at. caller" -- "washington journal" continues. host: joining us now, david weinstein, current partner at jones walker, former u.s. assistant attorney for the southern district of florida, here to talk about the events of yesterday. thank you for your time. guest: you're welcome. pleasure to join you and explain things. host: appreciated. one of the next steps for the prosecution and the defense stemming from yesterday? guest: at this point, the former president has been arraigned, he entered a not guilty plea and asked for discovery from the government. the next steps for the government is to start handing over the documents, the information they intend to rely upon during the trial whenever

it might take place. a lot of these documents are classified documents, so on the defense side, the defense team is going to have to submit themselves for background security clearances. they are going have to be given classified -- access to classified documents, and then they will have to set up some sort of a skiff where the documents will be held, or the defense team can look at them and take notes, but they will have to leave their notes in the room, so they will have to create a secure, safe area for defense notes to look at. interestingly enough, the defendant is entitled to see the evidence against him, so it will be a question of how we are going to get this process in place so that the defendant and defense team can look at things. sitting on the outside of all this is the codefendant, nauta, he also had initial appearance and did not have this legal team in place, so he has not been arraigned yet, and until he is arraigned as a codefendant who

has been arrested, so to speak, in a case that the speedy trial clock will not start get, the district court judge will not get to have set a trial date. interesting day for everyone to pay attention to hisil and nauta next appears in court with lawyers and entersuilt plea. from that point, we will get the first trial date in this particular matter. host: you know better than most that florida is known for having a speedy process when it comes to. what is the timeline -- when it comes to trials. what is the timeline potential he like there? guest: if this was a normal case, which we all know it is not, it would get set for trial and it will get set for trial until there is a motion to continue within the next 75 days of whenever nauta is arraigned. just over two months to perhaps two weeks from now the case will get its first trial setting and the judge will issue a trial order and tell them when pretrial motions are due in the case will move forward.

in a normal case, there will be a continuous, maybe a second one, and it should be in about six months from now and then the case would go to trial, be resolved, and they'll be the end of it. even in the other cases, it would stretch until nine months until there was a trial, a change of plea and sentencing. in this case, i think we will be lucky after pretrial motions are heard within the next nine months, and then from there, if there are adverse hearings to the government that they need to take up on appeal, that is going to go up to the circuit court, so there will be more hearings and delays. and for all quite apparent reasons here, it looks like the case probably will be sent for an actual trial setting until perhaps summer. and then that is going to be in the midst of the conventions. who knows where and when the

case will finally get tried. host: how does it factor in that you said mr. nauta had not developed a legal defense team and there were reports the president was having trouble developing a defense team, is there anssue as far as if you cannot have the full complement of people you need? guest: you need to have a lawyer or another two lawyers that are permanently entering notices of appearances to represent you. however lc staff your legal team, whether it is with experts -- however lc staff your legal team, whether it is with experts or other lawyers helping you to prepare the case for trial, that is up to you. once you have a permanent council, and the president has that, it does not matter when you get before the judge and you say i have not assembled the other lawyers on writing. you have a lawyer -- on my team. you have a lawyer, and they will enter a permanent notice of appearance.

district court judges run a tight rein on their calendar, and if you have a lawyer and the lawyer entered a permanent appearance, he or she needs to get ready and do whatever it is for the day the judge says this is when the trial is going to take place. host: you talked about the documents and evidence in question and how that will be seen by both sides. because they are sensitive documents, does that mean a declassification has to happen? guest: not necessarily. to my knowledge, waste on the way the documents are listed in the counts of the indictment and based on the way they refer to them, there are even continued redaction's with regard to titles of the documents within the document itself, they are still classified. people are entitled to look at classified documents if they have the proper security clearance. what will need to happen is the government lawyers have that security clearance. if they do not have it now, they have to get it while reviewing the documents.

the council for the president will have to go through the same screening process. they will be investigated, their backgrounds checked and cleared, and then they will be given the appropriate security clearance to look at the documents. when you get that clearance, you are obligated to look at them and not take them out of the areas where they are supposed to be and then you have to closely hold that knowledge. it will be interesting to see just how we are going to see these documents addressed in a trial or evidentiary hearing when the public cannot see much, if any at all, of what is on the documents. there will potentially have to be hearings held outside of the presence of the general public. so, it is going to be interesting, certainly as a side event here how they are going to continue to treat classified documents, and they could declassify the now, but, remember, that is not going to change the nature of what they

were classified at the time they were possessed by the former president outside of a secured area. host: david weinstein, our guest. if you would like to ask a question on legal matters concerning the former president and his not guilty plea yesterday, (202)-748-8001 for republicans. (202)-748-8000 for democrats. independents, (202)-748-8002. you can text your questions or comments at (202)-748-8003. mr. weinstein, judge aileen cannon, how much of a role does she play going forward? guest: a central and pivotal role. she is the district court judge assigned to the matter, and she controls her calendar, her docket, and she is in charge of local rulings made in the matter. she is assisted by a magistrate judge who is paired with her,

and she may refer to preliminary matters and evidentiary hearings to the magistrate judge she will conduct hearings and then make a report recommendation, but it is up to her to accept his report and recommendation. she will be in charge of granting motions to continue. she will be in charge of ultimately deciding not only the pretrial motions to suppress, motions to dismiss, but other motions that we called motions limiting certain evidence and testimony that will come into the case. certain lines of questioning, and she will be the person who takes the raw palliative evidence that is out there with regards to what is going to be admitted and makes some rulings to determine what fits inside the box. she will be in charge of the jury selection process. she will look at potential jury pools, be in charge of scheduling, when the trial will take place, what hour it will take place on, so she plays a

pivotal role in this case with regard to getting it to the endpoint, and that is a trial in this matter. host: how much does it matter that she was appointed by the former president and she had a ruling last year concerning these very documents itself? how much does that matter going forward as far as her possibly being influenced by the? guest: we are in uncharted territory of uncharted territory. there are many district court judges, in fact, all of them, who are presidentially appointed, and then senate confirmed. they sit in these positions until they retire, and until they are no longer enacting district court judge. obviously, we have never had a defendant who has appeared in front of a judge who they nominated. it is uncharted with regard to that. when they take the oath of

office, any judge or public official, they agree to uphold the constitution, which is what put them in the position. i have to believe -- we all have to believe, that as part of the justice system, they uphold the oath they take when they sit there, but, you are right. we have seen rulings from this judge that were favorable to the defendant already. that is not unusual in any case. judges make decisions favorable to defendants and the government, and then so matters that are unfavorable to a plaintiff. in this case, her decisions were reviewed by judges of higher authority. by the 11th circuit court of appeals, and they took her to task with some of the rulings based on the case law and based on their interpretation of the evidence and sent the matters back and overturned her prior rulings. when i appear in front of a judge and make a presentation and argue the case law and the judge disagrees with my interpretation, i have to abide

by it. and i cannot look at what i have written inside until the judge disagrees and i will keep arguing when you have not told me it is wrong. we have to believe that she will listen to what the 11th circuit has already said with regard to some of these issues and that her future rulings will be consistent with that. having said that, if they are not, and if the government can assert or believe under oath in a pleading they will have to file that she is already determined in some of these issues and that her determinations are biased and prejudiced, they could file a motion to recuse. it up to this point, we have not seen enough for them to actually do that. arguably, many people think they have. others think they have not. until there is a future rolling that shows some sort of a bias or prejudice, she is believed to be, and we will all have to believe her to be an impartial

arbiter of the facts here as someone who will look at the facts and law, look at what the 11th circuit has already said on many issues, both to her and other judges and cases that have been rolled on, and make a ruling that is consistent with the facts and the law. host: before we go to the first call, do you have any personal experience of being before her as an attorney? guest: i have not, she sits in the northern end of the district in fort pierce, and i down here in miami. while i can practice up in fort pierce and have been there, i have not had the opportunity to draw a case that has landed in front of her. host: david weinstein, former u.s. assistant attorney for the southern district, joining us. tanya from san antonio, mcallen, starts off with the guests. the question -- from san antonio, texas, starts us off at the guests. go ahead. caller: what can we expect, as

republicans, democrats and independents, from if there is a conviction or a charge, what is the backlash of him already exposing the documents, nuclear whatever, to other countries, that he has not made some kind of agreement like i will show you this, but if something happens and i need this, i went this to happen? i am afraid of that. i am afraid this is going to start a war. i have military, my granddaughter is military, my kids are all military. i am afraid that he has done

something to start a war, that could start a war. host: got your point, caller. we will refer to the. guest, mr. weinstein guest: thank you for the question. you have touched on something behind why the prosecution has taken place. the fact that these documents could contain depends classified information were taken from someplace where they were secure, cooked in a place where they clearly were not secure and may have been shown to other people is why there was an indictment and why the process is going to move forward in the government will present evidence to convince all jurors that this case has been brought validly and that a conviction should be obtained. with regard to the exposure of this information, there are certainly things going on right now behind-the-scenes that none of us know about with regard to what was in the documents, who had knowledge of what it was, and adjustments have been made

so that if that information was released to someone, somewhere, who could use it against us, that we have a counter plate against exactly what is going on -- counter play exactly against what is going on, and that is why they wanted the documents back. that is why they asked for them when they were missing, and that is why they are likely doing whatever they can to smooth out what information was put out there, and hoping to make sure whatever could happen will not happen. host: republican line, ronald. caller: yes. i am ronald. i want to call my opinion about how bad our country is. they blame it all on trump. biden had tons of it in different places all around. his son was talking to all these china and selling our top-secret information to china and all

these nations. making millions. and our country is sitting blind. and the fbi has to be paid off to not say nothing to biden or hillary. they have got to be paid off. they bought them out. that is what i want to say. host: mr. weinstein, that is ronald. sticking to the point of the parallels you have probably heard between what the former president was charged with, investigated by the special counsel when it comes to president aydin, former vice president pence -- president biden, former vice president pence, what are the parallels, if there are any? guest: there are parallels, but these are two different set of facts. you can group the investigations that are ongoing that have been completed against the former vice president pence, and ongoing investigation with president biden and documents he had when he was vice president

and the issues related to hillary clinton. you could separate them because they are different, vastly different. as we have seen from the concluded investigation into former vice president pence, the documents he had in his possession were inadvertently taken. i know that many people are saying that is what happened with former president trump, but now we have seen, based on the evidence contained in the affidavit and the statements in the indictment, based on statements made by the former president himself, this is not an inadvertent situation where i am packing up my boxes when i a movingm from the white house or out of the vice president's office, and i am collecting documents and putting them in boxes and taking them with me and i am not sure what is in them. with former vice president pence, what happened was the documents were collected. he had no idea they were in there. it was not an intentional act. and then when the people came

looking for the documents because they discovered they were missing, he immediately went through the boxes, didn't actual doro and diligent search with people who were authorized -- did a diligent search of people who were authorized to look at the documents. when he found them, he complied with the request and return them. that investigation was closed and no charges were filed against him. same thing took place with regard to hillary clinton and her use of potentially classified information. and the ongoing investigation with regard to president biden, when he was vice president, is going through the same process. they complied. they did what they were asked to do and in a quick and expedited fashion, and they did not mislead anybody or allegedly mislead anybody while making false statements. contrast that with what we have seen in the papers filed against the former president. he did not comply when he was asked. almost two years ago to return the documents. his first set of documents that were returned in the compliance

we now know that there was no diligent search. again, according to documents filed in testimony related to the grand jury, that -- presented to the grand jury, that he in fact directed people to take the documents and withheld them and he talked about knowingly keeping them in places they were not supposed to be. and then when asked again, said, no, i have given them back, but when the search warrant was executed, they found more of the documents. so you are talking about two different sets of circumstances. they are treating everybody the same. the responses are different, and that is why you have one individual who was now indicted by a grand jury and three other individuals, two of whom are cleared already, and a third who they are going through the process, to see whether or not he is going to be cleared. host: dave joins us from california, independent line, with our guest david weinstein. caller: hi guys. yeah. i am not going to get into as

far as passing judgment yet on what is happening now with trump, but we obviously have a problem with the archives on the way the process works. we need to revamp that because what are their personal pictures mixed with top-secret documents? that is crazy. we basically have two criminal organizations running the country, and they are using this to bribe and persuade other politicians and whatnot around the world and in the country to get what they want. that is what i see. guest: dave, you raise an interesting point with regard to how we handle classified documents. look, we all do not have to love and embrace technology, but when i try to make a transaction with my bank, i have to go through 14 different layers of authentication and classification and clarification before i can even transfer money. it seems odd to me, and certainly this is at the heart of what our problem is, that there is not a better way to

hold onto documents that are classified. when i go to the library, and, yes, people still go to the library, you check out a book, dana with the book is, and when you do not return it, they come looking for you for the way the book is. we need to have a better system. i agree. something should be done about the way classified documents are handled. if there is a better process, whether it is digital, stricter controls, we may not be in a situation where documents are just laying around from a place that is in a secure area that they could get swept up and put interpersonal documents. host: mr. weinstein, what do you think that the charges or at least many of them stem from with the espionage act and not with the presidential efforts act? guest: people have been talking a lot about the espionage act. it is not just one particular statutes but rather a series of statutes. again, when we hear the word espionage, we think about spies and secret midnight meetings and

mail drop boxes and documents that are exchanged and envelopes of cash exchanged. that is not what the espionage act is about. in this instance, we are talking about the taking of classified documents out of a location where they are supposed to be and putting them somewhere where they should not be. and, you know, with regard to what is taking place under these charges and under the ones filed with regard to the espionage act, it is done to protect the security of our country. host: there is an argument that "the wall street journal" editors made when it came to the presidential records act, saying "it is strikd legally notable that the indictment ner mentions the act but allows the pre access to unclassified and classified documents once he leaves the office, it allows good-faith negotiations of the national archives, but it says mr. trump had no right to take any of the

documents. some documents had previously been the property of the former president. if the espionage act means the president cannot maintain those documents, the pra is all but meaningless." what you think about the argument? guest: you have to look at the process and a lot of why where we are today is because people do not follow the process. look. if in fact there are presidential records that they believe either were declassified or classified but they believe they no longer need to be classified and the are presidential records where they were improperly classified, there is a process to work through the documents and to figure out whether or not the presidential records or are they classified documents? that process does not involve taking these documents, putting them in bankers boxes, and taking them and shipping them to your home in florida or your home in new jersey. the process involves picking up the phone, talking to the

national archives and saying, i have documents that i believe are presidential records and they should not be classified documents, and i need additional time to go through these. i am leaving office in january, so i need you to set up a secure location where we are going to keep these documents and then my staff and i are going to go, make appointments, go into a secure area, we are going to review the documents and save these are documents are presidential records and here is why we believe it is so. this document is declassified, and this document, while still classified, should be declassified. so i am asking you to declassify it. that is the process, and had the former president followed the process and the boxes had been sent to a secure location and not shipped to florida or new jersey, again, we might not be in this situation, and we would be talking about the presidential records act. host: eve is in michigan,

democrat's line, good morning. caller: good morning, pedro and good morning, mr. weinstein. my question here is that the people on the other party, host of them, pretend like donald trump was not a reality show person that they recognize from a reality show, so they thought that they knew this man. this man was not a man that was in politics. most people in politics do not act like this. you know this as well as most people who follow politics, that you put your head down and you learn from other people. this man came in like a bull in a china shop. you cannot do the things he did and expect to get away with it. host: ok, that is eve in michigan. guest: well, what i take from that is that we all have to learn from your situations.

look, when i started off as a yellow lawyer, i knew what i had been taught in law school but i do not know how to be a lawyer, so i listened to people around me who had been part of the process on both sides. so prosecutors, when it started off as a prosecutor. defense attorneys who, things in and out of the courtroom. i learned my lesson from people around me, and i did not put my head down. i kept my head up, i listened to what judges said, supervisors, and i learned from being within the system. it is important for us to have people who are both part of the system and who are from outside of the system. if you are from outside of the system, you do not have to follow everything that the system does and sit and stand when told, but you have to learn to listen and get advice from people around you who have good experience in dealing with these situations. host:host: are guest is david weinstein, former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. he is here to talk about the trend -- the case brought

against former -- president biden. what to think about the strength of the special counsel's case? guest: i agree with what the former attorney general, bill barr, had to say. on paper, this is a strong case. normally, indictments are bare-bones. they set out the dates, the times, and with these events are, and because the special prosecutor knew there would be great scrutiny paid to the case, he set out over 40 pages of information about why he believed the charges should be brought. again, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. just because the grand jury returned an indictment, that does not mean the person charged is guilty. but if you look at the facts and the way they are laid out, he not only sets out the violations that took place but how they got to be violations.

what was said by the defendants with regard to their knowledge, proving intent, proving wilderness, proving their actions and getting those documents from point a to point b and the fact that they were classified. he has broken them down into two sets of documents. there is a set of documents in the first when he four counts or 21 counts -- in the first 24 counts or 20 wink counts of the documents that were returned when asked for at the first time, but taken away from where they are supposed to be. and then a second set of documents were documents retrieved from mar-a-lago where they currently sat, and from where they should not have been. and then he sets out the allegations as to how these two individuals obstructed the investigations, the false statements they made and that others made. again, we get pictures in this indictment because this is 2023, and, of course, if there are no pictures, it did not happen, so we see. with the locations look like

on paper, this is a strong case, but it is not what is on paper that is important. what is important is presenting evidence for 12 people in a courtroom and for those 12 people to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the government has met its burden. but on paper, a very strong case here. host: we heard yesterday that the former president would not be allowed to talk to witnesses. we also heard that the presidency will push back against. what do you think the judge will do not matter? guest: in every case where a defendant is charged, the defendant is directed not to speak to witnesses that the government intends to produce at trial and are going to testify against them. that is standard, and there are orders entered and conditions of your release entered. you are given a list of witnesses, and you are told, you, the defendant, are not to have contact with those people. now, your lawyers can reach out to these people if they want to

talk to them. and if they do not want to talk to them, they can say, i do not want to talk to you, or if they are represented by lawyers, the lawyers will say my client does not want to talk to you. that happens all the time, so it is not unusual for a judge to direct a defendant not to talk to other people. as far as codefendants, if your lawyer, and the codefendants lawyer wishes to collaborate with the codefendant and wishes for the two of you to talk to each other, you do it through counsel with counsel present, preserving the attorney-client privilege. you have a joint defense agreement. and you ensure that any privilege that attaches to conversations continues to attach, but i have done it myself. i tell my clients, do not talk to your codefendants. you do not need to. if you have something you need to find out for them -- from them, talk to me, and i will talk to their lawyers. we need to preserve privilege.

i do not think we can say the word unique enough with this case. there are lawyers who are witnesses now, who were lawyers, some are still lawyers for the former president. how do direct a lawyer not to talk to their client anymore? that is a bit of a gray area that exists, but now they have turned and become witnesses, whether willing or unwilling, so, there should be a reason for a defendant not to be talking to witnesses. whether or not this defendant to come highest with those conditions remains to be seen. and then, ultimately, if he does not, are they going to do anything about it? again, a more traditional defendant, if a court finds out you are in violation of your release orders or any order of the court, you are dragged before the court. there is certainly going to be a contempt hearing, a hearing on violating your conditions of release. i am not sure we will see that happen here. host: in los angeles, republican line, you are next up. caller: thank you.

host: go ahead. caller: yeah. i am in the perspective that the democratic party has been trying to get at trump for about seven years and i think this is a continuation. i am an expert witness for the superior court in los angeles. i will go with alan dershowitz saying this does not meet the conviction criteria. he feels it is a very weak case. i am going to use the word vendetta by the democratic party, and it has twisted -- this whole thing was a law created to go after trump individually because he has been

president and has access to everything, and to take that away from him and make it a crime is just pure politics. it is disgusting to see our system twisted like this. thank you for your information. i will not agree with all of it, but it certainly gives us a better outlook. c-span, thank you very much. host: tom in los angeles. mr. weinstein. guest: tom, look, we are all part of the system. that is what is the beauty of our system and country. we are entitled to have opposing viewpoints, and we are entitled to disagree about what the law is in the application of the law, and that is why we have judges. that is why they review the facts, they compare what is on the books, read the statutes and look at the intent behind them when they are drafted by the legislature, and we can agree to disagree about what powers a president has when they are in office and when they leave

office. but we have to look at the facts here. i will agree with you, tom, that while he was the president, he was authorized to have access to. these documents he should have access. he is the president of the united states. but at that point when he is no longer the president, and these documents are still classified, and they are not presidential records or personal records, but they still obtain a privilege of being a classified document, one containing defense secrets, defense information, both of our country and other countries, well, then, they should be treated as such and only be kept in classified areas and not be taken from a place where they should. if the facts established in a court of law that that is what happened, then, you have to answer for what you did. if they don't establish that, there -- or 12 jurors don't believe the government can prove their case, that is why we have the system. we all have to accept the verdict and take our matter from their.

but this discussion we are having and the roles that we have, they have to be followed. otherwise, it becomes unkempt. host: there is a viewer on twitter who asks about the audio part of the indictment document released, saying, will the audio of the former president incriminating himself be included in the trial or deemed attorney-client privilege? guest: that is a question for judge cannon to answer. she will be assisting in the decisions made by rulings of the d.c. circuit and by the 11th circuit. the u.s. supreme court and others. if you make a voluntary statement in a place where you have no expectation of privacy, and where there are people who are not your attorneys, and there is no privilege. you have no expectation of privacy. and your statement is in admission, and the judge will evaluate all of those criteria. if in fact there was no privilege that attaches, there

is no exclusionary rule that should be applied by virtue of the u.s. constitution or emily rule of law or evidence -- constitution or any rule of law or evidence, then, he is, the recorded statements will to prove both the intent of the former president and the lack of a mistake on his part to convince the jury that he knew in fact the documents were still classified, that he should not have had access to the, and that they should not have been shown to anybody without the proper security clearance. host: in alabama, independent line, jason. good morning. caller: good morning, y'all. first off, i think the reason why trump did not go through the process, as mr. weinstein mentioned, was because in january of 2021, he was so busy lying and trying to work his members up into a frenzy, he was on wor >> we are going to leave this program here to keep our over