#89 Tim Parlatore - Unpacking the Trump Indictments | Part 2

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. Part two of this series focuses on the State cases brought against the former President. Parlatore weighs in on the Georgia case where President Trump is charged with 41 state-law felony charges. We also cover the infamous "Stormy Daniels" pay off and how Trump's adversaries are leveraging the Justice Department to make political gains. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://shopify.com/shawn https://betterhelp.com/shawn https://gcu.edu/military Tim Parlatore Links: Website - https://parlatorelawgroup.com Twitter/X - https://twitter.com/timparlatore IG - https://www.instagram.com/parlatorelawgroup Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  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.

• 0:59Shawn Ryan?

  Previously on The Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:06Speaker 03

  And you know, you can't let that happen. That's, that's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyers. That's a big risk. But they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I've heard. And they are removing machinery, and they're moving it as fast as they can. So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.

• 1:36Tim Parlatore?

  You can't just listen to excerpts from the call. You have to listen to the entirety of the call. 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 year?

• 2:03Shawn Ryan?

  Get away from the Trump Biden, you know, division. I think that a lot of people who can see past, you know, the candidates. I mean, this is the future of our country.

• 2:21Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah.

• 2:21Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and that is what I am most, me personally, that's what I'm most concerned about is, is this going to set the precedent from here on out to, you know, to politically persecute your opponent? And that's a big fear that I have, you know, and I think a lot of people share this fear.

• 2:46Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah. It's real. I mean, it's something that I saw in my own career, not just this case, but, you know, I started my career in New York City, doing criminal defense, doing, in the beginning, mostly state work, but then transitioning to primarily federal. And believe it or not, the only campaign that I've ever been involved in was when Morgenthau was going to retire as the Manhattan District Attorney after forty-seven years in the position. And I actively participated in Cy Vance's campaign.

• 3:27Tim Parlatore?

  And I thought that he was really going to fix the system because he came in with all these wonderful campaign promises about how he was going to do discovery differently, how he was going to evaluate, you know, plea deals differently, how he's going to do all these things that were actually going to improve the fairness of the system. And he won. And I went to the party, you know, the victory party, where his victory was only a few hours old before he said, "I'm not going to do that discovery policy."

• 4:11Tim Parlatore?

  And I have tried cases against that office that were based not upon what is going to keep New Yorkers safe, but based upon, you know, what is going to be the best headlines and the best campaign things for Cy Vance's reelection. So I personally am not a big fan of elected law enforcement officials, period. I have the same problem with a lot of sheriffs. And don't get me wrong, there are some phenomenal sheriffs out there.

• 4:52Tim Parlatore?

  I'm not saying this as a general rule, but being an elected law enforcement official is an invitation to abuse. It's an invitation to asking for political donations. And if you don't give the right donations, you know, what's, you know, are you going to get extra parking tickets and things like that? You know, judges in New York are elected. I had a case in a different county from where I was normally. It was one of the upstate counties, Westchester. And even though I was not involved in any of this politics stuff at all, I had this

• 5:35Tim Parlatore?

  case before this judge who was, in my opinion, not giving the best rulings. And then all of a sudden, I got a campaign solicitation from the judge. From, from somebody on the judge's behalf, asking me to donate money to the judge that I'm appearing in front of.

• 6:04Tim Parlatore?

  And I sat there as I'm reading this, you know, my, my blood went cold of like, am I actually being asked to give money to the judge in order for her to start giving good rulings in this case?

• 6:16Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow. That is scary.

• 6:21Tim Parlatore?

  I mean, I didn't. I didn't donate to her. But, you know, a big part of me sat there and read that and said, you know what? If this was all anonymous, like if there wasn't this whole, you know, campaign donor list, I wouldn't donate to her anyway because she doesn't understand the rules. She's making rulings that are not correct.

• 6:45Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. How often do you think this happens in the country?

• 6:51Tim Parlatore?

  Every day.

• 6:53Shawn Ryan?

  Bad.

• 6:54Tim Parlatore?

  Every day. And that's why putting money, money in politics causes abuse. Politics and law enforcement causes abuse. Money in politics and law enforcement is a disaster. That's where you have people like Fannie Willis, Patricia 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 as opposed

• 7:36Tim Parlatore?

  to spending those taxpayer dollars on stopping rape and murder in our streets. And they get elected.

• 7:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Can we talk about, um, before we leave the Georgia case, can we talk about why is Rudy Giuliani elected? Or I'm sorry indicted?

• 8:03Tim Parlatore?

  That to me is the biggest tragedy of this whole thing. Um, you know, Rudy Giuliani.

• 8:17Tim Parlatore?

  Rudy was America's mayor. He was well-loved. I don't like what they're doing to him now. You know, was everything done right in the election, uh, you know, the investigation and litigation? No. Do I agree with everything that they did? Not necessarily. Did some, did they make some mistakes? Yes, they did. Should he be losing his law license? Should he be losing all of his life savings? Should he be now potentially going to jail?

• 8:58Tim Parlatore?

  She wants a life, she wants a jail sentence out of Rudy Giuliani that exceeds his life expectancy. She wants him to die in a Georgia jail cell. That's not right. That's not justice. Why is he in that case? To me, people are angry at him because he was the face of the team that was pushing these election fraud claims. And because they don't like that and what it led to, they want to punish people that

• 9:41Tim Parlatore?

  they're angry with. And so that's why, in my opinion, Rudy is in that situation.

• 9:49Shawn Ryan?

  Last night at dinner, you had brought up that he's past his prime. Can you dig into that?

• 10:04Tim Parlatore?

  You know, I, I'm concerned.

• 10:17Tim Parlatore?

  I like Rudy Giuliani a lot. And I think that it is obvious that anybody, as they continue on in their career, eventually they lose a few steps. Mm hmm. Is that the cause of what happened here? I don't know. Not necessarily. I think that, quite frankly, the cause of a lot of this stuff is a lack of resources. I'll give you an example in a minute, but a lack of resources leads to an inability

• 10:59Tim Parlatore?

  to fully investigate claims, which increases the risk that you present claims that are not fully vetted. I, my personal opinion, I would have much preferred for Rudy Giuliani to be America's mayor retired. I would much prefer for him to be writing books, giving speeches, being comfortable

• 11:36Tim Parlatore?

  in the legacy that he built through what he did in New York City. And it's kind of an extreme example, but it somewhat reminds me of Jim Stockdale. You know? I was a big fan of Ross Perot. I thought he did a lot of very good things, certainly did a lot of great things in his business and taking care of his people. I thought that he brought a lot of interesting ideas to the election when he ran as a third party candidate. The one thing that I completely disagree with Ross Perot on was naming Jim Stockdale

• 12:20Tim Parlatore?

  as his running mate. Because Stockdale's a hero.

• 12:27Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah, he was Medal of Honor recipient, senior prisoner of war in Vietnam. And by the time that they got to the debates, he was unfortunately past his prime. And now, if I walk down the street and I ask people, you know, just grab some random person, "Do you know who Jim Stockdale is?" "Yeah, I remember him." He was the guy in the vice presidential debate that got all disoriented and started saying, "Who am I? Why am I here?" You know, there's, there's an element of where you want to take your heroes and allow

• 13:11Tim Parlatore?

  them to be retired.

• 13:14Shawn Ryan?

  You had mentioned something that he had done when he was in the Hanoi Hilton. And I didn't know who this man was before you spoke of him last night. Can you, can you elaborate on that? I want to show, you know, the audience what this man did for this country and how he'll will be remembered.

• 13:43Tim Parlatore?

  So Admiral Stockdale, then, I think he was a captain. He was either captain or commander then. He was a senior US service member in the Hanoi Hilton. He, he was a leader. He took care of the other prisoners. He kept them all together. And when the Vietnamese wanted to do a propaganda video, and they wanted to present him in this propaganda video, he beat his own face in.

• 14:30Tim Parlatore?

  He disfigured himself to rob them of the propaganda opportunity.

• 14:42Tim Parlatore?

  And he set the standard so that everybody else would also stay true. As a result, the treatment improved because they couldn't allow their propaganda to be showing the brutality. And so what he did to himself actually resulted in them throttling back and it improved the conditions for the American POWs.

• 15:17Shawn Ryan?

  And he was used past his prime.

• 15:19Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Shawn Ryan?

  And now he will be remembered.

• 15:22Tim Parlatore?

  Exactly.

• 15:23Shawn Ryan?

  For what you said.

• 15:24Tim Parlatore?

  Exactly. So, you know, for anybody listening to this, you know, if you think of Jim Stockdale as a VP candidate, think of him as, as the Admiral of the POW.

• 15:40Shawn Ryan?

  And that's how Giuliani will be remembered.

• 15:43Tim Parlatore?

  Giuliani, I fear, runs a risk of potentially, you know, dying in a jail cell.

• 15:54Tim Parlatore?

  You know, I don't think that the case against him, if fairly heard in the appeals process, I don't think that it would be upheld. So I do think that he would, you know, be released. But the reality is, I wouldn't want him, you know, being subjected to that.

• 16:17Tim Parlatore?

  I mean, the stress of going through a major criminal case like this is something that will itself take years off of your life.

• 16:30Tim Parlatore?

  So, I feel very strongly about, you know, about the inclusion of him as a, as a co-defendant in this case.

• 16:42Shawn Ryan?

  What would the worst-case scenario be in the Georgia indictments for both Trump and for Giuliani?

• 16:50Tim Parlatore?

  Jail sentences that exceed their life expectancy.

• 16:53Shawn Ryan?

  For both of them?

• 16:54Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah. You gotta remember, racketeering has major time associated with it. Life sentences, because racketeering is intended for the bosses of mafia families.

• 17:14Tim Parlatore?

  You know, a lot of the other lawyers that are doing these cases, you know, they've...

• 17:20Tim Parlatore?

  Most of the lawyers that are in these cases, a lot of them are former federal prosecutors who've then gone out on, on the defense side and they've become defense attorneys, although, you know, they call themselves white-collar, you know, defense attorneys. I think I told you, I hate the term "white-collar." Because, you know, to me, and somebody said this years ago and it really stuck with me, white-collar doesn't exist. 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.

• 18:00Tim Parlatore?

  But the reality is, you know, a lot of white-collar crime, Bernie Madoff, things like that, you know, they hurt just as many people. And, you know, whenever I'm around these people and they're like, "Oh, are you a white-collar lawyer?" I just look at them and say, "No, I'm a red-collar lawyer." "Red-collar?" Yeah. White-collar with a splash of blood.

• 18:23Tim Parlatore?

  You get these former federal prosecutors who have never really dealt with defending a RICO case. You get these political lawyers that are all about being party insiders and all that kind of stuff. And really, what this case requires is the people that I started practicing with, the people that I learned how to practice law from, which is the core group of New York City criminal lawyers who were the backbone of the John Gotti defenses. All of the big mob cases.

• 19:04Tim Parlatore?

  Ironically, all of Rudy Giuliani's enemies back when he was at the US Attorney's Office. Because the way that you look at an organized crime case and the way that you deconstruct a federal RICO case in that scenario is exactly what they need to be doing here. Because I look at it and I say, you know, one of the things that RICO requires is continuity. Continuity means that it is an organization that is not for a very distinct purpose, not for a single event.

• 19:45Tim Parlatore?

  It's something that's going to continue over the course of a period of time. A drug cartel is going to continue to sell drugs, to kill people, commit murder, mayhem, and all those things. A mafia family is going to continue to have all of these loan sharking, gambling, all of these things. A campaign that is trying to challenge the results of one election has no continuity to it whatsoever. And the precedent that they're trying to set in this case by ignoring that continuity

• 20:30Tim Parlatore?

  requirement means that any time that two or more people get together and commit two or more crimes together, Fannie Willis says that's a RICO. So if you and I decide, you know, we're going to go rob a bank, okay? We're going to go steal a gun, we're going to steal a car, we're going to rob a bank.

• 20:53Tim Parlatore?

  We're gonna have three hours of absolute mayhem, right?

• 20:56Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 20:58Tim Parlatore?

  Under Fannie Willis, that's racketeering.

• 21:04Tim Parlatore?

  It stretches the definitions far beyond what the legislature intended.

• 21:11Shawn Ryan?

  Are you saying just the conversation alone is racketeering?

• 21:15Tim Parlatore?

  In theory, in theory.

• 21:17Shawn Ryan?

  According to her.

• 21:18Tim Parlatore?

  Well, more than the conversation. You can't just have a conversation. You have to have an overact in furtherance of it. So you have to actually start the planning. You have to, you know, actually go do something. You know, we need, we need, at least need to steal the car. We haven't committed racketeering on camera yet. But, under her theory, that three-hour episode is racketeering. And that's the reason why I believe that this case should be considered by a federal appellate court, or district court, to say, "You are not in

• 22:03Tim Parlatore?

  accordance with the Supreme Court case law on the continuity requirement of RICO." And once you rip out the continuity, then this whole building that she's built here, you rip out continuity, now RICO goes away. Now her ability to touch what's happened in Coffee County goes away. What happened in the State House goes away. What happened in Pennsylvania goes away. And all she's left with is a very tiny case. Because hardly anything happened in Fulton County.

• 22:42Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. How do you think Georgia's gonna play out?

• 22:51Tim Parlatore?

  I think that they're gonna keep trying to push for the speedy trial. I think that the judge is smart enough to realize that's not gonna happen. I think that people are gonna start to file motions to dismiss on some of the things that I've mentioned here. I think he's gonna get bogged down in motion practice. I think that ultimately, especially when you're talking about a four to eight month long trial and potentially a few extra months for jury selection, I think it's gonna get pushed down past the election. And I think it's one of those things where it's a big bang in the beginning, and my prediction is gonna end in more of a fizzle.

• 23:33Shawn Ryan?

  Am I missing anything when it comes to the Georgia case?

• 23:38Tim Parlatore?

  No, I mean, that's the big thing there, is that it is like the D.C.

• 23:47Tim Parlatore?

  case, but structurally less sound.

• 23:52Tim Parlatore?

  And that's one of the problems with, you know, as lawyers, you always try not to overstep. And, you know, because if you have a legitimate claim and you try to inflate it into something that it's not, you risk losing the whole thing, whereas you would have maintained your credibility by just coming in with whatever that legitimate claim was. You know, if they have issues with how certain things were done in Fulton County, go with that.

• 24:28Tim Parlatore?

  But I think that really what you're gonna see here is that Fannie Willis, because she is focused on her own election, and I suspect the presidential election, because she's focused on political factors as opposed to legal factors, I think that that's where this is going to fail.

• 24:54Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thank you for diving into Georgia. Let's take a break. When we get back, we'll get into the classified document indictments down in Florida.

• 25:03Tim Parlatore?

  All right.

• 25:07Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

• 26:14Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Tim, we're back from the break. Let's, let's move into Florida. The classified documents. So 2022, the Justice Department opened an investigation into Trump's retention of classified documents after his presidency. June 2022, a lawyer avowed that Trump had turned over all classified records. But two months later, the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago and seized 102 documents with classified markings. Trump pleaded not guilty on June 13, 2023. 27th of July, 2023, superseding indictment, adding three new felony charges. New indictments include allegations that Trump,

• 26:58Shawn Ryan?

  Nauta, and De Oliveria sought to destroy security camera footage at Mar-a-Lago after investigations tried to obtain the footage.

• 27:09Shawn Ryan?

  Trial scheduled for May 20th, 2024 in Florida. Charges, 40 felony charges, 32 felony counts of willful retention of national defense information and violation of the Espionage Act, six felony accounts of obstruction-related crimes, two felony accounts of false statements. The Espionage Act makes it a crime to retain records containing sensitive national security information. First question, why would they have deleted the security footage?

• 27:41Tim Parlatore?

  They didn't.

• 27:42Shawn Ryan?

  They didn't?

• 27:43Tim Parlatore?

  They didn't. That's, that was one of those kind of surprising charges there because DOJ subpoenaed the footage and they turned it all over.

• 27:58Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 28:03Tim Parlatore?

  I am.

• 28:04Shawn Ryan?

  How was, how was he being?

• 28:06Tim Parlatore?

  They're claiming, their claim is that some people had a discussion about deleting footage and that some of the employees said, you know, can we delete the footage? And the answer was, no, you can't delete the footage. And that's the charge. So, no. No footage was deleted.

• 28:34Shawn Ryan?

  So, the char, I'm sorry, let's, the charge is that they had a discussion about deleting the footage? It's not that they actually deleted the footage?

• 28:46Tim Parlatore?

  Correct.

• 28:47Shawn Ryan?

  There was a discussion?

• 28:48Tim Parlatore?

  Correct. And if you read the indictment, even though it charges President Trump as being part of it, they're actually claiming that there was a conversation between two other people and that one of them said, "The boss would like the footage deleted."

• 29:03Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 29:05Tim Parlatore?

  But nobody'd actually say, well, that he actually said that. And here's one of the things that I learned in representing him. When I'm told, "The boss would like," it doesn't always mean that the boss would like. Oftentimes, it means, "I'm just using his name."

• 29:28Tim Parlatore?

  To make you do what I want you to do.

• 29:30Shawn Ryan?

  I don't understand how this is a crime. I mean, some of this stuff just seems like an initial reaction.

• 29:37Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I mean.

• 29:39Tim Parlatore?

  So, yeah, the Florida case is weird. It's different from all the others.

• 29:49Tim Parlatore?

  So, the Florida case was investigated by the National Security Division, which is not where you get your top criminal lawyers.

• 29:59Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:00Tim Parlatore?

  At all. In fact, most of the people in this case have no clue what they're doing in a courtroom.

• 30:07Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 30:08Tim Parlatore?

  The guy in charge, a guy by the name of Jay Brat, in my opinion, based on my observations of him, I think that he is a completely unethical person who should not be anywhere near government service.

• 30:26Tim Parlatore?

  If you look at the way that this case was investigated, he wanted to do a search warrant from the beginning before having any information about there being any potential improper conduct. He has throughout lied to federal judges in my presence. He has tried to do everything he could to turn this into a criminal case when it didn't need to be. And based on my experience, this is the type of case that was handled differently

• 31:07Tim Parlatore?

  from the beginning in order to create a criminal case than how it is handled with anybody else in a similar circumstance. Because ultimately, if you have a spillage of classified material.

• 31:25Tim Parlatore?

  What you should be doing is you should be having the intelligence community, working in administrative investigation, to locate and contain all that classified information, then do an assessment of whether there's been any damage. You don't turn that over to some rabid DOJ attorney who thinks, "Oh, I can use this to get Donald Trump", and then let him go hog wild without any respect to his own ethics. And so, the manner in which this case was approached from the beginning was overly antagonistic,

• 32:07Tim Parlatore?

  and designed to cause him to dig in his heels, and in the absence of evidence, create an appearance of non-compliance. Now, everything that, from the time period that I was involved in, fits exactly what I just described. Yes, there was a subpoena. Yes, there was certification. Didn't say that he turned over all classified records. What it said is, "We've conducted a diligent search, and all responsive records are enclosed." Let me say that again. "We conducted a diligent search, and all responsive records are enclosed."

• 32:50Tim Parlatore?

  It doesn't say, "Everything's been turned over." It says, "We searched. Everything we found, here it is." They wanted more time to do the search, and DOJ refused to give them more time to do the search. They wanted, you know, in later searches, we invited DOJ to come with us. Really? Yes. Did they? No. No, when they wanted us to search Trump Tower, Bedminster, we invited them. "Send your FBI agents with us

• 33:34Tim Parlatore?

  to do the search." They refused.

• 33:39Tim Parlatore?

  And I believe that the reason that they refused is because we were trying to show them that we had nothing to hide. And if they had sent the FBI along with us, it would have given the appearance of cooperation. Contrast this to the search they did in Delaware.

• 34:00Shawn Ryan?

  I don't understa-- look, I'm trying to collect my thoughts here. I mean, from the research I'd done, it seems like they were claiming that there were nuclear codes in these classified documents and secrets to military weapons inside these documents. And so we kind of already covered it, but if there are nuclear codes in information that is compromising some of the top weapons that the US military has in their inventory,

• 34:45Shawn Ryan?

  then why wouldn't the FBI, CIA, whoever, why wouldn't they not want to accompany you to recover those codes or the information on those weapons? They just left it up to the legal team to rummage around Mar-a-Lago for nuclear codes.

• 35:07Tim Parlatore?

  Correct. In any other circumstance, so first of all--

• 35:11Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, if you lose a weapon--

• 35:13Tim Parlatore?

  Right.

• 35:14Shawn Ryan?

  --a pistol--

• 35:15Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Shawn Ryan?

  --in the military, everything shuts down until that is recovered.

• 35:20Tim Parlatore?

  Correct.

• 35:21Shawn Ryan?

  Everything, all operations, all, everything--

• 35:25Tim Parlatore?

  Exactly.

• 35:26Shawn Ryan?

  --shuts down to find a pistol.

• 35:29Tim Parlatore?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:30Shawn Ryan?

  And we have nuclear codes supposedly that are out there. Where are they coming up with this?

• 35:34Tim Parlatore?

  So, nuclear codes, I never saw any evidence of that. You know, that to me is something that was just told to the media to make it sound worse.

• 35:42Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:43Tim Parlatore?

  But, you know, here's what I did see.

• 35:48Tim Parlatore?

  Let's talk about how they got out first, because that's important. There's a big difference between somebody stealing classified information so that they could put it on WikiLeaks and they can give it to Russia and they can do all these other things with it. And what happened here? Because what happened here is the White House has horrible document management procedures. I didn't say the Trump White House. I said the White House in general. Every administration, they do not follow the same standards that we followed in the military.

• 36:33Tim Parlatore?

  They do not follow the same standards that the intelligence community follows. They have documents outside of a SCIF, on desks, moving around. You have, you know, there was that picture of, you know, during the Obama administration where you have a room full of reporters and Joe Biden is standing in the back with a classified folder in his hand. They don't treat documents the same way in the White House that they do in the rest of the government. And what that results in is an intermingling of classified and unclassified documents.

• 37:12Tim Parlatore?

  And at the end of every administration, when they pack up, all of the documents, the National Archives picks up, straight from the White House. And what the National Archives does is it rents a facility in the city where the future presidential library is expected to be built, which also happens to be wherever the president has decided to go move to. So, you know, Ronald Reagan leaves, he moves to California, National Archives gets a facility in California near his house, they put all of his documents there.

• 37:56Tim Parlatore?

  They've done this Presidential Records Act was signed into law by Jimmy Carter. It didn't apply to Jimmy Carter. It applied to everybody from Reagan forward. So, starting with Reagan, every single president, they got a facility where that president moved to and put all the documents there. Except for Obama, they got a facility in Chicago for him and then he decided to stay in DC anyway. President Trump is the first person that they said, "No. We're not getting any facility for him."

• 38:35Tim Parlatore?

  And so, what happened is, when he left office, was it more chaotic than any other turnover? Yeah, it was. A lot more. Because of a whole bunch of things, not the least of which being the election contest. Also, when you look from Reagan forward, how many one-term presidents do you have?

• 39:07Shawn Ryan?

  Is that it?

• 39:07Tim Parlatore?

  George H.W. Bush was the only person, other than Trump, subject to the Presidential Records Act, who did not have four years' notice of the exact date that he was going to be departing.

• 39:26Shawn Ryan?

  That's an interesting take.

• 39:28Tim Parlatore?

  So, really, up until January 6th, he believed there was a likelihood that he was going to stay there. So, January 7th is when the transition really happens. National Archives is not going to get a facility down in Florida. And so, all the documents get boxed up and they'll go to Florida.

• 39:54Tim Parlatore?

  There are, you know, the famous pictures of the boxes all, you know, on the driveway outside the White House being, you know, put into trucks, being moved by GSA, General Services Administration, US government. And the archivist is sitting there saying, yes, that picture was very disturbing. Because, you know, I realized that those were, you know, National Archives, or NARA, which is National Archives and Records Administration. Those are NARA records that are going down to Florida. He didn't say anything at the time. Had anybody asked President Trump, hey, would you like us to, you know, hold on to these? And, you know, we'll put them in a facility there?

• 40:39Tim Parlatore?

  He'd have been fine with it. But the reality is, everything got boxed up, everything got moved down there. The first time since President Carter that a president has all the boxes moved to his house. And NARA knew, because they have essentially four decades of data on this, that every single administration, the boxes are commingled with classified documents. Every single one.

• 41:15Shawn Ryan?

  We had had a conversation also about what those classified documents actually look like. And I think it would be important for you to explain what kind of classified documents were in those boxes.

• 41:29Tim Parlatore?

  We're not talking about nuclear codes. We're talking about briefings. We're talking about, you know, I've gone through the boxes. I went to the, I spent a few days at the National Archives, and I went through all those boxes myself. Which are a fascinating archaeological dig into the presidency by date. And so you see on each date, here are the newspapers that he read that day. Here are, you know, his daily schedules. Here's all the phone messages that he got. Here's the classified document. And a lot of those classified documents fit with the schedule.

• 42:11Tim Parlatore?

  Because you see on the schedule, you have a phone call this afternoon with President, you know, whoever of a foreign country. And then right after that is, you know, here's the briefing sheet, a classified briefing sheet on all the questions we would like you to ask this foreign leader. And I'll give you, I'll give you an example that everybody's seen. Okay. From the impeachment proceeding, when he had the phone call with President Zelensky of Ukraine. And Alexander Vindman prepared for him the script of these are the questions we'd like you to ask Zelensky.

• 42:54Tim Parlatore?

  That script is classified. But the moment that you read it on the phone to the President of the Ukraine, it's not a secret anymore. And, you know, in the impeachment proceedings, we went through all this stuff because, you know, obviously Vindman was upset that he had gone off of his script and, you know, asked other questions. But that document, that's really what we're talking about here. That's the majority of what these, you know, so-called classified documents are. It's schedules, things that are highly classified at the time.

• 43:37Tim Parlatore?

  Tomorrow, we're going to fly to Afghanistan to have a surprise Thanksgiving dinner with the troops. Very classified. Really don't want the Taliban and the Al Qaeda and everybody to know that tomorrow, the biggest, juiciest target in the world is going to be flying right over their airspace. But the moment that he walks out into the mess hall with hundreds of troops and a bunch of TV cameras.

• 44:07Tim Parlatore?

  Any secret anymore?

• 44:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:09Tim Parlatore?

  And so that.

• 44:11Shawn Ryan?

  But the, but the, the schedule is still marked classified.

• 44:16Tim Parlatore?

  Correct.

• 44:17Shawn Ryan?

  And so these are the type of classified documents that they're recovering. Where did they come up with the, where did they come up with the nuclear codes? Is that just a flat out conspiracy?

• 44:29Tim Parlatore?

  As far as I can tell, that is a flat out lie that was told to the media to try and make things seem much worse than they were.

• 44:37Shawn Ryan?

  So I have another question. You see all of these counts of conspiracy, charges of conspiracy for the, for, for, for Trump and, and his, uh, and the other people that got indicted. So couldn't they, couldn't they flip the script and sue whoever leaked that with conspiracy? If it's not true?

• 45:06Tim Parlatore?

  You don't know who did it though. That's the problem.

• 45:10Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, you would have to make an investigation.

• 45:12Tim Parlatore?

  Right.

• 45:13Shawn Ryan?

  Just like they're making on.

• 45:15Tim Parlatore?

  Right. But ultimately, ultimately you have to convince a journalist to give up his source.

• 45:22Shawn Ryan?

  I have a couple of strategies.

• 45:28Tim Parlatore?

  But so that wouldn't work. But you know, one of the things to remember here, you talked about how there's 40 counts or something down there.

• 45:36Shawn Ryan?

  One, one other question. I'm sorry. I mean, we're joking around. You would have to get a journalist to give up his source. Well, if he doesn't give up his source, then I can, then, then couldn't you say it just came from him?

• 45:49Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, because that's just passing the buck because then that, then, then the source could say, oh, well, I got it from another source. I mean, it's either who did you get the information from or it's you?

• 46:00Tim Parlatore?

  I mean, what we're talking about here is a defamation claim. Civil defamation claim. And, you know, a journalist is not going to be liable for that if that's what a source told them. So you're not going to be able to really get the journalist unless you can show that they acted with reckless disregard for the truth. So that you're not really going to have any leverage.

• 46:24Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 46:25Tim Parlatore?

  In that way. And ultimately, trying to get a journalist to reveal their source as part of a civil defamation claim, it's just not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. So it's, it is unfortunately, one of the features of these leak investigations that it's just, you're never gonna get there. And even there, you know, President Trump has a major problem with filing any type of defamation claim to begin with because, yes, when you put out nuclear codes, that sounds really bad. Uh huh. Did it change anybody's mind?

• 47:09Tim Parlatore?

  Did any Trump supporters say, yeah, it's okay, he had classified that, whoa, one of them's nuclear codes? Okay, well, now I don't like him anymore. Now I'm gonna vote for Biden. No. The country is so polarized already at this point that I don't think that President Trump could ever have a viable defamation claim because anybody who puts out knowingly false information about him is just going to have the people that hate him have, you know, more ammunition for why they hate him. And the people that like him are just gonna say that's fake anyway.

• 47:54Tim Parlatore?

  So it's not gonna change anybody's opinion. And that, that is a requirement, really, in a defamation claims. You have to, it has to be something that is damaging to your reputation in a way that it changes people's opinion of you. So I don't think that's gonna get anywhere. Okay. But one interesting point, you know, when you bring up the 40 counts, each one of those counts is an individual document.

• 48:23Tim Parlatore?

  So now go back and take a look at it where they say that they found hundreds of documents.

• 48:29Tim Parlatore?

  The vast majority of them, they didn't charge.

• 48:33Tim Parlatore?

  Why is that? Because the vast majority of them were over classified, in my opinion. It's not about willful retention of classified information. It's about willful retention of national defense information, meaning that the

• 48:48Tim Parlatore?

  this information, if divulged, would be damaging to national security. And having a daily schedule in your house in 2022 that says in 2019, we're going to fly to Afghanistan is not national defense information. It may not have been properly declassified, but at present, it shouldn't be classified. It should be declassified. And so, classification has no bearing on this case whatsoever. Classification is somebody's opinion as to whether something constitutes national defense information. And so, if it's, people have been acquitted

• 49:32Tim Parlatore?

  for possessing top secret documents that were over classified. People have been convicted for possessing unclassified documents that should have been classified.

• 49:43Tim Parlatore?

  So, classification doesn't really matter. But the vast majority of those documents, they didn't charge.

• 49:52Tim Parlatore?

  And I believe because the vast majority of those documents didn't constitute national defense information. What do you think the outcome of this is going to be? I'll tell you, this is the one that probably

• 50:06Tim Parlatore?

  I think poses the greatest threat to him. And specifically because of the whole story of obstruction, not the deleting of the video. That's, that's kind of silly, but the the story about having Walt Nada move the boxes the night before Evan goes in to do the search.

• 50:32Tim Parlatore?

  That story, when I read that in the indictment, that was not something I'd ever heard before. That was not something that was consistent with anything that I knew about during my year of representing him.

• 50:47Tim Parlatore?

  If true, if backed by evidence.

• 50:52Tim Parlatore?

  That's the count that I think he would have difficulty overturning on an appeal.

• 51:00Tim Parlatore?

  If true. The flip side of that is, they're claiming that they have video of Walt moving all these boxes.

• 51:09Tim Parlatore?

  They've put screenshots of everything in there. They have pictures of the boxes sitting on the stage, the boxes sitting in the bathroom, the boxes sitting on the truck, the boxes sitting in the basement. The single most damning photo that you could possibly have is pictures of Walt moving 60 boxes the night before, yeah, time stamped, you know, late the night before Evan Corcoran shows up to do a search. That screenshot's not in there.

• 51:37Tim Parlatore?

  When they did their press conference, they didn't play that video for anybody. Think about any time you've seen a prosecutor do a press conference of, "We just arrested this bank robber," and they're gonna show you the video of the bank robber, you know, running out of the bank and everything.

• 51:54Tim Parlatore?

  That video would be the single most damning piece of evidence they claim that they have. Why haven't we seen it?

• 52:06Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think they're withholding, or do you think it's a flat-out lie?

• 52:09Tim Parlatore?

  I don't know. That's the problem.

• 52:12Shawn Ryan?

  Why would they withhold?

• 52:14Tim Parlatore?

  I don't know. This team, the Mar-a-Lago team of prosecutors, they don't act like normal prosecutors. They don't act like normal, ethical, strategic prosecutors.

• 52:34Tim Parlatore?

  They did a whole bunch of stuff throughout that whole case that we would just sit there and scratch our heads at and say, "Are these people really working for DOJ?"

• 52:45Tim Parlatore?

  Like, what, how do they not understand basic principles? So, I really don't know. I really don't know. But that piece of the indictment to me is, is going to be the most damning because ultimately, the willful retention, they're gonna have difficulty showing whether it is national defense information, they're gonna have difficulty showing that he did willfully retain it.

• 53:16Tim Parlatore?

  And ultimately...

• 53:19Tim Parlatore?

  It was brought there legally. It was... This is an issue of document management procedures. And had in the first instance, if instead of somebody from DOJ, instead of sending, you know, Jay Brat and the Keystone Cops, they had sent somebody from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to say, "Nara has informed us that there may be a spillage of classified documents. We'd like to work together to make sure that we, you know, protect, you know, our nation's secrets and everything." If they had done that, you know what President Trump would have done?

• 54:02Tim Parlatore?

  He would have said, "Go ahead, please. Please, Walt, help him out." But they didn't do that. So that's the problem.

• 54:20Shawn Ryan?

  What is he facing there?

• 54:23Tim Parlatore?

  Again, that's...

• 54:24Shawn Ryan?

  Worst-case scenario.

• 54:25Tim Parlatore?

  It's... That one, I think, um, I didn't look up the time on those. Several years.

• 54:37Shawn Ryan?

  From my understanding, you had a role in searching Trump Tower. Would you like to go into that?

• 54:43Tim Parlatore?

  Sure, sure. We did, um, a lot of subsequent searches. And these were done at the request of DOJ. They thought that there were more documents out there and that, you know, they had this theory that, you know, he was, you know, playing a shell game of moving documents back and forth between Bedminster, Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower.

• 55:09Tim Parlatore?

  And so we searched. You know, I hired a team of contractors to do the search. You know, we invited the FBI to tag along. The FBI refused. Um, you know, one of my colleagues had overseen the search at Bedminster, where they found nothing. Um, and ultimately, I personally oversaw the search at Trump Tower, uh, which was definitely one of those, you know, things that I never expected to ever be doing in my life. You know, growing up, you know, in, you know, right outside of New York City and then starting my legal career as a New York City criminal defense attorney. Go search Trump Tower for classified documents was not one of those tasks

• 55:54Tim Parlatore?

  that I ever envisioned being on my to do list. Um, but we did. We did. And, yeah, really interesting experience. You know, beautiful building, um, you know, very, you know, beautiful spaces. You know, we started in the office area. Um, and he's got this phenomenal office, you know, corner office with panoramic views of Central Park and everything. Um, and, you know, then we, you know, when we finished searching there, uh, we, we went through all of his records

• 56:35Tim Parlatore?

  that had, you know, real estate deals going back to the seventies. Um, and it was, we were sitting there laughing like this is silly. They were searching this place because there's nothing here post 2016. Cause when he was elected, he moved. And everything is like almost frozen in time there. You know, went up to the apartment, which was stunning apartment. Um, yeah, searched all around.

• 57:11Tim Parlatore?

  We were in the dining room and the guy who was taking us around, he pointed up and he said, hey, like that chandelier, beautiful chandelier. He's like, you see it moving? And you could, the chandelier was just ever so slightly swaying back and forth. I can't, why is that? He says, chandeliers not moving. The building is moving. The chandeliers swinging because of that. Cause those big buildings, they flex.

• 57:42Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 57:44Tim Parlatore?

  So, you know, we went through the whole place and quite frankly, halfway through, I started to feel very uncomfortable. Because especially when we got to the bedroom and stuff like that, it's a very personal space. And

• 58:07Tim Parlatore?

  the fact that I'm having to search Donald Trump's closet for classified documents was just, it felt very wrong to me. It felt like it was very invasive. And

• 58:29Tim Parlatore?

  obviously I appreciate that he trusted, you know, me and my team, you know, to do that. And it's better for us to do that than for the FBI to do it. But

• 58:43Tim Parlatore?

  going through that place, it was, it was totally frozen in time in 2016.

• 58:48Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 58:50Tim Parlatore?

  You know?

• 58:51Shawn Ryan?

  Found nothing.

• 58:52Tim Parlatore?

  No, nothing. Nothing at all.

• 58:56Shawn Ryan?

  Is there anything that we're not covering when it comes to the classified documents case?

• 59:04Tim Parlatore?

  I mean, those are the big things. Yeah, it's, it's just the obstruction allegation, if proven, is the biggest danger to him. Not the documents themselves.

• 59:19Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we will get to the last one.

• 59:26Tim Parlatore?

  New York.

• 59:27Shawn Ryan?

  New York, Stormy Daniels.

• 59:29Tim Parlatore?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:30Shawn Ryan?

  Which I thought was done, but I guess not.

• 59:34Tim Parlatore?

  Didn't we all?

• 59:38Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:02:45Shawn Ryan?

  Tim, we're back from the break. This is the last one. So we got the hush money case, Stormy Daniels. I thought this was done a long time ago, to be honest with you. When I started doing the research and I saw this come up, I was, yeah, I thought it was, I thought this was settled.

• 1:03:05Tim Parlatore?

  It was.

• 1:03:06Shawn Ryan?

  Didn't the attorney go down?

• 1:03:08Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I thought.

• 1:03:09Tim Parlatore?

  So it's such a bizarre thing. And just, I think they called it the zombie case even because it just came back from the dead. You know, it shouldn't have ever been a criminal case to begin with. You know, Michael Cohen is a moron for how he wrote up that settlement agreement. And, you know, it should have never come back to life, let alone come back to life as a criminal case. And it was closed. The prosecutor who was brought in to do the case was upset. He wrote a book about it, about, you know, why he was upset that they didn't do it. And it was all in history.

• 1:03:54Tim Parlatore?

  And then all of a sudden, surprise, here it is back again.

• 1:03:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:59Tim Parlatore?

  And, and in the most legally incompetent form possible.

• 1:04:07Shawn Ryan?

  So, March 2023, a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Trump 34 counts of violating a New York law on corporate record-keeping. Trump turned himself into authorities, was processed as a criminal defendant, pleaded not guilty, and was released without having to post bail. Trial is scheduled for March 25, 2024. Thirty-four counts on New York penal law falsifying business records in the first degree. Trump charged with crimes in the investigation. Prosecutors will likely argue that Daniels' payoff constituted an illegal contribution to Trump's campaign, a violation of either state or federal election

• 1:04:50Shawn Ryan?

  law that Trump furthered by falsifying his company's records.

• 1:04:59Shawn Ryan?

  The way I understand this is, actually, I don't understand this, but falsifying business records, labeling the payoff as a legal expense from the campaign, is that, am I correct?

• 1:05:20Tim Parlatore?

  So, what they did here was Michael Cohen decided to pay her personally, and then he was to be reimbursed by Trump. And so, these are checks to Michael Cohen that are then booked as, you know, legal expenses. Did he write the checks himself? I don't think so. But one of the interesting things here is that New York State loves to take, you know, a single count and turn it into many counts. So, when you say about how there's

• 1:06:01Tim Parlatore?

  thirty-some odd counts, really what that is, every check is a separate count. And then every, you know, memo entry in the checkbook is a separate count. So, for each check, there's two counts.

• 1:06:17Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah, and they do this with a lot of things. I mean, I remember years ago I had a the New York State version of a Rico case. It was a more traditional, you know, Italian organized crime, you know, gambling and loan sharking case. And I go in and they hand me the indictment. It's this thick. And I start to look into it. I'm like, my God, this is the biggest indictment I've ever seen. And it turns out they took every bet and charged them all as separate counts. You know, over the course of, you know, a couple of years that they were running a sports book. It's like every bet on football games was a separate count.

• 1:07:00Tim Parlatore?

  It was the most incomprehensibly, you know, stupid waste of trees ever. And, but that's what they do. And that's what they did here is they're taking, really it's just one transaction that was paid out in a couple of, in a few different checks and they, you know, expand it out like that.

• 1:07:22Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:22Tim Parlatore?

  So the feds don't do that. The feds would have charged this as a one count indictment, probably.

• 1:07:29Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:31Tim Parlatore?

  Uh, maybe two or three, but wouldn't be this, you know, thirty some odd.

• 1:07:35Shawn Ryan?

  Is the federal government behind these state ones? I mean, are they coaching them like the Georgia one?

• 1:07:42Tim Parlatore?

  I don't know. I've heard that rumored. Um, I haven't seen it, so I'm not gonna

• 1:07:49Tim Parlatore?

  give it oxygen one way or the other. I don't know. Yeah, I have heard that though. But, yeah, so ultimately what we're talking about here is

• 1:08:00Tim Parlatore?

  there was this, you know, she made an allegation.

• 1:08:06Tim Parlatore?

  Michael Cohen worked out a deal to pay her off. He wrote it up. Stupidly and yeah, and she got paid. There was an NDA. She wasn't allowed to talk about it and she violated it. And now they're trying to say that the payment was, you know, some kind of campaign contribution. The campaign argument, I think, falls because that's already been tried in other circumstances. John Edwards, for example, and paying off somebody to keep a, um, an extramarital affair silent, um, is not a campaign thing. You know, campaign expenses

• 1:08:50Tim Parlatore?

  have to be something that's purely for the campaign. There can't be any, you know, personal, you know, piece to it. And so if he's also interested in having her not tell the world because it would hurt business, marriage, et cetera, then it's not really a campaign finance issue.

• 1:09:09Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:09:10Tim Parlatore?

  Which is exactly what happened with John Edwards. So I don't think that they're gonna get there with that. Um, I think that they have statute of limitations problems because this thing happened so many years ago and they're, they're trying to extend the statute of limitations based on the idea that, well, we can extend it because he spent all that time in DC. So he was outside of New York. So I, I think that they could potentially have problems with that. Um, but just the baseline of this thing just doesn't, doesn't, doesn't make sense.

• 1:09:53Tim Parlatore?

  I, of all the indictments, this is far and above the weakest.

• 1:09:58Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:09:58Tim Parlatore?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:01Shawn Ryan?

  How do you think all these, I mean, they all came in four and a half months. Obviously there was some kind of, I mean, this was, when did this happen?

• 1:10:10Tim Parlatore?

  That was.

• 1:10:12Shawn Ryan?

  That was.

• 1:10:12Tim Parlatore?

  It was May, I think.

• 1:10:14Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what initially? This was before he was president, correct?

• 1:10:19Tim Parlatore?

  It was back in like 2015, 2016.

• 1:10:21Shawn Ryan?

  So, I mean, somebody's definitely convoluting all of this and coordinating, correct? You don't get a 91 felony counts in four different states in four and a half months?

• 1:10:36Tim Parlatore?

  I don't know. I mean, obviously, the Florida and DC cases are connected because it's the same, you know, the same boss at DOJ on both of those cases. Those two are obviously connected. The other two, quite frankly, strike me as more of, you know, local prosecutors that are trying to ride the wave.

• 1:10:56Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:10:57Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Shawn Ryan?

  They're trying to jump on the bandwagon.

• 1:11:01Tim Parlatore?

  Maybe there's some coordination, but I doubt it because my personal opinion is that there's not the coordination because, first of all, I don't think the federal government has any legitimate interest in Alvin Bragg bringing a weak case that is almost certainly going to get thrown out.

• 1:11:20Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:11:22Tim Parlatore?

  I don't think the federal government has any interest in Fannie Willis bringing a case that directly contradicts the federal prosecutor's theory of their case and, you know, and sidelines a whole bunch of their witnesses. So I don't really see that coordination going on, at least with the government.

• 1:11:42Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:11:43Tim Parlatore?

  You know, are there possible coordination with, you know, fundraisers and things like that because of these two, you know, elected district attorneys? Maybe. I don't know. But it definitely struck me as more of a, you know, want to jump on the bandwagon. Oh, we indicted him too.

• 1:12:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, they definitely, if anything, they're definitely getting a ton of publicity out of it.

• 1:12:09Tim Parlatore?

  Sure.

• 1:12:10Shawn Ryan?

  You know, but, um, okay.

• 1:12:15Shawn Ryan?

  Where do you think this is heading?

• 1:12:17Tim Parlatore?

  Dismissal.

• 1:12:18Shawn Ryan?

  Dismissal? Relatively soon?

• 1:12:20Tim Parlatore?

  I would think it should be heading for dismissal. Same with the others. I mean, this one is a pretty legally incompetent theory. So if this one doesn't get dismissed, um, yeah, I think it would get overturned by, on appeal.

• 1:12:34Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Is there anything we're missing that with the Stormy Daniels case?

• 1:12:41Tim Parlatore?

  No, that's, I mean, that's the outline of it. It's just, it's, it's a weak case. A weak case being brought for nakedly political purposes.

• 1:12:52Shawn Ryan?

  So with you wrapping up the interview,

• 1:12:56Shawn Ryan?

  you're one of the four lead attorneys on this at the beginning. You have more insight into all of this than

• 1:13:05Shawn Ryan?

  anybody else. In your opinion,

• 1:13:10Shawn Ryan?

  is this political prosecution that we're seeing?

• 1:13:14Shawn Ryan?

  Is this going to become the norm?

• 1:13:17Tim Parlatore?

  I believe that it is politically motivated. I think certainly the two state prosecutions are, are without a doubt, politically motivated. I think that the federal prosecutions, um, are because of the disparate treatment of him to other, you know, similarly situated defendants. Uh, I do see politics involved there and, and I think that, you know, I don't like to be the guy saying, oh, it's a, it's a political witch hunt. You know, I, I don't like using the word witch hunt at all.

• 1:13:54Tim Parlatore?

  But here's the thing. When they go in and they try to demand a ludicrously speedy trial,

• 1:14:04Tim Parlatore?

  nakedly for the purpose of getting it done before the election.

• 1:14:11Tim Parlatore?

  You feed that narrative. You know? If you are engaging in litigation strategies that are so obviously intended to be timed, related to the election, you feed the credibility of those that say that it's a political witch hunt, that it's election interference. If, and I look at this, you know, I have a different perspective on these things, not only because of my personal, prior personal involvement, but also because I spent a career working in the federal criminal justice world. And so when I look at the manner in which these prosecutors are acting

• 1:14:55Tim Parlatore?

  as compared to every other case, that, it's that, you know, delta of the treatment that supports, you know, the conclusion that is being done for political purposes.

• 1:15:15Shawn Ryan?

  Are there any charges that you believe may be valid? A legitimate concern?

• 1:15:22Tim Parlatore?

  I think that the most legitimate concern is the obstruction counts in Florida if everything that's in the indictment is true. If, big if. I've obviously had a lot of success in my career going in and winning cases where the things that they put in the indictment turned not to be true. So I don't believe everything the DOJ writes into an indictment.

• 1:15:51Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:15:51Tim Parlatore?

  But if, if all of the allegations, if everything in all of these indictments were true, I think that the obstruction in Florida is the single greatest threat.

• 1:16:08Shawn Ryan?

  My next concern is fair trial.

• 1:16:15Shawn Ryan?

  The jury.

• 1:16:18Tim Parlatore?

  Good luck.

• 1:16:19Shawn Ryan?

  Exactly. You, I mean, I remember when I interviewed Eddie Gallagher, he talked extensively about how they tried to, well, they didn't try, they did back the jury.

• 1:16:33Shawn Ryan?

  Is there any, is there even any hope that they will have a, a, a fair trial with a legitimate jury?

• 1:16:47Shawn Ryan?

  And how would you even, I mean, with the, I'll ask that question later.

• 1:16:52Tim Parlatore?

  You know, here's the problem with that.

• 1:16:57Tim Parlatore?

  That is an issue for any defendant in a high-profile case.

• 1:17:05Tim Parlatore?

  And certainly any politically charged case. Can you find jurors who will be fair? Sure.

• 1:17:16Tim Parlatore?

  Sure. I mean, the Georgia grand jury was not unanimous. There were people in there that thought he should not be indicted.

• 1:17:24Tim Parlatore?

  I'm sure that the grand jury in, in DC also was not unanimous. The Florida case, obviously, is going to be tried in the jurisdiction where the jury pool has a lot more people that voted for him than against him.

• 1:17:39Tim Parlatore?

  Ultimately, as a trial lawyer, what I want are jurors who are going to keep an open mind, that haven't prejudiced the case. Given the amount of publicity in these cases, I think that's going to be very difficult to find. And that's not just a Trump thing. You know, I think that Hunter Biden's going to have the same problem.

• 1:18:05Tim Parlatore?

  Bob Menendez, to a certain extent, is going to have the same problem. It's the reason why, back in 2016, when Jim Comey came out and said, you know, no reasonable prosecutor will bring the case against Hillary Clinton, I agreed with him.

• 1:18:22Tim Parlatore?

  Different reasons, but I agree with this conclusion. Because I believed there's no way you're going to be able to pick a fair and impartial jury to try US v. Clinton. Because everybody has already been so saturated with the stuff that they're going to have their opinions already made up. That's what I was, that was actually my next question. You know, that's about Hillary Clinton. About Trump. It's, you can't find a jury, I don't think, that's not going to bring their own, you know. Baggage. Yeah.

• 1:19:04Tim Parlatore?

  I mean, look, I tried a case years ago, very different circumstances. I tried the case of the three guys who base jumped off of the top of One World Trade Center. And it was big news in New York at the time. The GoPro video footage was, you know, amazing. It got millions of views on YouTube. And when the jury came in and the judge, you know, said, hey, has anybody heard of this case before? We lost half the panel right there. Because half the panel stood up and they got in line and they said, yes, I've heard of this case. Have you formed an opinion of this case?

• 1:19:47Tim Parlatore?

  Oh, yeah, what they did was freaking awesome. And I'm sitting there watching all my best jurors leave. But that's the point, is that I lost half the jurors in that case. If you apply the same standard to Donald Trump, by the way, same judge tried that case that has the Manhattan case for Trump. If you apply that same standard of, hey, jurors, how many of you have heard of this case?

• 1:20:20Tim Parlatore?

  Everybody's out.

• 1:20:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I don't. It's to me, it seems impossible. I mean, every, everything is politically charged in this country at this point. You're either pro-Trump or anti-Trump. You know, there doesn't seem to be any middle ground. And so, you know, when I'm talking about a fair trial, I'm not just talking about a panel of anti-Trump jurors. I'm talking about pro-Trump as well. And, and I mean, where, where would you even begin to find neutral jurors?

• 1:21:01Tim Parlatore?

  With these, with this defendant, I don't think you can.

• 1:21:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Do you think they'll try to pack the jury?

• 1:21:09Tim Parlatore?

  Well, look, I mean, the way the juries get selected, there's not that much you can really do about it. You know, people are randomly selected based on their driver's license registration. And there is a process. So it's different in a military jury because there, the convening authority picks the panel that you start from. But in a civilian system, the jury is already packed based on bringing the case in a jurisdiction that is, you know, so polarized. You know, if the Georgia case gets removed to federal court,

• 1:21:54Tim Parlatore?

  then you have a much wider jury pool. And so you would have a jury pool that goes into other counties that did vote for Trump, for example. But you have to start with the idea that, you know, if you have a Fulton County jury, then, you know, how many votes did he get in that county? That's probably the percentage you got. Which doesn't mean 100%. You know, I don't know what the numbers were there, but even if, even if Biden won by 70%, that means 30% of your potential jurors voted for Trump. And ultimately, you need a unanimous verdict to convict somebody.

• 1:22:41Tim Parlatore?

  And so if you have a third of your, you know, of your jurors, so out of 12, four, you know, eight to four, assume that the jurors ignore all the evidence and they just vote based on who they voted for in the election.

• 1:22:56Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:22:59Tim Parlatore?

  Even there, you're gonna have difficulty because you're gonna have an eight to four verdict.

• 1:23:04Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. It's gonna be really interesting to see how this all plays out. Are you worried for the country?

• 1:23:16Tim Parlatore?

  I am, and yet I'm, I'm not. Um, you know, all, I think that all of the calls for, oh, this is the greatest threat to democracy and, you know, we've never had a situation like this before. I think those are somewhat overblown. Um, and I think that those are primarily being pushed by people that have not studied our own history. Because we have had plenty of strife in this country and survived. Is this next couple of years going to be utter chaos? Yes.

• 1:23:59Tim Parlatore?

  Could it, you know, devolve into, into something worse? Yes. Is it gonna be the end of our country? I don't believe so. You know, I, I study history and I look at, um, yeah, I love reading books about, you know, historical figures. And when you read them, especially if you read them today, you're gonna pick out interesting things in those books, um, the parallel, what you see today. And so you see that the discord here, is it really that much different from a lot of the discord that happened, you know, in the late 1700s, early 1800s?

• 1:24:44Tim Parlatore?

  Not really. Is it really that much worse than when half the country decided to secede and we started shooting each other? No. I don't think it's that bad.

• 1:25:02Tim Parlatore?

  I think differences, I think the biggest risk is back then, as bad as it was, people didn't know about it because we didn't have Twitter and Fox News and CNN and all these other things. News traveled at the speed of a horse.

• 1:25:29Shawn Ryan?

  We had a very interesting conversation at dinner last night on overcorrection.

• 1:25:35Tim Parlatore?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:35Shawn Ryan?

  And how the pendulum is swinging and how you kind of had mentioned that this had started with Obama.

• 1:25:44Tim Parlatore?

  I think that there's an element of that. I mean, you know, each time you have the pendulum swing, Obama, you know, kind of swung the pendulum to one side, which, you know, brought the conditions that would bring Trump to office as it swings over to the other side. And then it goes way over in the reaction to Trump. And I think one of the interesting things is Trump, one of his strengths or weaknesses, depending how

• 1:26:23Tim Parlatore?

  you look at it, is he brings out extreme positions from his opponents. And so if you look at, for example, immigration, historically, there's been a debate about immigration. And if you go back and watch, in fact, I invite you, go back and watch the 1995 State of the Union address by Bill Clinton. And watch the part where he's talking about immigration. And when you watch that, you're going to sit there and shake your head and say, my

• 1:27:02Tim Parlatore?

  God, I forgot that Bill Clinton was a Republican. Because his talking points aren't that much substantively different than Trump's on reducing illegal immigration, building a wall, you know, we're a nation of immigrants, but we're a nation of laws, things like that.

• 1:27:25Tim Parlatore?

  And yet then when Trump, you know, pushes this whole, you know, build the wall, you then get, you know, the backswing of, well, if Trump wants to build the wall, then we want open borders. And then you have a situation like you have now. This country, and in fact, I think the world, um, you know, politics suffers from, you know, abuse, corruption, overcorrection, and ultimately getting back to, um, you know, kind of an equilibrium.

• 1:28:06Tim Parlatore?

  You know, the same is true of, you know, bail reform. I think I told you about this last night. Bail reform, everybody's talking about how, you know, New York has gone, and a lot of these states have gone with the no cash bail reform where, you know, nobody gets held in pretrial confinement, and all these people are out on the street and they're killing cops and, and all the, everything's terrible. And yet I look at it and I say, that is an overcorrection of a legitimate problem. Because when I started out my career in New York City, they were jailing people pre-conviction for things that they did not need to be jailed for.

• 1:28:48Tim Parlatore?

  They weren't dangerous to the community, they weren't risk of flight, they were putting them in jail to make it more difficult to defend themselves. And it's like, I had a guy once, he was in Rikers Island, his case primarily consisted of audio recordings. You know, we had hundreds of hours of audio recordings. He wasn't allowed to have a computer. So, under the way that the system was set up, the first time he's allowed to hear any of the evidence against him is when it's played for the jury.

• 1:29:30Tim Parlatore?

  And this is a guy that we knew for two years he was under investigation. We knew it. And about once a week, I'd call up the prosecutor and say, hey, you want my guy to surrender? You know, where are we at? Are you ready to charge him? You want me to bring him in? No, no, not this week. Call me again next week. They finally get to the point where they want to charge him. And they show up at his house, 5:30 in the morning. He always woke up at four o'clock in the morning because he knew that they would do this. And so he would go out for a walk. And so when they showed up, he's sitting on his porch drinking coffee. They show up with the SWAT team and he's sitting there. Oh, hi, guys. Hold on a second. I'll be right down.

• 1:30:13Tim Parlatore?

  He finishes his coffee, walks down, he holds his hands out. Five hours later, we're in front of a judge. He must be held in pretrial confinement. He is a risk of flight. If we don't hold him, he's going to disappear. But wait a minute. We've been talking for two years. And sure enough, the judge put him on Rikers Island where he couldn't review any of the discovery against him. That's just one example of many where bail was an abusive system that was robbing people of their constitutional rights. It was undermining their fundamental right to be able to defend themselves. And it needed to be corrected.

• 1:30:58Tim Parlatore?

  But no cash bail is a massive overcorrection. And so now they're going to have to swing the pendulum back. And eventually, we're going to get to an equilibrium. And once you reach the equilibrium, everything's going to be fine for a while until the institutional memory fades. And then it will fall off again. And then you'll be back in the pendulum.

• 1:31:27Shawn Ryan?

  You got a great way of relating things back to history, Tim.

• 1:31:30Tim Parlatore?

  That's right.

• 1:31:31Shawn Ryan?

  You do a phenomenal job at it. Well,

• 1:31:37Shawn Ryan?

  I just want to say thank you for coming and unpacking all of these indictments. And I just, you know, I think people don't understand what this is all about. I didn't. And you really, you just did a great job of explaining everything. And thank you for coming down to do that.

• 1:31:59Tim Parlatore?

  Well, thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.

• 1:32:01Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. One last question.

• 1:32:04Tim Parlatore?

  Sure.

• 1:32:07Shawn Ryan?

  If they wanted you back on that legal team, would you go?

• 1:32:12Tim Parlatore?

  I would have some conditions. The answer is yes. I would consider going back, but there would be certain conditions based on my past experience that I would want to make sure that

• 1:32:28Tim Parlatore?

  certain barriers and personalities are removed.

• 1:32:33Shawn Ryan?

  Fair enough.

• 1:32:35Tim Parlatore?

  But other than that, I mean, the reason why I took the case on in the first place is unchanged. It's an important case. It's, it's, you know, very consequential issues to this country. And, you know, but let's be honest. I didn't become a trial lawyer because I wanted to just do a volume DWI practice. You know, I like getting into the biggest, loudest fights. And this is one of them. But I would just need to be, have the conditions right to where I could actually fight it.

• 1:33:13Shawn Ryan?

  Definitely understandable. I need three recommendations from you on who do you think would be good on this show? Who would you like to see here?

• 1:33:27Tim Parlatore?

  So the first one we've talked about before, and I've, I think I've already connected you with him, is the former governor of Missouri, Eric Greitens. I think that he'd be a really interesting guest, relevant to a lot of the things we're talking about here, because he, as sitting governor, was indicted for a crime he did not commit by a, you know, politically, you know, elected district attorney. He was forced to resign as governor. And then, after he resigned, it came out that the lead investigator ended up pleading guilty to tampering with evidence.

• 1:34:11Tim Parlatore?

  And the prosecutor also pleaded guilty to an ethics violation for presenting false evidence. And ultimately, she had to step down. But, none of that puts him back in office. You know, the political aim of that prosecution had been fulfilled. And he's also just a really interesting and brilliant guy, you know, former SEAL as well. So I think you would enjoy, and your audience would enjoy talking to him. Perfect. The second one is a good friend of mine and a good client, Tommy Vext.

• 1:34:51Tim Parlatore?

  So Tommy is a, he's a heavy metal musician. He doesn't fit the graphic, demographic for most heavy metal musicians. He's black. He grew up on the streets of Brooklyn. He has a twin brother. And his life story is the perfect illustration of how personal choices affect where we end up. Because he and his twin brother, both grew up on the streets, both got into a lot of trouble. Tommy went straight, and he went sober. His brother did not.

• 1:35:30Tim Parlatore?

  His brother is serving time in prison right now for attempted murder of Tommy.

• 1:35:35Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, this sounds really interesting.

• 1:35:38Tim Parlatore?

  Tommy, because of his decision to go straight, is a world touring rock star

• 1:35:49Tim Parlatore?

  and an incredible human being. I think you would like him a lot.

• 1:35:53Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 1:35:54Tim Parlatore?

  And the third one is actually somebody that I don't know. The first two are admittedly clients of mine. The third one is somebody I've never met before I'd like to meet, Mike Simpson. I recently read his book and have been listening to his podcast. Really fascinating guy. He started off as a Ranger, then became a Green Beret enlisted, and then went to medical school. Went from being an 18 Delta Special Forces medic to going to medical school and then went back to Special Operations as a physician to support the Special Operations troops. And now he's retired from that and he's really focused on longevity.

• 1:36:41Tim Parlatore?

  He just published a book not too long ago called Honed: Finding Your Edge as a Man Over 40.

• 1:36:49Tim Parlatore?

  It's something I've been reading about how to, you know, fine tune my diet and exercise and lifestyle. And he has a fascinating podcast where he talks about a lot of these things. So I think that he's somebody else that you'd find very interesting. So those are my three recommendations.

• 1:37:08Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. We'll definitely look into them. And yes, you did connect me with Eric. And I do, I have had conversations with Mike, so. I will, and I know you'll connect me with.

• 1:37:23Tim Parlatore?

  Tommy, absolutely.

• 1:37:24Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect. I never would have pictured you as a heavy metal guy, Tim.

• 1:37:27Tim Parlatore?

  You know, one thing about Tommy, he used to be the frontman of a band called The Bad Wolves. He, he took over as temporarily frontman for Five Finger Death Punch when their lead singer went into rehab. He's done so much to help so many, you know, musicians and celebrities with substance abuse issues. And, you know, one of the interesting stories about him is he was going to be doing a duet with Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries, a redo of their famous song Zombie. And the night before they were supposed to record the duet, she, she died.

• 1:38:10Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:38:11Tim Parlatore?

  As a result of, I think she actually drowned, but it was, it was an alcohol induced death. And so he went forward with the song, which got millions of views. It was a very, very popular song. But he donated 100% of the revenue or the profits to her children.

• 1:38:36Shawn Ryan?

  That's a hell of a guy.

• 1:38:37Tim Parlatore?

  So he is, he's a guy, he's, he's a heavy metal musician with a deep story.

• 1:38:46Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect, perfect. Well, hopefully we'll get him on. Thank you for the recommendations. Thank you, brother. I appreciate it.

• 1:38:55Tim Parlatore?

  Thank you.