Pod Insights Shawn Ryan Show #89 Tim Parlatore - United States v. Donald J. Trump | Part 1 About this episode Tim Parlatore is a former Naval Officer and founder of Parlatore Law Group. He has represented Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher and President Donald Trump, among other high profile cases.
This episode is an inside look at the multiple cases and indictments against the former President. Part one covers the events of January 6th and supposed election interference. Parlatore was on the Trump legal team during the early searches and seizures of Mar-a-lago. Parlatore also breaks down the infamous phone call where President Trump can be heard asking to "find 11,780 votes."
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Transcript 12,910 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.
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1:00 Shawn Ryan? Hey, everybody. My next guest is no stranger to the Sean Ryan Show. In fact, his first appearance was earlier this year. Maybe you remember the Dallas Alexander episode when we got a cease and desist from the Canadian government. This actually wound up having to do with free speech and the SRS team stood up against Canada in support of Canadian free speech. Well, this man is the guy that made that all a huge success. So it's a real honor to have him back on the show. In the media, all we hear about are the Trump indictments. And I don't think a lot of us actually really know what the indictments are.
1:45 Shawn Ryan? We just know that he's being indicted. A lot of people think that it's unjust. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I'm not the expert. So we brought on one of his former attorneys.
1:58 Shawn Ryan? To go through everything and let us know what all the indictments mean. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my good friend, Mr. Tim Parlatory to the Sean Ryan Show. If you get anything out of this, please like, subscribe and comment to the show. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you're listening, please head over to Apple Podcasts, head over to Spotify, leave us a review, tell us who you'd like to see on the show, tell us what you got out of the episode, and if we need to make any improvements, leave it in the comment. All right, I love you all. Patreon, thank you again for making
2:39 Shawn Ryan? this show possible. Me and my team owe you, we'll never be able to repay you. So we just owe you a big thank you and thank you. Much love to you all. See you soon.
2:57 Shawn Ryan? Tim Parlatory, welcome back to the show.
3:01 Tim Parlatore? Good to be back.
3:02 Shawn Ryan? We have a lot of stuff to talk about here, so, but you're here for, to talk about all the 91 indictments that Trump has, but you know, you were on the legal team for, how long were you on the legal team for?
3:17 Tim Parlatore? A little bit over a year.
3:19 Shawn Ryan? Over a year, and recently, within the past few months, I believe you decided to depart
3:25 Tim Parlatore? Yep, back in the
3:26 Shawn Ryan? from the legal team, and I'm very curious why, I mean, this is such a high-profile case, and no matter, no matter what side of the fence you're on, why did you decide to leave?
3:43 Tim Parlatore? So, the reason I decided to leave is because I felt that
3:53 Tim Parlatore? I was not able to do my job the way that I knew best how to do it because of outside influences. It has nothing to do with the case and it has nothing to do with the client. You know, I very much enjoyed, you know, my personal professional relationship with President Trump. I felt that the case was very important. And ultimately, it was people around him that were interfering with my ability to defend him in the way that I felt best that I could do.
4:37 Tim Parlatore? And it wasn't a decision I came to lightly. You know, it was something that I thought about a lot and ultimately, I kind of sat there and I said, you know what? I want this case, but I don't need this case. And if I'm not able to do everything that I know is in the best interest of the client, if I'm going to be interfered with, there are other things I could be doing with my time. And so, you know, that's, that's really what led me, you know, to the decision.
5:15 Shawn Ryan? How many attorneys are on his team?
5:19 Tim Parlatore? So, at the time that I was there, there were, you know, four main attorneys that, that we were doing all the heavy lifting. It was myself, James Trusty, John Rowley, and Evan Corcoran. And we were doing a lot of the heavy lifting. There were, there were some other attorneys involved. Lindsey Halligan was assisting with a lot of stuff, but, you know, we were the main, the main four. And then, he had this other attorney, Boris Epstein, who was in there, you know, ostensibly as our supervisor.
5:58 Tim Parlatore? And he's a guy who, you know, graduated law school, spent like 18 months at a firm doing banking transaction work. Left that, hasn't practiced law since, became, you know, a political campaign consultant. And, you know, he was essentially dictating to us how we should fight DOJ, even though he'd never been in a courtroom as an attorney in his life. Who appointed this guy to be the top? Well, he was, he somehow worked his way in. He was in that position before I came in.
6:41 Tim Parlatore? He was the one that, you know, brought me into the team and it was just kind of a, you know, from the beginning, he, he said, you know, I am the House Counsel and you all report to me.
6:57 Tim Parlatore? What are the other attorneys' opinions on this?
7:01 Tim Parlatore? I, you know, I don't want to speak for them, but of the three that I mentioned, or of the four of us that I mentioned, only one's still there. Are you serious?
7:13 Tim Parlatore? So, and, you know, there's been, just last week, there was a article in Rolling Stone about how the, the team in Georgia had a shakeup and lost one of the finest attorneys in Georgia for exactly the same reason.
7:31 Tim Parlatore? Yeah, it's, it's difficult enough to fight against DOJ and to defend a client with all of these other atmospherics, but when you have somebody interfering who, you know, really doesn't know what they're doing and is focusing on their own twisted view of, you know, what they think will help a campaign as opposed to what is right and what is appropriate in the criminal justice system, that's a situation I just can't. I couldn't continue to operate under those rules and, you know, I mean, look, I've represented some major figures.
8:16 Tim Parlatore? In major cases. And all of them have given me, you know, the freedom to do what I need to do. I've represented candidates before, people who've had campaigns. You know what they always say? Tim, you're here to keep me out of trouble. You guys, you're here to get me re-elected. You guys, stay out of his way. You need anything, give it to him. And I don't even, I can't even blame, well, I don't blame President Trump for this, in this circumstance. He is stretched so thin, he's managing so many different things, he has to rely upon
9:00 Tim Parlatore? the people around him. And unfortunately, he just doesn't always have the best people around him who are actually looking out for what is best.
9:12 Shawn Ryan? Do you think that this, this lead attorney, is that what you would call him? Boris, a lead attorney?
9:22 Tim Parlatore? Uh, let's call him the House Counsel, that's what he likes to call himself.
9:27 Shawn Ryan? The House Counsel?
9:29 Tim Parlatore? Which is a weird term, by the way. The only people I've ever heard called House Counsel is what they used to say to try and disqualify attorneys off of old mafia cases.
9:40 Shawn Ryan? Was he, was, was he appointed by Trump?
9:44 Tim Parlatore? He was hired by him, yes.
9:46 Shawn Ryan? Is this guy acting in his own self-interest?
9:51 Tim Parlatore? In my opinion, he is.
9:53 Shawn Ryan? Is there any other reasons why he left?
9:57 Tim Parlatore? No, no, that was really it. I mean, I thought it was an important case, one that I, I would have very much enjoyed trying, but if I'm gonna be micromanaged and directed to do things that, you know, and directed to not do things, why would I wanna try, you know, the trial of the century with my hand tied behind my back where I'm not allowed to win?
10:26 Shawn Ryan? Have any of the replacements left too?
10:31 Tim Parlatore? Uh, as of right now, not that I'm aware of.
10:40 Shawn Ryan? Interesting. Well, let's get into the thick of it. And I'm gonna have a lot more questions on why he left as we go through the interview. But, but today, I really, I just wanna dig into the Trump indictments and figure out what's going on there, because a lot of people are very concerned, you know, including myself, that this is just political persecution. So, but going through them real quick, Trump is indicted. Within a four and a half month span, Trump has been charged four times.
11:18 Shawn Ryan? Washington DC, four felony charges. Georgia, 13 felony charges. Florida, 40 felony charges. New York, 34 felony charges. That's 91 felony charges in four and a half months. So I wanna dive into these things. But first, I have a, I have just a couple of questions from Patreon. So Patreon, that's my subscription network. That is, that is what enables you and I to both be sitting here. There are top, top supporters. And this one is from Charlotte. What is Tim's best guess of what legal fees Trump has been billed for in the
12:03 Shawn Ryan? last year?
12:06 Tim Parlatore? So, you know, the legal fees have pretty much all been covered through Political Action Committee. You know, the PAC, Save America. And so, a lot of those fees are public, because they do have to do public filings. The fees in this case have been massive. And, you know, part of that is because of, you know, the complexity of it. But part of it also is because, quite frankly, you have these attorneys that are, you know, billing it over a thousand dollars an hour, and they think that there's millions of dollars behind it. And, you know, if you look at those things, you'll see that my, even though I was on
12:47 Tim Parlatore? the case for over a year, my portion of it is relatively small. But like, I've seen some of the attorneys on there that, over the course of a year, billed $5,000, or $5 million. And my experience...
13:02 Tim Parlatore? That particular attorney didn't provide any value add whatsoever. So, you know, what's the total fees? I mean, it's, it's got to be $20 million.
13:11 Shawn Ryan? Oh, wow.
13:12 Tim Parlatore? Yeah, plus at this point. Is that normal for how much something like this would cost? Hmm, it's a bit excessive, but at the same time, one thing you have to remember is when you have a case that is in many ways all consuming, you have to set aside a lot of your other work. Yeah, think about this Georgia case. They just recently said that the trial of that's going to be somewhere between four to eight months long. So as a lawyer, you have to sit there and say, okay, yeah, it's certainly hourly rate, but at the same time, I'm going to have to set aside, you know, not taking any new work, not work on my business at all,
13:56 Tim Parlatore? spend, you know, four to eight months living in a hotel somewhere. And those things can get expensive. Yeah. Will that Georgia case cost, you know, over a million dollars per defendant? I think it will.
14:14 Tim Parlatore? But yeah, right now, when we're talking about, you know, these PAC fees going, you know, into the tens of millions of dollars.
14:24 Tim Parlatore? Personally, I think some of the lawyers there got greedy at the trough and now they're all of a sudden, you know, as things are coming down with the indictments and it's going to get more time intensive. How much money is there left?
14:39 Shawn Ryan? Yeah. You know, you said that this may be a little excessive. What, what do you think a normal, let's say it's spent 20 million with your estimation, what would a normal human being with, what did we say? 90, 91 counts felony charges, four different districts, states, whatever you want to call it.
15:03 Shawn Ryan? What would that run?
15:04 Tim Parlatore? Well, it really, it really depends on the individual case. And, you know, legal fees are one of those things where they're limited only by your imagination. Okay, if you want to have the biggest fanciest defense, you know, the multimillion dollar defense where you have a team of lawyers and paralegals at the table, you have a shadow jury, you have jury consultants, you have all of these other, you know, things and laser light shows, you can do it. I've never done that. I've never found it to be viable. I think a lot of that is more make work and it's it's efforts by the attorneys to try
15:48 Tim Parlatore? and just suck more, you know, money out of cases. Again, I took over a case once where the prior attorney was hiring psychodramatists to try to have the defendant act things out. Whereas I looked at it and said, I have a better idea. Why don't you just sit with the guy and ask him, hey, tell me what happened? So those things, you know, if I looked at these cases myself and I said, okay, my method of trying these cases, then my billing rate is a little bit lower because I don't maintain a big fancy office. But all four of these cases, you know, I could put together a good
16:30 Tim Parlatore? solid defense on all these for probably five. Five million. Yeah. Now, but even there, it's kind of a question of, you know, does it cut off the motion to dismiss face? Do you have to go to a trial? If you do go to trial, how long is the trial going to be? How many lawyers do you want in the trial? You know, it's, it really can be limited by your imagination, but at the same time, I would advise everybody facing that kind of situation to have a real hard talk with your lawyer about, are all of these expenses really appropriate?
17:13 Tim Parlatore? And, you know, one of the problems that a lot of clients face is that the lawyer is trying to get all these fees out of you at a time when you're facing jail. And so they'll, you know, they'll hit you on this stuff. Oh, you gotta, you know, mortgage your house. You got to do all this stuff because you don't want to end up in jail saying, man, I wish I had hired that psychodrama test. You know?
17:38 Shawn Ryan? Yeah, that's a great point.
17:40 Tim Parlatore? It's, and it's a, it's something, it's something that I don't like about a lot of people in my profession where they do, um, you know, give a lot of us a bad name through that. Yeah, but at the same time, these things can get expensive.
17:54 Shawn Ryan? Yeah.
17:54 Tim Parlatore? I mean, in the DC case, they're talking about millions of pages of documents.
18:00 Shawn Ryan? Millions of.
18:01 Tim Parlatore? Yeah.
18:02 Shawn Ryan? How do you go through millions of pages of documents?
18:04 Tim Parlatore? You gotta hire a team to do it. Yeah, I can't do that myself. I can't, I can't sit there and do it myself. I mean, certainly things are getting better now where they have, you know, certain AI solutions, but, you know, do you really want to trust ChatGPT to go through everything and figure out what your, you know, where all the potential defenses are? Or are you going to want to have a human, usually a junior lawyer, a team of junior lawyers going through this to pull out the things that are relevant?
18:34 Shawn Ryan? Yeah, yeah. You know, there's another question from Mr. Burns. Describe the most likely scenarios you foresee for Trump to be convicted or otherwise that would eliminate him from appearing on the 2024 presidential ballot.
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19:24 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still ad. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.
20:00 Tim Parlatore? The question gets interesting with that last little caveat at the end about eliminating him from the ballot. Because ultimately, none of these cases are disqualifying that they would force his removal. And all of these cases, in order for it to get to a conviction that could, while not statutorily remove him, put him into a position where it's very difficult for him to do anything, they have to get the trials done before the election. And that's why you see a lot of these prosecutors really pushing the timing of trying to get these trials done quickly.
20:39 Tim Parlatore? Whereas if there was not an election involved, cases of this magnitude ordinarily take over two years to get to a trial. So the idea that, I mean, in Georgia, they're talking about doing the first trial with two of the co-defendants next month, which is crazy. To actually take a case to trial within a couple of months of the initial arraignment? That's unheard of. But they need to, if this is, as the Trump team keeps saying, election interference, then they need to have the cases brought before the election.
21:22 Tim Parlatore? Especially in Georgia, if they can tie him up in a courtroom and make him sit in a courtroom for four to eight months, every single day, during the general election, he's not out debating, he's not out campaigning. So I think that that's, the most likely scenario really comes down to a matter of timing of, are any of these cases, or multiple of these cases, actually going to get tried before the election?
21:54 Shawn Ryan? Interesting. You know, there's one more question here from Brody. Would it be possible, especially if he is found not guilty, for Trump to sue for malicious prosecution since they keep actively searching for something to charge him with?
22:14 Tim Parlatore? That sounds actually like a question the client would have asked me, too. It is possible. Yeah, suing for malicious prosecution is not something that you frequently do, and there's a lot of hurdles to it. Prosecutorial immunity is one of the big ones. That's why, you know, when you see people that are wrongfully convicted, that have their convictions overturned, all those lawsuits are against the police departments, not the prosecutors, because the prosecutors get immunity.
22:50 Shawn Ryan? Okay.
22:51 Tim Parlatore? And so, you know, whenever the Manhattan District Attorney's Office screws up a case, the NYPD is the one that has to pay for it.
22:59 Shawn Ryan? Oh, okay.
23:01 Tim Parlatore? So, but in a case where you are found not guilty, a determination would need to be made because malicious prosecution is a much higher standard than just simply being acquitted. Being acquitted means that they failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. And so even if a jury thinks it's more likely than not that you committed the crime, if they have any reasonable doubt as to it, they have to vote for an acquittal. So it's not, it's not a statement of innocence necessarily. It is a statement, "You're not guilty."
23:41 Tim Parlatore? And so when you then go to evaluate it for malicious prosecution, you have to say, "Can I meet that higher standard?" And I think some of these you can. Some of these you can. I think that potentially, as we're going to discuss a little bit later, the election-related cases particularly, I think that there is a possibility of doing something there. And especially if it, if it does have an impact on the election.
24:11 Tim Parlatore? Because you're essentially disrupting his job application.
24:15 Shawn Ryan? Mm hmm, mm hmm, makes sense. Well, we got a lot to cover, Tim. Those are, those were, those were the top Patreon questions that we had. I have a ton of questions.
24:28 Tim Parlatore? Sure.
24:29 Shawn Ryan? Uh, we're gonna start with the January 6th insurrection case. But before that, before we really get into the weeds, everybody always gets a gift on this show. You know that, so I know, I know you're a coffee guy. There you go. So, you know, we just had this conversation outside, but you know, I'm very into mental health.
24:58 Tim Parlatore? Yes.
24:58 Shawn Ryan? And part of mental health is keeping your brain sharp. So that is layered superfoods, coffee and performance mushrooms. And the coffee actually has, uh, functional mushroom benefits in it. And so there's two different kinds of coffee in there. They have functional mushroom benefits, then there's performance mushrooms. And then there's a creamer. I know you're a black coffee guy, but, uh, the creamer actually has, uh, benefits of functional mushrooms and adaptogens as well, so.
25:30 Tim Parlatore? Well, thank you very much.
25:31 Shawn Ryan? You're welcome.
25:31 Tim Parlatore? I definitely look forward to, uh, brewing those.
25:34 Shawn Ryan? Let me know how you like it.
25:35 Tim Parlatore? Will do.
25:36 Shawn Ryan? But, um, so diving in here, I have a question on my own. Uh, one of my personal questions is, you know, the, actually, let me backtrack. I think it's important. Anytime you mention Trump today, people automatically assume that you are a, it's an endorsement or a supporter. And, and the same goes with the other direction. Anytime you mention Biden.
26:03 Tim Parlatore? Right.
26:03 Shawn Ryan? People automatically assume, you know, if, if you're mentioning him in any type of good light, that you're a Biden supporter. And, and it, it's getting to the point in this country where you can't, you can't criticize or praise any, any political candidate without people taking that as a endorsement.
26:25 Tim Parlatore? Correct.
26:25 Shawn Ryan? And so what I wanted to ask you is, you know, you were on the Trump legal team for quite a while. Are you a? Is this, is this, is this you showing everybody that you are a Trump supporter? Or is this just you doing your job?
26:45 Tim Parlatore? That's a really good question and one that nobody's asked me publicly before. The answer to the question is, I'm a lawyer. My loyalty is to the Constitution and every representation that I undertake is with a laser focus on the facts, the evidence and the law. The politics are something that, you know, needs to be considered in certain cases in figuring out the best method, but a lawyer has an ethical responsibility to represent their client to the best of their abilities within the ethical rules.
27:25 Tim Parlatore? And if a lawyer allows their personal political beliefs to dictate that representation, then they are a failure as a lawyer. If a client has a legitimate case, whether you agree with that client, you know, in their personal life or political life or not, then you should fight that case. I am not a campaign guy. I had had no dealings, you know, I tried to stay away from the Trump campaign. I represented him because I believed in his case. I believe that the, you know, it's an important case.
28:07 Tim Parlatore? It involves, you know, issues of monumental importance to this country, issues that will create significant precedent that not only affect Donald Trump himself, but it will also affect future presidents down the line. And that's why I found this case to be important, not because, you know, I, you know, voted for him or voted against him or anything else. And quite frankly, if I were to be public about who I'm voting for, I think that that would be, you know, something detrimental to my ability to represent clients. You know, I have built, over the course of my career, a several clients that happened
28:52 Tim Parlatore? to be on the right side of the political aisle. Do I also represent people on the left? Absolutely. You know, if, if Bob Menendez or Hunter Biden called me tomorrow and said, hey, you know, would you be interested in coming into my case? I would say, yeah, let's sit down and have a chat.
29:12 Tim Parlatore? You know, I, I don't like talking about my personal political beliefs. For that reason, I will tell you this. I don't fit into, my personal thoughts don't fit into the orthodoxy of either political party.
29:31 Tim Parlatore? You know, I, I, I agree with certain things on one side. I agree with certain things on the other side. But primarily, I'm focused on the facts, the evidence and the law.
29:43 Shawn Ryan? Well, I really appreciate that. Thank you. I think that's important and, and, um, you know, I,
29:51 Shawn Ryan? I wish we lived in a time where you could have
29:55 Shawn Ryan? political discussions without people automatically assuming who you're supporting or stand behind or are gonna vote for, you know, and, and it's, you, it, it, it, in my experience, you cannot have any discussions about politics. No constructive criticisms, no praise, no nothing.
30:15 Tim Parlatore? Right.
30:15 Shawn Ryan? Without people
30:19 Shawn Ryan? prematurely labeling your, your, your beliefs.
30:24 Tim Parlatore? Right.
30:25 Shawn Ryan? And, uh, and, uh, so thank you for sharing that. I think, I think that's important to kick off the interview with the fact that you are a neutral party in this and that, um, you're just trying to do right by the, by the constitution and get to the facts. And so I have some questions. But I think it will be more suited for the end of the interview. One is about the jury.
30:49 Tim Parlatore? Sure.
30:49 Shawn Ryan? Juries and, um, and, and another is, is this just after we dive in to all of these different indictments and, and the different locations?
31:01 Shawn Ryan? Is this just political prosecution? Because, you know, I am extremely concerned if it is political prosecution, because this sets a precedent, a sense of tone. And, and if it is, this is going to be the way from here on out. And, and then, that's, that's very scary, you know, for everyone. Because it won't just be one party. Eventually, it will be all of them.
31:32 Tim Parlatore? Correct.
31:33 Shawn Ryan? And, so anyways, let's start with Washington DC. The January 6th insurrection case. The House Select Committee on January 6th attack voted in December 2022 to refer Trump to the Justice Department for prosecution. August 1st, 2023, the grand jury approved an indictment against Trump, indicting him with an extraordinary conspiracy that threatened to disenfranchise millions of Americans. The charges that I have are two felony counts of obstructing an official proceeding, one felony account of conspiracy to defraud the United States,
32:17 Shawn Ryan? one felony account of conspiracy against rights. Where do we start here?
32:25 Tim Parlatore? Well, it's an interesting case because, and I think that it is unfortunately one that's difficult to look at this passionately. But, and a lot of it is because of the involvement of the politicians. And your timeline, your timeline was accurate. But you mentioned about the January 6th committee, you know, doing the referral. To me, that's an irrelevant fact. The Justice Department was already doing this, totally separate and apart from what the Select Committee was doing.
33:10 Tim Parlatore? The Select Committee's report, to my mind, had several.
33:17 Tim Parlatore? Major flaws to it. And, you know, I dealt with those investigators. I should say investigators with air quotes because they did not conduct a real investigation. Anything that didn't fit with what they had predetermined to be the solution, they didn't want to hear. I had witnesses that they didn't want to talk to. I had documents that they didn't want to see. I had, you know, a situation where one of my clients, a former guest of yours, Bernie Kerik, we had gotten President Trump, who I didn't represent at the time,
33:55 Tim Parlatore? to agree to a full privilege waiver as long as Bernie Kerik's testimony could be public. The committee refused. They specifically chose, we don't want the testimony to be public and we would rather not have the privileged information. We'd rather keep it secret and limited. So that committee, to me, was kind of a sham. And most congressional committees, honestly, on both sides of the aisle, they are. I mean, congressional hearings, I remember one former congressman once told me, the purpose of a congressional hearing is fundraising.
34:39 Tim Parlatore? It's about getting video clips that you can use for fundraising. So that piece of it, I kind of set to the side. The investigation in chief, and I dealt with them, you know, a lot. The entire theory of the case comes down to, did he knowingly push false claims of election fraud to try to overturn, you know, the will of the people and install himself wrongfully as president for a second term? That's their theory. And, you know, they have a few different alternative methods of charging it
35:19 Tim Parlatore? where they're really, to my mind, they went through the law books to try and find, you know, we have this conduct that we don't like. Let's go through the law books to try and find some statute that we can criminalize it in. And so I think that in large respects, they're kind of trying to jam the square peg into the round hole on that.
35:43 Tim Parlatore? But from a more basic perspective, my biggest problem with the entire January 6 case is it's all a matter of how you evaluate his actions based on the role that you assume that he's taking. Because as a first-term president, he is wearing two hats. He has the hat of being, you know, the candidate who wants to win the election, but he's also wearing the hat of commander in chief, who has a mandate under the Constitution to ensure that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed.
36:28 Tim Parlatore? So, pull back from a second from all the rhetoric. Change the names, change the personalities, change the circumstances. You have a second-term president, not a candidate, who has received credible reports of possible fraud, which could have affected the outcome of the election. That possible fraud needs to be further investigated to conclusively prove or disprove it. What do you want the commander in chief to do? Under that circumstance?
37:13 Tim Parlatore? I want him to do what's right. I want him to uphold the law. You want him to call the Attorney General. You want him to call the FBI Director. You want him to tell them, "Hey, we've received these credible reports. I would like you to send out FBI agents and research them. Figure it out. Prove it conclusively, one way or the other. Prove or disprove." Call up the governors. Say, "Hey, I received reports of fraud in your state. Can you have your state investigators go and look into this?"
37:48 Tim Parlatore? That is what we would want a second term president who is not running for reelection to do. And notice in my hypothetical, I didn't even say which way the election would have tipped. We would want them to do that no matter what. But when you add in the additional fact, it's a first term president who is running for reelection and the allegations of fraud go in the direction where if there is fraud proven, then he personally benefits. When you add those additional facts, it's impossible to really look at it this passionately anymore.
38:31 Tim Parlatore? And so, in this circumstance, if President Trump has brought credible information about fraud which changed the outcome of the election, do we expect him to sit there and say, "Well, Joe Biden won, so I'm not going to ask anybody to look into these things." And that is the part that people are, you know, to my mind, the investigators are not really looking at it through that lens. They're looking at it through the lens of he's a candidate who lost, who wants to overturn the result.
39:13 Tim Parlatore? And the difference between those, you know, the line is very thin and very gray between those two roles. And additionally, it all comes back to, did he believe these reports?
39:29 Shawn Ryan? Where did the reports come from?
39:31 Tim Parlatore? So, the reports came from a lot of different sources. And this is, again, part of what hasn't been fully explored. At the time, they were receiving a lot of reports from people on the ground in the various states who said, "I saw this. I saw them unloading boxes of ballots. I saw them, you know, doing this. I saw people running the same ballots through the machines multiple times," you know, whatever it is. They were getting all of these complaints from around the country. And some of them weren't actually even complaints of observing
40:12 Tim Parlatore? fraud so much as complaints of observing irregularities. "They are refusing to let the observers watch the ballot counting." That was a big one.
40:28 Tim Parlatore? Why are you refusing to let the observers watch the ballot counting?
40:35 Tim Parlatore? Do they normally? No, normally that is, that is a part of our system that, and it's, it's written into laws of the various states of how the ballots get counted, what observers are allowed to go. Usually you have the opportunity for a Republican and Democrat observer to both be there. The Republicans observers went and they were not allowed to observe. And that, you know, removal of the observers is something that, on one hand, is very easy to prove. You have plenty of eyewitnesses. You have surveillance video. On the other hand, it's very difficult to prove that it means anything. Because once you've removed
41:19 Tim Parlatore? the witness, what happened in the room? I have no idea. You know, did they double count? Maybe. Who knows? Did they do everything appropriately and they just didn't like people watching them? Maybe. Who knows? The removal of observers is not something that in and of itself proves fraud.
41:42 Tim Parlatore? But it's something that gives an indicator that this should be looked into more.
41:48 Shawn Ryan? Is there any law that states that you have to allow the observers in?
41:54 Tim Parlatore? Yeah.
41:54 Shawn Ryan? And why is not, why is that law not being upheld? Why is there no consequences?
42:00 Tim Parlatore? That was the issue at the time is that, you know, this was, this was not proper. The way that you kept the, the observers out, they went to judges, they got injunctions.
42:13 Tim Parlatore? But you're talking about a very short period of time that by the time you go through the legal process, the counting is done.
42:23 Tim Parlatore? And then what's the remedy? Do a recount? Well, what if they're, what if they've done something to the ballots? Who knows? It, it becomes very difficult.
42:35 Tim Parlatore? So they received all these reports of various irregularities throughout the country. And look, I didn't personally observe any of these things, so I can't speak to the veracity of, of any of these. But I will tell you that one of my clients, Bernie Carrick, was one of the chief investigators working with Rudy Giuliani. They received a lot of these complaints. Some of them, they were able to discount right off the bat and say, that's not something worth our time. That's not something that's credible. This person is a kook. Set it to the side. Focus on the ones that they could actually do something with.
43:16 Tim Parlatore? And ultimately, when he's testified, or when he was interviewed by the January 6th Committee, when he was interviewed by Jack Smith's team, his story was consistent, which is, as a former criminal investigator, we found evidence of fraud that rises to the level of probable cause, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, probable cause to believe that fraud had been committed, which requires further investigation to conclusively prove or disprove. They didn't have the resources to do that. They had neither the time, the money, the manpower, the subpoena power to do it.
44:02 Tim Parlatore? You know who does? The FBI.
44:08 Tim Parlatore? And that is really where this thing comes down to is that he received these reports from the Giuliani team and others, the president. He then goes over to Bill Barr and others and says, I want you to send investigators out to look at this. And again, I wasn't in the room, but the, the way that it was explained to me, Bill Barr essentially responds, there's nothing there. There's no fraud. This is, you know, this is not worth my time.
44:50 Tim Parlatore? I'm not going to devote resources to doing this investigation.
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45:53 Tim Parlatore? A lot of the frustration that built up by the morning of January 6th, I think, was more fueled by the lack of an investigation and the appearance.
46:14 Tim Parlatore? That some of these people were just saying it's better to, you know, close our eyes and move forward instead of actually verifying these things.
46:27 Tim Parlatore? Yeah, if we could go back in time, I would love to grab Bill Barr by the arm and say, dude, if you think the Giuliani is full of it,
46:41 Tim Parlatore? tell that to the president. Say, hey, I think Rudy Giuliani is full of crap. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna send out a team of FBI agents. We're gonna go investigate all that stuff that he did, and I'm gonna bring you back a report showing you that he's full of crap.
46:55 Tim Parlatore? If he had done that, I think that would have changed a lot of the trajectory of things. Not blaming him, not saying he's personally responsible for January 6, but the belief that no investigation was going to be done, I think is what fostered the desperation
47:20 Tim Parlatore? and, you know, the continued, you know, so-called pressure campaign to do an investigation.
47:28 Tim Parlatore? And one of the things that I'm always amazed at by these allegations is, and this is both in the DC and the Georgia case, is he put on an immense pressure campaign to conduct an investigation. Guess what? Asking the FBI or the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to conduct an investigation is very dangerous because you have no control over it. If I ask the police or the FBI, I want you to investigate this.
48:00 Tim Parlatore? My hands are off of it, and I am in a position of sitting back and waiting. And the FBI is gonna go out, they're gonna investigate, they're gonna interview people, they're gonna look at evidence, and there's a chance they come back and they say, Tim, this thing that you said, we found evidence of it. But there's also a big chance that they come back and they say, hey, this thing that you said, we found an innocent explanation. There's no there, there.
48:29 Tim Parlatore? He never asked in any of these things, "I want you to investigate with this conclusion."
48:41 Tim Parlatore? "I want you to investigate this allegation." That's the difference.
48:48 Tim Parlatore? And so, and this crosses both the Georgia and DC case. If you believe that there's a possibility of fraud, and you're asking them to investigate it, that is not a crime.
49:11 Shawn Ryan? When it comes to these counts, because this is all wrapped around J6, correct?
49:18 Tim Parlatore? Right.
49:18 Shawn Ryan? The DC stuff?
49:20 Tim Parlatore? Yeah.
49:21 Shawn Ryan? None of these sound, to me, like they're charging him with instigating JMR6.
49:32 Tim Parlatore? Yeah, not at all. So, and that's an important piece, is that people keep talking about the January 6th insurrection.
49:43 Tim Parlatore? I understand why people use that term. I don't understand why lawyers use that term. Insurrection is a legal term that has a definition under the United States Code.
49:58 Tim Parlatore? You cannot sit there and, as a lawyer, and say the January 6th insurrection, when not a single person has been charged with the crime of insurrection. Many people were charged with the actions on that day, but nobody's been charged with insurrection. So, as a lawyer, I throw that term to the side, as being an organized effort to overthrow the government. Obstruction of official proceeding? Yeah, a lot of people did do that, absolutely. Trespassing, property damage, general mayhem? Absolutely, they did all that.
50:46 Tim Parlatore? Bad fashion sense, absolutely. But. Bad fashion sense. I wouldn't walk around Congress wearing a fuzzy hat, but, you know. So insurrection is to the side, but even even inciting a riot is not something that he's been charged with. He's been charged with, you know, the obstruction of the proceeding relating to trying to pressure Mike Pence into not certifying.
51:26 Tim Parlatore? He's been charged with all these claims of fraud against the United States by falsely claiming that there was fraud in the election to Mike Pence, to various members of Congress, you know, with the intent of doing this, as it relates to the alternate slate of electors, things like that. But they could not, for good reason, they could not establish a connection that he had knowingly incited a violent protest, or a riot, or an insurrection. Because there's no evidence of that.
52:08 Tim Parlatore? You know, he asked the people to go down there peacefully and patriotically, and so it's very difficult with that video to then go in front of a jury and say, he wanted them to go down there and commit murder and mayhem. So that's, so that piece of the case is really, you know, excised out.
52:40 Shawn Ryan? When is this gonna be tried? Is it out yet?
52:43 Tim Parlatore? Yeah, right now, they're talking about a trial date, I think of next summer. So still before the election, but yeah, again, given the volume of discovery and everything in this case, it will only get tried on that schedule if everybody just ignores the standard conventions of federal criminal procedure.
53:12 Shawn Ryan? Do you think these are gonna stick?
53:15 Tim Parlatore? I believe that the January 6 charges in DC could result in a jury verdict of conviction. I believe that the charges are likely to be overturned on appeal, but I think that his greatest danger is a jury verdict of conviction. And again, if they rush the trial, then he's gonna have the conviction and the appeal is not gonna get decided till a year or two later.
53:51 Tim Parlatore? And so if he has a conviction and the judge sentences him to jail right before the election, then yeah, that's gonna have an impact. And the fact that a, that an appellate court overturns a verdict later on, too late.
54:11 Shawn Ryan? Yeah. How much time could he be facing with the DC January 6 one alone?
54:20 Tim Parlatore? And because that indictment came down after I left the team, I never sat down and actually, you know, went through the sentencing guidelines calculations on it. But it would not be a no jail case. And in particular, these judges, I think they would, you know, put him in. You know, one of the things that I'm amazed by is the judges that have been hearing all these January 6 cases.
54:51 Tim Parlatore? They're witnesses. You know, some of the judges have even talked about how on the morning of January 6th, I watched the insurrection out my window of the courthouse. That's true. You look at the court, where the courthouse is, you look out the windows and you can see the Capitol. In any other circumstance, a judge who is that personally involved would ordinarily be removed. And this was a great debate that they had several years ago about can we actually try 9/11 related Al Qaeda members in the Southern District of New York?
55:35 Tim Parlatore? Because the courthouse is so close to the World Trade Center. So it's, I, I think that if he's tried in DC, there's a high likelihood, great possibility of conviction. I think that given all of the other sentences that have been handed down for all of the other protesters, I think that the likelihood of him getting 10 plus years is high.
56:11 Shawn Ryan? Wow, you think that's high?
56:14 Tim Parlatore? Yeah.
56:15 Shawn Ryan? It's very likely.
56:16 Tim Parlatore? Yeah. I think that the likelihood of that being then overturned by the appellate court is high.
56:22 Shawn Ryan? Okay.
56:23 Tim Parlatore? And so, you know, some of this stuff may get dealt with in pre-trial motions to dismiss, which maybe they'll even allow that to go to the appellate court before trial. That's not something that they usually do, but sometimes it's appropriate.
56:40 Shawn Ryan? With the information that you've been presented with when you were on the case, is he guilty?
56:47 Tim Parlatore? In my opinion, no. And it all comes down to, did he believe that the claims of fraud were false?
57:02 Tim Parlatore? I don't think anybody that's ever heard him speak, and certainly nobody that's sat with the man and spoken to him face to face, could ever say, "He knows that there was no fraud." He believes today that there was fraud in that election. He believes today that that election was stolen from him. And here's the thing. For purposes of this criminal case, his personal belief is more important than whether there was fraud. He could spend a whole trial proving that there was no fraud.
57:46 Tim Parlatore? But if he believed it at the time, then he's not guilty. Well, wouldn't the... So, wouldn't the First Amendment protect that? Not exactly. So, First Amendment is a little bit more nuanced than that. So, the First Amendment does give you the right to, you know, say whatever you want, as long as it's not, you know... As long as it needs... For your free speech to be criminalized, it has to have more than just speech. So, a perfect example is, you know,
58:27 Tim Parlatore? the history behind the Stolen Valor Act. They initially passed a law saying, you know, claiming to have military, you know, decorations and rank and history and everything is, you know, falsely claiming that as a crime. That was overturned as a violation of the First Amendment. You have a First Amendment right to lie. The way that they then brought it back was it has to be tied to something else. So, if I go and tell everybody I was a Navy SEAL, that's legal. Nobody's ever gonna hire me again. But it's legal for me to lie about being a Navy SEAL.
59:11 Tim Parlatore? Now, if I say, "I am a former Navy SEAL, and I can teach you how to scuba dive."
59:21 Tim Parlatore? And I'm gonna charge you. Yeah, I'm a SCUBA instructor, former Navy SEAL. That's where the crime is. Because you are connecting the false statement to some form of pecuniary gain, monetary gain. And they've even, you know, been looking at this of, does it get down to the level of, you know, falsely claiming that you're a SEAL in a bar at night so you can convince the girl to go home with you? Is that constituted? But here again, if you're simply saying, pretend for a second that there was no fraud, pretend for a second that he knew that there was no fraud.
1:00:05 Tim Parlatore? If he's just saying it, there's nothing wrong with that. But the fact that he's then connecting it to Mike Pence, you should not certify the election. That's that extra step that takes it outside of a First Amendment defense.
1:00:29 Shawn Ryan? Did Mike Pence make the right call that day?
1:00:33 Tim Parlatore? I don't know. I think that the law was ambiguous as to whether he had the power to do what they were asking him to do. They have since, you know, gone to amend the Electoral College Act to clarify that his role is purely ceremonial. And in doing so, they do admit that it was, at a minimum, vague. And to back up for a second, because, you know, one of the big underlying questions here is, what was Mike Pence being asked to do?
1:01:16 Tim Parlatore? Mike Pence has said, and you've got to remember, he's now running for president against Trump. He has said that he was asked to basically reject these things and declare Trump as the president.
1:01:31 Tim Parlatore? That claim is inconsistent with all of the evidence that I saw through my time representing him and all of the other people and witnesses that I have interviewed.
1:01:44 Tim Parlatore? The information that I had, which is very consistent with every single one of these witnesses, is that what he was asked to do was they were going to present him with evidence of possible fraud and that he was going to say, "Because I can't be sure, I don't want to certify the election today.
1:02:13 Tim Parlatore? I'm going to adjourn these proceedings for 10 days, and I would ask that these particular states go back and investigate these particular claims of fraud and come back to me before the next hearing in 10 days to let me know
1:02:37 Tim Parlatore? whether these slates are still accurate."
1:02:42 Tim Parlatore? If, in fact, that is what he was being asked to do,
1:02:47 Tim Parlatore? then I think for him to have said yes, certainly the way that the law was written at the time, he wouldn't have been wrong to do that.
1:02:59 Tim Parlatore? At the same time, was he wrong for what he did do? No. In my personal opinion, I think he could have gone either way. I think that the way that the law was written, it gave him discretion.
1:03:19 Tim Parlatore? So he made the decision that he felt he should have. You know, I, I personally can't, I don't take a position on whether he was right. I say this, he wasn't wrong. I'm not going to say he was right, but he wasn't wrong.
1:03:43 Shawn Ryan? Gotcha. This is a little unrelated, but I'm curious to know, I mean, we're getting to the section where who could pardon him? How could he get out of this? All federal crime, they were all, they were all federal crimes. So if Trump is reelected, he could pardon himself. Why do you think he didn't pardon himself before he left office? Was that a mistake on his part?
1:04:13 Tim Parlatore? Self pardon is a, um.
1:04:21 Shawn Ryan? Doesn't look right.
1:04:23 Tim Parlatore? Well, and it's also, it's something that's never been done. And so it's, it's never been done. It's of questionable legality. I mean, certainly, you know, when you read the constitution, it appears that there's not that restriction on it. Um, but at the same time, nobody's ever done it. Well, here's the other piece of a pardon. This is actually important. Uh, and I'm, if you don't mind, I'm going to go on a slight tangent here about another case. A pardon is not a declaration of innocence. A pardon is a declaration of forgiveness.
1:05:08 Tim Parlatore? And so the act of accepting a pardon is in and of itself considered to be an admission that you've done something wrong. And that's why pardon applications, you usually are required to say, yes, I made a mistake and I am asking for forgiveness. Please restore me to the full rights of an American citizen without a conviction because I have, you know, for whatever reason you want to argue.
1:05:42 Tim Parlatore? And so the story that I want to tell you here is another, another one of my clients, Eddie Gallagher, when we were pre-trial in his case, and the newspapers were all talking about how President Trump was considering pardoning Eddie. Eddie actually asked me, he said, "Tim, if he does issue a pardon, am I required to accept it? Because I don't want a pardon before my trial. I want to go into court and I want to face my accusers and I want to be exonerated. At the same time, I don't want to go to jail for the rest of my life.
1:06:27 Tim Parlatore? I want to go home to my family. But do I have to accept it? Or can I wait until after the trial?"
1:06:35 Shawn Ryan? Hmm.
1:06:36 Tim Parlatore? And so it was something that I actually had to research at the time for Eddie. And luckily for him, President Trump did not offer him a pardon pre-trial, and so he did get the opportunity to go in and exonerate himself. But courts have found, in certain cases, in very unique circumstances, where it was brought to the court's attention, that you cannot claim that you were innocent if you accepted a pardon.
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1:09:56 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.
1:10:29 Shawn Ryan? All right, Tim, we're pretty much wrapped up with the J6 Washington DC indictments. I would like to get into the Georgia election interference case.
1:10:40 Tim Parlatore? Sure.
1:10:41 Shawn Ryan? So this case I find very interesting after some conversations that we had offline. But status indictment, criminal investigation opened February of 2021. Summer of 2023, Willis presented her evidence to a regular grand jury which approved a 98-page indictment on August 14th, 2023. 13 felony count charges. One count of violating the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, RICO. Three counts of solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer.
1:11:23 Shawn Ryan? One count of conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer. Two counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree. Two counts of false statements and writings. Two counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings. One count of filing false documents. One count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.
1:11:47 Shawn Ryan? Am I missing anything?
1:11:48 Tim Parlatore? Sounds really bad when you list them like that.
1:11:50 Shawn Ryan? It does. Could you go through and and tell us what all these indictments mean?
1:12:00 Tim Parlatore? You know, the Georgia case essentially mirrors the Jack Smith DC case, but in a slightly different angle. Who is Jack Smith? Uh, sorry, that's the, um, the special counsel, um, you know, Jack Smith is a special counsel in the DOJ case. Okay. So it mirrors the DC case in a lot of ways, but it departs in a lot of ways, too. One thing to remember here, Fannie Willis is a county prosecutor. Okay, she's not a state attorney general, she's not a federal prosecutor. Her fiefdom is Fulton County. That's it.
1:12:46 Tim Parlatore? Not only that, Fulton County, as it encompasses the Capitol, there are certain portions of that county that are outside of her jurisdiction. Specifically, the State House.
1:13:00 Tim Parlatore? The state government buildings, you know, where the governor is, where the Secretary of State is, where the legislator legislature is, those buildings are also outside of her jurisdiction. State buildings, because the state is superior to the county, anything happens in there, gets investigated by the state police, gets prosecuted by the state attorney general, not the county.
1:13:28 Tim Parlatore? So as a county prosecutor, she doesn't really have any power to be investigating the things that she's prosecuting here. What she's done is she's taken the state RICO count, uh, which is, you know, racketeering, influence, corrupt organizations. It was originally a federal statute that a lot of states have adopted, uh, similar statutes for theirs, that was designed to take down organized crime.
1:14:00 Tim Parlatore? RICO is unique because what it does is it essentially criminalizes being a member of a criminal organization. And so they have to prove, you know, what the structure means and methods of the enterprise are, enterprise being the organization. And then in doing so, they then have to show that certain pattern acts were conducted by the organization as part of that. And so it's usually traditional racketeering activity, you know, murder, mayhem, you know, illegal gambling, loan sharking, stuff like that. In the context of a state prosecution, this is one of those charges that allows you to
1:14:45 Tim Parlatore? say, okay, racketeering happened in Fulton County. But in order to prove the enterprise, I can start to touch things that are outside of the county and bring them in to prove the enterprise. So if she can't charge RICO, she can't talk about things that happened in the State House, things that happened in Coffee County, things that happened in Pennsylvania, things that happened anywhere outside of Fulton County, which is really just, you know, the polling
1:15:26 Tim Parlatore? stations and where the actual vote count took place in Atlanta. So that's why you have this RICO count, because she's trying to significantly play out of position for what her power is as a county official. So you start with that. And then she also has indicted all these different people. In doing so, one of the things that's interesting to me is, you know, obviously you can't have a RICO of one person. It's got to be an organization. That's why she decided to indict, was it 19 people?
1:16:09 Tim Parlatore? In doing so, in my reading of it, she is directly contradicting the D.C. case. Because some of the things that she's saying, and specifically the fact that she's charged Rudy Giuliani, is she is directly going against what the federal theory is. Because the federal theory is, Trump knew that these claims of fraud were false, because even though Rudy Giuliani told it to him, he knew it was false because Bill Barr told him it wasn't true. Which is not necessarily something that's gonna hold up on appeal. But Fannie Willis,
1:16:54 Tim Parlatore? instead of saying the same theory, she instead says, "Well, Rudy Giuliani also knew that the claims of fraud were untrue." So she's contradicting the federal theory. Interesting. What she's also done is by having this big, sprawling indictment with 19 defendants and 30 unindicted co-conspirators, is every single one of those people, many of which were being cooperative and sitting down for interviews and talking with the federal
1:17:34 Tim Parlatore? team, now they're being very openly accused of criminal activity by this county prosecutor. And so now they're invoking their Fifth Amendments. And so, in a weird way, she is undermining the federal case by causing a lot of their witnesses to now become unavailable because they are invoking their Fifth Amendment rights.
1:18:07 Tim Parlatore? So I mean, that's, that's the core of, of what this case is. A lot of the other stuff that you get into there, all the, you know, the forgery and impersonating an official, all that stuff, that goes into this whole theory of, um, you know, the, what they call the fake electors or the alternate electors, um, which is a whole kind of separate little piece of this thing. Um, and not a lot of people understand. What happened at the time, not just in Georgia, in a lot of these states, is that the states that were disputed, they had gone, you know, to create an alternate slate of electors.
1:18:52 Tim Parlatore? Um, and to back up a little bit further, the way that our federal presidential elections work with the Electoral College Act is that the voters in each state, you know, vote for who they want as president. The state then takes whoever won, so, you know, if Donald Trump wins this state, then based on the population distribution of those states, each state has a certain number of electors. And so, you know, when they say that, you know, Georgia has so many electoral college votes, what that meant, you gotta remember, all of these rules, all these laws were passed
1:19:35 Tim Parlatore? at a time when there was no internet, there was no electricity, there were no cars. What it means is, they counted up in Georgia and they say, okay, you know, Thomas Jefferson won Georgia.
1:19:51 Tim Parlatore? I don't know if he won Georgia or not, but just by way of example. And so if they have whatever, you know, 20 electoral college votes, they find 20 people
1:20:02 Tim Parlatore? that are the electors, they put them on horses and send them up to DC.
1:20:09 Tim Parlatore? And this, the whole timeline between having an election in November, having a certification in early January, and then having a inauguration in late January, all those timelines are based on the idea that people are traveling by horse from the outermost states. And so, the time it takes, you know, Georgia in 1800 to, you know, the late 1700s, to count all the votes, find the electors, put them on horses, send them up to DC, have the full vote, send them back, you know,
1:20:50 Tim Parlatore? do all the stuff for the inauguration, that's, that's why these timelines are set the way that they are. And so, the way that this has kind of developed over time is that if you want to challenge the slate of electors that is submitted, which is still, it's a list of names. These are the, the electors from Georgia who are going to vote for Biden in the Electoral College election. If you want to challenge that result, you run the risk that a court says, yes, this result is not accurate, but there's no alternate slate.
1:21:32 Tim Parlatore? You didn't put 20 other people on horses, you know, to send them up, you know, in their place. And so, that's why this whole alternate slate of electors practice has come about. It's been used by both parties. It's been used in multiple elections, so that you have that alternate slate on standby. Oh, good. And if you look at the slates from 2020, I, I say that the, you look at Pennsylvania. For whatever reason, somebody in Pennsylvania was smarter than everybody everywhere else. And they actually wrote on the slate, "alternate, only to be used in the event
1:22:16 Tim Parlatore? that the primary slate is invalidated through litigation or investigation." Words to that effect.
1:22:24 Tim Parlatore? The Georgia slate, nobody thought to write that sentence in. And so if you just take the Georgia slate of Trump electors, it reads like President Trump having been duly elected in this state, these are the people that are casting their vote. But is that a plausible fraud? To me, it's not. I mean, there are some that are saying, oh, the purpose of the alternate slate, it's a fake slate of electors because they wanted to fool Mike Pence.
1:23:04 Tim Parlatore? And there's this silly theory that Mike Pence may have looked at the two slates from Georgia and said, I don't know which one's real. I guess I'll pick this one. That's insane. Today, with the media and the internet and the proliferation of information that we have today, there's no chance in hell that Mike Pence is going to look at these slates and say, I don't know who won. It's not plausible.
1:23:41 Shawn Ryan? Yeah.
1:23:42 Tim Parlatore? But it is their theory of fraud on it. The thing is, a lot of these electors, they gave interviews at the time saying, yes, I am an alternate elector. I'm doing this in case the primary slate gets invalidated. But that's what a lot of those counts are.
1:24:01 Shawn Ryan? I'm curious to know where this. So there was a controversial phone call that happened. In January 2nd, 2021, Trump called Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, and urged him to find.
1:24:17 Shawn Ryan? 11,780 votes. The number needed to overcome Biden's victory. Now, I've listened to segments of that phone call several different times on, on, online. You can find it all over. We'll probably roll it right here.
1:24:34 Speaker 05 And they're brand new and they don't have seals. And there's a whole thing with the ballots, but the ballots are corrupt and you're going to find that they are, which is totally illegal. It's, it's, it's more illegal for you than it is for them because you know what they did and you're not reporting it. That's a, you know, that's a criminal, that's a criminal offense. And, and you know, you can't let that happen. That's, that's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That's a big risk. But they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I've heard, and they are removing machinery, uh, and they're moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal fines. And you can't let it happen and you are letting it happen.
1:25:16 Speaker 05 You know, I mean, I'm notifying you that you're letting it happen. So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state and flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, you know, there's, there's, there's just, it's a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it, if it was a mistake, I don't know. A lot of people think it wasn't a mistake. It was much more, uh, criminal than that. But it's a big problem in Georgia and it's, it's not a problem that's going away. I mean, you know, it's not a problem that's going away.
1:26:01 Shawn Ryan? I mean, he did, where, where does that fall under? What these, does that fall under one of the charges?
1:26:07 Tim Parlatore? It does. Um, it, it, it does fall under the charges because he's essentially trying to, um, their theories, he's trying to corruptly influence a state official to violate his oath. Um, did he? I don't believe so.
1:26:26 Tim Parlatore? Here's the thing. You can't, if you just cut out that one sentence of the tape. Yes, that's, that's the impression that you're left with. But you can't just listen to excerpts from the call. You have to listen to the entirety of the call. Cause he says multiple times on that call. We won by a lot. We won by over a hundred thousand votes. He's stating, possibly incorrectly, but he has truly held belief that he had won the state of Georgia by over a hundred thousand votes. Can I interject? Sure.
1:27:08 Tim Parlatore? Why would he believe that if he had not seen any of the numbers yet? He believed it because that's the numbers that were given to him by the investigative team. Okay. That was looking into these claims of fraud. And, and again, that's something that you may notice that I have not yet, nor will I offer my opinion as to whether there was actually fraud in that election or not. I, I don't have an opinion as to whether there was or was not. Because I would wanna actually see the investigation to know one way or the other. You haven't seen the investigation?
1:27:52 Tim Parlatore? I've seen the preliminary investigation, but I never saw a follow-up investigation by law enforcement to conclusively prove or disprove that probable cause. Okay. So, because it wasn't done. Why wasn't it done? Herein lies the big question. When, when Trump asked Barr to do the investigation, why wasn't it done? In this call that you're asking me about, he's begging the Georgia state officials, have your law enforcement officers go out and do an investigation. And they said, no.
1:28:39 Tim Parlatore? The part that you're talking about, about find this many votes, in itself is damning. In context of the entire conversation, if he believed that he had won by over 100,000 votes, the way that I look at that, the way that I would argue it to a jury and the way that President Trump has stated it, that is a statement of scope, not result. If I tell you, there's over 100,000 fake votes out there, and I need you to investigate this, was it January 2nd? Mm-hmm.
1:29:23 Tim Parlatore? I need you to investigate this, you have four days. You're gonna sit there and say, "Four days to find 100,000 votes? You crazy?" You don't have to find 100,000. Find 17,000. Once you find this much, that's the delta between the two candidates, then for the purposes of this inquiry, as to what slate should be certified for the election, you can stop. As soon as you find the delta between the candidates, the Secretary of State can stop
1:30:06 Tim Parlatore? and pass it on to the Attorney General of the state of Georgia to continue the investigation, find potentially, in his mind, all 100,000 of them, and then figure out who to arrest and put in jail for it. The Secretary of State, their role in investigating election fraud is purely to find out
1:30:33 Tim Parlatore? What is the right slate to be put up on January 6? Not, you know, Secretary of State is not in charge of putting people in jail. So you don't need to find all 100,000.
1:30:46 Shawn Ryan? Okay.
1:30:46 Tim Parlatore? Just find 11,000. And so when you listen to the tape in the full context, and you think of it that way, that this is a statement of scope, not result, given the shortened period of time and the very specific, limited role that the Secretary of State has, it makes more sense. Could it have been more artfully stated? Or explicitly stated? Is it how I would have explained it? No. It probably could have been clearer on that. But to just cherry pick the one sentence and say,
1:31:28 Tim Parlatore? he's directing him to go find these votes, you know, that's, it leads to a misleading result. But even there, go find the votes. As opposed to just say that there were the votes. Go find evidence of 11,000 false votes. And if you can find evidence of 11,000 false votes, again, you're sending somebody to do an investigation. It's a danger. Maybe they come back the way you expect, and maybe they don't.
1:32:05 Shawn Ryan? Let's talk about Fannie Willis.
1:32:07 Tim Parlatore? Sure.
1:32:07 Shawn Ryan? So if I remember correctly, we had a conversation a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago in DC about Fannie Willis. And I believe you told me that she ran her campaign on indicting Trump.
1:32:26 Tim Parlatore? Correct.
1:32:27 Shawn Ryan? Knowing that this was outside of her jurisdiction, jurisdiction. So.
1:32:37 Shawn Ryan? For somebody that has no legal mind at all, how is this even happening if she doesn't have jurisdiction?
1:32:45 Tim Parlatore? If the RICO were correct, she would have that limited piece of jurisdiction. But how this is happening, and you just hit the nail right on the head, to separate out the federal from the state indictments, one of the big problems with state indictments, and why, in my opinion, they were more dangerous to begin with, is because state prosecutors are really county officials, unless you're talking about a state attorney general. They're county officials, they're elected county officials, and so if you have an elected county district attorney in a county that is a, you know, deep red or deep blue, either
1:33:29 Tim Parlatore? way, they get their job and they keep their job by winning the primary election. They don't have to worry about the general election because they're largely going to be unopposed. Fannie Willis was not the district attorney at the time. She was, you know, outside and saying, "I would like to become district attorney," and playing to the base, she said, "If you elect me, I will indict Donald Trump." And in the primary race, that played very well. She won the primary. In the general election, she's essentially unopposed.
1:34:14 Tim Parlatore? So she never had to really face, you know, tough Republican opposition on this. And in single-party jurisdictions, again, red or blue, it creates a substantial risk of political interference and politically driven prosecutions because ultimately, you sit there and think, "Well, the district attorney and the sheriff, you know, they should be able to run for reelection based on, have I made your city safer?"
1:34:51 Tim Parlatore? And that's true of a general election. But in the context of a primary election, where it's all run by the party, there, it has a much higher risk of abuse of where they are going to pursue the partisan goals. Letitia James, the state attorney general of New York, did the exact same thing. She ran on a platform of, I'm going to get Donald Trump. And sure enough, she has brought all these civil suits against Trump and the Trump Organization. When you have people that are asking, "Give me a law enforcement position
1:35:32 Tim Parlatore? so that I can take out my political rival." That's dangerous. That's very dangerous.
1:35:42 Shawn Ryan? I think that's a major concern to a lot of people. Next, on the Sean Ryan Show.
1:35:49 Tim Parlatore? White-collar crime is a term that was invented by former prosecutors that would allow them to make money being criminal defense attorneys without somehow feeling dirty. Is this political prosecution that we're seeing? I don't like to be the guy saying, "Oh, it's a political witch hunt." But here's the thing. When they go in and they try to demand a ludicrously speedy trial for the purpose of getting it done before the election, you feed that narrative.
1:36:24 Speaker 06 I heard that one of the debaters said it was an inside job. It was, it was an inside job on the part of Donald Trump and his henchmen in the Congress of the United States.
1:36:36 Tim Parlatore? The judges that have been hearing all these January 6 cases, they're witnesses. And some of the judges have even talked about how, on the morning of January 6, I watched the insurrection out my window of the courthouse.
1:36:54 Tim Parlatore? Money in politics causes abuse. Politics in law enforcement causes abuse. Money in politics and law enforcement is a disaster. That's where you have people like Fannie Willis, Atesha James fundraising, asking for money on the idea that if you elect me, I will get Donald Trump. "I am going to use your taxpayer dollars to take out our political rival."
1:37:28 Shawn Ryan? Everything is politically charged in this country at this point. You're either a pro-Trump or anti-Trump.
Previous #88 Chris Miller - The Future of Warfare | Part 3 Next #89 Tim Parlatore - Unpacking the Trump Indictments | Part 2 Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
