Welcome back, America. We're here with 1 of the great civil rights, criminal defense lawyers of our time, David Schoen. He also represented
President Trump in 1 of the impeachment cases.
You're familiar with
him. David Schoen, I want to talk about Judge Chunken for a moment.
I've made the case that this setting the date on March 4th violates the Sixth Amendment,
effective
representation by counsel. There's 12.8 million pages of documents.
You have 5 months to prepare.
Even the Feds couldn't say that they've ever had a case where 5 months was enough. And this is a very complex case. You have a lot of
questions that are raised for the first time, complexity involving a former president, motions, filings.
She also sets the date 1 day before Super Tuesday, the most important date in the election cycle in the Republican primary. She also jumps the line, jumps in front of the first case that's in Florida with Judge Cannon, who already set her trial date for May, and I'm sure that's created a lot of chaos down there on the other case.
My argument, David Shown, is she's doing this. She wants a Democrat jury.
She wants at least 1 conviction on 1 of the counts.
So Donald Trump is walking around with a scarlet letter, convicted felon, so the likes of Chris Christie and others, as well as Democrats can say, well, he's a convicted felon. What's your take on this? Well, I think we have seen just that sort of thing in some of her words.
In other words,
the lady doth protest too much, methinks.
She has made clear that this is only going to be treated like every other case for every other defendant, and she won't kowtow to election concerns and that sort of thing, very defensively.
Of course, it's not like any other case. There's a great public interest. The government spoke about a public interest in a speedy trial rather than the defendant's interest in the speedy trial. There's a greater public interest here in the election
and the democratic process, and letting that democratic process run its course. I had a misdemeanor case in this same district set for 8 months
in the future, not this kind of schedule. This schedule is outrageous.
Nobody could prepare in this time frame, certainly not these lawyers.
It's once more,
unfortunately,
the political process reaching another branch of government that has, and where it has no place. And I earlier read what the code of professional conduct is for judges. And this would seem to me to violate it in multiple ways. That's number 1. Number 2,
she says it's like any other case, whether it's athletes or anything else. And yet the Department of Justice, for several decades,
Democrat and Republican attorneys generals have issued memos in March of election years
specifically saying, this is not like any other case.
You better make sure that when you conduct investigations
that you do not interfere with a campaign, and they go further. You're not to charge people before a campaign, unless you get a sign off by the attorney general of the United States himself.
But they give warning after warning after warning that this is different, that you are not supposed to use the criminal justice system to affect an election, yet we have a prosecutor and a judge who are doing exactly that, no? Yeah, well, I don't think you got the most recent memo, which was, if Trump is involved, ignore all previous memos for every other election.
No, you're 100 percent right. In my view, it violates the Fifth and the Sixth Amendment rights. There's no possible way you hit on the most important 1, the effective assistance of counsel, but also due process, all of the fair trial rights, the right to compel witnesses. He can't even sort out who the witnesses would be. They don't know what the exculpatory evidence would be. And the prosecutor said, well, they streamlined things, and they've gone through and made it easier.
It's not for the prosecutor to decide what evidence the defense finds most important. The defense has to do the painstaking work of going through the evidence. Listen, I've had experience with 2 members of
a couple of members of this Mr. Smith's team, and especially in this D.C. Process. I have right now a sanctions motion going against J.P. Cooney, the lead fellow in this case, and Molly Gaston. In another case in this district, we're awaiting a hearing because of their outrageous government misconduct. And in that case, the judge said he's very concerned about their misconduct and he's concerned that they don't seem to be concerned. But we haven't had the hearing yet. So Trump is a speedy trial on behalf of the government, not only for the defendant or the public. Let's make that clear. And you have a matter before
1 of these judges in the same district,
and they can't seem to get around to it, right? Right.
I've got a case actually with Judge Chutkin and another judge in this district, Judge Walton, both of whom I'm sure are in another setting of fine judges. But literally, I've had a motion to dismiss, and those are civil cases, but important cases with claims hanging over my client's head.
And literally I've had motions to dismiss pending for over 3 years
without any action on them. Well, maybe Judge Chunk can put that in the front of her calendar
and work that out. I mean, it's been sitting there for 3 years. Yes, this
is a railroad job. That's all it is. Pure and simple.
