January 12, 2024 • 13 mins
There is a lot going on with the Trump trials and the prosecutor. Plus, we have the trial with Hunter!
Andrew Cherkasky, former federal prosecutor and legal expert, talks to Joe Getty about both and more!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This case has never been about politics or personal vendetta
or about name calling. This case is about the facts
and the law, and mister Donald Trump violated the law.
At the end of the day, the point is simple,
no matter how powerful you are, no matter how rich
(00:22):
you are, that no one is above the law, and
that the law applies to all of us equally and fairly.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
What this case appears to be about is about a
really dramatic cadence. But I'm not a legal expert. Andrew
Tcherkawski is. Andrew is a criminal defense and civil trial lawyer,
former federal prosecutor, and military veteran, and knows what he's
talking about. Andrew, how are you, sir?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm great, good to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Good. We sure appreciate you spending a little time today. Hey,
can we start in your Georgia with the recent developments
with Fannie Willis and her boyfriend, the prosecutor she's hired
at high six figure you know, Fees who apparently doesn't
have a lot of experience in this What do you
make of that? How serious the development is this?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I think it's a very serious development. It is something
that borders on the idea of prosecutorial misconduct. You know,
her whole efforts against President Trump have been deeply politically motivated,
and she is coming after President Trump for something that
she claims is a blatant violation of Georgia law. He
has declared his innocence. I think that we have to
(01:36):
be very careful when prosecutors who are trying to charge
cases in a particularly unique way are now caught up
in their own misconduct. And it seems to be potentially
a gross misconduct.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Well, yeah, it certainly could be trayed as a project
she cooked up. I mean, obviously that's a stretch. There were,
you know, strange doings after the election, but she and
her boyfriend cooked up a scheme to make hundreds of
thousands of dollars. I mean, you could portray it that way,
and it does kind of have that look.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, it definitely has the look. The gentleman that she
is accused of having an affair with has been appointed
as a special prosecutor in Georgia. He has very limited
courtroom experience and prosecutorial experience. The reasons why he was
appointed with something that I was talking about many months ago,
before we knew about the idea that there was some
(02:31):
sort of special relationship between the two. He's gotten I believe,
over a million dollars at this point for his services.
Now he's providing legal services, no doubt through this, but
whether those legal services are connected with essentially an underlying
personal motivation to prosecute in order to rack up those
legal bills, that would certainly be on the highest order
(02:53):
of misconduct of an attorney and could very well be
seen as criminal. It's something that where there are genuine
questions in our country about Trump's conduct after the election
in twenty twenty, those are questions that I believe are
primarily political. They're trying to turn it into criminal allegations,
and it's a stretch. There is no good precedent for that,
(03:16):
and it is something that certainly taints this process for
the prosecutors to have such a scandal break out at
this point.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So not to try to make you make a prediction,
but given your experience litigating hundreds of jury trials, what
is the likelihood that it all collapses. What's the likelihood
that Fannie Willis has just dismissed and they have to
more or less restart. What do you expect to happen?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Well, I expect her to still go full steam ahead
against Trump and all of his associates that are charged here.
So she's not going to back off willingly. You know.
As a criminal defense attorney, I was kind of joking
the other day that our job is not to predict
what the issue is. It's to be ready to act
on the issues that arise. There's one hundred, maybe two
(04:03):
hundred ways that prosecutors can mess up a case, and
a really good defense lawyer is ready to pounce on
any one of them when they arise. If they knew
what the issue was ahead of time, the prosecutors would
likely know. So it's all about finding the prosecutor's errors
and mistakes or misconduct along the way, and then calling
(04:23):
it out and hoping that at that point the judge
sees it that way and will reverse the case or
dismiss the case, or issue some other major form of relief.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Before we move on to Hunter Biden, let's talk a
little bit about the business case in New York, the
real estate fraud, etc. Does that have any enduring significance
other than to Trump as a businessman, do you think?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Well? I think the enduring effect that it has primarily
is on the idea of those who do business in
the state of New York, the long term consequences of
the which Fox News report has no comparable history in
the state, and that idea being that nobody has been
(05:10):
essentially prosecuted where there are no complainants or victims people
who have lost any money. The idea here being that
if I go to a real estate agent and that
real estate agent tells me my house is worth a
million dollars, but I then list the house for one
point five and then it sells for two millions, how
much was that house worth in the first place. We
(05:30):
see corporations all the time who have never made a
penny in the history of the corporation. Think tech companies
that then sell their companies for billions of dollars. How
does that evaluated as the correct price or valuation of
the company when they haven't even made a dollar. So essentially,
the state of New York is putting itself in a
(05:51):
position to prosecute any business who they feel like are
overvaluing their company. And that's a very scary prospect for
those who do business. It's the nature of business. It's
also problematic because we see the immense political motivations here
with the various videos we've seen of Letitia James campaigning
(06:13):
to take down Donald Trump and chanting and promising that
she would take him down.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, it really is one of those things for the
record where you know, we have a fair amount of
ambivalence about Trump.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Here.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
We recognize the great stuff he's done, the policies of
the judges, et cetera, et cetera, and certainly some of
some of the negatives, but this one sure seems like
another naked political prosecution to intercede in the deal that
everybody was thrilled with and say no, no, no, you
got ripped off, and all sides are looking at the
(06:44):
States saying I don't think we were. What are you
talking about? Seems nakedly political. So, as you point out,
I think the enduring effect is going to be political,
the idea that, yeah, there is a witch hunt for
Trump and he can't get a fair shape shake Andrew
Tcherkawski's online criminal defense and civil try lawyer. Let's talk
about Hunter Biden for a minute. He pleaded not guilty
(07:05):
to some tax charges, including I believe three felonies. What
does that look like to you? How much jeopardy is
he in.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yeah, Hunter Biden is in a lot of trouble. You know.
Hunter Biden has kind of done it to himself in
his autobiography where he admits to rampant the legal activity
that he was engaged in in the late in mid
twenty teens. He is facing these tax charges and they're
(07:33):
certainly going to come fast and furious as this case
kind of proceeds with the evidence that will be used
against him. No doubt that's going to be particularly embarrassing
evidence to him and his father, and something that will
be I think heavily part of the campaign two prospects ahead.
(07:54):
I think the one very interesting point about that prosecution
is how the special prosecutor David Weiss intend to use
information about Barisma as well as Hunter Biden's connection with
a Chinese energy company. There's been lots of calls that
that is a violation of the PHARAH, the Foreign Agent
Registration Act, and that he should be prosecuted for that. Well,
(08:17):
Weiss has mentioned his affiliation with Bisma and the Chinese
holding company throughout the indictment, so I anticipate that Weiss
is going to use that information in the trial. Maybe
why he's not talking about it. But what we're all
asking is why isn't there a decision. It's been years
and years. Why hasn't Weis's come out and actually told
us why there's no prosecution on those allegations. Maybe that's
(08:40):
something that we will find out more through the court
filings that come in the following weeks and months.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Right, I was just going to say I don't trust
Weiss for a minute, and was going to ask that
that unholy to my mind plea deal a couple of
months ago that fell apart when that alert judge called
out both sides for the unprecedented and bizarre nature of it,
I believe that to be evidence of serious malfeasance behind
(09:08):
the scenes. Am I overreacting in my paranoid What was
your take on the plea deal malfeasans?
Speaker 3 (09:14):
I think that it shows that David Weiss has compromised,
that he was engaged in reaching a plea deal that showed,
or at least demonstrated a great degree of bias towards
Hunter Biden. Now that has fallen apart, and he has
moved forward with prosecutions, and I know prosecutors and when
you read the indictment, and you have the idea of
(09:35):
what prosecutors really are. These are folks who really want
to get a conviction and do so convincingly so once
they think their teeth in whichould appears they have here. Generally,
prosecutors are very interested in a conviction and significant jail time.
The problem, even though that might be the case here,
even though the prosecutors behind BIS and the ones who
(09:58):
actually try this case may very aggressively prosecute this case,
there's not faith in the system. There's not faith in
David Weiss, and so I think he, before being appointed
to Special Prosecutors, should have been taken off the case
and another brought in. I think that would have been
a wise move by the DOJ to create the appearance
that we have a fair and neutral special prosecutor on
(10:21):
that case who isn't compromised.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, because I've
been ranting about that for months now, and you actually
know what you're talking about. But I cannot trust wise
you know your statement that they've got their teeth into
it and they're given it the old College try. Notwithstanding,
just because the inexplicable allowing of the statute of limitations
(10:45):
to expire on some pretty serious charges looked again like
a serious level of being compromised.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, you know, when you have these ideas of special prosecutors,
we put a lot of faith in them. I don't
I think that it is something that is very concerning
to put our nation's future in the hands of a
special prosecutor, whether that David Weiss who's prosecuting Hunter Biden,
which could have dramatic impact on Joe Biden, or whether
that is the special prosecutor over Donald Trump that essentially
(11:17):
puts a single person in charge of these prosecutorial decisions
that are highly political nature. And you said earlier that
you know, whether you like Trump or hate Trump, I'm
not looking at Trump's cases from the perspective of liking
or hating Donald Trump. I'm looking at it from the
constitutional perspective of what this means for presidents. And it's
(11:37):
really not my opinions that I'm coming with. I think
of the Federalist papers Alexander Hamilton, who addressed this very idea,
who essentially said in his writings, and it can be
interpreted in a number of ways, that the idea is
that a president should be immune from their actions while
in their presidency because of the degree of decisions they
(12:00):
have to make and the desire that we not have
undue pressure on them to be fearful that they will
be criminally prosecuted. So Hamilton said, a president should have
to first go through in impeachment, then be convicted by
the Senate before the idea of criminal charges, and that
waiving of the honor of immunity attaches to a president.
(12:22):
See that takes it out of the hand of a
single special prosecutor, and it puts it in the hand
of the people, of the representatives of the people, and
a significant portion of that. So whether we're talking about
Hunter Biden or whether we're talking about Donald Trump, we
have to be very careful to put all of our
faith in a single appointed special prosecutor who is not
(12:46):
elected by the people.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Amen to that, Andrew Tchurkowski. That's the way we see
it too. Really enjoyed it. Terrific job. Dreat to talk
to you. I hope we can do it again.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, fantastic, Thank you.
This case has never been about politics or personal vendetta
or about name calling. This case is about the facts
and the law, and mister Donald Trump violated the law.
At the end of the day, the point is simple,
no matter how powerful you are, no matter how rich
(00:22):
you are, that no one is above the law, and
that the law applies to all of us equally and fairly.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
What this case appears to be about is about a
really dramatic cadence. But I'm not a legal expert. Andrew
Tcherkawski is. Andrew is a criminal defense and civil trial lawyer,
former federal prosecutor, and military veteran, and knows what he's
talking about. Andrew, how are you, sir?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm great, good to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Good. We sure appreciate you spending a little time today. Hey,
can we start in your Georgia with the recent developments
with Fannie Willis and her boyfriend, the prosecutor she's hired
at high six figure you know, Fees who apparently doesn't
have a lot of experience in this What do you
make of that? How serious the development is this?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I think it's a very serious development. It is something
that borders on the idea of prosecutorial misconduct. You know,
her whole efforts against President Trump have been deeply politically motivated,
and she is coming after President Trump for something that
she claims is a blatant violation of Georgia law. He
has declared his innocence. I think that we have to
(01:36):
be very careful when prosecutors who are trying to charge
cases in a particularly unique way are now caught up
in their own misconduct. And it seems to be potentially
a gross misconduct.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Well, yeah, it certainly could be trayed as a project
she cooked up. I mean, obviously that's a stretch. There were,
you know, strange doings after the election, but she and
her boyfriend cooked up a scheme to make hundreds of
thousands of dollars. I mean, you could portray it that way,
and it does kind of have that look.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, it definitely has the look. The gentleman that she
is accused of having an affair with has been appointed
as a special prosecutor in Georgia. He has very limited
courtroom experience and prosecutorial experience. The reasons why he was
appointed with something that I was talking about many months ago,
before we knew about the idea that there was some
(02:31):
sort of special relationship between the two. He's gotten I believe,
over a million dollars at this point for his services.
Now he's providing legal services, no doubt through this, but
whether those legal services are connected with essentially an underlying
personal motivation to prosecute in order to rack up those
legal bills, that would certainly be on the highest order
(02:53):
of misconduct of an attorney and could very well be
seen as criminal. It's something that where there are genuine
questions in our country about Trump's conduct after the election
in twenty twenty, those are questions that I believe are
primarily political. They're trying to turn it into criminal allegations,
and it's a stretch. There is no good precedent for that,
(03:16):
and it is something that certainly taints this process for
the prosecutors to have such a scandal break out at
this point.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So not to try to make you make a prediction,
but given your experience litigating hundreds of jury trials, what
is the likelihood that it all collapses. What's the likelihood
that Fannie Willis has just dismissed and they have to
more or less restart. What do you expect to happen?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Well, I expect her to still go full steam ahead
against Trump and all of his associates that are charged here.
So she's not going to back off willingly. You know.
As a criminal defense attorney, I was kind of joking
the other day that our job is not to predict
what the issue is. It's to be ready to act
on the issues that arise. There's one hundred, maybe two
(04:03):
hundred ways that prosecutors can mess up a case, and
a really good defense lawyer is ready to pounce on
any one of them when they arise. If they knew
what the issue was ahead of time, the prosecutors would
likely know. So it's all about finding the prosecutor's errors
and mistakes or misconduct along the way, and then calling
(04:23):
it out and hoping that at that point the judge
sees it that way and will reverse the case or
dismiss the case, or issue some other major form of relief.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Before we move on to Hunter Biden, let's talk a
little bit about the business case in New York, the
real estate fraud, etc. Does that have any enduring significance
other than to Trump as a businessman, do you think?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Well? I think the enduring effect that it has primarily
is on the idea of those who do business in
the state of New York, the long term consequences of
the which Fox News report has no comparable history in
the state, and that idea being that nobody has been
(05:10):
essentially prosecuted where there are no complainants or victims people
who have lost any money. The idea here being that
if I go to a real estate agent and that
real estate agent tells me my house is worth a
million dollars, but I then list the house for one
point five and then it sells for two millions, how
much was that house worth in the first place. We
(05:30):
see corporations all the time who have never made a
penny in the history of the corporation. Think tech companies
that then sell their companies for billions of dollars. How
does that evaluated as the correct price or valuation of
the company when they haven't even made a dollar. So essentially,
the state of New York is putting itself in a
(05:51):
position to prosecute any business who they feel like are
overvaluing their company. And that's a very scary prospect for
those who do business. It's the nature of business. It's
also problematic because we see the immense political motivations here
with the various videos we've seen of Letitia James campaigning
(06:13):
to take down Donald Trump and chanting and promising that
she would take him down.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, it really is one of those things for the
record where you know, we have a fair amount of
ambivalence about Trump.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Here.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
We recognize the great stuff he's done, the policies of
the judges, et cetera, et cetera, and certainly some of
some of the negatives, but this one sure seems like
another naked political prosecution to intercede in the deal that
everybody was thrilled with and say no, no, no, you
got ripped off, and all sides are looking at the
(06:44):
States saying I don't think we were. What are you
talking about? Seems nakedly political. So, as you point out,
I think the enduring effect is going to be political,
the idea that, yeah, there is a witch hunt for
Trump and he can't get a fair shape shake Andrew
Tcherkawski's online criminal defense and civil try lawyer. Let's talk
about Hunter Biden for a minute. He pleaded not guilty
(07:05):
to some tax charges, including I believe three felonies. What
does that look like to you? How much jeopardy is
he in.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yeah, Hunter Biden is in a lot of trouble. You know.
Hunter Biden has kind of done it to himself in
his autobiography where he admits to rampant the legal activity
that he was engaged in in the late in mid
twenty teens. He is facing these tax charges and they're
(07:33):
certainly going to come fast and furious as this case
kind of proceeds with the evidence that will be used
against him. No doubt that's going to be particularly embarrassing
evidence to him and his father, and something that will
be I think heavily part of the campaign two prospects ahead.
(07:54):
I think the one very interesting point about that prosecution
is how the special prosecutor David Weiss intend to use
information about Barisma as well as Hunter Biden's connection with
a Chinese energy company. There's been lots of calls that
that is a violation of the PHARAH, the Foreign Agent
Registration Act, and that he should be prosecuted for that. Well,
(08:17):
Weiss has mentioned his affiliation with Bisma and the Chinese
holding company throughout the indictment, so I anticipate that Weiss
is going to use that information in the trial. Maybe
why he's not talking about it. But what we're all
asking is why isn't there a decision. It's been years
and years. Why hasn't Weis's come out and actually told
us why there's no prosecution on those allegations. Maybe that's
(08:40):
something that we will find out more through the court
filings that come in the following weeks and months.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Right, I was just going to say I don't trust
Weiss for a minute, and was going to ask that
that unholy to my mind plea deal a couple of
months ago that fell apart when that alert judge called
out both sides for the unprecedented and bizarre nature of it,
I believe that to be evidence of serious malfeasance behind
(09:08):
the scenes. Am I overreacting in my paranoid What was
your take on the plea deal malfeasans?
Speaker 3 (09:14):
I think that it shows that David Weiss has compromised,
that he was engaged in reaching a plea deal that showed,
or at least demonstrated a great degree of bias towards
Hunter Biden. Now that has fallen apart, and he has
moved forward with prosecutions, and I know prosecutors and when
you read the indictment, and you have the idea of
(09:35):
what prosecutors really are. These are folks who really want
to get a conviction and do so convincingly so once
they think their teeth in whichould appears they have here. Generally,
prosecutors are very interested in a conviction and significant jail time.
The problem, even though that might be the case here,
even though the prosecutors behind BIS and the ones who
(09:58):
actually try this case may very aggressively prosecute this case,
there's not faith in the system. There's not faith in
David Weiss, and so I think he, before being appointed
to Special Prosecutors, should have been taken off the case
and another brought in. I think that would have been
a wise move by the DOJ to create the appearance
that we have a fair and neutral special prosecutor on
(10:21):
that case who isn't compromised.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, because I've
been ranting about that for months now, and you actually
know what you're talking about. But I cannot trust wise
you know your statement that they've got their teeth into
it and they're given it the old College try. Notwithstanding,
just because the inexplicable allowing of the statute of limitations
(10:45):
to expire on some pretty serious charges looked again like
a serious level of being compromised.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, you know, when you have these ideas of special prosecutors,
we put a lot of faith in them. I don't
I think that it is something that is very concerning
to put our nation's future in the hands of a
special prosecutor, whether that David Weiss who's prosecuting Hunter Biden,
which could have dramatic impact on Joe Biden, or whether
that is the special prosecutor over Donald Trump that essentially
(11:17):
puts a single person in charge of these prosecutorial decisions
that are highly political nature. And you said earlier that
you know, whether you like Trump or hate Trump, I'm
not looking at Trump's cases from the perspective of liking
or hating Donald Trump. I'm looking at it from the
constitutional perspective of what this means for presidents. And it's
(11:37):
really not my opinions that I'm coming with. I think
of the Federalist papers Alexander Hamilton, who addressed this very idea,
who essentially said in his writings, and it can be
interpreted in a number of ways, that the idea is
that a president should be immune from their actions while
in their presidency because of the degree of decisions they
(12:00):
have to make and the desire that we not have
undue pressure on them to be fearful that they will
be criminally prosecuted. So Hamilton said, a president should have
to first go through in impeachment, then be convicted by
the Senate before the idea of criminal charges, and that
waiving of the honor of immunity attaches to a president.
(12:22):
See that takes it out of the hand of a
single special prosecutor, and it puts it in the hand
of the people, of the representatives of the people, and
a significant portion of that. So whether we're talking about
Hunter Biden or whether we're talking about Donald Trump, we
have to be very careful to put all of our
faith in a single appointed special prosecutor who is not
(12:46):
elected by the people.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Amen to that, Andrew Tchurkowski. That's the way we see
it too. Really enjoyed it. Terrific job. Dreat to talk
to you. I hope we can do it again.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, fantastic, Thank you.
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