Who are the coconspirators in Trumps third indictment
Who are the coconspirators in Trumps third indictment
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00:00 identities of these six Trump co-conspirators. Sarah, what can you tell us?
00:04 That's right, Wolf. As you noted, there are six co-conspirators who are unnamed in
00:08 this indictment. We are prepared to identify five of them at this point based
00:12 on reporting from our CNN team. I think most notably the first unindicted
00:17 co-conspirator, who again is unnamed in this indictment, we have identified as
00:21 Rudy Giuliani. The indictment notes that this is someone who called the Arizona
00:25 speaker of the house, that was Rusty Bowers, somebody who made a presentation
00:30 before Georgia state lawmakers, and the person that Donald Trump tapped to lead
00:35 his post-election legal efforts. That is all Rudy Giuliani. Number two in this
00:39 indictment is former Trump attorney John Eastman. This is a person who wrote this
00:44 two-page memo. This was the plan for Mike Pence to be able to essentially overturn
00:49 the 2020 presidential election while presiding over the Electoral College
00:54 certification. Number three on this list, another former Trump attorney, Sidney
00:59 Powell. They point out that she filed a lawsuit against the governor of Georgia,
01:03 which we knew. They also point out in this indictment that Donald Trump was
01:07 espousing the theories of this co-conspirator, even though he had
01:11 privately admitted that they sounded crazy. We know all of that to be Sidney
01:15 Powell. Co-conspirator number four on this list is someone we've talked about
01:19 a lot, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. The indictment identifies
01:24 him as a Justice Department official. It also points to an email that a
01:29 top DOJ person sent to Clark rebutting his efforts to try to use the department
01:34 to overturn the 2020 election. And again, number five, we have another
01:40 pro-Trump lawyer. This is Kenneth Chesbrough. He was someone who was very
01:43 involved in this fake electors plot. The indictment points to an email memorandum
01:48 that he sent to Giuliani in December of 2020 about the fake electors plot.
01:53 So based on everything that we have previously reported, everything we know,
01:57 what our sources are telling us, and of course the work of the House Committee
02:00 that investigated January 6th, those are the five co-conspirators that we are
02:05 prepared to identify at this point, notably all attorneys who worked
02:09 alongside Donald Trump in this effort to try to overturn the 2020 election, Wolf.
02:13 Really significant reporting. Thank you very much for that, Sarah. Erin.
02:18 All right, Wolf. And of course now you can go through this and when it says
02:21 co-conspirator one, two, three, four, and five, filling those names. I want to go
02:26 now to Caitlin Polans outside the courthouse. And Caitlin, on the back of
02:29 Sarah's reporting, you have new information about something here in this
02:33 indictment. What are you learning?
02:36 Well, Erin, we are now learning that the senior campaign advisor who is signified
02:42 in this indictment as one of the people who was giving Donald Trump the harshest
02:46 assessment that there was no fraud after the election that would overturn the vote,
02:51 that person is Jason Miller. I have been able to confirm that. I've reached out to a
02:56 representative of his and received no comment back. But I have been able to confirm
03:00 that that is indeed Jason Miller, and this episode is just one of the highlights of how
03:05 the special counsel's office was using information that the close advisors to Donald
03:11 Trump on the campaign, people who even stuck with him after the 2020 election - Miller
03:16 continued to work with Donald Trump, continues to work with him - these are people who
03:22 were telling him that there wasn't fraud, and that Donald Trump and the alleged
03:26 co-conspirators or the co-conspirators in this indictment who are not charged at this
03:31 time, that those people were doing something anomalous with what the campaign knew,
03:36 that there wasn't fraud. And this particular mention of Jason Miller in the charging
03:40 document, it notes that he spoke with Donald Trump on a daily basis, informed him on
03:46 multiple occasions that fraud claims were untrue, informed him that ballot stuffing that
03:51 was being alleged in Georgia was not happening, that there were not a number of dead
03:55 voters in Georgia that would be sizable enough to swing the election. And he wrote in an
04:00 email - this is according to the indictment - on December 8th, so a month after the
04:04 election, before the Trump electors come together to try and certify Trump won, Jason
04:10 Miller writes in an email, "When our research and campaign legal team can't back up any
04:14 of the claims made by our elite strike force legal team, you can see why we're 0-32 on
04:22 our cases. I'll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it's tough to own any of
04:27 this when it's all just conspiracy beamed down from the mothership." So that's what
04:32 Jason Miller, senior campaign advisor, was saying to Donald Trump, and yet Trump and
04:37 the co-conspirators in the indictment continued on pushing this myth of election fraud.
04:41 All right, Caitlin Polans, thank you very much. A pretty powerful sentence there from
04:44 Jason Miller, and there was an expletive in there too. "I'll obviously hustle up on
04:49 all fronts, but it's tough to own any of this when it's all just conspiracy expletive beamed
04:53 down from the mothership." That's the level of disdain and disgust expressed by one of
04:58 Trump's key inner circle individuals charged with putting this forward, again and again
05:02 telling Trump it was false. I want to go now to Ty Cobb, the former Trump White House
05:06 lawyer. And Ty, I know you've had a chance to read through all 45 pages of this indictment.
05:11 What stands out to you so far?
05:16 Several things. I think that as we discussed previously in terms of what to expect, that
05:23 we got exactly what we expected, which was a very, very detailed, laborious, easy to
05:31 follow narrative of exactly why Donald Trump failed the country and put his own interests
05:39 over those of the United States. There's nothing in here that's gratuitous. There's nothing
05:49 in here that's obscure. It's very easily understood. And I think most sane Americans reading this
05:56 will understand that something very grave happened. I would like to articulate the gravity
06:04 of this, but I can't possibly do better than the letter from Judge Luddick that was, or
06:12 the statement from Judge Luddick that was just moments ago read on your air. I think
06:18 he has always been a straight shooter. I think he, like me, feels that the Republican Party
06:26 really cannot sustain itself without an abject rejection of Trump and a recognition that
06:33 he needs to go into the rear view. And I think he's a great statesman when he said what he
06:41 said about the significance and consequences of this day, having to take this sad step
06:51 with regard to a former president.
06:54 And our Jamie Gangel just sharing that statement that she obtained from Judge Luddick. Is there
06:59 anything, Ty, as you read through, you say that there's nothing gratuitous in here. Is
07:04 there anything that you think is not here that should be here? Is there anything that
07:09 is missing?
07:10 No, I don't, I don't believe so. I think it's, I think it is, this, this states the charges
07:18 in a very understandable way and in a very, in a difficult way because he's the only defendant.
07:27 It makes it very difficult for Trump to deflect blame here and to spin it. Now, having said
07:35 that, you know, the reference to the, to the co-conspirators is that they are co-conspirators,
07:42 not that they're unindicted co-conspirators, which raises the possibility they may well
07:46 have been indicted and justice may be following, you know, the traditional step that justice
07:53 follows of not announcing an indictment unless a defendant is, you know, arrested and or
08:01 arraigned. So it's, it's, it's conceivable that there is a fuller indictment upcoming.
08:10 It's conceivable that some of these people have already pled guilty. It's conceivable
08:14 that some people may read this, some of the people in the name may read this and, and
08:20 go ahead and, and plead. But I don't believe that, you know, anybody who is listed as a
08:26 co-conspirator was surprised to see themselves mentioned in the way they are today.
08:32 Right. And of course we have identified, Sarah Murray was just reporting five of the six,
08:36 the sixth being a campaign or a political consultant who was instrumental. Right. And
08:41 there's a few people that that could possibly be, but we're not going to, you know, make
08:45 assumptions here until we know for sure, but we do know who all of the others are. Interesting
08:50 tie that you say that they could have already pled or that they could already be charged
08:53 that we just don't know. And we don't know the status of any of those. I do wonder, Ty,
08:59 your view on the timing here, we were having a, I'd say robust conversation a few moments
09:04 ago about whether the American people deserve a verdict in this case from a jury of their
09:09 own peers ahead of an election, given that this alleges that a former president tried
09:16 to basically stage a coup and it lays it all out. Do you think that there's any chance
09:21 that that happens, that there is a verdict in this case before the actual election 2024?
09:27 I think there's an outside chance. I do think this raises some, this case raises, unlike
09:36 Mar-a-Lago, this case raises some significant first amendment issues. And Jack Smith alludes
09:43 to what Trump's first amendments rights are and accurately identifies, yeah, and accurately
09:50 identifies where those rights meet the wall at the point of the deception and conspiracy
09:59 that are charged. I want to apologize if I said that the co-conspirators may have actually
10:06 already pled. What I meant to say if I said that was they may have already agreed to plead
10:12 because had they pled, we would know that. All right. Well, Ty, thank you very much.
10:17 And thank you for that, making that clear. I appreciate it.