You look like you are about to start the 11 00 a. M. Shift at the bank of the weekend. Im loving them. Im loving them. You guys have a great rest of your day and i will see you tomorrow. A very good morning to you, it is saturday, march 16th, and we begin today with Big Decisions and more delays all revolving around Donald Trumps litany of legal troubles and the future of american democracy. Lets start in georgia, where nathan wade has resigned from his role as Special Prosecutor in the racketeering case against the former president , donald trump, and multiple Co Defendants over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 president ial election. That came shortly after the judge overseeing the proceedings, scott mcafee, ruled that before County District attorney, this woman, fani willis , should not be disqualified from trying the case as a result of her romantic relationship with nathan wade, which judge mcafee wrote caused no quote actual conflict in terms of the prosecution of the case, but which did present a tremendous lapse in judgment,. Judge mcafee said a major condition on willis and her office remaining on the case. Special prosecutor nathan wade must go. Otherwise, judge mcafee wrote, the appearance of impropriety will remain, which some observers, outside observers note contained a jury pool. The quick resolution is important because it means that the case could still potentially be tried before the november election. Had willis been disqualified outright and removed from the case, her team would have been, as well, and a different prosecutor would have had to take over, almost certainly leading to a trial delay given the amount of time and work from willis in her office over the last two years. Judge mcafees ruling came days after he dismissed six of the accounts in the indictment, three of which were against trump. The others involved some of his codefendants. Trump still faces 10 counts in the case. However, in judge mcafees words, those dismissals were not due to the prosecutions failure to allege sufficient conduct of the defendant, in fact, it is alleged in abundance. But because the legal language used in the indictment was too generic and not specific enough. And judge mcafee said the prosecutors could refile those counts. Meanwhile, the former president was in court in person in florida, relating to special counsel jack smiths Investigation Into Trump taking scores of classified documents with him to maralago when he left office. Trumps team argued to judge Eileen Cannon that she should dismiss the entire federal case on the grounds of the president ial records act, claiming the classified documents that he took with him were personal and thus excluded from the act requirements. We, of course, await judge cannons decisions on that one. But although during the hearing she decided to reject trumps teams arguments that the case should be dismissed on the grounds of the espionage act. That trial is currently set to start in late may. We will see if that happens. About 1000 miles up the coast in new york, the Stormy Daniels hush money trial was supposed to start in just over a week. But the judge in that case as agreed to a 30 day delay and left open the possibility that that trial could be delayed even longer. That situation is sort of unraveled in recent days. Spite making what it says was a request a year ago, manhattan d. A. S office alvin Braggs Office only recently received more than 100,000 pages of documents from the Southern District of new york. That is part of the department of justice. From their separate investigation into michael and the Stormy Daniels payments from several years ago. On wednesday, the manhattan d. A. S office received 31,000 pages of documents said to relate to the Subject Matter of this case, and yesterday the d. A. S office received the last tranche, a batch of 15,000 documents that they say are largely irrelevant to the current case. The d. A. S office has subsequently turned over the documents to trumps team, and that is what has caused this delay. All the while, hanging over everything, we await the Supreme Courts decision on trumps claims of absolute president ial immunity, which could make everything moot. We are set to hear oral arguments on that next month. Joining me now is amy lee copeland, a federal Criminal Defense and appellate attorney and former prosecutor for the subject district of georgia. Also joining me is barbara mcquaid, District Attorney for michigan, and author of the new and important book attack from within, how this information is sabotaging america. Welcome to both of you, thank you for being with us. Lets start in georgia with the numerous developments. Nothing binary about this discussion, this decision from judge scott mcafee. Generally speaking, is more of a win for fani willis then not, because she gets to stay on the case and continue to prosecute the case. But he took a lot of stabs at her and giving her that win. He sure did. Good morning. It is tattered but at least it is still flying. She took a lot of punches to the gut in that order, but she can remain on the case. As you noted, he gave her a choice, but it wasnt much of one. Either you and your whole office go or nathan wade goes. So mr. Wade resigned on friday afternoon and the d hey has excepted the resignation. I anticipate that she is simply going to roll up her sleeves and keep moving. She has appeared in this court many times, and from this judge, who also used to work with her in the Fulton County d. A. Office. I have no doubt that she is going to shake it off and get back to work. Barbara, lets talk about what the judge said. There was no actual Conflict Of Interest, but there was the appearance of a Conflict Of Interest with may continue. That seemed a little like having his cake and eating it too. He was there to make a determination that there wasnt, and he said that there wasnt. So how do you read what he said and what had happened as a result, nathan wade resigning . I think he overreaches here. He makes the legal conclusion that there is no actual Conflict Of Interest, and he doesnt even say it is an apparent Conflict Of Interest. He says it is an appearance of impropriety. He does not make any findings about that, but i think he overreaches by giving her this ultimatum. Either you are off the case and your whole office, or nathan wade is not the case. I think she should have removed nathan wade from this case a long time ago because of the distraction that he was creating here. But there is a little bit of jim coming saying i am not recommending any charges against hillary clinton, but by the way, let me tell you how bad she is. I think he kind of goes out of his way to make some gratuitous remarks that will taint her reputation and undermine some of her credibility in this case. I dont think he needed to do that, i dont think you shouldve done that. But nonetheless, i think you wanted to wag his finger a little bit. Certainly fani willis made a tremendous lapse in judgment , as the judge says here. But that conflict is with her office, as a manager. It has no bearing whatsoever on the fair trial rights of the defendants. And i think for people who dont follow these things closely, or dont understand the law completely, it is going to create this appearance that somehow this prosecution was tainted. So this is the important part, amy lee. How does the taint affect the prosecution of this case . Because the things that were alleged between fani willis and nathan wade, as barbara said, have nothing to do with the case itself. But there are two things at play. One, she is an elected District Attorney, which means she faces election in november, and one does not know whether this case will be concluded by then or not. And two, how does a jury deal with this . They will obviously be instructed by the judge not to consider these matters, but it is kind one of those weird things. What you tell somebody not to think about something, thats all they can see. Thats right. Let me just mention something. This is a nonpartisan d. A. Race. We are going to have answer a lot earlier about what our jury pool things about her. This is, of course, a local d. A. Prosecuting a crime she thinks occurred in her county. The nonpartisan race for d. A. Is actually in may, so she will have a fairly quick answer about how her jury pool things about her. There are two challengers, again, although it is nonpartisan, i think one identifies as democratic and the other identifies, self identifies as a maga attorney on her social media account. If she fails to get 30 of the vote there will be a runoff in june. This would come up and more dire, i expect would be limited if people have a bad feeling about her or a bad opinion of her because of this. We dont know when that is going to happen during jury selection. We dont know when the case is going to be tried. And the judge did note that that might be far down the road. No matter what, though, this is going to be a tough jury to select. Because the former president is such a polarizing figure. This is just another thing that the jurors are going to have to be asked about and the judge will have to sort out. Barbara, can we talk about the manhattan d. A. Case . Whats going on there . There are a lot of documents, and i think for those of you you who dont follow it as closely, we have to remember the documents were asked for by the manhattan d. A. , which is prosecuting this case. They were requested from the department of justice, so there are three parties involved in this Document Discovery right now. But it seems to have had the effect of delaying the case, which was supposed to start on march 25th. Yes. Thats right. I really put the fault at the defense here. Trump and his team. They did not ask for this document until january, so it turns out that there are more than 100,000 pages total between a trench of 70,000, 30,000, and 15,000. More than 100,000. So it took the Southern District of new york until now to review, sort, and provide those documents. So, when a defendant is determined to delay a case they can be very successful. I certainly saw this as a prosecutor. I often said trial dates are made to be moved, and i think we see trial dates, we think oh, good, this trial is going to go on march 25th. As a prosecutor, i saw this again and again. And it is because the judge wants to make sure that the defendant truly has adequate time to prepare. If they are receiving 100,000 documents now in the middle of march, they cant possibly review all of these in time for a trial on march 25th. And to avoid harming the fair trial rights of the defendant, creating an issue for appeal, a judge is usually pretty accommodating when a defendant wants more time. But if the trump team really one of these records in time for a March 25th Trial date, they shouldve been asking for the many months ago and nine january. I want ask you one other thing about the georgia case. The judge dismissed a number of the counts. Six counts. Three of them against donald trump, three against some Co Defendants. Some people read into that. But it seems like it was just sort of technical. He thought they were a bit broad. Thats right. And he made clear to establish a number of things in the order. Number one, the big count of the d. A. Has brought remains unscathed. Number two, the d. A. Can remedy this by going back and asking a grand jury to recharge these particular counts. And number three, if the d. A. Wanted to immediately appeal his order, he would likely get permission. It is notable, because in the disqualification order that resulted in his qualification, he did not make a similar provision about an immediate appeal. So that is good news for the d. A. , that he is at least not signaling it in order, that this case will not be signified for immediate appeal and it will continue forward. I appreciated, there was a lot of stuff to get to and a lot of granularity that those with this without Legal Training grateful to understand. Im grateful to both of you this morning. Barbara, im going to ask you to stick around because i want to dig into your important new book, attack from within, how disinformation is sabotaging america. Plus, still to come, the colorblindness trap. Pulitzer prize journalist Nicole Hannah jones investigated a 50 Year Campaign to reverse racial progress by coopting the very language used by the Civil Rights Movement in the fight for equality. Nicole hannah jones joins me to discuss. And i will talk to Evgenia Kara Murza , the wife of Vladimir Karamurza. And on banned book club, ibi zoboi. This is remington. Hes a member of the family, for sure. We always fed them kibble it just seemed like the thing to do. But. 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In the book, she spelled out the way that our country specifically is susceptible to disinformation, and how people in power or those seeking power can manipulate that susceptibility to slowly erode our democracy over time. Barbara, it is fantastic. I am still carrying my galley copy around because i am so attached to how accessible and straightforward this book is. I want to bring up something you just said in the previous segment. You talked about jim, he and Hillary Clintons emails. You discussed the ways in which Media Companies had been implicit in spreading misinformation. In one particular section, use it as an example, the New York Times handling of Donald Trumps claims about Hillary Clintons emails during the 2016 election. Im going to read from the book. Quote, according to a study by the columbia journalism review, in six days leading up to the election the times ran 10 front page stories about clintons emails, a number equal to the frontpage stories it ran about all other Campaign Policies in the 69 days before the election. Now, we know, barbara, that it is not just the New York Times that amplified the story. Most Media Companies did. How do we do with this, knowing what we learn from that . How do we deal with not amplifying disinformation that is happening in this Election Cycle . It is such an important question. Of course the media can influence what we all talk about. What we see on the news affects only talk about at the water cooler and many other places. We have struggled with is that the media has not quite figured out how to cover donald trump. Certainly there are extremists Media Outlets that deliberately amplify his lies. We saw the Dominion Voting Systems Settlement with fox news for 770 million for airing false claims about a stolen election. But i think even media acting in good faith can sometimes get trapped in this cycle of repeating false claims or inaccurate claims, misleading claims or hateful claims, just because that is what they have done throughout their history, throughout the careers. Media people have been trained to present both sides of an issue, and if an issue is controversial, to present that. I think in the 2016 election, the media probably was lapping up too much of Donald Trumps outrageous comments and amplifying them. And i think now some have really struggled and said maybe we should just ignore him and not give him a megaphone. And that is not a perfect solution either, because i think he will ne