 Hey, America Finding in Swayze, 11 o'clock block. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. We have an important discussion. We're trying to be helpful here. We're trying to examine Trump's legal solutions, legal solutions for Trump. And we have our regular full panel, Tim Epicella, Winston Welch, Stephanie Stoll Dalton, and Cynthia Sinclair. And we're going to start by playing a little video that goes from page to page examining the issue to get warmed up. Let's play the video. It's a commentary. Alternatives to the commission. You know the commission. OK, stop here. And this is a kind of outline. We have the possibilities of state fraud law in New York. And that's criminal and also civil. We have state criminal law in Georgia. We're interfering with elections. We have federal law on the insurrection. And this against the law, you know, to have an insurrection or a conspiracy for one or an accessory to one. And we have the United States Constitution on insurrection and specific provision in Article 14. OK, next slide. OK, so first is we want to give advice to Cyrus Vance to Mark Pomerance. He's the one that Cyrus Vance has brought in on things. And he's an expert in dealing with people like Trump. And he's probably going to succeed Cyrus Vance when Cyrus Vance retires, I think, at the end of the year. And of course, the attorney general for the state of New York, Leticia James, is also involved in the New York actions against Trump. So our advice, file actions against Trump and his friends immediately as soon as they can. We know there's a grand jury looking into it, but shouldn't wait. Everybody's waiting on that. OK, then prosecute Trump. Again, if he intimidates, I mean, a second prosecution, if he intimidates either the attorney general or the grand jurors, the petty jurors, those are guys who sit in the trial, the witnesses or the judges, anything like that and he improper actions against them. And this is listed because, in fact, in the past, in Trump's rich litigation history, he's done this sort of thing or threatened it. And then the third item here is in case of New York, expect appeals and litigate them vigorously. And don't let Trump kick the can down the road. So we have confusion until it gets to the Supreme Court. They should litigate any appeals vigorously. OK, next slide. OK, then there's advice to the Georgia DA. Her name is Fannie Willis. She should prosecute Trump and co-conspirators again as soon as possible. She also, last word, was that she had a grand jury going. And then prosecute him again for separate prosecution if he intimidates or tries to intimidate her or any of the grand jurors, petty jurors, witnesses or judges and expect appeals and litigate them vigorously. Pretty much the same advice through the officials in New York. Let's go to the next slide. OK, now we're talking about Merrick Garland, the attorney generally in the United States. She didn't panel a DC District of Columbia grand jury to look into January 6th. Definitely grand jury could do that. And I'm sure there'd be a lot of people who wanted to see that. And let them investigate everything. They could be a great investigative party in addition to whatever Nancy Pelosi decides to do in Congress. And then Merrick Garland should prosecute all of the insurrectionists, not only the ones who've been arrested so far, but the big guys like Trump, like Rudy Giuliani. OK, and don't let them delay or disrupt these proceedings. It's got to move on. The public is waiting. The public don't want the public to lose confidence in the system. OK, next. OK, Nancy Pelosi. She should appoint a House Select Committee and let them investigate everything and subpoena Trump and prosecute him. He has no immunity. And if he fails to show or he lies or obstructs, take appropriate action. Congress has the power to do that. And they should not hesitate. OK, next. OK, and this is a real corker, I think. Advice to those people who would run against Trump. That includes not only GOP people, but Democrats. If you want to run for president from either side, this is what you can do. You file your nomination papers early, so you have standing. And then with that standing, you simultaneously file suit against Trump, arguing that he is disqualified to hold office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. You may ask, what exactly is that? And I'm going to tell you. This is a summary of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. No one can be a senator, representative, elector, or officer of the United States, comes a lot of ground. Or a military officer, a member of a state legislature, or a governor, or a judge in any state, if they took an oath to support the Constitution and then took part in an insurrection or rebellion against the United States, to which January 6th, or gave aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States, of the United States Congress, or rather, Congress can change this only by 2-thirds vote, which is hard to get. So that, for example, if somebody took a file of a suit against Trump and said that he was not qualified to run, the only way he could be excused from that under the provision of the United States Constitution is if Congress changed it by a 2-thirds vote. He's not going to get that 2-thirds vote. Let's go to the next one. OK, the benefits of this, this way, people will be held, those responsible will be held accountable. The public will find out and see justice done, really important, because people are losing confidence in the government. People will, again, have confidence, and the GOP may reconsider its leadership, which all of those are really wonderful benefits to be achieved, and our necessary end should be now. Next, I think I'm almost finished here. OK, one or all of these alternatives will keep Trump away from us in 2022, keep him out of office in 2024, and restore confidence in government. I guess that's the whole thing. So let's stop there. Let's go to Tim. Tim, how important is it to have a commission, investigation, prosecutions of some kind in the environment of today's world? Pointing to Jay, extremely important. And why? Well, it comes down, and I'm sorry to say it, to simple terms, the preservation of the rule of law and our democracy in the United States. It's just that simple. And without following up on January 6, and all the other criminal charges that the state of New York and potentially Georgia will have to file against Donald Trump, if you don't do that, our law is a mockery. The law of the land is a mockery. And it's a paper tiger, if you will. And so it's absolutely critical that these things be charged, or investigation. What do you think of Mitch McConnell? Mitch McConnell says, we know all that we need to know. Well, we've all seen it on television. We know everything we need. There's no need for further vet. What do you say to him? Well, his name isn't Moscow Mitch for nothing. That's what I'd say. Doesn't care. Doesn't care about the Constitution. He doesn't care about the oath that he took to defend the Constitution. All Mitch cares about is Mitch and his retainment of power, nothing less, nothing more. You know, as I was watching all the screens, if it was a multiple-choice test, I would say add a box and check D, all the above. My only question is, do you have to be a candidate in order to file that Donald Trump isn't eligible for re-election due to the 14th Amendment paragraph three? Do you have to be a candidate or can anyone file it? Oh, no, the answer to that. I just do know that if you were a candidate, you'd have a better logical position on standing. And they will oppose everything. They will obfuscate everything you know that. Well, let's go on to Cynthia. The reason I'm asking Cynthia is that she made a list of all the crimes that she is aware of. And I wonder how they fit in the outline that I just gave you. Well, actually, I'm aware of quite a few others. I'm only going with the ones that he's charged with because I'm aware of quite a few others. But there are 14 active cases against them. Georgia already has two grand juries that are considering subpoenas. And I can give you that as for criminal election, influence, investigations, and what's called. And then we've got five cases that have been filed just about the January 6th. We've got the DCAG for incitement criminal investigation into the role, but there's no actual charges filed yet on that. But Bernie Thompson filed charges, incitement suit. It's an incitement suit for the January 6th. Eric Swalwell. Oh, wait, I need to mention that Bernie Thompson's suit is against his names Trump, Rudy, and two of the right wing militia. And I'm not sure which ones, but I think it's the old keepers and the proud ones. And then the Capitol Police have a suit for the January 6th riot. And they're going after Trump, two police officers, Capitol police officers for injuries. And the NAACP has the legal defense fund is going after them because of the big lie and how that affects voting rights, which I thought was pretty cool. Let's see then. Okay, so those are the only ones for January 6th. I'm gonna come to my most important one that I find a personal investment in. And that's the Eugene Carroll and the Somerservos one. And those are for defamation, because when they came out with saying that he had, well, Eugene Carroll said he raped her in Burdguff Gordon Goodman's department store in New York. Many years ago, still has the dress. They have found DNA on the dress. If we can get DNA from him, we might be able to make a match. So I think that's a really big one, but there's this weird thing involved in that one. The DOJ is involved. Now, he is now a private citizen, and hopefully all of that is gonna go away. But the DOJ was involved under Bill Barr. Right, because- They came in to defend him and they claimed he had some kind of crazy immunity from the raping people in Burdguff Goodman. Well, no, it's the defamation thing. You can't sue him for defamation because he said those things about her in the line of his job is what they're trying to claim, which is nonsense. So- Yeah, yeah. Well, okay. Well, it's suffice to say there's a lot of suits. We're not on my outline. And Winston, I wanna ask you, I mean, if you're Trump, how concerned are you about this? Is this really gonna get in his way? I know the spells know nothing's going to happen. At the end of the day, there will be a big dragnet that's put over all, it's all of his people, all the people that surround him, they will be caught. But at the end of the day, nothing will happen. And it's interesting to see Joe Biden fighting against some of the requests to get the papers out. And I think he's sort of trying to preserve some presidential authority in there. That was an interesting one. Nothing's going to happen to Donald Trump. He will be slapped on the hand, he will lose some, if you're already with him, you're already with him. Nothing is going to change people's minds. They're- No, it's not the people, it's the judges and the jurors. The judges and the jurors- They're independent of the base. They don't operate in a vacuum. And as I've said many times, we do not put our former presidents in prison. He will be discredited fully as more than he is already, but it's not good- Well, let me refine my question. Is this going to affect the 2022 election? When- And his ability to galvanize the GOP? Is it going to affect his ability to run in 2024? Yes, I think it could. And I think it could galvanize it in the wrong way. And so that's my concern is that this will just make him a martyr to the cause. And so for right now, let them absolutely go through these prosecutorial motions, let them investigate, I thought your best one of the ones you had there was for Merrick Garland to have the DOJ run a separate investigation, but all of them, I agree with Tim, all of the above, that you didn't have that on your box to check. All of these need to be pursued so that there can be as much of a correct and proper history out there, at least for those that are even willing to look at it the crossover soccer moms or whatever that the mythical version is that isn't in one camp or the other. But I think again, at the end of the day, nothing's going to happen to Donald Trump. Now, there might be a lot around him, his family's, we're going to see who's going to flip and it's not going to be pretty, but at this point, I think people just want it to go away on some level. And yet we have to delve into it or it's not going to go away. It's going to come back. I'm much more concerned about the efforts that are going on in every state. You think the press has made enough of this? No, the press hasn't made enough of it. Our Senate has made a mockery of any sense of justice by having no investigation into this. It's shocking. I mean, these people's very lives were at danger and they are so afraid and so cult-oriented that they are, whatever it is. It's really amazing. Let me go to Stephanie. They don't even think about their self-interest at heart. And so we can't expect a lot from there. We will get to talk about it. Let me go to Stephanie Winston, I want to. Yeah. I don't know if you've got my list of possible strategies that Trump might entertain. And I wonder if you could comment on that. It's a list of about, looks like 25 or so things that he might do. Can you describe that list and give us your favorites? I think the list was long because there are many options and he's perfectly capable of one or all of them even all together in his way of doing that. I wanted to go back to your question about McConnell and agreeing with everything that Tim said about that, but this has to do with your question about the list is I am amazed that McConnell can play everybody that we care what's on the videotape because we do not need to care anymore about what's on the videotape because everybody's seen it. So what it is we need to know is everything that's not on the videotape, okay? And especially here to for the videotape. And if we can go back to what might be middle of story already at the presidential debate, when he was asked about, when Biden asked him to talk about the people and to tell them what to do. And that was when he said to the proud boys, you have to stand by. He sounded the alarm during the presidential debate and I'm utterly waiting for the media to pick it up and start to talk to us about what's not on the tape but is appearing the tapes of the insurrection but is all the other stuff we need to know that being one big thing. So what is that the tip of the iceberg, the signal and that things are already in place? Was that the middle of the planning or was that the beginning of it? Anyway, that is something the media I feel is letting us down and it's the media that needs to pick it up and start looking at it for the strategic, the strategies that are clearly in operation and where they may have come from. And McConnell is so crafty and just having everybody- He's a master of timing, isn't he? He knows when the news cycle has moved on and people aren't interested anymore, he's capitalizing on that. But let me go through some of the possible strategies that occurred to me. There are a few of them, I won't read them all. One is Trump is gonna be desperate, right? The operative word is desperate with all these lawsuits that I've mentioned that Cynthia has mentioned, he's just covered with lawsuits here and some of them are threatening and I know that people don't wanna see a president go to jail and all that and the base is not gonna want that and Trump is gonna be desperate, what is he gonna do? One is he could activate the base, activate the extremists, have another insurrection or do the August trip with the coup in August. He could distract the country with divisiveness, race riots, a stock market crash. Who knows what kind of leverage he could put. He could distract the world by creating a phony war or asking Putin to do that. It's that old movie, the tale that wagged the dog, if you remember, a phony war for PR purposes. He can intimidate witnesses, as I mentioned, prosecutors, jurors, judges. He can intimidate his own counsel. He can do selected disappearances of people by his proxies and he can deny having anything to do with it. He could mount a huge PR campaign using every media he can and suck up all the oxygen and say, oh, gee, this is all a witch hunt, it's all the Democrats. He could defend all these cases to the max, every single one and lie and fabricate, don't forget fabricate evidence. He could blame other people, which I think he has shown he will do, including even family members and Allen Weissenberg. He can blame other people. They say that Allen Weissenberg can turn on him or he can turn on Weissenberg. He can claim that he can intimidate, threaten, compromise people, disappear, witnesses, prosecutors, judges, judges, jurors, judges and his own counsel. He can claim the Democrats of doing that. He can make a circus and disparage the justice system in the course of these cases. He can get sick. He can have COVID again or a modified version. He could have a variant. He could have scrotal bone spurs. He could claim mental incapacity, insanity and inability to defend himself. He can claim a phony baloney claim of immunity that he's still the president. He can get a 2022 GOP Congress if he wins the Congress to enact an immunity bill to enhance that claim. He can try to do the same thing in state legislatures like Georgia and three or four others. He can claim his counsel was unqualified or incompetent or corrupted by the Democrats. He can appeal everything on a slow bill and hope for Kavanaugh and Barrett. He can wait for 2024 and get a GOP president including possibly himself to pardon him for the federal crimes. He can get some GOP governors to pardon him for state crimes. He can settle all of the Sackler and Perdue settlement was announced yesterday where the settlement wraps around all the co-conspirators and family members that were in a line of fire. He can try a settlement. That's what adventurers litigated would do. And finally, and you mentioned this Winston, he can go to Russia and he can go to Russia and get the protection of Vladimir Putin and he can go to Russia with his family and his co-conspirators or in the end, and I doubt this is true. They had a psychiatrist on MSNBC last night asking, what happens to a guy like this under desperate circumstances? And the answer was he gets more desperate and he tries more crazy things, but I don't think that the psychiatrist would say he gets self-destructive. Nevertheless, I've added that at the bottom of the list. Okay, so Stephanie comments on all these fantastic defense mechanisms that Trump could try. Very, you know, very inclusive. I believe he's doing them all. I think he's already doing as many of them as possibly he can do in the circumstances. So it's already all that's in his head. You write on, you've got him cold. And that's where he is. And he's down there with nothing else to do, kicking around, trying to get all these, he's playing his organ and each one of those keys is one of those items that you list and one of those defenses, one of his remedies. So he's gonna be doing all of that. That's what we're gonna have to go through because the leadership will not take control of him and won't do their duty. That's really sad, but maybe they will if he gets into really hot water or he further decompensates. So Tim, I'd like you to kind of synthesize all this. Going around, Cynthia has pointed out there's other crimes here, other suits, civil suits and to some extent criminal suits that are still pending, plus all the things that could happen now. Winston has said, Trump should not worry that his base will protect him and that the system will not punish a president. Stephanie has opined on what Trump might do in terms of defending himself. So the question I put to you, Tim, is all that considered is he gonna get away with this? Is he gonna get away with this? Can he skate through this? Or is it gonna catch him at some point? And if so, this is a hard question. What is going to happen with all these suits? No president, I didn't know individual human being has been faced with so much litigation, civil and criminal as this one man. It's quite extraordinary. It could hardly be a conspiracy of Democrats. There's so many people, so many claims. Is it gonna catch him? You know, as I listened to all of what Cynthia and all the the plethora of items that Donald Trump's strategy could possibly pull off. And I'm reminded of a no gangster statement from the mafia back in the 1930s. And that is the gangsters used to let their bullets rust because this is before we had antibiotics. And so they would let their bullets rust and they would also roll them in garlic. So if the bullet didn't kill their victim, the blood poisoning in the tetanus would. So to make this analogy, Donald Trump's not gonna get out of all these. Something's gonna stick out of all the, again, the plethora of charges against them. One of them's gonna stick. And I think the easiest would be right away is to have Cyrus Vance file in federal court a violation of the 14th amendment paragraph three that he is not fit to be president ever again. And get that one, check off the easy things first and then go for the more difficult ones. It's amazing what might stick as soon as you start getting them to stick. Sometimes it's a cascade and avalanche of lawsuits that actually start swaying in the other direction. And that other direction is guilty. I agree with Winston, he'll never serve time. But I think that he will be prevented some ways somehow of serving 2024 as a candidate for president of the United States. And I think that's a good thing for the country and a great thing for our democracy. It would be good Winston if that happened. However, how do we get there? Because he's gonna be desperate. He's gonna try some of these defenses out, maybe a lot of them. And the base is going to be unhappy and the media, I'm not sure if the media is gonna really cover it the way they should. How much of a price does the country pay? Does the country pay? The democracy, the people in general, how much do we pay in order to get to the end of this problem? We've already paid so much. The trauma to our national psyche, to our families, to our friendships, to our, some people that they're married should now, it's beyond Donald Trump at this point. It's Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's she's the head of the Republican Party now. It's QAnon. It's the Hydra that's happened. So Donald Trump is in some ways almost, he's still, of course, the head of it all. But out of this has popped to so much. There's, it may be impossible. I would refer you to the Atlantic today, Adam Serwer's article that says the Capitol rioters won. Although some Republican leaders deployed their violence, most have come to support the rioters claim that Trump's defeat meant the election was inherently illegitimate. Now, whether that's true or not, we have to assume it's true. The base when you read about that and what percentage of Republicans feel the same way. They're living in an alternate media university and they're not watching the show. If they are, then send a shout out for us because you're opening your eyes at least. We welcome you to have some alternative things. And we watch Fox too, just to get until we can't anymore. But it's important to have a source of news. But as long as it's news and not just propaganda or lies and that's the difference. So again, search out for yourself. Our country, we have to have these talks on very individual levels. We have to have them on meta levels. We have to have them in the courts. We have to have them in the state houses. But right now, just look across your country and see how many states just are entertaining laws to serve. Yeah, that's a good indication of what they think about Trump. It's a good indication of what they think about Trump with all his losses. So Cynthia, let me flip the question that I asked Winston on you. Suppose he gets away with this. Suppose McConnell gets away with this. Suppose they're able to stop a delay or obfuscate any investigation or any prosecution because remember our rule of law as it has been over the past few years is in jeopardy. And that includes the court system. It includes the justice system, including the criminal justice system. It is a logical possibility that he will get away with it. If that happens, what effect on the country? Every parent knows when your kid gets away with something and doesn't get any kind of accountability, he does it again and he gets worse and worse and worse, testing those limits. And that's what'll happen if he gets away with it is that everything's going to fall apart. It's going to completely erode the rule of law in this country and that terrifies. Bad presidents come and go, good presidents come and go. This guy is dangerous. So all this, we'll talk about, we don't put presidents in jail. Well, when they're criminals, we do. And he's been a criminal for so long that he needs to be there. We are still at risk to his faith. These people have been radicalized, all of this. So my quote for today comes from Carl Sagan. We can't convince a believer of anything for their belief is not based on evidence. It's based on a deep-seated need to believe. Okay, I want to refine that question to Stephanie. What is this doing? What has it done to the, what we call the devolution of the GOP? What's the connection between the GOP and its active membership, including Marjorie Taylor-Green and the rule of law? I mean, what has happened? And how does that connect up with Trump's litigation troubles? Wow, that is a question, Jay. That's a huge question. I humbly submit that all these Republican friends have say, well, yeah, well, we're still Republican, but we're a clinging to, we admire and we want to live in those principles of Republicanism. So all of this is just surface-level stuff going on. So, you know, we'll get through this. But so, I mean, no, but it's, as you say, devolution, I think that, well, they say that and they say that those principles still work for them and they're still gonna do it. But I agree with your point about devolution. I think it's coming to pieces and it has nowhere to stay. It's unstable, it's unstable. It's this anarchist kind of thing. It's got to come to pieces. And I'm just thinking back to like McCarthy, how long it took the country going through the McCarthyism, the Joe McCarthyism and the Communist under every Bush, that went on way beyond intolerance until it finally just broke. And I would predict that, I guess I can predict and I hope for it to come soon that this will just dissipate in some move that someone finally gets enough courage to make. Oh, wow, from your lips. Okay, Tim, you know, we're not gonna have time for last comments here, but I wanna ask you a last question anyway, is if we don't have a meaningful GOP and right now we don't and it's gonna get worse, I think. Can we have a government without a second party? It doesn't seem to be any sign of an emergent replacement for the GOP. So can we have a government with only one party and the other party saying no to everything or devolving into the point of completely being ineffective on everything? Can we have a government that way? We do in Hawaii. That's the comment of the day. Cynthia, write that down. Thank you. The answer is yes, you can. Remember, you know, parties come and go. The Whig party left. You know, we've had these things. So another will fill the vacuum. I'm hoping that the sane Republican party will branch out and maybe they call themselves the real GOP party or maybe they just say the party of what's happening now. The name isn't important. It's the concept behind it and the mission and the goals and the policies, the fact that they wanna preserve the democracy and the constitution and make Americans' lives better. That's the goal of a party. Whether you call it Democrats, the OGOP, the new GOP or the party of what's happening now, it's the betterment of lives of Americans. And I'm hoping that will take place. Okay, you guys, great discussion. Tim Appichella, Winston Welch, Stephanie Dalton, Cynthia Sinclair. It's an ongoing conversation. I'm sure we'll find more to talk about next week. Thank you so much, Aloha.