ultimately did take and then remanded the case to the district court for some kind of a parsing of the allegations of the indictment to determine which ones uh could be tried and which ones could not be tried under some concept of immunity um one of the one of the possibilities was that the district court would have to parse these allegations out by holding essentially a mini trial uh where whereby the district court would hear essentially a an abbreviated or streamlined version of the prosecutor's case and then say okay you can you can try you can you can you can bring this put this before the jury you can't put that before the jury and one of the one of the hopes I think of of of the people who you know who who who including myself who um want him to be brought to Justice sooner rather than later was that this mini trial could start almost as soon as the case got back to the district court and judge chuckin uh gave them a couple of weeks to basically tell me tell her what they what the parties think the schedule would be and then uh the justice department said we need another month which is very was some what surprising because the justice department Jack Smith All Along has been pushing to move the process along as quickly as possible including by trying to LeapFrog the court of appeals on the immunity issue um and then by seeking asking the Supreme Court not to even take the immunity case and then now all of a sudden for the first time he's asking for a delay and we don't know precisely why that is um the motion submitted and and the motion was granted it obviously was not the motion for delay by Smith was granted it obviously was not opposed by Donald Trump's lawyers because Trump's strategy has been in all of these cases to delay and create as many legal and procedural obstacles as possible uh so the court granted that motion and now um it's going to take a few more weeks for Jack Smith uh to tell the court what he wants to do and the thinking the speculation is that he's doing that because Merck Garland doesn't want to have a mini trial that would look political and look like the pro the the justice department is attempting to influence the 2024 election oh you think that's it you don't think it's I think that well I don't know why I can say I I just speculating because that's interesting I would have thought maybe it was just because they were going through the Supreme Court and the the three-pronged ruling about what he's IM I I I don't think that would be the case because I think even though I would not have predicted prec the precise parameters of what the Supreme Court held and I've been critical of it on past podcasts with with Sarah I think we it has always been a distinct possibility that they would do something that would require the district court to parse out the allegations and that being the case you just have to put on a Mini case I don't think there's any magic to it you can you can kind of wing it a little bit and modify what you're put on before the judge as you go along but I you know if um if it were special uh uh special counsel uh Norm Eisen my friend Norm Eisen and I running this case we would have had we would have gone into Chuck in immediately and said okay we're ready we're ready next Monday and here the here are the 10 Witnesses uh we wish to call um but obviously and and we don't know why why Smith doesn't didn't do that he did say in his pleading asking for more time that he needed to consult with other elements of the justice department which indicates there are some discussions in the justice department or that there may be some disagreement in the Justice Department about what exactly to do and from that little tidbit the speculation is that Garland at this point says it's too late we don't we're not going to we're not going to try to push this in front of the public uh now because it would look too political and they're just going to basically sit and and let let the clock run out um before the election and I think what we will see one way or the other we're not going to see any evidence and there's going to be a lot of evidence that we have not seen even though the January 6th committee investigation was and Report was very thorough there's a lot of evidence that justice department must have because of the nature of its investigation and the grand jury powers that it that it that that that can be exercised I I I think what if I had to guess what's going to happen is there's nothing's going to happen this year but assuming Donald Trump does not become president presid of the United States again um we will see probably a superseding indictment next year in which Donald Trump and a bunch of other people are indicted