Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman — Find Me the Votes - with Evan Thomas

good afternoon uh everyone and um welcome to politics and Pros it's nice to see that there's a little bit of interest in this subject uh to today I'm I'm Brad Graham the co-owner of the bookstore along with my wife Lissa mustine and uh we're very excited to be hosting two veteran investigative journalists Michael isakov and Daniel clyman uh who have written a very comprehensive and authoritative book about Fanny Willis's case against Trump and his allies for plotting to overturn uh or try to overturn the the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia uh the book called find me the votes went to press uh shortly before the stunning news of a romantic relationship between Willis and um an outside lawyer she'd hired to serve a special prosecutor in the case Nathan Wade uh but in the course of researching the book U Mike and and Dan got to know Willis quite well they interviewed her uh something like six times over many hours and and came away with um with a a nuanced portrait of her uh as they say a complicated and and very human person so they're very well positioned to talk about this uh latest turn of of events involving Willis and Wade and what it means and to talk as well of course about all that went into the development of the complex racketeering case against Trump and and 18 others now both Mike and and Dan have long history is pursuing important stories for various Publications Mike worked at the Washington Post Newsweek in NBC News and is uh currently Chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo news um where he also is editor at large for reporting and investigations and Dan uh has held reporting or editing positions at Newsweek in Yahoo news and is now an investigative producer at at CBS News um both men also have have written previous books Mike authored or co-authored three earlier Works uncovering Clinton about the Clinton presidency hubris about the buildup to the Iraq War and Russian Roulette about Russia's role in the 2016 election of um of trump and and Dan wrote a kill or capture about the war on terror under Obama in find me the votes the authors provide a detailed reconstruction of the efforts by Trump and his co-conspirators to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia why why the focus on Georgia uh well as um as as as the as I'm sure you'll hear Mike and Dan elaborate on they contend that that Georgia was ground zero for the whole anti-democratic plot to to steal the uh the national election and the maneuverings there were were the most furious elaborate and and senators and Sinister the author show and thus best illuminate what Trump was um was attempting to do in conversation with Mike and Dan will be another very accomplished journalist and author Evan Thomas I'm sure he's well known to many of you he Evan spent nearly a decade with Time Magazine and then reported and edited at Newsweek magazine for more than 20 years he's taught writing and journalism at Harvard and Princeton and he's written 11 books so far far um the most recent of which road to surrender came out last year and is about the decision making in in 1945 in both the U the US and Japan that led to the dropping of nuclear bombs on on Japan uh so ladies and Gentlemen please join me in welcoming Mike Dan and [Applause] Evan is politics and Pros the greatest bookstore there is yes uh Dan and Mike are the two best reporters I've ever met I work with them for years on many stories uh we had a lot of fun a few fights over the years uh but uh so uh here we are we're gonna get to fonnie uh but uh first uh uh let me just tell you this is a great and very readable book uh but so uh uh Mike uh why don't you tell us well Danny why don't you let's start with Danny Danny why don't you start telling us how how you got how you got onto this uh well Mike and I had um you know talked about doing a book together for a long time our uh agent Gail here um Superstar agent U has proded us to write a book together um we were working um at Yahoo news together um and um um I guess one incentive to write a book was that uh Yahoo was acquired by a private Equity company so like maybe now's the time to write that to get a good contract um and then you know we knew I think uh I think from the very first conversation we had that the story that we wanted to tell was something about uh democracy and Peril uh the January 6th um uh attack on um on on assault on Congress was uh uh pretty still pretty close in the rearview mirror um and so uh we knew that this is the general neighborhood that we wanted to be in and then we looked around at the potential criminal cases against Trump remember Jack Smith hadn't done anything yet they were investigating but we didn't know where it was going to go he hadn't been appointed yet well he hadn't been appointed that's right but uh the justice department was looking at it um uh but we knew that January 6 was was going to be under you know be a lot of scrutiny there and that's one direction we could have gone in but then we looked Georgia and Georgia just struck us as really the most interesting um of all of the potential uh cases uh for a bunch of reasons it was um uh it was sort of the epicenter of Trump's most furious um effort to overturn the election um it was uh um and and really the widest scope of alleged criminality uh which you know we now see in that massive indictment that fonny Willis brought but from the the original sin the phone call to Brad renberger to the fake elector scheme to a cyber Heist uh of a um election office in in rural Georgia uh and and then um the the the terrible uh threats uh you know racially motivated in a lot of instances threats against average people in Georgia pole workers everyone knows the story I think of uh of uh Ruby Freeman and her daughter sheay Moss but this was just pervasive and there was a human Dimension to the story a human toll uh of all of this terrible activity and and and conspiracy mongering that was that was going on um that we thought was an important uh story to tell and then finally and I know Mike's goingon to have something to add to this uh you know I think we could already see um that there was a pretty good chance that you know Trump was going to run again uh and given the hold he had on uh the Republican uh base the Republican party that uh that he might well be the the uh nominee um and so uh we could see a repeat of what happened in 2020 um uh with all of the terrible consequences that that uh meant and we thought it was an important story to tell we were right about that we were right about that right about that if nothing else um yeah just to add very quickly I mean um we were on Ben witness's law fair podcast the other day and he said why did you choose to write about Georgia and um you know I think Danny basically explain you know explained it but you know bottom line is Georgia was the crime scene and all the players who you know factored into January 6 they were all there in Georgia first um from Rudy Giuliani to the proud boys and you know all the crowd extremists um were all active in Georgia but just to add um uh we were talking you know before we began um when we started this I mean you know we had the concept I mean Georgia was Ground Zero um Trump was looking like he was going to run again at the time there was no there was no Jack Smith there was no indication even that the justice department was going to do anything H about Trump's efforts to overturn the election the one person who was was fonnie Willis and she got in the game right away because as you'll see in chapter one The Brad raffensberger when he took that phone call from Donald Trump um remind him about the phone calls not everybody knows that well I mean look the the the you know look find me the votes plays off the uh the Trump raffensberger phone call January 2nd um Trump um calls the Secretary of State Brad raffensberger and for 62 minutes tries to Badger Kajol Badger pressure him to change the vote totals in Georgia to find him 11,780 votes one more than he needed to flip George's electoral votes um and um you know this is the first day fonny Willis took office that the tape of that call was released and by the way one of our most interesting stories I think in the book is how the tape came to in existence in the first place we can get to that but that was the first day fonny Willis was on the job and everybody on cable TV is dissecting Trump's words fonny Willis was focused on one thing where was raffensberger when he took the phone call he was in John's Creek a upscale um suburb but just a couple of miles in the Fulton County Line it's in her jurisdiction one of my my County this happened on my turf and you know right away she said yeah we're GNA have to investigate this a potential crime took place in my County so how where did how where do you begin you you you know about the leaked tape everybody's listened to that tape of of trump badgering ra renberger but renberg but then what do you guys do I think we I think we began uh you know by by um you know when you're when you're doing a story about an investigation um you know there are people out there who are investigating the story and so we wanted to I think figure out how can we figure out what the investigators were doing and so I think the first thing we did was try to find if we could get some kind of Toe Hold inside fonny Willis's office and uh that was not easy it was it was discouraging at first because uh uh it was you know people didn't want to talk um and they certainly didn't want to talk to a couple of investigative reporters who are going to be almost in real time uh reporting uh reporting out uh what they were investigating actually I I don't think I've ever really done that before where where in in kind of parallel we're investigating the same things that uh that the that they were investigating and learned some things that they didn't learn I should point out that when we started we had no sources in Georgia at all but this is the joy of reporting you know and you know we literally had to go down there time and time again and you know start from scratch developing sources because we always wanted the story to be and the book to be more than just the story of the investigation right it was you know the whole million in Georgia that produced all the players and there were a lot of coal players a lot of people and we wanted one one one thing we I think realized from the beginning uh was that uh one of the themes important themes in this book was going to be uh race that was going to be a a really essential element um because at at the end of the day and this is the way fonnie Willis frames it but she's right uh this was a this was a uh a a a a vote a voter voting rights case or or a voter suppression case it was an effort to uh deprive millions and millions of people um in Georgia um of the vote black and white Fon County by the way is majority black and and uh so these issues really resonated and of course Georgia with its history you know a hundred years of Jim Crow uh where black people were were deprived of the vote um you know uh that was that was a really uh important element and so when we started uh Georgia we knew that Georgia and Atlanta were going to be characters in this book we were doing this book against the backdrop of all of that history um and in fact you know I think the first I you know when you're writing a book you always think about uh models you always think about like other books that you know can provide inspiration and the first book we talked about and I reread was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil um because of all the wonderful characters and um and and and some of those themes um and we have any trans characters though we did not we did not no we looked at one point um we're walking down um a the street in in in Atlanta um and we had already learned about some of the we'd been talking to defense lawyers we'd learned about some of the colorful uh criminal cases down there um and um and and and I remember Mike saying you know this book had end up being a cross between midnight and garden good Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil And Gone With the Wind and G and and and gone and gone with the we had grandiose thoughts yeah yeah yeah so uh uh but I wanted the movie that would open up with the big and everybody's there so the the prosecutor is not supposed to talk to you how do you get her to talk to you um well as Danny said it wasn't easy um we spent a lot of time uh trying to um you know get in the door and um you know she gave she gave interviews almost all the interviews you know we approached her for was about her and we weren't stupid enough to like start asking about the mechanics of the case because we knew she couldn't talk to us about that but look she is a fascinating character she really is her history is her background I mean she's as we write in the book literally a daughter of the Civil Rights Movement her father who raised her was a civil rights activist who became a black panther in fact he founded the Black Panther Party of Los Angeles and um you know talk about um uh romantic relationships he lived for at least six months with one of the other Central Committee members of the Black Panther Party of Los Angeles Angela Davis um that was something and and actually Angela Davis even confirmed this to us in a email uh as the book was uh wrapping up um but you know he was you know throughout the South he was security for UI Newton um he got arrested um uh and he was quite the activist um and then finally sort of overtime shed some of his um black nationalist views and became quite mainstream he ended up working for Tom Bradley uh the first um uh black mayor of Los Angeles um but he moved to Los an moved to Washington DC raised her here he was an administrative law judge and she um you know she went to Howard um Emory law school was a standout there won a national uh mood Court Championship um gets a job with the Fulton County DA's office and she is the star litigator in that office for years I mean she was started out as a homicide prosecutor and after too long they used to tell young lawyers in the Fulton County DA's office you want to see how to do a homicide case go watch fonny Willis do it she racked up you know multiple convictions for murders rapes and all and then she does the biggest most sophisticated RICO case in the history of Georgia which was the Atlanta Public School teachers case which was quite controversial by the time by the way particularly in the black community um because um almost all the defendants um were black school teachers and administrators and this you know caused quite a Ruckus um but she was determined she was convinced as or convinced herself as we write that the real victims here were the kids and she brought the case she won the case um and um uh you know one you know then she runs and to unseat her boss who had been her Patron for years Paul Howard after he gets involved in a number of of um uh questionable activities um but just one thing I should add on this um um fonnie Willis is not the prosecutor a lot of liberals would like her to be she's no Progressive prosecutor in fact she's the opposite and when the George Soros organization went down when she was running for da to grill her um about um her her views um she immediately made it clear she was even with million potential Millions of dollars in campaign contributions on the line she was not going to say what they wanted her to say she yes she would use the death penalty if it was necessary no she was not going to apologize for Atlanta Public School teachers case and she knew that that was going to cost her she didn't care um she never got George she never got a dime of George soros's money one other story from that um uh DA's race that's interesting um an she got endorsed by the police Union this is the in the summer of George Floyd and the Atlanta police Union is endorsing her because she was the crime fighter um and she had backing from a big wealthy Republican activist in Buckhead Mary Northwood and Norwood Norwood narwood and tii who's a big rap guy Grammy award-winning and a political power broker in Atlanta goes to her during the election and says look I want to back you but not with you getting support from the police Union and Mary nor uh Norwood um you renounce their endorsements give back their money and I'll make you whole I'll make up for all the uh money that you're going to lose and she said no way they're members of my community and I'm not going to renounce their support TI gets up and walks out of the meeting by the way she's no right- Winger I mean you know she's a she's a liberal Democrat um and she believes in in some aspects of Criminal Justice Reform uh but she's kind of a traditional prosecutor in the way that we used to uh see you know big city prosecutors all over the country uh whether they were uh Democrats or Republicans we we'll come back to fonnie but let's talk for a second about the other side how do you get this's unbelievable cast of characters in this book out of a movie how do you how do you get to those people how do you figure out who they are and how do you get to them Danny why don't you talk well we we have a a chapter called the qinon commission um chapter six um and it's actually you know I think everybody remembers uh that you know that some of these some of the people around Trump were queueing on Curious um you know you had um you know Mike Flynn uh and um he was more than curious yeah he was more than curious um but I think um we were surprised at the extent to which qanon was really driving the stop the steel Enterprise and we focus um that chapter on a lawyer named Lynn wood um many of you will remember him he was a celebrated trial la lawyer in the 9s um he did the Richard juwel case the falsely accused uh Olympic uh o Atlanta Olympic bommer he did uh he represented John Benet Ramsay's family uh and then a few years ago he goes down the qinon uh Rabbit Hole um I mean you know totally I mean he's a full-on q andon devotee who's tweeting that Mike Pence is going to be um executed by firing squad and Chief Justice John Roberts uh is involved in pedophilia and sex trafficking rings I mean just with Jeffrey Epstein with Jeffrey Epstein of course I mean just crazy stuff uh and we sort of um and I was fascinated uh by by that and by the fact that this you know kind of guy who is having a like a major kind of crackup um uh is invited into the inner sanctum of the Trump legal battle in Georgia he's the face of the Trump legal battle down there uh by uh don Trump Jr uh and then Trump himself uh is is is calling him you know on a regular basis cheering him on uh and you know we had to tell this story um Lynwood has a a plantation called tatle in um in in the low country of uh South Carolina um and and that is where in the in a couple of weeks after the election Sydney Powell Mike Flynn um some of the some of the financial Patrick burn the financial backers of all of this they fly in there and and in this uh Civil War uh era uh Plantation they are planning uh basically the the sort of the coup they're they're vetting all of these what they call evidence and and and tips uh which were just you know all crazy uh crazy things rooted in in these conspiracy uh theories and they're filing laws suits um and um you know we needed to be able to tell that story so uh we called around a lot and there are sort of these sort of concentric circles there there are people who were brought in for a few days here and there uh people who um were kind of Consulting and we happened upon a small number of people um who were witness to all of this and to some extent uh were involved and then realized how crazy it was um and some of them had pangs of conscience um and when um when when we found them uh they were they were willing to talk about it I mean you could tell in talking to these people uh that you know one of them said to me at one point you know how in the world that I get myself into this um and we're I think eager uh to talk to a reporter and you find that you find that over the course of you know your your career doing this kind of reporting that sometimes people just have been holding things in and want to talk uh and that's what happened uh to some extent in this case I think just to put a button hole on this like the uh I think we write in the book that what happened in Georgia was both more Sinister and crazier than anybody imagined and the qinon stuff in tatle is the crazier part because if you read that chapter it was truly Bonkers what these people were doing I can never tell whether these guys believe it well there's an email actually which we have uh which is pretty Illuminating and it's Lynn wood to Sydney Powell she basically says you know yeah we got data but you're not going to need it we just have to look like we're doing litigation ha um it wasan he gave away the store there I mean these were not serious lawsuits they were just you know attempts to throw out a lot of wild allegations to stir people up and um the lawsuits for political leverage right and this is why uh you know because you could say well it's a it's a kooky story about these you know kind of batshit crazy people and these ridiculous uh exotic you know conspiracy theories but it had consequences um and and Lynnwood and the others are flooding social media in in in Georgia and around and around the country with uh all of these lies um and you know and and and riling people up um and that's what leads to it it it unleashes the torrent of horrible threats uh that were um uh that that that that reigned upon you know people like Ruby Freeman and her daughter and tell that story well well tell tell the Robby Freeman oh I'll tell that in a second but just to wrap this up one more time the uh these people that the sources that we developed on this actually had the receipts they had videos they had audios they had text messages mail and we got them and you know one of the things you discover is Trump is down there talking to these people all the time I mean we got the tape of him calling Lynn wood and and uh Sydney Powell go get him he says go get him knock him it was the day in December 2nd they were in Atlanta and they were doing what they called the Jericho March which was a rally to get people to surround uh Governor Kemp's mansion and horns until he uh declares open a special session of the state legislature um uh that was the thing um Ruby Freeman and sheos you know one of the more poignant stories of this whole um Affair I mean these two African-American election workers mother and sonter mother and daughter thank you of course um doing their job election night and all of a sudden Rudy Giuliani is going before the Georgia legislature playing a sliced and diced edited video that suggests they were doing all sorts ofing ballot stuffing bringing out suitcases of Biden ballots after everybody was ordered to leave and then stuffing them through the vote scanners time and time again um the important thing to know is first this was debunked immediately by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the FBI and the US attorney's office in fact you know what happened as soon as this hit the um news um everybody was freaking out oh my God is there you know did something happen here bar Bill bar then the attorney general who had just publicly said there was no evidence of voter fraud then sees this calls down to the us. attorney in Atlanta BJ pack and said you need to investigate this right away I need to know if there's anything to it the FBI is sent in with the gbi Georgia Bureau of Investigation and within days they report back this is all bogus there's absolutely nothing to it they went through the whole video they interviewed all the players everything that was asserted by Rudy Giuliani and a number of others at that Georgia legislative meeting was um was false and this was reported back um all the way up the chain didn't matter um magga media went crazy went after these people constantly Trump himself in that raffensberger phone call refers to Ruby Freeman 18 times he's obsessed all because of these bogus charges that um that Rudy Giuliani uh had and juliani is calling them drug dealers everything has a racial kind of uh you know uh overtone and as a result they're being harassed intimidated at their home one of the people who organized this intimidation campaign banging on the door demanding that they confess um was a paid operative of the Trump campaign he's one of the indicted uh defendants um who's paid like over $100,000 by the Trump campaign so and and Ruby Freeman had to leave her house I mean for two months at the FBI's recommendation just like go someplace else you got to get out of here Shan Moss had to change her appearance and it led to what I think is some one of the most you know terrifying words ever said to a congressional committee when Ruby Freeman testified before the January 6 committee do you know what it's like to have the president of the United States Target you there's a lot of it not just them it's all sorts of people the threat levels in this yeah talk a little bit about that well you want to talk about what fonnie Willis was experiencing herself yeah look the one other example before we get to fonny Willis uh you know the the Trump people were and everybody down at tatle at at the plantation were completely obsessed with the Dominion voting machines which uh they believ uh this is Sydney Powell pushing this but they a lot of them were trying to prove it they believe that uh those voting machines uh that that Venezuelan uh Communists uh close to uh Chavez who'd been dead for quite a while by then anyway uh but they had implanted um algorithms inside these uh these machines that were flipping votes from uh from uh uh Trump to Biden um and so they were obsessed with getting a hold of the machines that's what leads by the way to the Coffee County cyber Heist that I mentioned um earlier um but um at one point um a a young uh Tech worker in Georgia for Dominion um is uh there's a video of him um with his laptop putting a thumb drive in his laptop and a guy named Ron Watkins uh gets a hold of this video explain who Ron Ron Watkins is a a hugely important figure in the qanon cult in fact uh he administered the platform uh that everyone what was it Chan I think it was called uh where all the Q qon people uh communicated um and um he even some people believe he is Q himself um uh he um um but but the point is he's zooming in from Japan to tatle with Sydney Powell and lindwood and Mike Flynn all of them offering his um Insight his insights and he gets a hold of this video and he he he tweets it out and he says this is this this guy is is is trying to manipulate voter data um this is evidence of of the fraud that's that's taking place Total nonsense uh but this young Dominion worker who was a um an immigrant from a North African country um just doing his job um the the the video unleashes you know you know the hundreds of thousands of hon followers that that that uh uh that uh Ron Watkins has um and they start doxing him online and you know putting his all of his information out there and and and he's these horrible threats I mean these unbelievably violent threats rain down upon him the GI with the Noose by house there's there's a gift with the Noose by his house that's all over social media um it's just Relentless and to this day we understand this poor guy is suffering the the effects of of P TSD from from this experience and and many of you maybe all of you in this room will remember um a a kind of inflection point in all of this after after the election Gabriel Sterling who was the um chief of operations inside the Secretary of State's office in Georgia he's had it he hears about what happened to this young Tech worker he goes down to he he he he goes out to the uh hallway in the in the Georgia state capital and he gives this press conference this kind of iconic now press conference in which he castigates the president uh for all of the conspiracy mongering and at the end of it he says you know Mr President someone is going to get killed says prophetically let me pick up on that and get to the the threats stani Willis herself because in a way you know it's there's kind of a parallel she's investigating all these threats to people like Ruby Freeman and jam moss and this this young kid um but when she starts Trump starts riling up his folks he calls her a racist a Marxist a radical and then she starts getting a torrent of threats um that become that escalate over time she has to move out of her house um she's given a Kevlar bulletproof vest to wear when she's out in public as our members of her team and as they get closer to the indictment those threats get more and more harrowing and you know we open the book with this phone call she gets on her personal cell phone um a few days before the indictment a digitally disguised voice talking about how she's going to get raped and killed and murdered using the n-word and then the digitally disguised voice brings up her daughters cites their name cites where they live and and that's you know that spooked her the other stuff she insist did not but when they brought up her daughters and then and then just before the indictment this is in August um as they're getting ready to announce the indictment they pick up on a Maga website um an assassination threat the best time to to to shoot her is when she leaves the building um so she goes out and gives that midnight PR conference we were there along with the rest of the press Corps waiting this is the big news the conspiracy case against Donald Trump she goes back after that press conference goes back to her office takes off her business suit a black business suit and Pearls puts on t-shirts sweats baseball cap and a body double um a body double who resembles um fonnie Willis puts on the black business suit and the pearls over a Kevlar bulletproof vest and drives out um in an S SUV with a number of others it was a decoy operation fonnie Willis is smuggled out the back door of our office I mean just think about that think about for a moment you know would you know if Merrick Garland or Jack Smith had to get smuggled out the back of their office because of assassination threats and what a huge story that would be but that was the reality you wonder why moderate congressmen don't stand up to Trump yeah yeah well you know that that Ian that's a important Point um uh you know one of the things that that we uh we saw was it it wasn't just the the the sort of principles the office holders or the election workers who were being threatened it was their children it was their parents it was uh their brothers and sisters their families um and you know look I think that's exactly right and I've talked to uh Republic you Republicans who have said uh that they don't speak up to Trump because because of the potential consequences uh and look at Mitt Romney I mean r Romney in his in his Memoir uh said that he he pays $5,000 a day uh to protect himself and his family now mitt Romy can afford that uh but most people can't um and um and this there's you know we these threats are that was what was happening to fonny Willis was August uh of 2023 there's no reason to think that this isn't going to continue um remember we have a we're almost certainly going to have a rematch between Trump uh and Biden which is going to fulfill all of the the Prophecies of of the kinon crowd um and uh and you know I I think this is the world we live in a big part of it of course um is is social media um and um uh and and that's a problem that we we haven't fixed or aren't uh close to fixing let's we're going to open up the questions in one second I'm just but let's do the fun wait you mean the the the the current the the elephant in the room in the room take question all right um I mean look um I you know obviously um this was a um getting having a relationship with the chief prosecutor was not a smart move on her part it was a uh uh a misjudgment a lapse in judgment um not the only you know not know what we're talking about here I think they all do yeah right right um uh um it was a laps in judgment not the only one she's made and we talk about you know uh the previous time she'd been re reamed out by a judge for um sponsoring a fundraiser for her friend who was running against one of her targets Bert Jones who was one of the fake electors um and that was a what were you thinking moment the judge said to her and you know look I think that you know there is a arrogance to her uh a uh bravado and bragado doio she's a trial lawyer one of the best trial lawyers that ever graced the courtrooms of Fulton County and sometimes trial lawyers like fighter pilots can carry themselves with a certain amount of bravado and certitude big OS and have big OS but look that said that said I mean um I think that the filing that she made on Friday um should go a long way should go a long way to diffusing this controversy um the relationship did not begin until after he was hired so that takes away the idea that you know she hired her lover um and that you know on the trips they you know she paid for plenty on the trips other trips um and you know they assert that it was roughly equal equal if that's the case and no evidence come is presented that contradicts what they've said and it's hard to imagine that they these are two professionals who have their law licenses on the line I can't imagine that they would have you know falsely uh put in an affidavit from Wade and and Wade back in but let me just say I I got one more thing point to make of course you do of course I do um you know at the end of the day um you know they're gonna get before the judge and the judge mcavey is likely to ask Ashley Merchant the lawyer for Michael Roman the defendant who filed this motion can you explain exactly how the relationship between the da and Nathan Wade prejudiced your client and I have no idea how she could possibly answer that because there simply is no evidence that it prejudiced their client no violation of any constitutional rights no Prejudice just quickly to follow up on on what what Mike's saying look at the end of the day the judge has to make a decision as to whether uh to uh Grant the motion I.E disqualify fonnie Willis and her whole team or dis and uh dismiss the case uh based on what the laws are in Georgia uh based on um uh you know precedence um and the reality is is that um is is that the conflict finding a conflict of interest that would require disqualification is a very High bar uh and it's not just an appearance of a conflict it's an actual conflict and the conflict has to be you know that there was some Financial you had some Financial or other uh interest in the case that that uh in the outcome of the case and I think it's very hard to make that to make that case the the theory is which I think is pretty strained uh because she was paying him uh that um that that that well you know well here's opportunity to drag out this case against the president United States so that we can go on Caribbean cruises I mean I just don't and and the judge is a very careful thoughtful guy I I don't think that's going to hold water with him let's take some questions um have you been following uh the story from last week um where um video footage um came about from another state uh showing that a lot of uh purported um voter registrations had uh false names addresses and phone numbers and enough to would would have flipped the election in that state and this just happened last week which state which state I think it might have been Nevada I'm not sure no I I'm not aware of it but this this happened last week and it was uh in Congress and uh there's not much uh media coverage of it for some reason but um it's out there and take a look at it we look for it thank you next question thank you to Evan's earlier comment do you do you guys have a sense does Trump believe this stuff or is this the power game do you have any sense of does he really believe to try to get inside Trump's head I mean is a feudal exercise you know he believes what he wants to believe what it's in his political interest to believe yeah I agree with that could you speak a little bit about the Republicans who stood firm yes absolutely it's a great question trying to cut you off but you're going yeah I want to know how how and why C was it you know did what he did yeah uh well we we have a whole chapter about this um uh we call it the Iron Wall of uh Stone I'm sorry the Republican stone wall I should know the names of our chapters but uh uh and and it it it really is an extraordinary story um of of of heroism you know all the way from the uh the the top uh of of the government with with uh Kemp as you as you mentioned who uh resist and you know Trump was calling him regularly uh and and furiously pressuring him uh to uh to call re recall the legislature to overturn the election um and uh the Attorney General uh as well who resisted Trump and threatened to resign uh but all the way down to and I'll let Mike tell this uh story which is really one of the most extraordinary stories I think of the whole episode and an example of the unsung heroes many of which Republican who stood up stood up to Trump lower level officials in in the Georgia governments right yes I I will tell that story now but just on the question of Kemp the one explanation we have for why Kemp stood up to um Trump is um his wife Marty was getting fed up with Trump continually taking credit for Kemp's election over Stacy Abrams and they got fed up with that and you know said I'm not doing your bidding anymore um but yeah the story that that um Danny is referring to is I think like one of the most extraordinary stories of the whole 2020 battle which is um raffensberger Chief of Staff this young woman 30y old um political you know consultant who got hired Jordan fuches is her name uh and she was like you know there for the whole pressure campaign on raffensberger you know all the charges you know the proud boys showing up at raffensberger house and um you know the sexualized messages to his wife and then um as we get closer to January 6 on January uh second the Trump people are looking for they need one win for that January 6 to get Kemp to block the electoral votes they just need some somewhere and Georgia had to be I mean come on you know was so close it was the closest state surely um Trump could make it happen so um Mark Meadows calls up Jordan fuches and says you know the president really wants to talk to the secretary and they had been ducking Trump's calls they had tried before um you know Trump was the Trump campaign was suing raffensberger um you know Jordan fuches knew that there was danger putting her boss on the phone with the guy who's suing him especially given the guy's propensity for just inventing stuff about what might happen in a phone call um and she on her own unilaterally without telling raffensberger without telling Meadows makes this spur the- moment decision she's going to tape the call she's on the call but you don't know it because she muted herself the whole time and she taped it and you know uh um unfortunately for her she was in Florida at the time visiting her grandparents and Florida is a two-party consent state so she has never talked about this publicly because she had risked being charged in uh Florida one illegal taping one thing we learned was that the uh the January cyst committee uh very much wanted to speak to her um for obvious reasons um but a lawyer for the Secretary of State's office uh intervened and and and requested that they not call her because of this uh potential legal legal exposure but fonny Willis was able to get her before uh the grand jury um uh but only because she immunized her so she testified for the grand jury with with uh with uh with immunity yeah but but but for Jordan fuches we would not have the sound of of Donald Trump's voice pressuring Brad raffensberger it's Central or this book or this book certainly would have to come up with a different titled um but it was um uh you know the uh we in the book we could say it it was arguably the gutsiest and most consequential action of the entire postelection battle and it's all because of this young woman nobody's ever heard of she made the decision I would imagine a lot of those Republicans who stood up did want to below be below the uh didn't want their names out there but follow up how could Fulton County prosecutor immunize her for a crime that was committed she's immunized for what she said before the grand jury okay yeah hey hi I have so many questions former colleague at the Washington Post yes cannot wait to read this book it's um awesome um so I this is a sort of a reporting type question um when when Evan said that made that comment about and you want wonder why moderate Republicans don't stand against Trump in response to what you said we were talking about the death threats and the other threats something kind of went ping in my mind and it's one of those things we everyone sort of knows this but nobody knows it and I am curious as to sort of why that story has not been more widely reported and how the story of the threats being made against moderate Republicans who might stand up to Trump and their families which like I you know you hear a lot of journalists talk about it everyone kind of knows it but it's not really been reported in the way it might be I'm just wondering like I'm you could say why not but also like how would you go how do you go about really getting that story well I mean part of the problem is uh the people who would tell that story are not going to talk about it on the record right uh for for the same reason that we have this Dynamic right exactly there have you know there have been stories um you know you know but um but I I I agree with you I mean you know this is um it's so pervasive you know and you know sort of anecdotally uh you know I think I I have this vague memory but I could be wrong about this that the Washington Post had actually done some kind of a survey you would want to know how many people out there um have had these kinds of threats uh you know generated uh maybe not directly by by Trump but but but in this this climate that he certainly contributed to um and and and and you know and how many of them have had to get security and I think it's it's an important line of reporting um and there there's probably more that can be done but for the reason I mentioned before some some of it's hard to do because people are not willing to talk about it on the record the threats run through everything related to this case we talk in the book about um uh how fonny Willis had a hard time finding anybody to take the job because of the threat she reached out to Roy Barnes the former Democratic governor of Georgia the and um and um he's he turned her down is quote to us is hypothetically speaking do you want to have a bodyguard following you around for the rest of your life I mean that's actually how she ended up with with with Nathan Wade who was not her first choice or her second choice she only got you know when she couldn't get anybody else to take the job she turned to her friend Nathan Wade thank you so this in a way is a follow-up question to the last one um I know that you're not attorneys I am um but not a litigator not a criminal lawyer I do administrative stuff you know paper a paper lawyer all these threats it seems to me are illegal um and why don't you should check and see if they are illegal and if so maybe I I mean problem is the problem is most of them actually you you'd think they would be yeah but the problem is mostly they aren't because we have a a very robust First Amendment uh in this country and law enforcement you know they they look they they look at the line I mean if if it is a specific uh threat to to go to someone's home and and you know we're going to do this that's one thing if it's you should be you know you should be drawn and quartered you should be you should be uh as opposed to we're going to that distinction is important in terms of whether these are are crimes or not a lot of these threats were investigated you know what tends to happen yeah what tends to happen is um uh this is a kind of a law enforcement tactic where uh the the the local sheriff's office or whoever the law enforcement entity is will will uh will will track down the threat you know because first of all a lot of this is you you know under pseudonyms um people are disguising their identity so first you have to find the person when they do a phone number when they do they will often I forget what it's called I think it's called a knock and something um they will show up at the person's home knock on the their door talk to them try to assess uh whether um whether there's uh you know actually a a crime that that can be investigated or prosecuted and then the idea of it is that you know once they do that mostly the people like well I didn't mean anything by it and and and you know and I won't do it again and they're scared because law enforcement has come knocking on their door the intimidation of Ruby Freeman is charged in the Georg right yes there was a number of people who were charged in that um but it it it it would be interesting to know why the attorney gen our the US attorney general doesn't push harder on this um because uh if it isn't if they don't there Trump you know he won't stop unless somebody stops him and his people are the same same do we think all these threats are from the right or are they from the left too well the ones on the election were from the right um you know look there's plenty of threats from the left on various issues particularly nowadays but um uh what we were investigating was coming from the Trump people a comment and a a question um I have Oh I thought it was I'm sorry have a comment and a question I have friends and relatives live on the street with funny Willis and they've all I didn't hear what you said friends and relatives who lived on the street fny Willis on the street yeah they've moved away they've been threatened and so I want to know where you both of you think this is headed given what you've written and what you've seen yeah I mean Mike talked about this a little bit before um at the end of the day it's it's in the hands of of Judge Scott McAfee um one thing I will say with a a a lot of confidence is that um absent you know some you know huge new bombshell Revelations there's there is no chance that fonny Willis is going to step away voluntarily in fact zero chance was what I was told uh by someone in in her office uh she she is resilient she's a fighter talk about all these threats she's already been through you know even before any of this she's been through a lot and has and has hung hung on um you know I think since uh her office is filing um on Friday um which push back on a lot of the uh uh not all because they acknowledge the relationship but push back on a lot of the um other uh allegations um and um you know the the the the legal arguments that they made that why this is not a a conflict or doesn't even come close to a conflict that would require her being being disqualified you know I think there's a pretty good chance that she is going to survive and that the judge will not disqualify her judges have a certain amount of discretion but at the end of the day they they they they have to uh sort of root their decisions in in the law um and in precedent um and um uh I think it would be hard for for judge McAfee to make an argument that this was a conflict of interest and that's what the that's what the the the threshold is that that that that has to be met that said the uh court of appeals ruling that we're all waiting for and Jack Smith in particular also applies to fonnie Willis if the president is immune then um the case in Georgia can't go forward any the case in DC can go forward we don't think that's going to happen but um the court of appeals do seem to be taking it time any chance of a verdict before November I think they're going down um it now looks like the one case that might go first and you know perhaps the only case is the Alvin Brad case which is the weakest and most trivial of all the cases and it's probably only going to help Donald Trump you don't think the Georgia case is going to get a verdict before November I don't think it's right I mean right now um we don't know whether there's going to be a tri a trial anywhere before November it's possible but you know the court of appeals has got a rule then they then they appeal to the Supreme Court how quickly does the Supreme Court rule it's impossible to say at this point judge taken just removed the Jack Smith case from her calendar it was supposed to start in March and you know there's no trial date at this point on that uncertain not read the book Thank you right so um copies of the book are available to check out Des please form a line to the right of the table

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Id: DEnBp2cY5RQ

Length: 57min 43sec (3463 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2024